I have been a huge fan of BusinessWeek since I can remember.  I am also a big fan because of the likes of Stephen Baker who I have been reading in the blogosphere for quite some time as well.  I found Stephen’s post related to How to Fix BusinessWeek at his The Numerati blog and I was sad when I read it.  It was done in a manner that made me thing that fixing or saving journalism is a simple task but nearly impossible to execute.  I don’t think the likes of newspapers and other periodicals will be saved as they cannot be saved.  The numbers will make it insurmountable.   This opening from Stephen was very telling:

Monday I learned that BusinessWeek, where I’ve worked for 22 years, is on the block. It may be sold, or stay in McGraw-Hill (where it’s been for 80 years). But the business is losing money (I don’t know how much). Whoever ends up with it is going to have to figure out quickly how to turn a business news operation built primarily as a weekly magazine into a profitable franchise for the age of near ubiquitous and real-time information.

Losing money–that seems to be an understatement when you think of the offices and the infrastructure that is all the things that BusinessWeek has.  Huge buildings, rent, equipment, well the list goes without saying.  They have a huge budget to cover to bring us the news and the information or content we consume for free on the Internet.  Stephen follows that post with After The Madison Avenue Bubble.  This post hammers home another point that seems to be putting a nail in the coffin of the likes of BusinessWeek:

I just got up from my desk and took a stroll through these Midtown offices of BusinessWeek. In a matter of months, if someone buys the magazine, we’ll be gone. It’s terrific real estate. Down by the top editors’ offices, the big windows look across the Hudson. The eastern view looks across Rockefeller Center and toward the Chysler Building. These are expensive digs.

It took me a while to get used to working for a magazine that spent money like this.

That seems to be the biggest issue that will seal the fate of the likes of old media.  Spending money like they do and still producing what I can get for free elsewhere.  I am not a mogul in the business world but it seems to me that might be a problem.  It appears from what Stephen ended this latest post with was almost an acceptance stage of grief when he states:

But in the end, my initial  read turned out to be correct. The rich model for a weekly magazine was not sustainable. Those who want to be foreign correspondents today will be lucky to get what I expected: modest pay to work out of their apartments. It will attract mostly young people, which isn’t a bad thing. (They might ask more unschooled questions, but they’re more likely to move to the action and take chances.)  It turns out we rode something of a Madison Ave bubble for a few decades, and now it has popped.

Like Jeff Jarvis however, this seems to me to be quite an asset and something that could and should be fixed or in another word–saved.

Well, now, BusinessWeek is for sale and whoever gets it – it is a valuable franchise with a very valuable and wise crowd – will need to reinvent it. I was going to suggest that the magazine do for itself what we were thinking of doing for GM. But Steve beat me to it.

How do I fix BusinessWeek?  Easy, in a manner of speaking, I would level the playing field.  I have said many times at conferences, at business meetings, and over coffee with colleagues, if the journalists figure out new media, we are all out of a job.  Level the playing field is not as easy as it sounds.  But if we were to put journalists that have been reporting, writing and selling and have been on top of their game into the positions now being held by new media types at the places like TechCrunch, or other blogging networks, we would see the real cream of the crop.

BusinessWeek is taking their overhead, basically a champagne budget, and putting it up against the likes of Joe and Mary Blogger, publishing from free applications downloaded from the Internet from the comfort of their own home.  Joe and Mary’s overhead is nominal at best but they are being compared on the same plane now with those on Madison Avenue.  How do you compete with that?  Well certainly BusinessWeek has better access and better connections than does Joe and Mary, but that is beginning to change as well as bloggers gain access to back rooms and walled gardens that were usually only for "special people."  The scales were always tipped in favor of the "journalist" as they had the access, the diploma, the expense account and the social capital.  The latter of which has shifted in favor of those with the most voice, those with the most eyeballs, perhaps those with the most Twitter followers these days.  That seems to be the competition now, but that is another post.  Getting scooped by the guy in the building over from yours on Madison Avenue was expected, getting scooped from Joe or Mary the Pajama wearing citizen journalist is something entirely different.

