Continue reading Google issues invites to Google Wave

Google issues invites to Google Wave originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The business model of The Huffington Post, the largest and most famous political blogging and opinion site, fell apart completely yesterday. According to Hitwise, Huffington's traffic grew by 21% from October 28 to November 4. It has been rising sharply over the last year as interest in the election picked up speed.

With the election over, Huffington's traffic is certain to drop sharply and all of the reporters and editors it has hired since the beginning of the year may not have much to do.

Traditional wisdom is that old media will have to cut costs to stay alive, but there are some very successful Internet properties that may have to cut more since their natural audiences are leaving them. Political sites may turn to business and lifestyle reporting, but those categories are already crowded.

The Wall Street Journal writes "History, however, indicates that news outlets that benefit significantly from an election suffer about the same amount when it's over, so the Web sites will expand now at their peril."

Looking at Huffington, audience measurement service Compete shows the political website's traffic up 711% for the year ending in September. That number probably got even more impressive last month. In September, Huffington had 5.3 million visitors. In 2008, that figure was never above one million.

With all of the audience that Huffington is almost certain to lose it will also part with most of its advertising. And, with that, the large staff it will not be able to afford.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

What does Huffington do now? Cut costs originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 06 Nov 2008 11:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading An interview with a blogger who made $70,000 last month: Me!

An interview with a blogger who made $70,000 last month: Me! originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Associated Press puts bloggers on notice

Associated Press puts bloggers on notice originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Whole Foods CEO goes back to blogging originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 29 May 2008 14:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I often spend a little time over at Blogmaverick.com, where Mark Cuban recently sought to give the world of blogging a little of his insightful perspective. It seems that Mr. Cuban finds little to respect in the world of blogging, or at least in the world of slipshod ,cookie-cutter blogging. Though I found Mark's blog entry a trifle difficult to read, which is quite unusual coming from him, I nonetheless agree with most of the body of his post. I especially agree with his assertion that just because a blog is backed by the name of a well-known media organization does not in itself render that blog worthy of special notice.

Mark Cuban wrote, "...newspapers having 'bloggers' is easily one of the many bad decisions that newspapers have made over the past 10 years." If newspapers are going in a wrong direction by producing blogs, perhaps they need to reinstall the title reporter and drop the title blogger to give a different perspective to the reader. If newspapers are using the term blog simply as a culture hook, then they have it all wrong and they're just selling their reporters short. I believe that I'm in agreement with Mark Cuban when I say that true reporters should be releasing content within some format other than blogs. Blogging is what I do, and I'll be the first to tell you that I'm no reporter. The titles are absolutely not interchangeable, though they may sometimes be used correctly in tandem.

Continue reading Billionaire Mark Cuban offers opinions on blogging

Billionaire Mark Cuban offers opinions on blogging originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 15 Mar 2008 17:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading My online chat with Spitzer's call girl, Ashley Alexandra Dupre (or at least I think it was her)

My online chat with Spitzer's call girl, Ashley Alexandra Dupre (or at least I think it was her) originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 13 Mar 2008 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The concept of "collaborative filtering" has been around for a long time. The pioneer is Amazon.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN), which built the system that does things like "if you like this book, you might also like the following titles." Essentially, this is based on a variety of data sources, such as your purchase history as well as the behavior of similar users.

Well, a startup company, Outbrain, is providing its own flavor of collaborative filtering. In fact, the company has announced a venture capital round of $5 million. The investors include Gemini Israel Funds, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and GlenRock Israel.

The thinking behind Outbrain is that people want to read news stories and articles that those who have similar interests also read and liked. So, through a widget, a news site or blogger can allow users to rank content (using a five-start system).

Continue reading Outbrain: thinking of venture capital

Outbrain: thinking of venture capital originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Would Carl Icahn blog on BloggingStocks? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 07 Feb 2008 09:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Over the years, I've used a variety of blogging platforms. So far, my favorite is WordPress, which is the mastermind of Automattic.

