Archive for January, 2008
By Kyle Austin
By Kyle Austin
So Punxsutawney Phil won’t be looking for his shadow until Saturday but for Larry, Sergey and the rest of NASDAQ -Groundhog’s Day is today. Today at 4:30 p.m ET Google will release its Q4 earnings and if you’ve been following any of the lead-up stories to this “event,” it would seem that the entire hopes of the technology sector loom in the balance.
If Sergey and Larry appear out of their Mountain View bunker (for their earnings call) and see their shadow (anything less then blowout earnings) we are certainly headed towards six more weeks of winter and more importantly into a bear market which signifies a near full-on technology industry recession. At least that’s how the scribes are spinning it.
In his “Big Tech” blog, Fortune’s Jon Fortt takes a look at how important Google’s results will be to the entire tech industry in a post titled “What if Google Misses?” In the post Fortt points out that:
“Anything short of blowout earnings from Google and steady confidence from executives could rattle not only Google but also the whole Internet sector — though Yahoo (YHOO) has already done its part to put folks on edge.”
However, Wendy Tanaka at Forbes is bullish on Google. She writes that Google is expected to announce “40% increase in net income and a 54% jump in revenues for the fourth quarter.” She also spins Yahoo!’s results in a slightly more positive tone:
“Yahoo! finally had something to “yahoo” about on Tuesday as it reported fourth-quarter earnings that beat analysts by $0.04 cents per share. The struggling Internet giant reported earnings of $0.15 per share, compared to estimates of $0.11.”
Liz Gunnison at Portfolio teases that we could learn a lot more about Google’s mobile strategy in addition to their fiscal numbers in today’s call.
Even if Sergey and Larry see their shadows today they will have 16 more years to try their luck again according to what they said in an interview with Adam Lashinsky of Fortune.
In a rare three-way interview (That CEO guy named Eric Schmidt joined them as well), the Google boys at the top told Lashinsky that they all pledged to stay with the company for 20 years in July of 2004 before their IPO.
Will year five start out on a positive note? Stay tuned.
January 31st, 2008
By George Snell
By George
Apparently yes.
The vulnerability is scary. According to CNN.com, an anchor from a ship may have severed an undersea cable in the Mediterranean Sea and taken out Internet service in large regions of the Middle East and Asia (including China and 
India).
With so much information and critical services now Web-based – the cost of this outage will be in the billions. The United States has been spared from the outage (although the Web was in slow motion most of the morning).
But U.S. business have off-shored so much technical and customer support overseas that companies like IBM and Intel are still assessing the damage to their operations. It probably won’t be pretty.
Stay tuned to this story because it has greater ramifications than just the business losses and downtime. Government and business these days can barely function without the Internet (I think of our own operations at Racepoint Group – with a lot of our tools and many of our databases Web-based).
If an anchor can wipe out the Internet on two continents – the discussion falling out of this disaster will be centered on what will need to be done to fully protect and deliver the Web – while having reliable back up solutions in place.
January 31st, 2008
By Kyle Austin
By Kyle Austin
So Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch had a fast one pulled on him yesterday on the Fox Business “Happy Hour” show. Arrington notes on TechCrunch that he was scheduled to appear to discuss TechCrunch’s presidential endorsements of Barack Obama and John McCain.
Turns out they were really just interested in him trashing on Yahoo!. Arrington goes on to say “I was caught completely off guard” and “we never actually talked about,” what he thought he was there for in the first place. Even with being caught off guard Arrington makes some interesting points on the possibility of Yahoo! loosing the entire company to a merger or sale this year. Paul La Monica of CNNMoney.com shared similar thoughts with us just last week. Anyway, Michael apparently didn’t watch the show before going on it, because this sounds all too familiar.
Now first of all, you never really know what you’ll be talking about in these live business segments. You speak with the bookers of the show who have one idea and then the producers end up having a completely different idea when you show up for filming. But, Fox News and especially Fox Business (Even in its infancy) have become notorious in using this We’ll completely catch you off guard, cause that will make great TV approach. I mean, I understand that Fox Business has to try something to get their ratings out of the tank. The New York Times reported in January that less than 6,300 are watching the channel on any given weekday.
But, do they really think this sensationalistic approach will help them in the long run? I know for a fact that they are alienating their sources and potential guests with this tactic. One CEO that we work with recently took the time to tell us that he has absolutely no interest in going on Fox Business. Yes, the low ratings had a little to do with that, but we had little reason to convince him otherwise with the hatchet job reporting that they have been doing in their infancy.
