Facebook changes home page to Live Feed and News Feed. Users React.

Facebook has done it again. Made random unsolicited changes without notifying anyone. The home page, which previously showed a filter feed of all your friends’ posts and activities, has become the “News Feed” consisting only of those posts that Facebook thinks you might be interested in. Another link goes to the “Live Feed” page, which is the full feed.

This change, which may seem trivial to you who don’t use Facebook on a regular basis, is quite irritating. Inherently there are two problems. First, Facebook obviously doesn’t know what I’m interested in. In fact, some of the posts I’m most interested in are those that could be determined ‘unpopular’ because they are friends of mine who don’t post on a regular basis. These are the people I really want to keep up with. Second, the home page functionality constantly keeps changing. It just always seems to be in flux, and that can be irritating.

We all appreciate companies that are actively improving their sites and making changes as needed, but there also needs to be some continuity and consistency. When you have 300 million regular users, it’s in your best interest not to make them angry, but that’s exactly what they have done. Again, in what has become a regular occurrence, Facebook users are joining protest groups and complaining loudly.

Facebook needs to find a way of rolling out these changes in a more controlled manner. When you have an app that 300 million people use, you can’t just make changes willy nilly and expect everyone to just go along with it. It’s poor project management, and poor customer service.

RE Facebook Redesign Sees Dead People

Wash Bar banning Greeley Residents

Not sure how I missed this one, but it’s a doozy. Washington’s Sports Bar and Grill – a long time favorite in downtown Fort Collins is banning Greeley residents on Saturday night. This is to solve their gang problems.

Here’s more from 5280

There’s always been tension between Greeley and Fort Collins, highlighting the worst stereotypes. People in Greeley are lower-class cowhands; people in Fort Collins are snooty. And so on. The latest dust-up came when brothers Jason and Shane Jackson of Greeley went for a night on the town in Fort Fun, hitting Washington’s Sports Bar and Grill, according to the Greeley Tribune.

Once at the door, they were turned away by a bouncer, citing problems with gang members from Greeley and Evans. The Jacksons are far from being gang members, but the bouncer made no exceptions, leaving Mike Peters at the Tribune fuming.

According to an article in the Coloradoan the policy is working and the number of fights at the Wash are down.

Is NEWS still a viable business model?

Colorado is an interesting place. It is a large state that consists of one major population center in the Denver-Aurora-Boulder area with about 3 million people. Another 1 million are scattered along the front range from Cheyene to Pueblo. The total front range estimates are 4.1million people, while the total state population is estimated at 4.9 million. 83% of the population is stretched out in 140 mile strip. The rest of the state, by comparison, is empty.

Denver has two major newspapers that basically cover news for the whole state. The Denver Post which has been in existence since 1895 and the Rocky Mountain News who’s first issue was in 1859. These two papers have been the major influence in local news and editorial positions for a 200 mile radius of Denver ever since.

Now, almost 150 years after it’s creation, it looks like the Rocky Mountain News has met it’s demise

The Rocky, Colorado’s oldest newspaper, was put up for sale on Thursday after owner E.W. Scripps Co. said it lost about $11 million on the operation in the first nine months of the year.

Cincinnati-based Scripps said in a news release that if no acceptable offers emerge by mid-January, it will “examine its other options.” It gave no details.

An internal Denver Post memo, authored by publisher Dean Singleton, read in part, “an announced sale is usually the first step leading to a failing newspaper’s closure.”

“Scripps notified MediaNews Group [the owner of the Post] on November 19 that it planned to close the Rocky Mountain News as soon as practical,” the memo said.

I’m not lamenting the loss of the Rocky, honestly I’m not one for major news outlets, and haven’t read either the Rocky or Post in years. What I am interested in is why they are failing. The have a circulation of 210,000/daily and 457,000/weekend and yet they cannot sell adequate advertising to keep the paper going. Why is this?

Boehne says the problem is not getting people to read the paper, it’s that the advertising dollars that aren’t there anymore.

“In the last couple of years it’s gotten tougher. Classified ads have moved from our pages onto our Web site. We still have the classifieds, but it’s not as profitable on the Internet as it is in print,” he said.

Boehne says telling employees at the Rocky the paper doesn’t generate enough costs to support itself was one of the hardest things he had to do.

So classified sales have been hurt, by craigslist I’m sure, as well as their own website, but readership is not the issue?

According to this article Classified advertising currently averages about 28% of a paper’s revenue.

Classified advertising peaked as a percentage of newspaper revenue in the fourth quarter of 1997 at 41.64% vs 28.84% today.

A 13% decrease in overall revenue is going to be tough on anyone. There are two major factors that are going to impact classified advertising. Success and pricing. If items are sold through classifieds they are a success. This is why when promoting classified advertising newspapers will get testimonials like “I sold my mounted and stuffed moosehead in a single day”. This should to translate directly to readership. If people are reading the classifieds, they will buy stuff from there, of course, pricing still has to be low enough that the advertiser can make a profit.

Craigslist has done a great job of creating a high traffic name with low advertising costs (typically free). Everyone goes there, so the chances of success are high – creating an environment where the newspaper can’t compete.

