The writer makes the common mistake to equate circulation decline with decline of interest in the news. That clearly isn't the case which even a quick look at Pew Research stats would show. People are getting their news from the internet.
The news and music industries are very similar and despite what you read both are booming. It is the newspaper and recording industries that are buggered.
Summize is excellent. You can set up an RSS feed on your start-up name and then it feeds you Tweets that mention it. It is a great way to connect with early adopters who use your site.
The tech writing is as good as ever (and I really like the design - feels 'cleaner' than TechCrunch). I thought all the celebrity stuff would be J key fodder but it is strangely compelling.
We've been looking at adding CoComment to our site which I think is very similar. I have been using it and I like the way it records all the comments I make which I can then go back and refer to. However, it feels like we provide them with new customers and we don't get a ton back in return.
You really need to work backwards from the value of the customer. If you have something that directly monetises then you can calculate value of a register user and of a visitor. Back out your marketing budget from there.
However I am assuming you have a consumer app where it is very hard to calculate the value of a visitor/user. In that case you are looking at viral, social media, SEO and paid ads. Viral works if your product is intrinsically viral product (send to friend doesn't count). Social media works if have rich content (how to's, great photos, recent news). SEO is what you do if you can't do the first two (I know of one of the world's biggest travel social networks who never paid a penny on SEO). The problem with SEO is it takes a lot of time to build up traffic.
That brings you to paid advertising. I think paid advertising is great for getting everything kick started but the business model for paid ads doesn't stack up for free consumer apps. Hope that helps.
Walking away from over-paying for Yahoo is probably the smartest thing Ballmer has done since becoming CEO. Did Yahoo manage to convince anyone that they really have a strong go-it-alone strategy? Why pay now when you can pay half in 12 months time.
My prediction is Ballmer will still be comfortable in the CEO suite by the end of the year.
It is an excellent article. However I don't really get the hoo-ha about most Facebook apps being just for fun. I guess if you asked most of Facebook's users why they use Facebook they would say to have fun and connect with friends, not manage their schedule.
I guess that isn't good for Facebook's secret evil world domination strategy (is that still a secret) but not an issue otherwise.
I worked for McKinsey for 4 years and I actually really liked the up or out process. Yes, it puts you under pressure but not much more than the pressure young competitive people tend to put themselves under anyway. Nearly everyone there wanted to be challenged and get fast promotion. At the same time the process was very open, feedback was fair and when people didn't make it there wasn't much stigma attached (it just didn't work for them).
The flip side of up or out is that if you are any good you get promoted very quickly. I couldn't think of anything worse than waiting around for your boss to retire or move on.
It is pretty tough to see why Microsoft wants Digg. It already has an exclusive on advertising. Plus it isn't clear how they would grow it any faster than Rose and Co. Plus while, I don't believe 90% of the we would leave threats I think some of its core users would want to look elsewhere.