blogads for the opinion makers

Congrations to Brian Russell, who has signed the lease for his coworking space in Carrboro just down the street from us.

The four week moving average for initial unemployment claims rose again this week, notching up from 438,500 in the August 9 week to 445,750 last week.

The headlines say this week’s claims fell 13,000 versus to 432,000, but that’s just because last weeks number was revised up to 445,000.

This time a year ago, 326,000 people filed for unemployment.

CuteOverload got lots of coverage today in a number-packed article by Dan Mitchell in the New York Times, with a guest appearance by blog advertising network Blogads.com. Kudos to Mitchell for packing so much into the article and cleaving so strongly to the numbers.

Wow, I hadn’t realized how much Obama was rocking Twitter. John Accarrino has the numbers.

Politico.com is a huge success, writes Lindsey McPherson in the American Journalism Review. “In May, it had 3.5 million unique visitors and 25.1 million page views, according to Nielsen/Net Ratings. Editor & Publisher ranked Politico the 10th-most-visited newspaper site that month.”

The site IS highly regarded and highly trafficked. But read another way, Politico is a raging bonfire of greenbacks, a financial failure. Turns out, Politico.com piggybacks a tiny print publication — 27,000 copies published just three days a week — that happens to generate 150% more revenue than the site. As Ezra Klein sums up the situation:

Were they actually web only, they’d be losing catastrophic amounts of money. If The Politico was an experiment to see if people would read more stuff about politics, it was a success. But insofar as it sought a new business model that would bring economic viability to online reportage, it’s as adrift as everyone else.

A whole raft of aspiring publishing moguls are lined up expecting to get rich on politics this year — it’s gonna be interesting to see how many players are left come January 15, 2009 when they’ve made moderate profits (a few) or (mostly) abysmal losses and face an 18 month drought into the next election cycle.

Did anyone notice that the revisions in initial unemployment insurance claims today pushed the four week moving average up to 440,500, up 19,500 from last week.

Anything above 400k is regarded as recession territory. We just transitioned from teetering on the edge of a recession to plummeting.

Here’s my post in February on the topic, when claims were at 375,000.

Here’s an interesting dissection of the absence of a blogging bubble in the UK.

Did anyone else read Tim Arango’s recent NYTimes’ article about Vivi Nevo, Internet man of mystery, and wonder why the journalist didn’t invoke Jay Gatsby, the self-made man of another bubble-infused age?

Of all the characters the media business attracts — and creates, for that matter — perhaps no one is more remarked upon, wondered about or marveled at than Mr. Nevo. Among his many overlapping circles of friends, nearly all say that Mr. Nevo is a force in their lives: a loyal friend, a trusted conveyor and keeper of information and someone who never forgets a birthday or a bar mitzvah.

You get the feeling Arango had some off-the-record allegations he wanted to unleash but couldn’t cajole into the daylight, hence the repeated and elaborate “what does Vivi really do?” incantations?

Those who knew Mr. Nevo in the 1980s, after he moved to New York from Israel, have watched his rise with curiosity.

“You’re asking questions I’ve asked myself many times,” said Nicolas Rachline, who met Mr. Nevo in the late 1980s when both were part of a fashionable New York expatriate crowd that hung out at Le Bilboquet, a French restaurant on the Upper East Side. “What the hell does Vivi do? He seems to be a powerful player in the entertainment industry. How, I don’t know.”

Maybe we’ll know someday.

Mediapost credits Perez with scooping other major news outlets on the quake.

This year’s Netroots Nation in Austin was amazing. Great people, conversations, energy, ideas, debate. But it looks like Netroots Nation will be held in Pittsburgh next year. Conferences are all about building a culture, and Austin is an amazing place to build a culture. I’m skeptical about Pittsburgh.

Newspaper holding company AH Belo announced yesterday that ad revenues were down 21% in the second quarter. That 21% is the biggest decline I’ve seen yet. (Belo publishes four daily newspapers, including the Dallas Morning News and Providence Journal.)

For broader context: here’s an article about the ill newspaper industry in the International Herald Tribune, ironically, a newspaper I used to write for. Yes, the article includes that dire phrase “since the Great Depression.”

More thoughts on the phrase “worst since the Great Depression”.

More Cuil weirdness…

I’ve been noticing the phrase “worse than the Great Depression” cropping up in news reports.

So, right now, there are 11 references to “worse than the Great Depression” in Google news. And 11,600 references in straight Google news.

Then there’s “worst since the great depression.” There are 53 of those in Google news and 12,500 of those in regular Google search.

