Twitter has come out with new rules that make it clear the company plans to own the majority of the value in the ecosystem. While Twitter can probably get away with this kind of behavior, it risks losing much of the goodwill it has built up. Read more »
AOL has made the acquisition of The Huffington Post sound like a nice add-on for its existing content business, but the reality is that AOL had to do something dramatic, since traffic has been plummeting and losses increasing at some of its major media properties. Read more »
With just a few paragraphs about the evils of aggregation and the rise of the Huffington Post, in which he talks about aggregators as “pirates,” the executive editor of the New York Times manages to say volumes about how little he understands where media is now. Read more »
In its latest attempt to build social-networking features into its business, soon-to-be-public LinkedIn today launched a news recommendation service called LinkedIn Today, which it hopes will function like a specialized Twitter for business networks. But will it convince people to spend more time on the network? Read more »
Stumbleupon, which was reborn as a recommendation-and-discovery service in 2009 after an earlier ill-fated acquisition by eBay, produced another tangible sign of that rebirth today with the news that the company has landed a Series B financing round of $17 million from a group of funds. Read more »
A new iPad app called Zite is the latest entrant in the race to build the “Daily Me,” a personalized newspaper that learns what you like. No one has really won this race yet, although Flipboard appears to be leading — and where is Google? Read more »
If there’s one thing websites love, it’s analytical tools that show who comes to their site and what they do when they get there. Now they can get that from Facebook too, thanks to some new tools based on the network’s “like” buttons and comments. Read more »
As the financial screws continue to tighten on traditional media companies, more and more are choosing to throw their eggs into the basket labelled “paywall” — including the New York Times. But in the long run, these walls are really just sandbags against a rising tide. Read more »
Some believe using Facebook’s comment plugin cuts down on “trolling” and other bad behavior because it forces people to use their real names, while others say it gives the social network too much power. But when it comes to improving comments, anonymity isn’t really the issue. Read more »
A firestorm erupted this weekend over a new Twitter feature known as the “Quick Bar,” designed to show trending topics. The criticisms are a symptom of a larger problem for Twitter: it wants to be a business, and users still see it as a utility. Read more »
AOL has agreed to acquire Outside.in, a hyper-local news aggregator, for substantially less than investors put into the company. Like many other experiments in hyper-local news, it failed to connect with the communities it was supposed to be serving, and that is the kiss of death. Read more »
The secret to online success for newspapers doesn’t depend on technology or even specific kinds of content, says Emily Bell, the former head of digital for The Guardian. All it requires is a firm commitment to be “of the web, not just on the web.” Read more »
AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong has been busy signing content-production deals with celebrities like former supermodel Heidi Klum and singer Queen Latifah — but can this new Hollywood-focused strategy produce enough financial bang to make a difference to a fading web giant like AOL? Read more »
Demand Media is acquiring CoverItLive, a live-blogging service that it has had a stake in since 2009, in what could be a sign that the company wants to expand into other areas of user-generated content that are less controversial than its “content farm” business. Read more »
The New York Times is expected to launch a service soon called TimesLimited, which appears to be a Groupon-style email marketing platform. Since they have such close relationships with advertisers already, why didn’t newspapers like the NYT come up with this idea before Groupon did? Read more »
As the race to build the social version of Google’s PageRank heats up, PeerIndex has added a new data source to its rankings: users can now connect their Quora profiles to the service, which will use their activity at the site as a measure of authority. Read more »
Facebook’s acquisition of group-messaging service Beluga and its rollout of enhanced commenting features to websites such as GigaOM are two further signs of the social network’s plan to become a key player in all of the various ways in which people communicate with each other online. Read more »
The evidence continues to accumulate that e-books are not just something established authors can use, but that they are becoming a real alternative to traditional publishing contracts for emerging authors as well — and that should serve as a big wake-up call for the book-publishing industry. Read more »
What news consumers really need is some way to filter all the information they can pull in and have new content recommended to them, but despite some new entrants like News360, social networks like Twitter and Facebook have so far proven to be the best solution. Read more »
Making the transition from print publishing to being digital-first media outlets hasn’t been easy for newspapers — in fact, many have stubbornly resisted this change, and tried to dip their toes into digital waters gradually. But incremental changes are not helping them adapt to the new reality. Read more »
