Business Magazines on Twitter and Facebook

In our last About Business posting "Top 5 Social Networks for June 2010", we noted Facebook had more than 400 million members and Twitter more than 80 million. This represents a stunning potential and opportunity for Businesses and business marketing. Business magazines are employing Twitter and Facebook to reach, keep, and expand their audiences.

There currently is no directory listing access to Business Magazines' Twitter and Facebook accounts. In the interest of providing access to these accounts, we have researched and compiled the following listing:

1) Business Week, now called Bloomberg Business Week as of January 2010:
http://twitter.com/bw; www.facebook.com/BloombergBusinessweek

2) Entrepreneur Magazine:
http://twitter.com/entmagazine; www.facebook.com/EntMagazine

3) Financial Times (daily newspaper):
http://twitter.com/financialtimes (At the time of this post could not locate a
Financial Times Facebook page.

4) Forbes Magazine: http://twitter.com/FORBES; www.facebook.com/forbes

5) Fortune Magazine:
http://twitter.com/Fortunemagazine; www.facebook.com/FortuneMagazine

6) Inc Magazine: http://twitter.com/incmagazine; www.facebook.com/Inc

7) Kiplingers Personal Finance: http://twitter.com/Kiplingermedia;

8) New York Times: http://twitter.com/nytimes/business-news
http;//twitter.com/nytimesbusiness; (No Facebook page found at time of this post.)

9) SmartMoney Magazine : http://twitter.com/smartmoney;
www.facebook.com/SmartMoney

10) Wall Street Journal (Daily newspaper; no Sunday): http://twitter.com/wsj;
www.facebook.com/wsjonline

It's worth noting that these are the main twitter and facebook accounts for these publications. Editors and writers of these publications have their own twitter and facebook accounts and some are quite prolific. But these are the official twitter and facebook accounts. They are both promotional, newsy, and afford direct interactions in all the ways of social media. It shows commitment to the social media world and is transforming business media and the way we interact. With facebook a real face is put to these formerly anonymous and distant enterprises. And comments are invited as is participation in development of business ideas and articles.

You may freely subscribe to, follow and befriend these business magazine twitter and facebook accounts. You will be able to keep up to date with business news using these sites. You may easily start your own twitter and facebook accounts as well and have your customers, family and friends follow your business enterprise as part of your overall business plan.

Publications named above are also part of the Berkshire Athenaeum subscription holdings, where we invite you to read them at your leisure.

Risky Business 3: And Then There Were None

In our last post, dated Monday, September 15, we reported that of the 5 major investment banks -- Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Guaranty -- only two, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Guaranty remained operating independently. All others had either gone bankrupt or bailed out and absorbed by large commercial banks.

On Sunday night, September 21, the Federal Reserve allowed Morgan Guaranty and Goldman Sachs to change their status from independent investment banks to commercial bank holding companies. In exchange for this status Morgan Guaranty and Goldman Sachs lost their independent status and must submit to Federal Reserve oversight and regulation. What these two former Investment Banks gained was direct access to the Federal Reserve Discount Window and to loans giving them immediate credit. What this means to the economy remains to be seen. What this means to these giant investment firms is reorganization of their structures and submitting to oversight and government audits.

Hence our title for this post "And Then There Were None" cribbed from the Agatha Christie novel of the same name.

In that last post we also reported on the possible failure of Insurance giant AIG. On Tuesday the Federal Reserve bailed out AIG to the tune of 85 bilion dollars. AIG at that point was taken over and policies protected for the time being. Numerous small businesses and state pension funds were invested in AIG as well as home mortgages. It is the mortgage crisis, known as the subprime mortgage crisis that has precipitated the current crisis.

Then at the end of last week, former Goldman Sachs CEO, Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson, submitted a 700 billion plan, backed by President Bush, to bailout the financial sector of the United States economy! The bailout would allow the Department of the Treasury to purchase all the bad housing debt, mortgage backed securities, that commercial and investment banks hold, take this debt off their balance sheets, and allow them to continue investing and trading. Congress is currently debating this proposal with a self imposed deadline of Friday, September 26, for voting on and passing legislation. Executive pay is at issue as is what stake or benefit, if any, the government would earn from bailing out Wall Street firms and banks who request the assist of this bailout. How taxpayers would benefit from these large infusions of money propping up credit risks.

Is there a reason to panic? Businesses, large and small, depend on credit (loans) to start and continue their businesses, often putting up their properties (homes, etc) as collatoral. Farmers do the same. As Banks limit their lending because of squeezes on their own capital, credit becomes less available to small businesses. So the housing mortgage crisis affects all -- individuals, businesses, local and state governments. As companies and invidividuals fail, fewer taxes are collected by states, forcing budget cutbacks, layoffs, and elimination of programs.

Will the bailout stabilize the economy? Or will it simply bailout Wall Street, if that. That what's being debated right now. Inc Magazine looks at the effects on small business in an article by Patrick Sauer, "Wall Street vs Main Street". Is it sending good money after bad as economic columnist of the New York Times, Paul Krugman, suggests in his September 21 article, "Cash For Trash", The Times also polled the impressions of three economists, one from Duke University, another from the Brookings Institute, the third from the American Enterprise Institute, for their September 22 article, "How Three Economists View a Financial Rescue Plan".

Meanwhile, stock markets are volatile as ever, one day up with great gains, another day down with great losses. So economic balance does not appear on the horizon as yet.

Looking for a book on subprimes. Robert J. Shiller, author of Irrational Exuberance, has just published The Subprime Solution: How Today's Global Financial Crisis Happened and What To Do About It available in public libraries. On the previous bailout of Savings and Loans in the 1980s, see Michael A. Robinson's Overdrawn: The Bailout of American Savings, and Bailout: An Insider's Account of Bank Failures and Rescues, also available at public libraries.

