He is considered, intelligent and has what has always struck me as a very strong grasp on every topic he writes about. His Business Spectator website is a good (not great) example of the sort of premium content/advertising/web 2.0 stuff he talks about, and I know many senior people in Australian business read it.
I was in my teens when I read an article of his on a train in the Financial Review one morning (and I remember it quite vividly oddly enough) when he described the challenge that VOIP posed to traditional telcos.
When it comes to VOIP; time and distance don’t matter.
If you’re a telco, time and distance is your entire model.
It was the most succinct explanation I can recall.
Anyway, Alan has written an excellent article discussing Craig’s List and the model it owns to the detriment of so many in that offline and online space. Surprisingly, few Australian’s know of Craig’s List though in essence, it is a free classifieds website that started as a small, humble website and today is a monstrous, humble website.
Craig’s List really is one of those pure, web businesses that have nailed it due to a total appreciation of how the web and its users work.
I really thought the Murdoch’s strategy behind WSJ was right – and overall I do – though it hasn’t worked as well or as quickly as they needed and Kohler’s article references why. He also explains why Craigslist cuts a clear path through an increasing pile of sites that simply can’t pay the bills at a time when bills really need paying, and investors are light and few between.
I am not going to comment further, because Kohler makes it quite clear that you need the right model, it needs to be damn tight and it had better make money… page views are just not enough.