Media costs are not even close to level.  You must level them to compete.  That means no more overhead.  Stephen mentions his 5% as being what BusinessWeek has, and Jeff Jarvis said it was what makes BusinessWeek better.  The other 95% has to compete in their eyes, and that can only be done by making the remaining 95% carry the same costs as paying the rent on the corner office, not on Madison Avenue, but on West Elm street in the corner of the kitchen.

Not anyone can write well. I know that there is no possible way I could compete with the likes of Stephen Baker in covering the latest in business news and writing and reporting.  The only way for me to compete is to provide the story hope someone sees it and that gets me recognized.  The only thing I have going for me is I am not being paid a six figure salary and paying $100,000 per month in rent for an office building and paying for the infrastructure that goes with that empire.  When Stephen starts working out of his home like I do and doing the same thing, I don’t stand a chance.  How do they fix BusinessWeek?  Just download Wordpress have Stephen work from the corner of his kitchen and do what he has been doing.  No way does their competition compete.  Now, the remaining problem, how do you charge the companies wanting to advertise for that model?  Welcome to the game BusinessWeek.

photo via BusinessWeek

Tags: BusinessWeek, Journalism, Blogging, Old Media, New Media

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Just reading over at Profy and Svetlana Gladkova asking the question, "Twitter is a Popular Marketing Tool?".  The analysis is interesting on Svetlana’s piece and I think you should read it.  The thing that caught my eye was less about the written words and more about the graphic she had in the post.

The thing that made me note this graph was the far right three forms of online tools being used, blogs, podcasts and Twitter.  I preach of course that these are the "new media" and that companies should be embracing them, but it is nowhere near the use of direct mail.  I was amazed at the lopsided view of this. Twitter is the new media darling and blogs are making somewhat of a comeback since breaking on the scene at the beginning of the century.  I am curious how the study was conducted and as I understand it it was conducted by WebTrends.  The study appears to address only the European companies but I think that the results can be indicative of what is happening here as well.  As the economy keeps dipping and we go back to the "what works" idea of marketing, I see the testing of social media to be take a backseat to the more measurable results of the past.

Tags: New Media, Twitter, Twitter Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing

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I have recently launched Social Mediasphere TV and added it to my list of blogs including this one and including Bloggers For Hire in the long list of blogs I contribute to and provide.  Social Mediasphere TV is an extension of the radio I was doing on Blog Talk Radio.  You can still go over and take a look at my archives at that location and I may still continue my on location live radio using that service as it seems to be a very simple solution to the technical issues related to live radio.

I will be doing my show continuing here forward on Tuesdays at 5:00 p.m. PST and 8:00 p.m. EST.  We will be discussing all things Social Media and as always we will have special guests, commentary and even you as listener can call in and ask questions make your own comments or just be a guest yourself.  I am still working through all of the issues with using the applications of the trade, but I have been given some good advice and help from many friends that are cheering me on to make this new project a success.  See you all on Tuesdays!

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I have been following the story of Pajamas Media and the closing of their ad network operations as of April 1. This is not earth shattering news as we see the boom days of blog earnings begin to buckle under the economy and crash on the rocks caused by the storm. We have seen other networks close and cut back and have similar problems. As companies cut back on their ad spends it stands to reason that these forms of revenue will dry up or become scarce. i think this is not going to end any time soon.

One of the reasons ad networks were so powerful before was because they could leverage large page views and could funnel the eyeballs into one place better than companies looking to buy up ad space on single blogs. That trend has changed now as properties that have large followings have figured out how to leverage and negotiate their own advertising deals cutting out the middle man. The smaller single manned blogs are also more flexible and don’t need quite the investment to turn a profit. We are seeing a definite shift in the blogosphere and that shift will continue to transmogrify into a new model that is hopefully better.

