BevLog

Yesterday morning on "This Week" (ABC TV) in a segment called "Path to Success" Mort Zuckerman said, "The print publishing business is an oxymoron." I did a Google search and found out that Mort may have coined that quote back in 2009 in an interview with Huffpost Media.

In "Path to Success" Zuckerman and a new generation entrepreneur, Doug Imbruce, CEO of Qwiki, were doling out advice to young college graduates who couldn't find jobs. When talking about journalism, one grad with a degree in English mentioned Facebook and Zuckerman quipped, "I'm thinking about changing my name to Zuckerberg. (LAUGHTER) As in creator of Facebook. But Zuckerberg's claim to fame may have peaked out. One of the "soft" stock market barometers I used to write about was the cover of "TIME" magazine. Once a person (or product or service) made "cover of the year," it turned into a contrary indicator. Zuckerberg was "Person of the Year 2010." (Pardon the pop-up ad.)

See the show "Roundtable: Graduates and CEOs." More about Qwiki.

I just read "Preserving Advertising" in OMMA (the magazine of Onine Media, Marketing & Advertising). Kurnit created AdKeeper, a way for people to "time-shift" banner ads online to click on later and avoid being interrupted.

A little history: Kurnit co-founded About.com in 1995 and cashed in right before the dot-com bust in 2000. His first love (advertising) has now come back in a new way with AdKeeper - a platform that enables people to save and share advertising. Nielsen research revealed that more than half (56%) of average Americans said they would use such a service. Kurnit launched AdKeeper in Febraury and has raised $80 million in VC so far.

His AdKeeper (vs. ignore) banner ad business model has attracked big-name clients including AT&T, Ford and Verizon. PepsiCo is totally on board. When customers use AdKeeper to look at the ads they've kept - Kurnit may cash in on a new business model. Will Kurnit's AdKeeper be a "keeper?"

Demand Media reported first quarter revenue which was better than expected, but reflected the first effects of Google's cleaning out "bad content" to improve the quality of Google search results. Demand Media made some strategic changes with the news: "...the company is totally ditching its writers' compensation program."

(See my post on February 28, 2011 for more details about Google's crackdown on content-farm practices.)

Demand Media officially unveiled a new look-and-feel to their eHow.com Web site on March 16 to try to provide better quality articles and videos. It encourages feedback from visitors to help eHow staff monitor and improve content. Advertisers "love" eHow because it lets them "place their brand at the answer as opposed to just the question."