The dismantling of Washington-based local news site TBD has some arguing that such local online-media ventures are doomed to failure, but others maintain that the site’s demise was a result of corporate infighting, and says nothing about the strength of the original concept. Read more »
Although younger users of social networks are often criticized for engaging in “slacktivism” without any real engagement, a new study from the University of California found that younger Internet users become more socially engaged in the real world as a result of their online activities. Read more »
Google’s latest algorithm changes appear to be aimed directly at “content farms” such as Demand Media. Although the newly-public content company maintains that it won’t be affected by the changes, it seems obvious that Google is upping the ante in the content-farming game. Read more »
The web has turned breaking news into something that lasts a matter of minutes — or even seconds — rather than hours. If your business is to break news, your job is becoming harder every day, as Deadline Hollywood blogger Nikki Finke is only the latest to discover. Read more »
AOL’s recent acquisition of the Huffington Post for $315 million has centered a lot of attention on its content strategy — automating and standardizing content that attracts search-related advertising. While there are some clear benefits to this “content farm” approach to content, there are also significant disadvantages. Read more »
Why do Yahoo and Google have such a miserable track record when it comes to acquiring startups like Flickr, Delicious and Dodgeball? It’s the nature of the beast — startups and big companies are two completely different animals, and blending their DNA often just doesn’t work. Read more »
A New York Times story says that blogging is on the decline, especially among young people, who are using social networks like Facebook instead. But blogging is arguably still growing rapidly — it’s just that the form it is taking is evolving in different ways. Read more »
Twitter says that it shut down UberMedia’s apps due to trademark infringement and breaches of its terms of service. But there is much more to this than just a squabble over usage, and Twitter’s heavy-handed behavior is drawing some fire even from the company’s ardent supporters. Read more »
Klout has launched a Chrome extension that lets you see the Klout score of all the people you follow as you look at their tweets. But is that a good thing? At least for now, the Klout score is still something of a blunt instrument. Read more »
Author Jeff Jarvis this morning told a conference of privacy advocates something many of them probably didn’t want to hear: that society needs more protection for what he calls “publicness,” and less focus on locking down our personal information or prosecuting companies that use that data. Read more »
Google has gotten a lot of attention for One Pass, the all-in-one subscription plan for publishers that the search giant revealed earlier today — mostly because it’s a contrast to Apple’s new subscription system. But does that mean publishers should sign up with Google? Not necessarily. Read more »
SlideShare, the web-based service that allows you to upload a PowerPoint presentation and share it with others, today launched a new feature: a free, web-based meeting service called Zipcast that runs in any modern web browser without requiring a download. Read more »
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a rousing speech today about the need for an open Internet and freedom of speech, but she made one notable exception: Wikileaks. It’s apparently fine to persecute that organization for leaking diplomatic cables, even though it has done nothing illegal. Read more »
Apple has finally launched its subscription option for publishers with iOS apps, and it offers magazines and newspapers the ability to charge readers easily, as well as some other concessions from Apple — but in order to get those benefits, publishers have to pay a hefty price. Read more »
UberMedia, founded by Silicon Valley legend Bill Gross, has gotten funding from some prominent venture capital firms and has been buying up Twitter clients. It’s not clear what the company’s strategy is, but one thing seems obvious: it is on a collision course with Twitter. Read more »
The sale of The Huffington Post has some concerned we are entering an age of digital sharecropping, in which writers toil for nothing while landowners get rich. But all the web has really done is accelerate a phenomenon that has long existed in the media game. Read more »
As the online media game gets increasingly saturated, a new land rush is building in the hyper-local market, according to Topix CEO Chris Tolles, who says AOL’s ambitious rollout of its Patch.com network of local news sites is just the beginning of the land grab. Read more »
Facebook CTO Bret Taylor said in a recent interview that he sees the news business as the next industry that the social network can help to disrupt — but that goal could see Facebook clash with Twitter, which is busy doing the same thing. Read more »
Facebook is said to be considering a private share offering that could top $1 billion, and would value the entire company at $60 billion. If it continues to raise funds through such private deals, there’s a chance the company may never even do an IPO. Read more »
Twitter has been having talks about a possible acquisition by either Google or Facebook, according to a WSJ report — and both companies could probably benefit from such a deal. But would an acquisition by either one be good for the service or its users? Read more »
