Articles of the Day
Facebook Pulls In Beacon Program Again - Under ongoing pressure from privacy advocates, Facebook Wednesday made its second significant retreat in one week from its controversial new Beacon program. Users will now be able to permanently opt out of the program, which publishes news about members’ purchases at sites like movie ticketer Fandango to their friends. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the change in a blog post in which he also apologized for the original version of Beacon and for waiting too long to revise the system.
Downloading Videos On The Rise Among Internet Users - Reported weekly viewing of full episodes of television shows doubled from last year, with 16% of Internet users watching TV online on a weekly basis, according to the Larchmont, New York-based Horowitz in the just-released report: Broadband Content and Services 2007. About 61% of Internet users download online video content at least once a week and 86% do so on a monthly basis, compared to 45% and 71%, respectively, in the 2006 study.
Nielsen To Police Online Video Sharing - Nielsen Media built its empire as an arbiter of the media world, providing neutral third-party data for buyers and sellers of advertising. Now, in a partnership with the digital watermarking company Digimarc, it aims to referee the controversial world of online video through a new service that controls how copyrighted video is distributed on the Web. Customers of the new service would be traditional media giants like NBC Universal and Disney, social networks like Facebook and video sharing sites like YouTube.
Apple’s Fading Video Business - Has Apple missed a golden chance to do for Web video what it did for digital music? Apple’s iTunes might sell about 20 percent of all music sold in the U.S., but it’s not going to do the same with video. Let’s be honest: the iPod became a sensation mostly because consumers could fill the device with their entire CD collection. But you can’t fill your iPod video with movies, because you can’t download movies to iTunes.
News Corp. Not Done Shopping for Web Properties - News Corp. this week added the spirituality portal Beliefnet.com to its online properties, but that’s just the beginning. Take a look at chairman Rupert Murdoch’s track record: first MySpace and IGN, then Scout, RottenTomatoes, Photobucket, WSJ.com and finally, Beliefnet–all in about two years. So who’s next? Article-voting site Digg.com, game publisher Take Two Interactive Software, movie-based social network Flixster and LinkedIn, the social network for professionals, are all attractive takeover targets. Perennially-for-sale Digg has been piling on the features and upgrades recently, including new partnerships with News Corp.’s Photobucket and The Wall Street Journal for integrating photos and free content.
