Creating a Facebook app for your newspaper — or an iPhone app, or an app for Amazon’s new Kindle Fire tablet — is a nice project, but real innovation consists of rethinking how a media company functions in a digital age on a more fundamental level. Read more »
At Google’s recent Zeitgeist symposium, legendary TV newsman Ted Koppel suggested that it is somehow Google’s duty to “fix” the news, and CEO Larry Page seemed to agree. But relying on Google to choose what news we should read is a very slippery slope. Read more »
Flipboard was created out of a desire to reinvent media consumption for a digital and tablet age, but that doesn’t mean it can’t help existing publications repair their damaged business models, editorial director Josh Quittner told attendees at GigaOM’s Mobilize conference in San Francisco on Monday. Read more »
Last week, Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft reportedly pitched a premium advertising exchange to advertisers and brand-name publishers. The object would be to raise the value of their ad inventory and compete more effectively against Google and Facebook. Could this trio of portals pull it off and ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
What kinds of lessons can newspapers and other print publishers draw from the experience of Netflix, which has come under fire from users for trying to make the transition from its legacy DVD-rental business to online streaming? Here’s a hint: they’re not good. Read more »
Some critics say that Facebook is the new Yahoo: a giant web entity with hundreds of millions of users, but so lacking in creativity that it is reduced to copying Google+ and Twitter, and declining in popularity. But is there any truth to those claims? Read more »
Thinking about September 11 makes me realize how much the media landscape — particularly on the web — was transformed by those events, and how very different the world is now when it comes to how we experience real-time news thanks to social media like Twitter. Read more »
Google has bought restaurant ratings publisher Zagat, in a deal whose value hasn’t been disclosed. The deal helps Google bring in a source of recommendations and user generated content that meshes well with its engineering-centric culture and could boost Zagat’s profile among the digerati. 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 »
Dave Winer says journalism as we know it is “obsolete” because everyone can do it. Is he right? Yes and no. One thing is for sure: journalism is being transformed by the web and by real-time publishing. Whether that’s good or bad depends on your viewpoint. Read more »
Just as CNN created the 24-hours news cycle for television, Twitter has accelerated that to the point where news breaks every minute, and a tweet is almost as good as a page-one scoop for a political reporter. Not only that, but anyone can do it. Read more »
The Daily Dot wants to be the “hometown newspaper for the Internet,” but how many of its stories about Reddit photos or YouTube videos will be of interest to anyone outside of those communities? And does the newspaper metaphor make any sense for an online-publishing venture? Read more »
Some newspaper publishers have said that introducing Facebook comments has cut down on offensive commentary and boosted traffic. But it’s worth remembering that Facebook is not the cure for bad behavior, and that handing over comments to the social network means relinquishing control over something important. Read more »
Can we find clues about the future of news and journalism in the way a link-sharing site like Reddit operates? We just might be able to — and it’s a good reminder that the replacement for mainstream news media may look very different from what we expect. Read more »
A service called iTunes Replay, first rumored back in 2009, could arrive any day from Apple, according to a new report. It would allow users to re-download and possibly stream video content purchased on iTunes to multiple devices, something for which the time is ripe. Read more »
Most mainstream news websites still look like newspapers because most of them still approach the journalism they do in a traditional way — and until they embrace the idea of real-time and “news as a process,” the way that their websites look is unlikely to change. Read more »
For several days now, journalism professor Jay Rosen and author Nicholas Carr have been debating whether the internet makes journalism better or worse. In the end, neither side wins — or both do — because the internet amplifies both the good and the bad things about the media. Read more »
Twitter wants to be “the world in your pocket,” according to CEO Dick Costolo — but more than anything, it wants to be the engine of mobile and real-time commerce in your pocket, judging by his comments at the Fortune BrainstormTech conference in Colorado on Tuesday. Read more »
Some gadgets help us be more productive, some are just cool, and some are both. Here are a few media gadgets that can help you organize and streamline your work, while at the same time letting you have a little fun with technology. Read more »
Flipboard, one of the first iPad applications to really take advantage of the new device’s touch interface to create a kind of digital magazine, today released a series of updates and new features that turn the app into even more of a tablet-based newsstand. Read more »
