Bloomberg Blog

A Record-Breaking Week

What a week. The S&P 500 had the biggest slump since November 2008. U.S. stocks tumbled. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, NASDAQ Composite, and Russell 2000 - - all tumultuous.

This point in time is certainly disconcerting for people, especially business and financial professionals. Since Bloomberg has many lenses into the moving markets through our data, news, and analytic tools, we wanted to take this opportunity to share with you some of what we are seeing.

The recent market turmoil broke historic highs for market data activity globally, according to Bloomberg’s Research & Development team. Bloomberg processed 43.7 billion ticks on August 10, 2011 (a tick is an upward or downward movement in a security's trades, bids, and offers prices; tick data provides all market activity, not only volume of shares traded, giving investors full market transparency to make more informed trading decisions). This is 46 percent higher than previous days, including peaks in volatility experienced during the Japanese earthquake, the flash crash, and the apex of the financial crisis.

 
Market tick volume reaches historic highs

Bloomberg.com had some of its biggest traffic days ever, with more than 60 percent increases over average daily unique visitors and page views. The live TV player on Bloomberg.com had nearly three times the amount of unique visitors than what we see on average per day. And, we were the first in reporting the announcement of S&P's downgrade of the U.S.'s credit rating on the Bloomberg Professional service.   
 

 

Most read stories on Bloomberg.com:

-    U.S. Stocks Fall as S&P 500 Has Biggest Slump Since November 2008

-    S&P Seen Surrendering to Tea Party Costing U.S. Taxpayer

-    Stocks Tumble Most Since 2008 as Treasuries, Gold Surge on S&P Rating Cut

 

Most watched videos on Bloomberg.com:

-   Buffet says 'bet heavily' against double recession

-   Marc Faber says markets 'extremely oversold'

-  Jim Rogers on U.S. Rating downgrade, global markets

Whether you subscribe to the Bloomberg Professional service, watch our TV station, listen to our radio programs, or visit our web site, we'll continue to keep you informed on the issues that matter most during this concerning time.

 

The Bloomberg Team

Bloomberg Launches Community-Supported Agriculture Program for Its New York Employees

Bloomberg is taking an active role in supporting the health of its employees while also supporting local farmers.

Bloomberg recently teamed up with Mountainview Farm in Easthampton, Massachusetts to bring the first-ever Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) program to the New York office. Participating employees receive a weekly share of fresh produce during the farming season, as well as exposure to new vegetables and ways to prepare them.

This mutually beneficial program not only supports the local economy, but also gives employees access to better quality produce that is grown without chemicals and pesticides.

Additionally, CSA's provide farmers with the advantage of getting paid early for their crop, not having to lose profits to a “middle man,” and the opportunity of getting to know their customers. Consumers have the benefit of knowing exactly where their food comes from, learning how their food is grown, and getting produce that is grown sustainably.

More information on Bloomberg's sustainability initiatives can be found here.

 

 

Angela Martin leads communications for Bloomberg Sustainability

Bloomberg Businessweek to Launch New Editions in Europe and Asia

Bloomberg Businessweek is launching two new editions--in Europe and in Asia--in early 2012 and raising its rate base from 900,000 to 980,000.

For those who don't know, a magazine's rate base is the average circulation that it guarantees its advertisers, so an increase in the rate base is an important indicator of consistent and strong growth.

The European and Asian editions of Bloomberg Businessweek will feature content from the global edition of the magazine combined with regional reporting from more than 800 Bloomberg reporters in Europe and 500 in Asia. This follows revitalized local-language editions in Chinese, Thai, Indonesian, Turkish, Arabic, and a new Polish-language edition will launch later this year.

For more background on the news, here's the press release.

 

 

 

 

Heather Carpenter co- leads communications for Bloomberg Businessweek

Bloomberg View Launches New Blog "The Ticker"

 

 
 
 

Bloomberg View, the opinion section of Bloomberg News, is expanding its web presence with its own blog, "The Ticker."  

The Ticker will appear during the week and will feature commentary from Bloomberg View's editors and columnists. It will focus on -- but not be limited to -- economics, politics, finance and the markets.

View currently publishes three other blogs: Echoes, which looks at economic history, World View, which taps into the discussion taking place in India, China, Russia, Brazil and the Middle East, and Business Class, which features commentary from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago.

While the View will work to bring the world's discussion to Bloomberg, it will also work to bring Bloomberg to the world. The edited posts will frequently draw on the data, analytics, and reporting produced by the extended Bloomberg organization.

 

The initial group writing for the Ticker will include:

• George Anders, member of the Bloomberg View editorial board, focusing on technology and economics. He lives in California and is the author of the upcoming book, The Rare Find: Spotting Exceptional Talent Before Everyone Else.

 

• Caroline Baum, Bloomberg View columnist, covering the bond market and other financial issues and is the author of "Just What I Said."

 

• Max Berley, member of the Bloomberg View editorial board, focusing on European and American political economy.

 

• William D. Cohan, Bloomberg View columnist and the author of "Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World."

 

• Paula Dwyer, member of the Bloomberg View editorial board, focusing on the political economy and regulation, and is the co-author of "Take on the Street."

 

• James Greiff, member of the Bloomberg View editorial board, focusing on markets and finance.

 

• Tobin Harshaw, member of the Bloomberg View editorial board, writing a daily e-mail, Share the View, highlighting the section's upcoming content. To subscribe, contact him at tharshaw2@bloomberg.com.

 

• Simon Johnson, Bloomberg View columnist, writing about economics, and previously was chief economist of the International Monetary Fund.

 

• Michael Kinsley, member of the Bloomberg View editorial board. He previously was the editorial page editor of the Los Angeles Times and the editor of the New Republic, Harper's and Slate.

 

• Timothy Lavin, member of the Bloomberg View editorial board, focusing on politics and policy.

 

• William Pesek, Bloomberg View columnist based in Tokyo, writing on Asian economic and political issues.

 

• Jonathan Weil, Bloomberg View columnist, covering the financial industry.

 

• Mark Whitehouse, member of the Bloomberg View editorial board, focusing on global economics and finance.

 

• Francis Wilkinson, member of the Bloomberg View editorial board focusing on national, state and local politics in the U.S.

 

Ty Trippet leads communications for Bloomberg News and Media Group

Bloomberg Launches Cloud Archiving For Microsoft Office 365

Bloomberg's electronic communications compliance offering, Bloomberg Vault, has integrated with Microsoft Office 365. That means financial services firms using Microsoft Office 365 now have a cloud-based solution for meeting global electronic communications regulatory and risk management guidelines.

According to a study commissioned by Bloomberg Vault and Forrester Consulting in May 2011, financial institutions are taking more precautions when it comes to archiving emails. They are rapidly moving to hosted email compliance and storage services in order to deal with increasing costs, risks, and regulations.

And, it's not just financial institutions that worry about information management regulations and prudent records retention processes. Companies in all industries need to think about this as well. (The combined service from Bloomberg and Microsoft can also aid non- financial organizations.)

 

Here's the net-net on the benefits from Bloomberg Vault/Office 365:

- Integrated and secure archiving of all electronic communications as a hosted service, helping companies to reduce overhead costs by leveraging the cloud;

- Specialized features designed to help financial firms meet compliance requirements through real-time policy management, advanced search, eDiscovery and electronic records retention and preservation;

- Biometric security for compliance officers to enhance access controls.

 

Harald Collet is the global product manager for Bloomberg Vault

 

Bloomberg Testifies at Senate Hearing on Proposed Regulations for Derivatives Trading

Bloomberg testified before the U.S. Senate Banking Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance and Investment regarding regulations on over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives on June 29th.

As the largest independent trading platform for OTC derivatives, we provided perspectives on provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform & Consumer Protection Act, which requires companies to trade credit-default swaps (CDS) and other derivatives products through regulated exchanges called swap execution facilities -- or SEFs.  Given our unique position in the marketplace as a wholly independent player, the Senate Banking Committee asked us to comment on how SEFs should be regulated.

In short, we support the mandatory clearing and post-trading reporting requirements, but have concerns about the way the regulations will be promulgated, as poorly constructed rules have the potential to inhibit market trading flexibility and raise costs for the end user -- which would not fully achieve the important goals set out by the Dodd-Frank legislation.

