tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-111054372010-01-31T12:28:56.936-08:00An infrequent blog on technology trends affecting business-to-business online media.Dave Newcornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220822856643605874noreply@blogger.comBlogger44125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11105437.post-51163033965637532832010-01-31T12:09:00.000-08:002010-01-31T12:28:56.952-08:00

Now that Apple has announced its long-awaited iPad--on the flurry of the release of a boatload of e-readers announced at the January 2010 Consumer Electronics show--it's time to assess the e-reader situation, and how or whether it will save B2B publishing. Long-time readers of this blog (all five of you, you know who you are) will recall that I made a fair number of predictions about a year ago

Dave Newcornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220822856643605874noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11105437.post-8045349513524412082009-10-24T06:41:00.000-07:002009-10-24T06:44:31.815-07:00

We've recently had a big push internally to remake our editorial staff into digital-centric editors. As part of that, we're getting into aggregation journalism. That entails setting up our editors with RSS readers (Google Reader), teaching them how to add and monitor feeds from multiple sources, and most importantly, how to aggregate and report on what others are saying. Aggregation journalism

Dave Newcornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220822856643605874noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11105437.post-66577123166871891832009-10-10T09:04:00.000-07:002009-10-10T09:04:55.944-07:00

On our editorial desk, we're starting to have serious conversations about content aggregation. That's an alien concept to most editors who are steeped in the notion that if they didn't write about it themselves, the story doesn't exist. Of course, they can provide tremendous value developing a list of sources, monitoring those sources through modern techniques such as RSS readers, and curating

Dave Newcornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220822856643605874noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11105437.post-23907109400627852222009-10-03T13:09:00.000-07:002009-10-03T13:11:38.127-07:00

Lately we've given more attention to search engine optimization with our content sites. SEO for content sites involves, in my view, using an SEO-friendly CMS that is tuned to comply with SEO best practices, such as keyword-rich titles, headlines, and urls. Those are systemic things that can be set and forget. After that, you're talking SEO at the article level, which is a whole different

Dave Newcornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220822856643605874noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11105437.post-39425754723864371002009-10-01T07:03:00.000-07:002009-10-01T07:03:30.880-07:00

Today I saw this Gizmodo piece on how the rumored Apple Tablet is positioned to take the lead on digital publishing with its rumored device. This echoes my earlier piece claiming that of all the hardware, software and content companies trying to migrate the magazine experience to a tablet device, Apple is best positioned to win this game. While Apple is famously tight-lipped, there's enough

Dave Newcornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220822856643605874noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11105437.post-12649400272760295142009-09-19T08:17:00.000-07:002009-09-19T08:17:54.950-07:00

Google recently unveiled its Fast Flip experiment, which is a new way of "flipping" through web pages much like you'd thumb through a print magazine. The few reviews I've read have panned the user experience. But I like what Publishing 2.0's Scott Karp says about Fast Flip: It doesn’t matter so much whether Google succeeds or fails with this particular experiment. What matters is that they are

Dave Newcornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220822856643605874noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11105437.post-37506960527509429692009-09-12T08:39:00.000-07:002009-09-12T09:53:42.696-07:00

When we embark on a new Web site project or a Web site redesign, it's customary to first start with the design of the home page. Most of us have been in the endless meetings where everyone weighs in on what the home page should look like. Days, weeks, sometimes months later, we emerge with a final home page design. Then we focus ongoing attention to the home page as we continually tinker with our

Dave Newcornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220822856643605874noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11105437.post-61764945830337511862009-09-05T06:41:00.000-07:002009-09-05T06:49:47.583-07:00

Recently we converted our Web analytics over from NetTracker, a log-file based analytics tool, to Google Analytics. After the initial vertigo that accompanies the jaw- and traffic-dropping shift from log file to page tagging analytics software I began to look closely at some of the metrics that Google Analytics offers. As media companies, we tend to focus, with some bravado, on our traffic--this

Dave Newcornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220822856643605874noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11105437.post-36898431435289759642009-02-28T07:00:00.000-08:002009-03-06T15:19:55.572-08:00

