Peter Chernin, the long-time president and COO of News Corp, is leaving the company after protracted negotiations over his contract could not be resolved. Chernin’s salary was $28.8 million in the last fiscal year, which was $1.3 million more than even Rupert Murdoch’s take-home pay. Chernin helped Murdoch build and oversee his vast media empire over the past 20 years, and his departure no doubt will raise all sorts of questions about the future of the company. He will be leaving when his current contract expires on June 30.
For instance, what will happen to Fox Interactive Media (FIM)? This particular corner of the Murdoch empire is where News Corp keeps all of its Web businesses: MySpace, Photobucket, IGN, Scout, Chernin was its biggest supporter and internal sponsor. Peter Levinshon, the leader of FIM, was considered to be within Chernin’s camp. Although Chernin and Murdoch worked hand-in-hand, they are also very much opposites and a competitive rivalry always existed between the two. News Corp executives often identify with one boss or the other. MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe, for instance, is considered a Murdoch guy.
With Chernin gone, perhaps this is as good a time as any to take another look at FIM and what purpose it serves. Its original purpose was almost as an internal M&A fund for Internet startups. But now those businesses have grown up. Other than MySpace, which contributes the vast majority of FIM’s revenues and profits, it is not really clear what the point of FIM is. → Read More
Fox Interactive Media, the News Corp subsidiary that controls most of its online assets, has signed a 12 year lease agreement for a new facility in Playa Vista. All FIM companies in Southern California will move to the new facility starting in June of 2009. For those wondering about FIM and MySpace’s future growth, this move should settle speculation. The site will house over 300,000 square feet of commercial space and is part of a development called Horizon at Playa Vista (a rendering of the development is above). The area is quickly becoming LA’s media hub, with EA, Rubin Postaer and others now with offices in the area. The internal memo from Peter Levinsohn, President of Fox Interactive Media, is below. About a year ago, I communicated with you about our space and parking challenges, and our ultimate plan to find a facility that could accommodate all of our LA-area team in one location. After an extensive process, I’m thrilled to inform you that we have found the ideal location for Fox Interactive Media’s new headquarters. The new facility is located in Playa Del Rey (Horizon at Playa Vista http://www.horizonatplayavista.com/) and houses more than 300,000 square feet of commercial space. Playa Del Rey is the first newly-built community in Los Angeles in over 50 years and has become a creative hub for technology companies, including EA, the largest video game company in the world. The site itself should be amazing – including an exclusive gym, internal and external eating facilities, volleyball courts, and lots of green space for outdoor activities. Just beyond the newly-built facility will be a host of restaurants, shopping locations and living options. FIM has experienced phenomenal success in its three-year history, and we have plans for even greater growth and achievements in the coming fiscal year. Given our tremendous track record, it’s only fitting that we should enter into the single biggest real-estate transaction in Los Angeles in the last 25 years. When we move to our new facility between June of 2009 and January of 2010, not only will we enjoy the distinction of having one of the largest corporate headquarters in the LA area, but we will be housed in a state-of-the-art facility that reflects our corporate identity and culture. In the coming weeks and months, we’ll be providing you with more information about the site and the surrounding area. We’ll also provide a → Read More
During yesterday’s News Corp. earnings call, Rupert Murdoch and COO Peter Chernin talked a little bit about the weakness at MySpace. They expect Fox Interactive Media (which includes MySpace, Photobucket, IGN, and other properties) to miss its $1 billion revenue goal by the end of News Corp.’s fiscal year next quarter. Instead, they expect FIM to reach $900 million for the fiscal year. (No surprise there. We predicted the shortfall a month ago). And in the quarter they just reported, revenues for FIM were actually down 10 percent, from $233 million to $210 million. The culprit: There is too much inventory, and not enough clickthroughs. As a result both brands (and, more importantly, “friends” on MySpace) remain skeptical. Dumping ads on MySpace without targeting them simply doesn’t work. Google is also partly to blame, as its ad deal represents about a third of FIM’s revenues. Altough, Google is working on the problem. Google founder Larry Page said as much during Google’s last earnings call: On social networking monetization, it is an area where we have tried a lot of new technologies. Demographic targeting has been successful. The challenge and the opportunity is that there is