This metric isn’t perfect, since the words will often be things like “the worst housing recession since the Great Depression” or “Beer sales in pubs are now at their lowest level since the Great Depression of the 1930s – down seven million pints a day from the height of the market” or “The US home foreclosure crisis has deepened to a level not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s…”.

All of which suggests we also watch “since the Great Depression” too. Right now, there are 2890 results for that combination in Google news and 588,000 in regular Google search.

(For fun, I tried the same searches on Cuil.com, the $33 million Google killer. I get 472,817,893 results for Great Depression. Wow! Wait a second, I get just 5,396,452 results for “great depression.” And just 330 results for “depression.” Guess Cuil hasn’t programmed the quotation mark restriction into their algorithms. Definitely the worst search results since the great depression.)

The new Google killer looks slick. But it lacks advertising. I’m not just talking about the kind that pays the bills, I’m talking about the entire content category.

We just created this draft of our tutorial video. What suggestions?

Having installed a cool new WordPress blog, I’ve got some good (but not perfect) spam filtering in place. Thank you to Zudfunk for being the first to notice and chip in.

It seems criminal that Wachovia, which yesterday took a monstrous $8.7 billion loss and already is preparing for another $5.6 billion in losses, is still paying a dividend. The bank has a toxic portfolio of $122 billion of the riskiest mortgages, called pick-a-pay, which allow borrowers to make no payments on principle for an initial period.

$122 billion.

Wachovia currently projects that 12% of these mortgages are going to default. Why should any of these mortgages, most of which are in housing quagmires California and Florida, not end up in default?

$122 billion.

Losses on anything like that scale would force Wachovia to borrow money from taxpayers, you, me, our children and grandchildren. So continuing to pay dividends to shareholders while in such dire straights is akin to seeking to shelter assets from potential creditors.

Congress, busy trying to stop intelligent investors seeking to profit from the stupidity of others by selling short-selling the shares of still-overvalued companies (like Wachovia), should instead be prosecuting money-losing banks that insist on paying dividends with “extra” cash that’s just an accounting fiction.

A dividend is by definition a distribution of profits to shareholders, so how is it legal, or morally conscionable, for unprofitable companies to pay dividends?

Hey, let’s say it one last time: Wachovia’s mighty vaults sit on a $122 billion pit of quicksand.

I’m signed up for the John McCain campaign’s official newsletter and just got a note titled “The media is in love.”

It’s a bizarrely junior-highish screed, first suggesting cattily that “some may even say it’s a love affair” and then, casting caution to the wind, stating in the final paragraph, “The media is in love with Barack Obama.”

Boohoo.

Update July 29, 2008: Here’s some context for McCain’s bitterness about the press turning its affections towards Obama.

Google’s notice last week that its growth continues to slow got a lot of attention. A couple of other data-points to highlight:

a) ValueClick, a network focused on lead generation and display advertising, announced on Thursday that it no longer expects a strong second half (H2 is usually significantly stronger than H1.) It revised its projections for total ‘08 revenues from $730-$745 million to $655-$675 million. Last year’s number was $665 million, so VCLK is saying it won’t grow. More details on their deceleration in online advertising.

b) Q1 ‘08 was the first quarter in many in which online advertising shrunk relative to the previous quarter.

c) In other bad news for money-losing Internet companies praying they’ll be acquired before they run out of money, AOL, previously an acquirer, is desparately seeking its own corporate safe haven as its ad sales plateau.

Watch Joe’s face for the moment when he realizes he’s run out of memory after 20 seconds of filming. Micah was using “qik” and amazing service that lets him broadcast live.

NPR ran a long feature this morning about how bad people think the economy is — gas prices cutting into wallets, falling house prices, health-care costs, tight credit, creeping inflation.

The real bad news is… we ain’t seen nothing yet. Unemployment is still beneath what used to be called “full employment.”

Labor and politicians could only dream of 5% unemployment in the 80s and 90s. Unless we see a massive boom in export manufacturing (vabuuely possible with the dollar at $1.60 to the euro) the unemployment rate is headed back towards 8%. At which point today’s chorus of woe is going to sound, retrospect, like “Yellow Submarine.”

I was walking down mainstreet in Blowing Rock, NC Saturday and noticed a well-dressed middle-aged guy who had paused behind a parked mini-van. His leg was jerking a little and he looked like he was concentrating really hard. I asked whether he was OK and he said, loud and clear and coherently, “yes, I’m fine.”

I sat down on a bench not too far away and watched him. He started to lean on the van’s protruding spare tire and shove it. I went over and asked again, “are you OK?”

He said again, very clearly and in a normal voice “I’m fine.”