Today there's some good news for WordPress users -- the company snagged $29.5 million in a round of financing. The investors include Polaris Venture Partners, True Ventures, Radar Partners and the New York Times (NYSE: NYT).

And yes, the founding developer of WordPress, Matthew Mullenweg, has a blog post about the funding and the company's history. Keep in mind that there have been more than 5.8 million downloads of the software, with over 3.8 million in 2007. With such a base, the company has been generating a good amount of revenues (and now has about 18 full-time employees).

Writes Matt: "Automattic is now positioned to execute on our vision of a better web not just in blogging, but expanding our investment in anti-spam, identity, wikis, forums, and more -- small, open-source pieces, loosely joined with the same approach and philosophy that has brought us this far."

If you want to see other interesting venture capital investments, visit DealProfiles.com.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

Automattic: Blogging for millions originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Back in early 2005, Six Apart purchased LiveJournal, an online community of bloggers. Now LiveJournal has been sold again - this time to SUP, a Russian media company.

Compared to biggies like MySpace and Facebook, LiveJournal is a smaller player, but it still has about 14 million unique users.

So how much is this deal worth? Unfortunately, Six Apart didn't disclose the price tag on the deal. But in light of the valuations of recent deals - especially the Facebook financing - I bet it wasn't cheap.

In fact, it looks like there may be a scramble to buy up social properties. Basically, traditional media companies realize they need to get more aggressive in the space.

Interesting enough, SUP has been managing the LiveJournal platform for Russia, accounting for nearly 30% of the user base.

As for Six Apart, it will have more time to devote to its blogging systems, such as Movable Type and TypePad. After all, the company must deal with the tough fight from rival Automattic, which manages WordPress.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates DealProfiles.com.

To Russia with LiveJournal -- blog site sold to SUP originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 04 Dec 2007 10:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Liveblogging Google's (GOOG) Q3 results

Liveblogging Google's (GOOG) Q3 results originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 18 Oct 2007 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

With the explosion of blogs and wikis, it gets tough to find information. True, tagging can be helpful. But it's a bit of a chore for content creators (yes, it is more fun writing stuff).

But there's help: Jiglu. Basically, the company has a system that automates the tagging process. More importantly, it's free.

It's fairly easy to use the service, which is available for platforms like Google (NASDAQ: GOOG)'s Blogger. Jiglu scans your content and then comes up with a dynamic index. From there, you can place a cool box on your blog or wiki that has the relevant tags.

All in all, it's a good idea. However, the business model is kind of fuzzy. As usual, the company looks for ad revenues (who doesn't?). In theory, this sounds fine. Yet, don't bloggers want to keep their revenues? Why transfer that to an indexing service?

In other words, I have a feeling Jiglu might go through some iterations on the business model.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates DealProfiles.com.

Jiglu tags along with Web 2.0 originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 16 Oct 2007 14:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Reuters (NASDAQ:RTRSY) has a blog section at the bottom of most business stories at Reuters.com. It is called Business Blog Posts, and it is powered by Blogburst. Blogburst is part of blog syndication service Pluck. And, Reuters is one of Pluck's owners.

Complicated? Yes.

The business blogs that Reuters runs are mostly small, one-person operations like Phil's Stock World and Captain Currency. Some, like The Kirk Report and Bill Cara, are well regarded. But, Reuters does them a disservice. It keeps the traffic for their content when it runs on Reuters.com. So, Reuters gets the ad revenue on those pages. The bloggers get their names on Reuters, and a link back to their sites, which is probably rarely used.

It is interesting to note that none of the big business blog sites like SeekingAlpha or Ticker Sense run in the Reuters program. They understand that the deal is good for Reuters and bad for the blogs. They aren't prepared to let Reuters compete with them for eyeballs using their own blog content.