a lot of inventory. Part of it is just getting the advertising ecosystem built up and targeting in a way that makes sense. We have made some improvements but there are more improvements to be made. It takes time for advertisers to [get up to speed]. (That’s right, Larry. Blame the advertisers.) It wasn’t all bad news coming from MySpace, though. It continues to make improvements in bringing in branded advertisers (up 21 percent), revenues per user (up 49 percent), and audience. Traffic and time spent continues to rise at a healthy clip at MySpace, MySpace TV, Foxsports.com, PhotoBucket, and IGN. The bigger issue for MySpace is that the longer it keeps missing targets, the less incentive its top executive talent has to stick around. Compensation for top executives is tied to meeting profit targets at the business. If they don’t meet those targets, nobody gets paid any upside. And for these folks, it’s all about the upside. CrunchBase Information MySpace Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
A Yahoo board meeting Friday authorized talks with both Microsoft and Time Warner (AOL) next week. According to a New York Times report quoting sources, Yahoo’s board met to evaluate Microsoft’s takeover bid and other alternatives but did not make a formal decision on which option to pursue. The fence sitting from Yahoo provides some solace to Microsoft after a week where an AOL-Yahoo deal was said to be close at hand. The Times also quoted a “person briefed on the discussions” between News Corp and Microsoft for the former to join the bid for Yahoo as describing the discussions as being only “conceptual..suggesting that a joint bid was unlikely.” (source img credit: RedBrick Blog) → Read More
What a day. I can’t say neither side is throwing punches any longer in the epic fight over what’s left of Yahoo. Microsoft and Yahoo are done, for the most part, with sternly worded letters. Yesterday Yahoo made two announcements/leaks. First, that they were very close to agreeing to terms that would combine Yahoo and AOL as an alternative to the Microsoft deal. And second, that they will run, ahem, a two week test of Google Adsense on 3% of their Yahoo search results page, instead of their own ads. Microsoft responded that the Google deal is a precursor to handing over de facto monopoly power of the search advertising space. And they threw their own curve ball as well: News Corp. has switched teams and is now in Microsoft’s camp. The formal entry of AOL into the discussions suggests Time Warner wants to offload the asset soon. If a Microsoft/Yahoo deal goes through, the only realistic suitor for AOL is Google, and that gives them little negotiating leverage. The News Corp news is more interesting. In a move reminiscent of the Italians switching sides in World War II, they’ve abandoned their Yahoo soul mate for a more compliant Microsoft. They put in a bid for Yahoo in February (more), which was reportedly countered just a couple of weeks ago. My guess is the counter offer wasn’t very interesting, so they switched sides. You gotta love News Corp., they’re always there for you when they need you. But by far the most interesting news is the Yahoo/Google alliance. Industry insiders still question whether regulators would allow the deal, but Yahoo’s been whispering around Silicon Valley that a business partnership with Google, as opposed to a merger, would stand a much higher likelihood of getting approved. What Is Yahoo’s Strategy – Scorched Earth, Or Knife To The Nose? Yahoo has put costly severance plans in place to both retain employees and make themselves a less attractive acquisition candidate. But top talent has left anyway, and just about everyone at Yahoo seems to be looking for a job (even execs I’ve spoken with). Meanwhile, the Google deal shows they would rather give up the search marketing game, their biggest asset, than become part of Microsoft. Their actions, which appear to be based on destroying their market value as a counter to the Microsoft bid, benefit neither their stockholders nor their employees. And → Read More
Things are moving fast in the Yahoo-Microsoft drama. All the different forces are aligning for an endgame. The latest twist: The WSJ is reporting that Yahoo is close to signing a deal to combine with AOL. This at the same time that Yahoo is doing a limited test to place Google ads in its search results. Meanwhile, News Corp, which Yahoo once hoped would be its white knight, is said to be turning on Yahoo and talking to Microsoft about joining its bid. Obviously a lot of balls are up in the air right now, and anything is possible. Here is how the AOL-Yahoo combination is shaping up, according to the WSJ: Under the terms being discussed, Time Warner would fold its AOL unit into Yahoo and make a cash investment in return for about 20% of the combined entity, the people said. The deal, which wouldn’t include AOL’s dial-up access business, would value AOL at about $10 billion. As part of the deal, Yahoo would use the Time Warner cash and additional funds to buy back several billion dollars worth of its own stock at a price somewhere in the middle of the range between $30 and $40 a share Tellingly, that $10 billion valuation is half of what AOL’s business was pegged at when Google invested $1 billion for its 5 percent stake in AOL a little over two years ago. (But that does not include the dial-up business). What we are witnessing is all sorts of contortions on both sides to make the numbers work. We’ve believed all along that Time Warner will put an offer on the table, but it will be difficult to make it pencil out, especially if an AOL-Yahoo combo is up against a three-way Microsoft-MySpace-Yahoo deal. Each of these potential deals would create integration nightmares, but a three-way tie between Microsoft, MySpace, and Yahoo would create an entity with so much traffic and advertising inventory that it might not matter. The chances of such a complicated deal going through, though, are small. The most likely outcome is still Microsoft buying Yahoo, and this is all just fodder for the negotiations. Which Would Be A Stronger Yahoo Entity? Microsoft-MySpace-Yahoo 124172% of all votes AOL-Yahoo 48128% of all votes Total Votes: 1722 Started: April 9, 2008 CrunchBase Information Yahoo! AOL Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
News Corp is said to be in talks with Microsoft about joining its bid for Yahoo, according to sources quoted by the New York Times. News Corp entering the mix may allow Microsoft to raise its bid, putting even more pressure on Yahoo to accept it. It would also remove News Corp as a possible alternate bidder for Yahoo. A combined Microsoft/ News Corp/ Yahoo would marry Fox Interactive Media and most notably MySpace with Yahoo’s web properties and Microsoft Live and MSN services, creating an even bigger challenger to Google. According to the Times, the talks between Microsoft and News Corporation are at a sensitive stage, with their source stating that “there’s a long way to go before anything is definite.” The news comes after another colorful day in the Microsoft/ Yahoo standoff with Yahoo announcing a trial of Google ads against its search results, and Microsoft responding by saying that any Yahoo/ Google tie-up lessened competition. Update: The WSJ is reporting that Yahoo is close to signing a deal to combine with AOL. CrunchBase Information News Corporation Yahoo! Microsoft Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Amidst all the excitement over the MySpace Music announcement today is another story about the fate of parent company Fox Interactive Media. FIM, the division of News Corp. that controls MySpace, IGN, Scout Media, Photobucket, Fox Sports, AmericanIdol.com and other properties, is in trouble. The company, under President Peter Levinsohn, will miss their revenue target of $1 billion for the current fiscal year ending June 30, multiple sources say. Rupert Murdoch, Chairman of News Corp., first gave revenue guidance for their subsidiary FIM in June 2007 (further information here): “…we are forecasting that MySpace alone will generate in excess of $800 million in revenue in fiscal ’08. Overall, FIM in fiscal ’07 generated revenues of $550 million and a profit of $10 million, even after absorbing $80 million in retention and amortization costs. We would be surprised if FIM revenues this fiscal year do not exceed $1 billion with margins well above 20%.” Actual revenue is estimated to come in at around $900 million (2007 revenues were $550 million). And the $200 + million in expected operating margins is also likely an illusion. The division as a whole, with more than 2,500 employees, will be much closer to break even. The impact could be far reaching for the organization. All employee stock options are tied to profits. This includes MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe and Co-founder Tom Anderson, whose compensation is heavily weighted towards the plan. If there are no profits, there are no payouts. Some insiders say the projections were impossible to meet. Nevertheless, News Corp. has a fall guy: Chief Revenue Officer Michael Barrett, who was hired from Time Warner in 2006, has been either terminated or was offered an inferior position and resigned. Barrett was rumored to have had a very strained relationship with DeWolfe. Jeff Berman, currently MySpace EVP of Marketing and Content and a former public affairs executive, was named head of MySpace sales and marketing. Barrett is at least the seventh senior executive to leave FIM in recent history. Former COO Mark Jung (now CEO of Vudu), Chief Strategy Officer Jim Heckman (now CSO at Zazzle), CEO Ross Levinsohn (now a Managing Partner at Velocity Interactive), SVP Heather Harde (now CEO of TechCrunch), EVP Sales John Trimble (now EVP, Sales at Glam), and EVP Corporate Development Mitchell Chun (now at Zazzle with Heckman). In addition, FIM is moving some assets from MySpace and other properties → Read More
