Did Rupert Murdoch wait way too long to fix MySpace? It’s easy to get that impression from the News Corp. earnings call today.
The takeaway: The site is losing traffic and money and is going to get at least $100 million less from Google than it once thought. “It’s a work in progress,” News Corp. says, over and over again.
Another scandal, another Gawker story, and another payday for the person who sold Gawker the news. No big deal, says Nick Denton, the blog impresario: We’ll keep doing it.
Associated 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.
Earlier this year, Gawker Media’s Nick Denton announced that he was going to start paying for salacious clips, tips and other submissions, but that he hadn’t worked out the details. Looks like he figured it out: Denton says he paid the source who provided his blog network with the so-called “McSteamy” sex tapes that have earned him both a lot of traffic and a lawsuit.
It has been easy enough to be skeptical about Twitter’s influence and staying power–I do it all the time. But there’s no denying that Twitter has become a powerful driver of Web traffic.
Just ask the New York Times, which says Twitter is about to become one of the top 10 referral sources to the paper’s site.
Impressive. But what exactly does this mean?
Are you up in arms about the impending demise of tr.im, one of the many services that shorten long Web addresses? Here’s a possible solution, offered by bit.ly, the industry’s bigfoot: A nonprofit archive/graveyard for tr.im’s tiny addresses, along with anyone else who wants to participate.
Depending on your perspective, this is either interesting news or heartening news: Michael Jackson’s funeral and memorial were indeed a giant Internet event. But they don’t seem to have been as big as Michael Jackson’s death, and they weren’t as big as Barack Obama’s inauguration. So, let’s call them the third-biggest Web event of the year. To date.
Looks like I called this one wrong: Earlier in the day, I predicted that Web interest in Michael Jackson’s funeral would be less than expected because anyone who really cared about this would be watching on TV. Nope.
One last Michael Jackson Web traffic story: Google says it received so many search queries with the late singer’s name on Thursday that it thought it was being targeted by an “automated attack.” Which meant that some visitors looking for Jackson info on Google News got an error message for about 25 minutes yesterday.
Remember all those stories about Web sites buckling under the weight of all that Michael Jackson traffic? Here’s the flip side, now being promoted by those same Web sites: Look at all of our Michael Jackson traffic! Yahoo, for instance, wants us to know that Jackson’s demise has been its good fortune. “Michael Jackson rushed to hospital” was the site’s “highest clicking” story, while Yahoo News set a record for hourly visitors.
Here’s a scoop from Silicon Alley Insider, published this morning: “Gawker Media announced last night that it acquired BloodCopy.com. It’s a blog about vampires. Really.” No, not really. The business blog got tripped up by a promotional campaign for “True Blood,” HBO’s vampire melodrama.
I’m still on record predicting the demise of seattlepi.com–the online-only zombie version of the erstwhile Seattle Post-Intelligencer. My gut is that even though the Hearst-owned site has an edit staff 80 percent smaller than its predecessor paper, it still won’t be able to generate enough traffic and advertising to cover its costs. But while Hearst isn’t ready to declare victory, it does say that the first two months of seattlepi.com’s life have been “encouraging.” Via a press release, Hearst offers up a bevy of traffic stats that show the site has grown even as its staff has shrunk. Hearst doesn’t offer up any info about revenue, but does say that its “sales and marketing team is highly energized.” Good start.
Sure, YouTube dominated the online video world in April, and Hulu is continuing its rocket ride. But it’s surprising to see that Viacom’s MTV, which squandered its natural lead in online video long ago, had a big month, too. What happened?
MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe is likely to be on his way out of the company he helped found, and News Corp., which bought the social network in 2005, has a single potential successor in mind. Sources say that person is former Facebook COO Owen Van Natta, who is currently CEO of music start-up Project Playlist. People familiar with the matter tell me that DeWolfe and News Corp., specifically new digital boss Jon Miller, are discussing a leadership change today.
File under “interesting, but understandable”: After a flurry of election-related interest in October, traffic to red-hot Hulu fell off in November. Blame Sarah Palin–or the lack of her.
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.
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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