Monthly Archives: September 2010

New media valuations metrics

September 26, 2010 – 5:18 pm

TweetOn September 22, the Norwegian media group Schibsted announced a transaction to make it the sole owner of the French free classifieds site LeBonCoin.fr. The valuation for the deal? €400m ($540m). I must admit it : I fell from my chair(*). Not that I look down at Le Bon Coin, au contraire. In a previous [...]

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

The Carriers’ Rebellion

September 26, 2010 – 5:18 pm

TweetBefore the Steve Jobs hypnosis session, AT&T ruled. Handsets, their prices, branding, applications, contractual terms, content sales…AT&T decided everything and made pennies on each bit that flowed through its network. Then the Great Mesmerizer swept the table. Apple provided the hardware, the operating system, and “everything else”: applications, music, ringtones, movies, books… The iTunes cash register [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in hardware, mobile internet | Tagged , , , , | Comments (25)

Aggregators: the good ones vs. the looters

September 19, 2010 – 6:58 pm

TweetNews aggregators have grown into all shapes and forms. Some are truly helping the producers of original content but others simply amount to mere electronic ransack. My daily media routine starts on Techmeme. It is a pure aggregator — actually an aggrefilter, as coined by Dan Farber, at the time editor-in-chief of Cnet, who recommended [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in journalism, online publishing | Tagged , | Comments (95)

HP’s Board of Directors: Redemption or More Insanity Ahead?

September 19, 2010 – 6:42 pm

TweetHP’s Board of Directors has accumulated an impressive record of bad judgment calls, the latest being the lame lawsuit against their recently deposed CEO, Mark Hurd, who quickly joined Oracle as Co-President and Director. The History Once a revered Silicon Valley icon, HP was arguably the first worldwide success to emerge from pre-war Stanford where [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in Uncategorized, hardware | Tagged | Comments (11)

What do they read — actually?

September 12, 2010 – 5:40 pm

TweetUnlike their dead tree ancestors, online publications provide an interesting view on what readers actually like. Most news sites have Most E-mailed, Most Viewed and Most Blogged or Most Commented lists. Some even propose Editor’s Picks. For today, I’ll share non-statistical findings, influenced, needless to say, by my personal reading habits. Let’s start with the [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in journalism | Comments (8)

Nokia’s New CEO: Challenges

September 12, 2010 – 5:39 pm

Tweetby Jean-Louis Gassée Here we are, back from last June’s Nokia science-fiction romp. The company has finally elected a new CEO to replace OPK, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. 43-year-old Stephen Elop’s bona fides are in order: As President of Microsoft’s Business Division (since January 2008) he was in charge of the Microsoft Office money machine and was [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in hardware, mobile internet | Tagged , , | Comments (41)

The newswire quandary

September 6, 2010 – 6:47 am

TweetQuestions: should newswire agencies serve consumers – directly? And, to a broader extent, how does the current information shift impact the agencies’ future? Two recent events lead me to explore these questions in today’s Monday Note. The first one is rather significant: last week, Associated Press announced a deal with Google allowing the search engine [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in journalism | Comments (8)

Science Fiction: An Apple-Curated App Store

September 6, 2010 – 6:46 am

TweetIn an alternate universe, Apple has announced the App Store Guide and Blog. Choice morsels from the PR material follow. “We came to realize that a quarter million apps meant worse than nothing to Apple users”, said Apple’s CEO. “I get confused too! Reviews are often fake, lame, or downright incompetent. PR firms have been [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in mobile internet, software | Tagged , | Comments (12)