The Atlantic will launch a paid product within the next two or three weeks, a News Corp. is touting paywalls as “courageous,” and ProPublica wants to have paywall-free nonprofit journalism in every city. Read more at paidContent »
Foursquare is making a major push toward local search and discovery, recognizing that getting people to check into locations isn’t enough to grow the business — it’s all about local commerce. Read more »
Dutch newspaper publisher Jan-Jaap Heij talks about why he decided to launch a mobile app that allows readers to subscribe to individual writers for a monthly fee, and how personal brands are the future of journalism. Read more at paidContent »
Looking to buy a new Kindle Fire or Xbox product? How about making your purchase through a hashtag? Twitter has teamed up with American Express to allow purchases on the site, raising questions about the company’s future in e-commerce. Read more »
Hundreds of traditional publishers have erected paywalls around their content, but there is much to be gained by focusing monetization on individuals rather than an entire newspaper. Here are a few suggestions on how publishers could do this. Read more at paidContent »
PlayHaven, a monetization and customer management platform for mobile game developers, has raised $8 million led by GGV Capital. The company is working to build out its service by adding more customer insights. And it’s looking to expand to Europe and Asia. Read more »
Mobile analytics provider Localytics has raised $5.5 million led by Polaris Venture Partners. The money will help Localytics launch a new automated mobile app marketing platform that allows developers to message their customers and encourage them to take certain actions or make purchases. Read more »
Freemium can only offer the hope that customers will fall in love with your product and be willing to pay for it later. This is a scattershot approach to monetization. Rags Srinivasan argues that it’s time to take a deliberate and more targeted approach. Read more »
Kiip, a mobile reward network, announced it has raised $11 million as it looks to become more of a consumer-facing company. The startup will release a wallet app called Kiipsake that will let users organize and manage their rewards. Read more »
“Virtually every publication in the world right now would desperately like to be 100 percent digital,” said Flipboard editorial director and Time Inc. vet Josh Quittner said at Internet Week this week, as publishers debated how to monetize digital magazines. Read more at paidContent »
Kiip, a mobile monetization startup that offers real rewards to game users who hit in-game milestones, is now going after bigger brand advertisers with a new feature called Swarm, which engages millions of users in multi-player tournaments with the top winners walking away with big prizes. Read more »
The impact of digital technology has shattered long-established monopolies and ways of making money in the newspaper publishing industry. Today, publishers must find ways to subsidize content-creation costs directly, and this report examines a few different approaches, from more flexible paywalls to charging users directly for access and mimicking the business models of other industries, such as online gaming. Companies mentioned in this report include Ford, Netflix, Amazon and Hulu. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Mobile developer Gameview Studios said average revenue per user for its casual game Tap Fish is comparable between iOS and Android, and on some days Android is 30 percent higher than iOS. It shows that Android is closing the revenue gap on iOS. Read more »
Proving that virtual currency can be worth a good amount of real-life cash, social stock market Empire Avenue has landed $1.2 million in funding. Empire Avenue serves a unique and somewhat controversial purpose: It’s a stock market that puts a price on people instead of companies. Read more »
The money in mobile apps is increasingly tilting toward freemium apps and that is helping companies like Tapjoy, which said it now has 10,000 apps that are using its monetization and distribution platform. The company is also delivering more than 1 million ad completions every day. Read more »
Plenty of people seem convinced the New York Times paywall is working. But what does that mean? Is the NYT getting readers to pay? Yes. But the long-term value of that is still an open question — and a paywall remains a fundamentally defensive strategy. Read more »
Kickanotch — a Kansas startup that is building a one-stop app management and monetization platform for media companies, starting with radio stations — is now coming out with RevKick, a content- and ad-management tool that lets companies easily deploy, manage and monetize their apps from one dashboard. Read more »
Some media outlets are hoping that launching iPad subscriptions and paywalls will supplement the meager revenue they get from traditional online banner advertising, but AOL’s Patch and Hearst Magazines’ digital media are experimenting with some more innovative ways of monetizing their content as well. Read more »
The first quarter of 2011 saw plenty of competition between various web companies — and some heated tension, too. Content farms generated the most debate, with Demand Media’s IPO attracting attention and controversy and Google making a major change to its ranking algorithm. Facebook, meanwhile, maintained its heavyweight status online, but this time the social network’s impact was centered on social search, unified communications and comment systems. And Facebook’s ongoing dominance raised the question, Is there room for more than one social network? If niche networks like Quora and Color are any indication, the answer is “yes.” Additional companies mentioned in this report include Twitter, Groupon, Microsoft, LinkedIn and MySpace. To see the full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Film festivals used to be the go-to-place for aspiring filmmakers. Nowadays, they’re a place to go and have some fun with your crew. If you’re serious about getting your films in front of an audience, you have to release them online, says Andrew S Allen. Read more »
YouTube’s ability to monetize user-uploaded video content has increased substantially over the last year, with the Number 1 online video site serving ads against two billion videos a week, according to the New York Times. That’s an increase of about 50 percent over last year. Read more »
YouTube is clocking more than 3 billion video views each month from the top 2500 members of its partner program alone. That means more chances to make money, but not necessarily a lot of money for everyone: Most of these views are generated by music labels. Read more »
Micropayment options are just one monetization possibility that a web video creator might consider in order to generate a profit off their original content, but the tools for enabling small-scale payments are so far relatively limited, especially for independent creators. Change, however, just may be ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Today we’re all probably doing a lot of timeless things. Feasting with family goes back to the Pilgrims. Great Aunt Mindy’s cranberry sauce recipe hasn’t changed in generations, nor should it. Even watching football games feels like a prehistoric ritual at this point. But that doesn’t […] Read more »
The accelerating economic downturn is taking its toll on the entertainment industry, with DVD sales lagging and Blu-ray sales disappointing, according to the New York Times. DVD sales are down 4 percent so far this year, the paper reports, citing data collected by Warner Brothers. The […] Read more »
