A 1950s ranch-style dollhouse went up on eBay today. One of our favorite sellers, momoderne, is opening the bids at $125, or buy it now for $135. It's not entirely modernist (the drapes and bedroom furniture are traditional remnants) but there are many progressive details such as the walls of glass, the built-in woodwork and room divider, the fireplace, and the pedestal chairs.

Update: Thanks to Anne's comment below, we have the original name: Magnetic Doll House by Child Guidance. TimeWarp Toys says it was produced in 1964.

Hope you'll pardon the big fat Picnik logo above. I'm beta testing a new slideshow feature. What do you think? Do you prefer this preview of eBay listings, or is the standard column of static photos (below) better?

If anything sucks more than being the target of an ambitious but delusional gubernatorial candidate who has suddenly developed a bit of a fetish for prostitution, it's being ignored by that candidate. As far as Village Voice sees the world, Craigslist just got a bunch of free press. And they want their share.

When Craigslist management was facing a criminal investigation for listings on the site they did the smart thing. They talked about the law, and they pointed out that the real smut was on other sites that were being ignored by the South Carolina Attorney General. If you really want hard core porn and prostitution, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster pointed out, check out Village Voice's BackPage.com.

That's all body fluids under the bridge now, of course, since a federal judge smacked down McMaster and forbid him from stalking Craigslist management.

But Village Voice is still smarting from those Buckmaster links in that blog post. Yesterday they issued a very official press release titled Village Voice Media to Craigslist CEO Buckmaster: Calm Down, Back Off; There is Nothing Wrong With a Little Competition.

In an email, Village Voice's PR firm accuses Buckmaster of leveraging the legal bind he's in to damage Craigslist's competition.

The real reason for the press release and press outreach, of course, is to get a little bit of the spotlight pointed to backpages, too. Because their official story doesn't make sense.

Backpages has adult ads, lots and lots of them, and they're proud of it: We will continue to exercise our right to accept legal adult postings, they say. All Buckmaster did was link to a whole bunch of them. And since backpages desperately needs the traffic, what they really should be doing is thanking Craigslist, not attacking them.

What we learned today: If you really want to pay for sex, backpages is the place to go.

Full press release is below:

Village Voice Media to Craigslist CEO Buckmaster: Calm Down, Back Off; There is Nothing Wrong With a Little Competition

PHOENIX, May 29 /PRNewswire/ Last Friday, Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist, fired a deliberate, unnecessary and wholly inaccurate shot across the bow of Village Voice Media and backpage.com, our online classified advertising property. Given the serious nature of what Buckmaster inferred in his post about Village Voice Media newspapers and backpage.com, we can't sit on our hands and be silent.

In the original blog post, which was later submarine edited to reword and soften some of the attacks towards Village Voice Media, Buckmaster complained that politicians are attacking Craigslist but not Village Voice Media and other media outlets because they have a need for positive stories and campaign endorsements from those very same newspapers.

Is it possible that writing stories critical of Craigslist's (relatively tame) adult service' section is more career-friendly than attacking their own employer (or journalistic media brethren) for operating a (far more graphic) adult service' section of their own?

Buckmaster and Craigslist are in a tough, and in many ways, frightening situation - they have a number of moralistic state Attorneys General threatening them over their adult ads, and a raft of bad press following the terrible tragedy in Boston that the company is admittedly in no way responsible for. But, the manner in which Buckmaster is responding to this pressure - by disingenuously lashing out at competitors and caving to political pressure - is inexcusable, and displays a remarkable lack of sound judgment.

In 2002, Village Voice Media recognized the forces that were changing the classified advertising market and created backpage.com to answer that challenge. We've put a lot of work into making it the No. 2 free classifieds site in U.S. We're fine with being No. 2, proud in fact. Buckmaster, apparently, is not. Instead of working with his competitors to find a way to solve, or at least mitigate issues surrounding adult ads - the shortcomings of automatic content filters is something we are all trying to fix - Buckmaster simply attempted to take the competition down with him. And, his methods leave much to be desired.

First off, our newspapers don't endorse politicians and rarely have anything nice to say about them, so to say that politicians aren't going after Village Voice Media because they need our endorsement isn't viable. Secondly, Buckmaster is only complaining because a competitor is challenging his economic advantage in the free classified arena - which he built in part on adult ads - and has made him a very wealthy man. His talk of building community and serving his users rings hollow. It now appears that, as is so often the case with New Age entrepreneurs, it's all about the money.

