Is it TIME yet?

While many are taking guesses at what will enable Internet news sites to become profitable, Time (also in yesterday's WSJ) has focused on content. Not news content, but analysis and opinion by established writers that have a following. The question remains, how to draw readers to online sites and make it profitable. While the reason for the spurt in online readership is simple – you can share it with friends…"I’ll send you the link” instead of “did you see today’s paper?"- it's profitability is still at question.

As long as half my stories in newspapers are coming from the Associated Press, there is no reason for me to read any particular newspaper over another. Placing value on individual writers for the angle they bring to the discussion table will spur more debate and increase reading and sharing of links. What does this mean for advertisers? Not much, at least not yet. When the media “quadruple play” is in full force (the merging of broadcast, audio, print and Web) along with growing fascination with user contributed content, I’m sure there will be plenty to money to go around. However, delivering consistent localized and unique angles will enable newspapers to regain its trust and readership. Relationships will be the key...the way local papers use to do it way back when...

Search 2.0: Reverse Engineering

Over the past year, I’ve read about and been exposed to Google and quite a few enterprise search, business intelligence, taxonomies and ontology offerings (and ed cals). Now the overall goal is how to use information you already have more efficiently and in a more organized fashion to deliver better results for your company, partners, customers...etc. But today in the Wall Street Journal, Kevin Delaney wrote how some businesses aren’t looking at which keywords in searches to utilize but rather what keywords are being punched in to determine what products and services to sell. Imagine that? Giving people what they want! This is done doing my favorite activity, "reverse engineering."

This is definitely a good read and has about half a dozen useful links including:

Microsoft service for historical search volumes with breakdowns by age and gender: http://adlab.microsoft.com/ForecastV2/KeywordTrendsWeb.aspx

I could list it all out but I don’t want to steal Kevin’s thunder. If you have today’s paper, check out page B3. I can’t link to it online without a subscription but if you want to pay for it, go to WSJ.com, type in “search” into the search field.