AOL continues its surprising turnaround with another quarter of growth in its content and advertising segment. The company is still, however, depending on its legacy business for all its profit. Read more at paidContent »
This week, famous faces, new shows and pleas for advertising dollars brought many web video companies to web video’s version of TV’s upfronts. Here are just a few of the biggest stories to emerge. Read more at paidContent »
The process of selling digital ads is notoriously complicated and involves a lengthy list of competing companies and technologies. A recent ad tech conference explored if things will ever change – here’s some highlights. Read more »
Back from near-death, AOL feels vindicated that it bet on a content strategy when everyone else was turning to platforms and technology. CEO Tim Armstrong shared some thoughts on content, hyper-local site Patch and whether AOL might buy Time’s magazines. Read more at paidContent »
Remember when your email was capped at 2 MB? It wasn’t that long ago. Read more »
A bitter fight over who started the Huffington Post took a major twist today after a judge not only refused for the second time to dismiss the case, but also expanded it. Read more at paidContent »
Most of the startups and networks focused on hyperlocal or community news and information try to be as open as possible, but Nextdoor is taking the exact opposite approach and making the barrier to entry for users as high as it can. Read more »
Looking for the turnaround story of 2013? Stop looking at Yahoo — it’s AOL that’s the real deal. The company has quietly put in place a powerful strategy based on media, technology and advertising. And investors like what they see. Read more at paidContent »
The mobile-messaging value chain is changing as OTT players upend mobile operators’ SMS business. There will be 27.7 trillion messages by 2016, and most of the growth in traffic will come from IP-based services. Successful carriers will use this new technology to extend reliability and scalability. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
AOL has been a basket case for years as it tried to figure out if was a tech or a content company. But today it announced earnings and a strategy that suggest it may finally have found a way forward. Read more at paidContent »
HuffPost Live’s new app could help usher in an era where content producers seek to dominate not just our TV but our tablet devices — at the same time. Read more »
Brand advertising’s focus on cross-platform media measurement has grown dramatically in the past five years. Within the next 36 months cross-platform digital video advertising will standardize, driven by the shift in media dollars to online viewing and the adoption of the Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) initiative. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Did AOL just come up with a new way to do email? Who is Felix Baumgartner? Are we too addicted to techno-nannies? What is happening to the American salesman? Ina Drew plus what lurks in the wild. Some of the stories on tap this week. Read more »
Social media technologies continue to permeate marketing and enterprise collaboration, even if investors felt let down in the third quarter by their consumer-facing businesses like Facebook, Groupon, and Zynga. So B2B technology offerings in support of marketing and collaboration will soon steal all the social tech attention. This quarterly wrap-up analyzes these events, and provides a near-term outlook for trends, technologies and companies to watch in the next 18 to 24 months. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
AOL is trying to modernize the email experience with a new web email product called Alto that aggregates emails from Gmail, Yahoo, AOL and iCloud and organizes it in a visual system that relies on stacks of messages and attachments. Read more »
Expect Labs, the company that is helping usher in the era of anticipatory (or predictive) computing says it has received a big cash infusion from well known investors such as Greylock Partners and Google. The company also expects to launch its MindMeld app sometime this year. Read more »
The Commission on Presidential Debates is partnering with three online media companies to stream debates and educate voters. The platforms will also give the companies a way to showcase their other content. Read more »
In a move to increase community and social networking and decrease reliance on paid editors and writers, Aol’s struggling hyperlocal site Patch is rolling out a redesign today in five Long Island towns. The redesign will spread to 50 more communities this year. Read more at paidContent »
Book publisher Simon & Schuster is ramping up video distribution, creating content channels and signing with partners like Roku, Blinkx and Taboola. For now, the videos are intended to promote books and authors, not to drive advertising revenue. Read more at paidContent »
Jon Miller, the well-respected chief digital officer of News Corp, is on the way out after presiding over the company’s sprawling digital properties. The move comes at a time that News Corp is splitting into distinct entertainment and publishing companies. Read more at paidContent »
Companies have been scrambling to throw down billions of dollars to buy up patent portfolios. One expert warns the purchases reflect a market distortion while the impending Kodak sale suggests a bubble might be bursting. Read more »
