Footnoted also posts its "worst footnote of the year" each year - for 2009, the "winner" was Chesapeake Energy (NYSE:CHK) which spent more than $12 million to purchase its CEO's antique map collection.

Last year, Footnoted introduced Footnoted Pro, a service geared towards hedge funds and institutional investors.

Congratulations to Footnoted.org founder Michelle Leder, who has tirelessly read through more filings in the past seven years than most analysts do in a lifetime. Following the acquisition, Michelle will continue to run Footnoted under its new parent.

Update: Some insights from Michelle on the acquisition, posted at Footnoted.org.

Attend any conference and you’re bound to hear some truthiness – those concepts that the pundits believe to be true and repeat often, yet have little or no basis in fact.

This week’s SIIA Information Industry Summit was an excellent event, but there was a certain level of truthiness that I wanted to point out. Here are the examples that jumped out at me – I welcome in the comments examples you’ve heard there or elsewhere.

Truthiness #1

Those “25 and under” employees turn to Google, while those over 25 in the workforce use Factiva, LexisNexis or other "professional information" sources.

This was probably an accurate statement in 2000, but ten years later, it’s a crock. Do you know which of your customers turn to Google first? ALL OF THEM (with the possible exception of the corporate librarians). When users think of finding information, they think of Google. They’re not thinking of Factiva nor LexisNexis (nor Bing for that matter). And that applies to your 30-year old customers, 40-year old customers and 50-year old customers.  If you want to argue that those in the 55-65 age group are not active Google users, you might have an argument, but you probably can’t build your business around them.

Sure, there are differences between “digital natives” and those who grew up offline. But it’s not in the area of search. The differences are more around things like email. I know 19-year-olds who have Blackberries but never use email. To them, the Blackberry is simply a good keyboard to use for messaging.

Truthiness #2

All newspapers are basically the same; a model that works for one should work for another.

This one has been tossed around heavily in recent months, as newspapers explore the possibility of moving their content behind the pay wall. Pundits typically take one of two positions: those in favor of paywalls say “it’s working for the FT and the WSJ, so it can work for others”; while those opposed to paywalls say “it failed for NY Times Select, so it can’t work for anyone”.

But, not all newspapers are created equally.

First, the obvious example (and thank you, Gaby Darbyshire of Gawker for being one of the few to “get” this) – the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times are business newspapers. A large proportion of their subscriptions are paid for by corporations or are expensed by employees. Unlike most newspapers, these are a b2b purchase.

On the opposite side is the TimesSelect example. Yes, TimesSelect failed. But that doesn’t mean that every subsequent effort by the NY Times or others will also fail. Looking at the ideas floated by the New York Times, you can see they’ve learned a lot since then. They welcome the search engine traffic and plan to use a metered system so that only heavy users will pay. Will this work? I remain skeptical, but the concepts do have merit. Of course, it’s also important to keep in mind what the goals are. I don’t think the Times sees paywalls as a means to gain huge new subscription revenue. Instead, it seems like it will be an effort to slow down the attrition rate of their current print subscribers. If they are smart in the way they implement this, they could achieve that goal without losing much of the other traffic they desire.

The key takeaway here is that each newspaper is different. You need to look at the specifics of each property to understand what their drivers are. A good example of this was the news this week that Newsday, since launching its paywall 3 months ago, has only attracted 35 paid subscribers to the online-only version. That is a laughable sum, especially since the systems to support the paywall cost an estimated $1M plus, but it helps to first look at Newsday’s goals. Newsday is owned by Cablevision, which is facing fierce competition in its core Long Island market from Verizon Fios. Newsday granted free online access to Cablevision subscribers. So, as much as this is a defensive move for Newsday, I think it may be moreso a defensive position to help Cablevision retain its customers, as it increases the switching costs.

Truthiness #3

We’re impressed by your access to corporate leaders.

Ok, this one’s not really a truthiness issue, but it’s an annoyance that comes up at every event.

At an early age, we’re all taught that no one likes name droppers. Yet some pundits still feel obligated to give example after example that demonstrate little other than the fact that they had access to some corporate leader.

Now, if you tell me you dated Scarlett Johansen, played ball against LeBron James or jammed with Bono, I might be impressed. But corporate executives are not rock stars (no, not even Steve Jobs) and we don’t need to hear about the 10^th time you interviewed Alex or gave a (virtual) footrub to Mark. We just don’t care.