I intend to discuss this further on my radio show on Tuesday. I want to have a few or the blogging experts weigh in on this as well as discuss my ideas further. Join me on Tuesday at 5 p.m. PST as I discuss ad revenue and blog networks further.

[Headache photo via pvera]

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I am not in charge over at Twitter and perhaps after this post we will know why. I was catching up on reading about news on Techmeme this evening and saw that Twitter was raising more capital. I had the same reaction to this as did Ashkan Karbasfrooshan with his take on the similarities to Facebook.

I cannot seem to grasp why Twitter is not yet making money or having some sort of package for monetizing its business. I had a conversation on Twitter with Cory O’ Brien about our thoughts and both of us had the same confusion. Why is Twitter raising funds when the money is right there in their back pocket.

I am speaking of the possibilities of funding their own growth. They have great opportunities staring them in the face yet they seem uneasy to pull the trigger. I have to admit I am considered a big fan of Twitter and I am a bit jaded, but I think I am not alone when I say, I would pay a premium for the service. I am probably more of a power user than your average person and paying for this service to some may seem ludicrous. Guy Kawasaki said it is integral in his own business, and said he would pay a large amount just for the privilege to keep using. I am not sure of what a “pro account” would entail, but where do I sign?

Now I do understand that Pownce had this feature, and it is a company of the past since being acquired by Six Apart, but I would be curious about the people that had signed up for its premium account. It was a Twitter clone and did not have near the saturation that is being afforded Twitter (yes I recognize the estimated 5 million users is a small percentage of the Facebook users) but I think that those numbers would be interested to apply here.

Cory and I ran a sketch of the numbers and made some assumptions and came up with a way for them to earn $20M a year just by charging $1 a month for a premium account. If I can figure out a way to do that, imagine what the smart people could do with a little effort. I know that by harvesting some of the low hanging fruit now, they could make the big score later.
[photo via jenn_jenn]

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The bane of my existence currently is my ever increasing inbox of emails I need to respond to, and I am apparently only worsening the problem as I sign up for more and more social networks.  There is the wild game recipe club, the used furniture network, the parenting pull your hair out network, the underwater basket weavers network, and…well you get the idea.  I don’t actually belong to all of these clubs or social networks, but I can assure you they are out there with more then 3,600 clubs to join and be a part of online. One of the emails I get frequently is Classmates.com.

I was looking into this pre-social networking social network recently because I wanted to compare the use of it versus the use of Facebook.  I get my login found out about the page where I could go to see friends and others, and when I tried to navigate to the next step, wham!  The protective firewall dropped and I was shut out, barred, and could go no further.  The next step was something that baffled me.  They wanted me to join for a small monthly fee.  There went the idea of using Classmates.com.  Why?  The answer to that is easy, I can use Facebook for free.

The catch-22 here is the fact that we are all asking Facebook to find ways to monetize and not make it intrusive, and then when a company like Classmates.com is monetizing, we tell them in order to compete they have to make it free. It’s like those arguments I have with my kids.  The only one that understands the argument is 3 years old.  Classmates.com is making money for being a part of its network, and Facebook is free to anyone with a computer and an Internet connection.  It’s like getting cable television and paying for it and having it available over the free airwaves. 

Last time I looked Facebook was worth a boat load of money and it is all anyone is talking about.  Classmates.com comes on the radar as a vehicle for spam and it is immediately ignored.  There is no reason why Classmates.com should not be able to go toe-to-toe with the likes of Facebook and take a large portion of its market share.  I recently sent out a message over Twitter stating the same thing with the gist being, why would I use Classmates for pay when I can use Facebook for free?  I had lots of responses to that Tweet stating the same thing.

I am not beating down Classmates here as that would not be constructive, but I think I have a solution that might work for them.  Open up your application to everyone and bring down that wall.  Thought sounded somewhat Reaganish didn’t it.  It’s true however that they need to change their thinking.  Instead having that mass database grow stale and have everyone treat Classmates like the spam king of email, shop that database as well.  Those that are struggling, i.e. Yahoo, perhaps a purchase of classmates to take on the world of Facebook is a good move? Either way, we will see the likes of Classmates.com fade away as Facebook grows stronger, and then the next thing will come along and be better.

