We asked the experts: How do you do YouTube?
Everyone uses YouTube, but how exactly do people discover new videos? We asked both web video professionals like Amy Pham and Zadi Diaz as well as your average 12 year old girl to find out. Read more »
Stories for Mar. 4, 2013
Amazon execs set to testify in price-fixing case against Apple
photo: Getty Images / Spencer Platt
Amazon won a court ruling last week that restrict Apple’s access to its executives and documents. Filings from the case also show that senior Amazon executives are poised to testify for the government in its price-fixing case against Apple. Read more »
UK chain Tesco staffs up in preparation for launch of digital book, music and video sites
photo: markhillary
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 »
Stories for Mar. 3, 2013
If Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks are guilty, then so is the New York Times
Harvard law professor Yochai Benkler says that WikiLeaks clearly qualifies as a media entity, and argues that by pursuing Bradley Manning for aiding the enemy, the government is putting journalism at risk as well as whistle-blowing. Read more »
Stories for Mar. 2, 2013
US writers on the take: how demand for more media content leads to more corruption
photo: Straight 8 Photography
The government of Malaysia paid 10 media columnists to smear its political opponents on American media sites. It was able to pull this off, in part, because of online publications’ insatiable appetite for content. Read more »
Three e-reading tools I wish existed
A book club reading app that supports Kindle, and two other e-reading tools I’d love to see. Read more »
When advertising becomes content, who wins — advertisers or publishers, or both?
photo: Shutterstock/Gl0ck
One of the biggest trends in media at the moment is “sponsored content” or what some call “native advertising.” But is it the savior of online media, or just another mirage in the advertising desert? Read more »
Stories for Mar. 1, 2013
HitBliss lets users ‘pay’ for streaming movies and TV shows by watching ads
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 »
Google may be winning battles with publishers, but it is losing the war
Google is trying to paint a new German law regulating news excerpts as a victory, just as it did with the deals it cut with France and Belgium . But it feels like Google is losing more than it is winning. Read more »
To battle Kindle, German booksellers partner with Deutsche Telekom on new e-reader
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 »
German parliament passes ‘Google tax’ law, forcing royalty payments for news snippets
The controversial ancillary copyright law has now made its way through the Bundestag, although the opposition SPD party will try to defeat it in the country’s second legislative chamber. Read more »
Stories for Feb. 28, 2013
"What Mitch did and how he’s able to tell the story through the Netflix model -- I think it’s going to redefine what television can be."
— Actor David Cross on the upcoming 4th season of Arrested Development
Marketing to men: Break Media and the business of bro videos
Bro videos — crotch shots, beer chugging, cool cars and so on — have long been a staple of the internet. Today, bro vids are also big business thanks to “man research” and big brands pouring money into making them. Read more »
Bradley Manning provides more evidence of why we need a media entity like WikiLeaks
During his court-martial trial, Bradley Manning said that he tried to contact journalists at the New York Times and the Washington Post but got no interest and then decided to leak classified military documents to WikiLeaks. Read more »
Disruption guru Clay Christensen says incumbent media players are making a classic mistake
Existing players in an industry almost always fail to appreciate how disruption will affect them or understand how to adapt to it, Harvard professor Clay Christensen says, and media companies are making all of those same mistakes. Read more »
B&N CEO Lynch: “We’re not going to continue doing what we’re doing”
photo: Flickr / keone
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 Nook revenues plunge, B&N says it’s “calibrating” strategy but “committed” to devices
photo: Barnes & Noble
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 »
What the Atlantic learned from Scientology: native advertising is harder for news brands
photo: Phuriphat
The venerable Atlantic is being made the poster child for what happens when native advertising goes wrong. An ad industry event in New York raised the question of whether the Atlantic deserves this blame when many other sites engage in similar practices. Read more »
Stories for Feb. 27, 2013
Top jobs of the week in digital media
photo: Shutterstock / Tom Mc Nemar
Looking for a job in digital media? Each week we highlight some of the most interesting positions posted to paidContent’s jobs board. Check out the latest gigs at media companies across the country. Read more »
Updated: Amazon tells iOS users not to download latest Kindle app update
photo: huskyte77
Users who downloaded the Tuesday update say their books were erased from their devices and all their saved settings and bookmarks were reset. Amazon said Wednesday it was a known bug. Read more »
What a pig, a goat and an eagle can tell us about the decline of traditional media