Using Twitter as a tool for journalism has become more and more mainstream over the past year, and the company’s launch of a media resource center and toolbox for reporters is clearly designed to stake Twitter’s claim as a journalist and media company’s best friend. Read more »
There’s been a lot of talk about “branding” and media lately, sparked in part by Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten’s recent anti-branding rant, in which he said it was “ruining journalism.” But like it or not, branding is now an inescapable part of new media. Read more »
The Guardian newspaper in Britain has made its clearest declaration yet that the future of the organization is online by saying it is going “digital first.” Now all it has to do is prove that this strategy can be a success financially as well as philosophically. Read more »
We’ve spent so long consuming the news in fairly predictable formats that the new forms of journalism we are seeing all around us can be confusing. But these new forms have the potential to broaden the field immensely, and that is a good thing. Read more »
When the FCC said it was putting together a report on the future of media, many feared it would recommend subsidies and other breaks for traditional media entities, but the report actually provides very little help for media companies, other than some helpful advice. Read more »
AOL has made two huge bets — one the $315-million purchase of The Huffington Post and the other the expansion of its Patch.com hyperlocal news effort. Which is more likely to save AOL? With editorial turmoil and Patch’s high costs, the right answer may be neither. Read more »
In another example of the power of instantaneous publishing, a woman in Florida who was raped posted messages about the incident to Twitter — raising questions about how the media should handle such events, and reinforcing how the way we get our news and information is changing. Read more »
Apple’s latest move to try and convince more media companies to play in its sandbox is Newsstand, a digital storefront just for newspapers and magazines that the company announced at WWDC. But will it help convince more publishers to play by Apple’s rules? Read more »
Is Twitter like a spoken conversation, the kind you would have with friends in a bar? Or is it like a written discussion? One of the things that can make Twitter hard to define is that it can be both of those at the same time. Read more »
Many mainstream media companies are busy releasing me-too iPad apps and launching paywalls, but few are doing anything really innovative or different. Anil Dash of Activate Media says media entities need to find ways of disrupting themselves and their businesses by hacking their own organizations. Read more »
Those who see Twitter as a powerful tool for real-time journalism have another example of how it can be done: New York Times reporter Brian Stelter has posted a thoughtful account of how he used Twitter to report on the aftermath of a tornado in Missouri. Read more »
As rumors of a big Facebook/Spotify deal swirled, Mark Zuckerberg took the stage at the e-G8 Forum in Paris and reasserted that he has no ambitions to go Hollywood. “We don’t have the DNA to be a music company or a movie company,” Zuckerberg said. Read more »
If there’s one thing a real-time network like Twitter is good at, it’s distributing information, regardless of whether those who control that information want to see it distributed or not — as a British football player who is suing Twitter has found out to his chagrin. Read more »
Apple continues to sign up more publishers for its in-app subscription plans, the appeal of which is fairly obvious, but there also seems to be a growing wave of interest in doing an end-run around Apple and using the open web to offer a magazine experience. Read more »
As the BBC and other mainstream media outlets try to figure out how to curate and make sense of the “citizen journalism” coming in via social media, they also need to come to grips with the idea that news is now a process, not a product. Read more »
Google chairman Eric Schmidt has been taking some flak from global media and content companies for comments he made about copyright while in Britain, but he’s right, and Britain and Schmidt’s critics are wrong. Copyright is changing, whether they like it or not. Read more »
The Drudge Report drives more traffic to news sites than Facebook and Twitter combined, according to a Pew Research Center report. Maybe it’s time to acknowledge Matt Drudge not only as a powerful media presence but also as a great web entrepreneur. Read more »
Google added some features to Google News, including the ability to choose to see less news from blogs. But how does the search giant define the term “blog?” There’s no easy answer to that, which reinforces why the distinction doesn’t really make any sense any more. Read more »
Google said Friday it has added location-based news to its mobile version of Google News — not a huge development for the web giant, but another step towards offering news that is personally relevant to readers, something newspapers and other media outlets continue to struggle with. Read more »
In a disc-less age, what is a disk burning platform to do besides re-invent itself? The challenge is which way to steer your product. In the case of Roxio and its market-leading disc burning tool Toast, that direction points down two different paths. Read more »
