Are you in the process of writing a business plan for a new online venture, or an extension of an existing online business?

As you know, having an online portal for your information is essential for growth. Using the web as a new medium and not just an extension of your brand is critical. But this is a new beast, and to be prepared, you must plan. This holds true whether your online business unit launched six months ago, or hasn’t launched yet.

If your company relies on investors, like most large publishing companies do, this doesn’t make you exempt, it actually makes having a killer business plan even more critical. Now, remember that investors tend to read a fraction of your business plan before deciding to get more involved, but the plan is not just for your investors, it’s for you. It’s a roadmap.

The first step in this roadmap, is deciding what your website will offer and how it will make money. This is why, in every business plan we’ve created for our clients, we include a Mequoda Media Pyramid.

The Mequoda Media Pyramid supports the notion that media products have a natural hierarchy.

Building a Mequoda Media Pyramid is an exercise through which you dig down and determine exactly how you’re going to run your company. The pyramid provides a method for organizing content to maximize profit.

The foundation of the pyramid shows how you’ll draw prospects into your customer base, or online hub and build relationships. Then, level-by-level, you monetize those individuals by pushing them up the pyramid to product levels that are increasingly more valuable to them and certainly more profitable for you.

For Flora Daily, a hypothetical gardening website, we created this pyramid for its business plan:

It’s a fairly simple business plan and model. At the bottom of the pyramid, there are all of the marketing and partnership opportunities we can utilize to build this brand and drive traffic.

Second in the pyramid is the website. It’s the online hub and it’s free, as signified by being gold. Second is the next free product, which are free reports. Free reports are used to build email circulation and drive business to the next layer in the pyramid, which are paid books.

Books are Flora Daily’s own branded products. This is original content that is then repurposed back down the pyramid, into free reports and FloraDaily.com blog posts.

The next level of the pyramid represents the plan to have Flora Daily promote and sell other people’s gardening magazines for an affiliate commission. Flora Daily would partner with as many magazines as they have editorial topics on their site.

Designing your enterprise in a Mequoda Media Pyramid is a dramatic departure for most media companies, which have historically been horizontally integrated as magazine, newsletter or book publishers. Over the past 30 years, we’ve seen special interest media evolve toward vertical integration in which the goal is to produce media in and for a variety of content platforms.

Media companies implementing this vertically integrated strategy use outside media to acquire new customers, leveraging “free media” first. They use content to build a permission database. They create many products in many formats and recycle, reuse and republish content. Finally, they are able to pull customers up the pyramid to maximize profit.

Mequoda Media Pyramid Key Concepts

Here are some tips for building (and implementing) your own media pyramid for use in your online business plan.

• Media products have a natural hierarchy
  • This follows the time, money and trust media continuum
• Use outside media to acquire new customers
  • Leverage “free media” first
• Use content to build a permission database
  • Components of a niche media super-brand
• Create many products in many formats
  • Recycle, reuse and republish content
• Pull customers up the pyramid to maximize profit!

Want help building or restructuring your online business plan?

A complete Mequoda business plan strategy includes creating a publishing model, using the formal Mequoda publishing business plan creation technique, including key statistics and a five-year financial forecast for your market.

One of the many benefits of attending our Mequoda Summit is not only the chance to discuss your own business plan and model with us, but also the interactive spreadsheet you’ll receive, which contemplates all the factors you need to consider, whether you are launching or retooling an existing publication.

Register for the Mequoda Summit today at our earliest early-bird rate of only $897 and walk away twelve sessions later, with twelve actionable tools and techniques for building your online publishing business to last.

Every viable online publishing business, whether existent or contemplated, needs a business plan, including a five-year financial forecast suitable for senior managers, equity partners and venture capitalists.

Start in the red, break even in year two, and then move ahead to increasing nets sales and profits. That’s the ideal (and simplest) publication business forecast.

Every senior manager and investor wants to see a formal business plan, and especially, the five-year, profit and loss forecast. They want to know immediately how large the business will become, and how much of an investment is required to build the business out to maturity.

A bar chart like the one here for Flora Daily illustrates the three major factors.

• The amount of money that must be invested in the project (net contributions).
• The size of the business after five years (total net sales).
• The profitability of the business.