20 seconds later, he was flat on his back, looking up at the sky.

“I’m going call 911, OK?”

“No, I’m OK,” he said.

At this point, the guy is sweating and looking pale, so I said cognitive dissonance be damned and ignored his opinions and called 911. A woman stopped and asked the guy if he’s diabetic and he said yes; she gave him a peppermint. Two minutes later he’s sitting up, and the paramedics arrive. I head off to dinner.

Later I learned that diabetics suffering from extreme low blood sugar can become unrooted and report that they’re fine even as they’re melting down. I’m still unnerved by the memory of trying to square this guy’s disintegrating physical condition with his bald-faced statements to the contrary.

I just took a McCain poll appearing on Linked-In. From a media perspective, the Linked-in poll idea is fascinating because once you respond, you get to see how other Linked-In users respond with results broken out by sex, age, industry. Wow, that’s powerful as a media experience for Linked-In and HUGE as a service for advertisers.

But right now, I’m particularly interested in the poll’s slant: “What has the most long-term potential to lower gas prices for Americans?”

The answers: “Oil exploration on US territories,” “Alternative energy research,” “Better Middle East Relations,” “Smaller vehicles,” and “I do not know.”

First, there’s no room for “other.” Second, most of the solutions imply, either directly or indirectly, government interaction. Third, the obvious answer, “the market,” is missing. The poll begs the question: is this a question a candidate needs to be thinking about?

If anything, the government should be raising prices on gas (through taxes) to help us all retool our life-styles to prepare for the day 10 weeks or 10 years from now when gas costs $10 a gallon. To those who say “if we save it the Chinese will burn it,” I’d say, “let the Chinese build their economy on waste and inefficiency, we’ll compete far better with them in ten years.”

In the long run, the best solution to high gas prices — the only real long-term solution — is higher gas prices in the short-term. People will stop driving SUVs, manufactures will rush to make batteries more efficient, entrepreneurs will figure out solar cells. There will be millions of solutions that no five-year-planning bureaucrat can imagine. And then the market will lower prices.

Anticipating a lighter, digital future, we cleaned out some shelves and boxes of old videos yesterday. Each group represented a different strata of our lives, and the tattered boxes are themselves chronicles of our loyal patronage for certain videos. The Sound of Music was a particular favorite. Here’s the list:

On our video stand:
Born Free
PBS Home video Liberty, the American revolution 1, 2, 3
Dennis the Menace: Walter Mathau
The mask of Zorro (Banderas, Zeta Jones)
Cats
Annie with Kathy Bates
Annie with Albert Finney, Carol Burnett
Star Wars 5
Harry Potter: Sorcerers stone
The Man from Laramie
Around the world in 80 days
MacKenna’s Gold
Star Wars 1
Alexander the Elephant who couldn’t eat peanuts

Old Box (most circa France):
The Sound of Music
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Mary Poppins
Secret Garden
Monkey Trouble
The Orchestra
The Graduate
Musee D’Orsay
Cousteau
Beatrix Potter Tales
The whole Musi collection
Dinosaur
Oliver
Tintin
Charlie Chaplin: La Gradne Revie de Charlot
Mousehunt
Louvre
Dr. Doolittle
Montee Python
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
The red balloon

The Associated Press sent blogger Rogers Cadenhead a letter Friday complaining that his DrudgeRetort.com was infringing their copyright on some stories.

Here’s excerpts from their note and Rogers’ response.

Over the weekend, bloggers left right and center swarmed against the AP, calling for a boycott of links to AP articles with links instead to Agence France-Press, Reuters, McClatchy, or IPS.

The reaction is centered at UnAssociatedPress.net.

Looks like Rogers and the AP have straightened things out, but no larger precedents have been set.

In February 2002 Henry Copeland started brainstorming a service to connect bloggers and advertisers. Here’s the original Blogads manifesto. The Blogads domain was registered March 5, 2002, and after six months of prototyping and programming, the service launched August 13. Things were quieter than expected. The first ad, for $32, trickled in on September 2.

Folks in the know “thought Henry was crazy.”

Today Blogads.com connects 1300 blogs with a joyful stew of advertisers ranging from corporate giants to mom&mom T-shirt peddlers. Advertisers include NBC, Audi, PBS, Time Warner, JohnKerry.com, The Republican National Committee, The New Republic, Rhino Records, O’Reilly Media, Bagnews, Paramount Pictures, Random House, Network Solutions, Turner Broadcasting, eChristianWebhosting, Nokia, VH1, and Budget Renta Car.

