One problem, Brian Alvey said, is that some of those companies doing publishing really well today aren’t media companies in the traditional sense, pointing to Red Bull and Coca Cola as two examples. And Twitter and Facebook trying to be media companies just adds to the confusion. Another issue is the lack of buy-in at these old-guard companies, which also makes it that much more enticing for these “tech geniuses” to build their own startups rather than fix all that is wrong with an existing platform.