I have the utmost respect for Paul Conley and think he is one of the true class acts in media. It is well-known, however, that he and I disagree on the use of in-text ads … particularly Vibrant Media’s IntelliTXT product. Paul believes that there is no place for these kinds of ads on any reputable web site and his latest post takes Ziff to task because they reinstated in-text ads. He calls for the ABM and ASBPE to cut ties with Ziff and for the editors to, in essence, go on strike in protest. To be sure, Paul has a couple good points. First, it really is ridiculous that Ziff would...

At Penton, I used to moderate an emedia discussion forum on our intranet, “The Loop.” I loved the idea sharing, problem solving, and community that we developed out there. Not only was it incredibly useful, but it was a lot of fun as well. So I’ve decided to launch an emedia discussion forum right here, on eMedia Strategist. I created this forum to help publishers and event producers build their online communities and business. Whether you are in business development, publishing management, sales, editorial production, or technology, this is a place to connect with your peers...

Another post live from the Minday summit. In a session about growing your online audience and Jamie Pallot with CondeNet just dropped a term that is gaining new momentum with online audience development: SMO. What is SMO? Social Media Optimization … getting your content integrated into blogs, forums, social bookmarking sites, video sites (like YouTube), and other social media outlets. So we finally have a good term and another discipline that your audience development team needs to add to their arsenal. First was SEO and SEM, and now SMO.

I’m here at the Minday Summit in New York with a packed room listening to a panel speaking on community development. This is obviously a hot topic for any publisher today. All of the speakers talk about the cool community features they’ve been developing (and many of them are indeed cool). But in both this session and other sessions I’ve heard on the subject, there isn’t much discussion about the revenue side and how to monetize online communities. The big win, of course, is generating large traffic volumes. Gus Venditto with Jupitermedia is on the panel and said that of the...

John Payne with MedTech Publishing forwarded me a note from a reader who was complaining about the number of irritating, flashing, bright-colored ads on his site, Healthcare IT News. John asked a great question about whether these flashing ads were a norm online and if this was more of a rogue comment or a real problem in publishing. With his permission, I have attached an exerpt from my reply to him and a screenshot of this site the reader was talking about. John, overall, the site’s not too bad. There are 12 paid ad positions per page (or 16 depending on how you count it) and that...