Welcome to the eighth episode of “The Mediatwits,” the weekly audio podcast from MediaShift. The co-hosts are MediaShift’s Mark Glaser along with PaidContent founder Rafat Ali. This week’s show looks at the big IPO of business networking site LinkedIn, with the stock price doubling to more than $90 per share in its first day of trading, valuing the company at nearly $10 billion. Things are getting a little bubbly out there.
This week’s special guest is Bill Grueskin, the dean of academic affairs at Columbia University’s Journalism School. Grueskin talks about the upcoming launch of the school’s new online publication, the New York World, as well as how Columbia is putting greater emphasis on students learning about the business of journalism. Finally, Amazon had an important milestone recently, saying it is now selling more e-books than print books. How has the Kindle survived the onslaught of the iPad and tablets?
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Intro and outro music by 3 Feet Up; mid-podcast music by Autumn Eyes via Mevio’s Music Alley.
Here are some highlighted topics from the show:
Mark gets Sonic.net; Rafat get into co-working
1:00: Rafat doesn’t miss planning PaidContent events
2:45: Co-working space might motivate Rafat to work
5:10: Rundown on the podcast’s stories
LinkedIn IPO
8:10: The market is lacking tech IPOs
10:30: Premium subscriptions isn’t a big revenue driver
11:10: Mark gives more to LinkedIn than he gets in return
Interview with Columbia’s Bill Grueskin
13:10: Background on Grueskin
15:00: Columbia wanted consistency with student website
18:15: New York World will offer stories to other sites
21:10: Columbia has same challenges as legacy news orgs
23:20: Grueskin explains how Columbia is teaching business to J-school students
26:50: Comparing New York City J-schools
Amazon sells more e-books than print books
28:50: Book industry last to go digital — but fastest, too
29:45: Mark compares Kindle to Flip cam as utility device
32:00: Rafat thinks of Kindle as “peaceful device”
More Reading
LinkedIn Shares Soar After IPO at WSJ
The LinkedIn Pop at Reuters
LinkedIn’s $8B IPO — Silicon Valley, get ready for housing recovery at VentureBeat
LinkedIn IPO Doubles, Reid Hoffman Now A Billionaire at Forbes
Does LinkedIn signify a bubble? at Globe and Mail
The LinkedIn IPO Millionaires Club at WSJ
Columbia Journalism School to launch The New York World at Columbia University
Amazon Now Selling More Kindle Books Than All Print Books at PaidContent
Weekly Poll
Don’t forget to vote in our weekly poll, this time about the LinkedIn IPO:
Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.