Over the past year, Bloomberg and its primary competitors, Reuters (NYSE: TRI) and Dow Jones (NSDQ: NWS), have used their real-time data subscription products to support efforts to reach a wider audience with a greater array of general news offerings, such as more foreign coverage and distribution, investigative/enterprise reporting and opinion.

At the same time, its indirect news rivals such as CNBC (NSDQ: CMCSA) and TheStreet.com (NSDQ: TST), have moved aggressively into mobile and video, while CNNMoney has just refurbished its site to make it more compatible with all the devices users access content.

With so much activity overlapping at all these properties, does Bloomberg really need to do a major overhaul of its site? From a financial perspective, of course not. But from a relevancy perspective, absolutely, especially after just releasing its Bloomberg BusinessWeek subscription-based iPad app.

“Over the years, Blooomberg, has continued to add a lot of terminal subscribers,” said Tyrangiel, who is the editor for Bloomberg Businessweek and responsible for editorial content on Bloomberg.com and Businessweek. “The website was a gravy boat. We could get by with that. But the company wants to be the most influential news organization — and the web is the way to take advantage of of it.”

Among the other things Bloomberg wants to take advantage of is its 2,300 reporters in 72 countries and its HD-television network and package it all in a way that enhances the real-time data product. Ultimately, the cachet that it hopes to accrue, it will have time to build a stronger online ad operation. In March, for example, Bloomberg reformed the division that houses its TV, print, radio, mobile and digital media properties. It also gave Paul Bascobert, president of Bloomberg Businessweek, the additional role of head of Business Operations for the Bloomberg Media Group, as the multimedia unit is now called. The company hopes to make it easier to reach advertisers interested in Bloomberg’s cross-platform offerings.

Now that it has all these pieces in place for the site, Tyrangiel says it will take time for Bloomberg.com to develop a true identity. The hope is that Bloomberg View won’t just counter Thomson Reuters’ blog offering that it started doing over a year ago when it acquired Breakingviews for $18 million, but that it will develop a voice and tone that will help it set the news cycle’s agenda.

“What you’ll see on the site over the next few months is our best work brought to the fore,” Tyrangiel wrote in a memo on the Bloomberg Blog. “We’ll embrace the flexibility of the web so that our users get the smartest experience possible in the least amount of time. For example, if video conveys the message better and more richly, you’ll get the video. (And only the part that matters: no 10-minute epics on this site.) What web users won’t get is everything. Subscribers to the Bloomberg Professional service pay for the advantage they get from instant access to the extensive Bloomberg data, news and analytics. They’ll continue to get specialized exclusive content in real-time, in addition to the communications, charts, liquidity, functionalities, trade execution services, and the list goes on.”

»  A five-week study of a Campbell iPad campaign by Nielsen says that users who saw at least one of Campbell’s iAds had twice the recall than those who had seen a TV ad. And consumers shown an iAd remembered the brand “Campbell’s” five times more often than TV ad respondents and the ad messaging three times more often. [AdAge]

»  Pageviews look like they’re down 25-33 percent in Gawker Media’s new format. [@gabrielsnyder]

»  Apps are all the rage — you can tell by all the breathless coverage of News Corp (NSDQ: NWS). iPad newspaper The Daily this week — and publishers are hoping they’ve found the key to unlocking consumers wallets when it comes to paid content. So that’s where we are now. But the future may belong to HTML5. [Ken Doctor, Nieman Labs]

»  Social net Q&A site Quora is a verifiable hit whereas other question-and-answer sites have missed the mark. But as the site passes from the “cool,” early adopter set to the general public (well, soon), it could be victim of its own success as the “high-fidelity” gets drowned out in a “cacophony” of voices. But isn’t that the age-old problem of any company with a hot product? [GigaOm]

»  Just as the ink dries on Disney’s Playdom acquisition, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is looking to buy some social games as it sets its sites on challenging Facebook. [WSJ]

»  Newsweek and TheStreet.com have struck a content partnership. [Folio]

»  The number of people who rely on newspapers as their main news source has hit a new low. [USC Annenberg School]

»  The number of Hulu’s estimated viewers shrank to 24 million in June, from 43.5 million in May, under comScore’s new methodology — the inconsistency in online measurement is only making it harder to figure out what is reliable and what isn’t. [LAT]

»  A month after David Weigel resigned his columnist perch at The Washington Post over the Journolist listserv controversy, is joining WaPo’s Slate.com as a political reporter. [The Upshot]

Shah’s last role at Time Inc. was as group president, Digital, for the publisher’s news, business and sports properties. When he departed Time Inc., which at the time, was in the midst of its latest major reorg, Shah was expected to take on something more “entrepreneurial.” While he’s maintained a fairly low profile the past few months, Shah’s decision to take a seat on TheStreet’s board is a sign that he clearly interested in attaching himself to an established media brand as opposed to starting something from scratch.

