Facebook

NBC officially announced that Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien will return to the air on January 2nd without their writing staffs. Conan expressed his support for the writers and said his show “may be terrible” without them. Ratings have dropped off considerably during reruns, with both shows losing over 30% of their audience. THE FCC Continue Reading →

If you’re working in the media business today, you have to be thinking about the five most important digital consumer touchpoints: email, websites, paid search, display ads and video. And, if you’re like most of my clients, this is an ongoing, dynamic, relatively expensive process.   Over the past few months there have been some Continue Reading →

NEWS CORP officially completed its acquisition of DOW JONES yesterday after 60% of shareholders voted to close the deal. Rupert Murdoch soon showed up at the Dow Jones holiday party wearing a Santa hat. He brought some gifts, in the form of a new CEO, a new publisher and permanent vacations for several top DJ Continue Reading →

FACEBOOK has opened up Facebook Platform to other social-networking sites in a bold response to Google’s OpenSocial application standard. The social-net will license its model and technology to allow other sites to implement Facebook applications. Social-net BEBO is the first to embrace this new arrangement, claiming to offer the “Open Applications Platform.” We may be Continue Reading →

FACEBOOK made further concessions in its war against user privacy. Mark Zuckerberg publicly apologized on the company blog for “a lot of mistakes” surrounding Beacon — admitting the company did a “bad job” with its release. Most importantly, he announced that users will now be able to completely opt-out of Beacon. VERIZON has rolled out Continue Reading →

The first time Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of Facebook, got into social networking netiquette trouble with his online friends was back in September of 2006. Power users of the nascent site were aghast when suddenly, every thing they did on Facebook was instantly and automatically fed to everyone of their Facebook friends and even Continue Reading →

FACEBOOK has been forced to change Beacon’s default behavior due to mounting criticism and user unrest. Previously a transaction would broadcast to a user’s network automatically if he did not choose to prevent it. Under Beacon 2.0 transactions will not be published until a user actually agrees to it. Ignored requests will greet a user Continue Reading →

YAHOO and ADOBE will begin paying publishers to run ads inside PDF files. Publishers can upload a PDF to Adobe to have dynamic text advertising inserted. Advertisers will purchase the ads through Yahoo’s online system and have them contextually placed in relation to the contents of a PDF. Adobe and Yahoo have settled on a Continue Reading →

NBC UNIVERSAL will use TIVO‘s second-by-second viewer data and sell interactive ads on behalf of the DVR-maker. The ads will come in the form of clickable “tags” that reveal a company’s name even if a user is fast-forwarding through a commercial. A similar feature will allow users to easily record NBC Universal shows that are Continue Reading →

THE WGA and AMPTP will resume talks this morning. Negotiations will occur in an undisclosed location and a press blackout is in effect. The WGA reminded writers to return to picket lines even as the new round of talks begins. FIREBRAND will launch tonight on ION Television, offering users TV ads as entertainment. The show Continue Reading →