A second client that we work is likely to follow the lead in being finished with Fox Business after the on-air talent went borderline “off the reservation” in a live interview. That incident led to their producers openly apologizing to us for their “talents’” behavior.
If they really want to save this thing, Rupert better swap out this on-air “talent” for some reporters from the Wall Street Journal and I don’t think he can wait for the exclusive deal the Wall Street Journal has with CNBC to expire in 2012 to make his move. Plus it won’t be hard to swap them out now that they are going to be roommates.
It doesn’t appear that just featuring journalists from Dow Jones’ publications as guests is going to help. In a third run-in we had with Fox Business, “Happy Hour” included David Weidner from Marketplace in a “debate” on on a client of ours and a current event. The only problem being that co-hosts Cody Willard and Rebecca Gomez were hollering so loud you couldn’t hear what Weidner had to say. Luckily they film this “business” show in the Waldorf-Astoria’s Bull & Bear bar, so he could quickly drown his headache in a martini.
January 30th, 2008
By Kyle Austin
By Kyle Austin
As I noted in my last blog on The Wire, everyone in the newspaper and publication industry is cutting staff and being told to “do more with less.” Well apparently this doesn’t apply to Robert Scoble and Fast Company. He’s got the green light to hire more staff from his new employer. This is really Scoble’s reasoning behind crossing the line and letting advertisers onto his new Fast Company TV venture. I’m sure many folks getting into the online video segment market will be taking notes including GigaOm and CNNMoney.com. Although one wonders if Scoble will be able to score top notch guests like Om has been able to.
January 28th, 2008
By Kyle Austin
By Kyle Austin
Like everyone else who was living with PTSD (Post- Traumatic Sopranos’ Deficiency), I was eagerly anticipating the return of HBO’s “The Wire” on January 6. Four weeks into the fifth and final season and it has not disappointed, even though the hometown Baltimore Sun notes that viewership has declined. The Sun’s coverage of the show continues to be ironic, as the fictionalized Baltimore Sun newsroom has taken a leading role in the final season.
After four seasons of covering the drug dealers, police and politicians of Baltimore it is no accident that cities journalists are getting the spotlight in season five. Producer David Simon spent 12 years at the Baltimore Sun as a police reporter before being the victim of a buyout in 1995. His unique look into the newsrooms of America in 2008 has been a highlight of the final season and has been praised by many as the most honest and comprehensive look at journalism in television history.
However, there are others that wonder if it is only us within the industry that like the new twist, and others still who wonder if the only reason we are watching (and blogging) is because nothing else is on (Yes that strike is still going on). David Carr of the New York Times took a detailed look at the Simon’s examination of journalism early this week in a column titled “Ex-Newsman Laments a Dying Craft.” In which he exquisitely notes Simon’s love and loathing for his original craft that that has been brought to light in this final season:
“There are gorgeous, loving grace notes in “The Wire” (reporting, for instance, is exalted as “the life of kings”), but the newspaper business is depicted as the playground of the venal, the inept and the cynical.’
Simon himself published an Op Ed in the Washington Post just last Sunday entitled “Does the News Matter to Anyone Anymore?” In which he finally faces what me be the toughest thing for him and other newsroom journalists to face – The Internet will eventually kill off every paper in the U.S. outside of the New York Times.
“Perhaps it was all inevitable. Perhaps the Internet is so profound a change in the delivery model that every newspaper — even the best of the best — is destined to face retrenchment and loss. Perhaps all of this was written in stone long before I was ever wandering around a student newspaper office with a pica ruler sticking out my back pocket. Perhaps everything written above is merely Talmudic commentary.”
Simon, as the New Yorker recently and exhaustively portrayed, is a “Stealer of Life.” He has the unique ability to capture real life events and re-create them for his audiences in gripping reality. That intense ability makes his newsroom re-creation almost too close to home, as David Carr also describes in his piece.
You get the feeling that the current state of the newspaper business and its firings (Hello LA Times), buyouts (You too Boston Globe) and turn to sensationalistic reporting (Let’s get after Britney AP), is almost too much for him to take.
Anytime you hear an editor at the fictional Sun say “We have to do more with less” or “We have to cut our foreign bureaus and offer buyouts to senior staff,” you almost feel Simon snarling in the background. I mean the guy even takes time to respond to posts on Romenesko from (real) Baltimore Sun writers that argue that his newsroom scenes are drab. That my friends, makes for good television and an authentic look at newspapers circa 2008.
