(image) Today I landed from a trip to the world of the non-tech obsessed (PA and OH) to find my newsfeed was full of speculation that Google MUST buy Twitter, or be damned to obscurity in a race it's already losing to Facebook. Not so fast. Here's my simple…
(image) Today I landed from a trip to the world of the non-tech obsessed (PA and OH) to find my newsfeed was full of speculation that Google MUST buy Twitter, or be damned to obscurity in a race it’s already losing to Facebook.
Not so fast.
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It’s been nearly a month since Demand filed its S1, and I promised you all a longer look after my initial posting. Here are some thoughts now that I’ve had a chance to digest the document. A caveat: I know Demand CEO Richard Rosenblatt well, and consider him a friend. And one of his investors, Oak, is an investor in my company, Federated Media. However, neither Oak nor Richard participated in the preparation of this post.
First off, the offering is notable for the number of banks that grace its cover sheet. I count ten, as many as Google had in its IPO back in 2004. That shows the hunger in the financial world for a win – and the company that gets in front of that hunger has a better chance than most to succeed in an offering, as those banks will all be pushing shares to their best clients.
But Demand’s S1 is far more traditional than Google’s. There’s no auction involved, and the company stays far away from the revolutionary prose espoused in Google’s S1 (remember “Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one” ? And recall my response: “Yow,” I said to myself (and now to you…). “Do they really want to set themselves up like this?”)
Read MoreEarlier this week I mused out loud about retargeting, suggesting that perhaps it's time for marketers to not just chase folks around the web in hopes they might irritate us into submission, but rather offer us the chance to politely say "Not right now, thanks." One of Searchblog's readers…
Earlier this week I mused out loud about retargeting, suggesting that perhaps it’s time for marketers to not just chase folks around the web in hopes they might irritate us into submission, but rather offer us the chance to politely say “Not right now, thanks.”
One of Searchblog’s readers turned out to be Josh McFarland, CEO of remarketing startup TellApart. He marshalled his team and within 24 hours had a working prototype integrated into his service. Here’s how it works, in his words:
Read More…as far as I can tell, they in fact don't ever meet. You can't leverage your networks on Facebook and Twitter in Ping. It's another closed Apple system, another Apple universe in a gilded gift box. It's not that Apple hates the web, it's just that Apple is better…
…as far as I can tell, they in fact don’t ever meet. You can’t leverage your networks on Facebook and Twitter in Ping. It’s another closed Apple system, another Apple universe in a gilded gift box.
It’s not that Apple hates the web, it’s just that Apple is better than the web. Apple doesn’t need it. It seems Apple has it all figured out.
Read MoreThe New York Times published a story on the practice of retargeting today, entitled "Retargeting Ads Follow Surfers to Other Sites." While not nearly as presumptively negative as the WSJ series on marketing and data, it's telling that the story is slugged with "adstalk" in the URL. Journalists and editors…
But maybe I have an idea that can help.
As the Time piece admits, retargeting is not new. What seems new, the article concludes, is how much the practice has increased, to the point where people feel like they are being “stalked” around the web, often in a fashion that “just feels creepy.”
Read More…that was the subject of an email sent to my by my Apple-loving son when the image above showed up on the family iPad (yes, we have an iPad, my wife insisted. It's really hers, but that's another story). The story goes like this. My son had a question…
…that was the subject of an email sent to my by my Apple-loving son when the image above showed up on the family iPad (yes, we have an iPad, my wife insisted. It’s really hers, but that’s another story).
The story goes like this. My son had a question about the new Droid X I got, one I couldn’t answer because I didn’t have the device with me (we were at the beach, if I recall correctly). My wife had brought her iPad, however, so my son Googled the question and, not surprisingly, the Droid site was the first link. He clicked it. This is what we saw.
Read MoreYesterday I posted some thoughts on the Google-Verizon framework, offering what turns out to be a pretty widespread sensibility, at least in the punditocracy, that this whole thing feels off, not like Google, counter to the brand. There had to be another reason Google would do this, something super…
Yesterday I posted some thoughts on the Google-Verizon framework, offering what turns out to be a pretty widespread sensibility, at least in the punditocracy, that this whole thing feels off, not like Google, counter to the brand.
There had to be another reason Google would do this, something super important that forced its hand, something so crucial to its own perceived future that it would be willing to upset its core brand advocates.
Read MoreToday's Washington Post has a second day editorial from the CEOs of Verizon and Google on their proposed legislative framework first announced Monday. Here it is: Eric Schmidt and Ivan Seidenberg – From Google and Verizon, a path to an open Internet I read this article three times and I…
Eric Schmidt and Ivan Seidenberg – From Google and Verizon, a path to an open Internet
I read this article three times and I am still not sure what exactly the two are trying to express, or what problem they are trying to solve. Are Google and Verizon in violent disagreement, but together have decided they can live with this compromise? Did the FCC ask the two to sit in a room and not come out till they had an agreement? If so, why?
Read MoreAs I was reading through the Demand Media S1 (more on that as soon as I get a bit smarter on a few financial issues), I noticed that Skype just filed to go public. Wow. Here's the S1. It's another Goldman/Morgan joint, with JP Morgan in there as well….
As I was reading through the Demand Media S1 (more on that as soon as I get a bit smarter on a few financial issues), I noticed that Skype just filed to go public.
Wow. Here’s the S1. It’s another Goldman/Morgan joint, with JP Morgan in there as well.
Read MoreIt's the dog days of August, and a Friday to boot, and I certainly didn't expect this to land in my mail box this morning: The Demand Media Inc. S1. But I had set an alert for the company – and several others like LinkedIn and Facebook – because…
It’s the dog days of August, and a Friday to boot, and I certainly didn’t expect this to land in my mail box this morning: The Demand Media Inc. S1. But I had set an alert for the company – and several others like LinkedIn and Facebook – because I consider Demand to be one of the most important digital media companies to “take the next step” in several years.
The information revealed in the filing explains why. While Demand has been at the center of a months-long debate around whether or not “content farming” is a defensible practice, the facts are the facts: This model is working, and not just in a one-dimensional fashion.
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