Tag Archives: Web Sites
Business Insider hires VentureBeat writer
by Chris Roush
Matt Lynley, a tech writer with VentureBeat in San Francisco, has been hired by BusinessInsider.com to expand its tech coverage.
Lynley will move to New York later this year, but he will also recommend tech writers to BusinessInsider.com, which wants to build a presence on the West Coast.
“I still think VB has awesome games coverage, and they have a killer team on the West Coast,” said Lynley in an e-mail to Talking Biz News.
He graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill, where he studied business journalism, math and physics, in May 2010. He has reported for Reuters as an intern.
At VentureBeat, he writes about venture capitalism, clean technology and video games. However, in the past week, he has been covering Apple and the iPhone 4S.
Forbes leader defends Advoice program
by Chris Roush
Lewis Dvorkin, the chief product officer at Forbes, defends the magazine’s Advoice program, which gives companies an opportunity to post content on the business magazine’s website.
Dvorkin writes, “Now we’re taking dead aim at the disruptive forces before us by reconceptualizing how to fulfill the needs of our readers and advertisers alike.
“Our AdVoice program is a bold and critical part of our larger strategy–to position the most authoritative content from journalists, authors, academics, experts and marketers, too, at the center of a social media experience. AdVoice is for marketers, informed content creators in their own right. It provides them with the same tools that I or any of our staffers and contributors use to publish content on Forbes.com. It offers marketers a voice–a way to supplement traditional forms of advertising–and a unique opportunity to engage customers with thought-leading ideas in a credible news environment. Transparency is essential. I’m identified as a FORBES staffer; a marketer’s post carries the AdVoice label.
“Last week AdVoice demonstrated a new reality, exciting for us but perhaps discomfiting to traditionalists. SAP, a huge software company and an AdVoice partner, published an intelligently provocative post about Apple and the iPhone 5. Readers flocked to it. Powered by Facebook and LinkedIn shares it rose to the No. 1 spot in our most-popular-story module, nestled among posts written by staffers and contributors. An SAP post a few weeks ago on Salesforce.com hit the No. 2 spot.
“Jonathan Becher, SAP’s chief marketing officer and an AdVoice writer, says AdVoice enables his company’s employees to write with ‘authenticity’ and join the conversation.”
Read more here.
Law360 expands coverage into new areas
by Chris Roush
Law360.com, a news site that covers business law and high-level litigation, has expanded its coverage into new areas.
The new sections include mergers and acquisitions, private equity, real estate and project finance. M&A is an expansion of the corporate finance area, while private equity and real estate will launch in October. The project finance section will launch in November.
The new sections are available to Law360 subscribers, who consist of each of the top 100 law firms, hundreds of U.S. and international corporations, and major federal and state agencies.
“This is the next step in the continuing expansion of Law360, providing business attorneys across multiple specialties the news and analysis they need to keep abreast of major issues and cases,” Magnus Hoglund, co-founder of Law360, in a statement.
The expansion comes on the heels of Law360′s launch of Law360 Data, a platform that provides real-time updates on case activity for nearly every federal district court in the U.S.
Forbes.com records more visitors and page views after redesign
by Chris Roush
Lewis Dvorkin, the chief product officer of Forbes, reports that the business magazine’s website had a 40 percent increase in traffic in September in the wake of its redesign.
Dvorkin writes,”In the first nine months of 2011, Forbes.com experienced solid and steady growth in unique visitors (21% year over year), with the sharpest jumps in the two months following the release of our new article pages. During that period, our staff of full-time reporters held steady but we grew our base of individually branded expert contributors to 850 from 250. Our model is built on scaling our contributor base, to offer more topic-specific expert information to more users. By aggregating talent, we aggregated audience.”
Later, he adds, “Our strategy to position our authoritative content at the center of a social media experience is driving strong viral and organic growth. Our Twitter followers now stand at 421,979, up 402% in the last year; Facebook Likes are up 203%; and unique monthly users who interact with our content has risen 30% in the last three months.”
Read more here.