Do you have an exit strategy?

If you know your market, these online numbers will also enable you to extrapolate the value of your business, and plan your exit strategy, should you decide to sell.

At this writing, the exit multiples for online publications are running between 10 and 15, with an average of 12. That means if your business is making $1 million in profit after five years, it probably can be sold for $12 million.

If we know, in the planning stage, that the business can be launched for $500,000 and sold for $12 million in five years, that is an attractive return on investment.

In other words, a business launched for $500,000 in 2009, that in 2014 is making $1 million annually, can be sold for $12 million. That’s a simple return on investment of 24X.

Projecting how much your publishing enterprise will be worth requires you to take the long view of your business, as a banker or investor would. It’s not only about how much the business makes, year-to-year.

A five-year business plan is an absolutely essential calculation for attracting investors. Their diversity of expectations can be very wide ranging.

Some financial backers might be satisfied with 5X or 10X their investment after 5 years.

Venture capitalists are often looking for a 40X or 50X multiple.

Alternatively, when a mom-and-pop operation launches a small publication with $100,000 of personal savings, the owners might be very satisfied with a business that simply pays them a good salary. They may not have expectations to sell the business in the foreseeable future.

The five-year business plan can forecast that scenario, too.

What’s your publication’s five-year business plan?

A complete Mequoda business plan strategy includes creating a publishing model, using the formal Mequoda publishing business plan creation technique, including key statistics and a five-year financial forecast for your market.

One of the many benefits of Mequoda Pro membership is the Mequoda Pro Online Publishing Model interactive spreadsheet, which contemplates all the factors you need to consider, whether you are launching or retooling an existing publication.

The Mequoda Pro Online Publishing Model interactive spreadsheet is available 24/7/365 for immediate download from the Mequoda Pro Download Library.

Join Mequoda Pro today at the special charter membership rate and get answers to your questions about online publishing and marketing, plus unlimited online access to all eight Mequoda Pro Online Seminars.

When newspaper publishers close their doors, have they truly considered their ever-growing digital options?

It’s all doom and gloom in the newspaper industry right now, from the news that four Michigan markets will lose their newspapers, to the bill being introduced that asks newspapers be declared non-profit.

“We are losing our newspaper industry,” said Sen. Benjamin Cardin, in reference to the bill. “The economy has caused an immediate problem, but the business model for newspapers, based on circulation and advertising revenue, is broken, and that is a real tragedy for communities across the nation and for our democracy.” [source: AP]

That’s all well and good, but instead of going the “Print or Die” route, they might take notice of speculators who note that printing the NYT costs twice as much as sending every subscriber A free Kindle.

We had the same thoughts when the Amazon Kindle first came out:

At $399, Amazon’s Kindle is a bit pricey for all but the most avid early adopters. But if the newspaper publishers themselves bought the devices, and gifted them to subscribers, they would save a fortune on the materials, manufacture and delivery of the traditional, physical newspaper product. An Amazon Kindle in the hands of every newspaper subscriber would pay for itself in short order.

The publishers that control the medium — in this case, the wireless delivery system and reading device — will survive the media wars.

Previously, pundits would say that freedom of the press belongs to those who can afford a press. In the future, at least some of the power of the First Amendment will reside with publishers who can control the pipeline, or wireless reading device network.

Look for additional partnerships and alliances between Amazon, wireless networks, and traditional print publishers.

Let’s discuss for a moment on this. First of all, the NYT isn’t going out of business any time soon, and they’re the ones who would be able to afford sending a Kindle in exchange for a digital subscription.

Can smaller newspaper publishers afford to offer this trade-off within their print model? Possibly, it’s up to them to discuss, survey their audience and decide on a solution. The complication still lies with ad sales, brand recognition, and those people who still want to carry a newspaper under their arm.

Why it’s OK to go digital when print fails

Instead, when times get tough (and they’re only getting tougher), newspapers might consider going digital only, like Seattle Daily. I’m increasingly surprised at how many print publications choose to close rather than make the switch to an online business unit.

Once a newspaper has converted, can’t they still take advantage of digital readers and online subscriptions? Call it “going green” if you’d like, but don’t give up. Digital is increasingly becoming the platform of choice.