As with all new regulations, the devil is in the details. As stated in our testimony before the Senate, sophisticated market participants do not really need or want federal regulators micromanaging execution protocols. 

Bloomberg intends to register as a SEF and we are actively engaged with regulators in the rule making process.  Our customer base is evenly distributed amongst buy side and the sell side participants, so we are an independent company not beholden to anyone, nor are we biased toward any particular element of the market.  As an empirically-driven and data-centered member of the financial services community, our goal is to bring transparency and efficiency to the marketplace -- including in the highly complex derivatives market.

To read the Bloomberg testimony, click here, or if you prefer to watch the full Senate hearing, you can do so here.

 

Ben Macdonald is Bloomberg's Global Head of Fixed Income

Dan Doctoroff Named CEO of Bloomberg LP

One of the hallmarks of Bloomberg's 30 year history is the continuity of our senior leadership.  We took another step this week in the evolution of the management of the firm by announcing that Dan Doctoroff will become Chief Executive Officer of Bloomberg LP (effective August 1).  Dan has been President of the company (a title he will retain) for the past 4 years and has been instrumental in the recent growth of the firm and in building and managing our increasingly complex business model.  In adding the role of CEO, Dan will manage all day-to-day operations of the company.  He will still report to Peter Grauer - who has been our Chairman for the past 10 years and will continue to play an active role leading the company.

Bloomberg's success the past several decades has been primarily based on the extraordinary success of the Bloomberg Terminal, which provides financial information, analytics and news to financial professionals around the world.  And, of course, Bloomberg News has become a world leader in business and financial media and an essential contributor to the value of the Bloomberg Terminal.  We've also diversified to include new businesses, including Bloomberg Enterprise Products & Solutions, Bloomberg Data Solutions, Bloomberg Trading Solutions, Bloomberg Tradebook, Bloomberg Government, Bloomberg Law and Bloomberg New Energy Finance, among others.  The continued success of the Bloomberg Terminal and Bloomberg News plus the addition of these new businesses led to a record financial performance for the company in 2010.  With this streamlined management structure, the company is well-positioned to continue to grow and prosper in the coming years.

And one other exciting announcement:  Tom Secunda, one of the original four founders of Bloomberg LP, was named Vice Chairman of the company.  Tom has been at the forefront of our success over the past 30 years and manages our Financial Products business and Research and Development team.

You can read the press release here.

 

Rick Powell is Bloomberg's Chief Communications Officer

Introducing Bloomberg Queue

Everybody is busy. Always on the go. There's a lot of news out there, including on Bloomberg.com, and people don't have time to read everything. That's a big part of what we think about when determining which features to roll out on our website. While we revealed a new home page about one month ago, we are already adding a hopefully quite useful new tool.

Today, you'll find the Bloomberg Queue on our homepage. (Special shout-out to our launch sponsor Dell. It's the first creative execution in the U.S. of their new broad scale corporate brand campaign - positioning the company as a full-service information technology solutions provider that puts customers front and center.) 

 

   

 
The way this new feature works is simple. You see a story you want to read, but you don't have time right then. Add it to your queue (using the + sign), and read it later. Or, if you've read a story and want to save it, you can do that too and "star" it, or search within your queue for it.

We'll also suggest stories you might find interesting based on what you've already added to your queue. (The more you add, the better we can do with our story recommendations.)

Right now, you can do all of this using a browser, either on your PC, Mac, tablet, or phone.  We are working on giving you the ability to use your queue across any connected device online or offline.  Stay tuned.

 

Eric Steinle is head of product and design for Bloomberg web properties

Bloomberg Law Expands its Web Platform

As the first post about Bloomberg Law, let me take one minute to describe what it is and how it helps lawyers. Bloomberg Law provides primary legal research resources, analytics, news, and company information in one reliable system. Essentially, it provides lawyers what they need to conduct extensive research, build arguments, validate cases, analyze court dockets and just about anything else they need to help their clients and grow their practices.

Today, we are revealing the latest evolution of Bloomberg Law - which was built from the ground up and addresses the integrated legal and business needs of a modern law practice.

Here's an interview we did introducing the new Bloomberg Law enhancements. For more details on features and functionality, see the press release.

Lou Andreozzi is chairman of Bloomberg Law and Larry D. Thompson, PhD, is chief operating officer of Bloomberg Law

Bloomberg Wins Three Loeb Awards for Outstanding Business and Financial Journalism

Earlier this evening, at Capitale in New York City, Bloomberg accepted three Gerald Loeb Awards for outstanding business and financial journalism in the News Services, Beat Reporting, and Magazines categories. 

Winning a Loeb award is a big deal in the world of business journalism. It's a true honor that demonstrates a certain level of expertise to which most aspire.
 

Image from businessjournalism.org

Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief Matthew Winkler said, "As there is no greater measure of respect than to be honored by our peers, we are grateful to be recognized with seven Loeb finalists and three Loeb winners,  all of them advancing the public interest."

Here are the winners:

"Profiting From Fallen Soldiers"
by David Evans
(News Services category)

This series of stories, which appeared on Bloomberg News and in Bloomberg Markets Magazine, reveals how MetLife, Prudential and more than 130 life insurance companies have concocted a scheme to withhold -- and profit from -- $28 billion in death benefits owed to families of service members, government workers and millions of other Americans who had policies.  The stories resulted in almost immediate changes to U.S. government practices.

"Education Inc."
by Daniel Golden, John Hechinger and John Lauerman
(Beat Reporting category)

A series of Bloomberg News articles revealed that for-profit colleges have mushroomed into a $30-billion-a-year industry at taxpayer expense by targeting vulnerable populations -- disabled military and veterans, the homeless, immigrants and minorities -- with misleading promises of low costs, online academic help, and lucrative jobs after graduation.

"End of Life Warning at $618,616 Makes Me Wonder Was It Worth It"
by Amanda Bennett and Charles R. Babcock
(Magazines category)

Amanda Bennett and Charles Babcock stepped into the middle of the health reform debate and spent more than eight months collecting the medical and insurance records associated with the 2007 cancer-caused death of Bennett's husband. The result was a story that turned a personal tragedy into the exploration of the conflict between the deeply human impulse to save a loved one at all cost, and the price to society of doing so.  This story ran in Bloomberg Businessweek and on Bloomberg News.

 

Ty Trippet runs communications for Bloomberg News and Media Group

Bloomberg Businessweek to Launch New Edition in Poland with Point Group

Point Group Business Unit i Bloomberg Businessweek ogłosiły plan wydawania począwszy od jesieni 2011 r.

Oh, sorry, for those who don't read Polish, this says Point Group Business Unit and Bloomberg Businessweek announced plans to publish a Polish-language edition of the magazine starting in the Fall of 2011.

 

 

Michał M. Lisiecki, President of Platforma Mediowa Point (left) and
Jonathan Foster Kenny, Vice President and International Sales Director
for Bloomberg Businessweek (right) elaborate on plans and answer
questions at a press conference in the Bloomberg office in Warsaw, Poland.

 

This is the first new foreign license for Bloomberg Businessweek since it was acquired by Bloomberg L.P. The magazine also has local language editions in Turkish, Arabic, Indonesian, Thai, and Chinese.

Bloomberg Businessweek Polska will be published every two weeks and will feature content from Bloomberg's 2,300 journalists worldwide, including its Warsaw, Poland bureau. It will include locally-focused business and financial content produced by Point Group Business Unit, a subsidiary of Platforma Mediowa Point Group SA.  Michal Kobosko, project manager at Point Group Business Unit, will serve as editor-in-chief.

Here's the full press release.

Patti Straus co-leads communications for Bloomberg Businessweek

Goodbye Noir

Let's start off by saying that some of you are not going to like what we are about to write:
The Noir version of Bloomberg.com (noir.bloomberg.com), which launched in 2006, is no longer accessible. There were prominent messages on the Noir site providing advance notice of this change.

We know Noir has passionate fans, and we maintained it until we were able to incorporate (in a single view) all of the data and news you loved into the new site. This view lives in a new tab called "Quick." It features data including stock indexes and world markets as well as headlines in one place, just like Noir.

