Monetize the MySpace Parasites

I recently wrote a piece called News Corp: Bewildered Pioneer, where I discussed the rather low rate of monetization of MySpace, News Corp’s crown jewel in the online space. Following that, MySpace blocked Photobucket, Photobucket whined, the media went up in arms against News Corp. This is exactly what I would have done if I

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BusinessWeek: Crown Jewel or Achilles’ Heel?

In my post, “McGraw-Hill: Beating the Street” I have discussed McGraw-Hill’s overall business prospects, which looks good with lower double-digit growth in 2007. However, BusinessWeek, McGraw-Hill’s crown jewel is struggling and I am going to talk about it here. BusinessWeek, is one of the most widely read business magazines, with more than 4.7 million readers

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Tapping Into the Sun

In India, the scorching tropical sun is worshipped as a God. These days, it appears that countries like Germany and Japan, and more recently, sunny California are following suit. Solar energy, one of the purest forms of alternative energy, is making headways in becoming a major market phenomenon. I have recently been speaking with Tom

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Google Acquires Doubleclick for $3.1 B

Good! Just as I was complaining about Google’s absense of CPM-based display advertising options, they have picked up Doubleclick. :: “DoubleClick’s technology is widely adopted by leading advertisers, publishers and agencies, and the combination of the two companies will accelerate the adoption of Google’s innovative advances in display advertising,” said Google CEO Eric Schmidt in

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Giving Up on AdSense

I am a painful critic for Google’s AdSense program, as it pertains to Content (not Search). My beef is that it doesn’t take into account any understanding of the target audience of a publisher, nor does it take into account Context or Intent.

Yahoo! One Up On Google

This week, Viacom announced a multi-year partnership under which Yahoo! will serve as the exclusive provider of sponsored search and contextual ads to all of Viacom’s 33 broadband sites, including MTV.com, VH1.com, Nickelodeon.com, comedycentral.com and BET.com, with potential expansion to more than 140 additional Viacom websites across the globe. The ads will be powered by

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Salesforce.com Playing VC

I wrote a piece earlier called Is Bootstrapping Becoming Sexy Again? In that, I made the point that given where the Internet is today, bootstrapping companies has suddenly become very easy, and gobs of venture capital are no longer required to build the vast majority of businesses. Now, many of the larger companies are actually

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Salesforce.com Steps into the Main Arena

Today, Salesforce.com (Nasdaq: CRM) announced the acquisition of an OnDemand Content Management SaaS company, Koral, which is a Web 2.0 spin on a mainstream enterprise software application: Content Management. I listened to Marc Benioff’s presentation at the Four Seasons this afternoon. Marc and the CEO of Koral demonstrated some funky functionality, touting Unstructured Data Management

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