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 21 2375

Articles from Diggings

Twitter Finally Makes Sense! 2007-08-09 11:22:10 Continuing yesterday’s blog of praising John Sumser’s presentation at a recruiting conference here in Minneapolis a few weeks ago, one of the other reasons why I appreciated his comments was that he finally provided me with an explanation of why has grown as fast as it has. My view had been that Twitter was the logical extension of extreme narcissism and/or boredom for a younger, technology and social-networking obsessed generation. I just could not fathom why anyone would care about their friend’s trip to the mall or take the time to write a short message about their own banal activities. As I’ve come to see, rather than being the prime example of web 2.0 run amok, Twitter is simply an effective means for people to plug into a ubiquitous, perpetually connected online world. The content of the posts, the tedium of everyone’s daily lives is not what matters for users, it’s the fact that they are dialed in, participating, sharing, commenting, and, most ...

The Differences Between Boomers & Gen Y 2007-08-08 12:41:10 A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of sitting on a panel of recruiting bloggers at a recruiting seminar in Minneapolis. The event was organized by Paul DeBettignies (aka, MN Headhunter) and Steven Rothberg of CollegeRecruiter.com fame. It was an excellent event and those two deserve enormous credit for pulling it together and packing the room with HR professionals and corporate recruiters. One of the highlights of the day was hearing a presentation by John Sumser of Recruiting.com talk about the differences between Boomers and Gen Y, or as he says, Gen Why. He is a phenomenal speaker and his presentation on generational challenges is the best I’ve seen. If you ever have the opportunity to hear John speak, I would highly, highly recommend it. The slide below is taken directly from his presentation, and the slide by itself doesn’t do the topic or his perspective on it justice, but it was the most clear, concise, and accurate characterization I’ve seen of how Gen Y work ... Amp

Alternative Advertising Continues To Gain Momentum 2007-08-07 11:07:39 As much attention as has been paid to how fast web advertising has been growing, alternative advertising has been growing at comparable or even higher rates. The trend has been fueled by advertisers’ desire to achieve a more tangible ROI and more reliable metrics that traditional media have struggled to deliver relative to newer media platforms and vehicles. In a study by Magna Global, a sister company of Universal McCann, Brian Wieser projected that alternative advertising, which includes emerging online  platforms such as social networks, video, and search, as well as mobile, video games, advanced TV, and digital out-of-home advertising, will grow by 31.7%, more than double the ‘official’ growth rate projected for online advertising this year. Granted, there are some legitimate reasons why the 15% web advertising growth rate may be significantly underestimated, but the fact remains that alternative advertising, in which I’d also include alternative weeklies, ... Advertising

Why Paying Taxes Is OK 2007-08-01 23:00:56 The horrific, tragic collapse of the 35W bridge earlier tonight in Minneapolis should serve as a horrendous wake-up call to Governor Pawlenty and the state legislators (as well as a completely inept, significantly underfunded Department of Transportation) who for years have consistently and obstinately refused to raise sufficient revenue to repair, support, and improve a massively deteriorating transportation infrastructure. The scene tonight is shocking beyond belief, and perhaps it’s much too soon to lay blame or turn the catastrophe into a political issue, but the reality is that when tax revenue falls woefully short of needed funds for an extended period of time, services and infrastructure suffer. Taxes exist for a good reason. And while government should be fiscally responsible and wise in its investments, and while there is clearly a point at which excessively high taxes create negative consequences, it is essential that sufficient funds are collected to deliver the servi ...

The Best Coverage Yet Of The Ongoing Strib Saga 2007-08-01 17:58:22 The cover story of July 25th edition of City Pages provides the best coverage yet of the ongoing struggles of the Twin Cities’ two daily newspapers and the lawsuit between them. The excellent article, by G.R. Anderson Jr. and Paul Demko, provides a perfect synopsis of what has happened to the daily newspaper industry over the last decade, and why the Twin Cities will (and maybe should) only have a single daily paper in the near future. It’s worth the read. Tags: City Pages, Par Ridder, Minneapolis Star Tribune, St. Paul Pioneer Press, Avista Capital Partners, MediaNews, Decline of the Dailies ...

