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Two interesting articles this week about Yellow Pages (Telegraph and Independent) caught my eye (see links below).

Is the precipitous decline of Yell’s share price endemic, I wonder, of the whole printed business directory space?  Faced with stiff competition from online directories, combined with an economic slowdown in which businesses reconsider where they are spending their marketing bucks, could it be curtains for the old guard?

Where an older generation would always reach for the big yellow book, today’s consumers increasingly (and some would say in majority) reach for the Internet.  Its not just the delivery mechanism that’s changing, it’s the whole business model.

Take a look at Brownbook.net (www.brownbook.net), I’m the product strategist for that company, and there’s a good reason why I joined them.  It’s a totally devastating business model when compared with the traditional directory publishers.

Here are some of the differences:

- instant updates at any time, versus yearly updates

- cheaper AND more flexible advertising, versus high fees and inflexible options

- no sales force to fund, versus expensive on the road teams

- peer-produced, versus costly call centre and data entry agents

- increases SEO of companies websites, versus doesn’t really make any difference

There’s a lot more to it than that, but just how long can an old industry stick its head in the ground.  It reminds me of The Post Office 15 years ago when they missed the opportunity to be THE email provider and ISP for just about EVERY UK household… No, they said, our business is safe, and now they’re seriously challenged and stand NO CHANCE of competing in the electronic mail market.

See also:

The Independent - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/sharewatch/market-report-yell-feels-the-pain-as-broker-slashes-target-price-857752.html

The Telegraph - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/money/2008/07/02/cxquest102.xml

I’ve been so damn busy with this new company i joined, Brownbook (www.brownbook.net), that I’ve not posted for a while. (which incidentally leads me to wonder if all regular bloggers are just not very busy people!!! ). I figured I should pull my finger out when my neighbour said he was just damned BORED of looking that the smart pen (below). So, where better to (re)start than updating my recent reading list. Here’s what I’ve been reading recently:

(not started yet) We-Think - Charles Leadbeater

I read an early draft of this online, that was great so when I saw this in the shop I just had to buy it.
(not started yet) The Idea Generator - Ken Hudson

A small pocket book that I will one day dip into.
(Brill) The Black Swan - The impact of the highly improbable - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Brilliant, and the one that I am reading right now.
(Great) The Undercover Economist - Tim Harford

Great, but not quite up to the hype on the cover. Sure there are some interesting observations about the world, but its not like I started walking round seeing things totally differently (as the cover suggested I might).
(Eye-opening) Straw Dogs - thoughts on humans and other animals - John Gray

Recommended to me by the Chairman of Brownbook.net’s parent company, I saw it on the edge of his desk one day. Figured it’d be good to see what the boss was into. This book WILL change how you think about yourself and your race. Very, VERY good.
(Self-important CRAP) Playing With Fire - Gordon Ramsay

I love Gordon Ramsay, so I was VERY disappointed with this. The cover promises a rags to riches story, problem is he seems to get from rags to riches in about two pages, and the rest of the book is a load of self-important ‘look how great i am’ CRAP. I guess thats why we like him, eh?
(Brill, better than the title suggests) The 4-Hour Work Week - Timothy Ferris

This one is REALLY worth a read. Not for the fact that you will really work just 4 hours a week, but for the timesaving tips and practices that he preaches. Using one of his tips I have outsourced some of my weekl;y donkey work to a virtual personal assistant in INDIA. And why not, why should outsourcing just be for corporates and big jobs, my Indian guy is a pharmacology graduate, brilliant, polite, efficient, and $10 per hour. Beat that. You should try it.

See ON MY BOOKSHELF for more reading recommendations

I happened to be chatting to some old friends from the directory publishing world last week and they showed me an amazing technology that lets on the road sales people complete paper-based order forms and have the completed data and client signature sent back to their order processing system within seconds.  Its a comming together of a few technologies: a pen that has a small camera integrated below the ball-point nib, a special paper that has a unique pattern of almost invisible dots on it, and bluetooth technology to wire the info to a cellphone that sends the completed form.