According to a recent Time article, “Martin Nisenholtz, who oversees the far-flung digital operations of the New York Times, said the Kindle has been a “surprisingly successful” platform for his newspaper.” This is an addition to the popular (and free) NYT iPhone app.

In other words, people are still willing to pay for content; they just want it on the platform they prefer.

Will some still opt for the free information they can get via the iPhone app? Sure, but they’re the same people who wouldn’t have bought a newspaper to begin with.

Let’s talk devices – Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader and the Apple iPhone…

The Sony what? Oh right, the Sony Reader came out way before the Kindle.

It’s possible that the Sony Reader is about to make a grand re-entrance now that they’ve struck a deal with Google Books. The deal actually has nothing to do with newspapers though.

Instead, it offers those with the device, access to 500,000 books that were written before 1923. In other words, their collection of books that are already open to the public domain.

Nonetheless, it’s enough to perk up the ears of a few avid readers, but Amazon Kindle is the device newspaper publishers should focus on.

As for the Apple iPhone, are you aware that the Amazon Kindle iPhone app is free? This means that you don’t even need to have a Kindle in order to view and subscribe to their content. This is in addition to a handful of other e-reader apps that newspapers might partner with.

Those newspaper publishers thinking that many readers won’t dish out $359 for a Kindle might consider the 17 million iPhone owners when making their assessment.

What do you think? Should newspaper publishers consider their digital options?

Of the nine proven methods used by successful publishers for making money online, the top of the pyramid—and the potentially most profitable—is live events.

If you have a loyal constituency of readers who are paying customers, whose appetite for your narrowly focused, niche information is insatiable, you might want to consider adding a live event held at a “destination” location.

Last year (2008) marked the first in which Mequoda held a second, two-day conference that explains, in detail, the best practices for starting and running a profitable online publishing business.

The Mequoda Summit, held each autumn since 2005 in Boston, was also presented for the first time in Napa Valley, California in April. Both venues were a sellout, with a total of about 130 publishing professionals attending.

Now, everywhere I go, the first question people ask is about how the Napa Summit registration is going in the in the midst of an economic recession. Answer: Very well. Overall, we’ve seen that most publishing companies don’t consider the Mequoda Summit a luxury, but more of an investment in a survival strategy.

The second question is about how we came to choose Napa, a beautiful, but not entirely convenient, resort destination that is about 90 minutes from San Francisco International Airport.

The answer is simple. That’s where you told us you wanted to go.

Eighteen months ago, before we went to Napa for the first time, I attended a Specialized Information Publishers Association (SIPA) meeting in Chicago. I simply asked the assembled group of 25 publishers where they would like us to hold this new, Spring Mequoda Summit.

I offered four West Coast venues — San Diego, San Francisco, Monterey and Napa Valley — and asked for a show of hands for each. Every last publisher raised a hand for Napa Valley.

Several weeks ago in Amsterdam, our European publishing colleagues also expressed an interest in Napa Valley. It turns out that more than a few of them like California wines as well as world-class golf courses. Napa Valley excels at both.

The Silverado Resort, where the Summit is held, offers two 18-hole Napa Valley wine country golf courses, each in the distinctive style of their architect, Robert Trent Jones, Jr.

So, we know that some of the Mequoda Summit attendees will stay over for a few days of golf and touring the area’s world-renowned wineries.

Last year’s Napa Summit was attended by an almost equal number of Americans from both East and West of the Mississippi, plus, a considerable number of Europeans. In fact, as many of our publishing colleagues from the Continent attended the Napa Summit as did the Boston Summit.

So why have we chosen Napa again, you might ask?

Well, there’s the polling data we had from the SIPA execs. Plus, the sellout, capacity crowd who came to Napa Valley last year.

Interestingly, the Mequoda Napa Valley Summit drew more entrepreneurs and business owner/operators than did Boston. These are people running start-up Mequoda System publishing businesses starting ranging from $300,000 and methodically working toward $2 million in annual revenues. Of those that were fully operational for at least 12 months, the largest is doing $3.5 million in sales.

Who are these Mequoda System publishers?

Some are independent operations with three to five employees. Others are larger, corporate-owned publications.

