Career networking site LinkedIn is reportedly buying news aggregation app Pulse. The move comes at a time when LinkedIn is attempting to expand its content offerings. Read more at GigaOM »
In a keynote at SXSW Sunday, NYT columnist David Carr recalled the launch of the paper’s paywall during SXSW two years ago. “The theologists of free,” he said, believe that “you keep things free, and eventually somebody will clack two coconuts together and you’ll get rich.” Read more »
“Friend” has a new meaning, “Web site” should be avoided, and some tech concepts still lack words. A panel at SXSW Sunday discussed how language is changing in the digital age. 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 »
In a patent application filed Thursday, Apple outlined the possible creation of a marketplace for used digital goods. Amazon recently won a patent to create such a marketplace. Read more »
Barnes & Noble is bringing new movies and TV shows to Nook Video. It’s a good step toward creating a media ecosystem for Nook, but the company is not close to becoming a Netflix, Amazon or iTunes competitor. Read more »
Publisher Hyperion, which is a part of the Disney-ABC Television Group, reportedly plans to sell off most of its backlist and focus instead on books that tie in to ABC TV shows. Read more »
A year after it was launched as the new version of Android Market, Google Play contains over 5 million ebooks, 18 million songs and 700,000 apps, the company announced Thursday. But it’s still struggling to compete against Amazon and iTunes. Read more »
All-you-can-read digital magazine app Next Issue Media is expanding from iPad to Windows 8. The company partnered with Microsoft and hopes that users will want to read digital magazines across their devices. Read more »
According to Press+ data, the average price of a monthly digital subscription is now $9.26 — up from $6.85 at the beginning of 2012. Publishers are also offering fewer articles for free before a user hits a paywall. Read more »
On Tuesday, the Washington Post stepped into the sponsored content fray with a new platform, BrandConnect, that lets marketers create content and publishes it on the newspaper’s homepage. Read more »
U.K. supermarket chain Tesco announced three new hires for its forthcoming digital entertainment offerings Monday. Gavin Sathianathan, who was at Facebook, will be managing director of Tesco’s blinkboxbooks. Read more »
A book club reading app that supports Kindle, and two other e-reading tools I’d love to see. Read more »
A new streaming video service called HitBliss lets users earn virtual cash by watching targeted ads. They can then redeem their earnings for new movies and TV episodes. Read more »
Leading German bookstore chains have partnered with German telecommunications company Telekom to launch a front-lit e-reader, the “Tolino Shine,” for €99. Read more »
Analysts asked Barnes & Noble some hard questions in an investor call Thursday, following an earnings report that showed Nook revenues down by 26 percent over last year. Read more »
As it had warned, Barnes & Noble released a disappointing earnings report Thursday morning. Nook sales were down 26 percent over the previous year, despite the launch of new tablets. Read more »
Text-to-speech startup iSpeech is rolling out tools for publishers that let them convert books and articles to audio. The first two clients are Pearson and Evernote. Read more at GigaOM »
Amazon is cracking down on a policy that allows blogs and websites to earn money when users download free ebooks through their affiliate links. That means big changes in the ways that some self-published ebooks are promoted online. Read more »
Amazon is adding FX’s Justified to Prime Instant Video. It’s the first time Justified has been available on a streaming site, and it won’t be on Netflix or Hulu Plus. Read more »
A little over three weeks into its metered paywall model, Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish has raised an additional $93,000. The pace of subscriptions seems to be slowing, so how can Sullivan keep it up? Read more »
Among the highlights from Pearson’s 2012 report: Financial Times digital subscriptions surpassed print for the first time, and ebooks accounted for 17 percent of Penguin’s global revenues. Read more »
Barnes & Noble’s founder and chairman, Leonard Riggio, has offered to buy the bookstore chain’s 689 retail stores and BN.com. Barnes & Noble confirmed Monday that it is considering the offer. Read more »
Little, Brown U.K. is launching Blackfriars, a digital-only imprint that will focus on new literary fiction and serious nonfiction. Two of its first titles were previously published in the U.S. by Amazon and Penguin’s Riverhead. Read more »
In two signs of how online media consumption is changing traditional tracking services, Nielsen will begin tracking the habits of viewers who watch TV over broadband, while Billboard will begin including YouTube music video views in its charts. Read more »
Fanhattan, which is like a TV Guide for iPad, has launched out a beta web version with new discovery and recommendation features. On the web, it offers more content recommendations from more providers — 29 on the web, compared to 16 on iOS. Read more »
Three independent bookstores have filed a class action suit against Amazon the big-six publishers, alleging that the proprietary DRM Amazon uses on ebooks creates a monopoly. Read more »
Digital audiobook site Audible is launching its first iPad app and is also releasing a new version of its iPhone app that allows for some downloading over cellular networks. Read more »
Craigslist has never released a mobile app, but Mokriya, a company that has worked on apps for Hipster and Sidecar, has licensed the classified site’s data for its new app, Mokriya Craigslist. Read more at GigaOM »
Taboola, a video recommendation engine that’s used by sites like CNN and Bloomberg, raised $15 million, bringing its total funding to $35 million. Read more »
The digital reading revolution is not going to look the same in developing countries as it has in the developing world, but several companies are working on ways to bring digital reading to the African continent. Read more »
When it comes to discoverability and walled gardens, there’s a flip side. Read more »
The U.S. Department of Justice has approved the proposed merger between Random House and Penguin, though it remains under consideration by international antitrust authorities. Read more »
It’s only been a couple of months since Barnes & Noble downgraded guidance for its Nook business. Now the company is doing so again. Unfortunately, Nook Media is supposed to be the profitable part of the company. Read more »
Time Warner is reportedly looking to sell off most of its magazines to Meredith, the publisher of titles like Better Homes and Gardens and Ladies’ Home Journal. Read more »
Users of Amazon Prime Instant Video will be able to stream more shows from CBS and Showtime, including past seasons of America’s Next Top Model, Everybody Loves Raymond and The L Word. Read more »
Plympton, the serial fiction startup launched last year by former New York Times reporter Jennifer 8 Lee, is acquiring DailyLit, a site that delivers books in installments by email and RSS. Read more »
Netflix is partnering with DreamWorks to release its first original children’s show this December. Netflix will also add new DreamWorks films to its streaming lineup. Read more »
Starting Tuesday, Inkling is making its free digital publishing platform, Habitat, available to everyone. The company is also introducing an enterprise product, with publishers including Pearson and Wolters-Kluwer as launch clients. Read more »
Macmillan is paying $20 million to settle the class action and states’ lawsuits remaining against it. Read more »