So, when I spotted Chris Nuttall’s (FT.com’s SF based reporter) writing about something similar my ears pricked up.  Here is his piece which does a far better job of describing it than I can do:

Just added these to my bookshelf…

The 4-Hour Work Week - Timothy Ferris
Interesting, some challenging ideas. Been reading this for about two days, its started falling apart because the spine glue melted in the sauna today, oops.

iWoz - Steve Wozniak (w/ Gine Smith)
Brilliant, inspiring, revealing. Amazing guy and a really down to earth, high flyer of a book.

Mavericks At Work - William C Taylor & Polly LaBarre
Been on this one since about February, not my fastest read, its good to pick up and put down and it lives on my breakfast table for that start-of-the-day inspirational read.

See what else is on my bookshelf here

Joost is suffering as copycat services and alliances between old-media companies are taking a hold on the new generation of TV viewers.

This from the Sunday Times today…

JOOST, the online television service launched with a fanfare last year by the founders of internet telephony firm Skype, is preparing for a major retrenchment after failing to attract enough users and top-flight broadcasting rights.

The company is expected to rein in its global ambitions to focus solely on the US market.

Set up as an antidote to YouTube by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis after they sold Skype to online auctioneer Ebay, Joost has been overshadowed by the success of the BBC’s iPlayer, and in America, Hulu, a collaboration between NBC and News Corporation, the ultimate owner of The Sunday Times.

It has struggled to convince media and sports companies to sell it global rights, which are normally parcelled out to broadcasters country by country.

Joost has also suffered from senior defections. Chief technology officer Dirk-Willem van Gulik jumped ship for the BBC earlier in the year.

The company raised £23m last May from backers including CBS, Viacom, Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital.

A spokeswoman insisted most of the cash was still in the bank.

“We are not shedding staff,” she said. “There are some situations where staff have been rea-ligned to better fit our needs.”

Zennstrom told The Sunday Times a year ago: “We want to change the way people watch television . . . liberating people from the programme guide.”

Joost is unlikely to close, however. “There are too many egos involved,” said one former employee.

The BBC iPlayer, which provides a free seven-day window for viewers to watch shows they missed the first time round, is recording up to 500,000 programme downloads a day.

In the summer, it will be joined by Kangaroo, a portal shared by the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, to show older content, which will be funded by advertising.

Original article is here.

In an era where music companies are still battling to enforce DRM measures to protect ailing profits, some of the world’s biggest music stars are leaving them behind to embrace new revenue models.

This, from today’s Sunday Times…

HIP-HOP star Jay-Z has always seemed as interested in business as music. From a poor start in a tough Brooklyn neighbourhood, Jay-Z has lived the rapper’s dream, making millions and boasting about it all the way. His hits include Get This Money, I Love the Dough and More Money, More Cash, More Hoes.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, however, making cash seems to interest him more than spending it. The rapper, real name Shawn Carter, even “retired” from music in 2003 to spend more time with his money.

When Bill Gates wanted a hip-hop star for his spoof retirement video, Jay-Z, long-time partner of pop diva Beyoncé, was the natural choice.

Now Carter has cut one of the biggest deals in music history. It’s a deal that, depending on who you talk to, either points the way to a new model for the struggling music industry or highlights what a savvy player Jay-Z is, while spelling disaster for the company that signed it.

American concert promoter Live Nation hit the headlines last October when it signed a $120m (£60m) deal with Madonna. The pop queen dumped Warner Music, her long-time label, to do the deal, in a move that for some underlined the eroding power of the music industry’s big players.

Music has never been more present in people’s lives or more easily available, but the shift to digital sales has so far proved less profitable than the industry’s last successful business model - promoting an artist by any means it can to make money from CDs.

CD sales remain a profitable business, but as they decline, artists, music labels and concert promoters are all looking past them at alternative revenue sources, from T-shirt and ticket sales to ringtones and licensing songs for use in video games.

“The paradigm in the music business has shifted and as an artist and a businesswoman, I have to move with that shift,” Madonna said in a statement when she signed her deal. Other stars were listening.

Now Jay-Z - 10 years her junior - has dropped Def Jam, the label where he was once president, for a $150m deal with Live Nation.

The company signed a reported $100m deal with Irish rockers U2 last month to handle the band’s merchandising, digital and branding rights, and is also said to be in talks with The Rolling Stones, presently working out their contract at Britain’s EMI.

