Articles Index: Guest Column
Let's not pull any punches: It's been a horrible year for newspapers. We've watched as one newspaper after another has closed down or gone to a limited online-only model. Newspapers are suddenly frantic to find a way to make money online, as though the commercial web is something that came along last month instead of 15 years ago.
After a whirlwind of economic adjustments in 2009, publishers and content technology companies are hoping that the belt-tightening that they have undertaken this year will set the stage for renewed health in 2010. While there are polls and forecasts that seem to bear out these expectations, there are many unknowns that may lead to unpleasant surprises and challenging environments next year.
After reaching a high of 872 deals valued at $104.4 billion in 2007, M&A for the media and information industry dropped significantly in 2008 to 758 deals valued at $33.3 billion, marking a 70% year-over-year decline in overall deal value.
In Gilbane's 20-plus years of covering content technologies, we have consistently found that global companies succeed when they treat content management as a business practice-not as a technology, but as a formalized, institutionalized business practice tied to strategic business goals and objectives. Leading practitioners recognize the value of content as an enterprise asset, and they proactively manage their content as the asset it is. Their content management practices are designed to drive costs out of value creation while delivering scalability that's critical to the ability to capitalize on business opportunity.
At the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), we maintain a constant dialogue with our members to ensure that we address their needs. To help us plan our activities and events in 2010, we conducted a web-based poll of members and nonmembers to determine the critical issues industry executives want us to focus on.
I have good news and bad news about the information industry, both in the same statement: For decades, industry growth has been stable and steady. It's typically a 5% growth rate per year, and it always has been. It varies slightly, but overall, the industry is predictable and, like a grandfather's sweater, comfortable. Unfortunately, this sweater is showing some wear.
The recent valuation of Twitter came in at approximately a billion dollars, according to news reports. It's a big figure based on a lot of other numbers: monthly visitors to the site, the daily number of tweets, repeat usage, and-most critically-the extraordinarily rapid rise of all those statistics in such a short time. The one thing we know for sure is Twitter's profit margin: zero.
Column/Guest Column - Posted 09 Oct 2009
The Blob is back. Here comes that oozing, amorphous, alien life form known for swallowing everything in its path: AOL.
Column/Guest Column - Posted 15 Sep 2009
Many businesses budget tens of thousands of dollars a month, or more, for public relations programs but ignore the most effective PR resource in a company's arsenal: its own web site. You have well designed web pages for your customers - you need well-designed web pages for the press as well. Your online pressroom markets your company to the media 24/7. Think about how powerful it is when an editor spotlights your company as the leader in your space or as the source of information regarding a particular technology, product, or industry initiative. But an essential part of getting that kind of coverage requires having a user-friendly press page. What happens when a writer or an editor comes to your site; can she quickly and easily find what she is searching for, or does she move on to one of your competitors to get the needed information?
Column/Guest Column - Posted 01 Sep 2009
Our little Twitter is growing up. The time has come for us to come to terms with this fact, and take our Tweets to the next level. Mature Twitterers (those of us who have been around longer than Ashton Kutcher) are tired of the noise, and certainly don't want to be the ones creating it. So, we've taken matters into our own hands.
Column/Guest Column - Posted 23 Jun 2009
The news about news has been focused on failing newspapers, for which many blaming the Internet, Google, the unions, journalists, owners, and even consumers. While there are many issues at play, and as many soapboxes to stand on, I recently attended a symposium that provided evidence that many professionals are not waiting around for a government bailout, but working hard and thinking creatively to construct a strategy for journalism's future success.
Column/Guest Column - Posted 05 Jun 2009
Web 2.0 is going to change your life! It's the greatest thing since sliced bread. You'll be thinner, richer, and happier - all thanks to Web 2.0 technology. Are you as tired as everyone else of the rhetoric that promises to change our lives and make us rich, when most of it is just marketing hot air?
Column/Guest Column - Posted 12 May 2009
In the stampede to social media marketing, many companies are getting trampled. They assign someone to write a blog or set up a Facebook community, then use it as another soapbox to megaphone their standard marketing messages. As they yell, they wonder why audience members lose interest and wander away.
Column/Guest Column - Posted 28 Apr 2009
If you follow the world of startup innovation, as I have for more than 25 years, you've likely read about how the venture capital industry is under pressure lately. The IPO market is stalled, capital flow has obviously slowed considerably, and we read almost every day how difficult it is for founders to raise early-stage capital to fund their dreams.
Column/Guest Column - Posted 07 Apr 2009
I recently sat in on a very exciting presentation about how Web 2.0 will flatten organizations and unleash knowledge and creativity locked up in employees stifled by rigid hierarchies… Oh wait a minute, wasn't that the same talk I heard about knowledge management and collaboration back in 1998?
Column/Guest Column - Posted 10 Mar 2009
The Internet Strategy Forum (ISF) recently released findings for research conducted in 2008 focused on the demographics and responsibilities of those who manage corporate web sites and underwritten by us; 250 corporate web executives responded to the survey. The findings show that the people who run websites are better educated and more highly paid than they were in 2005. Also, there is a clear shift in title from "manager" to "director." These documented trends validate what many of those who work in the web industry have already intuited: websites are no longer being managed by renegade webmasters off in a corner doing their own thing, but by "mature" corporate web personnel who are responsible for delivering or supporting the delivery of an organization's mission, goals, products, and services online.
Column/Guest Column - Posted 24 Feb 2009
I have been writing about content management techniques and technologies for EContent since June 2004, when I was 67 years old. Last June, I turned 72 and decided to refocus my energy on my longtime interest, information philosophy. I will tell you something about that in my December column, which will be my last.
Along with the explosion of social media and user-generated content, the information industry continues to grow. Outsell predicts that the information industry will reach $448 billion in revenues by 2010, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.6% from 2007 to 2010.
The annual EContent 100 list provides an opportunity to consider the industry as a whole, and it reflects the content industry’s need to look at its present and its future from many perspectives. Long gone is the era in which print, online, audio, and video media formed distinct publishing markets, as is the time when enterprise firewalls defined the boundaries of where professionals discovered professional-grade content.
|