Last year, it became clear that Facebook is well on its way to becoming a social operating system underlying our digital lives.  And the enhanced Facebook Open Graph makes that vision a reality. 

The top priority for most magazine executives today seems to be building iPad apps. Yet the user experience of a print magazine is unmatchable: they’re cheap, never out of battery charge, not a target for thieves and they have twice the screen space when spread as an iPad screen. Magazines…

Digital music is now mainstream, thanks in part to the MP3. Will the e-book market be next to produce a one-size-fits-all format—a format that is universally readable, freely sharable, and with a reasonably good reproduction quality? The answer to this question, for at least in the foreseeable future, is: not…

In the wake of Facebook’s F8 mega-event, with its parade of product, feature and platform announcements, I’m struck by the recent major inflection that has social networking penetrating more and more completely into our digital lives.  Indeed, social networking has moved from something that’s a destination activity, to something that…

In the past two weeks… Facebook has revamped its layout and then announced a “timeline” where your living history will be displayed. Just as you are adjusting to the new interface, another is coming. *Google*+ became available to the masses. Huddle, a part of *Google*+, is now a new way…

Geoff Cook is the CEO of the social network myYearbook. He also founded EssayEdge and ResumeEdge, both of which he sold to The Thomson Corp. Last week, myYearbook signed a “definitive agreement” to merge with Quepasa, a publicly traded company. The combination effectively doubles each company’s registered users, monthly active…

Larry Kramer, the author of “C-Scape: Conquer the Forces Changing Business Today”, was founder and former CEO of CBS (NYSE: CBS) Marketwatch.com and the first president of CBS Digital. He sits on the boards of Discovery Communications (NSDQ: DISCA), Inc., American Media Inc., and Freedom Communications, Inc., among others. He…

Victor Wong is CEO of PaperG, an ad-tech company that provides online advertising platforms for local/hyperlocal publishers. Oliver Reichenstein’s “Business Class: Freemium for News?” has kicked off a lot of discussion around new ways to approach monetizing online news by adopting the airline’s business model. The analogy is that airplanes…

Kevin Smokler is the co-founder/CEO of BookTour.com, an Amazon-funded startup which offers affordable software tools for authors. He is based in San Francisco, and can be found on on Twitter at @weegee. There’s a ton of cleanup to do after coming home from a conference—laundry, follow-up emails, business-card filing and…

Bill Grueskin is following The New York Times digital pay plans as the former managing editor of the subscription-based Wall Street Journal Online, where the huge (and mostly free) NTYimes.com was a constant nemesis. He is now academic dean at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.  He got his first…

Kevin Smokler is the co-founder/CEO of BookTour.com, an Amazon-funded startup which offers affordable software tools for authors. He is based in San Francisco, and can be found on on Twitter at @weegee. I can think of almost 20 startups—all with funding—whose primary aim is to improve “book discovery” online, and…

Ashkan Karbasfrooshan is CEO of WatchMojo, a video content producer. He tweets at @ashkan. As my company, WatchMojo, celebrates its fifth year in business, it is interesting to look back at how our distribution and monetization strategy has shifted.

Tien Tzuo is CEO of Zuora, a subscription-billing company based in Silicon Valley. Previously, he was the chief strategy officer and chief marketing officer at Salesforce.com. One of the biggest news stories this past week has been Apple’s plan to offer various forms of content via subscription, as well as…

Evan Rudowski is co-founder of SubHub, a paid content platform. He was previously an online manager at Newsday and business development director at News Corp.‘s iGuide. As I watch the coverage of Rupert Murdoch’s upcoming iPad publication, The Daily, my mind races back to 1995, when I worked on Murdoch’s…

One of the reasons I love my job is there is always something new going on. Given the volume of new business ideas and trends that I have to evaluate on a day-to-day basis, it’s absolutely necessary to be rigorous. For every Google (NSDQ: GOOG), there are a hundred Pets.coms.

Andrew Pancer is COO of the social ad-targeting company Media6Degrees. Prior to that, he was Vice President of Digital Development for the New York Times (NYSE: NYT) and, before that, COO of About.com. Are we all looking in the wrong places for privacy risks? I pulled the following disclaimer from…

The facts for the publishing industry are clear – the vast majority of media outlets are declining in one or more ways. Two years ago, I registered @themediaisdying - a Twitter account through which I tweet links illustrating the industry’s challenges to nearly 25,000 followers. Now, as it enters its…

Matt Shatz is currently Head of Strategic Content Relations for Nokia (NYSE: NOK). Previously, he was Vice President of Digital for Random House. A decade ago, Napster made it clear that the music industry was going digital, forcing record labels to scramble to survive. Today, a similar phenomenon is playing…

Chris Hoerenz is chief marketing officer for the Fox Mobile Group, which was recently acquired by Jesta Group. FMG launched its on-demand mobile video subscription service Bitbop in June. The pricing landscape is shifting in the nascent mobile video market in the U.S. First it was the reduction in price…