This is our core constituency, and they all seem to love Napa Valley!

What about you? Do you offer a live event for your premier customers?

Don’t underestimate the importance of choosing a very desirable destination.

By the way, will you be joining us at the Mequoda Summit Napa Valley in April? Seats are filling up fast. Details at http://www.mequoda.com/mequoda-summit.

Why adding a job board to your website could both increase revenue and help the economy

Just because the economy isn’t doing so hot right now, doesn’t mean that every business is doomed to fail. But what it does mean is that we as publishers could really use a good brainstorm on how to build out our own business model in ways that are more profitable than costly.

One avenue that has been consistently popular with publishers is adding a job board to their website network. In general, websites that sell job listings are self-service and require very little maintenance from the publisher.

People getting laid off are resorting to building job boards themselves

A clear hint that we’re not doing enough to round up jobs is the Purple People Collective. The PPC was started by Ryan Kuder and Jonathan Tarud of Yahoo!. When Kuder got laid off from Yahoo! in February of last year, he had a hard time finding organized job listings from the various social media sites he visited. So he started the PPC as a new social networking site for laid-off workers/employees in the tech field looking for jobs.

Obviously, when someone who’s been laid off doesn’t think we’re doing a good enough job organizing job listings, and proceeds to start his own job site, we’re missing a big niche. But there’s still time, the Great Depression lasted four years. Maybe with some help from our side, we can be a part of the solution.

How other publishers are building online job boards to benefit both the employer and the job seeker

Jeff Green, advertising director of Nielsen Business Media’s digital strategy group says, “There’s about 40,000 different job boards and career portals now operating on the Internet. It’s impossible to deny what’s happening in the online recruitment industry and the billions of dollars being spent on the Web.” He also comments that “Advertising job openings in print is essential if employers want to reach the passive job seeker,” says Green. “But active job seekers are not waiting for their weekly issue to arrive.” Nielsen uses Adicio to manage their job listings.

One of the biggest media sites we know that makes their job listings a huge part of their business model is MediaBistro.com. MediaBistro.com does about $8 million in annual revenue, about $2 million of which we estimate is classified job advertising.

This website is designed for public relations and media executives, and competes in a broad horizontal market with CareerBuilder.com and Monster.com. But because the directory is attached to a content-rich website, it drives much of its own traffic, using an email newsletter to alert subscribers of new job postings.

Often, B2B and B2C niche websites can do well by adding a listings component, such as a directory or classified website, to their market.

Things to think about when building an online job board

Green offers the following tips when building an online job board:

• Create a strong search function. Seekers should be able to search by keyword (matching any and/or all words), location, category and type of position, whether full-time, part-time, contract or temporary. Employers should have access to similar search functions.
• Give job seekers the option of warehousing their resume on the site with the ability to determine what type of employers have access to view their resume. Or, allow for a resume upload on a per-application basis.
• Seekers love e-mail alert updates on new job posts that fit their job criteria. The big job boards incorporate this function and so should yours.
• Set up response reporting tools for your classified advertisers so they can determine the effectiveness of their posts.
• Make listing a company name optional. Certain customers may want confidential ads so direct competitors don’t know they are hiring for a certain position.
• Price classified ads based on rates from the large online job boards and competitor boards.
• Set a base price for a standard ad and then offer spotlights and feature placements for an additional fee.
• Provide customer service to your clients. Post a phone number and generic e-mail address on the job board site, especially if you don’t have a particular sales person linked to the account.

But why would anyone want to pay for a listing on your site when they have free sites like Craigslist and huge portal sites like Monster.com?

It’s simple, you own a niche! There’s no more specific way to put a job description out there than to offer it to your target audience. Even better, you can attract users who aren’t necessarily “seeking”, but happen upon a job listing on your site and decide to make a career change. It happens!

Even more importantly, you’re offering your employers a site full of users that are passionate about your topic. They’re much more likely to find people with the skills, ambitions and goals they are looking for when they place a targeted job listing on your site.

According to a recent survey by JobDig.com, 28% of employers surveyed used three job boards to list their job openings. 21% said they used four or more.

According to the report, “Of the companies that checked the ‘other’ box, the most popular site was Craigslist, followed by niche sites that were evenly split between geographic/local/regional sites and industry-specific vertical sites.” That’s us!

