Diggings A blog about recruitment advertising, media, publishing, HR, work, & technology, among other things. Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 0 0 1 2221

Articles from Diggings

Master Chief Dog 2007-09-25 13:43:29 I cannot wait. Tags: Halo 3, Master Chief, Blockbuster Video Games, Best Entertainment of 2007, Microsoft, Bungie ...

One More Reason To Blog… 2007-09-25 11:47:31 As I mentioned in a post some time ago about why I write a blog, one of the most significant benefits of doing so is that it increases one’s knowledge of and appreciation for the web. By blogging on a somewhat regular basis and actively participating in the community of bloggers related to what we do at JobDig, I have meaningfully expanded my horizon and increased my knowledge about the industry we’re in. This hyper-awareness of the media, advertising, and recruiting ’space’ could conceivably be possible by simply reading other people’s blogs, but certainly not to the extent possible by actively participating in the dialogue. It’s like listening to a great conversation versus being part of that conversation - the latter is far more rewarding, interesting, and educational. Diggings has also helped me stay more aware of the ridiculous pace of change taking place on the web. I pay more attention to trends, search, new technologies, and the rapidly evolv ...

$10B Valuation For Facebook? 2007-09-24 14:23:44 According the the Wall Street Journal and CNBC, Microsoft is considering a $300-500M  investment in Facebook for a 5%  ownership position. This would value Facebook at $10 billion.  Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to turn down the  $1B offer from Yahoo! they received last year to sell the business outright. Tags: Facebook, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Social Networking, The Next Internet Bubble? ...

A New Growth Area For Newspapers - Retail? 2007-09-24 09:30:24 USA Today announced that it was opening up a retail store in LaGuardia airport. While the paper did not explain what exactly they would be selling in the store, they said that the store would be divided into the sections of the paper and color-coded accordingly (news in blue, financial in green, lifestyle in purple, sports in red). The only hint they gave was possibly a USA Today branded Sudoku game. The whole concept is so odd it’s hard to even know where to begin a commentary on the strategic move. I suppose it could make sense if it’s simply a newsstand like FOX News has in some airports, but other than that, I cannot possibly imagine what type of retail strategy could make sense for USA Today. I guess we’ll have to wait and see when the actual merchandise is detailed. Tags: USA Today, LaGuardia Airport, Strange Retail Concepts, Unusual Growth Strategies ...

Newsosaur Bids Good Ridd(er)ance To Par 2007-09-21 20:50:34 My thoughts exactly. Chris Harte’s announcement today confirms that the year-long banishment will be permanent. The saga was an embarrassment to Minneapolis, the Star Tribune, and the entire community. I hope it’s over for good with no appeals, additional lawsuits, or further entanglements. Tags: Par Ridder, Star Tribune, Chris Harte, Pioneer Press Lawsuit, How To Lose A Job On Your First Day Of Work ...

Minneapolis - Best of Show For Business 2007-09-21 10:33:40 Minneapolis was recently ranked as the best city in the country for business, according to a recent study by MarketWatch. (Thanks to Gunnar and his blog 1Rainprop for the notice). Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of listening to a presentation by Russ Nelson (Chairman of the Downtown Council and President of Nelson Tietz & Hoye) and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak on the general health of the city. There was also an update on the Republican National Convention. In listening all 3 speakers, it became very clear that the city and the region are booming (despite having a Governor who obstinately refuses to invest in transportation infrastructure). The highlights of the presentations included the facts that commercial property values have remained very strong, vacancy rates downtown are very low, residential occupancy in the city is growing, and businesses in the region are doing very, very well, continuously adding jobs and fostering economic growth. Equally as important, the retail ...

Snowboarding Down Stock Charts Or The Warped World Of The NAA 2007-09-19 15:32:17 Pictured on the left is the latest ad from the Newspaper of Association of America’s campaign to convince consumers and advertisers that the daily newspaper is an effective, timely, modern, and relevant media vehicle. The internet is the best thing to happen to newspapers since the paperboy? Let’s see….which newspaper stock should we look at over the past 5 years to see how they’ve fared? The 5-year charts below are the stock prices for Gannett, Belo, Journal Register, McClatchy, Media General, and the New York Times. Not a lot of happy shareholders in the group. The only thing I can think of in looking at the slopes is that I’d love to snowboard down any one of them (though NYT would qualify as a bunny hill). The statement is as preposterous as stating that Wal-Mart is the best thing to have happened to the local, small-town retailer. What planet is the NAA from again? This campaign has to go down as one of the worst marketing campaigns in the history of ...