The fact that you have access to industry leaders is only of interest to me to the extent that you can share insights about their strategy or their success. If you provide no insights beyond what us “outsider” already know, you’re just a name-dropper. And I think your mama taught you not to act that way.

What bugs you about the pundits? Drop me a note in the comments.

Last night, the Content division of the Software & Information Industry Association held its annual CODiE Awards presentation. While the CODiEs had previously been awarded in the spring (in conjunction with the SIIA Software and Education divisions), this year the event was moved forward to align with the annual Information Industry Summit.

The CODiEs are awarded in fifteen categories. There were more than 100 products nominated, by more than 65 companies.  Nominees are screened by a team of judges, who rate each product based on category-specific criteria. Finalists are named and the SIIA membership votes to select the final winners of each category.

The full list of winners is posted on the SIIA CODiE site; I'd like to note a few innovators here.

• Dow Jones Investment Banker won a CODiE in the Best Online Professional Financial Information Service category.
• The Best Video Content Aggregation Service was awarded to Reuters Insider
• HR.BLR.com was selected Best Online Government Information Service
• Collexis Reviewer Finder won for Best Solution Integrating Content into Workflow

And, without appearing too self-serving, I'd note that Alacra Pulse was awarded two CODiEs, one for Best Online Business Information Service and another for Best Online News Service. Alacra was one of only two companies to take home "matching bookends" (Dow Jones being the other).

Congratulations to all the winners.

Here are a few photos from the awards dinner.

Newsonomics author and Outsell analyst Ken Doctor provided the Wednesday morning keynote at the SIIA Information Industry Summit.

Ken looked forward five years to 2015 to discuss what we might see. He's created his Laws of Newsonomics, including:

• Make it Social (Social, Mobile & Video are coming together - the new Trifecta. How publishers bring these three together will dictate their success.)
• The "digital dozen" will dominate: a dozen or so multinational, multi-platform media companies will dominate global news and information. The focus for these companies will be scale - in order to reach their share of the 900 million English language speaking people in this world.
  
• Aggregation: the aggregators will get disaggregated, then re-aggregated. For example, AOL (NASD: AOL) is launching its new TV product (4th effort), where it will license content from Disney, CBS, etc, then compete with the cable companies. Similarly, Google has launched the Nexus One in an effort to compete with duopoly of Verizon (NYSE: VZ) and AT&T (NYSE: T)
  
• Analytics-driven content is thriving. AOL, working with Seed.com now has 5,000+ writers who monitor search activity, then quickly create content based upon trending searches. The wall between editorial and publisher has come down. Example of Examiner.com, who have "hired" 25,000 writers who are paid $2-5 per post, and are now a top-30 website, in terms of traffic. They use a "pyramid' system, under which "examiners" are paid a referral fee to bring on other examiners and to bring on advertising sponsors.
  

Newsonomics will be available February 2. I will post a review shortly.

The digital dozen, as they stand

Less than five years after launching (and 3 years after shuttering) TimesSelect, it appears the New York Times (NYSE: NYT) is about to return with another paid offering.

At its peak, TimesSelect attracted roughly 750,000 subscribers, with nearly 2/3 of those being print subscribers and fewer than 250,000 online-only subs.

When it shut down TimesSelect, the Times expected to easily replace the lost revenue with the advertising revenue to be gained by allowing Google and others to index its archives. Of course, that was based upon the world of online advertising in 2007, not that of 2010.

 So, what can we expect this time around?

Rather than a solid pay wall, the rumours are that it will be an FT-like metered approach, where users can access a page without charge, but as their page views increase, they will need to subscribe.  That approach makes more sense, as it allows all of the content to be spidered and indexed by the search engines, continuing to drive traffic.

It will be interesting to see where the Times sets the bar for free/paid access. The FT has lowered the bar a few times. It initially allowed 30 page views per month to registered users and 3 to unregistered guests. Now, that’s down to around 10 pages for registered users and 1 page for guests. But I don’t think that the Times is prepared to dramatically shrink its audience to a fraction of where it is today. I could see them allowing 50-80 page views per month before requiring users to pay. The goal will be to convert those who read the paper online each day, not those who read an occasional article.

