A few days ago the Wall Street Journal published a series of articles about a supposed Facebook privacy breach. We and others noted that the article was complete rubbish. We also noted that the Wall Street Journal’s sister company, MySpace, wasn’t mentioned in the article – either as a disclosure of a conflict of interest or a discussion of whether MySpace was doing the same thing.
The WSJ was actually investigating MySpace, says a source close to the company, and were planning on publishing the information the investigation uncovered.
MySpace has had three different CEOs in the last two years, as well as a period where they were led by co-presidents. If you count Jon Miller, who runs the whole show, they’ve had four CEOs. Based on MySpace’s overall level of disorganization and constant leadership changes, we’re not surprised that the WSJ investigation landed on their doorstep, and discovered questionable privacy practices.
But the story was shelved. → Read More
Exclusive – SeatGeek, one of the finalists of TechCrunch50 2009, has raised another $550,000 in funding from previous backers (Founder Collective, NYC Seed, Stage One Capital, Trisiras Group, PKS Capital and angel investors Arie Abecassis, Sunil Hirani, Thomas Lehrman, Allen Levinson and Mark Wachen).
More importantly, the ticket search company has inked an interesting revenue-sharing distribution deal with The Wall Street Journal. → Read More
Back in October 2009, Dow Jones debuted a premium business news site dubbed The Wall Street Journal Professional Edition in an attempt to get companies to pay up $588 a year for access to more personalized, business-related news and analysis.
This morning, the WSJ Pro Edition became available to consumers as well, at the exact same price point ($49 per month) although existing WSJ.com subscribers can upgrade for a discounted rate (+$25 per month). → Read More
Legend has it that when Cortes landed in Mexico in the 1500s, he ordered his men to burn the ships that had brought them there to remove the possibility of doing anything other than going forward into the unknown. Marc Andreessen has the same advice for old media companies: “Burn the boats.”
Yesterday, Andreessen was in New York City and we met up. We got to talking about how media companies are handling the digital disruption of the Internet when he brought up the Cortes analogy. In particular, he was talking about print media such as newspapers and magazines, and his longstanding recommendation that they should shut down their print editions and embrace the Web wholeheartedly. “You gotta burn the boats,” he told me, “you gotta commit.” His point is that if traditional media companies don’t burn their own boats, somebody else will. → Read More
It’s finally happening. Maybe. According to sources close to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft is going to make a pretty big announcement at Mobile World Congress on February 15. After acknowledging that Windows Mobile isn’t exactly where it should be in terms of development and progression, Microsoft appears to be ready to announce and unveil Windows Mobile 7. But what happened to WinMo 6.5.3? → Read More
Layoffs in the tech sector are accelerating. It took exactly three weeks for tech layoffs to surge to 300,000, according to our Layoff Tracker. Since late January, when the tracker hit 200,000 layoffs, another 100,000 job eliminations have been announced or completed. In contrast, it took five weeks for layoffs in the tech industry to hit the 200,000 mark, and four months for layoffs to hit 100,000 last December. The total number of layoffs since we began tracking since the financial crisis began in late August is 300,093.
The past few weeks have particularly brutal for the technology space, with substantial layoffs announced by Pioneer (10,000), Cisco (3,000), Panasonic (15,000), NEC (20,000), Electronic Arts (1100) and AOL (700). Even Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal, who both managed to avoid layoffs in the past few months, were forced to make cuts to their workforces. And Google, who was immune to layoffs until late January, continued giving pink-slips in the past three weeks with the company’s exit from radio. Sadly, a few start-ups weren’t able to weather the storm, with eBaum’s World cutting all of its workforce. → Read More
In case you missed the news, internet cables serving the Middle East have had a rough week, with anywhere up to five major cables being cut over the last week. CrunchGear has been following the whole story, but we’ve not covered it until now because internet cables being cut isn’t as an irregular occurrence as you might think. Many of the companies behind these cables are essentially lazy, and simply drop them on the ocean floor, where ships can drop anchor and take them out at random. Five (or possibly less) cables were cut resulting in major outages in Iran (possibly the whole country, but possibly not) and other Middle Eastern countries. The cable cuts have resulted in more conspiracy theories than a Ron Paul meetup. The Economist has more on the theories. What perked our interest was an article Wednesday from the Wall Street Journal covering the story that included the very funky image top right. Yes, that’s a Shark with laser beams on its head. There was much discussion about the Wall Street Journals editorial credibility post News Corp, and finally we are seeing the results. Personally I don’t mind the change that much, sharks with laser beams on their heads makes for a more lively and creative Wall Street Journal, but I’m betting I might be in the minority with that conclusion. What do you think? → Read More
Ever since the rear-guard at the Wall Street Journal won the battle to keep its news pages behind its subscription wall (although, its opinion pages are now free), they have been cracking down especially hard on anyone trying to breach that wall—even if those people happen to be paying subscribers. In what appears to be an attempt to discourage freeloaders, the WSJ.com is locking out anyone from its site when it detects more than one simultaneous log-in on the same account. But innocent, rule-abiding subscribers who may be using multiple computers, or doing nothing wrong other than forgetting to log out of their accounts, are being shut out as well (see email below). That is no way to treat your customers. In fact, it shows an utter disdain for how normal people actually use the Web. But it is an understandable, and classic, reaction. Incumbent executives always try to fend off inevitable disruption by blindly protecting their current sources of revenues. I liked Rupert Murdoch’s original idea of tearing down