Judge Rules Against Par Ridder And Star Tribune 2007-09-18 12:20:03 In what should be the final chapter (but probably won’t be given the likelihood of an appeal) in the corporate malfeasance saga involving the Minneapolis Star Tribune, its publisher Par Ridder, and the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Ramsey County Judge David Higgs ruled in favor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press and MediaNews Group and against Avista Capital Partners, the Star Tribune, and Par Ridder. The ruling stated that Ridder’s non-compete was not valid but that he had, in fact, misappropriated confidential information from the Pioneer Press. (Previous posts on the case can be seen here, here, and especially here). As a result, the judge ruled that Par Ridder must step down from his role as publisher of the Star Tribune and cannot work for or deliver services to the paper for a period of at least one year. In addition, Judge Higgs ordered that defendant Jennifer Parratt, who Ridder hired away from the Pioneer Press after he had jumped across the river to the competing daily, is a ...

Monster Founder Jeff Taylor Struggling With Eons 2007-09-17 15:45:54 Last week, Eons, a social networking site for baby boomers, laid off 24 of its workers (a third of its staff). The site also announced that it was drastically scaling back its professional editorial content in favor off user-generated content, and eliminating sections and features such as travel and obituaries. The company has raised at least $32 million in venture funding. Despite having raised a decent amount of capital over the years and having tracked start-up funding across all sorts of verticals, it still baffles me to see what types of businesses get funded. Like the famous Dilbert Mission Statement machine (I think that’s where it came from), it’s as if some VCs just spin a ‘buzz-word’ financing wheel a few times, pick a random selection from the handful of categories, and invest ridiculous amounts of money in the resulting business model. It seems to not matter in the least how incongruous or absurd the resulting mix of elements might be. Along those li ...

Dead On Sirius Ch. 32 All Day, Every Day 2007-09-14 22:07:17 Sirius’ newest channel - the Grateful Dead Channel - finally launched on September 7th. It was worth the wait. Tags: The Grateful Dead, Jerry, Jerry Garcia, Sirius Radio, Sirius, Sirius Satellite Radio ...

Kremlin Bureaucrats Running The Daily Papers… 2007-09-13 16:37:35 In cleaning out my email today, I found a quote from a friend that’s worth printing. “you know the other thing I find interesting is how the death of newspapers is reported in the blogosphere. Old media is sort of like the old Kremlin bureaucrats who drew the shades rather than look at the rusting trains. feel free to quote me on that.” gp Seems pretty accurate to me. Tags: Kremlin Bureaucrats, Daily Newspapers, Death Of The Dailies, Dying Business Models, Old Media, New Media, Media, Advertising, Publishing ...

Monster’s Problems Keep Growing 2007-09-11 13:33:38 Not only has Monster been decimated by security issues, but their global traffic and usage stats are trending way down. At the rate they’re going, they’ll soon end up in third place behind CareerBuilder and Yahoo’s HotJobs. Blodget is exactly correct in his analysis of the problem: “So what’s Monster’s problem? Monster. That and the proliferation of more nimble, more focused job sites that are more relevant, less expensive, and easier to work with.” I’d also add to the list that newer, better jobs sites are also better at serving up relevant search results, don’t publish job scams or fake jobs, and don’t inundate users with horrendously annoying, wildly obtrusive 3rd party ads. Not only is Monster’s model quickly becoming outdated, but the security issues plaguing the company are impacting other sites they power as well. USAJobs.gov, a federal government jobs site that utilizes Monster’s technology, reported that ...

Please Remember… 2007-09-11 13:04:24 On this horrendous day, please take a moment to pause and remember. ...

Freaky Aliens Want You To Read The Paper 2007-09-10 12:43:13 It’s been written about before, but I was reminded again of how awful the NAA’s new ad campaign is after I saw the freaky NAA alien (pictured on the left) again today. The Newspaper Association of America began the multi-million dollar campaign earlier this year in a pathetic attempt to remind consumers how important, valuable, and modern it is to read the newspaper. After not seeing the bizarre, frightening martian for a few months, I thought they aborted the campaign due to the mocking they received from media pundits. Apparently not. Last month, Dynamic Graphics wrote an article on effective use of characters in corporate branding and highlighted the key principals for success. The article points out that successful brand characters must be unique, appropriate, timeless, engaging, simple, and able to evoke emotion. The NAA alien certainly is unique and evokes plenty of emotion (fear, revulsion, and contempt being the top 3). But the character is completely inappropriate ...

Washington Post Will Be One Of The Winners 2007-09-06 09:42:10 In a post last week, I commented on an article that speculated about what major metro daily papers will look like in 2020 and made the remark that a large number of papers will not make it until then, the good ones will barely survive, albeit with vastly different economics, and the great dailies will thrive. As I have argued in the past, the Washington Post will undoubtedly be one of the papers that will thrive. Exhibit AA in the argument supporting that view is the ‘Issue Coverage Tracker,’ a political news widget they announced this week for younger, tech-savvy readers. The widget allows users to customize the political news stories they want to stay abreast of and how those issues and/or candidates are being covered in the media. It is a perfect example of the types of things that daily papers must continue to do to attract and retain an engaged audience of readers and users in a wildly shifting technology landscape. Tags: Washington Post, Issue Coverage Tracker, Dail ...