January 26th, 2008
By Kyle Austin
By Kyle Austin
Another day and another change to report in the Time Warner Center. Paul La Monica, a long time editor at large with CNNMoney.com just made the final post to his Media Biz blog as he gets ready to launch a new daily morning column that will go live next Monday. La Monica has been a mainstay on the entertainment industry beat since 2005 and the Media Biz Blog has become a popular and necessary stop for those within the industry over the last ten months.
Just two weeks ago we heard that CNNMoney.com was embarking on a new video initiative and this will undoubtedly become another part of La Monica’s new job description. “The (new) column will focus exclusively on the big market/economic news of the day,” said La Monica when reached through email. “The rest of my day will be focused on editing and working with our video team.” In his last day on the MediaBiz beat Paul was kind enough to take a few more questions from RaceTalk after the jump.
RaceTalk: Paul, as it’s your last day on the media beat it gives us one last opportunity to grill you on your 2008 predictions for the media business. If you had to guess or predict the biggest “MediaBiz” story for 2008 what would it be?
Paul: I really do think that Yahoo is going to be taken over, especially if the one-year anniversary of Jerry Yang taking over for Terry Semel rolls around in June and Yahoo’s stock is lower than where it was before Semel stepped down.
RaceTalk: Is the “MediaBiz” blog ending with your move to a new column or will someone else be picking up the beat?
Paul: As of right now, I do not know of any plans to have someone else at CNNMoney take over the Media Biz beat. However, we have a team of very talented Fortune writers in San Francisco who cover digital media trends very closely in the Techland blog. http://techland.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/ And Richard Siklos, the media writer at Fortune magazine, also writes a weekly column for the Web site that looks at big news events in the world of traditional media. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/siklos/index.html And CNNMoney, of course, will continue to cover breaking news events in media as warranted with our staff of news writers.
RaceTalk: From what you’ve told me, your new “Morning Market Column,” will focus exclusively on the big market/economic news of the day. Are you looking forward to having a column with a broad beat rather then being tied to a specific beat like you had on your MediaBiz blog?
Paul: My new column will be called Morning Buzz and I am looking forward to discuss bigger picture trends in the market and economy. Don’t get me wrong. The media business is certainly very interesting and dynamic but I get the sense that its appeal is limited to a relatively small group of people in the know. The Morning Buzz column will give me a chance to discuss other issues in the business world that have more universal appeal, such as stock market trends, Fed interest rate policy and the economy at large.
RaceTalk: What should we expect with the new column?
Paul: I am hopeful that Morning Buzz will give readers an intelligent, yet also slightly irreverent take on what’s going on in the markets. I plan to pull no punches and call things as I see them. And with that, I hope that readers will look forward to the column each morning and will also be willing to email me comments or submit comments via a Talkback blog feature that we will set up for certain columns.
RaceTalk: What sort of pitches will you be looking for from PR folks like me? What types of sources will be a good fit for your new column?
Paul: I no longer will be needing pitches about specific companies. The best pitches to send me now would be for sources that have something interesting to say about the broader markets and economy. So fund managers, economists, professors and market strategists are all fair game. But pitches about small start-ups trying to be the next Google or Facebook? Not so much.
RaceTalk: As part of your new role at CNNMoney.com you will be working on an ambitious new joint venture between the company’s Turner Broadcasting and Time Inc. units to produce more then 30 original video reports per day. What will your role be in this venture and will you be an on air personality (as some Fortune writers have become)?
Paul: I have already appeared in some CNNMoney videos and plan to do more. I’m sure that some of the Morning Buzz columns will lend themselves naturally to video. Also, I plan on working with the on-air team and producers more closely about the best ways to cover breaking market news so much of my work with the video team will be behind the scenes, if you will. I will also be doing more editing at the site. So overall, I should remain pretty busy even though I will be no longer held captive to the grueling demands of a beat as sprawling as media.
RaceTalk: Thanks Paul, looking forward to the new column.
