»  While the announcement of the merger between The Daily Beast and Newsweek seemed to happen quickly, the transition has moved relatively slowly. But the pace might be quickening, as Ray Chelstowski, a former publisher of Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly, will serve as publisher of the combined entity, signaling…

Some of the stories people are talking about this morning:»  Still in the middle of a long turnaround amid constant rumors that parent News Corp (NSDQ: NWS). wants to sell it off, MySpace is readying a “dramatic downsizing,” that could include a lay off of between one-third and one-half of…

Some of the stories people are talking about this morning:»  A group of some of the largest demand-side platforms—MediaMath, Turn and DataXu—have formed a joint effort called OpenRTB, which is designed to provide a single, seamless platform for bidding on online ad exchanges. [AdAge] »  What brought the 150-year-old Atlantic…

Some of the stories people are talking about this morning:»  Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) still has the most popular browser, though it hasn’t gotten that much attention these days what with the all the focus on the new features surrounding Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Chrome. However, the next version of Internet Explorer…

You might think video would be the most popular attraction at NBC (NYSE: GE) Sports online. Not so. Last month, 21 million of the roughly 29 million visits NBCSports.com recorded were to its *NBC* Sports Talk blogs, led by Mike Florio’s Pro Football Talk.

We reported last week in the aftermath of IAC’s decision to shut down Bloglines that Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Reader was not doing that well either, citing the latest Hitwise figures which showed visits to the service down 27 percent year-over-year. Google did not respond then when asked for comment, but…

It was pop-culture philosopher Marshall McLuhan who wrote: “All media come in pairs, with one acting as the ‘content’ of the other.” That assertion is true once again, now that a range of developers is pushing out digital products that depend on paying homage to physical-media forebears…

Is the New York Times (NYSE: NYT) trying to shut down news reader apps that rely on RSS or is it just trying to smack down one in particular? An infringement letter (included in full below) from the New York Times to Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) got the flashy Pulse News…

Update: Twitter confirms that Costolo starts as COO next week. From a Twitter spokeswoman: “He’s a long time friend of Ev and Biz, so clearly they trust and respect the work that he’s done and look forward to working with him here at Twitter HQ.” Original: Looks like Twitter is…

Google (NSDQ: GOOG), whose RSS reader is in a tight race with Bloglines, continues to try to refashion Google Reader into a social-sharing site. The latest examples: The company said this week that users of Google Reader would now be able to search for and then “follow” people who publicly…

Former Feedburner CEO and Co-founder Dick Costolo joins the stream of senior level ad exec departures at *Google* within recent months. Google (NSDQ: GOOG) bought out Feedburner for $100 million in 2007, and quickly integrated its RSS feed monetization technology into AdSense. (It also aggravated many publishers with bugs and…

As a publisher, getting on the Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) Kindle isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme. We should know—paidContent was among the sites included in the Kindle Store when the first gen device launched in 2007. But bloggers who want a shot at incremental subscription income by self-publishing their RSS feeds through…

The New York Times‘s techies have been working overtime the past few days: in addition the R&D group’s launch of the Times Reader 2.0 on Monday, NYTimes.com has also gone live with Times Wire. Created by the Client Technologies group, Times Wire posts links to the paper’s online articles and…

Automattic, the parent of blog platform WordPress, unveiled BuddyPress Thursday, a platform built on top of WordPress designed to let its users build social networks around their sites. The framework includes private-messaging features, profile setups and activity streams, all of which can be customized. Automattic, which has raised at least…

Handmark, the Kansas City, MO-based mobile applications and software firm, has acquired Freerange, the Portland, OR-based mobile RSS applications firm. No financial details were disclosed. Handmark’s flagship software Pocket Express is a MyYahoo-like portal that serves up customized news, weather and sports on wireless devices, including newer ones like iPhones…

RSS distributor FeedBurner has shut down its FeedBurner Ad Network, according to a report on Search Roundtable. Calls to Feedburner and Google (NSDQ: GOOG), which bought the company for about $100 in June 2007, weren’t returned. A note attributed to Matt S. (possibly Matt Shobe, Feedburner’s co-founder and CDO) on…

Mobile newsreader service Mobispine is acquiring NewsAlloy, an Ajax, web-based RSS reader, intending to merge the two in to a “seamless” product offering personalized newsfeeds across desktop and mobile. The acquisition price is not disclosed. The NewsAlloy website claims 11,331 registered users, and Stockholm-based Mobispine says it has over 300,000…

As we had reported first in January, online publishing tools company Pluck was close to being bought out and now the company is making it official later today: it is being bought by Demand Media, the Santa Monica-based online domain and media company. The sale price is around $50 million…

Blue Sky Factory, a provider of email marketing solutions, has acquired Blogarithm, a service that sends email alerts whenever a selected blog or website has been updated. Blogarithm claims to have 35,000 users. The Baltimore-based Blue Sky Factory says it will integrate certain features into web-based email marketing service Publicaster.…