Online tech news show Diggnation to end
by Chris Roush
Brian Stelter of the New York Times writes that the popular tech news show “Diggnation” is ending after six years of broadcasting via the Internet.
Stelter writes, “A Web video network, Revision3, was built in large part on the back of ‘Diggnation,’ and like a traditional television network, it is carefully managing the announcement about the show’s end. ‘We’ve built the company to the point where, when a show goes through its natural life cycle, that’s fine,’ the Revision3 chief executive, Jim Louderback, said in an interview last week.
“While ‘Diggnation’ remains one of the company’s top five shows — Revision3 says it counts roughly 250,000 views each week — it represents under 10 percent of video views and under 10 percent of revenue for the company, said David Prager, a producer of the show and a co-founder of the company. He cited three topical shows that have more monthly views than ‘Diggnation’ now: ‘Epic Meal Time,’ ‘Tekzilla’ and ‘Film Riot.’
“‘We’ve been able to use ‘Diggnation’ to grow the network,’ Mr. Prager said.
“‘Diggnation’ had its online premiere in July 2005. Then, as now, Mr. Rose and Mr. Albrecht sat on a couch with computers and beers and reviewed both. The iPhone, the Windows operating system and out-of-this-world gadgets were three recurring topics. Some of the topics are derived from the trends on Digg, a social news Web site that Mr. Rose co-founded.”
Read more here.
Poachable business journalists
by Chris Roush
The New York Observer published Friday a list of the top 25 “poachable” journalists, and on the list are business journalists such as Joe Weisenthal of Business Insider, M.G. Siegler of TechCrunch, Bess Levin of Dealbreaker and Jenna Wortham and Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times.
About Sorkin, the Observer wrote, “If business reporting has a rock star, love him or not, it’s Andrew Ross Sorkin, who helped create one of the single most powerful and influential blogs in all of business news, let alone the Times, for whom Dealbook was an early experiment. He made himself a boldface name with Dealbook’s coverage of the 2008 crash, along with Too Big to Fail, the book and HBO movie that came after it. What other business journalist could get Jamie Dimon to show up to their book party?”
About Siegler, the paper wrote, “Siegler is currently the strongest voice at tech blog powerhouse TechCrunch, which makes you think that he would be well taken care of by parent company AOL. But after the recent drama that ended with founder Mike Arrington being forced out and columnist Paul Carr flouncing after him, Siegler revealed that Aol failed to reach out to him with any incentive to stay. He’s a born blogger, happy to pound out words with nothing but Apples for sustenance, and, while he has Twitter/Tumblr beefs with some potential poachers (The New York Times, AllThingsD) we can think of a place or two that might make a strong enough offer – complete with a semi-stable editorial structure – to lure him away from his Arianna earn-out.”
About Weisenthal, the paper wrote, “Any one of Business Insider’s top lieutenants would be a loss for Henry Blodget, but Weisenthal would be an especially hard hit, which makes him a difficult poach. No matter: anybody looking to provide more inventory or simply to shift the pace of a news operation would be downright negligent to not look at hiring Joe. Traditional business publications? Not so much, but Joe’s a one-man news wire who can sell a story like no other. It’s a freak talent and a rare find.”
Read the entire list here.
Wall Street Journal revises privacy policy
by Chris Roush
The Wall Street Journal revised its website privacy policy on Tuesday to allow the site to connect personally identifiable information with Web browsing data without user consent.
Julia Angwin of The Journal writes, “Previously, the Journal’s privacy policy stated that it would obtain ‘express affirmative consent’ to combine personal data with ‘click stream information’ culled from the website.
“The company said that combining the two types of data would ‘allow us to provide customized Wall Street Journal service information to our users,’ said Alisa Bowen, general manager of The Wall Street Journal Digital Network. ‘It is not being applied retrospectively and only applies going forward to new registered users and subscribers.’
“The change is part of a larger effort by the Journal to streamline and simplify privacy policies across its network of websites, which include WSJ.com, Marketwatch.com, AllthingD.com, Barrons.com and SmartMoney.com.
