January 21, 2009

In This Update:
• Google to Halt Print Ads Program for Newspapers
• Microsoft Sells off Shares In Comcast
• Change.gov Shifts to Whitehouse.gov
• Linden Lab acquires Xtreet and OnRez, Brokers of Virtual Goods for Second Life
• New York Times’ Policy on Facebook and Other Social Networking Sites
• Facebook + CNN = Future of TV
• WPP Phasing Out MediaCom Digital Unit Beyond Interaction
• Inaugural Traffic Jams Web, Cell Phones
• All Major Canadian ISPs Slow Down P2P Traffic
• Navitell Raises $3 Million for Mobile Storyteller Software
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Google to Halt Print Ads Program for Newspapers
REUTERS
Google Inc will kill a program to sell newspaper advertising because it is not making enough money, a blow to its efforts to expand its ad expertise beyond the Internet. Google will shut the Print Ads program on February 28, the company said on its blog on Tuesday afternoon. The two-year-old service was designed to help newspapers make money by enticing Google advertisers to expand into print newspaper sales. For Google, which has built its larger-than-life reputation as a master of the online advertising business, shutting down the print program is a rare failure.
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Microsoft Sells off Shares In Comcast
PULSE2
Software giant Microsoft Corporation has sold off their shares in Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCSA) according to a document that was filed with the SEC. The document was filed last week. Microsoft divested the remaining stake it had in the Internet service provider company. The number of shares that Microsoft owned in Comcast amounted to 150 million overall. The total investment Microsoft made in Comcast was $1 billion in 1997. Microsoft saw this as a way to help the company build high-speed Internet connections. It is unclear why Microsoft has decided to pull on their investment. InformationWeek speculates that it may be regarding the controversy around capping download speeds for P2P services or that Microsoft needs to raise cash for an impending acquisition.
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Change.gov Shifts to Whitehouse.gov
PAIDCONTENT
President Obama’s transition site Change.gov now points readers to the revamped Whitehouse.gov. The AP notes that the site has retained some of the historical info and navigation features from former President Bush’s era, but there are major upgrades, including a blog and pages outlining the Obama administration’s goals and policies. In the first blog post, Macon Phillips, the White House’s director of new media explains some of the ways the administration will use the site to communicate, noting that video and photos from the inauguration, and Obama’s first days in office will be posted soon.
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Linden Lab acquires Xtreet and OnRez, Brokers of Virtual Goods for Second Life
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Residents of Second Life traded $100.8 million worth of virtual items in the three months ended Dec. 31, up from $65.4 million in the same period a year earlier, said Tom Hale, chief product officer of Linden Lab, the San Francisco company that runs the virtual world. Though the sales occur in virtual Linden Dollars, the currency itself is bought and sold for U.S. dollars (the exchange rate is currently 262 Linden Dollars per U.S. dollar). To get a piece of that action, Linden Lab announced tonight that it had acquired two websites that broker these sales: XStreet SL and OnRez. Terms of the deals were not disclosed. For a 5% sales commission, the sites serve up an Amazon.com-like one-stop shopping experience for Second Life goods.
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New York Times’ Policy on Facebook and Other Social Networking Sites
POYNTER
Facebook and other social networking sites –¬ MySpace, LinkedIn, even Twitter — can be remarkably useful reporting tools, as the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 proved. As we’ve discovered from the experts on our staff, Facebook pages often tell a lot about a person’s work, interests, friends, and thoughts, and, as one page leads or links to another, Facebook can help reporters do triangulation on difficult-to-research subjects. What people write on Facebook sites is publicly available information, like anything posted on any site that is not encrypted. But there are a few things to be careful about, nonetheless.One of them is that outsiders can read your Facebook page, and that personal blogs and “tweets” represent you to the outside world just as much as an 800-word article does. If you have or are getting a Facebook page, leave blank the section that asks about your political views, in accordance with the Ethical Journalism admonition to do nothing that might cast doubt on your or The Times’s political impartiality in reporting the news.
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Facebook + CNN = Future of TV
NEWTEEVEE
A single linear stream that everyone watches at the same time? How retro. Live events are the epitome of traditional oldteevee fare. But while flipping between the many feeds of Barack Obama’s inauguration, I found the best experience was offered by CNN Live with Facebook Connect integrated, making the livestream experience social in a relevant way. And I really think it points toward the future of TV. Sure, the Flash upgrade installation process to run the actual CNN video was a chafe, but after the rigamarole, I loved feeling like I was in a room of friends watching the events. And not a room of friends who necessarily know each other – people from all different parts of my life were streaming into a feed of comments customized for me.
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WPP Phasing Out MediaCom Digital Unit Beyond Interaction
PAIDCONTENT
WPP Group will discontinue media buying and planning shop MediaCom’s Beyond Interaction unit as it seeks to further streamline its traditional and digital advertising services, Mediapost reported. The move comes almost a year after MediaCom initiated a global realignment of its digital unit. At the time, Beyond Interactive, as the division was known, was rebranded as Beyond Interaction and it began to assume a wider role as it coordinates buying across 23 countries. But over the past few months, WPP has moved to integrate digital and traditional functions at GroupM, which houses WPP media agencies MindShare and Mediaedge:cia. Sloan Broderick, managing director of Beyond Interaction, will still oversee digital operations at MediaCom, but the staffers will be reassigned to other clients throughout the media buyer.
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Inaugural Traffic Jams Web, Cell Phones
SFGATE
Public interest in President Obama’s inauguration overwhelmed several Web sites Tuesday, creating the equivalent of a busy signal for many hoping to follow the event online. Despite ample time to prepare for the festivities, CNN and Twitter – or at least portions of them – were slow or inaccessible. The deluge of users highlights the interest in Obama’s inauguration, which drew millions to Washington, D.C., and even more to the Web. Many Internet companies and mobile phone services braced for the predicted onslaught, but even then they couldn’t keep up with the traffic at peak moments Tuesday morning.
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All Major Canadian ISPs Slow Down P2P Traffic
TORRENT FREAK
Ignited by the Comcast fiasco in the US, the concept of net neutrality has certainly been brought into the mainstream. ISPs are rarely transparent when it comes to their throttling, capping and otherwise interfering behavior, but in Canada they had to come clean due to a CRTC investigation. The Canadian Radio, Television and Telecommunications Commission is currently looking into the traffic management practices of Canadian ISPs, which came to a head as a result of a dispute between CAIP, and its wholesale provider, Bell. The core objectives of the investigation are to examine the Internet traffic management practices being used, and check that they are in accordance with the Telecommunications Act.
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Navitell Raises $3 Million for Mobile Storyteller Software
MOCONEWS
Belgium-based Navitell has secured almost $3 million (or €2 million) in funding from FPIM, an investment holding company operated by the federal government, according to TechCrunch. From the company’s website, Navitell develops a number of different mobile platforms, but a good example is how its StoryTeller software will provide an audio or visual walking tour based on GPS, which may be handy if you are traveling. There’s other versions for boats, cars and motorcycles. And other platforms of the software offer you cooking lessons or a personal coach, if for example, you are trying to lose weight. TechCrunch reports that the company is getting ready to launch an international web-based marketplace for “mobile stories,” and the cash will be used for development and expansion into other countries.
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