The CBS Deal

C|Net has been bought by CBS, for $1.8 billion, a 45% premium over its recent stock price.

I mention this because my income today is wholly dependent on C|Net. I write two blogs for their ZDNet unit, Open Source and Healthcare.

I like the work for two reasons.

One, it's fun, I'm really my own boss.

Second, there's a working business model here. The company knows how to monetize traffic, and I get what I take to be a percentage of what I bring in. That means when I make money C|Net makes money. It gives me a warm feeling.

The ability to monetize page views is the big publishing change of this decade. Online publishers have learned how to balance product pitches with user annoyance. Profit responsibility has been pushed down to the shop floor.

Right now this knowledge is exclusive to established publishers. Individual publishers, such as yours truly (on this blog) generally don't have this capability. Systems like Blogads have failed to aggregate traffic, and failed to gain a reasonable per-view fee from advertisers. Google AdWords doesn't provide the per-page oomph small publishers need. And most individual blogs don't get enough page views to make the business model work. Marketing a site remains important.

The key to electronic publishing is maximizing both the per-page take and the audience. It's a balancing act. Under such people as Dan Farber and Larry Dignan, ZDNet has figured this out.

This is like the discovery of fire in a way. We have it. Will CBS take it?

I'm not certain if this is true company-wide. When you run a site (or a print publication) in the traditional way, with salaried personnel covering defined beats, you're taking a bigger risk. The income and outgo may not balance.

The revolution C|Net has created, which I don't know if CBS understands, is the idea that every line journalist is also an entrepreneur, that they are working for themselves as much as the company. I suspect CBS is more interested in C|Net's ad server technology, and perhaps their page count, from which they think they can maximize profits by cutting costs.

That's the wrong way. But we'll see.