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Tag: Henry Blodget

  • Henry Blodget Says that Thinking Twitter was the next Facebook was Absurd

    Henry Blodget Says that Thinking Twitter was the next Facebook was Absurd

    Business Insider founder Henry Blodget says that the idea investors got that Twitter was going to be the next Facebook was absurd. “But I do think that the big problem with Twitter was expectations just got absurdly out of whack a few years ago,” Blodget said. “People thought, oh, it’s the next Facebook. It was always actually this niche product.”

    Henry Blodget, founder, and CEO of BusinessInsider reflected on Twitter during a CNBC interview earlier today:

    Eventually, the size of the user base and the engagement matters a lot because it’s a leading indicator of how much revenue they can generate from it. But I do think that the big problem with Twitter was expectations just got absurdly out of whack a few years ago. People thought, oh, it’s the next Facebook. It was always actually this niche product.

    The good news for Twitter is there’s nothing else that does what it does. If you are into the news it is the best way to follow the news and there is always going to be a segment of the population that is totally into that. Twitter is great for that, so I do think they still have a defensible position.

    They actually have a lot more cleaning up and reducing to do. Twitter is a tough platform, to be honest. It is often unpleasant. I think there are a lot of arguments to make that they would be much better off if they forced folks to go to their real names, where you actually had to comment on your own name. You could do that and see a big reduction. But as long as that core userbase of people who are addicted to it, and there’s still a lot of people there, then I think they do have a good business.

  • Business Insider Hit 15 Million Uniques In May, Praises Aggregation

    In the publishing world, it’s no secret that Business Insider has seen tremendous growth in recent years. Today, co-founder, CEO and Editor-In Chief Henry Blodget announced that the site had 15 million unique monthly visitors in May, and he largely attributes the site’s popularity to news aggregation.

    On Friday, we looked at Compete’s latest numbers for some of the web’s popular business and tech publications. As previously noted, Compete’s numbers are often lower than publishers’ internal analytics, and it had Business Insider at 2,681,606 uniques for the month of May (U.S. Only), compared to 2,239,178 for WebProNews. The 15 million Blodget announced today are presumably global. For perspective, in light of Compete’s data, WebProNews (based on our internal stats) was at 5.2 million for the month.

    It’s interesting to see what Blodget has to say about aggregation. In his post, he writes, “We occasionally hear other media organizations speak ill of aggregation, as though it’s some sort of a bad thing. This has always been mystifying to us. We assume this attitude arose from an era in which big media organizations were like hydrants in the desert–the only place to find news and information.”

    “In the past, publications like ours would have had to hire PR firms to send their articles around and beg other journalists to write about them. Now, thanks to the Internet, you all not only choose to read our posts with no prodding from us, you write about them, link to us, raise awareness of our brand and writers, and make it easy for more readers to find us. And we’re grateful for every mention and link!”

    He’s right. You don’t hear that too often from traditional media publications, some of which have historically been quite defensive about news aggregation.

    It was only a year ago we were reporting that Business insider had surpassed popular social media news site Mashable in Uniques (based on Compete data from that time). As you can see from the Compete list, Business Insider is in the upper tier of business sites, in terms of unique audience. It will be interesting to see if it jumps up further, on a list dominated by sites like CNET, Forbes.com, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and Businessweek.

  • Business Insider to Yahoo: Buy Us and Make Us the CEO

    Business Insider has announced an “offer” for Yahoo.

    CEO Henry Blodget has posted a bare-bones plan with more details promised for “when the time comes” for Yahoo to purchase Business Insider for $150 million then appoint BI acting CEO (he says “us” not “me”) of Yahoo so they can implement their “plan”.

    Publicity stunt? Perhaps. We’ll bite. Should Yahoo?

    @hblodget
    Henry Blodget    Announcing Our Offer For Yahoo! http://t.co/gZZbJSc 44 minutes ago via Business Insider · powered by @socialditto

    @hblodget
    Henry Blodget    Yahoo is a lot more than media RT @jeffjarvis: @hblodget we disagree about whether media’s necessarily a good business 25 minutes ago via TweetDeck · powered by @socialditto

    @hblodget
    Henry Blodget    @EpicureanDeal Nope. Wouldn’t be an advisory relationship. They’d have to buy us and give me line authority (No interest in “advising”) 23 minutes ago via TweetDeck · powered by @socialditto

    @hblodget
    Henry Blodget    @nancefinance Yes, happy to take stock. But didn’t want to limit their flexibility. 3 minutes ago via TweetDeck · powered by @socialditto

    “Given all the private-equity firms circling around Yahoo, we expect we would have little difficulty raising the $20 billion or so we would need to buy Yahoo outright,” Blodget writes. “But we’re busy, and that would take time and be messy. It would also involve paying several hundred million dollars to investment bankers and other “strategic advisors.” And there’s no reason for Yahoo to waste that kind of money.”

    He says BI’s plan will “unlock the value embedded in Yahoo’s clobbered stock, and it will restore compelling organic growth to Yahoo’s core business,” and that it doesn’t necessarily involve BI’s remaining CEO of Yahoo.

    “We live in New York, not California, and this is not a power grab,” he says. “The plan involves our hiring the right CEO, something Yahoo’s board has had a tough time doing over the past 11 years. We think there are only a handful of great candidates who have the combination of talents and experience necessary to succeed in this job. And part of our plan would be to quickly bring the best one of them on board). We’re not going to waste a lot of time putting a book together and hiring advisors to help pitch Yahoo’s board on our offer (we have our own business to run). But if Yahoo! would like to entertain our offer, we would be happy to discuss it.”

    Yahoo, as you may know just fired Carol Bartz as CEO and is looking for a new CEO while Timothy Morse fills in in the interim.