Users Spending Less Time On ‘Mega’ Job Boards 2007-08-01 11:20:44 As more and more local & regional, vertical-specific, and niche job boards crowd the employment classified landscape online, and as new and improved features, functionality, and services increase the quality of service some of those sites deliver, people are spending less and less time on the mega job boards like Monster, CareerBuilder, and Yahoo’s HotJobs. With every passing week, the big 3 are seemingly more and more antiquated, cumbersome, and annoying for both jobseekers and HR professionals to use. As a result, they are losing their audiences in droves as better alternatives proliferate. Equally as devastating, the people who do still visit Monster, CareerBuilder, and HotJobs are spending less and less time on those sites, viewing fewer and fewer jobs. Over the past year, the average length of time a user spends on the 3 sites is down 43.7%. And who would imagine that the average visitor to Yahoo’s HotJobs spends less than 32 seconds on the site? That’s average! ...

Obfuscating The Full Extent Of Daily Newspaper Decline 2007-07-31 22:04:08 A great blog post by Scott Karp on Publishing 2.0 highlights the extent to which papers like the New York Times are obfuscating the full extent of the decline in print advertising revenue. As bad as the stories have been over the past few years about the decline of daily newspaper print revenue, the truth is undoubtedly much worse than what’s been reported. Tags: Hiding The Truth, Obfuscation, Vague Financial Reporting, Decline of the Dailies ...

Monster Stumbles. Is CareerBuilder Next? 2007-07-31 11:45:59 Monster announced yesterday that it is laying off 15% of its workforce, or roughly 800 people. The announcement followed the release of their quarterly financials - Q2 earnings dropped 28% even though revenue was up 20%. Looks like costs have gotten somewhat out of control. And no wonder, considering the fact that Monster’s ability to keep visitors coming to its site has become increasingly difficult and increasingly costly. Perhaps they’ve gone too far in the overly-rich deals they struck during the past year or so with newspaper sites and other media properties around the country. Those career center micro sites, which siphon traffic away from daily newspapers for an exorbitant fee, now appear to be equally bad for both newspapers and Monster. Given the downward trend in traffic for both Monster and CareerBuilder, one would imagine that CareerBuilder is facing similar circumstances in their own operations. Tags: Monster Layoffs, CareerBuilder, Web 1.0 Job Boards Are Str ...

PCM Finally Dumping Daily Newspaper Stocks 2007-07-19 11:00:56 Bruce Sherman and his fund, Private Capital Management (PCM), have apparently been unloading their shares in daily newspaper companies at a pretty rapid clip. At one point, the fund had invested about $4 billion in a number of companies including McClatchy, Lee Enterprises, Gannett, the New York Times, Knight Ridder, Belo, and Media General. Even as recently as earlier this year, in a letter to the fund’s investors, Sherman had communicated his intent to stick to this highly contrarian (insane) investment theme. Alan Mutter, the Newsosaur, has a great chart on a recent blog post that displays the extent to which PCM has changed course. Too bad that doing ‘the prudent and correct’ thing (as he stated in that letter) occurred after he obliterated so much of his investors’ money. Tags: Private Capital Management, Bruce Sherman, Daily Newspapers ...

No Blogs, No Fluff, No Functionality, No Web Site! Just A ‘Coming Soon’ Page. 2007-07-18 17:33:49 Thanks to Riveting Rosie for calling out one of the worst web gaffs I’ve seen in a long time. First, the new logo for JobFinderUSA is, as Rosie rightly points out, a total rip-off of LinkedIn, which by itself is an egregious flaw for any company. Secondly, I’m not sure where the ad ran, but I cannot imagine spending even the smallest amount of money to promote a ‘coming soon’ page that has no functionality whatsoever associated with it. As the ad says, no blogs, no fluff…..you won’t even find any of those annoying buttons to click, nothing to read, nothing to do, nothing to help you. Who needs online services or content when you can sit and stare at out cool 3D logo we have? Ludicrous. But the best part of the ad is the fact that a recruitment classified company, in today’s era, would actually promote, even celebrate the fact that they have nothing to offer a jobseeker or HR professional other than job listings. Of course, job listings, when c ...

