In response to the rise of the application economy, Wired is running a sensational piece about the web being dead. Yawn... But Wired is not alone in this. Pete Blackshaw, one of the most trusted voices in the marcom space, is asking, "Do brand websites still matter?" Behind his rhetorical question is the idea that the social web and mobile apps are gaining prominence, while brand sites wither on the digital …
Ben Huh Is Laughing Out Loud
Ben Huh, founder Cheezeburger Network told The Chicago Tribune, "We're trying to make the world happy for five minutes a day." Turns out that's an excellent business plan. Huh's network of sites reaches some 10 million Americans monthly and his Seattle company now has more than 40 employees. Huh attended Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. The Trib asks him if that influenced his decision to focus …
You Can Put A Price On Exclusive Niche Content That Helps People Do Their Jobs
Miles Galliford, co-founder of SubHub, a company that makes it easy to build a membership site and charge for access to premium content, says, the number one reason that people pay for content is because they can't get the information they need elsewhere for free. Writing on Marketing Profs, Galliford argues: "Successful membership websites tend to be run by people deeply immersed in their subject, and they have …
Paywalls Are Digital Stop Signs
The Times of London has lost 1.2 million UK readers across its daily and Sunday websites and almost halved the amount of time people spend on its sites in the past three months, according data released by ComScore. This is why: Currently the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal are the only other major papers to have paywalls in place. [via Business Insider] …
Digital Publishers Don’t Have Old Media’s Margins, But The Best Operators Are Making It Work
Daniel Lyons of Newsweek wrote an interesting piece about the business side of Huffington Post, a new media company with $30 million in revenue. HuffPo has a big audience--24.3 million unique visitors last month, nearly as many as The New York Times--but like most Web sites, it can't monetize it very well. Right now, HuffPo generates just over $1 per reader per year. That's nothing compared with the mainstream-media …
Repetitive Reporting Motion May Cause Dull Pains
Last Sunday, The New York Times addressed burnout among online content producers today. I've been producing online content every day for almost six years now, so it's a subject I'm familiar with. Such is the state of the media business these days: frantic and fatigued. Young journalists who once dreamed of trotting the globe in pursuit of a story are instead shackled to their computers, where they try to eke out a …
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Branson’s Daughter, Holly, To Run Digital Magazine Business
Ad Age reports that Virgin is planning to extend its brand into consumer magazines with the launch of a new title, Maverick, which will be available exclusively as an app for the iPad, iPhone and eventually, Android. If the venture is successful, Virgin hopes to establish itself as a leader in digital magazines. As I say here any chance I get, brands are in the media business today. Clearly, some, more so than …
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Cleveland’s Sports News Becomes Front Page Ad
[via Columbia Journalism Review] …
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