Publishers: You want to unburden yourself from paying the printer, the post office, the paper company? You want to sell an ad for half its price and be just as profitable? How many more advertisers do you think you could get if you could slice your prices in half? If this interests you, read on.I've resisted the digital e-book readers for years after I caved and bought the Rocket eBook around

Dave Newcornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220822856643605874noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11105437.post-2229093951009999682008-03-15T09:06:00.000-07:002008-03-15T09:33:46.774-07:00

This question is directed to smaller publishers: Do each of your publications have a person in charge of new product development? Are there titles on the payroll, "Product manager" or "Product development manager"? Ten years ago, there was no such thing in B2B publishing. The "product" was a print magazine, and it's stayed pretty much the same for well over a hundred years.By now, most if not all

Dave Newcornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220822856643605874noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11105437.post-40734783412017381302008-02-09T07:58:00.001-08:002008-02-09T08:47:56.286-08:00

I remember attending American Business Media's annual Digital Velocity event in March 2007 and seeing some really interesting social media presentations. At that time, I thought social media was white hot. They had a speaker from Gather.com -- a consumer social media site, not B2B -- tout exponential growth curves, with his presentation ending with a dire: "Think this is just consumer? It's

Dave Newcornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220822856643605874noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11105437.post-58287031441423406452007-11-10T07:48:00.000-08:002007-11-10T08:29:47.834-08:00

With the New York Times' discontinuation of its Times Select experiment, whereby readers paid to access the Times' exclusive columnists, and the buzz of anticipation that Rupert Murdoch will end paid access to the Wall Street Journal in the hopes of opening up wider advertising opportunities, it appears that the future of paid content is in question.Witness this video of a panel discussion on the

Dave Newcornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220822856643605874noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11105437.post-29488375899369311832007-10-13T19:26:00.000-07:002007-10-13T19:59:33.442-07:00

Where should publishers be investing their Web dollars, in Web site development (i.e., programming), or in content for their web sites? In a perfect world, both, of course, but dollars are finite, so publishers must typically choose one over the other.Which one you choose is really a function of where your sites are in the e-media lifecycle. My guess is most publishers would say the same thing

Dave Newcornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220822856643605874noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11105437.post-3041915745799364722007-05-12T05:15:00.000-07:002007-05-12T05:28:01.530-07:00

I just ran across this piece from BtoB about how large advertisers are citing awareness as primary goal of search marketing:Seventy-seven percent of advertisers with 500 or more employees said their primary purposed in using pay-per-click ads was to increase or enhance brand awareness.Print's supposed strength over online is branding. Ya know, the high-fidelity of the print experience, the glossy

Dave Newcornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220822856643605874noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11105437.post-29399145838551025622007-04-06T05:52:00.000-07:002007-04-06T06:05:10.709-07:00

Online audience development development is heating up. The skills required are SO different, and require SO much more work than traditional circulation. Yet if we master them as publishers, it opens the door to profitable online media.With this in mind, two years ago I volunteered to run an American Business Media task force (on the Digital Media Council) whose mission was to ferret out the best

Dave Newcornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220822856643605874noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11105437.post-69615583685396395952007-03-20T19:53:00.000-07:002007-03-20T20:07:07.463-07:00

Okay, this is preaching to the choir, but I'm convinced, after talking to other magazine professionals at this year's Folio: conference in Chicago, B2B digital media is way underpriced relative to its value.All publishers--all of us--need to start increasing digital media prices. And certainly increasing value, wherever possible.And for God's sake, please--please, I'm begging you sales types out

Dave Newcornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220822856643605874noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11105437.post-77699616805149539872007-02-24T07:27:00.000-08:002007-02-24T07:38:03.661-08:00

As I'm trawling the Web learning about social networking tools, sites and vendors, I came across Nurse Linkup, a social networking site for the nursing profession. It's got all the standard stuff you'd expect--blogs, networking, forums, news clipping, member pages, etc. What's interesting is the business model. The site is run by itLinkz, which has this to say on its web site:itLinkz plans to

