An article in Sunday's Boston Globe asking "What Went Wrong" started with an interesting anecdote about how the Globe turned away a stake in Monster.com at the beginning of the Internet revolution.
One one level you can read the story as a lost opportunity. On another you can read it as a company simply doing what had always made it successful. Hindsight is always 20/20. If I knew then what I know now I would have taken jobs "coding" in the mid-90s when I really wanted to be a writer. At the time "coding" meant putting HTML tags on documents, I thought it was something more complex that I didn't understand.
The people who took those jobs went on to become pretty good journalists, but that's all hindsight.
So I found it very interesting to get an email from a young CEO named Victor Wong of PaperG touting how the Your Town section of Boston.com will be using the company's "Flyerboards." These are like local bulletin boards for Your Town sites like those in Newton, Wellesley, Needham and Waltham that tap into the local ad market.You can read into it what you want, but here is a small, young comapny started by a bunch of smart guys that has managed to tap into the Globe. Though, given the Globe's current financial state I have to wonder if any money changed hands or if PaperG is just eating what it kills.