Category: Business

<![CDATA[BuzzMachine… by Jeff Jarvis:

Since the internet started, many big-time publishers have struggled to convince big-time advertisers that this new medium is not just about direct response (click-through) but also about branding (that is, the value of associating your brand and product with a media brand — the reason to advertise in a glossy magazine with a classy audience, for example). That is why the Online Publishers Association was created.

But note what Denton has done twice: He got big-time advertisers to sign onto a product that didn’t even exist yet. Take it from a guy who started a magazine; that doesn’t happen. So why did they do it? Clearly, they wanted to be associated — branded — with the next, new, cool thing. Just being the first in equals branding. That is a value of this new medium: its newness.

Jeff also blasts Andrew Sullivan for squandering his brand by taking time off for a book project…. But, basically, a brand is built over a very long —years—of delivering great value. There are still a ton of fly-by-night brands out there.
Newness is novelty, and novelty wears out.]]>

<![CDATA[ANM first to audit ad servers
Noted: Things count.]]>

<![CDATA[Frank Patrick’s Focused Performance Weblog: Johanna offers more of her usual good advice…
“We’ve all see the phenomenon that as soon as you’ve scheduled the project, the schedule is out of date. If you plan to invest in replanning and rescheduling, that doesn’t matter.”
…and this is advice that can be taken whether you think of your plan as “agile” or as “waterfall” or anything in between. Even if you’ve got a big duf (big design up front) situation, there is nothing to say that it’s necessarily carved in stone.]]>

<![CDATA[CNN.com – Blair and Gates in doodle mix-up – Jan 31, 2005:
It seems Bill Gates is “stressed” and “not a natural leader”:
LONDON, England (Reuters) — When a sheet of paper covered in doodles was found on Tony Blair’s desk at the Davos World Economic Forum, handwriting experts delighted in analysing it, concluding the Prime Minister was stressed and under pressure.
Experts who examined the tangle of boxes, circles, loops and notes on debt and trade variously described Blair as “struggling to concentrate” or “not a natural leader” and “stressed and tense.”
But there was a problem.
The doodles, it later transpired, were nothing to do with Blair but were the work of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who shared a table with Blair at the summit.
“Somebody from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has said that the notes are from Bill Gates rather than from Tony Blair,” a spokesman from Blair’s Downing Street office said on Monday.]]>

<![CDATA[FT.com – Venture capitalists raise $17.6bn :

Venture capitalists raised more money from investors last year than in the previous two years combined, raising concerns in some quarters that too much money will once again threaten investment returns.

However, the $17.6bn that was put into new venture funds last year was still a small fraction of the $106bn that poured into the industry at the peak of the dotcom boom in 2000.

The contrast between the amount raised (more than the previous two years combined) and the paucity of investments we still see is explained by the overwhelming contraction of the VC market since 2000. Basically, it’s very like the employment market. Yes, more people have jobs than a year ago, but far fewer people have jobs than normal economic growth would have provided since 2000.]]>