How to get started building an online job board

It won’t happen overnight, but job boards (especially in this economy) are one of the most frequented sites on the web right now. If you already have print listings, then you already have a client list. If not, you may have to start from scratch, you may even need to start cold-turkey with your listings.

One tip for getting traffic and listings on your site is to put out a press release for one week (or month) of free listings. Advertise it to your list and let the content roll in. Once you have a good amount of content on the site, then you have the value in place to make it a paid product (for employers).

There are various tools you can use to create an online job board, and it’s going to take the expertise of your developers. Here are some links to online job board software you can use.

The hands-off approach – For starters, you might consider a job board from JobCoin. They collect the employers for you, and you choose which listings to display on your site. They also allow employers to sign up on your own site, so it truly is your own job board portal. You get paid both when someone applies ($2-10 per application) and when an employer lists a job (around $20). The biggest benefit – it’s free.

The hands-on approach – There are many software packages out there you can buy to build your own job board. One of the most popular is Adicio, and it’s used by the likes of Nielsen, The Seattle Times, Newsday.com, and yes, Monster.com.

The less expensive hands-on approach – Jobberbase is new open source job board software created in PHP. It has a very clean interface and best of all – it’s free.

So take a look at your current business model. Is their room for a job board in there?

In a session called “Realizing Business Value from Web 2.0: An IBMer’s Perspective on ROI, Metrics and Anti-Patterns” at the Web 2.0 Expo today in NYC with Aaron Kim, the topic was fear of Web 2.0.

The session focused on to “anti” patterns he’s observed in global enterprises that may explain why the benefits of Web 2.0 are not materializing fast enough for many companies.

While we find that many publishing companies haven’t even mastered Web 1.0, it’s important not to ignore something big that’s happening in the industry. Keep it on your radar. This session was great because it took a look at both sides of the spectrum, companies who don’t even want to talk about it, and ones that don’t think before they start building right away.

Being Hesitant: Fear 2.0

Why the bad solution (no innovation) looks attractive…

• Innovation and change are risky and scary, especially in larger companies
• Failure comes with a name tag – when you do something publicly, especially in Web 2.0 and especially if you’re a large company, everyone knows about it

Why it turns out to be bad…

• Not changing is riskier – waiting until what you think might be “the hype” is over, leaves you in the dust. Following the bandwagon too late leaves you with nothing original to add
• From distance, using Web 2.0 looks exactly like the introduction of email and instant messaging years ago

What positive patterns are applicable instead?

• Foster a culture of innovation that balances risk and rewards
• Fail quickly, fail cheaply, fail gracefully and learn from it
• Exit strategies must be an included in innovation initiatives
• Ultimately, taking full advantage of Web 2.0 may require Management 2.0” (Business Week, June 5, 2006)

Being Overzealous: Rush 2.0

Why the bad solution (spend, build, spend) looks attractive…

• Web 2.0 sites occupy most of the top 50 sites in the world
• Your site/service is so cool and useful people won’t be able to resist it

Why it turns out to be bad…

• A fool with a tool is still a fool – Don’t start building and spending before you have a plan and research to back it. Be innovative, but don’t rush.
• People have a limited attention span – giving your users another social network to make a profile on isn’t appealing. Offering them a web application that gives them a tool they can use every day is.
• People behave in unexpected ways – unless you’ve taken the time to research what your users really want, you can’t be sure that throwing a web application or a social network at them is going to appeal to them.
• The world isn’t flat – thinking you can design or imitate someone else’s strategy might not work the way you think it will.

What positive patterns are applicable instead?

• “Web 2.0 is an attitude, not a technology” (Ian Davis)
• It’s about culture transformation, not a toolset
• Define and implement a comprehensive User Adoption plan
• Track adoption and balance incentives with desired outcomes
• Think about survival strategies: competition, predation, cooperation, and symbiosis

Kim talked about ROI in Web 2.0, which was a popular topic at this conference. He followed the same path of most every other speaker I heard talk about it, and the path is this: Web 2.0 and social media is not always about immediate ROI.

