Eons, Tributes, and Why Newspapers Should Cover Competitors

Yesterday's Innovation Economy column focused on Tributes.com, a spin-off from Eons, the social network for boomers and seniors that Jeff Taylor launched three years ago.

Eons doesn't seem to be have too much wind in its sails (its last funding was raised in 2007, though there's still some cash left in the bank), and Taylor seems to be pinning more of his hopes on Tributes, which hosts digital obituaries. Like an earlier Jeff Taylor venture, Monster.com, Tributes is a "disruptive" start-up aimed squarely at the old-school business of selling death notices that show up in print, in papers like the Boston Globe.

The first e-mail I got Sunday morning, from a reader named John, said, "...I find it interesting that companies that are dissing newspapers [like Tributes] get newspapers to write articles about them."

My response: I acknowledge that newspapers have plenty of problems these days, but one thing I appreciate about them (and I'm not talking just about the Globe) is that they don't tend to respond to rivals by refusing to write about them. Would newspapers (and their readers) have been better off if they never reported on the emergence of new media like radio, TV, and the Internet, all of which represented threats to their business? Would the Globe or its readers be better off if the paper never covered the Boston Herald, the Boston Phoenix, Boston Magazine, the Improper Bostonian, etc.?

I was interested in Tributes' business model, and Taylor's prediction that Tributes' revenues will surpass those of Eons by next year. So I wrote about it.

I'm interested in your take...