While the very phrase “product placement” elicits jeers and hisses in the TV and movie worlds, on the Web something surprising has been happening: Branded content is emerging as not just a promising way to make money, but as creatively viable as well. Take Ashton Kutcher’s “Blah Girls,” which features sassy teen celebrity-bloggers who pause occasionally to quaff VitaminWater as they chase celebrity dirt.
“The Internet represents freedom, but not everywhere.”
So begins the annual “Internet Enemies” report by Reporters Without Borders–and that’s probably the cheeriest line in the entire 39-page document. It goes down from there.
Facebook quietly changed its terms of service agreement recently. Bloggers freaked, triggering a public uproar that forced Facebook to revert back to the older version and come up with a better ToS agreement.
The founder and CEO of Tumblr, David Karp, announced that five blogs in his “community” critical of Web personality Julia Allison have been taken down because they were “derogatory” and constituted “harrassment.” … I suppose Karp can kick whomever he wants off his site–but that’s exactly what seems to be going on here. It certainly smells like a CEO protecting a friend.
Anyone can create a Facebook group and make it appear to be something it’s not. Brad J. Ward reminded admissions officials about that simple fact on Thursday after examining hundreds of “Class of 2013” groups that have popped up on the popular social-networking site.
It’s a long way from $700 billion, but the media start-up Six Apart is introducing its own economic bailout plan. The TypePad Journalist Bailout Program offers recently terminated bloggers and journalists a free pro account (worth $150 annually) on the company’s popular blogging platform.
John Battelle, CEO of Federated Media, decided to have a little bit of speculative fun onstage Thursday with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at the Web 2.0 Summit. It’s the sort of “speculative fun” that could give tech bloggers a gossip-overload headache for weeks to come: Battelle decided to throw some fuel on the “Facebook might buy Twitter” fire.
I blame David Hasselhoff.
Everything was going fine for the Web–the financial world had been unwinding its overleveraged excesses for nearly a year with nary a ripple into Silicon Valley–until the launch of HoffSpace, a social network revolving around the oogachaka-ing, burger-wagging actor.
Blogging is a fast medium–that’s one of its advantages over traditional media. There are bloggers who specialize in reporting fast about breaking news on a wide variety of topics.
We have already seen tons of things people do on Twitter to help their business–marketing people selling staff, community managers engaging in various activities with their users, startups providing technical support, bloggers hunting for scoops and promoting their articles.
The topic of blogs and their authors and owners and what exactly defines their place on the ladder of the journalism industry never quite fully goes away. That’s because there’s always something or other that drives the commentariat to reflect on the present, compare it to the past, and try to forecast the future.
The Associated Press, one of the nation’s largest news organizations, said that it will, for the first time, attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt without infringing on The AP’s copyright.
In the rapidly shifting era of blogger and media relations, we can expect one thing to occur as we forge ahead: mistakes. It happens to the best and the worst of us.
They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece–not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home.
A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.
In what may be one of the most pointless studies done in quite some time, a research firm has discovered to its own amazement that people tend to trust their own friends more than well known bloggers. Well, I should certainly hope so. Were there really people out there who thought that folks with high trafficked blogs actually held more sway than a personal friend?
This is a section of the All Things Digital Web site featuring posts from around the Web, from other Dow Jones properties and also original pieces we solicit. The section is now explicitly labeled that it comes "from other Web sites."
We are fully aware of the controversies around how linking and aggregating is done on the Web and we, in no way, are attempting to "scrape" original content created by others. Instead, regarding third-party posts, we are trying to point readers of this site to other posts from around the Web that we admire and are trying to do so in the quickest manner possible.
The Internet is full of terrific content that is not ours and we want to help our readers find it by making editorial suggestions--Look, Mom, no algorithm!--of posts we think are worth their time.
That is why we have made even more changes to Voices to ensure we do this in the most transparent and timely way. While we don't expect that everyone will agree with our policies, we have made changes that reflect our intent in pointing to content outside our site.
So here is exactly what we do: Read more »
Because the site is wholly owned by Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, we aim to adhere to the journalistic standards of the best of the mainstream media. But, because it is run autonomously as a small online startup, we aim to exhibit the fresh thinking and nimbleness of the best of the new media. We want to be first, and sassy, but also well sourced and accurate. We will offer lots of opinion and analysis, but plenty of fact as well.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
Don't miss a post! Sign up for our Daily Email and get AllThingsD.com delivered each day.
Get columns, blogs and video from D and All Things Digital on your iPhone. Download now »