So it looks like classified advertising in print will probably, eventually go away, and newspapers will have to cover nearly half of their annual revenue somewhere else, or they will have to close down like the Rocky Mountain news.

So the ultimate question here is this. Is NEWS still a viable business model? I think most of us would agree that print journalism, when it comes to content, is MUCH better than anything found in mainstream video. If this is the case, why can’t newspapers move to an online format and sell their advertising for enough to cover their costs and make a profit? Do people not value the news? Are there too many news outlets? Are journalists overpaid? What is going to happen once these newspapers go away? Will online content publishers take up the slack?

Will our much touted online revolution into the information age result in the ultimate demise of comprehensive news coverage by multiple sources that we have come to enjoy, leaving us with untalented, overly biased citizen reporters (like me) posting constant nonsense on the Internet?

It’s hard to say…

Stack Overflow and Joel Spolsky’s Fog Creek Software Management Training Program Reading List

I’m a big podcast fan. Originally, I was mostly into music podcasts like the amazing Coverville and the excellent Shifted Sound. Over the last few months I’ve been shifting to speculative fiction podcasts and postcast novels (podiobooks – in spite of my issues with the name). What I haven’t found, until recently, was a good tech podcast. Tech podcasts are either boring, or just fixated on very narrow topics. Stack Overflow is neither.

The legendary Joel Spolsky and the brilliant Jeff Atwood have a great on mic chemistry, and their discussions cover a broad spectrum of tech subjects, from a software, hardware and business perspective.

The most recent podcast discusses the Fog Creek Software Management Training Program Reading List used for management interns at Spolsky’s Fog Creek Software. I have found the reading list to be a great resource for some time, but it is great to hear Joel and Jeff’s opinions on many of the volumes and recommendations on the best ones to read.

If you are in the tech industry, I highly recommend the Stack Overflow podcast, and suggest looking at the reading list. There are some great resources there.

Dell charges for ‘Downgrade’

Dell Inc. will charge customers up to $50 for factory-installed Windows XP on some PCs after Wednesday, according to the company’s Web site.

The amazing floundering that is Microsoft Vista continues. A year and a half after it’s release, the public is still not convinced. Even though XP is scheduled to be pulled from the shelves on June 30th, there is still demand for XP on new computers and Dell is going to charge to meet that demand.

Even though Microsoft is going to stop selling XP licenses, it’s still within the terms of the Vista license to ‘downgrade’ a Vista Business or Vista Ultimate version to the XP Professional version.

Vista was released commercially in January 2007, nearly 17 months ago, but even with the release of Service Pack 1, the OS has not achieved widespread acceptance. In fact, it seems that anti-Vista sentiment is higher than ever. Back in January of this year Infoworld named Vista #2 on a list of all time PC flops, a dubious honor.

If you are in the market for a new PC and wondering if paying $50 for “last year’s technology” is worth it, you might want to take a peek at this tongue in cheek article reviewing an “upgrade” from Windows Vista to Windows XP.

Walmart not interested in video

In what could end up being the corporate blunder of the year, Walmart has blown off the video company that has been taping it’s corporate meetings for the last 30 years.

Flagler Productions Inc., a small video production company, had been taping all of the goings on at Walmart for 30 years based on a verbal contract. In 2006 Walmart decided to dump Flagler for a newer, glitzier production company. There was no written contract concerning the content that had been recorded, so Flagler offered to sell it back to Walmart for $145 million. Walmart countered with an offer of $500,000 because they didn’t think anyone else would be interested in the footage… appearantly they were wrong. Since Walmart wasn’t interested, Flagler is now allowing public access to the archive, for a price.

Now there are videos of Walmart execs in drag on youtube and who knows how much more shennaniganary. Lawyers are climbing all over themselves looking for evidence to use in court cases involving the retail behemoth. This is not only an embarrassment for Walmart, it’s a potentially costly blunder. How could they possibly let someone have this content without making a reasonable attempt at negotiating a purchase?

In a way I feel bad for Walmart, the silly things that went on in their corporate meetings and picnics shouldn’t really qualify as evidence for lawsuits, or be a basis for criticizing a corporate mentality. If they want to have some fun and do something crazy behind closed doors – who cares? Guess they should have ponied up and bought the footage – might have saved them money and headaches in the long run.

SEO value of website directories

If you have viewed any of the links in the margins of this blog, you have probably noticed Greeley Search and Fort Collins Search.

Both of these sites were originally started as website directories for their specific locales. The motivation was to encourage technology use by local businesses and promote spending dollars in the local community rather than on ebay, amazon or any other online retailer.

Lately I’ve been attempting to figure out if there is any value to these sites, and if so, what it is. I haven’t had many local people submit sites to them, it doesn’t seem like my efforts have been appreciated much. My question to you, the reader, is do you think there is any value in sites like these? Do they help organic results in Google? Is there a good way to acquire advertisers? Is there a good, cost effective, way to market them locally?

Let me know what you think.

Band of Horses on Numb3rs

I’m sure many fo you watched Numb3rs last night, not only because it’s an awesome show, but because it was one of the only new things on the TV (stupid Writers Strike).

During the climactic scene of the episode we were once again treated to a great Band of Horses song, The Funeral, in the background. Must be exciting for these guys to get their music used on the prime time TV shows.

Cease to Begin