You are the Classmates.com CEO.  How do you compete?  I want to know how you take on Facebook free, when you are sitting on income already coming in?

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Reading Marketing Profs Paul Dunay’s post regarding the company budget for social media I found it interesting specifically about the idea behind content creation. Paul states:

Ok but the real cost (again unlike the traditional media stuff) is in Content Creation to fill up those social media / new media channels – here is where the cost can get large. I happen to think I am very fortunate since I work at a consulting firm where many people are thought leaders – so we have no shortage of opinions

He does not get into the costs specifically as he does with pricing the actual tools of social media. The tools he itemizes are:

A Blog;

A Podcast;

A Video;

A Wiki; and

A Community.

I refer to these things as tools as I also believe that applications can be used in a social media planned budget as well. The applications are mostly free to very inexpensive. I did notice he did not budget for the activities surrounding the likes of Twitter or other which enhance the above tools. Basically, they are free. He is correct however when he states:

So unlike traditional media – Print, TV and Radio – which can cost big money. Social media’s upfront costs very little…

You have to read through his original post regarding the overall budgets to get an idea of the numbers, but I wanted to wrap my mind around the budget ideas first and foremost. The low cost of social media is right now making it a hot and much sought after way of accomplishing a company’s advertising, marketing and public relations strategy.

The real cost is the people that can manage this strategy, someone that can understand the uses of each tool and application and how to make it work for its intended use. This is where the budget has to be difficult to nail down. The person that is responsible for this doesn’t even have a job title or description these days. Is it the marketing person, the advertising person or the public relations person that handles this? What department do we charge for the implementation of this new way of handling our media? These are some difficult questions to answer. I am personally seeing many more job openings on job boards, and seeing recruiters provide the answers to the question of who to place in the position. The real question I have for Paul is the budget for the wage for this person. How much does your company expert in the leadership of social media get paid? Do you have a budget line item for a social media manager?

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One of the things I used to love about Technorati was when Dave Sifry would come out with his State of the Blogosphere address to all of us bloggers.  It sort of gave us a pie in the sky look at the number of blogs and what was happening on the back end of the blogosphere.  Those of us that consider ourselves old timers in the arena could sit back and watch as things began to unfold and we could talk about the good old days.  Technorati recently did another State of the Blogosphere that was released at Blog World Expo and CEO Richard Jalichandra was instrumental in getting the word out.

Now there has been a new sphere of influence in new media, and I have been labeling it the micromediasphere.  I know that others in my industry like Laura Fitton of Pistachio Consulting who refers to it as “microsharing“, and others are calling it something else like microblogging, but for the most part we are all talking about the likes of Twitter, Jaiku, Plurk, Yammer and up to an including today, Pownce. As of this writing, the folks at Pownce have given their 2 week notice that they are no longer going to be in the game.  I know that is a shame for some as they were one company that was well liked by developers and someone that was pushing the others applications to not suck.

I’ll be talking about the State of the Micromediasphere tomorrow on my radio show over at Blog Talk Radio.  My show The Social Mediasphere looks into hot topics like these and this is shaping up to be one of those topics.  I am hoping to get some guests on the show that can also talk about the State of the Micromediasphere.  I am inviting all to participate and give us your opinion and see what we can come up with and how things are looking for the future.

UPDATE:  This email just received today from the Pownce people:

We are sad to announce that Pownce is shutting down on December 15, 2008. As of today, Pownce will no longer be accepting new users or new pro accounts.

To help with your transition, we have built an export tool so you can save your content. You can find the export tool at Settings > Export.

Please export your content by December 15, 2008, as the site will not be accessible after this date.