We will continue to exercise our right to accept legal adult postings from our users and concentrate on growing backpage.com. We are aggressively building additional technical solutions as well as increasing our manual site inspections to improve efficiency of removing content that is illegal or otherwise violates our Terms of Use.

About Village Voice Media

Village Voice Media is a collection of 15 weekly newspapers and daily Web sites, including New York's Village Voice, the LA Weekly, Denver's Westword and the Phoenix New Times. Online, in print, and on mobile devices, VVM's products combine music, food and events coverage with gritty, hard-hitting journalism to create the most powerful city guides in each market. While the focus of the brand is local, its free classifieds site backpage.com, partnership with social recommendation engine LikeMe.net and national sales force, Voice Media Group, extend its reach on a national level.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Sonic Solutions Buys Simple Star; Sonic's Roxio to incorporate platform that allows people to turn video clips into shows that are shareable to PCs, TVs and social networks. (VentureBeat)

Comcast iGuide Time Shifts Itself; glitch made guide listings off by two and a half hours for Bay Area channel NBC11, making programmed DVRs useless. (NBC11)

Macrovision Shareholders Approve TVGuide Buyout; the company reportedly will sell off the print and oldteevee assets, but retain the online portion. (paidContent)

Economic Slump Could be Boon for Movie Biz; families that can't afford a vacation could turn to theaters for summertime fun. (The LA Times)

FCC Chair Under Fire; Kevin Martin may be called by Congress to defend his leadership. (The Washington Post)

Motorola and Widevine Sign Reseller Agreement; pact allows Motorola to sell, service and support Widevine's DRM products. (release)

Share This

Here's how it works. Like eBay or any other community shopping market sites, users can buy and sell products. The kicker is: the price, rather than being determined by the seller itself, is determined by a standardized market at Wigix. The service lists market products and has standardized pages for each (saving time and avoiding the seller having to create it for each listing). Then, following the concepts of demand and supply, the price is determined by the number of buyers or the number of sellers a product has. The more the people buy a product, the lower the price gets, and vice-versa.

So in concept, the market decides an equillibrium price for both the buyer and seller, and depending on the particular situation and the price of the product elsewhere, they can decide whether the offer from Wigix is worthy enough. Like most stock markets, the price will more often than not be beneficial to both parties with the equation of time in place (should I sell now or anticipate a higher price and sell later?), which is what makes it work.

The idea, in concept, is needless to say nothing less than brilliant. There's a value proposition for everybody: sellers don't have to spend the time and effort creating product listings and deciding prices, and buyers don't have to look through 10,000 listings and decide which one to bid on and scan through seller ratings. Additionally, the service boasts no listing fees and no fees for items under $25. If you're looking for an alternative to eBay or Amazon, Wigix is a definite contender.

Squidoo has added another lens option to its growing options of aggregation tools, all for the purpose of self-promotion and marketing that the end users can take advantage of. More and more, Squidoo is becoming a place where individual users can establish themselves as authorities for any purpose, with the ability to aggregate content and supporting data, whether it's for an eBay seller's items or a collection of interesting videos.

The latest lens from Squidoo is called Hey MonkeyBrain, and it's intended to be used as an interactive forum for discussions to manifest around particular ideas, statements, theories, etc., somewhat like outquibb and others. Squidoo users can set up their arguments, and others can chime in (without having to register) in order to support or dispel the argument's basis.

While this sounds fun and all, the true value of a MonkeyBrain argument is the supplemental information that can be added to the argument at any time, through various (aggregated) methods. Incorporate links, videos, duels, blurbs, eBay items and more. What this does is not only aggregate data around a given point, but it also enables Squidoo users (and Squidoo itself) to create a circular form of connected activity throughout the sites' various lenses. And there are many ways in which this aggregated content can be utilized.

For one, it can encourage site visitors to take action. Take the Vinyl is better than digital argument that's popular on MonkeyBrain right now. My first thought when seeing this particular argument was who cares? I don't even own a record player and all of my music consumption occurs in a digital manner, whether through my computer, iPod or stereo system. Scroll down on this page, however, and you'll see some eBay listings for purchasing a record player. Clearly someone had thought about this general lack of record players before me, and may have even set up the MonkeyBrain argument with the intention of selling record players.

