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In the early days of the Internet Amazon looked like the underdog when it matched up against big box book sellers like Barnes and Noble.  Now, targeting the smaller niche of eBooks, the roles are reversed as Barnes and Noble will look to match Amazon’s technological strengths with a new entry into the eBook marketplace.

Barnes and Noble (BN) said Monday its new eBook store will stock as many as 700,000 titles including new releases priced at $9.99.  BN is calling it the world’s largest eBook store, surpassing both Amazon and Sony, though that claim may be misleading given the inclusion of as many as 500,000 free titles offered in partnership with Google’s Book Search.  (Sony is also partnered with Google)

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If there is any one question essential to a corporate turn-around it’s: “who are we?”  If a company’s management can’t answer that, there’s no place to go. A company without a clear identity, a place with only a muddled mission or an abstract sense of direction, is a company with no chance to get back on course.

At MySpace, where things are in dire need of refreshment, new chief Owen Van Natta is asking exactly that question, and he’s bringing in more new staff to help sort it out.

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Google’s been accused of many things but having slight ambitions isn’t one of them.  From the company’s stated mission, to its search efforts, from book search to Android, the company always aims high.  Google’s latest plans stick with the formula.

Following an increasingly popular trend of pre-announcing potentially big news, the company announced today on the Google blog that their Chrome web browser will have a new cousin in 2010: Chrome the Operating System.

Unabashedly sighting in on Microsoft and its next generation Windows incarnation, Google says people want to get their email in an instant, they want computers to run as fast when they’re a year old as when they were first bought.  They want more for less.  More accessibility, more speed and less maintenance.  Google thinks it can deliver that.  Click to Read More

The printers are probably still warm from running off copies of last week’s announcement he was stepping down as the CEO of Joost, but former Cisco star Mike Volpi is wasting no time updating his resume.  Not a week removed and he’s already on to his next venture, literally.

Index Ventures (which is an investor in Joost) announced Monday that Mike will join their London office as a venture partner. 

While a new entrant to the VC world, Volpi is anything but inexperienced when it comes to evaluating companies.  The former Cisco Chief Strategy Officer oversaw a business development team that acquired more than 75 companies during his thirteen year stint at the networking equipment maker.

At Index, Volpi will focus on familiar territory: Telecom and Networking startups.  He’ll also try his hand at picking future stars from the Media and Internet sectors.

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If at first you don’t succeed, try try again.  But if “Plan B” doesn’t work either? Then what? Do you call it a cautionary tale? Chalk it up to the nature of the game? Or do you try a new course yet again?  For the once high flying internet video startup, Joost, which has been spiraling toward trouble, it’s door number three.

On Tuesday, the company announced in a corporate blog that it will restructure its business model to incorporate a white-label service aimed at providing video distribution technology. (The video site will remain but no longer be the company’s singular focus).

Joost cited the economy as a key factor in its decision.  On the company blog, CEO Mike Volpi wrote that it had become “increasingly challenging to operate as an independent, ad-supported online video platform…. We have built a solid technology platform that there is demand for in the marketplace, and look forward to this new chapter for our company. At the same time, we’ll continue to operate Joost.com and its associated video applications.”

While the challenges of earning a living off advertising had to figure into the calculus to shift focus, Joost’s problems run deeper and have been apparent for a long time. Simply put: the company’s service never matched up to the demands and behaviors of the consumer marketplace.  Timing, programming, and concept never fully came together.

Cycle back the calendar to May 2007 and Joost was a hot, hyped peer to peer video platform still in an invitation only beta.  The founders were coming off of huge success in the creation and sale of Skype. Click to Read More

Log in to Netflix and rate a movie you watched on a scale of one to five and Netflix’ computers will try to suggest other titles you’re likely to rank the same way.  This algorithmic pairing process has been marketed as a key differentiator between Netflix movie rental service and that of competitors.  It’s been touted as an achievement. 

For two and a half years, Netflix challenged the public to try and create a better mousetrap.   A million dollar prize was dangled as bait for the first person (or team) to create a program capable of beating Netflix’ Cinematch algorithm by a margin of ten percent or better.   Nobody succeeded.  Developers inched close but couldn’t quite hit the mark. Seven percent, eight percent, nine…but not ten.  The so called "Netflix Prize" went unclaimed. Until now, that is.

On Friday, a group created from a combination of four independent teams that had been vying for the prize submitted a solution that they claim resulted in a 10.05% improvement over Netflix’ Cinematch ranking algorithm.

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As newspapers continue their efforts to squeeze out revenue from their online properties, one of the questions editors are asking is what differentiation they should have between print and dot com.  Some argue that online being free; print should offer something special to add value to those paying for delivery.  Others counter that the Internet is the industry’s future and to be out in front requires putting richer content there – online where there are no page space restrictions and a bigger audience to capture.

In late May and early June, the Washington posted irked some readers and fired up the debate by taking a course seemingly supportive of door number two.   On May 31st and June 1st, the paper ran a large two part investigative report on an unsolved Washington, D.C. murder mystery.  The story was published only online leaving some print readers frustrated and others unaware they’d even missed a story until they saw the backlash.

In the weeks since passed, the paper has been criticized by some and lauded by others for its choice. The decision’s been justified by the scope of the article and its size (its narrow subject and long length argued to be ill suited for print), and castigated for the same reasons.  

Newspapers are fighting in an increasingly competitive online global arena and it’s clear there is no easy answer for how to succeed.  There’s so much information beamed at audiences.  To stand out from the volume (below cost and consistently) is a difficult task.  It doesn’t take much more than a passing glance at a newspaper’s financial statements to see that.  But new Nielsen data seems to add even more color to how complex the marketplace has become, and for that matter, how difficult the editorial decisions are that editors face.   

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