The Ian Bell Weblog

Last night, my biz partner Dan Gaul and I spent some time on Yahoo! comparing search results with Google. If you do a search for product reviews on Google, you will get results that include blogs (linking to sites that review, not that review products themselves), shopping comparison and other types of sites gaming the search engine with keywords. But with Yahoo!, we received results that were a lot more relavant and included review sites first, then the other spam results. I am going to switch my search engine to Yahoo! for a month to see how well it performs. I have been using Google for years, now it’s time for a change. Let’s see how well Yahoo! does.

Recently I have been spending sometime watching Loren Feldman at 1938 Media. I find his videos unique, and love that he speaks what’s on his mind. He has recently signed a deal with Pod Tech which I think it great, hopefully they are taking care of him. I have always had mixed emotions when it comes to blogs and video blogs. I certainly think they have their place, but feel that sometimes they forget where that is. Somtimes the video bloggers try too hard to be like a big broadcast television network, and it really ruins the whole experience for me. I want to see people who act themselves, are unique and realize it, not “pretend” to be someone they are not. Is there money to be made here? Unfortunately I just don’t see it happening to be honest. I was shocked when I read that RocketBoom only brought in about $250K last year in revenue. They have a TON of viewers and are certainly one of the biggest shows out there. Where are the advertisers? This is not a good sign…I predict that some of these people, perhaps Scoble, give it up in 6-8 months to go onto other things. I hope that Pod Tech can make things happen for 1938 media…

You know, when I think more about this, it’s like trying to sell advertisements for community access channel on cable, but hopefully with the broad audience that the web brings its can be done.

Time Inc. CEO Ann Moore has stated that the popular magazine will be transforming and entering several new verticals, but it will not however adopt a MySpace online strategy. “We’re not just going to go on the Web and let the readers decide.” Smart move. Now I have to wonder who thought it would be a good idea to let readers control Time in the first place? Some people fail to recognize what is a trend and nothing more. A business model for one vertical will not always apply to others. It gets dangerous when executives “pretend” to know what the internet economy is and how it works.

As many of you know, James Kim, a Senior Editor at Cnet, passed away last week. The Kim family went through a terrible ordeal, one that I hope no one will ever have to go through. In the end, Kati and the children were rescued after being stranded in the Oregon wilderness but unfortunately James did not make it. My sympathy and prayers go out to Kati and the Kim’s family. James Kim was an exceptional writer, a fabulous father and friend to those that knew him. We will truly miss James Kim.

I received a rather nasty email from a reader last night upset over my Microsoft Zune review (you can see his email in the user reviews section under the name “defiler”).  I might have been a little harsh on the Zune, but I stand by my score of 5.5/10, I think its a very poor product. So anyways, this reader accused me of being biased and anti-Microsoft. I had to chuckle at that. I am a Microsoft MVP for Digital Media (3 years running), our videos are featured on WindowsMedia.com (usually under the Entertainment section), and we feature our content on MSN Canada (starting next week). I like Microsoft. I will however, call it like I see it, and will never play favorites when writing a review. If it’s a bad product, then it will receive a bad score.

Worth noting, despite receiving positive reviews from the likes of Cnet and other outlets, Rob Enderle and I both saw the trouble from a mile away. Paidcontent.org has a story citing several sources that says that Microsoft Zune sales are falling fast, and it’s ranked 20th on Amazon with players from SanDisk and Apple outperforming it - as can be expected. Am I allowed to say ” I told you so”?

If you have a moment, check out CNBC.com. I love the design, simple, attractive and to the point. I hope that when the site launches it will keep the same feel.

I am a big fan of Digg; well I used to be anyways. I admit that I am drawn to the instant information that the site produces, it’s like having a news reader that only produces the best news stories. That was 6 months ago. Now the site only seems capable of producing content from unreliable blogs rather than actual credible sources. And out of the blog stories that make it to the front page it primarily consists of top ways to make money, Nintendo Wii and Apple news. The Digg community has taken over and unfortunately for Digg this is a bad thing because the stories that make it to the front page are biased, and that’s very bad for a news site.

TechCrunch has a post about Jay Adelson’s visit with Forbes, an interesting video to watch. Jay claims that the Comscore report of 1.4mm monthly uniques is way off and that the site really produces about 20mm per month. That’s a huge discrepancy. According to Jay, 70% of their readers use FireFox or RSS readers while browsing Digg content, and that is not taken into account. I have to question whether they really have 70% of their readers using FireFox though. Ultimately, if Jay cannot clear the fog, anyone really interested in acquiring the site will lose interest - and quickly. Would you spend $150mm dollars on a site that cannot produce clear accurate traffic data? Especially when that’s your only real asset.

The folks on the TechCrunch article got into a good debate about the value of Digg, and I decided to throw in my .02 cents. My response is below:

Drama 2.0 is right on the money. A real valuation takes days to perform and cannot simply be plugged into a form-field. There are multiple ways to valuate a company as well; DCF and EPITDA being the most common (look them up). There is a complex formula to all of this, revenue, growth rate, debt, projections, industry are only a few of the factors.

Let’s look at the facts though: $3MM in revenue off of 20mm monthly unique visitors is ridiculous. Digg claims they have the same traffic as some of the top news sites on the web. Do you think CNN.com, or FoxNews.com could operate their web businesses off of $3mm in revenue? Let’s get real.

And for the record, the industry average CTR for banner ads is .30, not 1%. And I can bet you that Digg is well below the industry average CTR due to a high pageviews per visitor ratio - and that is a bad thing.

Regarding technology, the only asset which Digg seems to own; it’s easy to emulate unfortunately. The real advantage they have is their traffic since they own no content, and because their stories are voted to the front page by the readers, that takes the control away from the Digg management. And that looks very bad to someone that might be interested in purchasing the site.

1) Low click-through-rate
2) Traffic you cannot control
3) Technology that is easy to duplicate
4) No actual content that you own

This does not look good for Digg. They are in a real bad situation. And of course they have investors and 20+ employees to take care of, so they need to sell the site for a large number in order to make any profit. They should have sold it once they were on the front page of Business Week.

Thanksgiving is my favorite time of the year. It gives you time to spend with your family and friends without the stress of work or other things in life. There is nothing quite like good food, family and friends, football and lounging around. Hopefully you have some people that you care about spending time with you this Thanksgiving. Best wishes.

CNN is reporting that the Apple iPhone could be here very very soon. I admit that I will be the first in line to get one, provided its a true Apple product and not just a Motorola phone that supports iTunes. Oh, and it must be compatible with the Bluetooth system in my car.

Normally I stay away from the blogging community, but on the way to work today, my biz partner Dan and I were talking about John Miller and Jason Calacanis leaving AOL last week. One of us brought up Valleywag and the endless insults and heckling that Nick Denton has focused on the whole event, specifically towards Jason Calacanis. I am not a big Jason fan, but I will never believe in hitting a man when he is down. There is definately no honor there, and it’s just poor taste. But unfortunately that seems to be how the whole Silicon Valley blog community behaves. Dan mentioned there should be a movie about it Titled The Bitches of Silicon Valley. Brilliant idea!