Articles of the Day
Senators Voice Concern Over Google, DoubleClick Deal - Two high-ranking senators Monday told the Federal Trade Commission they were concerned that Google’s planned $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick carries “profound and potentially far-reaching” implications for the Internet ad market, and “raises fundamental consumer privacy concerns.”
Use Of Broadband Service To Overtake TV Viewing - Within the next three years, more than 16 million U.S. households with televisions will use their broadband service more than they use their TV sets today, says technology consulting firm In-Stat. Up to 30% of viewers will drop subscription TV and use the Internet for watching TV, according to a recent survey by the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based In-Stat. More than 40% say they aren’t getting enough international news and information from their current TV service, despite having hundreds of channels to choose from.
How Widgets Turn Distributed Content into Distributed Marketing - Nobody ever said online publishing is easy, but no amount of warning could have adequately prepared us for the perfect storm of competition that arose over the last couple of years. On one front, broadband reached critical mass and pushed online media consumption (and consumer reliance on it) to new heights, spurring a new rash of startups and the venture capital to fund and promote them. Amidst this new competition, our very audience became extraordinarily prolific, producing themselves countless gigabytes of blogs and photo galleries and videos that compete with established publishers not just for mindshare, but even for authority on almost all topics.
Banking Sold Online, Serviced Offline - In the first six months of 2007, US financial services companies spent $1.5 billion on online ads. But that still isn’t enough to convince US consumers to seek financial advice online.
Is User-Produced Video Losing its Appeal? - The explosion of online video on the Web used to be all about amateurs. Not anymore. Apparently, the average Web user has become bored with clips of lip-syncing 7-year-olds and kittens falling asleep. Professionally produced programming surpasses amateur video as the hottest trend in online video. VideoEgg co-founder Matt Sanchez. z would know: Video Egg provides producers with tools for making and delivering ads to online videos.
Yahoo Europe on Probation - Yahoo has issued an ultimatum to its Yahoo Europe employees: improve performance or we will sell the company or close down these doors entirely. Toby Coppel, the new head Yahoo’s European business, says its challenges in Europe are more substantial than in the U.S. “In rushing out to market, we built a lot of applications that didn’t speak to each other,” he said. We were managing a larger number of legacy products with fewer people than in the States.”
Facebook To Acquire Chinese Social Network? - The hot rumor this week is that Facebook is planning on acquiring its way into the expanding Chinese social networking market by buying Zhanzuo.com. The Web startup, which runs on massive funding provided by Silicon Valley investors and most recently, Microsoft, is reported to have tabled an $85 million offer for the Chinese social network, according to British paper The Guardian. However, any deal has been refuted. “No offer has been made and no acquisition in China is being considered by Facebook,” its director of Communications told TechCrunch.
