I started keeping my diary 15 years ago, before Twitter, Facebook and a deluge of email. In a digital era, personal journal-keeping has changed and adapted to the more technological world — but those who privately chronicle their lives still find the practice useful. 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 »
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 »
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 »
WordPress is going to curate more content and may focus on longform writing and even native advertising, CEO Matt Mullenweg said in a panel at SXSW Saturday. Read more at paidContent »
Blogger Maria Popova has come under fire from a number of critics for her use of undisclosed affiliate links on her blog Brainpickings, which highlights how heated the debate over alternative forms of advertising has become. Read more at paidContent »
Both Andrew Sullivan — the conservative blogger who recently announced that he is going independent — and former Dresden Dolls singer Amanda Palmer are taking the same approach to media: connect with your fans, and then ask for help. Read more at paidContent »
Are new blogging platforms like Medium, Quora, Svbtle and LinkedIn’s Influencers program an attempt to recreate the bad old days of “content farms?” Not really — their focus is much more on quality content than on direct monetization. Read more at paidContent »
Andrew Sullivan’s breakaway from traditional media to run his own standalone blog — for which he has raised almost $500,000 before it even launches — is a sign of that the balance of power in media is still shifting. Read more at paidContent »
Just when many people seemed to think it was dead, new ventures like Svbtle and Medium are trying to reinvent blogging by adding curation and other elements. How they plan to monetize their content, however, remains a mystery. Read more at paidContent »
After launching a barebones mobile app earlier this year, Bloglovin, a Betaworks-backed startup that aggregates blog posts in a highly-visual way, has retooled its app to improve discovery and social engagement. Read more »
Evan Williams, the founder of Twitter and, more recently, The Obvious Corporation, said that since launching Blogger a dozen years ago, he and his cofounder Biz Stone have wanted to democratize the distribution of content. But now, he said, they’re focused on quality. Read more »
Micro-blogging startup Tumblr announced Thursday that it’s partnered with Union Metrics to offer brands and advertisers a full-fidelity analytics platform. Read more »
Six months after launching the first ad on Tumblr, the startup’s founder and CEO David Karp took the stage during New York’s Advertising Week to talk up his platform’s approach to marketing. Read more »
A memo written by the managing editor of the Washington Post in 1992 says a lot about how much of the future of media was obvious even then, but it also misses the most disruptive force the industry has seen — namely, the rise of social media. Read more »
Many online media outlets continue to rewrite news without providing a link to the original source, but doing this is both rude and short-sighted: Linking is one of the fundamental underpinnings of the internet and a crucial part of the culture of the web. Read more »
As a hot, buzzy start-up in private beta, Branch has enjoyed advanced hype thanks to some high profile users and backers. But it also suffers from misconceptions as well because it’s not quite clear to the public what it will be. Is it a form of a […] Read more »
Put pictures in context, be good to read drunk, and other news blogging lessons I’ve learned from my favorite non-news blogs. Read more at paidContent »
Google and Amazon have applied for dozens of new top-level domains — including .blog and .book, as well as .search and .cloud — and many of these will be for the exclusive use of the two companies, which critics say is bad for the web. Read more »
Tumblr’s iPhone app has gotten a major redesign that introduces more robust blogging features and new speed enhancements. Tumblr still doesn’t have a dedicated iPad app but the new 3.0 update should provide a lot of improved functionality for fans of the mobile app. Read more »
If straight-up blogging requires too much of a commitment and Twitter requires too little, CheckThis wants to join Tumblr as a “just right” option in the middle. Read more »
During a Q&A with former rival Anil Dash at paidContent 2012, WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg acknowledged the blogging platform’s complexities and revealed he has been working on a “radically simplified” WordPress. You can see the full video here. Read more at paidContent »
Matt Mullenweg, the founder of Wordpress and Automattic, said at paidContent 2012 that the service is preparing for a significant change of direction — by releasing a much simpler version designed to work on mobile. Read more at paidContent »
