Vittorio Pasteris

Il WSJ su Marchionne, Torino, Fiat, …

The holidays in Turin have certain rituals that set the city apart from others in Italy. That’s because Turin is home to the country’s largest manufacturing company, the multinational auto maker Fiat SpA, and like all big companies, Fiat is a sort of state within a state.

Besides traditional winter festivities, such as buying orange-colored boxes of handmade hazelnut chocolates at Gobino and stopping for a cup of hot chocolate mixed with coffee and cream at Café al Bicerin to fight off the Alpine cold, Turin offers parallel Fiat activities.

In this photo from 1955, Fiat 600s are driven on the roof track of the Lingotto factory in Turin. Like the car maker that calls it home, Turin, more than any other Italian city, mixes old with new, tradition with innovation.

Fiat auto workers’ kids receive gifts at the company’s annual Christmas party as the car maker’s sprawling Mirafiori factory shuts for the break. Fiat Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne delivers his annual speech to hundreds of managers gathered at the Lingotto—a former factory modeled on the Ford plant in Detroit where the Model T was born—that now houses Fiat’s executive offices.

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Via All Things Digital

In just two weeks, on Oct. 22, Microsoft’s long operating-system nightmare will be over. The company will release Windows 7, a faster and much better operating system than the little-loved Windows Vista, which did a lot to harm both the company’s reputation, and the productivity and blood pressure of its users. PC makers will rush to flood physical and online stores with new computers pre-loaded with Windows 7, and to offer the software to Vista owners who wish to upgrade.

With Windows 7, PC users will at last have a strong, modern successor to the sturdy and familiar, but aged, Windows XP, which is still the most popular version of Windows, despite having come out in 2001. In the high-tech world, an eight-year-old operating system is the equivalent of a 20-year-old car. While XP works well for many people, it is relatively weak in areas such as security, networking and other features more important today than when XP was designed around 1999.

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La newsroom del WSJ (via Nextnewsroom)

In America gli editori cercano nuove strade. In Italia …

The Wall Street Journal has long envied the success of professional social network LinkedIn and its 15 million or so monthly visitors (WSJ.com has just a third of that). In late 2008 they launched WSJ Community, a social network bolted onto the main WSJ site. That community is a ghost town – raise your hand if you’ve even heard of it, let alone visited it. At some point, they’ll likely shut it down as quietly as possible.

But they are still serious about gunning for the LinkedIn crowd and all those monetization opportunities (jobs, ads and a heck of a marketing pool for WSJ subscriptions). They’ve been working on a new social network, to be called WSJ Connect, we’ve confirmed. And instead of building it internally, like they did with WSJ Community, they’ve enlisted the help of another arm of parent company News Corp. – Slingshot Labs. And yes, they call it “LinkedIn Killer” internally.

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Via Massimo Russo

Il Wall Street Journal, come del resto già annunciato da Rupert Murdoch, si appresta a far pagare per le proprie applicazioni in mobilità. Per il momento gli utenti iPhone si sono visti sottoporre un sondaggio nel quale si chiede la loro disponibilità a pagare per avere pieno accesso al giornale, oggi del tutto gratuito. I risultati non sono stati resi noti. Nelle prime tre settimane dal lancio, il programma che consente di navigare il Wsj è stato scaricato 360mila volte dell’App Store. La strada scelta dal Journal dovrebbe prevedere una parte gratuita, con la necessità di abbonarsi per utilizzare tutti i servizi e avere accesso agli approfondimenti.

Joh Gruber racconta antefatti e post facti sullo scoop del WSJ sul trapianto di fegato a Steve Jobs (auguri Steve)

Friday night around midnight, The Wall Street Journal published a report headlined “Jobs Had Liver Transplant”1 by Yukari Iwatani Kane and Joann S. Lublin. It stated:

Steve Jobs, who has been on medical leave from Apple Inc. since January to treat an undisclosed medical condition, received a liver transplant in Tennessee about two months ago. The chief executive has been recovering well and is expected to return to work on schedule later this month, though he may work part-time initially.