Like Madonna before him, in straight record sales Jay-Z, 38, is not the force he once was. American Gangster, his last album, sold about 1m copies in America compared with 3m copies of 2003’s The Black Album, but he has also found new artists and pursued other business ventures, such as a clothing line, Rocawear, which he sold last year for $204m, sports investments and a chain of nightclubs. Forbes magazine’s last annual list of “Hip-Hop Cash Kings” ranked Jay-Z first with estimated earnings of $34m in 2006.

The Live Nation deal, which is yet to be formally announced, is a “360degree” deal that will give the concert promoter a financial position in virtually every aspect of the rapper’s career. Jay-Z is expected to get a $25m payment upfront, $10m in advances for each of three albums, $25m towards concert performances and $20m for the publishing rights that he owns. He will also get $25m in overheads to run his side projects with $25m more available to finance acquisitions or investments. He and Live Nation will split any profits 50/50.

Many music executives were dismissive of Live Nation’s move. They pointed out that the major labels were all now doing “360degree” deals and said it was well known that Jay-Z had unsuccessfully touted this same deal to most of the big labels.

“This isn’t a new model,” said one. “It’s ‘let’s take ageing artists past their prime and overpay them’ - that’s a very old business model.”

He said he doubted if they would make back the $10m advances on his new albums and that Jay-Z was not a touring artist of Madonna’s calibre.

Live Nation has a ticket sales deal with Ticketmaster but that expires this year.

David Joyce, analyst for Miller Tabak, said the company was “circling the wagons” by building a roster of big-name artists to help it see off competition when it goes it alone. He said the traditional music-industry players were increasingly looking for a slice of Live Nation’s action. Cherry-picking top acts for top prices is one way to see off that competition.

Music executives said the real test of Jay-Z and Madonna’s deals will come when they have new albums to release. Unlike the record labels, Live Nation is not set up to get CDs into stores or digital music onto iTunes and will probably have to sign up a label to do the release.

Original article is here

Wildscreen.TV Offers 100% Ad Revenue to Users
Wildscreen is a new video site hoping to combine quality content with a social media network. With a focus on quality instead of quantity, Wildscreen distances itself from the YouTube crowd by offering a space in which users can upload as much content as they want, with customized and branded channels.

Aimed at filmmakers, Wildscreen is also hoping to entice users in with the offering of full ownership of the channel, including 100% of the ad revenue going directly to that operator of the video channel. With no upload limitations or revenue splits, wilidscreen’s offering is just different enough to likely catch someone’s attention, as individuals are being presented with a number of experimental alternatives to the monetization of their online video content.

More on this is here

Dailymotion the video-sharing site is taking things a step further with the inclusion of full length films in its new section, called Cinema Dailymotion. This is an online screening series for viewers to watch streaming, full-length films and documentaries.

More about this here

I never knew that CurrentTV, that channel I sometimes stumble upon on my sky system in the UK (and often I actually stay for a while) was started, and has as its CEO, none other than Al Gore. Its on channel 193 on Sky UK and Ireland.

I just found out here on Techcrunch.

I love CurrentTV, it totally embraces the short-form web-like content that we’re all getting used to and gives people teh chance to get their productions from the Web to the TV. And it works. The quality, variery and pace of content is excellent, even the viewer created content (they use the term VC2 [V C squared) instead of UGC) links are fantastic.

(Looks like I’m not alone either, their website stats have been going through the roof, see their comscore graph on that Techcrunch article above.)

Attributor, who helps media companies protect their content, has raised $12 million in Series C funding. The company uses what it describes as “fingerprinting algorithms” to crawl the Web and identify when and where a publisher’s articles, images, or videos are being used, and if they are being used with proper licensing permissions.

In addition to protecting copyright content from malicious use, part of Attributor’s pitch is that by through better management, publishers can increase ad revenue, get more inbound links, and improve their search engine rankings. So far, Attributor has signed up several top media companies, including CondeNet, The Associated Press, and Reuters.

The company has now raised more than $20 million to-date, with its last round coming in December, 2006.

This is from Mashable here