The New York Times has just proposed to turn us all into Seinfeld's Elaine Benes. In episode 119 of the classic sitcom, Elaine's preferred method of contraception is revealed to be the sponge. When the sponge goes off the market, she must come to terms with the fact that whatever stock she had in her possession was it. She could …
Facebook is the largest news organization ever
Upon reading the title of this post I suspect your reaction is, "Really? I didn't even know it was a news organization." And that reaction is precisely why many people look with disbelief at the extraordinary estimates of Facebook's value. Facebook is not some plaything. It is a fully fledged news organization on a scale we have …
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Antitrust and Apple's iPad Subscription Pricing
Consider the following situation. You are a producer of a certain fashion item (maybe, designer jeans). A clothing retailer opens up a store on the highly trafficked, High Street. They would like to stock your jeans but they insist on a low wholesale price even though they will price at full retail to consumers. You …
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The Present and Future of Digital Publishing
Here is what we know about publishing. It is going digital, and that means traditional publishers have to switch their complementors — the term we use to describe firms that do essential things but are not strictly suppliers. Traditional publishers' complementors were printers and distributors. Their new complementors will be whoever can get their digital editions to …
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The Consequences of Hiybbprqag’ing
Like so many who watch developments in the tech world, I have been absorbed in the last few days on the ‘Bing Sting’ and precisely what it means. The debate is quite passionate. Following the initial story from SearchEngineLand by Danny Sullivan that documented Google’s identification of how Bing’s search rankings were related to its own, Microsoft responded but …
Digitopoly 