News Corp. has acquired Irata Labs, a small social software development studio based in San Francisco, the LA Times has learned.
The company, which builds games and other apps for social networks, has confirmed the deal to us and on Twitter (check out these tweets from Irata Labs CEO Chris Abad and co-founder and designer D. Keith Robinson). The terms were not disclosed. → Read More
Fox Mobile Group, a division of News Corp’s Digital Media Group, is set to announce a new wireless video subscription service at CTIA later today. Dubbed Bitbop, the service will allow people to view premium video content on their smartphones for $9.99 a month.
As GigaOM called it, you can think of the new offering is a Hulu on-the-go. Bitbop users will be able to both stream and download movies or other video content on-demand from their mobile devices over Wi-Fi or 3G alike. → Read More
Which online video companies will get bought in 2010? Venture capitalists are desperately looking for exits while the usual suspects are sitting on more than $80 billion in cash: Microsoft ($20B), Apple ($40B), Google ($15B), Amazon ($3B), and Yahoo! ($3B) just to name the cash positions of a few potential acquirers. Theoretically, it should be a match made in heaven, but the sheer number of venture-backed video startups is staggering so when the music stops, not everyone will find a dancing partner.
Once you assess what drives companies to merge or acquire one another, however, it seems like we’re about to enter a period of mergers between video competitors and see a series of acquisitions by larger companies looking to accelerate their video strategies, with a common theme being increasing both monetization and margins.
With that in mind, let’s look at those 10 potential deals. → Read More
News Corporation this afternoon announced financial results for the second quarter ended December 31, 2009.
Zooming in on the ‘Other’ segment, which houses News Corp’s Digital Media group, things are not looking too bright over there, in contrast to the rest of the business.
The business unit, which manages MySpace, IGN Entertainment, as well as the Hulu joint venture with NBC Universal, took a bit of a hit (again). → Read More
The magazine industry is falling over itself over a new shiny object. It wants to remake its product for a new class of digital tablets with color screens and touch screens. Today, a group of big publishers—Condé Nast, Time Inc., News Corp. Hearst, and Meredith—announced a joint venture to create standards for digital magazines to be read on tablets, e-readers, Web phones, and the like. The consortium will also create a digital newsstand to sell electronic copies of its magazines. These will be more like downloadable apps than Websites—think of it as an App Store for Magazines, where you can find and download magazine issues and subscriptions in app form.
The existence of this App Store for Magazines (and newspapers, presumably) raises a big question. Why are these print publishers reinventing the digital wheel? A popular app store already exists. It’s called iTunes. And people don’t mind paying for apps there. By creating their own app store, the magazine publishers can avoid paying Apple its 30 percent cut of sales. But that’s not the real reason.
The real reason they want their own store is the customer data. → Read More
Today, the FTC held a hearing on the crisis in the (print) news publishing industry, which gave Rupert Murdoch yet another opportunity to publicly call out Google about its supposedly thieving ways. Google’s response: Hey, we send out 4 billion clicks a month to news sites. If you don’t now what to do with all that traffic, it’s not our fault. (I’m paraphrasing).
But Google also gave a concession to news publishers who have been complaining loudly about the backdoor to subscription-protected sites that is Google News. For instance, you can read WSJ.com stories for free if you search for them on Google News and then click through. News Corp, the owner of the Wall Street Journal, knows this, but allows it because otherwise Google won’t index its site and then it will lose 25 percent of its traffic.
Now Google is allowing publishers to opt into a First Click Free program, which should actually be called the First Five Clicks Are Free. A news site now can limit the number of free clicks from Google News for any individual to five a day. → Read More
We’ve been doing some more digging on the definitive moves by Microsoft to woo newspapers over to Bing and away from Google, a story we broke two weeks ago.
Since then there have been some follow-up by various media outlets, notably the Financial Times this week which confirmed that Microsoft had had discussions with News Corp to “de-index” its news websites from Google.
Who approached who first? The FT said the impetus came from News Corp, although our information is that Microsoft is also talking to a range of newspaper publishers in Europe as well, such as German publishers like Axel Springer.
So here is what our sources are coming up with. → Read More
We’ve been doing some more digging on the definitive moves by Microsoft to woo newspapers over to Bing and away from Google, a story we broke two weeks ago.
