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The trailblazing blog PaidContent, specializing in coverage of the business of new media, will be acquired by the Guardian Media Group, writes Kara Swisher tonight in a very sweet scoop. As Swisher says, it's a coup for new media - but it's another great move by the Guardian Media Group as well.

Kara Swisher expects an announcement tomorrow, but the deal was essentially confirmed a few minutes ago on Twitter in a conversation between the Guardian's Technology Editor Charles Arthur and travel writer Craig McGinty. Jeff Jarvis also says he's got embargoed info on it - so this sounds very real. Below are our thoughts about what it means.

PaidContent is a blog that some readers here may not be familiar with, but it has been among the top revenue generators among high-profile new media outlets for several years.

What PaidContent Does

The company has a diverse strategy, including PaidContent.org, mobile content coverage at MocoNews, coverage of India at ContentSutra, PaidContent UK, a number of small industry conference and paid research reports.

PaidContent is regularly the first to report on fundings and acquisitions and the site combines speed with high quality writing. All of us could aspire to perform so well. It is notable that Swisher reports the price was "north of $30 million." While that's a nice sum for a blog, one of if not the largest sums paid for a blog network to date, but only relatively small technology providers on the web go for so little these days.

The site launched in 2002 and its advertisers are B2B service providers that many of us in the consumer tech world don't think about much. They are the companies that power the public facing media services we later consume. All the way back in 2006 Business 2.0 magazine reported that PaidContent was set to bring in $1 million in annual ad revenue.

In March PaidContent hired the former head of DownJones and Yahoo Finance to be its CEO.

The Guardian is On Fire

The London Guardian, the flagship newspaper of the Guardian Media Group, has become a trailblazer in its own right well before this deal. It's a newspaper with its own developer platform; the newspaper hired then Yahoo Developer Network head Matt McAlister in March.

For the last year and a half the Guardian has run a campaign called FreeOurData.org.uk - agitating for public data APIs and portability. How incredible is that, from a news organization? One of the results of that agitation was the creation of the publicly funded mashup contest called Show Us a Better Way, which we covered here last week.

What do you get when you combine cutting edge tech openness with some of the leading new media publishers online? A kick ass publisher ready for the 21st century, hopefully. Meanwhile the rest of the newspaper industry struggles to survive attacks from Craigslist.

If this deal really goes down, and we expect that it will, it's a great move by all parties involved. Industry watchers have wondered both how leading blogs will be monetized long term and how newspapers will survive. This is one part of that unfolding story.

This is the site Leo Laporte uses for advertising on the TWiT podcast network.

In the tradition of American Idol, The Apprentice, Top Chef, and Dragons' Den, a new TV show is in development in New Zealand that will bring the 'Elimination/Game show' format of reality TV to the world of startups. I will be one of the 3 judges.

The TV show, to be called Start Up (not to be confused with the 2001 movie Startup.com) is being produced by a kiwi company called Start-UP Media, alongside Wellington hi-tech cluster Silicon Welly. The aim is "to take one kiwi online company from startup through to launch in Silicon Valley and hopefully on to international success."

Aspiring kiwi startups are invited to apply to be part of the TV show. The TV series will select 10 startups and put them through 3 months of challenges.

As reported on the NZ Herald, Start-UP Media says the focus is on finding startups with an international focus:

"We're looking for companies with an international focus from day 1. The minimum entry requirements will be that they will have a product in development or beta phase however we may make an exception for someone that has an exceptional idea supported by market validation."

We here at RWW fully support the notion of Web innovation and success happening on an international scale. While the hub of Web technology is still Silicon Valley, this TV show aims to encourage aspiring kiwi entrepreneurs to make the first step - and the best of them will be promoted over in the Valley.

As for which American Idol judge I will be... I think it's fair to say I'm not nasty enough to be Simon Cowell. I'd like to think I'm not the other extreme either (Paula), so I guess that makes me Randy Jackson! I like Randy, so I can live with that ("it was pitchy for me, dawg"). The other judges are Tim Norton from PlanHQ (an online business planning startup) and Rod Drury from Xero (an online accounting app with global ambitions).

What made Marie Digby? I’ve heard about her on the radio from time to time, while I do the unnatural act of driving somewhere. Now, I’ve been invited to an event, where the tagline says that she’s “a star born from YouTube”. I had to dig further.

Decided to watch the famous video. Its just her, sitting with her guitar, performing an acoustic version of Rihana’s Umbrella. Nothing fancy. I’m told she sat in front of her MacBook to make the “hit”.