the entire subscription wall much better. Here is the e-mail I received from a paying online subscriber, describing his ordeal with the WSJ.com and a screen shot of what he saw when he was in breach of the multiple login rule. Hopefully, this is an isolated case. Otherwise, the WSJ.com could have a reader revolt on its hands of its own making. (If anyone else has experienced the same thing, please share in comments). I’ve been a paying subscriber of the Wall Street Journal online since 1995. About two weeks ago they made a change so that they allow only one login per account at a time and closing a browser isn’t sufficient, you have to manually logout. If you forget and try to access the site from another browser or machine, they lock your account and make you call in to get it reset. As one who uses many computers and browsers, this is a major change and hassle. They don’t even let you get to the free version without clearing cookies if your account is locked; you just get a nasty message. Furthermore, the unlock process requires long-wait times on the phone and answering lots of questions. I tried email, but no response after 24 hours. I’ve been through this twice now and they insist that they will continue this policy to prevent subscription sharing. Given general trends → Read More
News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch has said that the Wall Street Journal online will retain a paid subscription model, despite months of speculation that the site would go completely free. Although the full details of the plan are not clear, Murdoch said that much more of the site would be offered for free, however “the really special things will still be a subscription service, and, sorry to tell you, probably more expensive.” The decision bucks the recent trend of other subscription services being dropped as online advertising revenue offered a viable economic alternative to paid subscriptions, the biggest switcher being the New York Times in September 2007. (via WSJ) → Read More
In a concession to increased competition from the blogosphere and other newspapers throwing in the towel on paid-subscription walls for online content, the Wall Street Journal is making its opinion pages and commentary free. Does that mean the rest of the paper will soon be free online as well? It is certainly in keeping with new owner Rupert Murdoch’s previous public statements to that effect. But the resistance within the Journal to completely opening up is still strong. Even as part of this announcement, the editors caution, “It’s as close as we’ll get to conceding there is such a thing as a free lunch.” You can read that to mean, don’t expect the rest of the paper to go free anytime soon. And a couple days ago, Henry Blodget made a strong case for why the Journal‘s Website might end up keeping its paid wall: it makes money now ($75 million), it keeps print subscribers paying, and it generates higher online ad rates by attracting a more affluent audience. All good points that have been trotted out by the defenders of print media in the past (i.e., the print media executives who don’t want to give up the lucrative model that they understand for a nebulous one that they don’t). Even so, it is not clear that Murdoch is convinced of these arguments. And his opinion is the only when that counts in this debate. By opening the door a little bit with the opinion pages, the Wall Street Journal will be operating two different business models side by side. You can be sure that if the free portion outperforms the paid portion, there will be a lot of pressure to open up the news sections as well. Interestingly, when the New York Times tried the same bifurcated model it chose to make its news free and its opinion columnists were supposed to be the big draw for the online subscription service. So are people more willing to pay for opinion or for news? The answer is neither. We all know how the Times‘ experiment worked out. It is now completely free. As more and more readers move online, they will expect their news to be free and ad-supported, as it is today on 99 percent of the Web. Even the Wall Street Journal cannot fight market forces and consumer preference forever. → Read More
The News Corp owned The Australian newspaper is to start syndicating content from the Wall Street Journal complete with WSJ branding. According to The Guardian, the deal comes before the finalization of the News Corp takeover of Dow Jones, the Wall Street Journal’s parent company, however may indicate a sign of things to come. The Australian previously syndicated content from the Financial Times (FT.com), a rival to Dow Jones. Content from the Wall Street Journal, and other properties within the Dow Jones company will provide tempting syndication opportunities post takeover. The News Corp owned Fox Business Channel is already quoting heavily from Wall Street Journal sources, and post takeover there is no reason to doubt that the cross promotion opportunities within the News Corp group of companies will be taken full advantage of. I doubt however that we’ll see a MySpace Business News channel…at least in the immediate future. See our previous coverage here. → Read More
News Corp head Rupert Murdoch has said that he was “leaning toward” making the online Wall Street Journal free, but had not yet made a formal decision. The news comes after the New York Times dumped their pay-for-view service Monday. The Wall Street Journal currently charges $99 per year for full access to all content at wsj.com Murdoch rejected criticism that a free wsj.com would hurt the newspaper, saying that making the site available free would help boost viewership and revenue globally… ‘If you make it free, it will hurt the paper’ — I don’t think so,” (via Reuters) → Read More
The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg scored the first review of the Apple TV wireless media streaming device and the big conclusion is that it “work[s] great…” for the average person. In other words, power users may feel that the Apple TV is a little too limited to appeal to them. As a power user, this news saddens me. First, though, the good. The Apple TV was simple to set up and easily interacted with all six of the computers (three PCs and three Macs) Mossberg hooked up to his wireless network. Even though Mossberg is only rocking an 802.11g wireless network (Apple TV supports draft 802.11n), video streaming worked flawlessly. Well, flawlessly to a point, since Apple TV requires a TV with component or HDMI inputs. Essentially, what it does, it does well. Then again, it really doesn’t do all that much. → Read More
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