After a week off, Dan Primack has landed at CNN/Fortune’s web site, more or less picking up where he left off at Thomson Reuters’ peHUB. He started work yesterday and already has posted a slew of stories about Elevation Partners, angel investors vs. traditional VCs, and other VC/private equity doings.
Dan’s daily email from his new perch, Term Sheet, has yet to start. You can sign up here.
For now, finding Dan’s stuff is a challenge. He’s working for Time Warner’s CNN.com web site, which is a behemoth that includes content not only from CNN, but also from traditional Time titles such as Sports Illustrated, People, Money and Fortune. It took me a few clicks, but I will spare you the search and give you the address of his Term Sheet page: http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/category/term-sheet/.
Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it?
I’m sure Primack will build this into a success over time, but for now, I think he has some work to do to stand out on this very crowded web site. For fun, just try going to CNN.com or CNN Money and see if you can easily find Primack and his articles.
ABS Capital is a growth equity investment firm with more than $2 billion in capital under management. Unlike many venture capital and private equity firms, it has fully embraced social media and is currently working on a new web site to make it even easier for Internet users to connect with the firm and its portfolio companies.
Stephanie Carter, head of marketing and communications for the firm, spoke today at the PEI Investor Relations and Communications Forum.
Carter said most of her social media efforts have occurred during the past year, after she brought in a 25-year-old intern who worked her way into a full-time job and who is “reverse-mentoring” Carter.
The firm has a Facebook page and encourages its partners to have their own pages. In recognition of the fact that some people research the firm on LinkedIn, Carter has worked with partners to update their LinkedIn profiles even if they themselves don’t use the service.
ABS uses Google Analytics to track traffic on its web site, and one of the key discoveries was that most visitors spent only three minutes on their site looking for information about the partners or portfolio companies. So the ABS web site is being redesigned to make it easier to find that information, with less emphasis on developing written content about the firm that few visitors were reading.
ABS is focused on later-stage investing, so it is constantly interested in connecting with company CEOs, senior executives and board members. By being active in social media, Carter said that ABS is telling these people, “wherever you want to meet us, fine.”
What’s perhaps most remarkable about this case study is that ABS Capital is not using social media because it has a particular interest in Internet companies or social media as an investment. It is using social media because it recognizes that it’s a valuable business tool to help it achieve its objectives.
I was amazed when I checked to see how many people are now on the Net. 1.7 Billion. Up from 360 Million 10 years ago. 738 Million in Asia alone.
This is a HUGE market opportunity that even Google has not yet tapped. I know I’m not the first to recognize this – duh – but I do think that a lot of online marketers may be targeting too narrowly, addressing only the opportunities they see in their line of work or in their experience, and not thinking about how to reach a larger slice of that 1.7 Billion. And counting.
You can check out the estimates here at the World Internet Stats site.