Grassroots marketing? Bands try much harder, and still feel the pain of becoming somewhat famous. What makes her different? Beauty (she’s of Japanese-American heritage)? Sultry look?

I wonder what her tipping point was. She’s had it easy, when you think about it. The Internet has popularised so many good things, and even if you rewind back say fifteen years ago, there is no way an artist would have made it easily, via grassroots events/stunts.

Aren’t you glad you’re part of the free software revolution? If not for Linux (SuSE), Python, MySQL, and lots and lots of disk, you will not be seeing Marie Digby, now will you? And naturally, if not for the ease-of-use of her Apple laptop, and how they’ve become commodity hardware (15 years ago, there were for “graphics professionals” and were sordidly expensive). Times do change.

Maybe I’ll go to the event… if I’m not too jet-lagged (imagine, planning a month in advance to be jet-lagged)…

Technorati Tags: marie digby, music, youtube, trends, rihana, umbrella, macbook, apple, open source, free software revolution, tipping point

Overlay.TV inserisce direttamente nei video e nei programmi televisivi links ai siti dove acquistare direttamente i prodotti che si vedono nelle trasmissioni.

L’esempio più famoso è il video dell’esibizione di Kanye West ai Grammys, dove indossava degli occhiali che è possiblie acquistare con un semplice click sul prodotto.

Se il product placement di una volta prevedeva bottiglie di acque minerali in primo piano, scene tirate con i vari marchi in bell’evidenza, ora le “markette” saranno meno evidenti (almeno si spera!).

Il pericolo è quello di essere catapultati in trasmissioni che diventeranno un coacervo di pubblicità (come se non bastassero le varie televendite, spot, ecc.); l’utilità del sistema e quella di risolvere le domande “chissà dove lo compro?”. Ora i prodotti sono tutti lì, tutti a portata di mouse.

We received an interesting email today from Business Wire, a press release wire service that Warren Buffett bought in March 2006. Currently Business Wire is ranked about #32 on the Techmeme Leaderboard, which puts it above some top tech blogs (but not ReadWriteWeb, which is ranked #6 currently). The email claimed that companies and marketers can use Business Wire to bypass journalists and bloggers to get into key news sources like Techmeme and search engine results too. Is this true?

I think it's a fair claim - and there's no reason why Business Wire shouldn't feature in Techmeme if it is 'breaking' news stories or is being linked to by bloggers. In fact it does indeed route around blogs that simply regurgitate PR - which is a good thing in my book!

The real value of good journalism and blogs, IMHO, is the value-added analysis and contextual information that we can provide. A press release that runs in Business Wire may well be a great source of data on a news story. But people read newspapers and blogs to get a more rounded view of news stories, and if they're lucky some added analysis about the company and/or market segment.

I asked Techmeme founder Gabe Rivera what he thought of Business Wire ranking #32 on the Techmeme Leaderboard. Gabe replied that this in itself "isn't a problem." He told me that "press releases are kind of like poorly-written company blog posts, which also have a place on Techmeme. That said, I wish Techmeme at times did a better job at elevating good blog posts above the press releases they discuss."

I asked Gabe if people actually read press releases from the likes of Business Wire. "Sometimes people want just-the-facts", said Gabe, "Some PR Newswire releases are in fact remarkable reads". He pointed to this recent story about Microsoft's bid for Yahoo (screenshot below). But, Gabe noted, "many others are less so, and better retold by blogs like RWW."

Techmeme coverage of Microsoft-Yahoo story, with PR stories to the fore

Back to the Business Wire email, which stated that "with a team of engineers and coders, press releases have not only gone 'public' but they are embedded with multimedia and infiltrate search engine and social media flawlessly."

I agree that PR has infiltrated search engines and some blogs - which in the former is good and the latter not so. It's definitely a good thing that PR is public nowadays due to the Internet. Because it forces journalists and blogs to provide added value to news stories, rather than just copy and paste PR.

You still see some blogs rank highly in Technorati by copying PR sometimes word for word. But long term I think such blogs will, ironically, have their lunch eaten by PR services such as Business Wire. Already Business Wire claims it is embedding their stories with multimedia, so how long before they start to have other 'social software' features such as comments, voting, tagging, etc.

So yes, PR wire services probably don't need us anymore. But to some of us, that's a good thing!

Monthly political and cultural editorial magazine, The Atlantic, announced in an editor's note this week that it would be ditching its subscriber registration requirement to view online content. The magazine's printed content, including archives from 1995-present, is now free for the general public on its web site. Archives dating back to 1857 are available as part of a for-pay premium pass program (though some of those articles should be in the public domain, right?), excluding articles from January, 1964 - September, 1992, which are left out for copyright purposes.