We know it's not the black background some of you are used to, but you can expect us to continue delivering the best news and data so you can get what you need in the least amount of time.

We realize change is hard. We hope you'll embrace it, and we encourage you to check out Quick at Bloomberg.com/quickview.

The Bloomberg.com Team

Top-Ranked Hedge Fund Manager Donald Brownstein Talks Finance at Bloomberg Markets "Movers & Shakers" Breakfast

On Wednesday, June 15, 2011, Bloomberg Markets magazine held its first “Movers and Shakers” breakfast in Manhattan - a series which spotlights important financial leaders in an intimate, exclusive setting with financial and securities industry executives.

The first guest for the series was Structured Portfolio Management’s Donald Brownstein, who was named 2010’s top hedge fund manager in the magazine’s February issue.

He arrived early at Bloomberg Television’s New York studios to be interviewed by host Erik Schatzker before heading up to the 28^th floor dining room. There, he was greeted by Bloomberg President Dan Doctoroff and a fast-gathering group of admirers including CEOs, presidents, managing directors, economists, and heads of investment services from such notable companies as JPMorgan, BlackRock, Fitch Ratings, Oppenheimer, Pershing, and BNY Mellon.

With every seat filled and a magnificent view from the top of Bloomberg's Midtown Manhattan headquarters, Brownstein was introduced by Bloomberg Markets editor Ron Henkoff and publisher Mike Dukmejian. Brownstein held everybody rapt, even taking notes, when discussing some of his favorite topics -- fixing the housing market, foreclosures, interest rates, and solutions to the debt crisis – followed by a provocative Q&A session.

 
 

 Photo by Jin Lee

 

Drew Kerr leads communications for Bloomberg Markets.

 

Enhancements to Bloomberg Businessweek+ iPad App

It's been two months since we launched the Bloomberg Businessweek+ iPad app, and we have an update with some cool enhancements that I think you will like. Thanks to everyone who wrote in with suggestions and improvements - please keep them coming!

 

   

Here are the enhancements:

- More Audio: Added audio to top stories of the week with Ken Prewitt and Pimm Fox discussing top stories with the editors and reporters

- Print Articles: Added ability to print articles wirelessly using AirPrint compatible printers (first business magazine to support this)

- Multitasking: Added ability to listen to audio in the background while browsing the magazine or other apps

- Push Notifications: Added alerts for when new issues are published

- Improved charts: Added 5 year charts and earnings (revenues, EPS, net income) to company information

- Faster downloads of issues and other performance and usability improvements

 

There are more enhancements in the pipeline. Please let us know if you have any suggestions for things we can do better. Email us at feedback@bloomberg.net

Oke Okaro is the general manager and global head of Bloomberg Mobile

Release the ECB's Greek Files

This week, Bloomberg responded to a filing made by the European Central Bank on May 13, 2011 asking the court to block the disclosure of Greek swap information, citing risk to the market.  

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief Matthew Winkler talks about our lawsuit against the ECB to release documents showing how "Greece used secretive financial instruments in the family of derivatives to paper over burgeoning and undisclosed indebtedness from the central bank—a pattern of obscure financing spanning at least half a decade."

Excerpts from the piece below, or if you are a WSJ subscriber, you can view it online.

"The European Central Bank allowed itself to be deceived by a default in the making and now refuses to share with the taxpaying citizens it represents the details of the deception. Secret and opaque financing got Europe into a mess that can only be resolved by the transparency of full disclosure."

Euro sign at Gallusanlage with European Central
Bank bldg in Frankfurt, Hesse, Germany

"At a time when European governments and private investors are being asked to contribute to another bailout for Greece, the ECB's secrecy leaves unanswered questions. Money flees secrecy, and opacity engenders suspicion among investors and the public."

"The ECB owes a full accounting to member countries and taxpayers whose money has propped up Greece and may yet be used to support other EU countries. Transparency on this issue is the only way we can make sure a debt crisis never again becomes contagious."

 

 

Ty Trippet runs communications for Bloomberg News and Media Group 

Andrew Morse Joins Bloomberg as Head of U.S. TV

 

Bloomberg Television (U.S.) has a new leader … Andrew Morse, formerly of ABC News. 

Reporting to Andy Lack, CEO of Bloomberg Media Group, Morse will oversee Bloomberg TV's editorial, programming, operations and development in the U.S. and will work across all of Bloomberg's media properties to drive wider distribution of broadcasts across other platforms.

Andy said, "Andrew brings experience not only as an award-winning broadcast journalist, but in understanding the needs of today's media organizations to deliver creative content to consumers across multiple platforms. As a producer, he's created exciting, smart television for a global audience, making him an ideal fit as Bloomberg continues to build a world-class multimedia organization."

Morse led ABC News’ coverage on the ground for the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis in Japan and the Egyptian Revolution in 2011, as well as the earthquake in Haiti in 2010.

As executive producer of innovation and integration for ABC News Digital, he worked with the broadcasts to create an integrated on-air to digital experience. He oversaw ABC News' digital portfolio, including ABCNews.com, ABC News Now, the network's 24-hour broadband channel, and its emerging platforms such as the iPad and iPhone applications.

Morse joins on the heels of Bloomberg launching a new HD channel in markets across the country and new state-of-the-art graphics, design, and music. For more on Andrew's background, see the press release.

Jocelyn Austin runs communications for Bloomberg TV

 

Bloomberg Markets Launches Most Influential List

Bloomberg Markets magazine will be launching "The Bloomberg Markets 50," a list of the 50 most influential people who move the world's markets. The ranking will first appear in print as the magazine's October cover story.

Here's why we're well-equipped to come up with such a list.

- We are a global business and financial information and news leader delivering data, news, and analytics quickly and accurately. 

- Bloomberg Markets magazine serves the global financial elite, providing insight and perspective on the companies, trends, issues and people that move the world's markets.

- We know how to tap into this exclusive group and how to bring them together to further key global economic discussions.

 

On Thursday, September 15, 2011 at New York City's Morgan Library, Bloomberg will host the inaugural Bloomberg Markets 50 Summit where candidates for the Bloomberg Markets 50 and other attendees will address monetary policy, economic outlook, financial reform, commodities, inflation, finance, and alternative investments.

 

Bloomberg Markets Publisher Michael Dukmejian told Lucia Moses of Adweek in an interview, "This is a combination of business leaders, government leaders, financial leaders, economists, analysts, and everyone in between, who run the world’s financial markets."

 

 

 

 Drew Kerr leads communications for Bloomberg Markets.

Bloomberg's Successful IPv6 Test

Yesterday was world IPv6 day. For those of you who may not be completely familiar with IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6), let me briefly explain. Believe it or not, we are actually on the verge of running out of Internet addresses due to the enormous growth of the World Wide Web. These IP addresses are assigned numbers to computers, printers, etc., and without them you cannot communicate or connect to the web.

Bloomberg maintains a strong focus on assessing the technical landscape and its evolution. On that front,  we've watched this trend closely. While there has been good progress in recycling and reallocating the address space, the global move to IPv6 is now inevitable and underway.

We've launched dual-stacked (both IPv4 and IPv6 capable) and IPv6-only versions of the Bloomberg.com website and performed several tests. What we've found so far is that almost all of our readers have environments that are compatible with dual-stacked domains (99.95%). That's great news, and it means that we'll likely migrate our main site to a permanently dual-stacked configuration in the next few weeks!

So, what does this all really mean for you?  It's similar to adding new telephone prefixes -- it shouldn't affect you, but over time, having an IPv6 capable allows us to participate in the growth of the Internet with no hiccups or interruptions for you.

Andre Stechert heads Bloomberg.com's R&D Team

Bloomberg Takes HD Online

We know you’re looking at Bloomberg.com and saying to yourself, “Hmm, this video clip is really sharp.” Well, it is. This week we upgraded our video quality to match the high-definition format of Bloomberg TV. 

When you see a clip from our U.S. TV feed, or if you are watching Bloomberg TV live, you will see it in all its high-def glory (full-frame 16x9).  Don't worry, we hope to do the same for our international feed in the near future.

