Monthly Archives: October 2009

The French Edgar Hoover and “his” media dependents

October 25, 2009 – 7:46 pm

TweetPicture this in today’s American media: an Edgar Hoover-like chief of a major police agency cozying up to veteran reporters of Newsweek, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New Yorker. To these cronies, the chief feeds dirty information, unverified gossip, unproven suspicion of corruption of X or Z, all of it “dug up” [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in journalism | Comments (5)

The End of Walled Gardens

October 25, 2009 – 7:45 pm

TweetIf there is one side of Scandinavian medias’ strategy I find particularly convincing, it is their ability to cooperate as much as they can, and to compete on what matters most, that is the product, the user experience, the reader. To describe this, Americans, the world’s best neologists, invented the world “coopetition”, cooperation + competition. [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in advertising, journalism | Comments (4)

Microsoft ambivalence

October 25, 2009 – 7:44 pm

TweetLots of earnings reports this week, mostly good ones. Apple did better than expected, even by the most enthusiastic earnings seers, so did Amazon whose shares went up 26.8% today, adding more than $10B to its market cap in one day. I’m happy to see a quality company, one that treats its customer better than [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in hardware, mobile internet, software | Tagged | Comments (8)

Rotten Apples in the Reviews Barrel

October 19, 2009 – 9:11 am

TweetA few weeks ago, professional blogger Kevin Dixie received a strange proposition: a US‑based company offered to buy from him 30,000 reviews for a new iPhone application at $1 per review. Positive reviews, needless to say. Moreover, the marketing company proposed to extend the deal for 30 applications, about 10 to 20 times a month. [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in advertising, journalism | Tagged | Comments (10)

One Bit

October 19, 2009 – 9:10 am

TweetThis is going to be a busy week. Monday we have Apple’s earnings and, later in the week, Windows 7’s release. The deafening noise will make it hard to understand the real, lasting consequences of these events. Fortunately, deep into the bowels of a server, a smaller happening, a bit flipping from 0 to 1 [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in software | Tagged , | Comments (5)

The Cash Is In The Topics

October 12, 2009 – 5:05 pm

TweetAll conversations I keep having about the economics of a news web sites revolve around two key ideas: how to increase both the duration and the depth of a visit. In this respect, much work remains. For August 2009, here are the numbers of page views, as measured by Nielsen Net Ratings on the French [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in journalism, newspapers | Tagged | Comments (11)

The “Love Triangle”: Apple, Google and Verizon

October 12, 2009 – 5:01 pm

TweetAt the end of my August 9th Monday Note, “War in the Valley, Apple vs. Google”, I committed to get into Google’s potential weaknesses in this conflict. Since then, things have gotten a tad more complicated. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. As discussed last August, Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, had to leave [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in mobile internet | Tagged , | Comments (3)

Inhale, it’s Free

October 5, 2009 – 3:47 am

Tweet“Free”, as a business model, is a figment of the imagination. In itself, “Free” is not a business model, it is only a component of broader revenue system. Unlike Chris Anderson, author of the book “Free” ($18.00) — a bestseller not a bestfreebie — I happened to actually practice the free “model”. Between 2002 and [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in newspapers | Tagged , , , | Comments (23)

A Blinding Flash of The Obvious

October 5, 2009 – 3:46 am

TweetIn the US, if Apple gave up on the AT&T exclusivity, the iPhone’s market share would double. So says Morgan Stanley’s anal-yst Kathryn Huberty. See this PC World piece here. And a CNN/Fortune Magazine piece here. Let’s not throw stones at Ms. Huberty but, instead, question her bosses’ wisdom, work ethics or wakefulness. Is anyone [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in mobile internet | Tagged | Comments (10)