Archives: January 2007

Pew Study Shows 28% of People Online have Tagged Content

Posted by: Heather Green on January 31, Categories: tagging

A Pew Internet study out today shows that a pretty impressive number of folks are using tagging, just three years after it became popularized with del.icio.us and Flickr. Study also finds that 7% of internet users say they tag content "on a typical day."

This Week's Cutting Edge Podcast with Photobucket's Alex Welch

Posted by: Heather Green on January 31, Categories: podcasting

On the Cutting Edge Podcast this week, I chatted with Alex Welch, the CEO and co-founder of Photobucket, the very popular social media sharing site that is adding 80,000 new...

Wetpaint, Wikis, and the Selling Ads on User Generated Site

Posted by: Heather Green on January 30, Categories: Wikis

In the world of user generated content, Wikis are the place where people stick around, unlike the flight of fancy hotspots like YouTube.

Why didn't reporters run on Ari Fleisher's scoop?

Posted by: Stephen Baker on January 30, Categories:

The Times reports that former Bush press secretary Ari Fleisher spilled the beans to two reporters about CIA agent Valerie Plame. “They didn’t take out their notebooks,” he said. “They...

I got my hands on a tobacco-free Newsweek

Posted by: Stephen Baker on January 29, Categories: advertising, mainstream media

A special offer from Newsweek in today's NY Times: The magazine promises "to provide tobacco ad-free editions to subscribers who request it." I paged through my latest Newsweek and couldn't...

YouTube's shining and dimming stars

Posted by: Stephen Baker on January 29, Categories: entrepreneurs

Ever heard of Alvah C. Roebuck? How about the Woz? Both were nudged out of the spotlight by their more famous partners, Richard Sears and Steve Jobs. Now it looks...

Methodist social networking: click tab for prayer

Posted by: Stephen Baker on January 29, Categories: new blogs

Just got a news release about the United Methodist Church's new social networking site that debuts today. (Link not up yet) It makes sense. What's a more natural social...

Fairly satisfied? Extremely satisfied?

Posted by: Stephen Baker on January 27, Categories: Weekend Rant

Against every instinct, with the exception of procrastination, I clicked open a survey from Hotels.com about my most recent stay (at a Days Inn). But the questions I see...

Yahoo's false positives: When to worry

Posted by: Stephen Baker on January 26, Categories: spam and other abuses

I just opened my Yahoo mail account to see two new messages. On one, the vulgar subject line included the word "Viagra." The sender of the second was "Virus." I...

How to Make Money With Videoblogging? Ask Ask A Ninja

Posted by: Heather Green on January 25, Categories:

Video blog Ask a Ninja says it signs a deal with blog network Federated Media for big contract.

How do pollsters reach cell phones?

Posted by: Stephen Baker on January 24, Categories: politics

Pollster Mark Blumenthal notes that 10.5% of American households don't have a traditional wireline phone. This cell-phone-only population has doubled in the past two years. And it poses problems for...

This Week's Cutting Edge Podcast with FeedBurner's Rick Klau

Posted by: Heather Green on January 24, Categories: podcasting

On this week's Cutting Edge podcast, I speak with Rick Klau, a vice-president at FeedBurner. He talks about the rise of podcasts among the feeds his company helps manage. The...

PR: Not rocket science

Posted by: Stephen Baker on January 22, Categories: marketing

Shel Holtz defends the science of public relations after critics including Stowe Boyd and Robert Scoble lay into the concept of a social media press release. He writes, "Public relations...

Breathless Google Buzz...Again

Posted by: Heather Green on January 22, Categories: search

An article in the Times of London gushes about how Google is plotting to "do for books what Apple's iPod has done for music." Ugh, yet again Google waves its...

Dear Wired: Please, No More Daily Show Covers

Posted by: Heather Green on January 20, Categories:

Just a quick weekend rant. I really like Wired Magazine, but I don't know about you but what feels tired to me is putting folks from the Comedy Central's The...

BW Profile of Wallstrip

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

My collegue Aaron Pressman did a short profile of the video blog Wallstrip for this week's magazine. It's a novel idea in a year where indie video bloggers who want...

Business opportunity: Devils wing of the Hall of Fame

Posted by: Stephen Baker on January 19, Categories: Weekend Rant

Here's an early weekend rant on baseball. Apologies to non-fans. A high school friend and I have a new idea. Build a rival Hall of Fame that celebrates baseball for...

Captive advertising audience at 30,000 feet

Posted by: Stephen Baker on January 18, Categories: advertising

I took a US Airways flight from Pittsburgh to Denver yesterday, and the advertising drove me crazy. It's hard to blame the beleaguered airlines for trying to find someway,...

Colorado paper blogs letters to editor

Posted by: Stephen Baker on January 18, Categories: mainstream media

Sitting in a little cafe in Boulder, CO, and I see the local Scripps Howard paper, Daily Camera, is putting the letters to editor it receives online, which will appear...

This Week's Cutting Edge Podcast with Tim Bourquin

Posted by: Heather Green on January 17, Categories: podcasting

This week's Cutting Edge Podcast with Tim Bourquin, who runs the popular Podcast and New Media Expo with his brother Emile.

Me on math

Posted by: Stephen Baker on January 15, Categories: BusinessWeek

Here's an interview I did with people at the Tepper (Biz) School at Carnegie Mellon about math and business. It follows last year's cover story, but includes some new ideas...