"We're pleased to bring The Atlantic before a broader online audience," said the magazine's editorial board, saying that it hoped that an increased online reach would encourage more people to subscribe to the print edition. The print version of the magazine is currently read by around 425,000 people, while the online edition has a monthly people count of just under 400,000 according to Compete.

The Atlantic follows other old guard US media properties that have recently set their online content free.

In September, the New York Times removed the pay wall on the majority of its archives, as well as its TimesSelect service, which included non-news content like editorials by Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd. By removing pay walls, magazines and newspaper create more pages on which to sell advertising, and can theoretically increase traffic and improve search rankings (due to the influx of new content that can then be returned in search results). When the Times stopped charging, some bloggers estimated that it would see an uptick in pageviews by as much as 14%.

In Novemember, Rupert Murdoch followed suit and announced that the Wall Street Journal would stop charging for content. The Journal operates one of the most successful online subscription news sites, with subscribers bringing in $50 million per year in revenue, but Murdoch is hoping that by dropping the pay requirements on its content, the site's traffic will balloon and allow the paper to recoup the lost subscription revenue via advertising. Not having a pay wall would allow the paper to reach readers "in every corner of the earth," said Murdoch in November.

The Atlantic has long operated a successful web operation, including some of the most cited political blogs on the web. In fact, three of the magazine's blogs currently appear in the Memeorandum top 20 -- the only mainstream media source to accomplish that feat. Removing the magazine's online pay wall should help to cement its web site as a leader in its market.

Update: Looks like we spoke too soon. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland today, News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch said that the Wall Street Journal would not be going free online after all. "We are going to greatly expand and improve the free part of the Wall Street Journal online, but there will still be a strong offering" for subscribers, Mr. Murdoch said according to the WSJ. "The really special things will still be a subscription service, and, sorry to tell you, probably more expensive."

It begins with billboards spotted in exotic places like Knoxville, Tennessee and Ames, Iowa and posted online by curious Lost fans. The billboards advertise a URL, "FlyOceanicAir.com." Upon visiting the website, you are sucked into an adventure involving multiple websites, video diaries, photos with text hidden among the pixels, clue hunts, and strategy games. You can even call a toll-free phone number and get progress updates about the search for missing Oceanic Flight 815. Interesting characters and mysteries keep web players engaged and new content is posted at seemingly random intervals, forcing frequent check-ins to see if there's anything new.

So begins Lost's second Alternate Reality Game, a follow up to this summer's "The Lost Experience" game, which spun clues deep into websites - like those belonging to advertising partners Sprite, Jeep, Monster.com, and Verizon.

The new game, dubbed "Find815" in reference to the game's main website, began January 1st to promote the new season of Lost.

Crafty fans soon discovered that one of the game's websites was registered to a group called Hoodlum, based in Brisbane, Australia. (Oh, and Hoodlum's CEO is Tracey Robertson and an in-game email to the main character, Sam, happens to be from a "Tracey R.," conspiring fans point out.)

Having been in the business for nearly a decade, Hoodlum is a company that was ahead of the curve when it came to multi-platform entertainment than spans beyond TV to mobile phones, the web, and even "real" life.

Hoodlum's website showcases some of their work and their press releases highlight how they created, developed, and produced their multi-platform, interactive media creations. Among the solutions for their clients, Hoodlum mentions that they offer "a unique tool to track and measure the engagement of users." There are no details on what that tool may be, but we can only guess that it's something a bit more advanced than a tracking cookie.

Hoodlum's core technology is called INCA (Interactive Net-based Channel Administration), a proprietary system which gives them the ability to produce projects on time and within budget while tying together content administration, platform integration, and final delivery. Within INCA, there are modules like user management, content management, approvals, game engine, characters, and scripts - all of which combine to run the game.

Selling themselves as a one-stop shop for these types of projects, Hoodlum offers solutions for all areas of a project, from conception to strategy to creative to production and delivery. Founded in 1999, Hoodlum's founders claim to be "evangelists for interactive TV," something the U.S. wants, "but doesn't quite understand," they say.

Well, we may have to learn.

The new, "New Media"

In the U.S., the TV writers strike continues with no end in sight, leaving the door open for companies specializing in other types of entertainment to grab a foothold in the big business of American entertainment. The release of Halo3 proved there is more than enough room for alternative entertainment mediums beyond scripted television to make profits.