Jupitermedia Buys Media Jobs Site 2007-07-18 13:38:07 Jupitermedia Corporation has purchased Mediabistro.com, a site that originated from the founder organizing cocktail parties and networking events for media professionals and eventually grew to include vertical-specific job listings and content. Jupitermedia is paying $23 million for the site which had 600,000 unique visitors last year and generated revenue from employer listings and premium content subscription services. Jupitermedia also owns internet.com and graphics.com, both of which offer a similar range of content and services. Tags: Online Job Boards, Classified Acquisitions, Classifieds M&A, Jupitermedia, Mediabistro.com, Internet.com, Graphics.com, Media Industry, Vertical Job Boards ...

Washington Post Keeps Getting It Right 2007-07-17 12:04:45 The Washington Post, continuing to strengthen its position as one of, if not THE most thoughtful, innovative, and successful newspaper in the country, launched LoudonExtra.com yesterday. The site is a hyper-local site dedicated to Loudoun County, Virginia. The site contains local news, restaurant reviews, a calendar of local events (the first event relates to celebrating Ice Cream Day), web cams, videos, photos, user-generated content, local sports stories, school news, local blogs, and a bunch of local database listings. The site was launched with a lead, multi-month advertising sponsor already in place and is being promoted through a multimedia advertising campaign. The site serves as a perfect example of the types of things that local, metro daily newspapers should be doing. Unfortunately for everyone, almost none are. Rather than expanding local coverage, embracing local communities and the thousands of potential contributors within them, and capitalizing on the unique brand t ...

Sweet Land: A Movie Everyone Should See 2007-07-12 16:57:59 Sweet Land is finally out on DVD and I would strongly urge anyone who likes great movies to rent or buy the DVD. It is a phenomenal, beautiful movie by Ali Salim who wrote the screenplay and directed the film. It won Best First Feature Spirit Award For Independent Film and has received incredible reviews. Taken from the official web site of the film…. “Winner of the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at the 2005 Hamptons International Film Festival, Sweet Land is a poignant and lyrical celebration of land, love, and the American immigrant experience. When Lars Torvik’s grandmother Inge dies in 2004, he is faced with a decision – sell the family farm on which she lived since 1920, or cling to the legacy of the land. Seeking advice, he turns to the memory of Inge and the stories that she had passed on to him. Inge arrives in Minnesota in 1920 to marry a young Norwegian farmer named Olaf but her German heritage and lack of official immigration papers makes h ...

Will Kijiji Destroyroy Newspapers? 2007-07-11 12:31:26 The daily newspaper industry, already in shambles, received more bad news recently with ebay’s U.S. launch of Kijiji. Despite the challenging name, the site is basically an exact replica of Craigslist which ebay invested $25 million in a few years ago (so much for amicable strategic corporate investors).  With free classified listings for real estate, cars, jobs, services, and other things, the site will undoubtedly further erode classified revenue for daily newspapers. This year alone, daily newspapers have seen classified revenue from autos fall 20%, and both real estate and employment classified revenue fall 14%. And while Kijiji might accelerate those declines in autos, real estate, and garage sales, my guess is that it will have little impact on job classifieds. The jobs posted on Craigslist, the same type of jobs that will appear on Kijiji, are not typically advertised in daily newspapers anyway. Like Craigslist, Kijiji will likely cater to part-time, temp, and freelance-t ...

Military Veteran Job Boards Crying Foul On Monster… 2007-07-10 11:02:55 Workforce Management recently reported that a number of niche job boards catering to military veterans are unhappy with the Department of Defense’s awarding of a contract to Monster’s site Military.com. Under the exclusive contract, Military.com will power a new DOD site aimed at helping veterans transition back into civilian life, TurboTAP.org. As such, all registered users will be poured into Monster’s database of jobseekers, and only listings from Monster/Military.com will be posted on the site. The niche boards, including Vetjobs.com, MilitaryHire, and CorporateGray claim that Monster received preferential treatment in that the bidding process was not opened up to other sites in a fair, competitive process. The 3 sites are calling for the Government Accountability Office to investigate the contract. Tags: Workforce Management, Monster, Militray.com, TurboTAP.org, Vetjobs.com, MilitaryHire, CorporateGray, Niche Job Boards, Government Contracts, GAO, DOD, ...