For publishers, you’re likely not going to be building a stand-alone product like some other companies might do. More likely, you’re creating a brand-building tool or network for your users. The point is just that, “value capture takes time, effort, creativity and resources in short supply” Kim noted.

The value of many Web 2.0 tools should be obvious, because these tools create trust and loyalty to your brand which increases your SEO with link-building and product sales due to more personal relationships and customer satisfaction with your brand. But depending on what you’re building (or using), the value is either there or not there.

Your biggest metric, in a complimentary Web 2.0 or social media product should tell you how much you are getting in return for the amount you are spending. If you hired a social media community manager for 50k a year, that’s what you need to get in return. If you built a Web 2.0 photo community for your magazine for 10k, that’s what you need to make. If you started a Twitter account to generate traffic, you don’t need to get anything in return to see a benefit.

Kim showed a graph from the answers of 1,988 executives around the world from a survey question that asked, “What are the top 3 barriers, if any, to the further success of your Web 2.0 initiatives?” 28% said that they didn’t understand the potential of future financial returns. 25% by the way, said that nothing was holding them back.

When the question was asked about why they use it, 74% said it increased the efficiency of their business. In another question about why some companies were “holding out” on Web 2.0, 4% said it was because they “don’t see the need”. “How can you not see the need?” Kim asked.

But when Kim asked how companies were measuring the business value of its Web 2.0 deployment, 63% said they were using traditional measures such as ROI, total cost of ownership, or internal rate of return.

More notes and quotes from the Web 2.0 Expo (and still more to be added so stay tuned):

A (Mostly) Free SEO Toolbox

7 Ways to Get Ranked in Google

Web 2.0 Supply & Demand Metrics

Is Web 2.0 Worth It?

Customer Service is the New Marketing

Why is SEO Important?

7 Reasons Why Search Engines Are Your Friends

Mequoda Summit “Website Business Models that Work” Session Review:

Like all other mass media that came before them, websites are an evolving set of archetypes that represent the similar information architecture that can best meet similar user needs.

Mequoda uses the term “archetype” to understand and categorize kinds of sites. After analyzing more than 2,000 media websites, we have identified 12 unique archetypes. For some of the archetypes, we’ ve also identified sub-archetypes that represent significant variations in information architecture on the primary theme.

Each of the 12 Mequoda website archetypes derives from an analysis that asks these two questions:

1. Who supports the access to content: audience or sponsors?
2. What does the user seek: content or commerce?

Each archetype, therefore, supports a particular revenue model—userdriven or sponsor driven. If the archetype and the revenue model are not in sync, success will be limited.

1. Internet Hub
2. Social Network
3. Online Magazine
4. Search Engine
5. Directory Website
6. Lead Generation Website
7. Classified Website
8. Catalog Website
9. Book Website
10. Event Website
11. Membership Website
12. Newsletter Website

It’s the dawn of a new age in publishing, and we must redefine ourselves as media professionals. Instead of publishing a single magazine or newsletter, we need to offer users information and entertainment on a variety of platforms using a variety of business models and marketing channels. 

Choosing the right business model and supporting infrastructure for any business is a key strategy for business success. Building the right infrastructure supports higher revenue, lower operating costs and happier customers.

What you’ll learn:

• How to identify the twelve website archetypes.
• How to identify the right archetype for your business, to ensure higher revenue, lower operating costs and happier customers.
• How to drive targeted website traffic to your site with an Internet hub
• How to encourage users to interact with your media brand.
• How to use personalized content to enhance user satisfaction and increase page views and time spent.
• How to develop trusted relationships.
• How to make money with your publication in ways you either never imagined or don’t know how to execute.
• How to double your online revenues every 12 months using the Mequoda Marketing System.
• How the archetypes were derived from a two dimensional grid that asks two simple questions.

The Jordan, Edmiston Group, Inc., the leading provider of independent investment banking services for media, information, marketing services and related technologies represented UHPG in this transaction and acted as its exclusive financial advisor.