When all that's left of TV is poor-quality reality shows and other mindless filler, more sophisticated viewers will turn their attention away from the tube, likely going online instead in search of more stimulating entertainment. Companies like Hoodlum, whose business model is producing this new type of "blended" entertainment, will be poised to become the next big media giants - while the major networks continue to squabble over paying writers for webisodes.

In fact, Hollywood rag "Variety" reported earlier in 2007 of former Fox Interactive Media president, Ross Levinsohn, warning attendees at an industry event that "a strike would 'open the window a little more' for Internet creators to steal away audience from traditional media." But NBC Entertainment/Universal Media Studios co-chairman Marc Graboff wasn't concerned about online video cutting into TV series viewing. "There are so many cats flushing a toilet that you can watch," he quipped.

Marc clearly hasn't been paying attention to what ABC is up to.

Citizen media and user generated media of blogs, blogging, podcasting and vodcasting - its all explained here. Citizen journalism.

This is a guest post by Muhammad Saleem, a social media consultant and a top-ranked community member on multiple social news sites.

digg_url = 'http://digg.com/tech_news/The_Economic_Idiocy_of_Blocking_Social_Media_Traffic'; digg_bgcolor = '#ffffff'; digg_skin = 'compact'; By now most of you have probably seen the site 'Why Digg is Blocked'. For those that haven't come across it, the site is on a mission to convince webmasters and content producers to reject social media traffic. Here's a look at the incredibly flawed logic the site uses to justify its purpose.

1. The Ad-Block Plus Argument

The first argument that the site makes is that social media sites endorse the use of ad-blocking software which allegedly infringes on the rights of site-owners.This argument is flawed for several reasons. First, none of these sites endorses the use of ad-blocking software. Yes, there was a time when Digg used to be technology-centric and a majority of its user-base was tech-savvy enough to use ad-blocking software to improve their online experience. However, as the site has grown, and as social media sites in general (i.e. Reddit, Propeller, StumbleUpon and so on) continued to grow and develop a more mainstream acceptance, the demographic has expanded to the point where it wouldn't be a stretch to assume that a majority of the traffic from the sites is not actively blocking advertisements.

Without any hard numbers, I would guess that the ratio of ad-blocking to non-ad-blocking users from these sites follows the 80-20 rule. The 20% of users that are actively engaged in finding, submitting, commenting on, and promoting the content to these site's 'popular' pages probably have ad-blocking software installed, whereas the 80% that are simply browsing these sites for interesting content to read (or reading front-page news via RSS), have no such software enabled.

2. The Insignificance Argument

This argument really does more to hurt the author's case than any of the other ones (though I'm not saying the others are any less stupid). The author argues that the social media demographic is an insignificant percentage of the internet and an even smaller percentage in terms of online spending, so blocking them shouldn't matter to site-owners. But then the author goes on to argue that "users who don't click on these ads are stealing bandwidth without paying for it". Well, if the demographic is so insignificant, why block them at all? It's not as if you're losing much in the way of ad impressions or clicks, right?

Furthermore, as you will see in the next section, this 'insignificant' traffic is what actually helps put most unknown sites on the map and helps them develop any significant kind of Google traffic to begin with. Oh, and how much bandwidth are these users really stealing? At my old blog, i got dugg 7 times in a month and got 250,000+ visitors that month, while the entire bandwidth cost was just $20.00 (Media Temple + WP-Cache). So no matter how small the scale on which you're operating, as long as you're smart about your operation, social media traffic should be a godsend, not something to complain about.

3. The Low Click Through Rate Argument

The final argument the site employs is that according to a sitepoint.com survey, Digg users are 3 times less likely to click on an advertisement. What this site and Sitepoint both fail to factor in, is that even in the best case scenario (for search) Digg traffic usually comes in numbers 80-90 times more than Google traffic to the same content. Once you consider those numbers, even at 1/3 the CTR, the total number of clicks you get are still 30 times as many as you would get from Google traffic.

Furthermore, where social media sites really shine is in giving increased visibility and otherwise unattainable exposure to relatively unknown sites. For a site that is generally unknown, has little or no PageRank and no inbound links or RSS subscribers, you may be lucky to get 10-20 Google visitors a day. Once you get submitted to social news sites, however, not only can you expect tens of thousands of visitors in the next 24 hours from those sites, but your average long-term search traffic and visibility will increase dramatically. So even if you completely discount the social media traffic and the low CTR there, the fact that your Google traffic may quadruple following social media success, is alone worth the effort.