You may not see every single video look perfect just yet, but we are working to improve the quality and delivery speed of all the video we provide on Bloomberg.com.

Here's a video where "Bloomberg Enterprise" profiles Ethan Allen Interiors Inc. and features an interview with CEO M. Farooq Kathwari.   

Gregory Flynn is responsible for the evolution of video on Bloomberg.com

Introducing Bloomberg View: Putting the World in Focus

The new Bloomberg View is now up and running on Bloomberg.com and on the Bloomberg Professional service.

Our debut editorial lets readers know that they can expect Bloomberg View to feature regular columns, op-ed articles by occasional contributors, and unsigned editorials.  This first piece addresses why, in this day and age, we have unsigned articles and how we hope, over time, "to develop a general philosophy beyond the commitment to transparency and tolerance, non partisanship and intellectual honesty, free markets and data-driven solutions to national and international problems."

Here is an interview we did introducing our new opinion section. We look forward to sharing more with you on Bloomberg View in the future.

James P. Rubin and David Shipley are executive editors of Bloomberg View

Something Different

For the past month or so we’ve been beta-testing a new Bloomberg.com homepage. Today, we’re live.

At a glance, you’ll notice some obvious differences.

-   The top of the page now has a panoramic photo/video window that helps dramatize our lead stories and gives our visual folks a chance to show off their chops.

-   There’s a fixed ‘headlines’ box on the top right of the page, tabbed with a ‘non-stop news’ module; the former lets users scan the biggest Bloomberg stories of the day, while the latter allows them to watch stories roll off the virtual presses as they’re published. (Try it: It’s weirdly hypnotic.)

-   Also at the top of the page is a new Market Snapshot section that gives users a global view of the world's leading indices and how they are moving in relation to each other.

-   We’ve enriched the experience as you scroll down. Browsing the top stories in our various section fronts is much easier; there’s increased touting of individual stories, as well as flashes of humor, serendipity, and a new emphasis on social media.

We think the homepage looks better, but what you see is more than just a few design tweaks. It’s reflective of a new phase at Bloomberg.com. For many years the site has been an automated feed from Bloomberg News. Today marks the beginning of a gradual transition—emphasis on gradual—to a more editorially driven site.

Bloomberg’s a pretty unique news organization. We have more than 2,300 reporters in 72 countries, an HD-television network, and so many people doing smart things with data that our headquarters can sometimes feel like an extension of a top research institution like MIT.

What you’ll see on the site over the next few months is our best work brought to the fore. We'll embrace the flexibility of the web so that our users get the smartest experience possible in the least amount of time. For example, if video conveys the message better and more richly, you'll get the video. (And only the part that matters: no 10-minute epics on this site.) We know you’re busy, and in everything from our design choices to our story selection, we want to make it clear that we understand that.

What web users won’t get is everything. Subscribers to the Bloomberg Professional service pay for the advantage they get from instant access to the extensive Bloomberg data, news, and analytics. They’ll continue to get specialized exclusive content in real-time, in addition to the communications, charts, liquidity, functionalities, trade execution services, and the list goes on.

What visitors to Bloomberg.com can expect is our best news across a variety of categories, and a commitment to expanding content coming from the web editorial team. Today we launched Bloomberg View, the new opinion section of Bloomberg News run by David Shipley and Jamie Rubin. Next up is Personal Finance, a Sustainability section, and an enriched Tech section. And there’s plenty more after that.

We hope you enjoy the changes we've made. Please remember that Bloomberg.com will continue to grow and evolve. We'll be sure to keep you posted on future enhancements.

Josh Tyrangiel is the editor for Bloomberg Businessweek and responsible for editorial content on Bloomberg.com and Businessweek.com

 

Bloomberg Tech Survey Finds CIOs Increasing IT Spend

On May 17, 2011, Bloomberg LINK hosted its first Enterprise Technology Summit and used the opportunity to poll leading tech experts from companies including Google, NYSE Technologies, and Dell SecureWorks about key tech trends. This invitation-only event brought together more than 100 Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and technology decision-makers.

Seventy-six percent said they expect to increase IT spending over the next year. And, when asked what infrastructure investment areas have yielded the most return on investment (ROI) in the last year, cloud computing received nearly half of the responses. 

Here's a clip of a session with Ben Fried, chief information officer at Google, Inc., talking to Bloomberg Businessweek's Josh Tyrangiel about his company's technology strategies.

The Bloomberg.com Team

Bloomberg HD Launches in New York / New Jersey

 

Bloomberg Television has a sharp new look. Bloomberg HD, a new high-definition channel, launches today (May 11, 2011) on Time Warner Cable channels in the New York/New Jersey area.

Bloomberg HD will be available on Channel 730 in New York City, Channel 708 in Mount Vernon, New York, Channel 714 in New Jersey and Channel 717 in the Hudson Valley.

 The new look is designed to be easy to understand at a glance, with color-coded chips to indicate if the markets are up or down.  Other features include graphs, company metrics, real-time pricing information for U.S. and international markets, as well as even more headlines to showcase Bloomberg Television’s reporting on markets, breaking news, and world events.

In an interview with Multichannel News, James Cofer, head of distribution for Bloomberg Television, Americas, said: "Bloomberg HD's service will offer more data and information on the screen than its nearest competitor, with a simple, clear design that allows viewers to quickly gain insight on the markets and top stories."

Cofer also said that he "forecasts rollouts with large distributors, including Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, over the 'next two, three four quarters."  So stay tuned for the all new Bloomberg HD in markets around the country.

For more detailed background information, you can check out the press release.

The Bloomberg.com Team

Study Finds Rapid Adoption of Hosted Email Compliance

Email is the lifeblood of most companies -- especially financial institutions. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that they are taking more precautions when it comes to archiving electronic messages. What does surprise -- according to a study commissioned by Bloomberg Vault and conducted by Forrester Consulting, financial institutions are rapidly moving to hosted email compliance and storage services. Many used to rely on in-house software, but are now moving to hosted solutions in order to deal with increasing costs, risks, and regulations.

The Financial Times reported on the study's findings saying that three-quarters of the 187 financial services "decision makers" who participated are worried about the potential reputational damage lurking in their companies' old messages.

If you can't access FT, you can also read stories on this in Computer Business Review or Wall Street & Technology. And, full survey results can be found in the press release.

Editor's Note: Bloomberg Vault Bloomberg Vault is the first compliance solution to integrate real-time monitoring, search analytics, and archiving of Bloomberg messaging, corporate email, and other electronic content. The hosted service leverages the reliability, security and scalability of Bloomberg’s global private network, including biometric authentication of users for security and redundant data centers for disaster recovery.

The Bloomberg.com Team

Bloomberg Makes BtoB's Media Power 50

Bloomberg Businessweek came in at No. 3 in BtoB Magazine's 2011 Media Power 50, a ranking of the best b-to-b advertising vehicles in the marketplace.

Writing about the magazine, Sean Callahan reported, "With Businessweek bleeding ad pages when Bloomberg acquired it in December 2009, challenging the Journal seemed farfetched. But backed by Bloomberg's more than 2,000 journalists in 75 countries, Bloomberg Businessweek has been reinvigorated."

Bloomberg Businessweek wasn't the only one in the Bloomberg family to make it into this Special Report. Bloomberg.com and Businessweek.com were both listed as the top business news Web sites.

Here's the full report.

