MediaFlect

Craig is reading the previous post, says ‘thanks” but that he couldn’t post a comment because it required registration. I think I’ve fixed that.

Last week, in San Francisco, was nicely invited to the book party for the new John Batelle book, “Search: How Google …” at a lovely Italian restaurant. Among the technorati there was Craig Newmark, of Craigslist, whom I had the pleasure of meeting for the first time. Craig seemed bemused by a post I had done months ago after a newspaper conference in Pennsylvania. I had asked a room of about 60 Internet people there how many knew of Craigslist — about half the hands went up. “How many of you are at least concerned about Craigslist?” The same 30. I found it intriguing that all those who knew of Craigslist were concerned or worried (because of the implications to their cash-cow classified revenue) and was very very surprised that Internet people at a newspaper could possibly not know of it. That was in April. I guess they know better know — or at least I hope they’ve looked into it.

I was also surprised that Craig had apparently read my post. He said he uses Bloglines to sift for mentions of him and his lists, and he and his publicist comb them, looking especially for any negative mentions in order to counter them. And Craig, if you are upset about this post, please do let me know and I’ll try to make amends.

Meanwhile, apologies to anyone who’s missed the postings (and hats off to anyone who’s glad I’ve cut down). Between the Executive MBA, consulting for TopButton, CNET and others who request anonymity, contributing to Rebuilding Media and occasionally PaidContent, and life — you know, eating and playing with my children and saying “hello” to the spouse once in awhile — well, I sure ain’t complaining. But I do apologize.

Layoffs at The New York Times and other papers are getting attention, and movies says this piece I found thanks to fellow Rebuilding Media poster Bob Cauthorn, says movies, too, are in trouble.

On the Media this week interviewed a former ABC News colleague, Richard Gizbert, about his accusations that he was fired there as a refusal to go to war for the network. This, too, at least as OTM sets it up, shows the times are tough for broadcast networks as well. In other words, it’s not just pontificating. The effects of diminished audience and competition are real. Even if the network — and I say this while fearing it is crass — no longer has to pay millions for Peter Jennings’ salary. That Tom and Dan left their networks, and weren’t replaced by such paycheck-heavy talent, also may be a sign of the need to save money.

This blog post, about three users of Treo phones bringing a class-action suit in California over how poorly the phone functions in their eyes is intriguing for two reasons I see:

One, the word Treo, itself, is linked to ads that sell the Treo. Forbes.com notably tried, then dropped the internal linking technique and others have written about the editorial vs. commercial problems with doing so. It could become the equivalent of product placement within journalism and serve to, over time, influence the product in nefarious ways. (”Say, John, could you throw the word Porsche into your story a few more times?”) This one is sort of sadly amusing as its whole theme is about how lousy the Treo is, yet you can click to buy one for only $179.

Secondly, I wonder, if this lawsuit gets any traction, what it might mean for technology, in general. If people can legitimately sue technology creators for making overarching promises — then, r’uh r’oh.

Free tabloid AM-NY today fronts the news about pornography coming to cellphones, and flicks at how that could lead to more adoption of the technology: “Adult entertainment is widely regarded as the first media segment to drive growth of the World Wide Web, and industry experts expect the same for third and fourth-generation mobile phones.”

Exactly. The piece, like most mainstream news pieces about pornography, focuses on the “oh my” aspects. (This story goes into parents’ worries that kids will access porn via phone.) But, creepy as it may feel, it doesn’t hurt to look at how purveyors of sleaze use the technologies, both the innovations and the abuses. (Abuses would include using technologies that lock up computers or put spyware or cause multiple popup windows.)

These folks are nothing if not bottom-line oriented, and they always want to make it easy for someone to find, access and, if necessary pay for and download their material. (It would be a reasonable study to see how many times people give up on porn site video vs. news site video.) They understand how to make people keep clicking through for more, using design that shows off what users presumably want. I would bet they’re avid viewers of Web logs and other analytics to see what is causing the most clickthroughs, and funnel analysis to check on abandonment points and ratio of click-in to purchase.

So if the smut purveyors are hitting hard on cellphones, this may mean good news for handheld devices. Just as erotica is said to have driven sales of everything from paperback books to cable TV to VCRs (and probably DVD players), it could drive adoption of cellphone technology and help solidify standards.

I am not making any moralistic judgments. I am purely talking about technology and commerce. And when as mainstream a newspaper as a local free tabloid puts a topic on their cover, that’s probably a harbinger of acceptance to come.

Meanwhile, who is doing any real research or experimentation in the best ways to convey news via cellphone or other handheld device?

Ah, my kingdom for more time. Here’s thoughts on news of Google’s blog search tool, and where search falls short to date.

I don’t know why there’s any hoo-hah about whether Anderson Cooper is gay. If he’s the modern anchor, who really does show that he feels the pain of the stories he covers, if he can go from being an ABC Newsman to celebrity Mole to a CNN anchor, then isn’t it just as 21st Century to also date the same sex? I mean he was at the GLAAD awards a couple of years ago joking (from a podium, in front of video cameras, to hundreds of attendees, for Gay and Lesbian awards) about looking for a date. Granted, he didn’t say “with a man”, but c’mon. … I like Anderson, personally. He’s very nice and not full of himself. And I always respected that he didn’t make a big deal about it, but was open. So why is New York magazine this week dancing around the issue? Are we not ready as a society for the idea of an anchor who may be in that particular minority?

This won’t get the kind of coverage of an AOL buying Time-Warner, or Yahoo looking to gobble Disney, but I think it’s a small modern example of online buying out meat-space media. Zinio, an expert in, basically, transferring magazines to the Web, has “purchased” online subscription company BlueDolphin . (They call it a merger, but PaidContent, where I contribute and which usually gets it right, says Zinio bought its new partner.)

The magazine industry has moved online in fits and starts, and there are myriad models, from fully free, like Forbes, to nearly fully paid, like many of the Time-Warner titles, to the formerly paid but now mostly free, like Business Week, to the barely online, like Vogue or Vitals , which I used to handle on the Web.

Meanwhile, print magazine companies feel they’re in trouble as they grapple with the new technologies. I find it instructive that the Web technology company would be able to buy the print circulation sales company.

For the record, Texterity and qmags are others who convert magazines to Web distributed formulae.

An advertising blog is playing around with Japanese and making me wonder they’re trying to say. I came across blog Advertising Tools on Web advertising. To the right of the logo, in Japanese, it says “Chocolate Casody.” I think they were trying to write “chocolate candy” but got the “n” symbol mixed up with the “so” symbol (they’re similar).

Yeah, I’m showing that I speak Japanese — but also giving an example of the curious trend of people using Japanese writing and lettering as a sort of background, almost just for show. I don’t know anything about the site, or whether it’s good or legit. And wondering what in the world the logo has to do with anything related to advertising. Now, back to work.

We’ve all been wondering, what with the hiring of TV exec Lloyd Braun and former WSJ.com top editor Neil Budde and the reams of jobs they’ve been trying to fill, what Yahoo! is up to, journalistically speaking. With the news they’re hiring video journalist Kevin Sites (who shot the video of the Marine killing an unarmed Iraqi last year) to cover wars — on video, no less — we have at least one clue.

Says The New York Times, in the piece linked above: “Mr. Braun said the project did not mean that Yahoo was ‘building any kind of news organization.’ Rather, he said, the company is trying to develop signature programming in all areas - news, sports, health, entertainment, finance - that will complement content it already carries from other providers.”

Any more doubts over whether Yahoo is a media company?