Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

News Corp.’s MySpace is evolving into a more advertiser-friendly, traditional media platform, says site co-founder Chris DeWolfe. DeWolfe and fellow co-founder Tom Anderson recently signed new contracts with News Corp. reported to be worth $7.5 million a year. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/technology/21myspace.html?_r=1&oref=slogin  1/21)

Time Warner on Tuesday will begin testing HBO On Broadband, offering 400 hours of movies and original series that can be downloaded to computers. Users must be digital cable customers who subscribe to HBO, and must use the cable company as their Internet provider. (http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2008-01-20-HBO-broadband_N.htm  1/20)

Barely a month after taking most of its videos off of iTunes and going home, NBC is ready to play again. In a story about NBC CEO Jeff Zucker, the Financial Times reports:Mr Zucker appears to have patched up relations with Apple after a pricing dispute last year led NBC to pull its shows from the iTunes digital media store. “We’ve said all along that we admire Apple, that we want to be in business with Apple,” he said. “We’re great fans of Steve Jobs.”Still no sign of the missing NBC shows on iTunes. But it looks more and more like NBC’s walkout may have just been a negotiating tactic.  (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/21/wow-that-was-fast-nbc-looking-to-patch-things-up-with-apple  1/21)

The decision to make NBC Universal’s films available for Apple’s iTunes’ rental program is consistent with NBCU’s decision not to renew its contract for TV show sales, CEO Jeff Zucker told the FT. The difference? Variable pricing for the films. Zucker: “We want to be in business with Apple. We never said that we did not want to be in business with Apple. But we want to do it on terms we feel comfortable with.” And that is quite consistent with NBCU’s stance all along. (http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-zucker-universal-films-rental-deal-with-apple-is-consistent-with-nbcus-  1/20)

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be among the keynote speakers at this year’s South by Southwest Interactive Festival, March 7 to 11, in Austin. SXSW Interactive will feature more than 500 speakers, 150 panel discussions and other events. (http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/2008/01/14/daily29.html  1/17) 

Google is seeing its lead in the lucrative Internet-search market slacken, according to Nielsen Online. Both Google’s and Yahoo’s shares of the U.S. search market are said to be declining. Microsoft, which is investing heavily in its online services, is experiencing an increase. (http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/googles-search-share-slackens-nielsen/story.aspx?guid=%7BD8576427-26FF-4F34-9910-88A0BA58E9D8%7D  1/18)

Former Wall Street analyst Henry Blodget reports that Yahoo is preparing a list of 1,500 to 2,500 employees targeted for layoffs by division heads, at the behest of co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang. A leaner Yahoo is expected before Yang’s Jan. 29 analyst conference call. (http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/080120-112309  1/20)

The founders of Facebook, Digg, Twitter and other hot Web sites are among the Internet celebs being honored with the first-ever “Crunchies” awards. The blogs GigaOm, Read/WriteWeb, VentureBeat and TechCrunch came up with the awards and voting was done via their sites. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080119/tc_afp/lifestyleitinternetawardmediacrunchies  1/19)

Gawker blog publisher Nick Denton: “There used to be a shortage of attitude and aggregation, but there are now thousands of highly trafficked blogs. There’s a huge media ecosystem hungrily searching for anything original. The economics have changed.” (http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/16-02/st_15denton  1/18) 

Not that this is a surprise, but LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman has finally admitted it has been having talks with the “usual suspects” for a buyout, but then decided not to. “I know we are going to be much more valuable in a year or two…We have had (buyout) conversations with all the usual suspects, but I think an IPO is by far and away the most likely outcome”, Hoffman told AP. (http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-linkedin-yes-we-had-ma-talks  1/20)

Slide, the maker of social networking widgets, has raised a big $50 million fourth round from Fidelity and T-Rowe Price. The round, sans-dollar amount, was first reported by Kara at All Things D; Brad Stone at Bits then reported the amount. (http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-widget-maker-slide-raises-50-million-from-wall-st  1/18) 

With the cost of Super Bowl commercials nearing $3 million per spot, Coors Brewing Co. is inviting its consumers to submit user generated content videos online to win tickets to the big game. The contest allows consumers to “interact with our brand,” says a Coors rep. (http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3628158  1/18)

People born after 1993 prefer visual information over text and are frequent multitaskers, according to a new report on the “Google Generation” from the British Library and the Joint Information Systems Committee. Also, they like to cut-and-paste; plagiarism is “a serious issue.” (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080118-the-google-generation-not-so-hot-at-googling-after-all.html  1/18)