There have been various battles to try and win the short form video war over the last few years. We’ve seen a number of platforms have a stab at it; Viddy, Cinemagram, Socialcam, YouTube Capture, ptch, Threadlife, Klip… the list goes on. Despite some decent attempts, and the occasional celeb backing, no clear winner emerged.

Then along came Vine. Set up last year, and bought for an undisclosed sum from Twitter in October, it took the short video world by storm when it was launched this January.  Because of the fact it was backed by Twitter, Vine was greeted with more fanfare than any of its predecessors. And it seems now as though this hype was justified. Read More »

USA Today underwent a major 30th anniversary redesign late last year and one of the things it introduced was Twitter bylines for staff.

It is still one of the very few papers to user Twitter bylines and I’m always really surprised that other papers haven’t followed suit. Read More »

We wrote last week that the Mail Online was continuing its expansion plans with a launch in India and today it has been confirmed by online measurement firm ComScore that the Daily Mail’s website has passed the New York Times to become the World’s biggest newspaper.

The Mail Online reached 45.3 million people in December compared to 44.8 million for the New York Times. However, in a put down almost worthy of Dorothy Parker the Times has said that the British tabloid was simply not in its class. Ouch. Read More »

Sharing news: people are doing it.

More research is being undertaken to try and understand how people are reading news online these days, with the latest study showing once again that Facebook is a lot more important than Twitter when it comes to directing traffic to news websites (but that Google is still the biggest driver by far). Read More »

A news sharing start-up called Ongo, which has raised $12m from USA Today publisher-Gannett, the New York Times Company and the Washtington Post Company.

It is headed by former eBay executive Alex Kazim, who previously ran defunct  blog aggregator Tokoni. At eBay he was a senior VP and president of Skype. Read More »

The hyperlocal market in the US is continuing to heat up. USA Today-owner Gannett plans to boost its hyperlocal presence with more than 100 sites that will see it bring together community newspapers, local television stations with its high school sports community website HighSchoolSports.net. Read More »

The Los Angeles Times has launched its new iPhone app today featuring the paper’s full content for $1.99, and says it plans to launch a “Hollywood Star Walk” app later this month, while USA Today has held off charging for its iPad app in favour of chasing a bigger audience. Read More »

Despite the iPad’s $500 price point, device owners are willing to shell out a little more for top news apps, led by the Wall Street Journal, which has sold 3,200 of its $200 yearly iPad subscriptions in two weeks.

The Wall Street Journal iPad app, which has been called “the most advanced”, “fancy” and “must-have” by bloggers, costs $17.29 per month, twice as much as the WSJ’s $8 online-only subscription. Read More »

USA Today has led the way on Apple iPad downloads as the honeymoon is officially over. A week after trusted technophiles put the iPad through its paces the reviews remain mostly positive; but it’s clear the device isn’t the revolution or saviour gadget-addicts and publishers had hoped for.

With about 300,000 sold in the US on the first day and 300,000 more since; with a million app downloads (mostly games), the experts remain lukewarm towards the device. Read More »