A look at B2B history
BtoB Magazine has a special five-year anniversary issue (the anniversary was actually in March, but let's not quibble) that has some fantastic stuff about the craziness in our industry during the past few years.
If nothing else, a look through the issue refreshed my memory. For example, in a discussion about the nearly forgotten concept of the "e-hub," BtoB talks about Covisent, which hoped to be the online marketplace for the auto industry. There was a period of about four weeks in my life at Primedia Business when we were obsessed with Covisent. Our plan was to provide news and information for the site. We came close to a deal, but we never closed on the sale.
Remarkably, I had forgotten all about that until I read the BtoB issue.
Look, there's some fun stuff here, including a column by usability guru Jakob Nielsen.
But if you do nothing else, take a look at the column by Rance Crain, who seems to share my worries about the growing influence of Wall Street investment firms in trade publishing.