e-Healthcare Solutions Blog

Medical publishers, like the record industry and so many industries before them that have been caught unprepared for the rapid shift in media habits towards the Internet are practicing what Don Tapscott, in Wikinomics refers to as "Tarzan Economics". That is to say they are desperately holding onto the vine in their hand (print business) for fear of falling to the jungle floor. They refuse to let go and grab the e-vine to the future without first having it securely in their hands. This is a very conservative strategy... too much so.

The problem medical publishers are facing is that while they have been grasping the vine of print, any company who's started in the last 15 years has started with an eye toward where the market "will be" not where it was at the time. Thus companies like WebMD (and the dozens of companies they've bought such as eMedicine, Medscape, RxList, etc...) as well as the numerous other "digital-only" publishers such as MDlinx and others, are all taking significant share of the "new" media pie, at the expense of the traditional publishers.

Medical publishers need to re-evaluate who their competitors ARE in the new media landscape. Collectively, all traditional medical publishers only make up a small portion of the media consumption habits that are occuring on the Internet.

The competition has changed.

e-Healthcare Solutions works with medical publishers to harness their collective strengths, and support both their online advertising sales and marketing challenges to provide a viable competitive alternative to WebMD for Pharmaceutical marketers and their agencies. WebMD is losing share, so it's working.

Medical publishers of the world unite!

My last post was February, so I'm well overdue. It's now Memorial Day and what do you know, I have a little down time ;).

Well Yahoo made the blunder of shunning Microsoft's offer (full disclosure, I'm a Yahoo stockholder - and as such I'm pissed). Most Yahoo stockholders, both holders prior to the MSFT offer and new activist investors such as Carl Icahn, are pretty upset as well. Icahn so much so that he's trying to salvage the deal by ousting the YHOO directors. He's and the other major holders should be upset. Jerry Yang and Yahoo's board have lost site of their principle fiduciary responsibility of maximizing return to their shareholders. The MSFT offer was generous. Start listening to Kenny Rogers Jerry... you got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em.

As of this writing MSFT has reportedly come back to the table with a revised proposal that offers to buy part of Yahoo (the search advertising business) and taking a minority stake in the remainder. If that deal happens, I doubt it will be as lucrative to YHOO shareholders as the cleaner outright purchase would have been. If they couldn't get that done - I see little hope in carving off pieces.

Yahoo is also reportedly discussing outsourcing the text ad sales to Google after a successful pilot program. This baffles me even more. I guess they've thrown up their hands in competing in this arena. If that's the case - and it's not a core strategic focus, why not sell it to Microsoft?

Someone (anyone please) needs to give Google a little competition in the area of paid search.

Today it's easier than ever to analyze your web-site from a search engine perspective and "fix what's broken". Here's a helpful easy tool that takes just a minute to use...
WebsiteGrader.com

It just keeps getting more interesting... with Yahoo stock dipping under $20 per share, Microsoft decided it was time to try to take the original leading Internet search portal over... again. Having rebuffed an offer about a year ago, based on the promise of the future of Panama and other initiatives, Yahoo might not dodge the bullet as easily this time since Panama has been disappointing and there are no more silver bullets in their chamber. The offer from Microsoft, at a $42 Billion - a 62% premium to their closing price, may both be too rich to turn down, and too rich for competitive bidders to counter... except maybe Google.

Google is already rattling the "anti-trust" saber and crying Microsoft fowl. Google's responding to Microsoft's offer even before Yahoo has... which by Yahoo's own admission, will take "quite a bit of time".

As these Internet industry titans wrestle for domination, the deal market only gets more interesting.

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