In the aftermath of events like the Boston Marathon bombings, Twitter is often criticized for the way it indiscriminately distributes lies as well as facts — but as chaotic as that process is, we are better off for having it. Read more at paidContent »
Newspapers and other media entities have gotten used to thinking of themselves as the most important part of the equation — but why not focus on helping individual brands engage with their audiences and then share in the revenue? Read more at paidContent »
The U.S. newspaper industry has lost more than $40 billion in ad revenue in the past decade — over half of that in the last four years alone — and Google’s ad revenues are now more than twice what the industry pulls in. Read more at paidContent »
Foursquare said Thursday it has raised $41 million to expand its location-based service, but the financing is convertible debt rather than equity, which increases the pressure on the company to prove it has a real business. Read more »
Paywalls can bring in extra revenue for newspapers and other traditional media outlets, and they can help keep existing readers from leaving — but how do they help bring in new readers? And what happens if they don’t? Read more at paidContent »
Although its Storyboard editorial operation won awards for the content it curated from the Tumblr network, founder and CEO David Karp said Tuesday the unit is being shut down and all the editorial staff are being let go. Read more at paidContent »
There’s been plenty of focus on how publishers are catering to advertisers by producing “native” advertising, including sponsored content — but a much bigger trend is brands and advertisers that are becoming publishers themselves. Read more at paidContent »
Mendeley, an open collaboration platform for scientific research, has promised that it won’t become less open after being acquired by journal publisher Elsevier, but some prominent users aren’t waiting around. Read more at paidContent »
Digital First Media chief executive officer John Paton says that paywalls aren’t the answer for newspapers, and that print is eventually going to go away — which is why the company needs to take more risks. Read more at paidContent »
BuzzFeed has become the poster child for what some call sponsored content or “native advertising,” but despite the skills of founder Jonah Peretti, the secret to making ads go viral is not quite as simple as it appears to be. Read more at paidContent »
An early blogger and startup founder who had recently launched a new business focused on health and fitness, Allen Stern passed away last week and was remembered by his friends and blogging colleagues. Read more »
Our panel on writers who have built independent businesses around themselves — and one who has chosen to remain inside a traditional media entity — gets a new addition: viral publishing phenomenon Tim Ferriss. Read more at paidContent »
Film critic Roger Ebert talked about how much Twitter meant to him as a form of conversation, and his enthusiastic use of it as a way to connect with readers is a lesson to journalists of all kinds. Read more at paidContent »
Newspapers have been a blend of the serious and the entertaining for decades — why is it so surprising that a site like BuzzFeed could broaden its appeal into more serious topics as well as funny cat photos? Read more at paidContent »
Media theorist and author Douglas Rushkoff argues that many traditional media outlets like the New York Times are trapped between the flow of real-time information and the need to stand back and analyze that stream. Read more at paidContent »
Twitter wants to get on the good side of third-party app developers with some new features for its expanded-tweet Cards, but the main focus of these new features is still to cement Twitter’s control over its ecosystem. Read more »
I may disagree with them about the benefits of a hard paywall, or the wisdom of cutting 90 percent of the newspaper’s blogs, but at least the owners of the Orange County Register are putting their money where their mouths are. Read more at paidContent »
It’s a risky bet, but the new owners of the Orange County Register — two entrepreneurs with no background in traditional media — are pouring money and resources into the newspaper, and not just online but in print as well. Read more at paidContent »
Founder Henry Blodget tells New Yorker magazine that Business Insider’s audience is larger than many established financial news outlets, but the company also lost $3 million in 2012 or almost a quarter of its revenues. Read more at paidContent »
A “Facebook phone” is one of the longest-running rumors in the technology world, but a number of observers think such a beast is actually going to make an appearance next week. But do users actually want one? Read more »
The inspiring story of a young girl who wanted to build a video game, and raised more than $20,000 on Kickstarter to do so, quickly turned sour after her mother turned out to be a successful entrepreneur. Read more »
Dave Winer is the father of RSS and a blogging pioneer, so it’s worth paying attention to him when he comes up with something new — which he has, in the form of a browser-based note-taking and blogging tool. Read more »
The Daily Mail, the world’s sixth largest news site, says it is not only growing digital revenue faster than most other papers, but has engagement levels that put it above Yahoo and even YouTube. Read more at paidContent »
Twitter may be run by a private corporation, but it has quickly become one of the strongest tools we have for free speech, which is why it’s so important that the company resist efforts to curb that speech. Read more »
Flipboard’s new curation tools for creating custom magazines may appeal to individual users, but they will likely also appeal to advertisers and other brands — and therein lies the potential for real media disruption. Read more at paidContent »
Flipboard has become a leading player in the digital news-consumption field, and now it wants to hand the same filtering and curation tools employed by its editors over to users of the app, to create their own magazines. Read more »
Although some might expect a 17-year-old startup founder to take his windfall from a Yahoo acquisition and run, Summly CEO Nick D’Aloisio says he wants to stick around and help Yahoo figure out how mobile content works. Read more »
In buying Summly, a mobile news-consumption app created by teenaged entrepreneur Nick D’Aloisio, Yahoo gets to inject some much-needed fresh thinking about mobile content, and also shows it is serious about change. Read more »
Eliot Higgins, an unemployed British blogger with no military background, has become a crucial source of information about illegal weapons being used in Syria for both human-rights organizations and traditional journalists. Read more at paidContent »
Some of the larger traditional brands in journalism will probably wind up prospering in the new digital era, and some hyper-local ones will as well — but what happens to the players in the middle? Their future remains uncertain. Read more at paidContent »
How can media companies and publishers monetize their content when advertising continues to decline and paywalls are not filling the gap? This is one of the major themes we’re going to explore at paidContent Live on April 17 in New York. Read more at paidContent »
Military intelligence has reams of information about the regions and individuals it needs to keep an eye on, but a senior U.S. analyst says we still lack an understanding of the real context for much of that information. Read more »
Just like any company, the Central Intelligence Agency is trying to filter the massive amounts of data that are being produced by both people and machines, and find the signal in a growing volume of digital noise. Read more »
The Pew Center’s latest report on the state of the media shows the financial woes affecting the traditional news business continue, and this is having an effect on consumers — but there are a few bright spots as well. Read more at paidContent »
A lot of die-hard RSS users are upset that Google has decided to kill off its Google Reader service, but for me Twitter and other platforms based on social news are far superior to any RSS reader and have been for some time. Read more »
Devices like Google Glass are going to change the way that we consume the news and other information — how will media companies have to change the way they think about the news and how it is constructed? Read more at paidContent »
If LinkedIn were to buy the Pulse news-recommendation app — something a number of reports say could be in the works — it would give the corporate social network a powerful way of filtering content for its users. Read more at paidContent »
The biggest challenge for modern etiquette is that we have so many different forms of communication available to us now, but not everyone agrees on how or when it is appropriate to use them. Read more »
The controversy over writer Nate Thayer’s failure to credit his sources, which some alleged amounted to plagiarism, is just part of an ongoing debate over how we use — and give credit for — information in a digital age. Read more at paidContent »
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg says that the social network is trying to create “the best personalized newspaper” with its news feed. But we all know what has happened to newspapers — can Facebook somehow avoid suffering the same fate? Read more at paidContent »
