Colin's Corner

Media7

I recently announced on LinkedIn that I have a new job.

After nearly 16 great years at IDG in various roles - CEO of Macworld, leading the MacPublishing joint venture between IDG and Ziff Davis, heading up IDG Connect (IDG's Premium Lead Generation Service) plus various strategic roles on the IDG Executive Committee - with a particular focus on helping the company transition to a digital and online centric organization. Now, it's time to try something new. 

I intend to use the skills developed over the last 20 years in media to set-up Media7 Consultancy - which will focus on helping publishing companies make the transfer to digital as well as growing their online and mobile businesses. I will be working with several organizations as an advisor, some as a board member and for others Media7 will provide consultancy services. I strongly believe that mobile will become the most important media - hence the name of the company - which pays tribute to Tomi Ahonen who for the last couple of years has been arguing this point and has recently published a book on the subject.

I'm also staying close to the IDG family, and will be working with the partners in the San Francisco office of IDG Ventures, assisting them with deal flow and analysis - perhaps, in due course, even getting involved in one of the portfolio companies or companies under consideration.

The economy is very tough but opportunities abound - the companies that make it through the next couple of years will be well positioned to take advantage of the eventual up-turn. The next few years will be about maximizing operational efficiencies and capital preservation while looking for revenue growth - so I'm extremely excited to have the time and flexibility to take a bit of a step back to really evaluate some amazing organizations and exciting ideas and to work with bright, enthusiastic teams - not only start-ups but also legacy companies re-inventing themselves.

I'm most grateful to IDG, in particular Pat McGovern whose vision and leadership remains totally inspiring - my good colleague, IDG's CEO  Bob Carrigan, plus many, many good friends at IDG and in the industry - including IDG's competitors. I've had the good fortune to work with some remarkable people.

I look forward to staying in touch as Media7 evolves.

Networked Journalism Summit

I had the pleasure of attending Networked Journalism Summit , excellently moderated by Jeff Jarvis. I got a couple of minutes to speak about some of the transition strategies that have happened at IDG – Jeff has highlighted the comments on my blog previously - the light at the end of the press and Print Sucks (his headline) so I won’t repeat them here. The key point is that IDG is not emotionally invested in print – it’s invested in providing quality information to readers - no matter in which form they want to receive it  - print, online or mobile.  It’s about making audiences and their eyeballs available to marketers in appropriate ways. Longer term, some of the strategies that need to be pursued by publishers should include:

1. Continuing to build digital audiences - today, that's online - tomorrow increasingly mobile - I expect to seen significant mobile revenues towards the end of 2009 early 2010.

2. Focus on audience engagement - using KPIs to monitor improvement in engagement- IDG's Market Fusion program and the developments of the Engagement Intensity Index are solid examples of this approach.

3. Drive performance based solutions for marketers - especially around premium lead generation services, custom publishing, events and mobile- the launch of IDG Connect, http://www.idgconnect.com/ IDG’s central database to drive response programs has been extremely successful and now responsible for significant revenues.

4 Extend audiences and inventory via the development of a Vertical Publisher Network - the launch of the IDG Technology Network http://www.idgtechnetwork.com/ recognizes it's not all about being a destination site but rather focusing on the aggregation of content and audience fragmentation.

5. Look to build end-user revenue streams online - via appropriate e-commerce. A successful example is the Macworld SuperGuides 

6. Managing the print properties for "profit" - or at least ensuring there is positive contribution to overhead.

7. Preparing for the Web 3 - the Semantic Web  - thinking about content as objects and the relationships between content, companies, people and places - viewing the web as interconnected data and rich applications

8 Continuing to stay close to readers and advertisers - using research to help identify products that meet the needs of the marketplace.

The workshop discussions were illuminating, I sat in on the one focused on revenue lead by Fred Wilson   – while around 20 different revenue streams were identified – generally my sense was that publishers still are too focused on revenue model that are associated with print and are leaving opportunities associated with the data associated with their audiences and content.

Panels

You'll have noticed a small in text blue icon next to companies mentioned in the posts. Rolling over the icon opens up a "panel" that displays additional information about the organization.  

“Panels” is a new consumer information network that instantly gives users the most sought after information about any organization, brand, or advertisement – in a standardized, consistent, and predictable format called a “Panel.” Panels can appear on any internet ad, blog, social profile page, email signature, URL, brand name, and more. These “Panels” automatically deliver contextually relevant and in‐depth information to users about any entity, at any time, from numerous data sources.
Users get this information for free without diverting them from their web location and without requiring any effort on their part. Panels’ categories are organized as tabs across the top of the panel and so far the following are available;

“About”  - Basic company and contact info, URL, logo, and summary
“Site”  - A full preview of the home page, stats, tags and other goodies about the actual web site/blog
“Map”  - Beginning with Google Maps, and others to follow, a place for geographic data
“News”  - Headlines, Blog posts, News, Press Releases and more from a variety of sources
“Jobs”  - Employment listings across numerous providers such as Monster and SimplyHired
“Financial”  - If a public company, real-time info and quotes appear in several sub-categories

Coming Soon over the next few weeks are “Reviews” and “Shop” 

Site Search - Lastly, notice in the lower left hard corner of the panels, you can easily search just the target site right from here, with results opening up in a new window or tab. 

Panels appear for any company or organization ranging from the biggest public companies such as Apple, Ford, AT&T, or WalMart to up and coming startups such as WebDiet (launched at Demo Fall 08 ) and Yammer (launched at TechCrunch50)

Panels make any blog significantly more useful for readers and more successful for the publisher/blogger/website owner because;

Users will stay on the page because they can get deep information via panels and,
Clicks on links - including ads - will dramatically increase   

More information on panels is available here. If you'd like to test out panels on you blog - send an email to me at [email protected] - implementation is simple.