Moses Kagan's Aurora Borealis

Why are NY Times reporters anonymous in an age where reputation is all that matters, particularly online?

NY Times reporters create incredibly high-quality content. Yet, with the exception of the very small by-line atop (or sometimes below) each article, they are basically anonymous to everyone but hard-core media geeks.

So, NY Times Digital:

• Create a profile page for each reporter
• Include pictures and bio information
  
• Include links and intro paragraphs from each of the reporter's articles
• Include a comments area for interactions
• If available, include links to reporter's Facebook, MySpace, etc.

Doing this would cost nothing and would open up an entirely new, more social way to consume the content the Times is already paying to create. Plus, the addition of social features would spur entirely new kinds of interactions between reporters and their fans.

So, NYT, what are you waiting for?

Labels: internet, newspapers, ny times

As many of my friends will know, I have been working with a small team over the last six months to develop Cazt, a secure new system for organizing, viewing and sharing audition videos over the internet.

Cazt differs from competitive sites in several ways, the most important of which is that it is free for producers, directors and casting directors. Cazt saves these busy people time and money by eliminating endless rounds of burning and messengering DVDs around Hollywood.

How does Cazt make money? Actors who audition for roles in participating projects are given the opportunity to:
1. Watch their audition videos, and
2. Customize online resumes into which their videos will be embedded. That way, actors ensure that they put their best foot (feet?) forward for the people who will decide whether they get the job.

Actor resumes are also available on the wider internet (minus the confidential audition videos!), so they can serve as professional home pages.

All of this value is available to actors for the low price of $14.99 per month, which is considerably less than most online resume services.

If you or someone you know is casting a tv show, movie, commercial, industrial film, get in touch by e-mailing me or commenting below.

Labels: Cazt, internet

E&P has a summary of a new D-Bank analyst report arguing that newspapers in the Yahoo employment classifieds alliance may soon hit the inflection point where the decline in traditional recruitment classifieds revenue is outweighed by the increase in online recruitment revenue.

I've been banging on and on about the need for scale in classifieds sites - specifically, in terms of listings - for a while now. In an age where talent is searching for absolutely the best job available and willing to move to get it, no one newspaper is going to succeed in the recruitment classifieds market by itself.

Instead, papers need to contribute to, and benefit from, a national (or international!) network.

Labels: classifieds, internet, newspapers, recruitment

The NY Times has NBC Universal's announcement of a new plan to offer free downloads of its popular programs. NBC plans to make money in two ways: 1. Through sales of ads to be inserted in the downloads (which you can't fast-forward), and 2. Through sales of no-ads versions. NBC has also pulled out of its deal with Apple to host its content on iTunes (though this is possibly a negotiating ploy).

The major problem with this concept, which the other networks will be watching / preparing to duplicate, is that it fragments the marketplace for consumers. If each network adopts the view that the only place to get their shows will be their own, proprietary sites, they are asking customers to go through the arduous process of finding / downloading their favorite shows from different sites (with different interfaces, logins, etc.)

There is NO WAY that this will become the status quo. Instead, some techies are going to cook up a meta-search site that allows consumers to create a list of their favorite shows and then automatically goes through the process of finding / downloading them from the network sites, thereby removing the effort / pain in the ass from the process. And, incidentally, defeating the networks in their efforts to use their proprietary content to drive traffic to their proprietary sites.

Labels: internet, iTunes, NBC Universal, television

Ecstatic reports today about the NY Times finally dropping Times Select, the paid subscription wall hiding the NY Times Op-Ed content. Paidcontent has the numbers.

And, according to Alleyinsider, Murdoch is going to go in the same direction, trading the subs revenue from 1m online readers for ad sales revenue on an audience of 10-15m.

Everyone will, of course, be writing about how this is a big victory for the Internet, openness, blah blah blah. But what about reports that CPMs are trending down, at least at AOL? What happens when the newspapers, attempting to recoup the lost subs revenue, walk right into a (potentially) declining ad market with more volume to sell?

Not sure I'd like to own NY Times Co. stock right around when earnings reports next come out.

