Classify This!

I am not sure what is the right strategy for classified paper editors. I used to think it was starting a generalist website that was more like Craig than Craig, then eventually building vertical websites based on their most profitable content categories, then build niches from their generalist, then maybe add community features and make Yelp!…

But now I am not sure. But I am still convinced of a number of things

You need to make the largest marketplace, or at least try, especially if you’re a generalist

The content quality has to be a primary factor (photos, videos, information about each item, everything you can to ensure best information per item)

You probably should let private users place ads for free and add as much information per ad as possible so you continue to build content and your private users at large are happy with this free and simple service

You still have to fight for simple interfaces and a very good search, filter and ad placement function

You still have to fight to send organic searches so the quality of leads is the best (SEO focus)

I think ultimately, you have to put yourself in two shoes: the private user and the professional user - and make sure you are capable of making both of them happy and convinced that they and not the other is the primary target you’re trying to satisfy

Billy Holiday, Strange Fruit

Billie Holiday’s youth and adult life where a dramatic account of black womanhood. Her very hard and abused childhood gave way to a drug and alcohol ridden adult life, always sorrounded by abusive men until her early death at 44.

Billie Holiday was recording for Columbia Records in the mid-thirties the first time she heard the lyrics of Strange Fruit, written by Jewish school teacher from the Bronx Abel Meeropol.

Strange Fruit, often performed by her from there on, is a song about the lynchings of African Americans that were taking place all over the Southern US at the time when it was written.

This song is one of the most moving and turbulent of all her repertoire. It manages to put music to the bloody social problem of lynchings and racism in early XXth Century America.

Take some time to see a video with rare footage of Holiday performing this anti-racist song. It should give you something to ponder over: Humanity’s uncanny disposition towards hatred.

Origami in Business & Research

The other day a friend from San Francisco was telling me about his fascination with origami as applied to business. The comment was related rather to the leaness of foldings and to the economy of energy to accomplish a task: something like, you can accomplish a three-dimensional shape by folding a two-dimensional one using the minimum amount of energy (folds). At this time I had not hear of Robert Lang.

Robert Lang works as free-lance paper artist and scientist, implementing what he has learned from his folding experiments in concrete technical applications. Concurrently with the Japanese biochemist Toshiyuki Meguro, Lang discovered in the early 1990’s that each component of an origami figure can be reduced to a basic circular shape.

Origami principles are also used by innovative technology companies to develop new products. The German company Easi Engineering, which works together with almost all of the large European car manufacturers, to pack airbags, folded with the help of origami software, in the steering wheels. Robert Lang was hired as a consultant for the development of solar sails for satellites and fold-able optical lenses for space telescopes.

I find extremely interesting to think of the applications of the origami principles to business management. It could be translated in a desire to simplify and distill management practises to a lean organisational structure. Providing innovation or flexibility and modulation with the least energy and with a goal of optimisation and improvement: to fit in the most efficient form a volume into a limited space; to make it a “killer application” (like in the case of the airbag, a life saver)

Istanbul and The Midnight Kiosk

It’s after midnight on Taksim Square and people are everywhere - this is worse than a busy mid morning hour. So, suddenly, as I muse about the decline of newspaper circulation in the Western World, I see a proto-newspaper stand (The Primal Newspaper Stand, improvised infront of a closed retail store, on a cursory wooden, tablet with legs and lots of clothes pins to hold the press on display…). Hurriyet, Milliyet, Financial Times, International Herald Tribune…

The kiosk is run by a man who still offers yesterday’s editions, even though most retail chains are already selling tomorrow’s. Nonetheless I like this. Like the Russian Babushkas selling on the street, the most primitive of the distribution channels, the single seller on the street side, with probably no license and no stand, adapts to the pulse of the town and opens past midnight. I wonder if he offers discounts for late sales…?

I found this the ultimate speck of modernity incognito ;-)

Classifieds’ Lost Ink

The publisher’s dilemma is still whether to split their on and offline business. As publishers we always supposed that we could leverage our last mile infrastructure, use our direct sales, start bundling off and online products to avoid cannibalization (whatever that means)…

Maybe we need to disassociate our print and online activities and treat them as separate platforms and channels. The multimedia approach is just not always doing the growth for a lot of publishers and in the end we neither have good online products nor a pricing strategy that could allow us to let go of print offer and make aggressive pure online products to bridge the revenue gap.

I have seen some dignified attempts at hybrid products in the classified industry, but for the most part I have seen publishers that were brave in online and separated pure products, which soared. Some of them are doing 80% online EBITDA in countries where Internet penetration is on the 50-65% range. But the issue with doing hybrid products is making them sexy, sexy, sexy… And not only that: in less Internet advanced markets print products derived from vertical online can really add revenue and brand awareness.

Reverse printing

I now have to admit my love for web-to-print projects, especially in markets, where circulation still grows (India, Turkey, Russia…) and there is (not always) a huge gap for vertical, glossy, photo publications… Some markets are ready to truly absorb the multi-media package. But that’s not all, the truly cool thing is they are ready for web-to-print products…

It’s a matter of time - but it could be the case we will see the uprise of print vertical products as a sideline to online business in many emerging markets…

Some questions, though, still remain…

Aggressive online pricing once leadership is attained or not…?

How to make products that bridge the gap of print revenue loss…?

How to manage the print to online pricing conundrum…?