paidContent Disrupts Business Media, Today in Silicon Alley!
While the tech blogosphere wrings their who needs Silicon Alley hands today–falling prey to New York Magazine’s John Heilemann self-depreceating “Web Bubble 2.0“–, a Silicon Valley blogger phenomenon, Rafat Ali, made Web 2.0 hay today, IN SILICON ALLEY! And, I had the pleasure of enjoying a front row seat for the entire new media New York City extravanganza!
“The Future of Business Media” is what Ali’s paidContent promised to present at its innaugural NYC conference, and the Ali team delivered, big time.
In Ali’s own words: “We’ll have about 500 people attending this rare chance to see the top executives who lead business publications, blogs and TV networks and more discussing the core issues for the industry from every angle.”
Which “top executives” exactly? Peter Horan, CEO, IAC Media & Advertising, Neil Cavuto, SVP, Fox Business Network, Alan Meckler, CEO, Meckler Media…among many, many others.
BUT, what about paidContent itself?
L.Gordon Crovitz prefaced his talk with Ali about “The Latest From Dow Jones” by noting paidContent has graduated to the Waldorf Astoria.
In fact, while Ali and paidContent’s Staci Kramer moderated all panels in their roles as hosts, by virtue of actually being the host of the high-quality, high-end conference, paidContent illustrates the significant role it is playing in helping set how the future of business media will really play out.
The blogs vs. mainstream media (or vice versa) media battle often reverts to a page view smackdown, today’s “Technology Business Media” panel case in point. CNET CEO Neil Ashe threw down the page view gauntlet once again, with a now familiar CNET trumps blogs refrain, just look at our traffic and page views, after all!
While others in the blogging community have anointed themselves as CNET competitors, the reality is that CNET is 20 to 50 times the size of any of those. CNET added more users in a month than the audience Engadget and Gizmodo combined have in total. So we have a major perception and reality gap between what is actually going on and what people attempt to benefit from saying what’s going on. The practical reality is that CNET is materially bigger than anyone who claims to be competing with us, and as a result, materially more effective.
Nevertheless, CNET’s mine is bigger than yours call to arms is a short-sighted one. For example, among the diverse companies represented on the panel along with CNET, Ashe’s charge was the sole company to NOT tout a play in the lucrative and burgeoning events/conference market.
Disruption moral of the story? The CEO of publicly-traded CNET was summoned by the tiny Ali-fueled blogging startup that could to ponder “The Future of Business Media,” under the direction of paidContent!
Postscript: I asked a very fatigued Rafat Ali during the Waldorf Astoria post conference reception to opine on Silicon Alley vs. Silicon Valley conference audiences. In short, if Ali could have his way, he would be my Silicon Alley neighbor, in a New York minute!
Congratulations, paidContent!