When it comes to market share gains in advertising dollars, Google outstripped every other media company in 2007, whether you look at the Web, TV, print, or radio. Earlier this morning, Henry Blodget compared the advertising revenues of 17 major media businesses (including News Corp, Time Warner Cable, Viacom, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL,, the New York Times, and CBS Radio). He left out Disney for some reason, but otherwise it’s a pretty good set of data (see the spreadsheet here). According to his calculations, total online ad revenues across these 17 companies grew 9% last year, online revenues grew 28% (versus 3% for offline ad revenues), and Google’s online ad revenues grew 44% (versus 15% for the combined online ad revenues of Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL). But let’s take a deeper dive into these numbers. Google added $2.6 billion in advertising revenues last year. Next in line and far behind was News Corp., which grew its ad revenues by $915 million. To better visualize how much Google is creaming every other media company, I put together the charts above and below (click on them to see a larger version). And here’s a table with each company’s ad-revenue gains (or declines), in descending order: Now, what about absolute market share? Google does pretty well there too, with 14.9% of the total $58 billion represented by all 17 businesses. That is up from an 11.3% market share in 2006, and makes Google No. 2 behind News Corp’s 16.5% market share. (No.3, actually, behind Time Warner, but Blodget separated Time Warner Cable, Time Inc., and AOL, which combined would have a 15.2% market share). Looking at the absolute numbers in the pie chart and table below really helps you put these businesses in perspective. For instance, check out Yahoo in the No. 4 spot, with $4.7 billion in ad revenues last year. It is right behind newspaper company Gannett, which is still a cash cow, but saw its advertising dollars decline by $338 million last year. Yahoo, in contrast gained $361 million in ad revenues. That’s still a fraction of Google’s growth, but looking at the absolute numbers let’s you see why Microsoft wants to buy it. A combined Yahoo-Microsoft would be No. 3 on this list. And here are the underlying numbers: → Read More
Rupert Murdoch is reported to have said that News Corp won’t fight Microsoft for Yahoo. Talking to investors at the annual Bear Stearns Media Conference, Murchdoch said that “We’re not going to get into a fight with Microsoft, which has a lot more money than us.” Murdoch also gave support to Google as FIM’s ad provider: “We’re very happy to be in the Google camp. They sell our search advertising and pay us well for it.” This comes in stark contrast to what we’ve heard behind the scenes – that News Corp submitted a formal big to Yahoo just a little over a week ago, and have been openly claiming to be negotiating with Microsoft to take over their Google advertising deal. With News Corp not wanting to get in the way, Yahoo’s last chance of heading off Microsoft’s offer now rests with Time Warner. Murdoch did not rule out another type of deal with Yahoo, but given Microsoft’s increasingly hostile takeover offer, the chances of News Corp being involved in any deal with Yahoo given these comments looks slim. CrunchBase Information Yahoo! News Corporation Microsoft Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
News Corp. has essentially planted four or five deal guys at Yahoo HQ, working directly with Yahoo business development to try to find a deal to combine MySpace and Yahoo that both sides can swallow. The News Corp. team is led by Jack Kennedy, Fox Interactive Media’s EVP Strategy and Corporate Development, says a source with knowledge of the discussions. According to another source, the team was as Yahoo again on Wednesday, and has been there most of the last two weeks. We reported on what the bid might look like on February 12: According to our source, the deal structure would spin off Fox Interactive Media (the primary asset is MySpace, but IGN, Scout Media, Photobucket, Fox Sports, AmericanIdol.com, Flektor, Ksolo; plus investments in Hulu, Simply Hired and Snocap are also assets of FIM) into Yahoo, along with a big cash injection from News Corp. and an unnamed private equity fund. The total investment would be valued at around $15 billion. Yahoo would be valued at somewhere around $50 billion before the transaction, north of Microsoft’s $44.6 billion bid. That would leave News Corp., plus the private equity group, with more than 20% of the combined entity. They’d be the largest single stockholder and effectively in control of the combined Yahoo/FIM entity and their nearly 150 billion monthly page views (which would be second only to Google). As far as we know the potential deal structure hasn’t changed, and they are still hung up on how to make the merger work without getting Google involved to take on search marketing. The team was expecting Microsoft to up its bid last week, forcing the Yahoo board to make a move. But Microsoft is taking things directly to shareholders, a time consuming move. That gives News Corp. more time to get their deal to pencil out. It’s possible that at the end of this ordeal we’ll see a Yahoo/MySpace combined company, with News Corp. as the biggest shareholder. But to do that these guys need to pull the trigger on a bid. It’s time to make a move, or fly back to LA. → Read More
