McGraw-Hill
recently decided to sell Business Week. The buyer is Bloomberg LP but
the future of Business Week is in limbo as are the jobs of all that
work there. The price has not been disclosed but the value
of Business Weeks assets are more than the purchase price. Does
Bloomberg LP view the value appropriately?
First Lets Look at Business Week’s History
Business Week is a global source of essential business insight that
inspires leaders to turn ideas into action. Through content, context,
and collaboration, Business Week moderates global conversations and
moves business professionals forward. Founded in 1929 and published by
the McGraw-Hill Companies, BusinessWeek magazine is the market leader,
with more than 4.7 million readers each week in 140 countries.
BusinessWeek.com (BW.com) was launched on America
Online in December 1994, and on the World Wide Web in August 1996.
BW.com’s B-Schools Channel won a prestigious National Magazine Award in
both 2007 and 2008, for personal service online. BW.com produces much
original journalism, with new stories posted multiple times a day, as
well as a dozen regular podcasts, 28 staff-written blogs, multimedia
slide shows, video reports, and interactive features. BW.com also uses
aggregation and Web 2.0 social media to engage its audience in a deep
and meaningful way.
Business Exchange. In 2008, BusinessWeek launched
the Business Exchange, an innovative online offering that aims to
better serve the evolving information needs of business professionals.
Delivering to a high-income and highly educated audience,
BusinessWeek.com is the preeminent provider of decision-making global
business news, information, and services. The site attracts 9.2 million
monthly users.
The Attraction
Traffic represents attraction of a market which creates engagement of people and things, a transaction.
Google’s whole economic value is fueled by the hits economy, traffic. While most of the major media has “gone social“ Business Week has went the extra mile with Business Exchange and its strategic alliance with LinkedIn.
As we can see by the above chart Facebook’s traffic pattern
demonstrates the highest rate of change compared to Business Week, Wall
Street Journal, Twitter and Business Exchange. Facebook’s market cap is
now over $10 Billion, Twitters is over $1 Billion as is LinkedIn. However, the value of traffic alone doesn’t show the economic value of quality traffic. What will the Price be for Business Week?
It will be interesting to see how Bloomberg LP values Business Week.
It will be even more interesting to see what they do with it. Could
Business Week become the “LinkedIn” of business content by vertical
market? Should Bloomberg LP also buy LinkedIn and merge them with
Business Week to create LinkedIn Business? Business
drives commerce. Commerce is what fuels an economy. Business Week’s
traffic is centric to business markets learning what is influencing
markets and what innovation is on the horizon.
The qualitative value of Business Weeks traffic represents
the economic power that fuels our economy. You can’t say the same for
Facebook or Twitter.
Comparing Old Media vs. New Media
Lets look at Business Weeks initiative called Business Exchange, a portal of blogs added to a taxonomy of business subjects. Now look at the charts illustrating the growth of Business Exchange. Do you see the obvious? Statistically
speaking the growth rate of change for the Business Exchange
represents significant value the quality of the traffic creates.
Rate of change is the factor of conversational currency. A bank makes
money based in the rate of change in interest using other peoples
money. Conversational currency drives a rate of change in interest.
Quality traffic precedes relationships and business transactions follow relationships. Business
Exchange has grown exponentially because of the quality of media
created by business people discussing business issues and not by
useless chatter. The journalist from Business Week and
elsewhere are learning from the Business Exchange model. Learning is
an attraction that pulls markets. Business markets are where
transaction happen. Useless chatter doesn’t create economic
transactions.
John Byrne’s, Editor in Chief of Business Week, and his team
engineered Business Exchange as well as a strategic relationship with
Linkedin. The value of Business Week comes from the quality of
thinking provided by leadership, management and the staff that supports
the enterprise. The quality of Business Week’s content, both on-line
and off-line is what provides markets with insights and knowledge.
The debate over the future of publishing and how to create revenue,
besides advertising, continues. Since content is an influence over
markets maybe a new model will emerge which monetizes information,
influence, ideas, talent and conversations. The actions taken by an
audience as a result of content that is in context to their wants and
needs creates value for a marketplace of consumption. The value of
content consumption has yet been quantified, qualified or monetized.
The future of Business Week will defined by the people who lead and
manage the “social capital” created by what Business Week has done in
the past. Innovation that creates a new economic model for content
consumption will likely come from the markets that consume it and the
people who manage it. Business Week has the right market, the quality
traffic and the right people who can lead it to the next generation. Lets hope that Bloomberg LP sees and understands that it’s the people who create the value. Time will tell.
What’s your opinion?