Prompted by the rumblings of activist hedge funds Harbinger Capital and Firebrand Partners last month, I wrote about the New York Times (NYT) and its evolving technology assets. I found the Times to be surprisingly forward-thinking in its investments in the online world. As a strategic investor, it has made some fairly impressive investments in innovative startups that could solve the riddle of monetizing online news and content. Its investments include bets on blog advertising networks, news aggregation websites, blogging platforms, video sharing sites, job search engines, …

Jesse Stay, my partner in SocialOptimize, just made the big time in terms of exposure. The New York Times (NYT) just referenced the book he co-authored with Jason Alba, I’m on Facebook – Now What?, in one of its career-oriented articles. Jesse’s success as an author of this timely book and a very well-written blog about social networking technology has paid dividends for our business. We have performed no advertising since founding the new media branding and development agency a few months ago, yet we get several …

Since my current work is in new media and social networking, I am keenly interested in the turbulence facing the newspaper industry. Clients, ranging from Fortune 2000 companies to small innovative startups, come to my team at SocialOptimize to gain an understanding of the new media landscape and to develop an actionable strategy for building a meaningful presence in social networks. They ask about their traditional marketing budgets and I tell them that we will see the disappearance of many old model newspaper, radio, and television companies as they struggle …

Advertising Age is reporting that U.S. media employment fell to a 15-year low in December 2007. The major driver behind this slump is the struggling newspaper industry. This is not surprising because nearly everyone is spending more time getting their news on the Internet and less with broadsheets. Exacerbating the losses is the disappearing classifieds business as online alternatives like craigslist, partially owned by eBay (EBAY) offer cheaper and more immediate classifieds solutions. The New York Times (NYT), also known as the Gray Lady to the cognoscenti, recently announced another …

 
Macro

Economic Indicators site to be shut down by U.S. Department of Commerce: Say goodbye to a very useful online resource due to “budgetary constraints” – lame excuse. The cost of administering a good website has diminished drastically. Enlightened government bureaucrats will still collect the data, but they don’t want to share it with private citizens.

William Ackman’s statement before Congress – The State of the Bond Insurance Industry: Interesting reading courtesy of fund manager who presciently shorted the real estate industry before the sub-prime meltdown became the crisis du jour.

Detroit home …

The New York Times (NYT) is reporting that Yahoo’s (YHOO) board plans to reject Microsoft’s (MSFT) $44.6 billion bid, launched about a week ago. This on the heels of an article, titled Yahoo Sale Could be Bad for Minnows, in which the New York Times explored the implications of the potential diminishment of one of the traditional “exit strategies” for entrepreneurial startups. Venture capitalists and startup entrepreneurs have long adhered to a playbook of creating cutting edge technology with the hope of being acquired by the big three of Google …