Another big difference I expect we’ll see from the TimesSelect days is with the editorial pages. With TimesSelect, editorials were only available to paid readers. That was the exact opposite approach to that of the WSJ, where editorial opinion was one of the few open sections of the site. The NY Times wants its political opinion to be heard and shared, while its editorial page writers want to reach the widest audience possible I would expect editorial pages to remain open and not subject to page view counts.

Breaking news is another area likely to remain open. It’s hard to be the primary news authority if no one can read your news. So, I think that breaking news will remain open in the same way that the WSJ does it today. I can’t imagine the Times ceding their position on breaking news to CNN. Breaking news will remain free.

So, what will drive usage of paid content? I think they will focus on some of the pieces that makes the Times unique – the Book Review, Times Magazine, political coverage (non-breaking) and other content to convince users to pay. This announcement is being done in conjunction with the Apple Tablet release, so I’d expect access on the Tablet to be fee-based, just as it is on the Kindle. I think we’ll see the iPhone app require a subscription as well.

I think the Times will bundle its electronic offering, so one subscription will allow for access on all devices. I assume that print subscribers will gain access to this package as part of their subscription as well.

In terms of price point, I would expect them to charge somewhere around $79-99 per year (current Kindle-only subscription is roughly $150, which I think is a bit steep).

Will it work?

I remain a skeptic until someone proves they can get consumers to pay for news (and the FT and WSJ subscribers are largely b2b, not consumers)

I see them getting back to the level of 250,000 or maybe even 500,000 online-only subscribers at a $99 price point. And there’s no doubt that page views will drop. Would $25-50M in revenue make that worthwhile? Maybe, though as the advertising market strengthens, they will miss having the larger audience.

But the newspaper industry today is in free-fall and we can’t blame the Times for experimenting. Let’s hope they’ve learned from their TimesSelect experience and come up with a model that works.

There’s no “Dummies Guide” for bailout recipients, but at some point there will be a few interesting HBS case studies in how poorly banks handled the public relations aspects of the bailout. I find it amazing at how tone-deaf the leaders at these major financial institutions can be.

The latest response is their shock that the Administration might look to assess financial institutions with a risk-based tax in an effort to recover more of the TARP payments. The banks argue that they’ve repaid their TARP bailout with interest, so why should the government come back for more?

What the banks do not seem to understand is that the bailout was not simply another financial transaction. Without those bailouts, many of these financial institutions would simply not exist.  It’s not enough to simply repay the bailout loans then return to your old ways.

Whether or not they truly feel grateful for the lifeline, leaders at these financial institutions should express gratitude. I also think they should put their arrogance in check. I can only speak for myself in saying that destroying tens of billions of dollars in shareholder value would be a humbling experience.

How might the banks have handled the situation better? Here’s a start:

1. Show up in Washington when you are beckoned by the President. It’s pretty pathetic when you make auto CEOs on private jets look like the “good guys”.
2. Take a serious look at your core business. Have some of the “best and brightest” at your firm focus on how you can return to making small business loans and helping homeowners restructure their mortgage. I’m not suggesting a permanent change in your business, but perhaps diverting a bit of your focus in the short-term away from proprietary trading.
3. Take an honest look at your compensation policies to ensure you are rewarding behavior that is in line with long-term shareholder value. Yes, it’s possible you might lose a handful of superstars, but you’ll survive. Remember that the bonuses paid by Lehman and Bear this month will be zero. That could have been you, had the taxpayer not stepped in.
4. Stop thinking that you’re a master of the universe. Take a look in the mirror. Remember that you and your peers destroyed more shareholder value than anyone in our history. You built a business driven by factors you barely understood and could not control. Look in the mirror again. Still impressed?

Great post from Cory Doctorow on the sustainability of social media. Overall post is great, but this quote is priceless:

Only ancient, clueless dinosaurs like Rupert Murdoch are dumb enough to pay hundreds of millions for social media companies with the belief that they will grow to be immortal giants. Only lazy, fat media execs from firms that endured for decades without having to remake themselves from top to bottom think that a complete turnover in the corporate landscape is a failure.

(would have just tweeted this but it deserved to be displayed in its entirety)

Alacra and ALM Legal Intelligence are partnering to bring Alacra Pulse to law firms.

Financial institutions and professional service organizations have been using Alacra Pulse for idea generation and current awareness since its launch last year. The partnership with ALM will allow us to reach the legal market, where the business development needs are very similar.