“The new privacy policy applies to all the websites in the Wall Street Journal Digital Network. It contains expanded disclosures of online tracking techniques and contains links to opt-outs from third party tracking networks. It also adds a disclosure that it collects mobile device IDs. The company says that it only shares the mobile identifiers with companies that provide internal analytics.”
Read more here.
Bloomberg’s digital leader has left company
by Chris Roush
Kevin Krim, who joined Bloomberg LP in 2009 to improve its website operations, has left the company, a spokesman confirmed Friday.
“Bloomberg.com has come a long way since Kevin joined nearly two and a half years ago. Traffic has increased 78 percent and revenue has more than tripled,” said spokesman Ty Trippet. “We will continue to evolve the web site for global senior business executives, and we wish Kevin the very best.”
Krim was the global head of Bloomberg Digital, where he was responsible for Bloomberg.com, BusinessWeek.com as well as new digital products for Bloomberg LP.
Krim oversaw Bloomberg’s online media businesses as well as the integration of the company’s television, radio, news and data content into current and new digital products targeted at business leaders. Krim’s team also develops advertising and subscription solutions for Bloomberg’s U.S. based and international online media properties, including the Japanese language site Bloomberg.co.jp.
Krim joined Bloomberg in 2009 and reported to Multimedia CEO Andy Lack.
Before joining Bloomberg, Krim served as vice president of product and strategy for Yahoo! HotJobs and Yahoo! Small Business, both of which were top five businesses for Yahoo! globally. Prior to joining Yahoo! in 2006, Krim served as general manager of LiveJournal.com, a global social network and blogging community.
Previously he was vice president for Web properties at LookSmart Ltd., where he led vertical search destinations including FindArticles.com, Furl.net, and Zeal.com.P.
Business Insider’s business plan for growth
by Chris Roush
Ryan McCarthy writes for Reuters.com about Business Insider’s strategy in the wake of its announcement Thursday that it had secured $7 million in additional funding.
McCarthy writes, “None of this is intended to say Business Insider doesn’t do some very smart web journalism. Joe Weisenthal, in particular, appears to work inhuman hours and is one of the smartest and most prolific voices in business journalism. Joe’s crafted the site’s voice after his own. He regularly posts Wall Street analyst reports that others don’t get, and he’s able to provide the kind of quick context that works really well for Blodget’s readership. Blodget, for his part, can be a great blogger and has a particular knack for analyzing failures.
“So why does Business Insider risk undermining all that highly original, distinctive content for what appear to be roughly 18,000 article views? When media companies are asked to grow at a meteoric pace — and Comscore indicates that Business Insider’s unique visitors have nearly doubled this year — the line between original content and borderline theft gets awful blurry. The editorial mission quickly transforms from ‘What can I link to?’ to ‘How much can I take?’
“To be fair, Business Insider’s more prominent pieces are often its most original. But journalists and readers should be very worried when fast-growth media companies determine the standards for distinguishing between citation and theft.
“One one would hope readers and advertisers would eventually catch on to the kind of lazy lifting that would earn middle school students an F. But that hasn’t happened yet.”
Read more here.
Why Business Insider is doing so well
by Chris Roush
John Carney of CNBC.com writes about why the Business Insider site, where he once worked, has been so successful.
“But this competitiveness doesn’t diminish their team spirit. The place is a start-up and it feels like one. They consider themselves underdogs battling vastly bigger media companies. They want to be better at what they do than everyone else.
“User-Focused. There’s a schizophrenia that runs through much of the media. Writers and editors often went into writing or editing with an eye on improving the world. They want to educate, inform, expose corruption. At the same time, they know they need to appeal to commercial and reader interests that they often hold in some degree of contempt.
“The animating forces at Business Insider are very different. They want to deliver what the reader wants. Their entire goal is producing the most “user-friendly” media company they can. They’re constantly experimenting with what level of reporting, aggregation, commentary, and summarizing will best satisfy and attract readers.”
Read more here.