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AOL, 2006 Called and Wants Its Content Commoditization Strategy Back…
It was a Monday like any other Monday. After a weekend of too much drinking, low-key football-centric Sunday celebrations (Go Packers!) and an early night to bed, I woke up this morning in the way I normally do on a Monday: Cursing ye gods of Mondays past, and hoping the day would not turn into…
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Sucks to be a Blog Network These Days
Having come from the blog network space, I have a mostly unique understanding of the difficulties encountered when running a content business. There is always a war between traffic and community, profitability and loss, long term projections and short term realities. It’s not an easy business. It’s even more challenging when you’re a blog network.…
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Transparency and Handling
Transparency happens to be the number one search term for this blog. Don’t ask me how it happened. I’ll simply say that I talk about honesty and transparency quite a bit. The reason is that it is the cornerstone for business and brand. Today at the Interact 2008 conference, AOL founder Ted Leonsis dropped a…
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Walled Gardens and Business Models in the 21st Century
Walled Gardens. Defined as media properties utilizing privileged access to provide information services or content to a user. The classic example of a walled garden was AOL, before they opened up most of their services. Users paid $23.95 or whatever the access rate was and got access to the “AOL Network.” Then there was Facebook,…
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SXSW Interview: Frank Gruber of AOL
Frank Gruber of AOL sits down with me in this interview at SXSW. Thanks, Frank!