The future? To be continued!

Most Powerful Business Web Sites

What are the most powerful Business Web Sites?

Crain Publishing's Business to Business Marketing Magazine answers this question annually in its special reports on Media Power. Media Power 2008 was released in May and names 50 industry leading web sites. A wide variety of criteria are used, including ad revenue, number of views, length of time spent on sites by users, paid circulation ( if applicable), ad rates, and multiple surveys. The audience for these reports are ad agencies, corporate marketers, anyone engaged in concerted ad campaigns. Audience tracking companies, such as Nielsen, are not only involved in tracking television but also Internet web sites and their impact. So Business to Business Magazine pools all this information to come up with its ratings.

Here's who made the list of top Business Internet sites in alphabetical order: www.allbusiness.com, www.business.com, www.cnetnetworks.com, www.cnnmoney.com, www.entrepreneur.com, www.forbes.com, www.google.com, www.infoworld.com, www.msn.com, www.nytimes.com, www.techtarget.com, www.thomasnet.com, www.wsj.com, and www.yahoo.com. Click on the highlighted "list of top Business Internet sites" and highlighted web addresses for detailed reports. The Wall Street Journal held the number 1 position closely followed by Google. The list shows the continuing shift from print media to online electronic media and the trend towards incorporating interactive social networking.

For the print media the most powerful General Business Magazines were Barron's, Business Week, CFO ( Chief Financial Officer ), Conde Nast Portfolio, The Economist, Fast Company, Forbes, Fortune, and Inc Magazines. While each of these magazines is in fact a print magazine available on newstands and libraries such as ours, each has an active online presence and vast additional online resources at their sites. Click on the magazine names to visit their sites.

Business to Business Magazine also rates business newspapers. Most powerful outlets for 2008 are The Financial Times, Investors Business Daily, The New York Times. USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal. Click on "business newspapers" for the special report. Visit the websites of the newspapers by clicking on the name of the paper. Each of these newspapers with the exception of the Wall Street Journal has considerable content available free on their websites. Last year the New York Times made their entire site free. The special report shows considerable revenue gains for the Times' online edition so it appears their "free" strategy has reaped rewards. Other newspapers are likely to follow their lead.

In the coming weeks we will explore the business resources of many of these magazines and what they offer to small businesses and to the interested reader. Meanwhile nearly all of these most powerful business magazines and newspapers can be read at the Berkshire Athenaeum where you can freely bring yourself up to date and follow your interest.

The Search Engine Wars ( In the News )

It's not often that a brand new search engine enters the fray against the super search giant Google. But that's what happened Monday, July 28, with the birth and arrival of Cuil (pronounced Cool ), the newest and, according to them, the largest search engine on the internet. Cuil indexes 122 billion web pages; at least that's their goal.

The awkwardly named Cuil is gaelic for knowledge according to founders Tom Costello and Anna Patterson. Cuil is a new business start up funded at the 33 million dollar level mostly by venture capital from Madrone Capital, Tugboat Ventures and Greylock Partners. The founders and their chief associates are all veterans of the search engine wars, having worked on Google's major search indexes, Ebay search, AltaVista and AltaVista's Babelfish ( their translation engine ). The founders believe their contribution to search is a focus on relevance and comprehensive content and not simply page counts. They argue their search results will be more meaningful to users. So far, that remains to be seen.

Announcements of Cuil and its taking on of Google heightened expectations of all trying to use Cuil Monday. Birth of the site was not without considerable pain. The site stalled, often froze, and when results were returned they were often irrelevant and sometimes even bizarre; hardly a notable beginning for a major search engine. The initial response was overwhelming. There were an estimated 50 million hits the first day. Servers had to be upgraded right away to accept the traffic. Inc Magazine staff blogger, Jason Del Rey, reported that a search for "Inc Magazine" could not find its web site ("site not found"). By the time of this posting Inc Magazine returns the correct results, although there are still problems; many of the results are not relevant.

Search results still leave a lot to be desired. We tried searching "fannie mae", knowing that Congress and the President had signed new legislation ostensibly propping up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Cuil's "relevancy" search only returned the Fannie Mae home page, but no news about Fannie Mae or the crisis it was undergoing on a daily basis in the stock market, housing market, or in Congress. Indeed, the results were the "public" face of Fannie Mae on which there was little or no news about what it was going through. In other words if you wanted to know "about Fannie Mae" and its context and problems, you could not find that through Cuil. Hence no knowledge! A Google search on "fannie mae" returned in depth information about the company and what was happening to it. So much for Cuil's "comprehensive" search capacity.

Google has not become the gold standard of search by sitting on its laurels. Throughout the years it has put considerable effort into bettering and expanding its search capacity. But Cuil has identified vulnerability in Google and its data collection sometimes invasive approach. For example Cuil guarantees a non invasive privacy policy, focusing on the search not the searcher. But it will have to get much better in returning relevant search results before it can be considered a first rate contender with Google. Right now it can't be considered a first stop for search. It is a start up with lots of growing pains to be gotten through quickly if it is to be a contender. Beyond search it will have to work on its business model to develop a strong revenue base. Cuil has much talent and promise. It will be worth watching as will be Google's response.

For books on Google and its significance see David A Vise's The Google Story, John Battelle's The Search: How Google and its rivals rewrote the rules of business and transformed our culture, and Building Your Business With Google For Dummies by Brad Hill, all available at the Berkshire Athenaeum or your local library.