It is a shame that Reuters has handled bloggers this way. Many other media outlets like WSJ.com and TheStreet.com comment on blogs but send traffic to the bloggers. Reuters has decided not to give the little guy a leg up.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St. which was approached about the Reuters program and turned the company down.

What does Reuters have against financial blogs? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 04 Oct 2007 14:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In a sign of the increasing importance of high-end financial blogs, Reuters Group Plc (NASDAQ: RTRSY) is starting a new network of the sites. Or, it could be that the Reuters business development people have down time because of its upcoming purchase by Thomson Corp. (NYSE: TOC).

The offer that Reuters is making to a number of high-end blogs is that it will link to the participating sites from Reuters.com, offer free access to selected Reuters Headlines (RSS or Headline Wizard) and Reuters Video Player to publish Reuters News, and get 30% of an advertising program that the big financial services company will manage.

In return, each blog agrees to execute contracts with comScore and NetRatings to assign its traffic to Reuters.com. NetRatings ranks Reuters.com as the No.7 financial website with unique visitors of 6.1 million in May.

Reuters may be trying to match blog initiatives at media outlets including FT.com, WSJ.com, and AOL.com.

Either Reuters has a very high regard for financial blogs or it needs to pump up its audience ratings.

Disclosure: 24/7 Wall St. was approached by Reuters about this opportunity.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a principal at 24/7 Wall St.

Reuters starts financial blog network originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 09 Jul 2007 16:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Yahoo's handling of financial blogs says it all originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 19 Jun 2007 09:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I'm not writing this piece for my associate bloggers here on BloggingStocks. The fact of the matter is that most, if not all of them are far better, more well versed and more professional than myself. I don't even consider myself a professional writer. Basically I'm a hack commentator with some creative potential. But be that as it may, I do know a thing or two about presentation, and if there's one thing I've learned about blogging is that the presentation is what garners the healthy numbers. So, for the aspiring and struggling bloggers out there who want to expand their potential, this one's for you.

I get quite a lot of my material from three major news services. United Press International, Associated Press International, and The Financial News Wire. The angle is that I tend to quickly skip past the stories that I know everyone else is reporting. I know what's being reported because I research that fairly well. So when I get down to sifting through the news to determine what I'll present to you, I already have a pretty well formed picture of what stories are not requiring another go around. Sometimes I do present a piece regarding a story that has been hashed over pretty well, but in those cases you'll notice that I don't just put out a carbon copy of the press release. In the cases when I grab onto a hot headline to present content to the readers, it is my purpose to give them more of a scoop of my opinionated brain matter than just another carbon copied dateline.

Continue reading The news, blogs, and press releases: Give 'em a piece of yourself

The news, blogs, and press releases: Give 'em a piece of yourself originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 06 Jun 2007 20:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Apple iPhone/Engadget SNAFU: The aftermath

Apple iPhone/Engadget SNAFU: The aftermath originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 17 May 2007 19:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Jobs from blogging: Far more companies are hiring than you'd think

Jobs from blogging: Far more companies are hiring than you'd think originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 10 Apr 2007 19:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Google announced on Tuesday that it's expanding its testing of a new advertising program that will make it possible for advertisers to pay for advertising only if it generates results. Under the current system, advertisers are charged whenever someone clicks on an ad. Under the new system (which is being tested by 75 advertisers and 75 publishers), advertisers will only pay if the ad generates an action by the consumer such as buying a product, subscribing to a newsletter, etc.

Obviously, a pay-for-action system holds tremendous appeal for advertisers, but is much less appealing to the websites selling advertising space. However, in the long run, I think it will be good for them. If advertisers only pay for results, they will be more inclined to advertise on the Internet. Expanded demand for ad space on the web will eventually lead to higher fees for the publishers. And, ultimately, companies aren't going to want to pay if their ads aren't generating results anyway. So while I would expect some initial resistance from publishers, I think they should embrace it.

Google expands "pay per action" ad test originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 21 Mar 2007 12:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.