While this example shows how MonkeyBrain can be used to encourage visitors to take action, it also shows how it can be used for self-promotion. Lastly, given the interactive options of a MonkeyBrain argument, it's also an opportunity to collect a little marketing research and feedback on whatever the topic of discussion may be. The MonkeyBrain lenses will show up on your Squidoo profile, along with your other lenses, giving you one more way in which you can continue to create a mini network around yourself, while still leveraging the Squidoo network at large.

ShareThis

Comcast has entered the world of IPTV, officially launching Fancast today at CES in Las Vegas. Following a soft launch in August, the site now features full-length episodes of many popular TV shows, as well as the existing features the site had for browsing TV listings and purchasing movie tickets through Comcast-owned Fandango.

As for the selection the most important part of any IPTV offering in my humble opinion Fancast isn't bad. There look to be episodes from more than 100 different shows, many of which are currently on the air, such as Heroes, CSI, and Power of Ten. There are also 22 vintage episodes of Miami Vice for you Don Johnson fans, plus 32 episodes of Arrested Development.

The viewing experience features pre-roll advertising, sound controls and the ability to rate the video. At this point, there don't appear to be options for viewing in full-screen mode, or for embedding videos elsewhere. Fancast has also used tagging to help organize videos, for example, being able to see all videos that have been tagged drama or sitcom.

While it is missing a few features of NBC/News Corp competitor Hulu, Comcast's online viewing catalog has the advantage of including shows from all of the networks (minus ABC apparently) plus cable. Then, since it's integrated with Comcast, you can find out where to watch it on television if the episode you want isn't available online. You can also order DVDs via Amazon if that's your preference.

As the company says in a press release issued this morning, Fancast looks to provide an easy way to manage their entertainment experience as the number of viewing choices that are available across platforms continues to grow rapidly. For serious TV addicts, Fancast does appear to be on its way to being an excellent starting point, assuming you're a Comcast subscriber.

In addition to the launch of Fancast, Comcast made several major announcements regarding its cable service. Project Infinity is a plan by the company to exponentially expand Comcast's Video on Demand (VOD) offerings, for which there are already 275 million monthly views. Additionally, Comcast announced an expansion of their HD catalogs for both movies and TV shows.

Share This

Job listings site Monster announced today that it has paid $61M for a young startup called Affinity Labs, which runs a set of websites for niche audiences such as police officers and nurses.

These sites, while only a few months old and attracting a total of only 500,000 unique visitors per month, are attractive to Monster because it can use them to target professionals who are in high demand by employers. The sites are essentially cookie-cutter information portals with social networking features that seek to attract members of particular demographics. Monster has already established a presence on each of the sites by deploying career search badges, like the one below, on their homepages.

A couple things are peculiar about this deal. First, Monster has paid a handsome sum of money for a company that offers neither a large user base nor coveted technological capabilities (as far as I can tell, these are simple CRUD websites built on Ruby on Rails). Second, Monster is retreading very familiar ground by purchasing several informational portals from the same guy, Christopher Michel, who sold them Military.com, an information portal for servicemen, in 2004 for $40M.

In fact, we've heard that this was not a coincidence but rather a repeat performance of sorts that has been planned all along. Affinity Labs was reportedly started in 2006 as a way for Michel to replicate and enhance his success with Military.com by selling a handful of similar sites to Monster within a relatively short period of time (an exit of one to two years). Monster even planned to invest in Affinity Labs before CEO Andrew J. McKelvey stepped down from his post during the company's options backdating scandal in late 2006. Once McKelvey was gone, Monster shied away from investing and Affinity Labs raised its Series A with Mayfield instead. However, Affinity Labs continued to collaborate with the Military.com team within Monster to develop its handful of portals.

With today's announcement, Michel's plan of building a company with a specific Monster exit in mind has come to fruition. Whether Michel stays with the company will probably determine whether or not Monster has paid too much for the sprouting company, as he will be instrumental to their blossoming into established sites that can drive quality traffic to Monster.

The announcement highlights the fact you don't need to build a revolutionary product if you have a well-defined buyer in mind from the start (and it doesn't hurt have a little bit of history with that buyer as well). Affinity Labs didn't build anything worth mention in the tech press, but it quickly executed on a project that it knew would be attractive for Monster given that company's need for reaching professionals in demand. The deal also highlights the weaknesses and needs of a company like Monster, which has a harder time developing internally and will therefore gladly pay for several small startups rather than trying to deploy online destinations itself.