Rafat adds: Shah has been working with different private equity firms looking at various acquisition targets to run, and it wouldn’t be surprising if he did look at acquiring TSCM at some point in the past year. Of course, TSCM has been looked over by any and every player in the industry for a long time now. With a new management in place, an increasing emphasis on diversifying the revenue stream and moving away from reliance on founder Jim Cramer, the company thinks it can finally make a run at it, after being a second tier finance site for years. It also believes, from what I understand, that it will come out of the current SEC investigation around its Promotions.com deal unscathed. Remains to be seen; I remain skeptical on its chances.

David adds: Zynga recently said it planned to bring some of its titles — such as the popular FarmVille game — to Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) properties, including MSN Games and, oddly enough, Windows Live Messenger. The move is seen as an expansion from social gaming to a more general online distribution strategy. But that doesn’t mean the company is looking to remake itself. As the acquisition of Serious Business suggests, Zynga is not about to give up its strong presence in the social net space.

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Zynga Acquires Social Game Developer Serious Business

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Zynga, the leading social games provider, today announced it has signed an agreement to acquire Serious Business, creators of social games on Facebook. The deal will enhance Zynga

The partnership is a shift for Zynga, which has largely focused on making its games available on social networking sites, like Facebook and MySpace, and, more recently, also on its own standalone gaming sites.

The agreement should add some cachet to MSN’s gaming portal, which has seen its traffic fall by about 13 percent over the last year, according to comScore (NSDQ: SCOR) — even as online gaming overall has grown. Zynga, meanwhile, gets to potentially tap a new user base and add a new platform for its games.

The specifics of the deal, as outlines in TSCM’s SEC filing:”The notes are payable in six equal monthly installments commencing April 1, 2010. The Company was granted a security interest in the securities and assets of the Promotions.com business until the notes are fully paid, and one of the notes (with a principal amount of $0.3 million) is guaranteed by the principals of the Purchaser. In the event that, prior to December 18, 2011, there is a change in control of the Purchaser or all or substantially all of the assets of the Promotions.com business are sold, among other events, for consideration (as defined therein) in excess of the Sale Price, the Company will be entitled to receive an additional payment from the Purchaser, equal to 50% of such excess if the event occurs on or before December 18, 2010 and 25% of such excess if the event occurs after December 18, 2010 and prior to December 18, 2011.”

This comes at the same time TheStreet.com (NSDQ: TSCM) acquired a small mobile and interactive marketing company Kikucall, for about $1.75 million, which we first reported last month.

Also in the filing, the company mentioned that it has bought an unnamed subscription marketing services company, for about 647,901 TSCM shares. Likely it will use the acquisitions to bring more subscribers to its various premium newsletters and services.

The full language of the filing:

“the parties amended the Employment Agreement dated as of January 1, 2008 between the Company and Mr. Cramer to provide that (i) the increase to Mr. Cramer’s base salary that was to take effect on January 1, 2010 (to $1,872,000 per annum, from $1,560,000 per annum) will be delayed until July 1, 2010; and (ii) Mr. Cramer’s target bonus for 2010 will be $1,287,000 (before the Amendment, it would be have been 75% of $1,872,000, or $1,404,000), subject to the proviso in the Employment Agreement that Mr. Cramer’s annual bonus be not less than the annual bonus paid to any other executive, employee or independent contractor engaged by the Company for the period.” Except as expressly modified by the Amendment, the terms of the Employment Agreement remain unmodified and in full force and effect. The Agreement also provided that the Company would grant Mr. Cramer 22,200 restricted stock units (RSUs) promptly upon execution of the Agreement, one-third of which RSUs shall vest on each of the first three anniversaries of the date of grant, subject to the terms of an RSU agreement in the form of the RSU agreement between the parties dated as of April 9, 2008.”