For more discussion, don't forget to follow the topic at Reddit (here) and Digg (here).

digg_url = 'http://digg.com/world_news/Egyptian_Blogger_Marks_One_Year_in_Prison'; digg_bgcolor = '#ffffff'; digg_skin = 'compact'; Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman is a 22 year old law student in Egypt who blogged under the name Kareem Amer until being arrested one year ago today. Charged with 'contempt of religion' and ‘defaming the President of Egypt,' the young man was sentenced in February of this year to four years in prison. Supporters will hold rallies on Friday calling for his release in 14 major cities around the world, from London to Mexico City.

The demonstrations are being organized, in part, by the Free Kareem Coalition. The group says it is an interfaith organization founded and primarily made up of Muslims who disagree with what Kareem wrote on his blog but will "defend with all our might his right to express such opinions."

According to his supporters, Kareem was raised in a religious family and educated in Egyptian religious schools throughout his youth. He was expelled from college and referred to Egyptian authorities in 2005 after his authorship of the blog karam903.blogspot.com was discovered. On that blog Kareem has criticized what he called Egyptian gender apartheid, he said that a religious riot he witnessed in Egypt showed the "barbarism and thievery and fanaticism" of Islam and on September 11th, 2006 he wrote a post titled "There Is No Deity but the Human Being." Supporters have translated his posts into English but have included repeated disclaimers that they do not agree with what he has written. They ask international supporters of free speech to support the campaign in a number of different ways.

Below is an interview with Kareem performed after a college disciplinary board meeting, hosted on YouTube with translation overlayed using the service BubblePly. To learn more about the case and campaign, visit Freekareem.org.

Not long ago I returned from Mobile Monday Melbourne, and this month I got to see Manny Christophidis from Streamezzo give a talk about what they do. Being my first Mobile Monday event, I had a great amount of fun and learning, and found out that many used MySQL in their work, sometimes passively without even knowing what database sat below them.

Surprised I was, to learn that this event had been going on for nearly two years. If you’re not in the mobile space, you tend to miss out on this not-very-well advertised event, I guess. Seeing as there are more mobile phones being sold these days than personal computers, I think this space is going to get even larger in time to come.

Back to Streamezzo. They make mobile clients, that are really lightweight (100kb Java, and about 200kb Symbian), that realistically serve as ad clients. As common sense would have it, they’ve found that putting ads at the application start and end seem to work the best (i.e. notice when fring is loading, it has a silly message saying “fring is loading…” - replace that with a targeted ad, Streamezzo says) and annoy the user the least.

Streamezzo’s server requires Java and can have either an Oracle or MySQL 4 (or greater) database. Back-end OS can be either Windows 2000 and up or Red Hat Linux.

Some of the more interesting things they’ve done is that they’ve re-skinned an entire mobile phone, and made the device home screen the actual portal. This ensures folk can pull down data based on the location (cell) they’re in. With all the modern rave about the online desktop, man, this sounds like an early version of the online mobile phone.

Applications they developed that caught my eye included:

• a promo for Nelly Furtado, which delivered rich media music (and video). One could preview songs from her latest album, buy the song, buy a ringtone, or preview video clips. These previews incidentally were controlled at the server (so they’re full-length songs in reality, but the server only pushes out say, 5s for a preview). The mashup with online chat seems to make this app pretty cool - if you’re a Nelly fan who got this app downloaded, you’re bound to want to chat to other Nelly fans
• a client for vpod.tv, which is the French version of YouTube. They speak video publishing for the masses, and they definitely use MySQL for their back-end as well

Sadly, Streamezzo’s stuff isn’t open source. They claim that with knowledge of XML, you should be able to create applications pretty quickly. Apparently it can set you back 0.75 Euro cents per active mobile client per month; this doesn’t include the minimum establishment fee as well. One might really be better off with Flash Lite (though I wonder how the free/OSS tools for creation of content fare).

In other quick news, omg.tv organise the event, and one of their specialities is Second Life, and more importantly, the Second Life Cable Network slcn.tv! I’ve got to give this Second Life thing a try, soon. Also, MTX Media develop a lot of primarily Symbian software, but also do Java based stuff and they’ve got some cool things that are out there - a targeted ad for Honda that gives users information about all available Honda’s, but what I found most useful is the Yellow Cab app - book a taxi, via the mobile web, without ever having to make a phone call! Coming to Melbourne in under-3 months, as its proven to work in Sydney. MTX back-ends are all MySQL Enterprise based, for what its worth.

Technorati Tags: mobile monday, mobile monday melbourne, mysql, streamezzo, mobile client, advertising, rich media applications, second life, mtx, java, symbian

check page 4 of this article: about not appropriating crowdsourcing as a means to cutting costs, but as a new type of journalism that demands management and leadership skills from "editors" that are not taught in school