Fantastic commentry on one aspect of how old media is migrating the new – by someone that straddles both worlds. I especially like the bit about bloggers with 100 viewers displacing old media types with millions. That isn’t really true (or it depends upon who those viewers are), but bloggers with millions of viewers should …
Category Archives: Internet Business
iPhone
The best summary of the iPhone I’ve seen. The device is beautiful, does everything you could dream of and more but is fatally tied (the phone locks out other SIMs) into a 2 year contract with dubious Cingular. To give Apple credit, ALL of the USA mobile networks in are terrifyingly poor – with Cingular …
Yellow pages
Some numbers from the potential Yellow Pages sale emerge, with expected EBITDA of $160m this year. Yellow pages prices have been cranked up over the last few years, and with online being what it is I don’t see huge upside for the printed product. The upside is all online, and although it is essentially an …
Paypal moves to two factor security
Well done Paypal – customers apparently will get a dongle (for free if you are a business) that generates a password that you use along with your own each time you login to Paypal. Paypal fraud is a huge problem, and the service is highly sensitive to phishing attacks. Phishers will still have one shot …
Brands #2
Apple – launches iPhone with Google AND Yahoo!. The iPhone seems so good it has to be fake…
Wiki on Trade Me
Codswollops. I cannot comment on this as I’m an insider but not a spokesperson. Apply a bit of common sense to these statements though….. (and no – I’m not going to edit them) (From Wikipedia – TradeMe) Fraud and controversy …In recent times, TradeMe has not in all cases helped out victims of fraud. …. …
Big Retail
Big online retail sites tend to vary a bit by country. Check out the biggest French, German and UK sites – measured by Comscore traffic. Strange huh? Amazon is #3 in France, #2 in UK and Germany, while eBay doesn’t make the list – probably because Comscore fall into the old trap of treating eBay …
Brands playing together
Microsoft just got together with Ford to launch their car audio system Sync. The system appears to be pretty good, but it says volumes that Microsoft launches with Ford – a company in real trouble. Meanwhile Apple launched their original simple iPod system with, who else, Mercedes Benz…
NZHerald ads
Some ads are back – there is a Microsoft one (that’s smart enough to know I’m on a mac) served up by http://ads.apn.co.nz/ADCLICK/CID=xxx – which is not the former doubleclick method. There is also a super slow Sorted ad – served by http://secure-nz.imrworldwide.com/xxx, which is Neilsen. The ad appears quickly enough, but clicking on the …
Skype numbers adding up
Fantastic analysis of Skype’s numbers here. The author projects just under $12 revenue per active Skype user in 2007, versus the $78 per real Skype 2007 user paid by eBay. All up those are not bad figures, and the purchase by eBay makes financial sense. I’m a fan of Skype as it gives eBay the …
Stuff ads
Well – perhaps there is just no advertising money out there at this time of year. Stuff has esentially no advertising showing. Maybe NZHerald is in the same situation, and is using Google ads as a backup plan. Good show if so. Trade Me, meanwhile, looks to have a full complement of ads, as does …
sports quiz
I’m proud to have scored just 18/50 in the 2006 Stuff Sports Quiz (link will change to weekly quiz). There is so much sport on these days that keeping up would require shelving much of the rest of your life.
Woosh – viable or not?
Woosh made a $24m loss on operating revenue of just $10.4m. Operating revenue (which is net sales) was actually down slightly on the previous year, while EBITDA was $12m. Clearly some interest and depreciation in there, which they say is related to network investment. Despite a claim that it will break even this year, these …
NZHerald – resorting to google ads
The good news is that NZHerald is loading super quickly today. The not so good news for APN is that they are using Google ads instead of more lucrative display ads. I’d be really interested whether they are generating real revenue out of those Google ads, but I suspect not after looking at the advertisers. …
Oldest newspaper moves online
A sign of the times – the world’s oldest newspaper The Post Och Inrikes Tidningar, a Swedish daily list of bankruptcies, governemnt and corporate announcements has moved online. That’s 361 years of tradition turned on it’s head, but the logical move for an announcement-led paper. The online mast-head still states ‘since 1645’.
Lance Wiggs 