“For many years, we have discussed the possibility of joining forces with UHPG in our mutual goal to educate consumers about their health needs,” said Traver Hutchins, CEO & President of MediZine LLC, a portfolio company of Veronis Suhler Stevenson. “With this acquisition, we are now able to build on UHPG’s impressive heritage to reach more consumers with extensive research-based health content. This complements MediZine’s current programs reaching more than 100 million consumers each year.” He added, “Stuart Jordan, UHPG Chief Operating Officer, has done a tremendous job developing the company’s assets, which will be a growth catalyst for MediZine, as we continue to build out our multi-media and integrated health education platform.”

“Everyone at UHPG is excited by the prospect of expanding our existing consumer health brands and creating new products, which will now be possible thanks to the completion of this deal,” said Jordan. “I am personally happy to be joining the MediZine team which shares the same mission to further the consumer health information experience.”

MediZine’s proven expertise in how to reach proactive, health-concerned consumers – when and where they seek solutions – in pharmacies, in doctors’ offices and in home and online, will provide novel opportunities to grow the subscriber base for UHPG’s portfolio of publications, including John Hopkins Health After 50 and the University of California Berkeley Wellness Letter newsletters.

“We look forward to significantly expanding the readership of our collaborative Wellness Letter through our new partnership with MediZine,” explained Stephen M. Shortell, Ph.D., Dean, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley. “Touching the lives of as many people as possible with health information that can be trusted is increasingly important, given the rapid changes occurring in medical and health care discoveries.”

“Our much-valued and long relationship with UHPG, and our partnership in the Health After 50 enterprises, play an important part in our efforts to inform the public about advances in biomedical research and health care,” said Edward D. Miller, M.D. Dean/CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine. “UHPG’s contributions to consumer education have been impressive. Now, with access to MediZine’s resources and expertise, we are looking forward to expanding our reach.”

About MediZine LLC

MediZine, a leader in consumer health education, reaches millions of health-conscious consumers with research-based information that enables them to make better health decisions and lead healthier lives. As the pioneer in the use of Point-of-Care consumer health education programs in pharmacies, in doctors’ offices, in home and online, MediZine continues to innovate consumer health education programs through its vast integrated, cross-platform channels.

Major brands include: MediZine’s Healthy Living, the nation’s largest consumer health magazine; REMEDY, the nation’s third largest consumer health magazine; Diabetes Focus and Diabetes Focus Español, the largest magazines for diabetes patients and their caregivers; MDminute, condition-specific health magazines; REMEDYLife.com, condition-specific interactive educational platform; and REMEDYDirect, one of the largest opt-in health databases of its kind. MediZine is a privately-held company based in New York in partnership with the private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS).

About University Health Publishing Group

As the publisher of two of the most-respected consumer health information brands for more than two decades, University Health Publishing Group LLC has improved the health and well-being of millions of readers worldwide, to whom it supplies essential health information through a variety of products delivered in print and online.

UHPG publishes products in conjunction with Johns Hopkins Medicine and the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health, two of the country’s most prestigious teaching and research institutions in health and medicine. The Johns Hopkins products include the monthly Johns Hopkins Health After 50 newsletter, the Johns Hopkins White Papers (annual reports on 15 major disorders and ailments), the Johns Hopkins Bulletins (five quarterly ailment-specific publications that provide in-depth consultations with the leading authoritative experts), and the Johns Hopkins Health Alerts web site. The University of California Berkeley products include the monthly University of California, Berkeley Wellness Letter, the University of California Berkeley Wellness Reports (four annual reports covering key areas of preventive health care), and the WellnessLetter.com web site.

About Veronis Suhler Stevenson

Veronis Suhler Stevenson is a private equity buyout and structured capital fund management company dedicated to investing in the media, information and education industries in North America and Europe. VSS provides capital for buyouts, recapitalizations, growth financings and strategic acquisitions to companies and management teams with a goal to build companies both organically and through a focused add-on acquisition program. To date, VSS equity and structured capital funds have invested in 62 platform companies, which have in turn completed over 255 add-on acquisitions resulting in a portfolio with realized and unrealized enterprise values totaling approximately $14.1 billion.