During the ‘04 election, Blogads ran hundreds of ads for different candidates and causes, more different political ads than any other single online media. Henry “makes blogs possible,” said leading bloggers.

Henry, 46, grew up in Wooster, Ohio and in 1984 received a BA in history from Yale University after nearly failing classes in economics, math and computer science. After working on Wall Street (’84-91) and in Budapest as a journalist (’91-’98), in 1998 Henry founded Pressflex.com, the parent company to Blogads. Pressflex today serves as the webmaster for nearly 100 newspapers and magazines across Europe.

Henry has punditized about blog advertising at events including Blogtalk 1.0 in Vienna, Austria, iBreakfast in New York, NY, Blogon in Berkeley, CA, Gnomedex in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, Politics Online in Washington, DC, SXSW in Austin, TX, Ad-Tech in San Francisco, Chicago and NYC, Blognashville, Syndicate in NYC and San Francicso, iHollywood in LA, the AAN’s annual conference in Little Rock, Promax in New York and Search Engine Strategies in Chicago.

Here’s audio from two SXSW panels Henry moderated in 2006, Cluetrain: seven years later and Revenge of the Blogs: politics and election ‘08. And here’s the podcast of Suxorz panel at SXSW ‘08, which former Ad-tech chair Susan Bratton called “the best panel at SXSW ‘08.”

Henry is on the advisory board for SXSW 2009 and serves on the advisory board of George Washington University’s Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet. Here’s a video of Henry evangelizing blogs to TV execs at Promax.

Department of dubious distinctions: Henry’s blog is the sixth oldest by an American CEO, according to this list. And Henry is one of Gawker’s New Dorks of All Media.

Henry’s favorite bloggers include welch, langfield, layne, jarvis, bruner, teebee, arellanes, greg.

Favorite business books: The Innovator’s Solution, The Loyalty Effect, Emergence, Sam Walton: Made in America, Fooled by Randomness, Only the Paranoid Survive, Crossing the Chasm, The perfect store: eBay and Linked.

Nick Denton noted that tech bloggers don’t make extra money on “Apple day” when geeks go into a feeding frenzy for droplets of news from The Steve Jobs’ mouth. Denton blamed poor advertising inventory management tools — how to budget ad placements for 10X traffic?

But I think it’s also that few advertisers want to share the spotlight with Apple, lest they look wan in comparison. Taking a quick scroll around Engadget.com and Gizmodo.com and you see house ads with an occasional Microsoft Zune ad tossed in. Seems fitting that Microsoft is too clueless to be worried about being overshadowed by Steve Jobs.

Writing in the WSJ, Russell Adams dissects the failure of the Washington Post’s foray into “hyperlocal online publishing,” Loudon Extra.

The Journal sites three problems: a) lack of links from WPost itself when a big story breaks b) huge geographic spread (520 square miles) and diversity in Loudon county and c) lack of engage and d) hiring nonlocals.

Two other things to consider. The Post hired the guy to create Loudon local based in part on his success building “the Lawrence (Kan.) Journal-World’s KUSports.com, a site dedicated to University of Kansas sports that grew during Mr. Curley’s three-year reign from 500,000 monthly page views to a one-time peak of about 13 million monthly page views.” Didn’t anyone tell WPost UKansas sports audience a) is a lot bigger and more fanatic than school board audience and b) isn’t local?

And it also doesn’t help that Posts “Loudon Extra” site doesn’t seem to be Google friendly enough (though I can’t see exactly where they’re failing.) My evidence: if you search Google for “site:washingtonpost.com loudon extra” you get only 2200 results and “site:washingtonpost.com loudonextra” you get only 1 result. Their URLs are Goog-friendly (see below), but they seem (on quick inspection) to lack an index page that would make it easy for Google to do a comprehensive spidering. Yep, that was too easy. Someone from the Post wrote to point out that I mispelled “Loudoun.” Ding. Using the correct spelling, the site ends up with 33,000 entries in Google.

Remember when Goog spent the first quarter tanking, trending lower in sync with Comscore analysis of declining paid clicks, analysis that turned out to be wildly misleading in the end?

Well, GOOG jumped this week in trading leading up to Comscore’s release of a very bullish report on Google’s paid click growth. After being down Monday, Google opened Tuesday at 548 and spent all day trending up, closing at 560. The stock gapped higher the next morning and opened at 568. That night Google closed at 568. After trading closed, Comscore released its estimates
and Google jumped to 575 the next morning.

So anyone who had an inkling Tuesday morning that Comscore’s release Wednesday night was going to be very bullish for Google made a quick $27, a profit that would be vastly multiplied by playing in options.