Dave Newcornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220822856643605874noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11105437.post-47256809177100102982007-02-16T18:02:00.000-08:002007-02-16T18:39:42.703-08:00

Like most publishers, our next stage of growth will come from online and events, to make up for the decline in print. However, more and more, I'm convinced that as we begin to expand beyond "magazine" web sites, we're firmly entering a Web 2.0 world where nothing looks familiar.As we move away from B2B publishing 1.0, here's what will come next. We just need to figure out how to adapt these

Dave Newcornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220822856643605874noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11105437.post-1170950124175641302007-02-08T07:39:00.000-08:002007-02-08T07:55:24.236-08:00

As anyone who runs a Web site knows, up to two-thirds of the raw unfiltered traffic is from spiders and robots. Penton's Eric Shanfelt wrote an excellent post on how publishers may inadvertently (or intentionally) inflate their traffic by including these numbers.We all must struggle with ways to filter out this activity, either by filtering IP address, user agent, domain, or even usage pattern (

Dave Newcornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220822856643605874noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11105437.post-1170385256688440542007-02-01T18:52:00.000-08:002007-02-01T19:23:56.756-08:00

Lately I have been obsessing over software frameworks. I will borrow the excellent lay definition provided by Prescott Shibles, my counterpart over at Prism (now Prism/Penton, or really, Penton):An application framework, for those of you non-techies, is a toolset that enables rapid application development by automating some common needs (permissioning, data entry/modification/deletion/

Dave Newcornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220822856643605874noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11105437.post-1134828555683723212005-12-17T05:47:00.000-08:002005-12-17T06:33:45.410-08:00

In my role as subcommittee chair for online audience development for the Digital Media Council of the American Business Media trade group (boy, that's a mouthful), I'm embarking on a mission to learn the tactics and techniques that Internet-centric media companies are using to attract and retain site traffic, registered users, e-newsletter subscribers and opt-in leads for advertisers.Thanks to

Dave Newcornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220822856643605874noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11105437.post-1134191300417359152005-12-09T20:52:00.000-08:002005-12-09T21:15:57.043-08:00

I just returned from the Search Engine Strategies Chicago event, my first such event. I don't know about you, but I felt like a dinosaur at this conference. Search engine marketing (SEM) is so much more sophisticated (and with demonstrable ROI) compared to traditional print ad marketing and online media. And SEM is white hot right now, judging from the buzz at this conference. And not in a bubble

Dave Newcornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220822856643605874noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11105437.post-1133143076276459862005-11-27T21:15:00.000-08:002005-11-27T19:15:46.876-08:00

I'm relieved to see that I'm not the only one who's still figuring out an easy way to consume content via RSS. I have tried Web-based services (bloglines), a standalone news aggregator (FeedDemon), and browser-based solutions (Firefox) and none seemed to be especially useful. Safari 2.0 seems to be a breakthrough by elegantly incorporating feeds into the browser, a la Firefox, but somehow easier

Dave Newcornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220822856643605874noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11105437.post-1132633767256061562005-11-21T20:20:00.000-08:002005-11-21T20:29:27.270-08:00

Google launched its GoogleBase database service last week. Unlike the Web, which is awash in unstructured information that's crawlable by a search engine robot like Googlebot, GoogleBase allows anyone to set up their own structured database (with fields and records) right inside Google. This is potentially mind blowing, depending on how it catches on with users. Just like people make a living now

Dave Newcornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220822856643605874noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11105437.post-1132409939655598682005-11-19T06:05:00.000-08:002005-11-19T06:38:44.310-08:00

Digital paper, e-paper, electronic paper, call it what you will. It's been long in coming, and won't be here any time soon. I saw an actual example last year at the Seybold conference in San Francisco, and the "screen" was small and monochromatic (black and white). Yet it's a start. The technology won't be relevant to magazine publishers until the screens become 9x11, high-resolution color and

Dave Newcornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16220822856643605874noreply@blogger.com1