Business Insider is reporting that Google is interested in buying Hulu after it was put up for sale last month by owners Disney, News Corporation, Comcast, and Providence Equity Partners.
YouTube is the latest buyer to emerge after Hulu was approached by Yahoo! just before it was being put on the block. Read More
Here’s a question: is the web up to the task of delivering news? I’m pretty sure I’m not a lone in finding some news websites a pain to visit. Sure there is often good content, but often how you get it to, how it is presented and what surrounds it can let it and the site down.
US designer Andy Rutledge has been spending a good deal of time thinking about the design of digital media beginning with the thought that “digital news” is broken and needs to be re-examined. Read More
Google+: something different for business accounts
Google is working to develop a separate business offering for Google+ in a bid to create something that will work better than simply letting brands sign up for normal profiles – which they are not currently able to do.
Bradley Horowitz, who is vice-president of product at Google+, wrote in a post that the company is “designing features for different use cases that we think will make a better product experience for them and everyone else”.
Infographic: more Americans on Facebook than have passports
An infographic compiled by a new, Swedish travel business called tripl reveals that more Americans are on Facebook than have passports.
I remember hearing ridiculously small figures for the number of Americans who have passports – but it’s actually 37% of the population (not the five per cent that seems to be widely quoted).
Microsoft has shot itself in the foot (again) on Twitter, by rushing to offer Amy Winehouse fans the chance to download her music from Microsoft as they mourn her passing.
The @tweetbox360 Twitter account, which is run by the Microsoft UK PR team, tweeted this morning: “Remember Amy Winehouse by downloading the ground-breaking ‘Back to Black’ over at Zune”. Read More
Very interesting presentation from venture capital investor Roger McName, of Elevation Partners, which was an early Facebook investor. He covers a lot of ground, but his thoughts on social media are very interesting. His basic message is simple: social is over.
He also says Google’s dominance is over because it lacks prominence on mobile connected devices.
Back in March, I wrote this piece looking at the ownership issues around Twitter profiles used for professional purposes. I noted that sensible consensus seemed to be that a personal feed (with no inclusion of a company or brand name) is owned entirely by the individual behind it, whilst a corporate feed (with no inclusion of an employee name) is owned entirely by the organisation to which it makes reference.
However, the post raised the issue of Twitter profiles that combine both employee and employer names. At the time, I mentioned that the account of the BBC’s Chief Political Correspondent, Laura Kuenssberg, was the perfect example of this – @BBCLauraK. What would happen, I asked, if she left the BBC for a rival media outlet? Would the BBC keep her Twitter account and reassign to her successor, or would she be permitted to take it with her? Read More
Forecast: announce your plans for the day
We all know about social media, but how about socializing media? For example, a smartphone app that exists purely to help you see your friends?
Foursquare has launched one. It’s called Forecast, and it’s a very simple idea. You let Forecast know your likely movements later in the day and it lets your friends know. Then presumably, if they’re going to be around, at a loose end and wanting to catch up, they can get in touch.
Tech blogger Robert Scoble has posted some interesting thoughts about Twitter. He suggests it has suffered from being badly run and dropped the ball in terms of innovation.
He says it needs to get back on track and seize the initiative from Google’s new social service Google+. His piece echoes others that have been written recently that argue it is Twitter rather than Facebook that could be the big loser to Google+. Read More
Its too early to draw any conclusions, but the The New York Times, which introduced its paywall on March 28, seems to be doing well with paying subscribers.
It has racked up around 224,000 digital subscribers as of the end of the second quarter proving that its readers aren’t running for the free content hills beyond its paywall. Read More
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