901am

New Media News Every Morning

Chicago Tribune gets local with Triblocal

By

triblocal.jpgThe Chicago Tribune announced the introduction of Triblocal, a local community publishing service in two portions of Chicago’s western and southwestern suburbs. Beginning today on triblocal.com, community contributors have the ability to post stories, photos and events about their hometowns and comment on postings from other contributors.

Content and photos from the site will be used to develop a print publication that will debut later this year and be distributed with the Chicago Tribune in those communities. Triblocal editorial staff will provide enhanced coverage of these communities both online and in print.

“We’re constantly working to better serve the changing needs of our readers and their communities,” said Owen Youngman, senior vice president/strategy and development of Chicago Tribune Company. “Triblocal is designed to meet the needs of a growing population who want to share news and information that’s truly relevant to their lives, while also delivering a vital, engaged audience to advertisers.”

Originally posted on April 19, 2007 @ 9:14 am

New Media Wire – Mon Apr 23, 2007

By

A New Way To Monetize Video Content
It’s not available quite yet but Hiro Media is launching a video site that offers a new way to monetize video content – which of course is great if you produce such. Essentially, clickable ads are embedded in the video content, and content providers earn per click. That way,the video can be viral and still produce revenue. New TeeVee gives more detail.

Eyejot video emailVideo Email With Eyejot
Eyejot offers a nice way for friends and family to stay in touch with each other when live conversation is not possible. Just use a webcam to record a video message and send it off. The recipient gets an email with a link to the video message, which they can view without signing up. To respond, however, they have to register at the site. The interface is pretty simple but logically laid out. If you have multiple messages in your inbox, you can click the “automatically play next message” checkbox to view all of them in succession.

L.A. Times Jobs To Go
The Los Angeles Times will be dropping around 150 jobs this weeks due to decreasing revenues. Nearly half of these positions will be newsroom jobs. The L.A. Times is owned by the Tribune Co., who also own the Chicago Tribune. They have a recent plan to go private. Maybe they should do like the NY Post and double their newsstand price?

Originally posted on April 23, 2007 @ 12:49 pm

Digging Into Digg and API Contest

By

DiggHarry Maugans has been looking into Digg users and dugg sites, and analyzing a mass of collected datasets. The results are discussed in four recently articles: Top 300 hundred Digg users, The most powerful members on Digg, Most powerful sites on Digg – by topics, and Most powerful sites on Digg.

Data junkies and anyone interested in analyses of social bookmarking sites will probably enjoy these articles. They show that certain sites indeed do get on the Digg home page more often than others. What I found ironic but not surprising is that one of the stories got buried even after 100 votes. It just goes to prove that fascinating analyses of human behavior do not necessarily interest the subjects of study, even to Digg users.

In related news, Digg has now publicly released a Digg API along with a Flash application toolkit. The dataset goes back to 2004. There’s now a contest for “the most creative and innovative visualizations and applications” that use the new tools. There are 10 prizes, and entry deadline is 8 pm Wed May 16th, though no time zone is given. Sorry non-Americans, no prizes for you. Seems the Internet may be global, but contests are not, for legal reasons. (That means that the 10+ Digg visualization apps, excluding my Digg mashps, that I have sketched won’t be entered in the contest, but I hope to release them in the future, when they’re complete.)

Originally posted on April 20, 2007 @ 10:59 am

Imus To Blog For Weblogs, Inc.? SplashPress?

By

Valleywag, ever ready to create rumor, suggested the other day that Weblogs, Inc., founder Jason Calacanis might be wooing disgraced radio personality Don Imus. Calacanis responded later, in the comments section, that the rumor was 100% false.

The question is, is any blog network owner willing to roll the dice and sign Imus? Could they pay him enough? Would he even make a good blogger? (Aside from his ability to offend people Hey, maybe he could write for Jack of All Blogs, since SplashPress is looking for a blogger.)

But really, why wouldn’t Imus just set up his own site, create a podcast/ vodcast, and carry on as before? Maybe someone would be willing to run their advertising on his site.

On the other hand, I vaguely recall watching an A&E (or similar) special on his life, and seem to remember that he’s quite well off. Maybe it’s just time for him to retire to his ranch and practice saying rude things to his horses.

Originally posted on April 20, 2007 @ 10:34 am

eBay acquires StumbleUpon for $40-$45 million

By

Techcrunch has the scoop: eBay has acquired social networking meets random surfing outfit StumbleUpon for $40-$45 million.

Valleywag does the figures and works out that whilst the deal is obviously good for the folks behind StumbleUpon.. they only ever took $1.5m in funding and never had a full venture capital round; the price means that sites like Digg may only be worth $100-$150 million, and the entire sector worth no more than $500million, which is probably significantly less than the sum total of funding that has gone into startups in Silicon Valley alone.

Originally posted on April 18, 2007 @ 7:49 pm