Blink, and six months go by. Ever since I made the move from Time Inc. to TechCrunch, my life has become a whirlwind of nonstop blog posting, little sleep, and a growing addiction to news feeds, Techmeme, and my Blackberry. Last week, I wrote my 600th post (this one is No. 617). The boxes I brought over from my previous career are still stacked, unopened, in my TechCrunch office. A lone painting from my three-year-old son adorns the wall. I have not had time to unpack or even buy a bookshelf to put things on. Fourteen years worth of stuff, and it still amazes me I don’t need any of it.
A Cambridge, Mass.-based company is launching a free Web site that maps news articles to their location on a map.
MetaCarta indexes more than 1,400 sources, including stories from the Associated Press, Reuters, and other news sites and blogs.
You can search for a place name or zoom into the map to a specific location, and articles related to that spot will be displayed. Repositioning the map refines the search. You can also browse by category, such as health, politics, sports, and world news.
The AP and Reuters stories are displayed in a window on the site, while clicking on other items sends you to the source site.
There are no ads right now, but eventually there may be classified listings and ads associated with businesses, says Rick Hutton, vice president of content at MetaCarta.
What’s my secret master plan around developing our business? The secret is I tend to speak plainly and I already said exactly what I wanted to say. I believe bloggers should be careful about raising too much money and thereby killing opportunities to work with others. I believe the politics of linking is at times distasteful, but necessary for any blog to thrive (that is something I’ll write more about later). And I believe the rollup of big blogs is about to begin.
Are we thinking about how all this affects our business and making plans of our own? Sure we are. Are others helping us think through this? Of course they are. Was any of the speculation about our exact plans, based on “sources close to the situation” accurate?
The New York Times tonight added Mixx bookmarking buttons on its site, which is an important milestone for the company. Facebook, Digg and Yahoo Buzz are the only other third party social bookmarking services that are offered.
The NYTimes doesn’t include well known and more established services like Delicious, Reddit and others on its pages. And since Mixx is only six months old, so this is an important sign of confidence in the young startup.
An example is here, just click on the “share” button to the right of the article.
Dow Jones (NYSE: NWS), now officially part of News Corp. has made its first acquisition after the deal: it has bought Dutch company Betten Financial News, in an effort to expand its Dow Jones Newswires operation internationally. DJ will combine Betten's corporate and markets coverage with Dow Jones Nieuwsdienst, its Dutch service. Betten's brand is well known in The Netherlands under the "Betten Beursmedia News" brandname. In addition to distribution via market data terminals Betten has its own website and also provides content to a number of financial institutions' Web portals as well as to Dutch sites including Financieele Dagblad and IEX.nl. Betten also supplies content to the DJ Factiva services.
Scripps (NYSE: SSP), which is in the process of splitting up its business into two units, has filed its annual 10-K report with SEC, and the Interactive division, which would be part of the supposedly fast growing Scripps Networks Interactive, is still seeing its share of troubles after a turbulent year. Its acquisition of comparison shopping plays with Shopzilla and uSwitch (in UK) is what has been primarily responsible for this turbulence.
First, its note on the two small acquisitions it did last year: "In July 2007, we reached agreements to acquire the Web sites Recipezaar.com and Pickle.com for total cash consideration of approximately $30 million." And this optimistic note on overall online ad revenues: "Our Internet sites had advertising revenues of $40 million in 2007 compared with $34.0 million in 2006 and $22.0 million in 2005."
Then, on to the troubles and its effort to turn them around:
-- A non-cash charge of $411 million, including $312 million of nondeductible goodwill, was recorded to reduce the carrying value of our uSwitch business' goodwill and intangible assets to their fair values. The charge decreased income from continuing operations by $382 million, $2.32 per share.
-- Falling energy prices in the United Kingdom resulted in less switching activity and lower revenue at uSwitch during 2007 compared with previous years. While we have made efforts to grow other service categories at uSwitch, including personal finance and insurance products, our revenue remains concentrated in the energy market. This concentration, combined with the changes in the energy markets in the United Kingdom, led to lowered future cash flow expectations for uSwitch, which resulted in a non-cash impairment charge of $411 million in the fourth quarter.
-- In the later half of 2007, we began to see improvement at Shopzilla. Revenue in Q407 increased slightly compared with Q406 primarily due to traffic acquisition efficiencies.
-- Segment profit in 2007 was impacted by $10 million of costs that were incurred in the first quarter to build brand awareness for uSwitch and $7 million of costs incurred related to a management transition at Shopzilla.
-- Interactive media segment profit is expected to be $13 million in the first quarter.