Please visit our new home to find out more:
http://www.sixapart.com/pownce

Our thanks go out to everyone who contributed to the Pownce community,

The Pownce Crew

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I have been watching the recent demise of one of my favorite blogging networks called Know More Media. A business blogging network with its focus on the business world. I have been reading Easton Ellsworth’s blog since it’s inception at Business Blog Wire. As I understand it they intend to discontinue paying their bloggers as of this Friday on August 1, 2008. An open letter from Jeremy Wright, CEO at b5Media to the leadership at Know More Media was my first alert to this happening.

I have also been following the rumors, innuendo and some of the people involved with the blogging network at Weblogs, Inc., a blog network company that was purchased by AOL, and the idea that they too may be stopping the payment to their bloggers for the content that they are providing. They are supposed to also learn their fate on August 1, 2008. I would say that this Friday could be referred to as Black Friday as it relates to the blog networking agencies.

What is the cause of this demise? I believe there are two components to this dilemma and it starts with the economy and the ad spends we are seeing in the online marketing realm. I too have felt the economic crunch with companies that were early adopters to enter into the social media arena. Experimental marketing such as the kind I provide, is usually the first to suffer the cuts of companies tightening their belts to prepare for the new downturn. Companies using blogs to market their products and services are still seeing the advertising as experimental not being able to yet show a return on their investment. Measurement of social media marketing is still in it’s infancy and companies are falling back on what they believed was working before they began to experiment and then experience tougher times. The economy has taken its toll. Advertisers are repositioning their budgets to go to something more stable and more quantifiable.

Another problem I see is the way blogging networks are managing their properties. Some of the companies that are in trouble with their networks are those companies that are not flexible and have the ability to move with the market. The leadership of these companies are beginning to see what happens when you rest upon your laurels and get too comfortable with a business plan that really must grow with its market and adapt to market changes. Leadership continues to take profit and not go back to those leaner times. In addition, since the sale of Weblogs, Inc., we have seen the emergence of social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace and the explosive emergence of microblogging sites such as Twitter and other applications. These blogging networks must also evolve to adapt these tools to make them a part of their own properties. They may have some components in place, but for the most part relying on their bloggers to keep them profitable is a tough chore for those bloggers and it will not last forever.

What do I see for the future of the likes of blogging Networks? I see smaller niche networks fracturing off to make single networks and written by perhaps multiple bloggers. We are seeing the emergence now of social sites such as in the food realm, the sports realm, and the automobile industry and other hobby type sites. The mommy blogs have embraced the idea of community and are some of the best in the business at making a social group made of many bloggers. The only problem we are seeing is the bloggers themselves are not making money from these groups. It’s an advertising property for the owners. Groups that are joining as a member/friend/follower of the group as a whole are becoming their own target market. They are generating content for the group and it all ends up in one place. They have built in forums for discussion, they have feeds that are brought in from each member of their own member blogs, and they have a Facebook look with each community member owning a certain part of the real estate. We see it now with FriendFeed Groups and other places.

Some of the players like b5 and others are still able to show profits because they have positioned themselves to give the best product. I believe even b5 has adjustments that they make on a regular basis to bring in new properties and cutting off the parts of the network that are bringing their number down. A type of survival of the fittest as it relates to their participating core. The problems we face have to do with metrics and what those with money see as the value. I have heard tell that those that have a target audience with the most impressions are the most valuable and are riding that wave. It seems Jeremy Wright is able to continue to surf that wave.

What do you think. What is the new thing to replace networks? Do you think networks are here to stay? As we all become our own citizen journalists, how can we monetize that content, or is their a different way of thinking for advertisers. These are questions I get and wrestle with on a regular basis. Any ideas?

[photo via Benny Bloomfield]

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Technorati has been an icon of the blogosphere since Dave Sifry began the company to track blogs and provide bloggers with statistics and search.  It was the first thing people downloaded to their blogs, and the first part of setting up a blog.  They seem to have lost that celebrity status.  There are so many companies that have been cracking away at that Technorati keystone that it appears they may crumble.  I have been waiting to hear some news from the Technorati camp and it appears that news is bubbling up as reported by TechCrunch.

