Digital Intelligence

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Yahoo! has expanded the number of its websites around the world that let visitors automatically share what stories they read with Facebook friends. A feature added in September to Yahoo! News in the US has been extended to 26 more of the California Internet pioneer's websites around the world.

22/12/2011  |  Full story...

YouTube is adding some 100 channels of original programming to its video sharing site, including TV, film, music, sport and celebrity content. The new content includes deals with celebrity partners such as pop music star Madonna and actor Ashton Kutcher. Google, owners of YouTube, reportedly laid out more than $100 million to establish the partnerships, which come as the California technology titan tries to become a preferred source of content for Internet-linked televisions.

01/11/2011  |  Full story...

Google is taking aim at the cable industry by putting up $100 million to develop original content for dozens of new YouTube channels, according to a news report. According to the Wall Street Journal, YouTube hopes to roll out the new channels next year. The paper cited unidentified people ‘familiar with the matter’ saying that the Web giant is near deals or has already reached agreements with skateboarder Tony Hawk and media companies Warner Bros. and News Corp.'s ShineReveille, the company that produces "The Office" and "Ugly Betty."

10/10/2011

10/10/2011  |  Full story...

As part of a new Government-backed report, Professor Ian Hargreaves has made 10 major recommendations to free-up restrictive intellectual property and copyright laws that "obstruct innovation and economic growth in the UK". The 123-page report found that businesses aiming to take advantage of opportunities in areas such as the internet are being held back by often archaic laws.

The Hargreaves report, the result of a five month review, recommends legalising the practice of copying music and films and seeks to relax the rules around 'transformative works' - reworkings of existing content. It also calls for a new agency to mediate between those wanting to license music, film and other digital content and rights owners.

19/05/2011

19/05/2011  |  Full story...

AOL UK has launched its new Project Devil display advertising format, with RIM promoting their new BlackBerry TorchM and M&S, advertising their summer fashion range on a three paneled creative canvas. The Project Devil unit is displayed as a large creative canvas, divided into three panels, which allow advertisers to customise the content and functionality within one interface. The functionality of each panel includes media streams and applications such as video, slideshows, mapping, 3-D rotation, quizzes, polls and text messaging.

30/03/2011

30/03/2011  |  Full story...

YouTube has acquired online video content firm Next New Networks for an undisclosed sum, marking the Google-owned firm’s first foray into content production. YouTube also announced 'YouTube Next', a YouTube division aimed at accelerating partner growth, which will spearhead a series of YouTube Next-branded programs and services.

Next New Networks began in 2007 and is behind the Web comedy show Barely Political and the online cartoon network Channel Frederator. During the 2008 US presidential election, Barely Political won millions of online views of its comedy videos featuring "Obama Girl," a singing and dancing devotee of then presidential candidate Barack Obama.

09/03/2011

09/03/2011  |  Full story...

Google has altered its search algorithms to penalise sites offering "low-quality" content, saying 11.8% of searches will now show changes in the "top few" results on the first page. The search giant said the adjustment of its famously secretive algorithms will push so-called “content farms” further down the lists of results that users see.

“This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites - sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful,” said Google fellow Amit Singhal in a blog. “At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high- quality sites - sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”

01/03/2011

01/03/2011  |  Full story...

Taiwan's leading smartphone maker HTC is to buy a British digital multimedia company and invest in a US online gaming firm as part of a bid to expand its software business. HTC will buy London-based Saffron Digital, which enables the delivery of multimedia content to handsets, for £30m, the firm said in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.

HTC has been the most successful of the Android phonemakers and has been investing in teams and companies to enhance its software platform further, trying to keep a step ahead of rivals like Motorola and Samsung.

09/02/2011

09/02/2011  |  Full story...

AOL has bought political news site The Huffington Post, for $315m (£222m), as the Internet firm continues its drive to boost its content services. It is estimated that the newly combined AOL Huffington Post venture will have 270 million users, with 117 million in the US alone, which could give it an edge in the battle for advertising dollars.

The deal comes just over four months after AOL acquired Techcrunch from Michael Arrington, and is in keeping with AOL CEO Tim Armstrong’s avowed goal of transforming the original dial-up giant into a major content player.

02/08/2011

08/02/2011  |  Full story...