At the start of the Microsoft/Yahoo saga we reported that News Corp. was scrambling to put together a bid to compete with Microsoft, but backed down because they were unable to find outside funding to make the deal lucrative enough (the sorry state of the debt markets contributed to the problem). Yesterday Silicon Alley Insider reported that talks between the two were continuing. We’ve confirmed the rumor – Yahoo and News Corp. are in the middle of marathon discussions, and have more details. According to our source, the deal structure would spin off Fox Interactive Media (the primary asset is MySpace, but IGN, Scout Media, Photobucket, Fox Sports, AmericanIdol.com, Flektor, Ksolo; plus investments in Hulu, Simply Hired and Snocap are also assets of FIM) into Yahoo, along with a big cash injection from News Corp. and an unnamed private equity fund. The total investment would be valued at around $15 billion. Yahoo would be valued at somewhere around $50 billion before the transaction, north of Microsoft’s $44.6 billion bid. That would leave News Corp., plus the private equity group, with more than 20% of the combined entity. They’d be the largest single stockholder and effectively in control of the combined Yahoo/FIM entity and their nearly 150 billion monthly page views (which would be second only to Google). The negotiating team is said to be trying to iron out the details in the next 48 hours, in time for Yahoo’s upcoming board meeting to review its options. Microsoft is largely expected to increase their bid to the $35 range in the next couple of days based on Yahoo’s formal rejection of their first offer (effectively raising their bid to $50 billion). Any competing offer needs to be in that range or higher. One major snag – it is widely believed that, even with a News Corp. deal, Yahoo would need to outsource search marketing to Google to make the numbers work. While Google is likely happy to do that deal, it’s unlikely U.S. regulatory agencies would approve it (we discuss this in detail here). Without the revenue boost and cost savings from outsourcing, the News Corp. bid may not pencil out. Yahoo, of course, isn’t too worried about that right now. All they want is any kind of bona fide competing bid to at least get Microsoft to increase their offer. Yahoo execs are saying privately that they think a Microsoft → Read More
In case you missed the news, internet cables serving the Middle East have had a rough week, with anywhere up to five major cables being cut over the last week. CrunchGear has been following the whole story, but we’ve not covered it until now because internet cables being cut isn’t as an irregular occurrence as you might think. Many of the companies behind these cables are essentially lazy, and simply drop them on the ocean floor, where ships can drop anchor and take them out at random. Five (or possibly less) cables were cut resulting in major outages in Iran (possibly the whole country, but possibly not) and other Middle Eastern countries. The cable cuts have resulted in more conspiracy theories than a Ron Paul meetup. The Economist has more on the theories. What perked our interest was an article Wednesday from the Wall Street Journal covering the story that included the very funky image top right. Yes, that’s a Shark with laser beams on its head. There was much discussion about the Wall Street Journals editorial credibility post News Corp, and finally we are seeing the results. Personally I don’t mind the change that much, sharks with laser beams on their heads makes for a more lively and creative Wall Street Journal, but I’m betting I might be in the minority with that conclusion. What do you think? → Read More
An unconfirmed rumor has surfaced that either Google or MySpace is about to announce a big $1 billion to $1.5 billion acquisition in the social space. After checking around with multiple industry sources, we’ve concluded that if the rumor is true the most likely candidate is Bebo, which we are told is raising capital and simultaneously shopping itself around again. We put the chances of this rumor being true at a solid 50 percent. Update: Make that a solid 51 percent. To be clear, there is a long history of rumors surrounding Bebo as an acquisition target that turned out to be false or never panned out. The last one was in May 2007, when Yahoo supposedly wanted to buy it for $1 billion. At a TechCrunch party last summer (before I was working here), Bebo CEO Michael Birch told me that the Yahoo bid was a complete fabrication and the first he heard of it was from his Dad, who called him up after reading about it. When I contacted Birch last night about this latest rumor, he had no comment. Let’s just go through the logic for each potential buyer, who might be bidding against each other. An acquisition of this size by Google in the face of Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo would show how swift Google can act while its competitors dither. It would also show that what it is really scared of is not a combined Microsoft-Yahoo, but the growing threat from fresh-faced upstart Facebook. Google already owns Orkut, one of the biggest social networks globally, especially