Archives: October 2006

Google Acquires JotSpot

Posted by: Heather Green on October 31, Categories: wiki

Joe Kraus and Graham Spencer just can't seem to stay away from search engines. The co-founders of Excite started thinking about Jotspot, the business Wiki startup, three years ago. Basically,...

Saving magazines

Posted by: Stephen Baker on October 31, Categories: mainstream media

Let's just assume that you have a bunch of magazine subscriptions and have fallen behind in your reading. On recycling day (ie. today), your spouse comes up to you with...

Writing for an audience of one

Posted by: Stephen Baker on October 30, Categories: BusinessWeek, mainstream media

For years at BusinessWeek, I wrote for an audience of one. At least that's the way I saw it. If an article pleased the editor in chief, it really didn't...

Why Ze Frank is Right and Wrong About Rocketboom

Posted by: Heather Green on October 27, Categories: podcasting

A look at Rocketboom's numbers shows that Ze Frank is right and wrong. Rocketboom doesn't dish up 300,000 downloads a day. It's averaging around 211,000. But that also means that Rocketboom daily downloads are 7 times as large as the 30,000 that The Show gets.

Unhappy datum

Posted by: Stephen Baker on October 27, Categories: Definitions, society

Looking through this grammar check (ex Pro-blogger) I came across one of my bêtes noires (note fancy French plural.). Datum. It's the singular of data. But does anyone use...

Coke and Eepybird: File Under Better Late than Never

Posted by: Heather Green on October 27, Categories:

So after sitting on the sideline watching the Coke and Diet Mentos video craze bloom, Coke has finally decided to jump in. They're sponsoring a contest run by the Eepybird guys (who did the original Coke and Diet Mentos video.

What's a waste of time?

Posted by: Stephen Baker on October 26, Categories: society

Lots of good responses to the Web 3.0 post. For me, it's a good exercise to look at the various trends we see--the growth in computing power, the movement...

Six Apart's Vox Launches

Posted by: Heather Green on October 26, Categories: blog technology

Six Apart launched its new blogging service Vox today. I am curious if anyone else has used it and what they think of it. I like this idea of public...

Ze Frank, Rocketboom,and the Problems with Numbers

Posted by: Heather Green on October 25, Categories: podcasting

By questioning Andrew Baron about Rocketboom's download numbers, Ze Frank shows just how hard it is to use public numbers to show traffic at an online video site. Web stats...

This Week's Podcast with Todd Dagres

Posted by: Heather Green on October 25, Categories: podcasting

On this week's BW Cutting Edge Podcast, Todd Dagres talks about Spark Capital, his fund devoted to investing in new media and convergence startups. He explains how the company is...

What Would An Agent Do? Online Video Stars

Posted by: Heather Green on October 25, Categories: digital media

I enjoyed reading the story in the NYTimes today about the talent agency that's scouting video stars online. But I also had fun riding in on the bus just imagining...

TV Isn't Dead

Posted by: Heather Green on October 24, Categories: mainstream media

It seems to me that for the most part, people use absolutist headlines on their posts to create a polemic. And for the most part, I just grumble. But here's...

Web 3.0

Posted by: Stephen Baker on October 24, Categories: Citizen Media, Definitions

My assignment in Monaco was to lead a panel in defining Web 3.0--this when people are struggling to get their heads around Web 2.0. I wouldn't say we emerged from...

Are we entering a new Jazz Age?

Posted by: Stephen Baker on October 23, Categories: mainstream media, society

Are you jazzy enough? We grew up in an industrial age where big organizations operated like orchestras. Everyone played a defined role in rigorous, finely-synchronized ensembles. At least that was...

Venice Project, Music Nation: From P2P Video to Label-backed Contests

Posted by: Heather Green on October 20, Categories: digital media

Two stories about launches of video startups, including the Skype backed Venice Project and Music Nation, an online American Idol where voters decide who gets signed to a deal with Epic Records.

The buzz at Monaco: Netvibes

Posted by: Stephen Baker on October 20, Categories: mainstream media, wiki

The media conference in Monaco is just starting, but the biggest buzz so far surrounds Netvibes, the Paris-based company that is putting together do-it-yourself pages with unimaginable combinations of bells,...

NBC News Wakeup Call

Posted by: Heather Green on October 19, Categories: digital media

The news that NBC is dramatically reshaping the network, through deep cuts in the news operations and changes in the primetime lineup is a huge shift. The networks were one...

How Will Video Fragment? One VC's Take.