ALM Pulse reads and analyzes stories from more than 3,000 traditional and alternative media sources, identifying key events such as M&A rumors, bankruptcies, comments by financial and industry analysts, law firm representation of clients and other impactful events. The results are delivered as daily alerts to users and through the ALM Pulse website.

ALM Pulse includes all the current Pulse events:

• Street Pulse (analyst comments on companies)
• Deal Pulse (M&A rumours, deals and deal ideas)
• Legal Pulse (law firm mentions, legal representation)
• Weak Pulse (bankruptcies, reorgs & restructurings)
• Chief Pulse (comments by senior corporate executives)

The ALM partnership furthers Alacra's goal of partnering with segment leaders to reach markets where we don't participate directly. This is the second Pulse partnership to-date, the first being our partnering with Fidelity to include Alacra Street Pulse in their new Stock Research Center.

For more information on ALM Pulse, visit http://pulse.law.com/info or contact almlegalintel@alm.com.

Yesterday’s announcement by Google (NASD: GOOG) of the Nexus One phone dominated the Twittersphere. Some tech blogs immediately anointed it as the successor to the iPhone while Apple fanboys dismissed it for lacking key features like multitouch.

So, how will the smart phone (or superphone) wars shake out? It’s too early to tell, but here’s how I read it:

For now, the iPhone provides the better user experience. It offers proven technology, a vast app store and still has the cache of a status symbol. The Nexus One will appeal to early adopters along with those who’ve held off on buying the iPhone because they didn’t want to use AT&T. To some extent, it will be the audience who at least considered buying a Palm Pre last year.

Already, the Nexus One may be the better web browsing device, though the lack of multi-touch “pinch” will be a drawback to those over 40 whose eyesight is not what it once was (speaking from experience here). And Google has already promised full Flash support later this year.

In the coming months, things will get interesting. Apple’s edge in Apps will diminish, as successful app developers will launch Android versions for this growing base of users. Over time, developers frustrated by the iPhone’s controlled app environment may embrace Google as their primary mobile platform. But, with openness comes the challenge of app overload. Apple can tout the curation process as a benefit of their App store.

In terms of features, I’d expect Apple and Google to leapfrog one another in the coming years, which should benefit users of either platform. Apple may finally have to embrace (and license) Flash and offer removable batteries, for example.

The differences in their business model will also be a differentiator. While the iPhone is clearly aimed at the top end of the market, Google phones will hit all price points. Rather than having the carriers subsidize the cost of the phones, Google actually is sharing revenue with the carriers, which incents them to push out Google products for the masses. This makes a lot of sense. As Google has stated, their business is not focused on making money from hardware (or software). Their goal is ubiquity. Google wants to be the dominant player in mobile advertising and this helps them achieve that.

So who are the big winners and losers?

Despite the burst of hype around the release of the Pre, Palm (NASD:PALM) remains a bit player. I can’t see a compelling reason for anyone to buy a Palm Pre at this point, which hurts both them and Sprint.

Another winner: Twitter, whose servers held up under this volume of Tweets with nary a fail whale in site. This is a good warmup for the Apple Table announcement to come January 27.

What do the experts have to say? Here are some comments, courtesy of Alacra Pulse:

Forrester’s Charles Golvin sums it up with three bullets:

• Google has taken responsibility for driving Android innovation
• Google will be an influential phone retailer…in the future
• Those awaiting another iPhone-like revolution are in for disappointment.

Interpret’s Michael Gartenberg notes:

"Google's decision to sell its own Google-branded phones is "a sea change in terms of Google now owning the customer, making the carrier a little bit less relevant to the conversation and maintaining more control over the hardware and software experience because they realize they're competing with players like Apple and the iPhone"

Sanford Bernstein’s Jeff Lindsay adds that Google “perceives mobile as the next major opportunity” and "It is too big a risk to drive the strategy through their partners. They want more say and more control."  

Via AllThingsD, BarCap’s Doug Anmuth offers the first projection on Nexus One sales: In a note to clients this morning, Barclays Capital analyst Doug Anmuth hazards a guess: 5 – 6 million units sold in 2010, based on distribution through T-Mobile at launch and Verizon Wireless (VZ) by spring. And, according to Anmuth, it should allow Google (GOOG) to book incremental revenue of $2.6 billion–$3.2 billion.