The Bloomberg.com Team

Bloomberg View to Begin Publishing Editorials in Late May

Bloomberg View, the new opinion section of Bloomberg News, will begin publishing its first editorials, columns and Op-Ed articles in late May. It will debut on Bloomberg.com and on the Bloomberg Professional service. The editorial board members and columnists were released today. For more detailed background information, you can check out the press release, but here's the line-up (in alphabetical order):

Members of the Bloomberg View editorial board:

• George Anders, former editor at Wall Street Journal and Fast Company
• Max Berley, former editor for Bloomberg Washington and Washington Post and International Herald Tribune
• Lisa Beyer, former editor at Time magazine
• Mary Duenwald, former editor at the New York Times Op-Ed page
• Paula Dwyer, former editor at Bloomberg Businessweek and New York Times. 
• James Greiff, former opinion team leader at Bloomberg News
• Tobin Harshaw, former editor at New York Times Op-Ed page
• Michael Kinsley, former editor of Harper's, New Republic, Slate, and the Los Angeles Times
• Timothy Lavin, former editor at The Atlantic
• James P. Rubin, former assistant secretary of state for public affairs and chief spokesman for the U.S. State Department
• Stuart Seldowitz, former U.S. State Department diplomat
• David Shipley, former deputy editorial page editor and Op-Ed page editor at the New York Times
• Francis Wilkinson, former executive editor and columnist from The Week

 

Bloomberg View Columnists:

• Jonathan Alter, formerly of Newsweek and current analyst for NBC News, and MSNBC
• Susan Antilla from Bloomberg News
• Caroline Baum from Bloomberg News
• Margaret Carlson from Bloomberg News
• Stephen L. Carter, Yale University law professor
• William D. Cohan, Author ("Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World")
• Noah Feldman, Harvard University professor of constitutional and international law
• A.A. Gill from the Sunday Times of London and Vanity Fair
• Edward L. Glaeser, professor of economics at Harvard University
• Jeffrey Goldberg from The Atlantic and former staff writer at the New Yorker
• Albert R. Hunt from Bloomberg News
• Simon Johnson from Bloomberg News
• Paul Kedrosky from Bloomberg News
• Sheril Kirshenbaum from the University of Texas's Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy
• Ron Klain, former chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore and Joseph Biden
• Ezra Klein, columnist and blogger at the Washington Post and MSNBC analyst
• Laurence J. Kotlikoff from Bloomberg News
• Michael Lewis, Author ("The Big Short") and columnist from Bloomberg News
• Pankaj Mishra, Author ("Temptations of the West: How to be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet and Beyond")
• Peter R. Orszag, former director of Office of Management and Budget for President Obama
• Meghan O'Sullivan, Professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and former U.S. National Security Council advisor from 2004 to 2007
• William Pesek from Bloomberg News
• Virginia Postrel, former columnist for the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, the New York Times, and Forbes
• Alice Schroeder from Bloomberg News
• Amity Shlaes from Bloomberg News
• Jonathan Weil from Bloomberg News

 

The Bloomberg.com Team

Bloomberg Markets Story Raises Eyebrows

Bloomberg Markets Magazine published a story about how many insurance companies try to dodge payouts for legitimate accidental death claims, and the beneficiaries have no chance to fight questionable denials of their claims.

Learn about how some people fought back and won. Check out this CBS News clip for a 3 minute recap.

 Read the full Bloomberg Markets story here.

 

The Bloomberg.com Team

Bloomberg Businessweek Makes Adweek's 2011 Hot List

Adweek's annual Hot List just came out, naming 10 of the most successful and influential magazines of 2011. It's been more than 10 years since Bloomberg Businessweek has made this list, but coming in at N.o. 9 is none other than Bloomberg Businessweek. (See the complete list below)

Just one year ago, Bloomberg Businessweek relaunched with a new design, which garnered a lot of attention in the business as well as the creative communities.

Business Insider: "More than any magazine redesign we've seen in the past few years, Businessweek feels bold and fresh, with provocative covers, interesting charts, and great photo selection." (You should experience it on the iPad.)

Women's Wear Daily: "Bloomberg Businessweek has become a favorite of the design community."

In the story naming the Hot List winners, Adweek reports, "Businessweek was part of a dull, struggling category until the deep-pocketed Bloomberg LP bought it in late 2009 and breathed new life into it. Bloomberg installed as its editor Josh Tyrangiel, a digital wunderkind from Time Inc. and onetime music critic, who saw the need for a product that combined the speed of the Web and the illustrative ability of print. The resulting redesign has been called smart and original and drawn comparisons with New York magazine. Things seem to be moving in the right direction. Individually paid subscriptions rose 7 percent in the latter half of last year, while ad pages jumped 49 percent in the first quarter of this year, bringing profitability in sight."

(Adweek also named the magazine's "Ireland Underwater" one of the top 10 covers of the year.)

Here's Adweek's complete Hot List:

1. Food Network Magazine
2. Marie Claire
3. Elle Décor
4. Wired
5. GQ
6. People StyleWatch
7. Cosmopolitan
8. Rolling Stone
9. Bloomberg Businessweek
10. Vanity Fair

The Bloomberg.com Team

Testing 1, 2, 3

You might see a new Bloomberg.com home page today. You also might not.

We’re beginning a very quiet public test of our next home page design with a small fraction of users. (Note the use of the words ‘quiet’ and ‘small’; we’re a little superstitious about this stuff.) We believe we’ve improved the site's overall ease of use and navigation, but there are a couple of things in particular we're excited to preview:

- A new Market Snapshot section across the top of the home page gives you a global view of the world’s leading indices. You can see an index for each major trading region, clarifying how markets are moving in relation to each other. Relevant market data scrolls along the bottom.

- To feed your need for a constant flow of up-to-date information, you'll be able to see a non-stop stream of news right on the home page. Every piece of news that hits the web site will be shown on the homepage with a time stamp.

- A new Quick tab allows you to rapidly scan that stream of news and data headlines by categories such as Most Popular, Exclusive Stories, Opinion, Economy, Technology, Politics, Sports, etc. 

The bottom line is that we are trying to provide an optimal way to get your news and data quickly and easily. We'll keep you posted on the results from this test, and we look forward to bringing you even more soon.

 

Josh Tyrangiel is the editor for Bloomberg Businessweek and responsible for editorial content on Bloomberg.com & Businessweek.com

New iPad App for Bloomberg Businessweek Launches Today in Apple App Store

After reading the headline above, you might already be saying to yourself:  "Another magazine on the iPad, big deal."

Well, this app IS a big deal. We named it Bloomberg Businessweek+ because you get all of the incredible articles you see in the magazine PLUS exclusive content and interactive features. Don't just take our word for it. Business Insider says, "Finally, an iPad magazine app that is actually a pleasure to use."

Here are some of the cool things you can do:

-  Tap on the bolded companies in the articles to get live information such as their current stock price, performance history, and recent news.

-  Watch an exclusive video each week with Bloomberg Businessweek's editor and creative director talking about how they came up with the feature story and the design of the cover.

- Listen to interviews by Charlie Rose and Bloomberg's Tom Keene.

- Search across issues by company or keyword, save articles in a personal library, and share favorite stories via email, Twitter and Facebook.

- Read the magazine in portrait or landscape, and change the font size

- And last, but not certainly not least, discover content easily. In addition to the incredible search functionality, there's a dedicated navigation bar, global table of contents, and a special "Highlights" section. And, we always let you know which article, page and section you are reading so you don't get lost.

 

 

 So now you're saying to yourself, "How much is this going to cost?" Everyone can download a free issue. If you already subscribe to the print magazine, each issue continues to be free. If you don't, you can subscribe for a monthly fee of $2.99.

This app is just the beginning for us. We'll be adding new features and improving the ones you already have- just as we always do at Bloomberg-- in order to do what's best for our customers. So stay tuned.

Oke Okaro is the general manager and global head of Bloomberg mobile

Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit 2011 (Apr. 4-7)

Every year Bloomberg brings together global investors, senior executives, and policy makers to address key issues facing the clean energy and carbon markets. While the event is "Invite Only," you don't have to miss out.

Starting today, you can go to a new page on bloomberg.com/bnefsummit to follow insights emerging from the conference. You'll find the latest summit news, as well as exclusive Bloomberg Television interviews with leading CEOs and analysts. In addition, Bloomberg Radio's Kathleen Hays will be broadcasting her show live throughout the conference.

Here are some highlights from each day:

-  Monday, April 4: Focuses on the generation of new clean energy technologies - who's developing them, deploying them, and financing them.

-  Tuesday, April 5: Hones in on the economics of clean energy, taking a closer look at the current costs of generating energy cleanly.

-  Wednesday, April 6:  Examines how clean energy is shedding the label "alternative" and moving into the mainstream.

-  Thursday, April 7: Features a special roundtable co-sponsored by Bloomberg New Energy Finance and UN-Energy, an interagency initiative of the United Nations, about how the world can raise $100 billion a year to adapt to and mitigate climate change.