Shares of Google (NSDQ: GOOG) have been on a sustained decline since late last year, when they briefly hit the $700 mark. They're now off about 35 percent from those highs, factoring in a decline today of more than 7 percent to $451.13 early this afternoon. The latest wave of fear seems to stem from a comScore (NSDQ: SCOR) report claiming a meaningful decline in click-through rates in January to 10.4 percent, from over 12 percent in the second half of 2007. Lehman's Doug Anmuth, who queried various advertisers and search engine marketers, pegs the blame on consumers. Advertisers aren't (yet?) pulling back from paid search, but searchers, perhaps because of the weakening economy, aren't clicking on ads as much they have been. As TechTraderDaily notes, a number of analysts are piling on today, to varying degrees. Though between the share decline and the company's mediocre quarterly performance reported in January, the market doesn't need to be told that the bloom has started to come off the rose.
CBS (NYSE: CBS) has announced Q4 revenue of $3.76 billion, down 3 percent year-over-year from $3.88 billion. Net income fell 18 percent to $273.1 million, from $335 million, however this year's quarter included significant declines in the value of certain CBS investment. The decrease in the top-line was partly attributable to asset divestitures and lower political spend. Some highlights:
-- Television: Revenue fell 4 percent to $2.46 billion in the quarter. While overall ad spending fell for the above noted reasons, the decline was offset, in part, due to strength at Showtime and CSTV.
-- Radio: Factoring out divestitures, same-station revenue fell 7 percent due to an overall weak ad market.
Conference call: The first big matter of business CEO Leslie Moonves addressed on the call was the economy: "At CBS, we are not seeing a recession in our day-to-day operations." Sectors that have been hit the hardest have not been big CBS advertisers, he noted. As for the concluded strike, the company says it's come out of it unscathed: "Our financial pictures was not effected by the strike in any shape or form." There will be some changes to business though. This year's upfronts won't be as garish as in past years, although they'll still be held at Carnegie Hall. And the company will attempt to maintain some of the lower cost structure that the strike instigated. Much of the call was spent restating the argument that the network business remains strong, and that "the internet is truly an extension of (the) existing network business." The thesis is that good TV content will be the backbone of digital success.
-- Last.fm: In the company's earnings release, this was the only digital property that got a mention. On the call, the company also touted it as an example of its success in the online space, noting that usage is up 92 percent since it adopted limited full streaming.
-- NCAA Tournament: CBS is projecting digital revenues form the tournament of $21 million, up from $10 million last year. In 2005, using a pay model, the company generated revenue of $250k. Moonves noted that the cost structure of the operations has been the same throughout.
Newspapers have been attracting larger audiences with their websites, partly compensating for the decreased readership of their print editions, according to a new report from Scarborough Research. The analysis of data from 88 newspapers in the top 50 local markets August 2004-March 2007 showed web site growth making up for print losses by 28 percent. Interviews with newspaper executives brought out several common themes among successful news sites, including local coverage, unique and interactive content such as blogs, videos and podcasts, and cross-promotion. Among the highlights:
-- Online audience has grown 14 percent, making up print audience losses by 28 percent.
-- Readers aged 18-34 who view only the online editions increased 21 percent.
-- Online readers are increasingly wealthy and educated; readership among adults with annual household incomes of $75k increased 33 percent. Readership among adults with a college degree or higher increased by 16 percent.
The full report isn't available online but the release has some details.
That's where the jobs are...really. AdAge has done an analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data, and come up with some interesting numbers about employment in the media and marketing sectors. U.S. media employment in December fell to a 15-year low (886,900), led by cuts in newspaper industry. On the other hand, jobs in advertising/marketing-services broke a record in November (769,000), and in that sector, the marketing consultancies powered that growth. These consultancies over the past year added 14,500 jobs (up 10.8 percent), nearly matching staff cuts at newspapers (down 16,900 or 4.7percent), according to the analysis. Why? Well, in time of chaos and change, anyone who ties to make sense of change still wins. That's where consultancies fit in.
On the media side, employment peaked in 2000, and since then media companies have eliminated one in six jobs (167,600). The only media sectors to add jobs: magazines (up a meager 400 jobs) and internet media companies (up 9,200).
Blink, and six months go by. Ever since I made the move from Time Inc. to TechCrunch, my life has become a whirlwind of nonstop blog posting, little sleep, and a growing addiction to news feeds, Techmeme, and my Blackberry. Last week, I wrote my 600th post (this one is No. 617). The boxes I brought over from my previous career are still stacked, unopened, in my TechCrunch office. A lone painting from my three-year-old son adorns the wall. I have not had time to unpack or even buy a bookshelf to put things on. Fourteen years worth of stuff, and it still amazes me I don’t need any of it. 
The New York Times tonight added Mixx bookmarking buttons on its site, which is an important milestone for the company. Facebook, Digg and Yahoo Buzz are the only other third party social bookmarking services that are offered. 