Since then there have been some follow-up by various media outlets, notably the Financial Times this week which confirmed that Microsoft had had discussions with News Corp to “de-index” its news websites from Google.
Who approached who first? The FT said the impetus came from News Corp, although our information is that Microsoft is also talking to a range of newspaper publishers in Europe as well, such as German publishers like Axel Springer.
So here is what our sources are coming up with. → Read More
Rupert Murdoch is pointing a gun to Google’s head, and Microsoft is helping him pull back the trigger. For the past few weeks, Murdoch and his officers at News Corp. have been very vocal about their distaste for Google and their desire to lead other media companies in a boycott of sorts.
Murdoch keeps threatening to stop letting Google index the WSJ.com and his other media sites, and wants other news sites to join him in this self-imposed silence. The folks at Microsoft’s Bing think this is a great idea. Not only that, but the FT reports that Microsoft is in fact in discussions with News Corp. and other publishers about the possibility of paying them to remove their sites from Google’s search index. → Read More
Old habits die hard. Rupert Murdoch believes that the future of the newspaper business is subscriptions—electronic subscriptions. He’s done with giving away his news for free on the Web and to search engines like Google. Instead thinks that Kindle-like tablet computers can save the media industry. It’s a notion that’s been floated before: an entire newsstand in a color tablet which delivers electronic versions of any newspaper or magazine you want for a monthly subscription of $15 to $19 a month.
It’s got to work, otherwise, he warns from his soapbox, “Newspapers will go out of business. All newspapers.” In an interview on his own Fox Business (embedded below), he explains his thinking: → Read More
I’ve mostly been a spectator in this whole Rupert Murdoch de-indexing his news sites from Google circus. First because I didn’t really believe he even knew what he was talking about (or how much traffic he’d lose), and more recently because Erick Schonfeld took the story here at TechCrunch.
But suddenly this is a fascinating story to me for a bunch of reasons. This may be less about the self destruction of traditional journalism and more about the search wars.
Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis, who used to work for Murdoch’s Digital Chief Jonathan Miller when the two were at AOL, posted a video last week (embedded below) with a simple suggestion: Not only should Murdoch de-index from Google, but he should get Bing to pay him for the exclusive right to index it. TechCrunch Europe’s Mike Butcher has been sniffing down a similar trail.
If other media companies joined Murdoch Google could actually find itself in a very difficult position, where Bing had content that Google didn’t. If you knew that Wall Street Journal and, say, New York TImes content was only in Bing search results, mainstream search users would suddenly have a big reason to go to Bing.
This would shift the balance of power away from search engines and to the content sites – if they could pull it off. Bidding wars over rights to index content would conceivably break out between Google and Microsoft, just as bidding wars have broken out in the past over the right to serve search ads into third party publishing sites.
If Murdoch is going to go through with this de-indexing Mexican standoff thing, he might as well do it the right way and drive the fear of God into Google. As a spectator, I’ll enjoy watching the fireworks. → Read More
Once again, News Corp. is threatening to hide itself from the rest of the Web. Earlier this week, Rupert Murdoch told an Australian interviewer that he might start blocking Google from the WSJ.com and his other news sites, even though Google accounts for about 25 percent of the traffic to the WSJ.com. Now his digital lieutenant Jon Miller is echoing his boss and warning that a move to block Google may come within the next few months. But he qualifies that by saying that News Corp must “lead” other media companies against Google for this to work. In other words, News Corp can’t go it alone.
I’m not sure what other media companies, other than the AP, might be willing to follow. While the WSJ actually does quite a good job getting people to pay subscriptions online, and supplements that with advertising revenue to those paid subscribers, it is not clear how many other media brands can command that kind of loyalty. If Murdoch can get any of his newspaper rivals to once again retreat behind pay walls, it most surely will hurt them more than it will hurt Google. → Read More
Today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, News Corp. Chief Digital Officer Jonathan Miller sat down to talk with Federated Media’s John Battelle. Miller oversees a lot of projects for News Corp., most notably MySpace.
Miller reiterated some of what MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta said yesterday at the conference. They have a plan to move forward focusing on what they believe they’re good at, socializing content, which will be music-heavy thanks to their deals with the music labels. → Read More
The Associated Press is yapping again about the “exploitation of news” by search engines, news aggregators and, well, the Internet itself. The CEO of the AP, Tom Curley, told a media industry powwow in Beijing:
We will no longer tolerate the disconnect between people who devote themselves — at great human and economic cost — to gathering news of public interest and those who profit from it without supporting it.