Italian bloggers are up in arms after ministers secretly resurrected their attempts to introduce a new law that could see them fined thousands of Euros for not responding quickly enough to request for corrections — an approach dubbed the “blog killer” by critics. Read more »
The Pulitzer Prize win by the Huffington Post has been hailed by some as the first win by a “blog,” but the reality is such terms have become increasingly meaningless. All we have now is media, some of which is journalism and some of which isn’t. Read more »
Twitter announced it has acquired blogging and sharing platform Posterous in what appears to be acquisition of talent. No details about the acquisition were released but Posterous Spaces will remain up and running for the time being, though it’s unclear how long that will last. Read more »
The fourth quarter may have lacked a dominating big-event product announcement like Q3’s Facebook platform extension or Q2’s unveiling of Google+, but the NewNet world continued to buzz along. In the battle for mind share, everyone wanted to be a platform. Meanwhile, consumer and social technologies continued to gain momentum, and new vehicles for content and service discovery presented both challenges and opportunities for NewNet companies. And it is hard to ignore the overcrowded but growing world of daily deals. This quarterly report analyzes these trends and others, and it also provides a near-term outlook of trends, technologies and companies to watch in 2012. Companies mentioned in the report include Amazon, Facebook and Socialcast. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
In the wake of an Oregon court ruling that decided a blogger wasn’t a journalist, some have argued it’s more important to define what journalism is — but in many ways, that’s even harder to define than who qualifies to be a journalist. Read more »
Being detained by U.S. Customs on my way to San Francisco for a conference on the future of work got me thinking about way that many people work now has changed in ways that make the job of governments — and border agents — a lot more complicated. Read more »
It was ten years ago I started blogging in earnest. In the years since, what started as a e-blotter turned into a startup. What was a one-man operation is now a collective effort of many talented people. Here are some reflections, lessons learned and stats too. Read more »
Swedish micropayments startup Flattr is hoping it can encourage web users to hand over cash to the bloggers they love — and gain a bit of traction for its own service in the process. Read more »
The Guardian is trialling a new community publishing platform that’s based on where you are — a sort of Wordpress meets Craigslist meets Everyblock. But can it make hyperlocal work? The company’s director of digital strategy tells us what it means. Read more »
The success of Tumblr — which has raised $85 million in funding and sees 13 billion pageviews a month — contains lessons for media companies, and the main one is that social sharing can be an incredibly powerful force if you make it as easy as possible. Read more »
Social discovery platform StumbleUpon says it’s cutting back on the ability of users to blog and customize their profiles on the site. That includes shutting down groups, photo blogging, and the ability to select themes, which are all going away as of Oct. 24. Read more »
Brainchild of New York–based filmmaker Kirby Ferguson, the Everything is a Remix web series builds on the premise that original ideas and thoughts are extremely hard. And because of those reasons, some of the greatest creations are derivative works or remixes of original thoughts. Read more »
Lots of companies have tried to soften up their image by adopting a friendly tone of voice, but social media has cranked the volume up. But when even banks and faceless corporations are adopting this facile approach, is it time hypercasual was killed off? Read more »
Google added yet another app to its stable of software for the iPhone on Thursday. This time, it’s the official Blogger app, which lets users publish and edit posts to Google’s blogging service. But with no shortage of competition, is there anything special about this app? Read more »
In response to the upheaval in the media industry and what they see as the problems that the web has created for journalism, some are arguing that journalists should be regulated and licensed — but such solutions would create worse problems than they claim to solve. Read more »
Andrew Sullivan, a well known political commentator, ex-magazine editor and legendary blogger offers up some great tips and advice to aspiring bloggers on the art of blogging. More than a decade after I started blogging, I couldn’t agree with Sullivan more. Enjoy the video. Read more »
Want some great Mac apps that work with Lion’s new full-screen mode and really show off why the new feature is one of the best new additions to OS X? We’ve got you covered, with this list of five of the absolute best full-screen stars. Read more »
