Survival of the Fittest - Newspaper Style

San Francisco Chronicle columnist David Lazarus wrote on Wednesday about the lack of a functional business model for the online portion of the newspaper despite growing audiences and decreases in readers wanting to get their fingers dirty. Lazurus said “newspapers' online operations typically account for only about 5 percent of overall revenue.” He offers several of his ideas for how to make online newspapers more profitable.

Now, I’ll offer mine.

• I already know that Bill Gates is a billionaire and Microsoft is very profitable. Let’s hear about what smaller companies are doing to change the landscape of particular industries. I want to know what solutions exist to stop cyber crimes like phishng and man-in-the-middle attacks, not about how Microsoft fell short of expectations this quarter and only made $4 billion while Gates was sleeping last night.
• Leverage assets you already have and get assets you need. I don’t blame publications for laying off reporters for cost cutting measures. However, newspapers need to better integrate with local news channels. More and more local news stations have Web sites that have great video interviews but some very poor articles. Sometimes I’ll watch it on the news or hear about it the next day and I want to go back to the clip. But other times, I’ll see a video and want to hear about what’s being written about it. But if I can find it all in one place, then that would be even better. This will attract more readers and viewers and enable revenues to go up on both sides. So, you might be asking, wouldn’t television revenues go down? Not really, unless you have Internet clips in HD, it should remain steady. Then get some young guys who surf the Web frequently to find creative new multimedia techniques for the latest vehicles for news delivery.
• Personalize newspaper content. This is a challenge and may not be doable. When I went away to college, I wanted to read my local newspapers. Primarily for the sports section but also for some of the local news. With so many connected newspapers you might think it’d be possible to live outside the Bay Area and get my daily dose of the A’s, 49ers and Warriors while still getting my fingers dirty. I had to instead resort to viewing stories on the Internet. And instead of getting my local news through family and friends, I can read what is happening beyond my block. Now I can’t get enough of the Trojans. Fight on!

Flash Drives Continue to Gain Momentum

Flash drives are getting cheaper and gaining increased functionality. With more memory and places to plug into in like your car stereo, gaming consoles, DVD players and TVs, you don't have to be stationed at your computer. But if you are stuck at a public computer or at a friend's place, you can load programs to pass the time such as games, photo editing tools or save your favorite Web settings. Joining the party on Monday was Intel. What would happen if Microsoft joined the party with its proprietary and heavily used Microsoft Office and Outlook suites? It won't said leading industry analysts.

The Power that is the Internet Exposed in London?

Today and tomorrow, or yesterday and today if you’re in the UK is the Financial Times Digital Media and Broadcasting Conference. It should be a great event where many are gathered in London to discuss how the Internet is stealing TVs thunder and maximizing opportunities on the Web. With many broadcasters, internet content providers, ISPs, technology platform producers, media groups, investors and advertisers in attendance, it should be a great event. I’m still thinking that one day my HD Internet idea will be future but we’ll see what the experts say.

Confirmed speakers are from Oracle, Reuters, European Telecommunications Network Operators, National Geographic, Disney, CNET Networks, Sony, Sling, Microsoft, Advanced Micro Devices, MySpace, Sun Microsystems, Mozilla, BBC, Ask.com, and Google.

I'd love to hear more about the discussions from this conference.

ACCESS DENIED: At RSA Conference

This morning, I woke up at 5 a.m. to get to the RSA Conference. I was excited. I wanted to hear Bill Gates speak. Not for any other reason but to say that I was in the same room as he was. Who knows, maybe he had something inspirational that I could use for a proactive pitch for a client. I didn't even take a bag because I knew I could get one for free at the conference and didn't want to carry two. So I arrived at 7 a.m. and registered but was denied a bag because I wasn't a paid attendee. But they did say that I can still go to the keynote. So I walked down to the Keynote area in Moscone North and started walking in until I was abruptly stopped by the staff and was told I couldn't see the keynote with my "expo only" pass. Okay, so that's my fault. I should of read my privileges more carefully. I was then told to go to 103 where I could watch it live on the monitor. But once I arrived to 103, I was abruptly denied again. Now I understand making a bit of money and priority for paid attendees, press and analysts. However, denying someone from watching a keynote from even a screen, that's going overboard.

I did manage to enjoy the free continental breakfast that I probably wasn't suppose to have with my "expo only" pass.

Maybe next time, Bill!

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.