in Latin America. It just has not caught on in the U.S. Bebo is also a global play, but its strength is in English-speaking countries such as the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. According to comScore, Bebo had 21 million unique visitors worldwide in December, 2007, with about 4 million in the U.S. Orkut had 25 million worldwide unique visitors. So Google would nearly double its social networking market share, as measured by active members. And it would have a strong English-speaking social network with which to begin to challenge Facebook here in the U.S. Bebo is already part of Google’s OpenSocial platform, even though it embraced Facebook’s competing platform also. You can bet that Bebo’s Facebook effort would get a bullet in the head pretty quickly if it became part of Google. Still, given Google’s recent earnings → Read More
The rumors keep on rolling around the surprise semi-hostile Microsoft bid for Yahoo this morning. Sillicon Alley Insider says they’ve heard that a couple of hedge funds were already preparing their own bids for Yahoo, and were (or perhaps still are) days away from making their move. According to our source, other big private equity funds were busy today, too. Taking calls from News Corp., that is. News Corp. and Yahoo have been mulling over a merger (of Yahoo and MySpace) since the middle of last year. But the deal back then had News Corp. selling off MySpace in exchange for 25% of Yahoo’s stock. Now the roles have been reversed. Today, News Corp. was supposedly making calls to put together a syndicate and make a counter offer to what Microsoft put on the table. No takers so far, we hear. All of this is likely to come to nothing, though. I agree with Paul Kedrosky and Mathew Ingram – Microsoft has probably already won this deal, simply because they aren’t relying solely on spreadsheets in their valuation. Hedge funds don’t have that luxury. → Read More
Ever since the rear-guard at the Wall Street Journal won the battle to keep its news pages behind its subscription wall (although, its opinion pages are now free), they have been cracking down especially hard on anyone trying to breach that wall—even if those people happen to be paying subscribers. In what appears to be an attempt to discourage freeloaders, the WSJ.com is locking out anyone from its site when it detects more than one simultaneous log-in on the same account. But innocent, rule-abiding subscribers who may be using multiple computers, or doing nothing wrong other than forgetting to log out of their accounts, are being shut out as well (see email below). That is no way to treat your customers. In fact, it shows an utter disdain for how normal people actually use the Web. But it is an understandable, and classic, reaction. Incumbent executives always try to fend off inevitable disruption by blindly protecting their current sources of revenues. I liked Rupert Murdoch’s original idea of tearing down the entire subscription wall much better. Here is the e-mail I received from a paying online subscriber, describing his ordeal with the WSJ.com and a screen shot of what he saw when he was in breach of the multiple login rule. Hopefully, this is an isolated case. Otherwise, the WSJ.com could have a reader revolt on its hands of its own making. (If anyone else has experienced the same thing, please share in comments). I’ve been a paying subscriber of the Wall Street Journal online since 1995. About two weeks ago they made a change so that they allow only one login per account at a time and closing a browser isn’t sufficient, you have to manually logout. If you forget and try to access the site from another browser or machine, they lock your account and make you call in to get it reset. As one who uses many computers and browsers, this is a major change and hassle. They don’t even let you get to the free version without clearing cookies if your account is locked; you just get a nasty message. Furthermore, the unlock process requires long-wait times on the phone and answering lots of questions. I tried email, but no response after 24 hours. I’ve been through this twice now and they insist that they will continue this policy to prevent subscription sharing. Given general trends → Read More
News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch has said that the Wall Street Journal online will retain a paid subscription model, despite months of speculation that the site would go completely free. Although the full details of the plan are not clear, Murdoch said that much more of the site would be offered for free, however “the really special things will still be a subscription service, and, sorry to tell you, probably more expensive.” The decision bucks the recent trend of other subscription services being dropped as online advertising revenue offered a viable economic alternative to paid subscriptions, the biggest switcher being the New York Times in September 2007. (via WSJ) → Read More