Believe me, you won't want to miss that fourth day. Participants include senior figures in the world of climate finance and policy, as well as decision-makers from developing countries.

Some of the big names include Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank; Stephen Chu, Secretary for Energy, USA;  Michael Bloomberg, Mayor, New York City; Deepak Gupta, Minister for New & Renewable Energy, India; Emmanuel Armah -Kofi Buah, Deputy Minister of Energy, Ghana; Chris Huhne, Energy and Climate Secretary, UK; Juan Rafael Elvira Quesada, Minister for the Environment, Mexico.

The Bloomberg.com Team

@pkedrosky One of World's Most Influential

Our very own Paul Kedrosky has made TIME's list of the 140 Twitter feeds that are shaping the conversation. The good folks at Time are asking people to vote on whether or not the people they chose are the right ones. Kedrosky comes in at No. 111 - right behind Felix Salmon and ahead of Kara Swisher, Om Malik, Fred Wilson and others. If you like tapping into Paul's financial and technology expertise or just his overall witty comments, vote YES for him to stay on the list. Too bad you can't see his cool charts on Twitter, but you can always go to his blog for that.

 



The Bloomberg.com Team

Yes, Bloomberg is Hiring

Given all of the recent job cuts across the media and technology industry, we just wanted to let you know that Bloomberg is actively hiring. We've got 12,900 employees in 166 locations around the world, and we're growing.

As we expand our offerings in areas like sports, government, web, law, news, etc., we'll be looking for talent across the board - engineers, marketing professionals, reporters, and everything in between.

More than 500 R&D engineers alone will be hired this year. We'll be adding another 1,600 employees in New York. And, we're expanding operations internationally with new office openings in Mumbai, Dubai, London, and New York just to name a few.   

We know it's been rough out there, but if you think you're the "New Type B" who can solve great 'unsolvable' problems - check out the opportunities.

The Bloomberg.com Team

Watching Bloomberg Video in Style

 

Earlier this month we introduced a new video player on Bloomberg.com for live broadcasts and on-demand videos. The player is faster, allows for a more seamless playback, and is compatible with non-Flash environments. You can also share the videos with friends or colleagues, or put the video on your own site using a new embeddable coding feature.

All new videos will be displayed in this video player, but it's possible that you may still see the previous Bloomberg.com player for old videos. We're currently working to migrate our entire video archive (over 15,000 videos) to our new video platform.

 While we're excited about the new features our player provides, we're still working hard to enhance the user experience even more. Stay tuned over the coming months as we move forward with additional video-related initiatives across Bloomberg.com.

 David Regan is on the product team at Bloomberg.com

 

 

 

 

"The Bloomberg Juggernaut"

Every once in a while it's important to share our strategy to reveal a little about why we are doing certain things.

Well, the American Journalism Review recently spoke with several Bloomberg executives and reporters about just that, and we wanted to make sure you got the inside scoop. In the story, Bloomberg L.P. president Dan Doctoroff is quoted saying:

"The more readers and viewers of Bloomberg News we have, particularly among corporate executives and government officials who make business news, the more influence we have. The more influence we have, the more access we have to them. The more access we have, the more market-moving information we have. That helps us sell more Bloomberg terminals. The more we sell, the more we invest back into our news organization, creating this wonderful virtuous cycle that is unlike anyone else in any other news organization."

What does that mean for you? It means having more news, data, and information at your fingertips than anyone else (at least we think so). Everything we are creating on the Web is to ensure we continue to get you what Matthew Winkler, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News calls the "Five Fs: factual word, first word, fastest word, final word and future word."

The Bloomberg.com Team

Measuring Consumer Comfort

Housing, stocks, politics, employment, consumer spending -- they all affect the U.S. economy. And, one of the most important factors in this equation is consumer confidence. How do people feel about the state of the U.S. economy and their personal finances? Is it a good time to buy needed goods and services? 

Bloomberg's Consumer Comfort Index measures Americans' perceptions on these important variables. A new index reading is generated every week on Thursdays at 9:45 AM ET and is featured on Bloomberg.com. On this page, we’ve broken down the responses by gender, age, income, race, region of residence, political affiliation, and marital and employment status. This gives a more detailed picture of what - and who - are driving changes in confidence.

U.S. consumer confidence last week held close to the highest level in almost three years. Is the improving sentiment enough to give consumers the shot in the arm they need to step up spending?

The Bloomberg.com Team

Companies, Indexes, Funds, SE-Oh My …

Everyone knows that Bloomberg.com has an abundance of valuable company information, charts and market data. To be precise, we have pages on around 150,000 funds, 91,000 public companies and 14,000 indexes from all over the world. This includes well-known brands like Microsoft and lesser-known companies like Al Jouf (in Saudia Arabia) as well as the Deutsche Bank Energy Index and the Schwab Core Equity Fund.

These would normally be an SEO manager’s dream. Unfortunately, the pages were buried on the site and so didn’t generate much traffic. In fact, many of these pages weren’t even indexed by Google.

In order to make this data easier to find – by both our users and the search engines - we created various lists and directories to give our funds, companies and indexes more exposure. You can now find the information sorted by country, industry, and alphabetically. For example, we offer you a directory of:

• Athletic Footwear public companies
• Public companies in Lebanon
• Balanced Funds
• Stock Indexes in Indonesia
• And more…

Now that the first step is complete our initial SEO goals have been met: Google, among others, have indexed all of our quote pages. This is where the real work begins.  As an SEO specialist, I am not only working on getting the quotes pages indexed in Google, but more importantly getting them into higher rankings so they generate traffic to our site. 

To do this, we will tweak the html code, create more links to funds, companies, and indexes, and finally wrap it up with a surprise. It’s a big undertaking, but we’ll keep you updated. 

Ulli Muenker is the SEO lead for Bloomberg.com.

WEF 2011 on Bloomberg.com

The World Economic Forum begins today in Davos, Switzerland. It should come as no surprise that Bloomberg is giving you up-to-the minute coverage – on Television, Radio, and Bloomberg.com.

To ensure you can find all of the Davos information in one place, we created a WEF page on Bloomberg.com that showcases our diverse coverage. The page features multimedia news, including the latest articles and videos from the forum, and direct access to our live TV and radio players. Key members of the Bloomberg team will be interviewing high-profile people throughout the event – and we’ll be streaming their tweets live on the who’s who of Davos on our page.

While it seems like an easy feat, creating this page on Bloomberg.com had its hurdles. First we had to ensure we were able to meet the guidelines set forth by a cross-platform team charged with giving you the access to Davos from all angles. Our tech team rose to the occasion by creating a custom solution that we can now use for future events.

The result: a WEF page that is constantly updated by our dedicated editorial team and gives our users deep insights into the important issues being discussed.  

Heather Phillips is on the product team at Bloomberg.com.

Press Room: Tooting Our Own Horn

Sometimes known as spin doctors, troubleshooters, or flacks, the job of a public relations professional is never done (if I do say so myself). Part of trying to enhance the company’s brand to external constituencies certainly includes proactive outreach. But, it’s equally as important to give our key audience – reporters – a way to stay informed about what Bloomberg is doing. After all, we at Bloomberg do pride ourselves on being transparent.

To do this, we’ve launched a new Press Room on Bloomberg.com to make it easier for everyone to find information about key announcements. The page features press releases from all of our corporate business units, including Bloomberg.com, Bloomberg Businessweek, Bloomberg Government, Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg LINK, Bloomberg Mobile, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Bloomberg News, Bloomberg Professional, Bloomberg Sports, Bloomberg Television & Radio, and Bloomberg Ventures.

The timing on this is great, too, as we’ve been launching products that broaden the company’s appeal to a larger business and corporate audience. We’ve redesigned Bloomberg.com, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Bloomberg Markets magazine, and we are building out new offerings in Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Sports, Bloomberg Government, and Bloomberg Television.

It only makes sense that we have a home for these important announcements and milestones. In the new Press Room, you’ll also find contact information for all our PR pros categorized by group. If we don’t make it easy for reporters to find us, we aren't being very transparent … are we?

Lauren Meller is on the public relations team at Bloomberg.