Media blogs: when to publish secrets

Posted by: Stephen Baker on January 15, Categories: mainstream media

One thing I've learned in two years as an MSM blogger. When we publish behind-the-scenes accounts of how our media sausages are made, the posts get picked up, read, commented....

Who has time for revenge?

Posted by: Stephen Baker on January 14, Categories: BusinessWeek, society

The latest BusinessWeek has a cover story on revenge, and its central role as a motivator in the world of business. My question: Are these revenge-minded leaders more primitive than...

Fish Tales and My Ultimate Problem With Review Sites

Posted by: Heather Green on January 14, Categories:

Beset by the deaths of the whale shark and beluga whale at the Georgia Aquarium, I realize that what I want in a local review site is a way to find folks who think more like me. I need an algorithm, I think.

What consumers need: Time

Posted by: Stephen Baker on January 12, Categories: society

We have two old cars with combined milage of a quarter million miles. Our TV set, a 27-inch Zenith, is about as fat as it is wide. But if we...

Reconsidering What it Takes to Start a Company

Posted by: Heather Green on January 11, Categories: entrepreneurs

I missed Tom Evslin's very thoughtful post earlier this week on why it costs more to start up a company now than had previously been thought. His take: despite the...

Newscorp.'s Chernin: Little Opportunity to Make Money in User Generated Content

Posted by: Heather Green on January 10, Categories:

News Corp. president and chief operating officer Peter Chernin warns that industry watchers may be overstimating the business opportunity behind user-generated content, Hollywood Reporter reports.

Mini Survey on Podcasting

Posted by: Heather Green on January 10, Categories:

Shout out for thoughts on how podcasting is doing.

This Week's Cutting Edge Podcast on Podcasting with Michael Geoghegan

Posted by: Heather Green on January 10, Categories: podcasting

The guest on this week's BW Cutting Edge podcast is Michael Geoghegan, a podcasting consultant, founder of Willnick Productions, and podcaster at Grape Radio.

Panning Wal-Mart on a blog: Sign of crisis?

Posted by: Stephen Baker on January 09, Categories: comments

Bruce Nussbaum's November post--Is the Wal-Mart model dead?--generated 127 (and counting) comments, most of them highly critical. Bruce concludes that Wal-Mart is facing a management crisis. He may be right....

How P&G skips the middleman

Posted by: Stephen Baker on January 08, Categories: advertising, mainstream media

The Wall Street Journal writes today about how P&G and other companies are setting up their own social-networking sites to reach consumers. Capessa, a P&G health features venture with Yahoo,...

Piper Jaffray Report: Online Video Up while TV Viewing Declining

Posted by: Heather Green on January 08, Categories: research

A new report from Wall Street analyst Safa Rashtchy at Piper Jaffray outlines the rapid adoption of online video and the subsequent decline of TV viewing. One of the interesting points is that TV networks sites are increasingly popular and are the second most popular destinations, after YouTube.

Consumer Electronics 2007 Sales to hit $155 Billion

Posted by: Heather Green on January 06, Categories: society

That's a 7% jump, pretty nice for the CE industry. The data is coming out on the eve of CES of course, from the Consumer Electronics Association. And while much...

Second Life and Metrics That Matter

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

If there was one big lesson from the last bubble, it was to understand what metrics meant. Eyeballs, getting big fast, focusing on revenues and not profits, hits. All these...

Daylife: Could Use Some Daylight

Posted by: Heather Green on January 04, Categories:

After loads of anticipation and delays, Daylife (backed by Dave Winer, Michael Arrington, and Craig Newmark among others with consultation from Jeff Jarvis) is live, at least in beta. As...

This Week's Cutting Edge Podcast about Podcasting with Rob Walch

Posted by: Heather Green on January 04, Categories:

This week's Cutting Edge Podcast is with Rob Walch, podcasting guru and the host of podCast411. Walch talks about why he’s still convinced only a tiny percentage of podcasters out there will make money and why you should podcast anyway.

Will companies pay to store our data?

Posted by: Stephen Baker on January 04, Categories: advertising

The Times' David Pogue writes about cheaper data-storage services for backing up computer files. But Jeremiah Owyang, a Bay Area web strategist, writes that companies will soon pay us to...

Silver lining: Job offers pop up in Philly blog comments

Posted by: Stephen Baker on January 03, Categories: mainstream media

Dan Rubin blogs sadly as 71 colleagues at the Philadelphia Inquirer get pink slips from the new owner. This should serve as a warning to LA Times staffers who...

Aggregating Activism

Posted by: Heather Green on January 03, Categories: society

The Internet aggregates more than videos. I was reminded of this this morning, while reading a story in the Times today about how the resilient fight of a Romanian farmer...

Joel Stein: Climbing off the Clue Train

Posted by: Stephen Baker on January 03, Categories: comments, mainstream media

Lots of anger and derision surrounding Joel Stein's combative op-ed in the L.A. Times, in which he snubs readers' opinions. Edward Champion writes: "Adapt or Perish Mr. Stein. Op-ed...

Now for Fido: Yoga and a double soy latte

Posted by: Stephen Baker on January 02, Categories: society

Just came across this story about $130 massages for dogs. Sometimes it's easy to forget that dogs are different. They'll lap from a dirty puddle over bottled Vittel any day....

Database journalism

Posted by: Stephen Baker on January 02, Categories: research

Martin Stabe points to a German article (that I can't read) about the ethics of database journalism. The question is whether journalists who expose convicted sexual criminals living too close...