This week marks the 21st anniversary of the world’s first website, and as new social-web platforms like Twitter and Facebook spend more and more of their energy trying to control and monetize their networks, it’s worth remembering some of the choices that the web’s creator made. Read more »
The purchase of the sports-blogging site Bleacher Report by Turner Broadcasting unit fills a content hole for the Time Warner unit, but it is also a validation of the user-generated-content model behind the sports-blogging network, and a sign of the disruptive effects that model can have. Read more »
Remember when Friendster was the hot social network, publishers doubted that ebooks would ever sell, and Netflix thought DVDs in red envelopes was the future? We do — that was that state of digital media when paidContent launched in 2002. Read more »
Tim Armstrong continues to believe local news network Patch is not only viable, it is vital to Aol’s future. He promises a new data-driven product in development now will wow Patch watchers and users in the fall. Read more at paidContent »
Aol has been in turnaround mode for years — this time, it looks like the turns are in the right direction. Advertising up, revenue decline almost flat, subscription churn lowest in a decade, latest re-org underway. Read more at paidContent »
Former Google executive Marissa Mayer looks to some like the savior Yahoo and its shareholders have been waiting for. But her focus in the past has been on technology and product development, and that may not be what a media company like Yahoo really needs. Read more »
Elliptical Mobile Solutions is hardly a household name in the data center world, but don’t bet against it. While bigger data centers seem to be better for webscale companies such as Google and Facebook, many are happy to grow about 105 cubic feet at a time. Read more »
AOL is taking its flexible infrastructure strategy to a whole new level of flexibility by building data centers that are about the size of French door refrigerators. Now, AOL will be able to deploy infrastructure where needed with little more than an electrical outlet required. Read more »
Huffington Post now looks less like a blog network and more like a traditional media entity, having launched its own weekly digital magazine for the iPad — but is launching a subscription app a smart way of branching out, or a sign of old-media thinking? Read more »
Sanford Bernstein senior analyst Todd Juenger doesn’t believe digital media companies like YouTube, Yahoo and AOL can entice advertisers into committing huge portions of dollars all in one buying session, a la TV’s traditional upfront market. Read more at paidContent »
In this busy new world of multiple social networks and recommendations tools, the discovery process itself is being disrupted by innovation and by the changing ways in which consumers now interact online. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Two weeks after the digital media giants stormed Madison Avenue with their Newfront blitz, television’s indigenous programmers showed up in Manhattan to defend their turf. For now, their share of ad dollars appears to be safe. Read more at paidContent »
Brad Garlinghouse, who once headed up AOL’s Silicon Valley operations, is now CEO of YouSendIt, a provider of file sharing, sync, storage and collaboration software for businesses. Garlinghouse replaces Ivan Koon who is leaving the company after six years. Read more »
The recent dramatic declines in users of some Facebook social-reading apps from newspapers like the Washington Post reinforces a lesson that media companies need to keep in mind at all times — namely, that Facebook is the information gatekeeper now, and you are just a provider. Read more »
Cable and broadband business veteran Lou Borrelli will head marketing for a start-up trying to make good on the promise of TV Everywhere. NimbleTV wants to make multi-channel subscribers pay a fee on top of what they’re already shelling out to stream their video anywhere. Read more at paidContent »
Arianna Huffington says everything is fine at AOL and she doesn’t mind having her power reduced, but she also admits that private-equity firms have raised the idea of a spin-off of Huffington Post. Could this be the beginning of the end for the faded former portal? Read more »
The 650 patents that Facebook acquired from Microsoft are “web-related” said a source with knowledge of the deal and listed some specific examples. The source said the portfolio includes patents related to: instant-messaging, e-commerce, LTE, mobile, handsets, search and advertising. Read more at paidContent »
Facebook announced today that it will pay $550 million for the right to 650 patents and patent applications from Microsoft.
Microsoft acquired those patents and hundreds of others in a deal with AOL earlier this month. Read more at paidContent »
Media issues like advertising and discovery along with commerce dominated the activity in social and real-time Web technologies during the first quarter. Google raised some hackles, Facebook responded to demands from traditional advertisers, and Yahoo got a new chief executive. Read more in the full report. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