About JEGI

The Jordan, Edmiston Group, Inc. (JEGI) of New York, NY is the leading provider of independent investment banking services for media, information, marketing services and related technologies. Since being founded in 1987, JEGI has completed nearly 500 high-profile M&A transactions for global media, information, marketing services and related technology companies; entrepreneurial owners; and private equity and venture capital funds. JEGI has established an impeccable reputation in the marketplace, which reflects its superior performance on behalf of its clients. The firm’s executive team of investment bankers has over 200 years of combined experience across the media, information, marketing services and related technology sectors that JEGI serves. For more information, visit www.jegi.com.

Over here at Mequoda, we are one of Wordpress‘ #1 fans. Open source software is becoming the new wave of the Internet, as proven by instances such as Google’s open source mobile phone platform, Google Android. We also have many blogging platforms that are heading in the direction of the open source Wordpress by making their own platforms open source.

Incase you’re not familiar with the term “open source”, it generally refers to software that is released with source code that is available for modification by it’s users. Many paid content management systems are even built with the free source code, which is then modified and used to turn a profit.

In any case, we were happy to know that last week according to the New York Times, “Automattic, the commercial arm of the popular WordPress publishing platform for blogs, has received $29.5 million in financing from four companies, including a small portion from The New York Times Company.”

The New York Times reports, “Automattic received $1.1 million in financing about two years ago. Polaris Venture Partners, True Ventures and Radar Partners were joined by the Times Company in the second round of financing.

Toni Schneider, the chief executive of Automattic, said the additional funds would provide the profitable company with a buffer as it invests in other services, including an anti-spam filter and an online-identity product.

The companies did not disclose the size of each firm’s investment, although the Times Company’s stake is the smallest.

The Times Company had previously maintained a business relationship with Automattic. The About.com guide site, which was purchased by the Times Company in 2005, is published using the WordPress platform. The New York Times has also produced more than 50 blogs using the platform.

Martin A. Nisenholtz, the senior vice president for digital operations of the Times Company, said the company hoped to improve the publishing technology at the foundation of WordPress and harness the platform’s ability to aggregate blog posts.

“As we’ve adopted blogging and started to treat it as a mainstream publishing platform, there are all sorts of things we might do going forward to improve our approach,” he said.

Citing a potential application of the technology, Mr. Schneider said blog posts from across the Internet could be featured alongside stories on The Times’s Web site.”

Steps like these can only validate the online future as an open source medium where everything is built on a Creative Commons type of open copyright license, information is truly free, and so is the platform it’s built on.

As big fans of the open source movement, we were very enthused to hear that MySQL was recently picked up by Sun Microsystems. As defined by Wikipedia, the basic program runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases and was previously owned and sponsored by a single for-profit firm, the Swedish company MySQL AB. The project’s source code is available under terms of the GNU General Public License, as well as under a variety of proprietary agreements.

This type of program goes hand in hand with other open source content management systems such as Wordpress (who recently acquired $29 million in funding) and encourages other open source projects such as the wildly popular Openads (who also recently acquired $5 million in funding).

According to the press release, Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced that it has “entered into a definitive agreement to acquire MySQL AB, an open source icon and developer of one of the world’s fastest growing open source databases for approximately $1 billion in total consideration.”

They also say that “MySQL will bring synergies to Sun that will change the landscape of the software industry by driving new adoption of MySQL’s open source database in more traditional applications and enterprises. The integration with Sun will greatly extend the commercial appeal of MySQL’s offerings and improve its value proposition with the addition of Sun’s global services organization. MySQL will also gain new distribution through Sun’s channels including its OEM relationships with Intel, IBM and Dell.” This deal is said to be final by the end of June 30th, 2008.

According to TechCrunch, Sun Microsystems has acquired them for $1 billion. MySQL had raised a total of $39 million from Benchmark, Index, IVP, Intel, and SAP in the past and claims a 25% share of the database market.

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz wrote in his blog: “MySQL is by far the most popular platform on which modern developers are creating network services. From Facebook, Google and Sina.com to banks and telecommunications companies, architects looking for performance, productivity and innovation have turned to MySQL. In high schools and college campuses, at startups, at high performance computing labs and in the Global 2000. The adoption of MySQL across the globe is nothing short of breathtaking. They are the root stock from which an enormous portion of the web economy springs.”

Much like the recent funding of Wordpress’ Automattic, this is one more step in the direction of free media where publishers and developers can work together to create brilliant free content while spending much less to make it happen.