photo: Shutterstock/Donskarpo
When news shows rely on “viral” videos for their programming, without bothering to even try and verify whether they are real or not, all they do is push their viewers towards the original source of that content. Read more »
New York Times gives Starbucks visitors 15 free stories a day
photo: Starbucks
News brands like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are turning to free Wi-Fi as a way to promote their content. In the lates example, Times readers can get 15 free stories a day while sitting in Starbucks. Read more »
Text-to-speech startup iSpeech launches publisher platform; Evernote, Pearson first clients
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 »
Authors face change as Amazon tightens affiliate policy on free Kindle books
photo: Flickr / Alan O'Rourke
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 »
The opportunities and dangers in the native advertising land rush
photo: Dano
Native advertising, brand journalism — whatever you call it, the current ad-driven content boom provides a lot of opportunity. But for it to work, journalists and publishers need to think about their brand as much as the advertiser does. Read more »
Stories for Feb. 26, 2013
Passbook mobile ticketing expanding to 13 MLB ballparks this season
MLB continues to further integrate mobile tech into its fan offerings. While iOS is by far its most popular mobile platform, the head of baseball’s digital arm says it’s “shrinking every day” as Android grows. Read more »
The Guardian’s data journalism is cool, but it can take three weeks to make
photo: Jordan Novet
Media outlets such as the Guardian take a long time to produce data-backed reports and visualizations, while big data analytics apps move fast but don’t lack a human touch. Is there a happy medium? Read more »
Variety doubles down on digital — drops paywall in what it calls “end of an error”
New owner Jay Penske is shutting down Variety magazine’s daily print edition and removing the paywall around the century-old tabloid’s online content. But will these radical moves help the paper survive against more nimble rivals? Read more »
Should you be worried about the new “six strikes” anti-piracy rules? Yes and no
A new system of warnings for users who download copyrighted content is being rolled out by some of the biggest internet service providers in the United States. Is it something you should be concerned about? That depends. Read more at GigaOM »
Mark Cuban-backed start-up launches “HootSuite for YouTube”
Brands and publishers are well aware that they need to monitor and manage Twitter and Facebook. VidIQ, which launched today, says they’re overlooking YouTube as a critical social and data platform. Read more »
Cablevision sues Viacom to break up the bundle — or get a better deal
photo: Nyghtowl
Cablevision has sued Viacom over requirements to carry channels no one watches. The lawsuit could be a serious challenge to the cable bundle. That’s why it will likely be settled out of court. Read more »
New York Times backs AP in lawsuit against news collector Meltwater
photo: Shutterstock / Voronin76
How much can news agencies like the AP control their stories on the internet? The New York Times has just weighed in on a critical case that will help determine that. Read more »
Amazon Prime Instant Video gets exclusive on FX’s Justified
photo: FX Networks
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 »
Social Studios turns your Facebook feed into a TV show
Does your Facebook news feed deserve its own TV show? Social Studios thinks so – and has teamed up with an actress to make it happen. Read more »
Mobile phones and tablets now make up 8 percent of video viewing
photo: Tom Krazit
Tablet video viewing grew 110 percent in 2012 – but mobile video hours still just account for little more than eight percent of all time spent viewing online video, according to Ooyala. Read more »
Stories for Feb. 25, 2013
Fox in the hen house: Kickstarter backed short wins Oscar
Inocente, the story of a 15-year-old San Diego homeless girl wanting to become an artist, won the Oscar Sunday for best short documentary. It was also the first Kickstarter-funded film to win an Academy Award. It was one of the three Kickstarter-funded films nominated for an […] Read more at GigaOM »
Three weeks in, it may be time for Andrew Sullivan to tweak The Dish’s metered paywall
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 »
Marco Arment’s digital magazine and the paywall vs. sharing problem
Marco Arment softened the paywall around his iPad-only magazine because his content was not benefiting from the social-sharing effect that the web enables — a microcosm of the dilemma that many other publishers are also facing. Read more »
Here comes the “International New York Times” — NYT rebrands the Int’l Herald Tribune
photo: Getty Images / Mario Tama
The New York Times Company is betting its future growth becoming a global news brand. It took another step towards doing so by announcing it will rebrand and relaunch the IHT. Read more »
Here are 5 tools that might juice online video ads
photo: cybrain via Shutterstock
Video remains the most promising ad format for publishers hoping to improve their ad returns. The industry is still in early stages but here are five winners of a contest to make video ads more interactive. Read more »