I am temporarily lifting our ban on AP stories to make a point. The remarks seemed to be directed at Google, among others. But if you follow the link above, it will take you to an AP article hosted on Google. Is Google stealing it? No, Google already licenses stories from the AP, so it is already “supporting it.”
What’s really behind all the bluster is that the AP is in the midst of renegotiating a new licensing deal with Google, and is using vague public threats to try to get more money out of them. It’s really kind of sad. → Read More
FOX News and MySpace are partnering to launch Fox’s citizen journalism social media platform on MySpace, called uReport. MySpace members can share citizen produced content with the MySpace community, as well as have the chance to be featured on FOX News. FOX News and MySpace are both owned by News Corp.
FOX News uReport, which is nearly identical to CNN’s citizen journalism initiative iReport, is a platform through which users can upload photos and videos to FOX News from a computer or mobile device. Members of the MySpace-uReport community can become “uReporters” by uploading video and photos tagged by specific news categories, including entertainment and politics. FOX says that this content could be featured in programming on FOX News Channel and foxnews.com, with FOX News maintaining editorial control of the MySpace page. → Read More
As far as we can tell, the guy who’s going to be taking over MySpace along with the rest of News Corp.’s digital assets doesn’t actually use the site itself. We cannot locate a MySpace profile for Jonathan Miller, who will shortly become the CEO of Digital Media for News Corp.
We’re big believers in company executives eating their own dog food, and more often than not they do. But MySpace is a different story – every once in a while they announce new executives who don’t have a MySpace page at all. It’s always fixed promptly, but it’s a bit of an embarrassment.
News Corp., MySpace and Miller all either refused to comment or haven’t responded to our inquiries.
My guess is the MySpace team will be creating one for Miller shortly, assuming he doesn’t in fact have one. He could have an anonymous profile, but from what we’ve heard he doesn’t. We love Miller and think he’s an awesome choice for the huge job he’s about to take on. And now’s the time for him to start using MySpace. → Read More
[photopress:ncyh.jpeg,full,center] Yahoo! is in talks with News Corp. about merging itself with MySpace and the company’s other Web outlets, including IGN and Photobucket. That’s because Yahoo! rejected Microsoft’s bid a few days ago and it’s looking less likely than before that Microsoft will raise the price of its bid. The discussions between Yahoo! and News Corp. right now would result in something just shy of a full buy-out by News Corp. This is just my own personal observation, but MySpace isn’t nearly as relevant as it was a few years ago, right? (Supplanted by Facebook, which I also get the feeling has plateaued.) So then what better thing to do than to merge one also-ran (Yahoo!) with something on the decline (MySpace)? News Corp joins Yahoo battle [Financial Times] → Read More
Like the kid in Can’t Buy Me Love, now that Microsoft has its eye on Yahoo!, everyone wants to get with the faltering ex-nerd. Good riddance, I say. Let News Corp. or Microsoft or a bunch of hedge fund guys pick up this dog at rock bottom prices and turn Yahoo into what Netscape eventually became — a pet project and then an also ran. This is a small world and mindshare, which fleeting, doesn’t often alight back on the popular sites of old. When, for example, is the last time you hit Buy.com on purpose? Didn’t think so. You’ll do a search and end up there “accidentally” but you don’t type in Buy.com to look for stuff if you don’t know where to look. Good luck, Microsoft. That 16% Yahoo! search market share will definitely buoy MSN for a while, but not much else. Google might be a giant now, but she will fall to something else and so on and so on, ad infinitum. You can’t go home again. via TC → Read More
News Corp. continues its quest to dominate the mainstream media. One of the publishers it owns, HarperCollins, is now planning to offer selections from 14 books available for iPhone viewing. The move comes as HarperCollins tries to dive into the digital world and hype surrounding Apple’s successful phone. You’ll be able to use your iPhone, come August and September, to view snippets from books like “The Burnt House” and “Obama”. Only 10 pages or so will be available for preview, but should the book interest you, a mobile option to purchase it will be there. HarperCollins offers digital book content for iPhone [Reuters] → Read More
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