Posted by: Heather Green on October 19, Categories:

I was speaking recently with Todd Dagres, the founder of VC firm Spark Capital, about the future of the video market and he had some interesting thoughts about how things...

Amanda Congdon to Work with TV Network, Develop Cable Show

Posted by: Heather Green on October 18, Categories: podcasting

Rocketboom's former host and co-founder gives a little detail about her next act, which includes a videoblogging gig with a TV network and deal to develop a cable show.

The Problem with Web Metrics

Posted by: Heather Green on October 16, Categories: digital media

Here's a story I edited, written by Sarah Lacy, about a topic that drives us all crazy online: Web Metrics. This story is a good overview of the issue for...

My Podcasting, Ebbing and Flowing

Posted by: Heather Green on October 16, Categories: podcasting

I've been noticing recently that my interest in my podcasting tends to rise and fall in correlation with how much writing and editing I am doing. I've been doing a...

How do editors build brands?

Posted by: Stephen Baker on October 14, Categories: mainstream media

Goodbye parties two nights in a row for BW colleagues, and I've got the headache to prove it. So I've naturally been thinking about job prospects for jettisoned journalists. I...

YouTube: Fun with Numbers

Posted by: Heather Green on October 12, Categories:

Why it's important to look at the total number of visitors in the U.S. when it comes to talking about making money off of YouTube.

Is the Blackberry stealing readers from BusinessWeek?

Posted by: Stephen Baker on October 12, Categories: BusinessWeek, society

A very critical story about BusinessWeek just came out in The New Republic. The story, behind a firewall, says that we're turning into the People of the business world in...

This Week's Podcast with Rocketboom's Joanne Colan

Posted by: Heather Green on October 11, Categories: podcasting

The guest this week on the BW Cutting Edge podcast is Rocketboom's Joanne Colan.

Yahoo's time capsule: Aren't we creating one every day?

Posted by: Stephen Baker on October 11, Categories: search, society

I read news about Yahoo's time capsule. (ex MIT) We can all contribute our thoughts, poems, pictures and songs. But doesn't it seem strange to be assembling a formal time...

We've been numbers for ages

Posted by: Stephen Baker on October 10, Categories: society

When I tell people about the book I'm writing, and how companies are going to get to know us better and better by analyzing our data, they often reply,...

Clever, Clever YouTube

Posted by: Heather Green on October 09, Categories: digital media

The Google purchase of YouTube makes so much sense to me because only someone with a massive ad search network could make YouTube pay out quickly enough to stave off...

YouTube signs Licensing Deals with Universal, CBS, and SonyBMG

Posted by: Heather Green on October 09, Categories: digital media

Continuing the work it has been doing to clean up its copyright infringing act, YouTube signed deals with Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Group and CBS to license the...

Innovation Drought?

Posted by: Heather Green on October 09, Categories:

My collegue Tim Mullaney has an interesting story about how the VC environment could be impacting innovation. One theme is how the problems with finding ways to cash out (Despite...

Why we'll OD on coffee

Posted by: Stephen Baker on October 09, Categories: society

Steve Rubel laments the passing of Tower Records, and wonders if book stores will be next. No way, I say, as long as book stores remain seductive places to hang...

This Week's Podcast with Jeff Clavier

Posted by: Heather Green on October 05, Categories: podcasting

On this week's BW Cutting Edge podcast, Jeff Clavier, the founder of SoftTech VC talks about investing as an angel investor in social media, search, and discovery startups. As we...

Cyworld and the Stratification of Social Networking

Posted by: Heather Green on October 05, Categories: digital media

Will splintering be how MySpace topples?

New baseball gameday: data paradise

Posted by: Stephen Baker on October 04, Categories: society

Uh oh. I'm supposed to be working, and I've just come upon the brand new Major League Baseball "Gameday." It's a statistical treasure trove that you can watch in nearly...

Why bother with college?

Posted by: Stephen Baker on October 04, Categories: society

I was talking yesterday to, Michael Schwartz, the Harvard microeconomist who just joined Yahoo's research team. He and others will be using microeconomic techniques to model and predict the behavior...

Capturing Insight

Posted by: Heather Green on October 03, Categories: blog technology

Musings on whether private blogs might be a good way to track research or reporting.

BW Podcast with VCs Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham

Posted by: Heather Green on October 02, Categories: podcasting

The latest BW Cutting Edge Podcast is with Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham, founders of NYC VC Union Square Ventures. I learned a lot during this interview and think it's...

The Making of a Good Story

Posted by: Heather Green on October 02, Categories:

I was at a green conference this weekend and some college students who were there asked a journalist now turned book writer and green energy guru how should they approach...