Building the Kedrosky Blog

Paul Kedrosky is officially blogging on Bloomberg.com.

To the reader, Paul’s blog looks and feels similar to the other content on Bloomberg.com. That was the goal, but how we get there is actually quite different for Bloomberg. For one, Paul travels – a lot – and he needs the ability to upload his content without logging into the Bloomberg system. He also requested the same functionality of his current blog. Our talented R&D team was able to overcome the technical hurdles and establish a process that was seamless for Paul, his busy schedule, and the Bloomberg.com editorial team.

What’s exciting is that we're laying the groundwork for outside contributors to work with Bloomberg.com. The majority of the content on the site today comes from the Bloomberg Terminal and is then posted to the Web. Posts for Paul's blog actually do the opposite. He authors content that is posted directly to the Web and is then sent back to Terminal. This allows us to begin to think of other ways we can leverage this process and enrich the content on Bloomberg.com.

Now that the blog is live, our design team will be working hand-in-hand with Paul to produce some innovative data visualizations on a variety of topics. Users can also comment on Paul’s blog. We’re also enhancing the Bloomberg.com video player to allow Paul to embed his appearances on BloombergTV directly on his blog.As always, we're already thinking about how we can improve the foundation. Check back regularly as we continue to build upon Paul's contributions on Bloomberg.com.

David Regan is on the product team at Bloomberg.com.

 

Checking in with Bloomberg.com’s Kevin Krim

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Kevin Krim, Bloomberg’s global head of Web properties. This year has been a busy one for his Web team and 2011 promises to be even more exciting. 

Good thing for us, Kevin sat down with Benzinga at Business Insider’s Ignition conference. In the interview, he discussed why Bloomberg continues to invest in media.  “We see our media as not just glamorous marketing for Bloomberg. Instead, we see our media as strategically central to the health of our overall business.”

Bloomberg has a unique ability to innovate across all media platforms, and Kevin sees a big opportunity in digital. “Outside of ESPN and the Weather Channel, we're one of the best-situated media companies in media in terms of our cross-platform capabilities. We are inherently digital. We don't have some of the legacy constraints that some of our competitors do.”

Kevin explained some of our initial goals for the redesigned Bloomberg.com. And he touted how successful the redesign has been thus far. “We, according to comScore, have over 20 million unique visitors a month, which puts us right behind the big two portals, Yahoo! and MSN and the Dow Jones network of sites. So that's really significant. That represents 40% growth year over year in our overall audience.”

Read or listen to the complete interview and let us know what you think.

The Bloomberg.com Team

We’re Thankful for New Features

Even with the Thanksgiving holiday in full swing, we still added a few new things to Bloomberg.com last week.

We know you love to share our business news stories with your colleagues, clients, and friends. So we’ve made it easier. On every article page, we now feature social sharing buttons from Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, along with an email option. Our updated sharing tools save you time – which we know means money.

In addition, we added a new Web video series, Leadership Connections. As part of the series, top CEOs, politicians, executives, and more answer questions like: What are the qualities of an effective leader? And how do great leaders overcome challenges?

The first episode features global leaders talking about what makes a great leader, including former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, Google’s SVP and Chief Legal Officer David Drummond, and NFL Hall of Famer and former congressmen Steve Largent.

Let us know what you think.

The Bloomberg.com Team

Paul Kedrosky Joins Bloomberg

I have signed an agreement, announced today, to partner with Bloomberg across its entire news organization. 

What does this mean? Well, a bunch of things. First, I'll do a regular Bloomberg opinion column alongside people like Michael Lewis and others. There will soon be a new Kedrosky blog at Bloomberg.com, and you're going to see me on Bloomberg TV and listen to me on Bloomberg radio -- a lot, and exclusively. 

This is the part of these deal-related notes where people prattle on endlessly about how delighted they are. Well, I am. Delighted, that is. Really. Bloomberg is set to blast away at the fusty world of finansciencesocioeconomics media with more content, more analysis, more ... of more.

We see things in similar ways: we love data, visuals, and synthesizing across economics, markets, sports, science, technology, and current affairs. Meteorology too.  What's more, Bloomberg is fine with me doing my usual eclectic stuff, including speaking, investing in early-stage private companies, and so on.

If you have any more questions, here is an FAQ. This is the interweb, after all.

So, you're selling out?*

Yes. I mean, it would be stupid to pretend that there isn't money involved. There is. (All upfront, and all in Renminbi, of course. I have ace counsel.) But doing it just for the money would be boring. This simply seems like fun, and I'm interested in partnering with someone who can help grow a bigger audience for the sorts of things I like to do. And it helps that Bloomberg has more data than I do – a lot more. And, yes, yes, Bloomberg has money.

What's going to happen to Infectious Greed?*

Nothing, nada, nyet. I'll still be putting the usual sort of things on my site. Science, technology, economics, book stuff, academic papers, worrying over Wimbledon grass wear patterns, musing about what kind of tree Yahoo would be if it was a tree, wondering why Chinese cars don't use gasoline, and so on. You know, that sort of thing, heavy on synthesis and making connections.

Going forward Bloomberg will handle the business side of things on this site. My thanks to John Battelle and Federated Media who handled advertising on the site up to this point. They have been fantastic partners, and John is a good friend and a lovely man. Thanks John.

So, you're selling out?*

C'mon, same answer. It's about money, but it's not just about money. It's about audience, scale, data, and resources. It's about growing something and making it bigger, while giving me access to more people on a global scale. It's also about having fun. And if it's not fun, why do it?

What's going to be different?*

I hope that more data, a larger audience, and more resources will make the sorts of things I like to do more accessible to more people. Having said that: one of my goals in making the change – and the Bloomberg people have been hugely supportive of me in this – is to make the changes as seamless and transparent as possible.

To be specific:

1. The Infectious Greed site stays the same.
2. There will soon be a new blog on Bloomberg.com, called, why not, Paul Kedrosky.
3. I will be exclusive to Bloomberg, working with its terminal, online, TV, and radio properties. 

Paul Kedrosky is a contributor to Bloomberg.com

A-Musing Video and More

It’s been a while since we’ve talked about new things added to Bloomberg.com, but there has been a lot going on under the hood. Each week our technology team deploys new software and design tweaks – often two a week.

The changes include bug fixes, enhancements, new pages, and more. We learn a lot about how to improve the overall Bloomberg.com experience from the feedback we receive from our users. And we make changes accordingly.  

One recent focus has been on improving the television section of our site. We have made it easier for you to find your favorite TV personality and added new pages for all of the new Bloomberg Television shows, including Bloomberg Game Changers and The Mentor. A new TV channel finder lets you find Bloomberg Television in your area.

In addition, you can now find all of the great stories written by our award-winning Muse columnists with ease. Our arts, culture, and spend columnists have their own archive pages that you can bookmark to stay up-to-date on their latest musings (pun intended).

Let us know what you think.

The Bloomberg.com Team

SEO Update: Increasing our Video Views

Bloomberg.com has always featured numerous videos that are popular with our users. With this week’s technology deployment we are using some key SEO tactics to help search engines find our videos as easily as our users.

The first step is to increase accessibility to our videos.

We do a great job of featuring our most important videos in prominent positions throughout our website. But once they have been replaced with more current content, they are harder to find.

Today, we released a video archive that makes it easier for search engines – and our users – to find our videos. This archive, which is sorted by date and goes back to April of this year, allows search engines to index our video content, so more people can find it.

Now that the search engines are able to find and index our videos, we can give them more clues about the video content. This helps them to better rank the videos based on the terms users are searching.  The more details we provide, the easier we make it for them to rank our videos.

To give search engines the information they need, we include all videos in our XML sitemaps (aka Google Sitemaps). In these sitemaps, we submit information to the search engines about video page URLs, description about the content, publication date, and more.

As a result of these two initiatives, we expect to generate more traffic to our videos. We’ll keep you posted on our progress.

Ulli Muenker is the SEO lead for Bloomberg.com.

Welcome to World of Bloomberg.com Feedback

Our users may be surprised to learn that we receive approximately 3,500 to 4,000 queries each month via the Bloomberg.com feedback link. We take feedback and customer service seriously and respond to all valid emails.