Labels: advertising, internet, newspapers, ny times

Zhang Yin, the richest woman in the world, made all her money by turning an astute observation into a business model. She saw goods being shipped to China in paper packages. And she saw the ships coming back to China empty. And she thought, "Why don't we load the used paper back on the ships, bring it back to China, and recycle it to make new packaging?" That was a $3.4b idea for her (personally).

Why do I mention Zhang? Because I believe that there is a resource on the internet every bit as undervalued as the rubbish paper and empty ships that Zhang saw: banner ads.

Right now, anyone can go onto Google, Advetising.com or any of the other advertising networks and purchase the right to show banner ads across the internet. Prices are as low as $0.25 per 1,000 impressions. And, you can target the impressions, so that they are shown on sites with whichever demographic profile you desire.

This is an amazing opportunity!!! You can show your ads 1,000 times for $0.25. Imagine a product selling for $100, with a gross margin of 80%. Each time a product sells, you make $80 in gross profit. So, you would be willing to spend (in the real world), at least $50-75 on advertising. That's 200,000-300,000 ad impressions. Which means that if you convert 0.0003-0.0005% of the impressions into sales, you have a great business.

This has to be one of the best arbitrage opportunities on the internet - and one that you only need some flash skills and a credit card to take advantage of.

Labels: advertising, banner ads, display, internet

A journalist friend, let's call him "Eben", recently asked me for career advice. Having risen quickly up the totem-pole, Eben is now a reporter for Time magazine, which is, by any standard, a pretty big accomplishment for a 27 year-old.

Eben's question was: Which part of the print journalism landscape is likely to be safe from the on-going business model disruption currently afflicting newspapers and (some) magazines? Put another way: What is the print media landscape of the future going to look like?

Any prediction for the future of print media needs to start by acknowledging the impact of the internet. Starting a website is easy. Getting people to look at your website is more difficult - but clearly not too difficult (you're reading this!). Making (some) revenue from selling ads around your website is very easy - Google will do it for you instantly.

Sites like MySpace and Facebook generate billions of page impressions at very little cost, allowing them to serve ads at ridiculously low prices to advertisers. Right now, I can get Google to show pretty much any ad I want 1,000 times for less than $1, because there is so much inventory available.

What does this mean for newspapers and magazines? It means that, with the exception of some high-prestige titles, it will be very difficult to sustain ad pricing levels at a level high enough to support expensive news gathering organizations.

I expect that we are entering a world in which (1) most news is reported by networks like the AP and syndicated across the entire web; and (2) a small group of prestigious publications charge high cover prices / online subscriptions for high-quality investigative reporting.

Not a particularly pretty picture for those of us who believe that high-quality investigative journalism widely-read is critical for the health of democracies, but you can't fight the market forever.

Labels: future, internet, magazines, media, newspapers

This is my mobile internet manifesto:

1. Three successful business models have emerged on the internet: advertising (Yahoo & Google) / subscription (Match.com) / transaction fees (eBay)

2. This was b/c of the payment problem – it was impossible to charge customers small amounts, b/c credit card companies didn’t want the business and internet service providers a. didn’t understand it and b. used variable IP addresses and so lacked a perfectly straightforward manner of determining who had purchased what

3. Meanwhile, WAP emerged – crap technology, bad hardware, slow speeds, etc

4. But, the mobile networks, with their long history of billing for premium rate phone lines, slowly worked out a creaky, painful, but ultimately workable way to bill subscribers for purchases on their phone bills

5. More recently – emergence of WiFi and high-speed mobile data connections, flat rate data contracts

6. Launch of the iPhone and competitive gadgets

7. There will be a huge audience of (affluent) people with: high quality mobile internet devices, fast connections, and the ability to buy goods and services priced at $0.10 / $0.20 / $0.50, etc. – admittedly, the mobile networks still charge far too much for their service but this will change

8. Over the next 2-3 years, new business models will emerge that have the potential to re-shape the way we think about internet businesses

Labels: billing, internet, mobile