Today’s agreement between MySpace and nearly all the states attorneys general to bulk up protections against sexual predators will no doubt have spillover effects on other social networks as well. No social network can afford to look like it is lagging in this area and will do whatever it can to be at par with emerging industry norms in this area. In fact, not long after I originally posted about the MySpace deal earlier today, I received the following statement from Facebook: Facebook has always created an inhospitable environment for predators by limiting access to users’ personal information based on real-world social connections. We have led the way in our partnership with the New York Attorney General and continue our involvement with the Attorneys General of all states and other law enforcement agencies to keep children safe from those who would do them harm. We are happy to work further with the states to develop and deploy strategies to protect kids online. I am pretty sure that not only Facebook, but also Bebo and Google, will do whatever is necessary to fight sexual predators. With that in mind, here specifically is where Facebook, Bebo and Orkut (i.e., Google) are now lagging MySpace in protections for younger users, and where they may have to spend money to catch up: Update: See clarifications/corrections from Facebook below in italics: 1. IMAGE AND VIDEO REVIEW MySpace proactively reviews videos and images for pornographic and sexually inappropriate content. Humans look at every image and banned images are digitally fingerprinted to prevent them from being uploaded again. Facebook and Bebo only ban inappropriate images and video that are reported by users. Orkut doesn’t even do that. Facebook has automated examination working on video, but they find that reports work extraordinarily well in removing inappropriate content quickly – for both images and video. They have always had report links, which MySpace was forced to add under this agreement. 2. GROUPS REVIEW MySpace monitors group discussions for predatory content. Facebook and Bebo regulate only reported incidents. Orkut does not review group discussions. Re: Groups, Facebook has algorithmic monitoring for inappropriate names/themes and a variety of technical tools that automatically cull them. 3. SEX OFFENDER DATABASE MySpace helped develop and fund a database of registered sex offenders and deletes the accounts of members who are registered sex ofenders. Facebook, Bebo, and Orkut do not have a policy of automatically → Read More
In a deal announced today with 49 state attorneys general and Washington D.C., MySpace has put into place new measures to protect minors from sexual predators. (Texas is the lone holdout). The site, owned by News Corp., has agreed to independent monitoring and to work on age-verification technologies. It also agreed to, according to the WSJ: • Allow parents to submit a child’s email addresses to MySpace to prevent anyone from misusing the addresses to set up profiles. • Make the default setting “private” for 16- and 17-year-old users so they cannot be viewed by adults they don’t already know. • Respond within 72 hours to complaints about inappropriate content and devote more staff and resources to classify photographs and discussion groups. • Strengthen software against underage users. • Create a high school section for users under 18 years old. This is the latest in a series of moves MySpace has taken over the past few years to address the problems of sexual misconduct arising from use of the social network. How long before the attorneys general ask other social networks such as Facebook and Bebo to sign onto similar agreements as well? Putting such protections into place is the price of being a responsible social network. Update: For more, read this post on where FaceBook, Bebo, and Google’s Orkut need to catch up. → Read More
Apple is said to have signed a deal with 20th Century Fox that will see video rentals on iTunes. According to FT.com the deal will be officially announced at MacWorld on January 14. The same report also says that Apple is in talks with Sony Pictures Entertainment, Paramount and Warner Bros along similar lines. Speculation of Apple offering video rentals via iTunes has been around for a long time and is seen as a natural next step for iTunes. We reported in June that the iTunes rental service will charge $2.99 for a 30 day rental, but final details have not been disclosed. Code to support rentals in iTunes was discovered in November. After a year where Apple was portrayed as the bogeyman by companies such as NBC (who have now withdrawn their content), this is a big win for Apple. Another interesting part is News Corp appearing to continue to hedge its bets; on one hand it joined with NBC to launch Hulu, billed as an iTunes alternative, and yet they continue to deal with Apple directly as well. If Murdoch isn’t prepared to dump Apple and join with NBC exclusively, what does this say about what he thinks about the future of online video? Certainly from the outside its says that Apple/ iTunes is still the biggest and best game in town, and the place to be if you want to profit from your content online. It would also suggest that NBC’s strategy of not dealing with Apple may be bound to fail. → Read More
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