Monster.com

Loading information about Monster.com

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Well, it doesn't hurt to extend your reach if you're hiring, so why not start 2008 by giving Authentic Jobs a try if you haven't already done so in your hunt for talent. You'll reach the best of the best when it comes to modern, standards-aware web design and development.

Use the promo code BEREA08 and you will get a 50% discount if you place your job listing no later than January 15. The discount applies to both full-time and freelance listings, and you still have the money-back guarantee.

Add 456 Berea Street to your Technorati favorites.

Posted in Job openings.

An Advertising Recession?

Another New Ad Medium

Watching the Audience

Information Will Be Free

Since the dawn of the internet, "content wants to be free" has been the rallying cry of digital evangelists. But those who wanted to charge for content could always point to a shining example: the Wall Street Journal, with its 1 million online subscribers and $65 million in digital subscription revenue.

That will all change in 2008. Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. recently completed its $5 billion acquisition of Dow Jones, plans to set WSJ.com free, judging from several fairly unequivocal public pronouncements.

Despite the short-term loss of subscription revenue, "long term, it's kind of a slam dunk," says Mike Vorhaus, managing director at the consulting firm Frank N. Magid Associates. The money that is made from selling ads that reach a much larger audience will more than make up for losses, he adds.

The New York Times had a similar epiphany in September, when it shut down TimesSelect, its premium content service. But business news seemed to be one place where online subscriptions could still be sold successfully.

The Journal's move, however, will change the economics for competitors such as the Financial Times, which also charges a fee. "If the Wall Street Journal goes free, I suspect [FT.com] will also do it," says John Morton, an independent newspaper-industry analyst in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Companies that provide data rather than news may perhaps be more immune to the live-free-or-die fever, but then again, they might not.

ConsumerReports.org has been another success to date; just this month, it signed up its 3 millionth paid subscriber. But Jarvis predicts that free content will triumph eventually in that arena as well.

"Somebody's going to come along and pull a Craigslist on them," says Jarvis, referring to the listings site that has decimated newspapers' classified sections. "It's the kind of data you can get from your fellow customers."

Time to Part Ways?

I think Google has in the works a global strategy so sweeping and audacious that it is breathtaking, but that's for a future column. This week I want to point out where Google is screwing up, why, and what they should do about it.

My first point is small but significant. If you are a resident of the U.S. you may have used a service called free411.com or 1-800free411. It is a simple service that looks up directory listings for free, saving callers fees of a dollar or more per inquiry. You can look up listings online, but most people call the toll-free number. Where free411 makes its money is by forcing users to listen to an ad before they get the number they are looking for. The service is incredibly successful averaging more than 25 million calls per month.

Free411.com has competitors, of course, and the most daunting just appeared on the market from Google - Goog-411. Goog-411 is actually a bit more sophisticated than free411, offering product and service classifications and suggestions, which, of course, also generate more revenue. But for the most part the two services are comparable.

They should be since Google took a long look at investing in or acquiring free411 under a nondisclosure agreement between the two companies, only to abruptly break off discussions and start its own competing service. Is this beginning to sound familiar? This strategy of getting start-ups to explain their business models and share their technologies was practically invented by Microsoft, which would then break off talks, start a competing product or service and use pressure on industry partners to put the smaller company out of business.

Google doesn't have to behave like this. At their current share price they can acquire any company -- and I mean ANY company -- for little or no cost. Killing little free411 after first cozying up to them is mean-spirited and, if Google continues to behave like this in the future, will hurt the company's reputation long-term. Maybe having a good reputation means little to Google, but it should.

It's time to grow up, kids.

Another problem at Google right now is algorithmic optimization gone mad with the probable result that many of Google's smaller AdWords customers will go broke this Christmas. Killing longtime customers is not a good corporate policy.

