What does it mean when the telecom monopolies get everything they’ve been asking for, and the Chairman of the FCC become apoplectic in his rage that it’s not nearly enough, and Congress holds hearings into why they didn’t get more?
Billy Tauzin, undoubtedly corrupt chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee has labeled the swing vote in this FCC decision a “renegade Republican.”
Tauzin is expected to introduce a bill to scrape TR’s face off Mount Rushmore later this year.
The Washington Post and Nielsen//NetRatings have posted a study of affluent online users [PDF]. Not surprisingly, they found virtually all affluent adult shoppers use the Web to make or research their purchases.
They made less play of the fact that the affluent also spend a lot less time with newspapers (19% spend more than 1 hour/weekday) than the Internet (68% spend more than 1 hour/weekday).
Tim Porter takes on the question “Are bloggers journalists?“
I have a hard time getting excited about this question, but [traditional | real | old-fashioned] journalists care a lot about it. Dave Winer cares about this too, but (as always) he’s driven by his personal demons. After all, Dave says Dan Gillmor isn’t a journalist.
Ultimately, Tim asks the most important question. Don’t worry about who else can call themselves a journalist, but what kind of journalism you’re doing. As far as I’m concerned, the industry lost any right to bar the door once they let local TV news call itself “journalism”.
[This piece features two wonderful wordplays: Mini Me(dia) and “troglodyte traditional journalists hunker defensively in their newsholes”]
While their numbers are growing, Neilsen//NetRatings says African-American Internet use still trails other ethnic groups by a significant degree. Meanwhile, Arbitron and Edison say African-Americans have achieved virtual parity with white Americans when you include school and library use.
Since N//NR’s ratings methodology measures at-home (and guesses at-work) use, they are almost certainly undercounting African- and Hispanic-American use of the Internet.
Sterling Hughes thinks more of Overture’s strategy than I do:
I disagree with Barry’s assement. Had Yahoo! not bought Inktomi, than I would most certainly hold the same opinion. However, I don’t think Microsoft (MSN) is happy that one of their major competitors now owns their search provider. Barry is right, traffic is important, not search: search is a commodity. That’s Overture’s advantage. Yahoo! threatens to steal traffic from the customers Inktomi powers; they are biting the hand that feeds them.
I’d be pessimistic about any company whose strategy is to be the partner of last resort for AOL and Microsoft–two companies not known for making their partners rich in the long run.
NOTE: For some reason, I get a ton of spam as comments on this particular message. I’ve decided to close comments on this message for a while to see if whoever has marked this a a good place to spam will go away. [Posted 7/12/04]
What the heck is “algorithmic” search?
I had never heard this term before Overture started using it. As far as I can tell, they’re using it as a way to put what they do (paid search) on a par with what Google does (search). What’s surprising to me is the extent to which the press has latched on to this term. [Google news search]
Despite the fact that Overture’s net profit margin has dropped from 20% to 5% and their quarterly net income has dropped from $30 million to $5 million, they’re on a buying spree. Overture spent $400 million to buy a couple of search companies, one failed and and one for people too cool to google.
The speculation is that Overture plans to offer “algorithmic” search to their paid search customers. What they plan to do with Altavista and Alltheweb, which now compete with their customers, is less clear.
Despite what others may think, the problem is that Overture’s relationship with its customers is asymmetrical. Overture needs its customers a lot more than they need it. That’s why Overture’s margins are collapsing and why they’ve pulled this stunt. Search and ad sales are commodities. Traffic is not. Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and Google have traffic. Overture has search and ad sales. You do the math.
Steve Outing notes that the bottom has dropped out of newspapers’ employment classified business. Every category of advertising, including other classified categories, are up. But employment classifieds are down 23% — a sickening drop that goes right to the bottom line.
It may already be too late to save this business. When employment recovers, employment classifieds will not.
Cable operators don’t want to be required to offer impartial access. They say they “have no intention of blocking access to content”, despite existing contracts which permit forcing pop-up ads on users and permit differential access to preferred sites. In an unintentionally chilling statement, they continue:
“Regulation of the sort proposed by Amazon.com that purports to prohibit restrictions on such access would inevitably be used to thwart legitimate business practices and arrangements [emphasis added. Implications: alarming] that have nothing to do with blocking access to content. These efforts would deter investment and innovation [emphasis added. Interpretation: figleaf for doing nothing] in the provision of high-speed Internet services.”
Access monopolies must be treated as common carriers.
The Digital Divide has been bridged by libraries and schools , according to Arbitron and Edison Media Research. The report includes a lot of information on streaming media users as well.
When you look at Internet use at home and work, The divide is small, but significant. 48% of Hispanics and 6% of African Americans have Internet access at home or work compared with 70% among whites.
When you include school and library access, 75% of the total population has access to the Internet compared with 74% of African Americans and 65% of Hispanic Americans.
These numbers are interesting in light of eMarketer’s recent assertion that US Internet penetration will peak at 80%. Their conclusion seems about right, but their line of reasoning doesn’t prove it.