Online content publisher Demand Media went public this week, debuting at a higher-than-expected price of $17 per share. The US-based firm employs a network of more than 13,000 freelancers who produce instructional articles such as "How to Thread a Sewing Machine" and "How to Finish Knitting a Scarf."

Because these articles have a longer shelf life, they can generate ad revenue for a longer period.

Demand Media uses the articles on its website, ehow.com, and sells them to publishers such as USA Today and the San Francisco Chronicle. The initial public offering was greeted enthusiastically by investors as shares surged 35 percent after the IPO raised about $151 million in gross proceeds -- more than twice the $72 million it was expecting.

28/01/2011  |  Full story...

Tag management system TagMan has closed $2.25 million in Series A funding led by Greycroft Partners, allowing the firm to boost its performance tracking capabilities for websites. Other investors in this round include iNovia Capital and individuals. TagMan, the smart container, that sits on more than 100 e-commerce sites, including Subaru, Virgin Atlantic and Air New Zealand, previously raised $2.1 million in Angel funding, the most recent in February 2010 led by Cambridge Angels and the London Business School E100.

11/01/2011  |  Full story...

AOL has acquired Pictela, a provider of an award-winning global technology platform for serving and distributing high- definition brand content across online advertising and social media. The transaction brings further scale to AOL’s suite of premium advertising tools for advertisers, agencies and publishers, including the company’s new ‘Project Devil’ display advertising format which AOL intends to roll out further in the UK during Q1 in 2011.

20/12/2010

20/12/2010  |  Full story...

Video sharing site YouTube is in talks to buy US web video producer Next New Networks, according to US reports. The New York Times said a deal would be the Google-owned firm’s first foray into content production.

No terms have been disclosed, but the NYT quoted analysts applauding the potential acquisition. YouTube has sought to increase its share of professionally produced content as it faces competition from the likes of Hulu, a joint venture whose backers include media companies News Corp, Walt Disney Co's ABC, and NBC, controlled by General Electric.

17/12/2010

17/12/2010  |  Full story...

Total UK revenues for mobile content and services, mobile advertising and marketing, will be £407.10 million in 2010, rising to £1.10 billion in 2015, according to a new report. The 'Mobile Market Trends: UK: Usage and Revenue Forecasts to 2015' report from mobileSQUARED says revenue growth will primarily be driven by increased mobile advertising spend -- especially around 'conversational advertising'.

The mobile advertising market is forecast to grow from £50.25 million in 2010 -- 12% of total revenues, to £357.84 million in 2015 -- 33% of total revenues, as advertisers increasingly target this direct channel.

25/10/2010

25/10/2010  |  Full story...

The latest annual Consumers & Convergence global survey from KPMG has found that UK internet users are the least keen to pay for online content.

The study found that 81% of UK internet users would prefer to go elsewhere for content if a frequently used site began to charge. KPMG polled 5,627 respondents from 22 countries and discovered that 43% of people worldwide are willing to pay for access to frequently-used online content. In contrast, only 19% of those in the UK are willing to pay.

26/07/2010

26/07/2010  |  Full story...

Disney has unveiled plans for its online storage service, called 'Keychest', that will give users access to the studio's movies and TV shows online, offering an alternative to DVDs and Blu-rays. Using Keychest, consumers would purchase access rights to a film or TV show, rather than have physical ownership of material on a disc.

Disney hopes the technology will be deployed before the end of 2010. KeyChest will let consumers buy films or television shows from various distributors, store them on remote servers, and play them on multiple platforms ranging from TVs to computers and phones. Disney said it plans to roll-out KeyChest for both the U.S. and the international market, and that it will soon announce partners who will participate in the program.

07/01/2010

07/01/2010  |  Full story...

Facebook is testing a new application that allows its users to moderate content posted by others on the social network. The Facebook Community Council application is currently being tested with a very small number of users, selected on an invite-only basis.

An FCC member can check items published on Facebook for offensiveness along the lines of personal attacks, violence, drug abuse and so on. FCC members are only allowed to click on one of the following alert flags inside a special FCC members-only app if they find something objectionable: Spam, Acceptable, Not English, Nudity, Drugs, Attacking, Violence.

07/01/2010

07/01/2010  |  Full story...