When I talked with Richard Jalinchandra in Las Vegas at the Blog World Expo in November, he mentioned then that Technorati was in for some changes and that he wanted to lead the company back to its glory days.  He couldn’t talk then about what he was doing but it seems that the cool stuff I expected and the things the head of marketing, Aaron Krane,  talked about on my Social Mediapshere radio show would make them a shining star again.  I didnt expect them to enter the advertising arena.

Tris an I questioned them on why they were not indexing search results past six months and it looks like they may be rethinking that with adding an advertising component to their search.  Arrington states:

Technorati will certainly be competing head to head with FM, although sources say they’ll focus on the long tail of the market as well (FM only takes larger sites). The network will be a self-serve exchange for bloggers (and other publishers) as well as advertisers. Ad units will include both display and text ads, and will allow units to be charged on both a CPM and CPC basis. (emphasis added)

I was hoping that Technorati would be adding some features that would be more than just another way for bloggers to add a revenue component to their blogs.  I want to see them return to an application I would run to five times a day because they offered a way to see stats and a something that was cool to experience as I did back in the day.

This is part of the reason I have hooked my wagon to the folks at Lijit*.  I certainly see that they have ideas to make their “wijit” something that is a first add-on to a blog.  I am not sensing that Technorati has that coolness factor in mind.  I certainly understand that after raising $20M in funding you might want to start thinking of making money and perhaps they will change the way they run their business and we have only seen the beginning of their new glory days.  It appears Richard is doing his job of CEO and is running the company in the best interest of those investors, but I for one want to see them do some things they used to do, only better.  Don’t make it about the page views make it about the blogger and a company that every blogger loves to use.

[photo via Brian Solis]

*Lijit is a client and I do some evangelism for them.

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I have been thinking about the comment left on my post about Blog Talk Radio and their attempt at monetizing their application.  Then I read today over at HipMojo the article about why companies that are basing themselves on ad revenue will fail.  It helped me formulate my own opinion about how companies in the tech world are struggling with making money.  It is a dance that seems hard to learn.

The game plan seems to be along these syllogistic lines.

• Come up with an application that fills a need.
• Develop the application.
• Launch it and see if it scales, get user feedback and adjust its use accordingly.
• Begin to build your user base until you reach some determined tipping point number. (This is probably the most difficult step in the overall business plan.)

These are the initial outlines I have seen.  During this period you may have an angel investment or a small first round to get to the tipping point number.  The next step is where it gets tricky.  Now that we are at our initial goal, how do we make it profitable?

Companies have built the trust and admiration of their users by providing a great application that is free and useful.  The users are making it an integral part of their lives.  The company has developed and gathered this large community.  They must leverage that into real money.  As I see it, they have but two choices, advertise or begin charging for the service they once before gave away for free.  A blend of these two would be a third choice.

Advertisers want eyeballs and reach.  The users are what they seek, and the more the better.  It’s all about the page views and the numbers generated from people.  Fewer users, the less they pay for your real estate.  Increasing page views and users increases revenue.  This is a hard fact as CEO’s try to guide the company to profitability.  If an application has 100,000 users it is worth more to an advertiser than 10,000 users.  Companies sell to advertisers and tell them, “We have 100,000 users at X amount of page views.”  The media buyers line up for those numbers.  Problem is, companies such as Blog Talk Radio have to sell based on those numbers, but then they must get the customer or users to get behind the plan. If they ask the users permission perhaps they only have 50,000 of the 100,000 users that will allow ads.  Now their property is worth 50% less to advertisers, and they don’t make money at that level.

Their second choice.  They begin charging the users for using the service.  Or as I indicated above the third choice, charging those that elect not to have advertising on the application a premium. The third choice allowing both opt in and opt out income.  This is risky as you may chase off users that were really sold on the application that was free, but not so warm to paying a fee for the service, or having advertisements show up on a usually clean page. 

