Niche Web Sites Buck Media Struggles

WSJ.com: "Several start-up Web sites such as SB Nation, Seeking Alpha Ltd. and HealthCentral Network Inc., which create and aggregate content about topics like sports, business and health, are recording sharp gains in visitors and -- in many cases -- revenue. They are outpacing other sites on similar topics through business models that allow them to create niche content with little financial investment. Many also are landing distribution partnerships with big media brands eager for cheap content during the recession."

The New York Times Battles a Googler for New Jersey

Valleywag: "Why is the Gray Lady building websites for the obscure suburbs of South Orange, Maplewood, and Milburn? Perhaps because those are the exact same towns Google executive Tim Armstrong picked for Patch, his local-news startup."

Hearst to Begin Charging for Digital News

WSJ.com: "A top executive at Hearst, which publishes 16 newspapers including the Houston Chronicle and Seattle Post-Intelligencer, said the company is mulling how much of its online offerings to keep free, while reserving some content exclusively for people who pay."

Technophiles are abstaining from Facebook for Lent

NJ.com: "Religious leaders and scholars across the country are encouraging the faithful to unplug from Facebook, MySpace and other sites in a virtual Lenten fast."

Why the Japanese Hate the iPhone

Wired.com: "Besides cultural opposition, Japanese citizens possess high, complex standards when it comes to cellphones. The country is famous for being ahead of its time when it comes to technology, and the iPhone just doesn't cut it."

Online networking 'harms health'

BBC: "Social networking sites should allow us to embellish our social lives, but what we find is very different. The tail is wagging the dog. These are not tools that enhance, they are tools that displace."

The Database of Intentions is More Valuable than the Database of Musings For Now (Google and Twitter)

Charles Hudson: "whoever beats Google won’t do it by beating them in web search - it will have to be something different and non-obvious to Google as the incumbent"

Make Online Ads Accountable

BusinessWeek: "You might conclude we're measuring online advertising in a perverse way. Yes, the Web is effective for brand building, but in dwelling relentlessly on display advertising and CPM pricing, we're losing focus on the Internet's real power as a medium for direct marketing and eliciting a response."

The future of newspapers: "Google devalues everything it touches"

Poynter Online: "Google devalues everything it touches. Google is great for Google, but it's terrible for content providers, because it divides that content quantitatively rather than qualitatively."

Pew: Twitter and status updating used by 11% of Americans

Pew: "As of December 2008, 11% of online American adults said they used a service like Twitter or another service that allowed them to share updates about themselves or to see the updates of others."

Blogging Hits Crossroads: A-Listers Giving Up

WebProNews: "Like it or not, the corporation is going to have to enter the blogosphere, and by irony, will ruin it in order to save it. Luckily, unlike the past, there will be wider avenues via user-generated media for quality content producers, so long as they have the passion and will to walk those avenues. Besides, writers write, bloggers blog, regardless."

Bigger than TV, bigger than the internet: Understand mobile of 4 billion users

Communities Dominate Brands: "Newspapers? the total circulation of all daily newspapers worldwide is about 480 milllion. Cars? There are about 800 million cars on the planet. Cable and satellite TV subscriptions? About 850 million. Personal computers including desktops, laptops and netbooks, about 1 billion. Fixed landline telephone connections, about 1.2 billion. eMail users about 1.3 billion. Internet users about 1.4 billion. Television sets about 1.5 billion. And credit cards? About 1.7 billion people carry at least one credit card in their wallet.

But there are 4 billion mobile phone subscriptions now in January 2009. More than twice the number of credit card owners, 2.5 times the number of TV sets or internet uses, approx 3 times the number of email users of total landline phones and yes, four times the number of personal computers. This is a monster sized industry, totally towering over all others."

Android: Being ported beyond smartphones

BusinessWeek: "In late 2009, Touch Revolution plans to introduce a remote control and a touchscreen land-line home phone that will be powered by Android. Also in the works from Hamblin's company: touchscreen menus for restaurants, Android-based medical devices, and a 15-in. kitchen computer where family members can leave messages for one another."

Google TV to Start Selling NBC Universal Inventory

Advertising Age: "if Google can sell the inventory more effectively and cost-efficiently than the current sales force efforts, we believe that it could set an important precedent that other cable networks may follow"

Old media will never be as profitable again, warns WPP's Sorrell

Brand Republic: 'The painful thing for old media is it will never be the same again,' Sorrell said. 'It will never be as profitable as it has been.'

...

He said the seeds of the problem were sown when the people who created the new-media industry in the early Nineties, decided to give it away for free."

YouTube Will Soon Let Big Content Partners Bring Their Own Ads

TechCrunch: "The ability to sell their own ads on YouTube is a big deal for larger media companies, especially those which are already selling Web video ads across their own sites. Media companies with lots of video tend to have large advertising sales teams that are typically able to command better ad rates than what YouTube can get. The prospect of selling ads against all of their videos on YouTube at those higher ad rates has them salivating, even if they have to share the spoils with YouTube."

Twitter to integrate search

Times Online: "Biz Stone, one of Twitter's co-founders, told The Times: 'Search integration is a way of introducing relevancy to people. This is not just about 'What are you doing?' but about what everyone else is doing. Twitter is about finding out what is going on out there right now in real time. This is a powerful new way of repositioning the product.'

Within the next 10 days, Twitter will start putting search into the Twitter home pages of about 1 per cent of users, to test the waters and ask for feedback, before rolling it out across the network, Mr Stone said."

Free Newspaper Venture Depends on Local Blogs

NYTimes.com: "The Printed Blog, a Chicago start-up, plans to reprint blog posts on regular paper, surrounded by local ads, and distribute the publications free in big cities."

Web 2.0, Revenue Models and Profitability

The Drama 2.0 Show: "The most popular Web 2.0 creations have not been cheap to grow and operate. They’re still struggling to find revenue models that will serve as the foundations of self-sustaining businesses and even those startups that generate significant revenue in absolute terms (namely Facebook) cannot justify the valuations they’ve been given. And profitability is still largely a pipe dream."

Social networks must focus on monetisation, says Deloitte - NMA

New Media Age: "Deloitte claimed social networks need at least 100 users to generate the same revenue as one user on traditional media. It also pointed to large operating costs of social sites, particularly those with video streaming."