Only 13% of internet users would be prepared to pay for access to online media, although Brits show a higher than average willingness to fork over cash for Internet content, a survey has found.The research, carried out by GfK on behalf of the Wall Street Journal Europe, examined internet use in 16 European countries and the US.

80 per cent of respondents said they wanted continued free access to information online, and of the 13 per cent of users willing to pay, 8 per cent would accept a charge for advertising-free content, and 5 per cent would pay for content with advertising.

17/12/2009

17/12/2009  |  Full story...

News Corp. is joining a new, independent digital publishing consortium in the US, according to a news report. The Financial Times reports that the consortium - which also involves Time Warner's Time Inc., Conde Nast, Hearst Corp. and Meredith - could be announced this week. The paper reported that the five US publishing giants are set to this week target the e-reader market 'to wrestle control of its digital future' from the market leaders Amazon, Apple and Sony.

08/12/2009

08/12/2009  |  Full story...

Five has become the second broadcaster to sign a deal with YouTube to show its programmes on the video sharing website. The three-year deal follows a similar link up between YouTube and Channel 4 last month. The move will see full versions of popular shows from Five available on YouTube for up to 30 days after they are broadcast, providing an alternative viewing method to Five's current on demand service.

07/12/2009

07/12/2009  |  Full story...

Sony’s chief executive, Howard Stringer, has unveiled the technology giant’s plans for an all-in-one online network that pipes Sony’s films, music, games and other content to its TVs, Walkmans and PlayStation game machines. In an interview with reporters this week, Stringer said the project, known as the Sony Online Service, which will combine the company’s digital content and hardware. The company, based in Tokyo, expects to book its second consecutive annual loss in the fiscal year that ends in March, after losing 98.9 billion yen, or $1.12 billion at the current exchange rate, last year.

04/12/2009

04/12/2009  |  Full story...

Yahoo will let users of its email, photo-sharing and other online products link their content and activities directly into Facebook.

Yahoo's support of the Facebook Connect service, which it said it expects to begin in the first half of 2010, represents an important move in Yahoo's efforts to tap the popularity of social networking and underscores the growing clout of Facebook, which now counts more than 350 million worldwide users.

Earlier this year, Yahoo allowed users to preview messages from their Facebook friends directly on the Yahoo homepage, as part of a broad revamping of the Yahoo front page.

The new move takes the integration between Yahoo and Facebook a step further, by automatically pushing activities performed on Yahoo sites, such as photos shared on Yahoo's Flickr, into the Facebook news feed.

03/12/2009

03/12/2009  |  Full story...

Johnston Press has become one of the first regional UK publishers to start charging for its online content. Johnston Press owns more than 300 local newspapers including the Yorkshire Post and 'The Scotsman'. The move will see the publisher put content from six of its titles behind ‘paywalls’. From yesterday, readers of three Johnston titles, the Nothumberland Gazette, the Whitby Gazette'and the Southern Reporter, will pay £5 (€5.40) for a three-month online subscription.

02/12/2009

02/12/2009  |  Full story...

The BBC Trust has said that the corporation's online operation could be scaled back in the future following recent criticism from industry stakeholders. The BBC was also ordered by its internal regulator to rein in the activities of BBC Worldwide, its commercial arm, after competitors complained that the corporation’s huge financial muscle was giving it an unfair advantage. The Trust has also published an ongoing strategic review document for the entire BBC operation.

In his chairman's commentary, Sir Michael Lyons discussed the prospect of streamlining BBC Online services to "narrow the focus on distinctive content and help to create a more open BBC". Lyons said he wanted BBC Director General Mark Thompson to ask what "licence fee payers really expect to get from their licence fee and what they might be surprised to see the BBC doing in the online world".

He indicated that some areas, such as the iPlayer and news online, are safe when he asked: "Beyond the core offer of news, sport, education, children's and the iPlayer, which parts of the online service are essential to the BBC's mission and which could be stopped?"

01/12/2009

01/12/2009  |  Full story...

Microsoft is reportedly in talks with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp to pay the media company to remove its news websites from Google. According to the Financial Times, Microsoft is talking to other publishers to get them to remove themselves from Google too.

The move would see the publisher being paid revenues by Microsoft's search engine Bing if it “de-indexes” its news content from arch-rival Google. The plan puts pressure on search juggernaut Google to start paying for content, the FT said.

23/11/2009

23/11/2009  |  Full story...