It’s a chess match played by advertisers and CEO’s and ultimately users.  How can they all be happy?  I’m not sure that is entirely possible but their must be a compromise somewhere.  Companies are struggling to be profitable, advertisers are cutting their spend to increase their return on their own investment, and meanwhile, the user holds the power of being part of the community and whether the user wants to sell their eyeballs.

I have been touting 2008 as “The Year of The User.”  Companies have been building their user base.  The power the users hold with their attention and their eyeballs and presence make the other parties to the dance want to court them.  I’m not sure the answer, but I think ultimately it will raise the cost of advertising, and may force a new metric not based upon the number of eyeballs and page views.  Who flinches first has not been determined.

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I am a really big fan of Blog Talk Radio and have met Alan Levy, John Havens, Lisa Padilla, their newest addition, Kris Smith, and have spoken to others in their organization.  They are a bunch of great people.  They have a super application that is easy to use, is free for its users, and overall they have allowed me to have a radio/podcast show where I otherwise would not have had the ability or technology.  I can use something I am familiar with using, my computer and my phone.  I have done numerous shows on Social Mediasphere Radio and on Blog World Expo Radio and have praised them at every step.

This is why it will be difficult for me to shell out some harsh criticism now.  It is more than a small matter to me.  The have moved to their next level of “monetization” of their application.  After all, companies must make money and this is new territory still and companies are working hard to figure ways to get into the black.  I know first hand of companies that are making this a priority for 2008.  There has yet to be a surefire way for people to do this besides the obvious, advertising.  Blog Talk Radio is no different.

I received this email from Frank Neill, Director of Advertising, today that indicates that they are moving into this next phase of monetizing their application.

Dear Host,

Thank you for being such an important part of  BlogTalkRadio. BlogTalkRadio just recently passed 52,000 shows since we launched the company in the fall of 2006. We have created a community of thousands of hosts and millions of listeners. And, through the RevShare program, we are all in this together!

Obviously I am not the only one that loves the program and their system.

In January 2008, we launched a RevShare program where our hosts have an opportunity to participate in the revenues earned from advertisers. If you have not yet joined our RevShare program, you can do so by completing the RevShare form located at [link omitted].

I am always happy to earn money from my efforts and if a company is using my content and my participation to earn that revenue, I think it is actually only fair that they offer me a piece of the pie.  But this is where the email turns south for me.

RevShare hosts will earn 35% of all revenue for advertising from their shows, and they can earn 50% of revenue from their sponsors that they bring to BlogTalkRadio. With our RevShare program in place, participating hosts will earn money for downloads and page impressions they generate. Keep in mind that BlogTalkRadio will serve ads on your show even if you have not opted in to the RevShare program. [emphasis added]

Big scratching noise across the LP for that last sentence.  If I’m to understand that paragraph, I can opt in to be paid for my content on Blog Talk Radio and they cay earn money and I can earn money, but if I don’t opt in to the rev share, they are going to put ads on my content whether I like it or not.  Huh?  What if I don’t endorse the product that is being advertised on my content?  Perhaps I have a religious, political, or moral reasons I don’t want to have a certain company using my content for their gain.  The tone behind it is one that is difficult to swallow as well.  “We’ll do it whether you like it or not.”  I know that was not the company intent.  A conversation with John Havens confirms it was in no way the company’s position.

The email goes on to say how they will be paying out for the revenue earned, and then talks about some ads already in place for “Run In Network” ads that run on all shows.  Examples given are “LifeLock, AccuQuote, Rosetta Stone and Internet Speedway.”

What if I don’t want Internet Speedway showing up on my content.  What happens if I am a direct competitor of theirs?  I have no control over their being splashed across my Social Mediasphere show?  I don’t endorse or approve of their business, but I am now forced to accept that forced endorsement?

To me as a business owner it is unacceptable.  Would I pay for ads not to appear on my shows or would I pay for a “pro” account” to control my own ads?  I probably would given the benefits I am receiving, but to put an add on my show that I do not endorse or don’t want is madness.  John made mention that this may be an offering that will later be put into place.  Yes, growing pains are just that, painful.