January 25th, 2008
By Ben Haber
By Ben
As Roger Clemens showed everyone on 60 Minutes, steroids are a major issue in sports, and people will probably be fighting over acquisitions and testing for at least the next decade. In a brilliant move, Southwest Airlines decided to capitalize on the hot news topic, putting out a series of great commercials about “productivity enhancers”. Maybe this poor business man can have a sit-down interview with Mike Wallace next to declare his innocence.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRjv3sWYXs0&feature=related]
January 18th, 2008
By Kyle Austin
By Kyle Austin
Well, I’m finally back from the West Coast. Got out of San Francisco right before Steve Jobs, Fake Steve Jobs and the herds of Job’s worshippers flew into town. My time in San Francisco would have been great, if I hadn’t been battling the CES flu. Turns out I should have been juicing like Roger Clemens and Mary J. Blige while I was in Vegas. Yes, I’m still recovering from my time at CES and meanwhile I’ve gained a new respect for live bloggers. In between maneuvering yourself around the show floor or poppy fields (Disclaimer - Matt Richtel may have been under the influence when he wrote this), dodging the lines at the mono rail, having impromptu conversations and pulling your eyes from scantly clad porno stars at the Adult Expo - how do you find a time to post? My original goal was to do a few live blogs from CES, but alas I’m stuck with cleaning out a closet of “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” from CES – while also cleaning out my sinuses.
Thumbs Up:
- To Rupert Murdoch for putting up his staff at the Wall Street Journal in nice digs. Had a chance to check out one of the suites at the Venetian that a journal staffer was calling home – Truly five stars…
- To Rwanda president Paul Kagame (Who I met very briefly along with his entourage of secret service handlers on the 28th floor of the Hilton) for braving the madness that is CES to speak as part of the “Technology and Emerging Countries,” panel. He’s now conquered a genocidal dictatorship and Silicon Valley bloggers. What can’t this man do?
- To good CEO and VC ribbing. Heard this one while schmoozing the floor at a certain event. “So you’re staying at the Palms suite that has the pool inside it? I bet the pool in my room is bigger then yours.”
- To SeaGate’s BlogHaus suite in the Bellagio Hotel. I left before Scoble started dancing at the BlogHaus party (AKA Scoble’s PodTech Goodbye bash) on Wednesday night, but the place was decked out when I stopped by Wednesday afternoon with enough free booze, X-boxes and T1 ports to make everyone happy.
Thumbs Down:
- To Gizmodo and Gizmodogate. Yes, your video montage was funny. But now you got yourself banned for life from CES and made everyone reconsider once again how we treat bloggers. Kudos.
- To a lack of big news at CES. As Bob Dylan would Say “The Times They Are A-Changin.” The giants don’t use the show as a launch for any of their big products anymore and the rest of the players are left to be heard in a sea of ambient noise. One scribe friend from Fortune (Not Mr. Bing) went as far to say, “This is my least favorite time to visit Vegas.” This makes me as well as Mr. Bing wonder if the end of CES as we know it may occur in 2011.
Now I have to run and book my flights and reservations for the next three years.
January 16th, 2008
By George Snell
By George
From November 12 through December 31, One Laptop Per Child ran a charitable campaign in North America called the Give One Get One. It was simple. Buy two of OLPC’s XO laptops (often called the $100 laptop) for $399 U.S. dollars and you get one; while the second is shipped to a child in a developing country.
The campaign is a case study on the effectiveness of public relations in building awareness, creating consumer demand and driving action. OLPC is a non-profit organization and couldn’t afford a fancy advertising campaign to spread the word about G1G1. So they turned to Racepoint Group.
We have been working with OLPC for more than a year — doing pro bono communications work. But the G1G1 campaign was different. The public relations campaign we created for G1G1 would be augmented by a small (but very creative) advertising campaign (publications and broadcasters agreed to run these ads and short videos as public service announcements). But we were primarily on our own in building awareness and driving traffic to the G1G1 web site where consumers would be able to purchase the amazing XO laptops.
We had already done a remarkable job in media relations for OLPC — but now we were tasked with directly impacting sales. We had to move beyond the core technology and business writers and focus on consumer press. The goal of G1G1 was to reach consumers — directly. There was the added difficulty that consumers could only buy the XO in one place — a web site built by OLPC. Consumers wouldn’t be able to go to a store to look at, touch, or play with the XO. In fact, we wouldn’t even be able to tell them exactly when they would receive their XOs.
A difficult challenge, indeed.
But our campaign generated thousands of articles and broadcasts — from a feature in People magazine to appearances on “Good Morning, America” and FOX-TV and hundreds of blog posts. For the month of December — OLPC was everywhere. The results speak for themselves. OLPC sold more than 160,000 XO laptops and raised more than $35 million dollars.
Proof that when public relations is done right — it can create a powerful impact.
January 10th, 2008