Feedback queries run the gamut. Many are submitted by dedicated media users who are fans of Bloomberg Television, Radio, and podcasts. Some are about anchors, guests, and news topics. Others are leads for the Bloomberg Professional sales team.

Our users alert us to technical problems and issues on Bloomberg.com – we truly appreciate that. In these instances, we work closely with the R&D team to ensure all of the kinks are worked out in a timely manner.

Users post their opinions, likes and dislikes, and comment or query us on just about “everything” going on in the world! And I mean “everything.” For example, a grandmother contacted us seeking help for a homework assignment she was doing with her grandson. It had nothing to do with finance, but I asked our intern to help. He did, and received a nice thank you note.

Another unusual query involved a Bloomberg terminal user in Thailand who contacted us when his city was in the throes of violent demonstrations. He emailed us from his office basement asking us to contact terminal users to let them know that he was safe and would be in touch.

The most dramatic emails we’ve received were during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Several people turned to us for help. They requested links for the Red Cross, Salvation Army, and survivor lists. It was a very trying time, but we were committed to helping in whatever way we could. One story that stood out was a sister who was trying to locate her brother in Louisiana. With the help of a radio ham operator, the Salvation Army, and Bloomberg, we located him and followed him until he was safely reunited with his family.

Why do these people contact us? I asked one of them once and her response was, “Because we trust the Bloomberg name.”     

Virginia Nafziger has been responding to Bloomberg.com web queries since 2003.

Behind the Scenes: Bloomberg Game Changers

Last week Bloomberg Television launched a new original series: Bloomberg Game Changers. This documentary series profiles innovative leaders in technology, finance, politics, and culture. The show airs Thursdays at 9 pm ET on Bloomberg Television, with clips and entire shows also posted on Bloomberg.com.

We aimed high to profile some top industry players – and we think we succeeded. Our first subjects include Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, comedian Jon Stewart, and this week’s profile of Apple CEO Steve Jobs, to name a few.

Our team of producers and associate producers began by researching our subjects to get archival photos and videos that detail their lives from childhood through their current jobs. We quickly expanded our search from the Bloomberg archives to every news archive, hometown library archive, personal videos from friends, and YouTube. 

The hard part was locating people and convincing them to speak on camera. We contacted old friends, classmates, and colleagues. Some had lost touch over the years but many of them still have relationships with our "Game Changers." You need a great pitch to persuade people to appear on an unknown show to talk candidly about these high profile people. We explained that the show was not an investigative report or a gossipy fluff piece – a tough sell.

We also interviewed biographers, journalists, and analysts to fill in the narrative thread of the stories and added narration where needed.

In order to make a compelling documentary, we needed to edit all of the content, write narration, create graphics, fact check, and get legal review (which can take up to 12 weeks). For each show, we interviewed between six and 12 people, with many interviews lasting more than an hour. We had to cut some great stories to fit our delivery time.

Our biggest challenge: keeping up with the latest news that seemed to break every time we thought we were done. In the end, we created 11 solid documentary profiles that highlight the careers of game-changing individuals. Let us know what you think.

Nina Weinstein is the executive producer of Bloomberg Game Changers.

Stomping Out the Bugs

“… ‘bugs,’  as such little faults and difficulties are called, show themselves and months of anxious watching, study, and labor are requisite before commercial success – or failure – is certainly reached.”

This quote comes from a letter Thomas Edison wrote to a colleague in 1878. Even back then, engineers were baffled by bugs. And tech bugs are almost as annoying as their real-world insect brethren, only they don’t always buzz out loud to let us know they are around.

The quality assurance (QA) team at Bloomberg.com has a mission to methodically shake those bugs out before they cause problems on the site. We want our users to enjoy the full features of our site as soon as they are launched. The good news is that technology has improved Edison's testing process from taking months to days. 

So how do we manage to de-bug Bloomberg.com and still find time to launch new features?

QA plays a leading role here (if I do say so myself). After the developers hand off new software code, QA makes sure it works (“functional positive testing”), stretches it to the limits of the data systems that feed it (“functional boundary testing”), tries to break it (“functional negative testing”), and sees how fast it responds under high load conditions (“nonfunctional” or “performance” testing). 

Confused?

Here’s how it works: Specialized software simulates hundreds of people navigating our site at once to see if all goes as expected. If the code is fixing a previous bug, we click through the same scenarios that failed to make sure there is no longer an issue -- that’s called “regression testing” in QA speak. We use tools that pull the HTML code for every single URL on Bloomberg.com to ensure that the code creates a consistent Internet experience no matter what computer platform or browser our users prefer. Lastly, we check our pages by eye on all of the major browsers, including Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer on both the Mac and PC platforms to check every corner of the user experience.

Once QA is confident we have exhausted all options and all bugs are fixed, we lock down the code for the next deployment. Since we challenge ourselves to release multiple deployments a week, this whole process takes place in mere days.

We think Edison would be proud.

Eric Mumford is on the QA team at Bloomberg.com

Bloomberg’s New Android App

Today, Bloomberg is expanding its reach with a mobile application developed specifically for the Android operating system.

While all Android users were previously able to experience Bloomberg through our mobile Web site – mobile.bloomberg.com – we wanted to give them a richer, more interactive, and engaging experience. Our goal is to bring the best of Bloomberg to all of our mobile consumers – irrespective of which devices they prefer.

Like the iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, and Nokia apps, the one for the Android operating system features an easy-to-use interface that allows users to personalize the news and data they see throughout the day. The Android app also features two home screen widgets that allow users to get a quick snapshot of the stocks in their personalized portfolio and the latest breaking news.

One unique (and we think cool) aspect is that our release is the first fully featured business and finance app for Android. This allows us to deliver the news faster and gives users the ability to read stories while off-line. Other providers have opted for a hybrid approach that consists of a top level widget (or light app with one page) that’s integrated with their mobile website.

But this is just the beginning of our mobile story. Like our siblings at Bloomberg.com, we are committed to continually evolving with the technology. And soon we’ll have some new mobile innovations to share.

Stay tuned!

Gregg Fenton is on the Bloomberg Mobile team.

Get into the Debate: Intelligence Squared

Is it possible to debate some of the toughest, most emotional issues facing the United States in front of a large New York City audience in a way that's smart, thoughtful, and civilized?

That's the challenge for each of the Intelligence Squared debates, which begin their second season on Bloomberg Television tonight. And this season we are featuring previews of our broadcasts and full episodes (after they’ve aired) on Bloomberg.com.

Our first topic was on the fate of those picked up by American military, intelligence, and security forces on the "battlefield" of the war on terror. Are these soldiers subject only to the laws of war and military justice? Or are they criminals, entitled to the processes and protections of America's civilian court system?

The debate was taped at New York University in front of a live audience, who voted their position on the issue before and after the debate. Before the debate, the audience was almost perfectly divided between those who felt terror detainees should be treated as criminals, and those who were undecided.

We assembled two high-powered teams to try to move that vote. On one side was Michael Hayden, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Directorate of National Intelligence, and Marc Thiessen, a former Defense Department official and speechwriter for President George W. Bush. On the other side were Stephen Jones, the defense lawyer who defended Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, and David Frakt, a military lawyer who has defended detainees facing military tribunals in Guantanamo Bay.

We expected sparks to fly. And they did.

In one exchange, Hayden argued that since the primary objective of the US government is to take terrorists "off the battlefield," giving them rights and protections of criminals, "overcomplicates" the effort. "You will leave me with one other choice to take him off the battlefield," Hayden said. "And that's to kill him."

Frakt, a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Air Force reserve, countered that the oath he and Hayden took as military officers is to defend the Constitution of the United States, "not to defend the people of the United States." Frakt argued that the greater good was to preserve America's core values, even at a high cost.

"But you cannot achieve perfect security. And when you try to, by making shortcuts, you ultimately diminish us a country. And it does not serve us in the long run."

The arguments were powerful, poignant, and sometimes heated. At the end of the debate, the audience vote swung sharply to one side. Find out which side won tonight at 9pm on Bloomberg Television.

Eric Wagner is the producer of Intelligence Squared on Bloomberg Television.