Before we get to the details of this little nightmare let's first consider the algorithm's religious significance for Google. Larry and Sergey begat PageRank which begat search which begat AdWords which begat AdSense, which begat the Global Google search and advertising empire that has grown too complex to further characterize in a single, strained Biblical analogy. At the heart of each of these programs is an algorithm embodied in a computer program with each algorithm automagically generating for Google billions of dollars per year. Algorithms -- the smarter the better -- are at the heart of Google's success. But Google's major failing nearly always comes down to confusing algorithmic efficiency with moral, ethical, or even business correctness. Sometimes good algorithms do bad things and the tendency at Google is to simply not care: it was the ALGORITHM's fault. But even worse, since algorithms can't be held responsible like the person who wrote or authorized the use of the algorithm ought to be, there is at Google a sense of unaccountability. Stuff happens, they'll say, when algorithms are fluxing toward optimization and producing collateral damage: it's not our fault.

Only it IS Google's fault. More specifically, it is CEO Eric Schmidt's fault when the company hurts its customers then either pretends it didn't or that the offending code was found under a rock somewhere. I have covered instances of this behavior in the past and it isn't how adult companies are supposed to behave.

Google AdWords used to be a simple and stable way for merchants to make money on the Internet. They'd buy search terms on the Google search engine, their ads would be posted near the search results, and one or two percent of searchers would click on those ads resulting in generally a good living for the advertiser. The system was simple, stable, and would run for months or years with little management on the part of the AdWords purchaser.

But recently Google started messing with AdWords, modifying algorithms and launching new programs that make the company look good to Wall Street, which is always seeking at least the appearance of improvement, but not to Google's AdWords customers.

AdWords customers are suffering from useless pages on unused and "parked" domain pages, or static pages simply filled with ads. The owners of these domains use AdSense participation to suck up more than 30 percent of the total AdWords market. This is one Google program working against another. Nerdtv.com is just such a parked page, owned by someone who won't even answer my e-mails and filled with AdSense ads that just sit there with no relevant page content to support them. And "content" is the issue here since AdWords advertisers have the choice of placing their ads on search pages (along the right side) or on content pages (on the top of the Google.com page, but also on other participating sites). But for some reason AdWords advertisers who opt out of doing content ads are still finding their listings on content sites, including parked domains and MySpace pages.

As always, it comes down to the algorithm. Here's what Google has to say: "Depending on the design of the site, a parked domain site will be classified as either a search site or a content site. That means your ads may show on parked domain sites if your campaign is opted in to the search or content networks." So opting out doesn't always opt you out.

Then there is the expansion of Google Broad Match, which seems to be putting local (geo-specific) ads on the results of national searches. This means if you run a bike shop in Charleston, South Carolina and someone hits your keywords on a search in San Francisco, Google may show them your completely irrelevant ad.

Google Personalized Search now uses the terms from previous searches to help fine-tune the next search, which seems good in principle, but if someone searches first on "childcare" then later on "insurance" they are likely to be served ads for insurance for children, which might not interest them at all.

There are other issues like problems with Google Analytics, and the blogosphere, if you know where to look, is full of this stuff (check my links to the right, please). But what's worst is that this is all taking place in the context of a Google customer support system that is effectively broken. They say it isn't broken, but if it takes weeks to get an answer, customer service is broken.

Google's defense, of course, is that the company will make everything right once you prove to them that they made a mistake. But Google is defendant, judge, and jury. And even if they face reality and do the right thing, it may already be too late for smaller advertisers. An algorithmic change by Google can result in AdWords budgets that worked well for years becoming suddenly depleted. All of the advertiser's money is gone, often with little to show for it. Worse still, there is no money left for ads that might generate revenue. Google says it will do the right thing, but doing that six months later has no effect for a merchant five months out of business.

Google appears to simply not understand this. Maybe with so many big jets parked at Moffett Field they've forgotten what it is like to run a business on little capital. Maybe they don't care.

At the heart of this problem is a flawed computer architecture that makes Google's customer service responses so slow. Google likes to pretend that its distributed architecture can handle anything, but that appears not to be the case here. When a change in the way Google does business bumps up the customer service load, the system becomes brittle and breaks. If Google acknowledges the problem, that generates more queries and the bad system gets even worse, so they say nothing. This isn't peculiar to Google, it happens at eBay, too, where they have to very carefully phase in changes for fear that partner reaction will bring down the system.

So Google says it will do the right thing and maybe even intends to do the right thing, but failures in its IT systems effectively keep it from doing the right thing, which brings us back to Microsoft, which has long been the poster child for inability to follow through because of IT failings.

It's not that Google learned this behavior from Microsoft. It may just be an inevitable part of having an IT monopoly.

There, I said the "M" word.