A quick update on PhoneNews.com and where things are headed. Read more, you’ll like what you see! (Well, unless you’re the competition, then you won’t like what you see very much…)
So, what the heck happened?
What a way to start a state-of-the-site article, but we feel it’s the right way. We owe you, our faithful readers, an explanation. It’s one we’ve wanted to share for quite a long time, actually.
Over a year ago, Newsroom Network was sued. Unfortunately, we have to pay our attorneys $310/hour (seriously) to talk very much more about it. To make a long story short, we feel that justice prevailed in the case, but in order to close the door on any case in the federal courts, a settlement is usually required. So, we can’t say much more than that.
Litigation costs a lot of money, especially in the federal courts. Thankfully, we did enough due diligence that we were able to protect everything and not be bankrupted. However, we did lose our operating budget for the better part of a year to pay attorneys. Operating without an operating budget is tough.
As the old adage goes, anything that doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. PhoneNews.com is now a part of Mobile Media Ventures, Inc. Newsroom Network had to be deactivated, sadly. We had to cut our losses and make the decision to keep what was already profitable, and shut down the rest.
This brings up some tough questions for us. A lot can happen in a year, especially in the tech sector. PhoneNews.com has taken some pretty hard hits because of all of the above. A lot of people have told me personally it’s not worth continuing, and to sell out to one of the big box operators.
The good news is, we’re not going to do that.
The Road Ahead
Back in December, we started “the comeback”. Which, failed because unfortunately people backed away from the table and we weren’t able to end litigation. Thankfully, it’s now over and we’re now very well protected as a company. So, we’re now on a re-comeback. No, this isn’t a Rocky movie.
The first part of that process was team augmentation. That part is still continuing. We’re hiring, and yes, we have money. We’ve been giving some of our most loyal advertisers a free ride during this, because we felt that our coverage didn’t meet our own standards. We feel that period has now passed.
Our next major milestone will roll out on June 30, to mark year eight for PhoneNews.com. It will be our first major UI overhaul in over three years. This will not be our final UI. It will however allow our frontend to match technical advances on our backend, and let us deliver great reviews, editorials, and analysis… in addition to the news, of course, with greater impact.
This also means some lines in the sand have to be drawn though, areas we’d like to bring back we just don’t have the resources to deliver to the caliber we’d like. The Forums and Phone Encyclopedia are both going to be fully deprecated for the foreseeable future. We do have a business plan that calls for future directions for both, but it’s not going to happen any time soon.
Later this year we’re going to roll out something that, for the first time in over a year, will return PhoneNews.com to the relevance that we intend to rebuild. We’re not going to say exactly what it is, but we realize that the app business is something that we missed the boat on. So, we’re building a new boat, a boat with a rocket strapped to the back of it.
And we know that people want more than just mobile news, everything we’re building right now is to that goal. We miss Newsroom Network and what we were building there. But, we’re not going to execute old business plans just because bad things happen to good people. We have to roll with the punches and do things in the right order, that gets things working right again.
So, as we close year seven, I have to say that the state of PhoneNews.com is strengthening. Thanks for tuning in for all these years, without you, we wouldn’t be about to start year eight.