I have spoken to John Havens at Blog Talk Radio for comment about this and as always he is the very professional and asked that I speak directly to Frank Neill the advertising director. I will certainly post a follow up to that conversation.  I’m also about to scour the terms of service as it may reveal something I have missed.  I guess I don’t often rant about things here so this is new ground for me, but I guess I should ask, “Am I making a mountain out of a molehill?”  How about suggestions for the team at Blog Talk Radio?

UPDATE:  If anyone had any doubts about how cool the team is at BTR, check out their response from Frank Neill in the comments here.  I also want to reprimand myself for forgetting to change the title here after I spoke the first time to John Havens.  I changed the content but forgot the title.  I wont change it now but I think more appropriate title should be more like “Blog Talk Radio Enters Monetization and Learns How Hard It Can Be To Make A Buck.”  My hat is off to them as they give away the cow and try to sell the milk to their users.  I think a new post is now forming as well.  Are we too used to getting things for free?

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Silicon Alley Insider is discussing the fact that Fox News Corp. is trying to make a back door deal with Yahoo. In the words of my friend Dave Taylor, “so what?”  Apparently, Yahoo will do anything not to fall into the hands of Microsoft or do they actually realize this is inevitable and they are trying to make Microsoft hurt a little when they raise the stakes.

Mike Arrington goes into a little more detail about what the deal may entail as it relates to what money or assets would trade hands or at least be a part of the deal.

According to our source, the deal structure would spin off Fox Interactive Media (the primary asset is MySpace, but IGN, Scout Media, Photobucket, Fox Sports, AmericanIdol.com, Flektor, Ksolo; plus investments in Hulu, Simply Hired and Snocap are also assets of FIM) into Yahoo, along with a big cash injection from News Corp. and an unnamed private equity fund. The total investment would be valued at around $15 billion.

I’m really failing to see what the benefits are to the shareholders of Yahoo.  They after all are the decision makers here.  Besides a big dose of cash what are the shareholders really gaining as it values their stock?  MySpace may be a nice carrot, but not something Yahoo really needs.  I doubt Myspace has the momentum to pull Yahoo from its current slide.

My thought is that this is a deal that is really just going to make Microsoft really hurt when they write that check.  Yahoo wants a competing offer to make sure that Microsoft must raise its own offer.  I think that Yahoo sees the writing on the wall but is doing what they can to make sure they go out in blaze of glory.  Of course at this point with all of those 1,000 employees now looking outside Yahoo for jobs, glory is a relative term.

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I have been preaching to people as long as I remember that “We live in a Google World.  I happened upon a post today by Owen Thomas (no I’m not a Valleywag reader, I thank Techmeme) about Google and its global market share.  He refers to a chart done by Efficient Frontier Insights showing the market share of the search engines across the globe.

Obviously as the chart shows, Google is enjoying the lion share of search marketing.  Some say it is because they are more targeted with their technology.  Others say it is because they have more advertisers and more publishers.  I think it is because they do search better than any other company.  It will be interesting to see if Microsoft is able to capture a little more piece of the pie and if they can put a dent in the market share owned by Google.  When I hear that Yahoo is thinking of outsourcing  its search to Google, it does not give me much confidence that Microsoft is getting the best in search from Yahoo, and obviously its search engine at MSN is not making much of a race of search in its own right.

UPDATE:  For a deeper analysis check out HipMojo.com

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As I looked over some of my feeds in my RSS reader today I cam across a piece written by Marc Andreessen about the deathwatch of the New York Times.  His sarcasm in the piece makes it a fun read in spite of the message.  His take as I read it is that unless changes are made in the way they are doing business, they will soon be out of business.  I tend to agree with Mark Evans piece that the New York Times must change the way they do business or perhaps the deathwatch will be a credible idea.  We have already experienced the death of a newspaper after 126 years in business. 

As traditional advertising takes a turn in its direction, older traditional media will have to adapt to go where the money is and change their business models to keep revenues that they are losing to online media.

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