What’s intriguing about this story is not the question of whether Jobs actually had a liver transplant. I do not doubt that (although I’d like to see better sources for it). What is intriguing is the question of who leaked this information to the Journal and why.

Via WSJ

The last fast few years have seen resurgence in Internet companies not seen since the bubble years of the late 90s. The growth of these advertising-supported “Web 2.0″ companies has propelled online advertising sales to $21 billion from $6 billion between 2002 and 2007. But the last recession pricked the bubble in 2001. What will happen to this crop of Internet companies?

The broader economic recession has not spared the Internet sector. Online display advertising is projected to be flat to down by RBC Capital in 2009. It is hard enough for internet startups at the best of times. Which companies will come out of this recession the best?

I predict that media buyers will focus on both a flight to quality and a flight to surety. This will benefit three types of startups: companies with large audiences, companies that sell direct-response advertising, and companies that offer valuable niche content.

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A spiegare che succederà nel futuro del giornalismo ci voleva Rupert Murdoch che di mestiere fa l’editore, che non è per niente amato dai suoi giornalisti, ma che ha le idee chiarissime sul futuro dell’informazione (e non si può che dargli ragione) Trascrizione del suo intervento da Vittorio Zambardino

Today I would like to talk with you about a subject that always gets certain journalists going: the future of newspapers, and it’s a subject that has a relevance far beyond the feverish, sometimes insecure collection of egos and energy that is the journalistic profession.

Too many journalists seem to take a perverse pleasure in ruminating on their pending demise. I know industries that are today facing stiff new competition from the internet: banks, retailers, phone companies, and so on. But these sectors also see the internet as an extraordinary opportunity. But among our journalistic friends are some misguided cynics who are too busy writing their own obituary to be excited by the opportunity.

Self-pity is never pretty. And sometimes it even starts in journalism school—some of which are perpetuating the pessimism of their tribal elders. But I have a very different view.

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Via TechCrunch

Here is the stark reality of online video: nobody is making much money and the enthusiastic projections for online video advertising going from $500 million in 2008 to more than $5 billion in five years will undoubtedly be pared back in the coming weeks as analysts revisit their numbers. (Those numbers are from August—eMarketer).

The writing is already on the wall. YouTube is resorting to selling off video search results to the sexiest bidder and just today announced that it is extending overlay ads in YouTube Partner videos to embedded videos on other sites (previously these would only show up on YouTube itself). It is pulling out all the stops to try to get those revenues flowing. Meanwhile, smaller video startups such as Veoh and Revsion3 have already cut back on staff and shows in order to survive. So you can throw this slide out the window:

There is plenty of video inventory, just not a lot that advertisers want. Although YouTube streams more than 5 billion videos a month, estimates bandied about are that only 3 to 4 percent of those videos have ads. That is still a lot of videos, but it means that much smaller competitors such as Hulu that focus only on professionally-produced, advertiser-friendly videos are much closer in revenues to YouTube than the raw number of video streams would suggest.

via WSJ

Google Inc. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt will hit the campaign trail this week on behalf of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, signaling Mr. Schmidt’s push for a greater voice in politics while giving the Obama campaign a boost from a highly desirable constituency.

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt in Washington earlier this year. He has advised the Obama campaign on technology and energy issues.

Although the Internet-search company has numerous issues pending on Capitol Hill, Mr. Schmidt said in an interview that “I’m doing this personally,” adding that “Google is officially neutral” in the campaign.

Mr. Schmidt said his planned endorsement of the Illinois senator is a “natural evolution” from his role as an informal adviser to the Obama campaign.

The Google chief plans to join executives from other technology companies to announce their support for Sen. Obama. Sunday, Sen. Obama received an endorsement from Colin Powell, who was President George W. Bush’s first secretary of state.