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Tuesday, October 27, 2009

NBC Grabs a High-Profile Blogger to Boost Its Local Site: Eater Co-Founder Ben Leventhal

leventhalNews for the foodie/NY blog scene: Ben Leventhal, co-founder of the influential Eater blog, is headed to GE’s NBC Universal, where he’ll oversee “lifestyle content” for NBC’s growing local Web unit.

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Friday, October 16, 2009

Dear FTC: Is This the Kind of Thing You Want Me to Disclose?

whoselloutA marketer offers to pay me per post. I don’t know whether to be flattered or offended.

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Friday, October 9, 2009

Exclusive: MySpace Gets a New Sales Boss–MTV Vet Nada Stirratt (Plus, an Internal Memo, Of Course!)

Nada_Stirratt

Employees at News Corp.’s MySpace have been waiting to find out who their new ad sales boss will be. And, here she is: Nada Stirratt, who until today was running digital sales for Viacom’s MTV Networks.

Stirratt has her work cut out for her. The struggling social networking site, HQed in Beverly Hills, has been trying to reboot its image, spur innovation in its product and, most of all, pull itself out of a too-long slump, even as longtime rival, Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook, has seen explosive growth.

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The AP Tries a “Truthiness” Approach: “We’re Not Talking to Google” Means “We’re Talking to Google”

Colbert-truthinessAssociated Press CEO Tom Curley told a group of journalists this week that his company isn’t talking to Google about renewing its licensing deal. But they have been talking for months and talked again this week.

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The Secret of Chad Hurley and Steve Chen’s Famous “Two Kings” Video. Revealed!

chad hurley and steve chenThree years after the Google deal, YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley explains some of the cryptic language in the clip that defined the Web 2.0 era. Also, he’d like you to know his site is generating more than a billion views a day.

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Thursday, October 8, 2009

Twitter Down, Again, Just Like the Old Days

Twitter’s status site said this yesterday: “We’re currently diagnosing the causes of an unplanned site outage that happened a few minutes ago. We are recovering from this issue now and apologize for the interruption in service.”

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Look Who’s Selling Warner Music’s Videos on YouTube: Veoh’s Sales Team

green_day_Last month, Warner Music Group won the right to sell ads on its YouTube videos. Next step: Getting someone to sell ads on its YouTube videos, since the music label doesn’t have its own sales team. The plan: Hand those duties over to someone who’s already doing it for Veoh and other video outfits.

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Sunday, October 4, 2009

The New Yorker Takes on Hollywood Power Blogger Nikki Finke

nikki-finke

Yet more–a lot of ink–on Nikki Finke, Hollywood’s best-read and most feared blogger.

What does Finke think? “Amusing.” Meanwhile, what about Finke’s plans to hire a New York correspondent?

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Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Tablet Schmablet: How About a Mud PC?

092209ATDgizmodoThe new Wondertablet the guys at Gizmodo showed off last night looks cool. But you can’t actually touch one right now unless you know someone very connected at Microsoft. But you know what you can touch? Today? A PC you control by shoving your hands in a box full of mud. All you have to do is get yourself to Gizmodo’s awesome gadget gallery in New York during the next few days.

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Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Yahoo’s Bartz: Microsoft Deal Was “Very Clever”

092209ATDbartz

More from the post-Q&A Q&A: Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz says major investors like Gordon Crawford support her, and that she’s in the market for medium-sized M&A. Here’s what she had to say.

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Monday, September 21, 2009

AOL: More Org Chart Shuffles Coming; So Are Ad Dollars. But Mum on Microsoft.

092009ATDaolCEO Tim Armstrong says he’s still overhauling the Internet company in advance of its spinoff from Time Warner, but he has hopeful noises to make about ad sales. He has nothing, however, to say about chats with Microsoft.

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Friday, August 28, 2009

Gentlemen, Start Your Engines: Time for Another Round of Cable Deals?

carey_cable_guyDid a federal court just give underemployed M&A guys a boost? Could be: The United States Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., has overturned a longstanding cap on cable-system ownership.

If the decision holds up, it could well start another round of dealmaking similar to the one we saw at the beginning of this decade in which the industry consolidated to about half a dozen major players.

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Wednesday, August 19, 2009

On the Internet, Everybody Knows You’re a Name-Caller: Google Unmasks the “Skank” Blogger

google-suitWant to call someone a “skank” on the Web while remaining anonymous? Might want to rethink that: Following an order from a New York court, Google has outed a woman who insulted a former model using the company’s Blogger service.

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Friday, July 10, 2009

How to Kill the Rest of Your Friday

koolaidLet’s be honest. You’re not getting anything productive done with the rest of the day. Why not sit back and watch a couple of interesting ads before the weekend starts?

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Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Here Comes the Video Shakeout: Joost Scales Down, CEO Mike Volpi Steps Out

volpiHere’s the beginning of the inevitable online video shakeout: Joost, the once-hyped video service that was supposed to rival Google’s YouTube, is restructuring to focus on “white label” services, i.e., a back end for other video players.

The site is laying off the majority of its 100-plus employees, and CEO Mike Volpi is out, replaced by Matt Zelesko, who had been SVP of engineering.

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About Peter

Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider.

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Ethics Statement

Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.

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