AdBanter.com is Dead

Advertising is a funny business and AdBanter.com sought to provide a place for ad people to laugh at their profession. Unfortunately, the laugh track seems to have come to a halt back in 2000, and AdBanter.com has been in a state of suspended animation ever since. Currently, the site contains a notice advising visitors that the site is no longer being updated, and directs them to an active online discussion group. I tried to subscribe into this group but was greeted with the following message:

"Your form submission has been rejected as it appears to be an abuse of our server."

I hate it when sites accuse me of server abuse. I love servers and treat them very gently. But this is proof positive that the whole project now sleeps with the fishes.

Business 2.0 May Soon Die

According to a story in today's New York Times, tech biz magazine Business 2.0 is on the verge of closure. Ad revenue is down sharply, and the blame is being laid on Time Inc., which consolidated its sales force recently, giving Business 2.0 short shrift.

This is all very sad. Unlike many print magazines, Business 2.0 took the Web seriously, and its site sports a number of frequently updated Blogs which do a good job of covering biz tech. Unfortunately, these little jewels are buried deep within an overcrowded CNN/Money/Business 2.0 site which, like the long-dead Pathfinder, does its best to hide the good stuff beyond a wall.

Business 2.0's Blogs could probably generate good ad revenue for Business 2.0 if they were better monetized (right now, the banner running appears to be untargeted RON (Run of Network) ads booked through Advertising.com, a Time-Warner subsidiary). Why not target text ads specifically to Business 2.0's content?

I used to work for Business 2.0's editor, Josh Quittner, and he's a very smart guy who understands that you can have a great idea, execute it well, and still get it all smushed up by clueless suits. Let's hope that he's able to spin off the online assets of Business 2.0 and get them away from Time Inc's corporate bureaucrats, who can't produce anything but grief.