Canaccord Adams’ Peter Misek sees the Nexus One driving a rift between Google and the carriers

"At stake is the ownership of the mobile internet and customers who will increasingly use it.  Handset makers, on the other hand, feel they may empower a very potent competitor by continuing to use Android."

Gartner’s Nick Jones sees direct sales of the Nexus One to consumers as but a first step for Google:

"So will it stop at Nexus? I guess not... perhaps we’ll see Chrome OS netbooks on the shelves in the future as well"

I think we’re all happy to see 2009 come to an end, while we prepare our businesses for the growth we hope to see regenerated in twenty ten. And with that eternal hope comes that other classic year-end exercise: predictions.

So, here are my predictions for digital media and technology in 2010:

1. Apple (NASD: AAPL) will break its exclusivity with AT&T (NYSE: T), making the iPhone available on other networks (T-Mobile and Verizon). AT&T will get to test the loyalty of its new subscribers (and find many of them leaving their dropped calls for Verizon).
2. Android (NASD: GOOG) shows itself to be a serious player in smartphones. This one will take some time, but I think that going into the 4^th quarter of 2010, the Android platform will have established itself as a legitimate competitor to the iPhone. Android will also make a run at the enterprise market, providing a viable alternative to the Blackberry.
3. Spotify will line up its partners and launch by mid-year and will mount a realistic challenge to the iTunes model of buying music. Apple will respond with a service-based offering, based on the LaLa platform it acquired.
4. Online advertising spend will exceed analyst forecasts. As the market begins to recover, advertisers will first expand their budgets online where they can measure results. Pepsi’s decision to skip the Super Bowl and focus online could be the tipping point and we’ll see lots more growth to come.
5. The real-time web will continue to grow in importance, and will be more fully integrated with the existing web (especially on mobile devices). Hence...
6. Real-time search results presentation will be overhauled. Google and Microsoft Bing (NASD: MSFT) rushed solutions out the door after inking deals with Twitter, but the results are mediocre, with a “last-in, first displayed” approach like web results circa 1998. Given time to do it right, I expect that Google will display results using measures of influence (based upon a mix of followers and engagement) to rank results, similar to their core page rank system.
7. Consumers embrace web video as an alternative to cable: Roku’s partnerships with Netflix (NASD: NFLX) and Amazon (NASD: AMZN); and various devices launched on the Boxee platform will begin to drive mainstream acceptance of video downloading. This integration of television and the Internet will lead to new and innovative offerings.  Meanwhile, Blockbuster (NYSE:BBI) finally declares bankruptcy, shuttering most of its stores.
8. Apple will release its long-rumored Tablet. While it will not instantly cure cancer or bring world peace, it will provide functionality that the naysayers had not considered, much in the way that the iPhone was more than simply an iPod with a phone built-in. The Tablet will not be the savior for the print industry, but will accelerate consumption of television content and may also provide a boost to glossy magazines and other visual content.
9. Mobile gaming will continue to explode; the iPhone and Android will be considered viable alternatives to Nintendo DS and Sony PSP as handheld gaming devices.
10. Internet Explorer market share drops below 50%. While Apple and Google fight over control of the rapidly growing mobile screen, Microsoft’s long domination of the desktop will be diminished as Firefox, Chrome and Safari eat into Internet Explorer’s share.
11.  The M&A market will be strong in 2010 as entrenched companies pick off weaker competitors at what they perceive to be bargain prices. Here are a few deals that I think we could see:

• MSFT should buy RIM and give up on Windows Mobile; otherwise, they will cede the mobile space to Apple and Google. Can Steve Ballmer make a large deal happen without his ego screwing it up?
• LiveNation should merge with MySpace. The recording industry is dead; live performances are the way that the big acts make their money. Meanwhile, MySpace is a great platform for awareness, but doesn’t fit with News Corp’s long-term strategy and is dying as a social media platform. News Corp should spin out MySpace and merge it with LiveNation as the dominant music platform.
• Twitter will not be acquired; instead it will have an IPO. Ditto for Facebook.
• Numerous content company CEOs will overpay for underperforming old media assets, convinced they can turn around these “gems”. They will fail.

Will these predictions come true? Who knows. But, it’s pretty clear that mobile, the real-time web, gaming and video are where huge opportunities will come in the next 12-24 months.