Worldwide mobile phones market up 20% in Q1

The global mobile phone market in the first quarter of this year increased 19.8 percent year-over-year, mostly fueled by booming smartphone sales, especially in emerging countries, according to the new data from technology firm IDC.

The number of units shipped was up to 371.8 million, compared to 310.5 million in the same quarter in 2010, TechCrunch reported.

The key catalyst of the growth is rising smartphone adoption, especially in the Asia Pacific region (excluding Japan), the Middle East and Africa and Latin America. The nearly 20 percent growth rate was also higher than the 18 percent in the previous quarter, MediaPost reported.

"Increasingly, mobile phone makers and carriers are making smartphones affordable to a wider variety of people, which has helped drive the market to new heights," according to IDC in a statement released Friday.

The research firm also expects mobile phone sales growth to be driven almost entirely by smartphone sales throughout 2015, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Among leading device makers, Nokia remained on the top by shipment volume, but its market share dropped significantly in the first quarter to 29.2 percent, compared to 34.7 percent a year earlier.

Samsung and LG followed. Samsung had 18.8 percent market share while LG 6.6 percent in the first quarter.

Apple and China's ZTE came in fourth and fifth, with 5 percent and 4.1 percent share, respectively.

Image: Flickr

Politicians want a word with tech companies

Privacy lapses and mistakes tend to cause lawsuits, but following a series of privacy issues, Sony, Apple and Google will be facing members of the U.S. Congress as well:

Sony: Sony’s Playstation Network underwent a massive hacking attack, and hackers are now believed to be trying to sell a database of 2.2 million Playstation owners’ credit cards on underground forums, as well as exposing 77 million users’ account information, according to Gawker.

Rep. Bobby Rush, of Illinois, announced Wednesday that he would reintroduce data security legislation similar to a bill he introduced in the previous session of Congress. Rush said the bill “requires ‘for-profit’ entities holding data containing consumers’ personal information to have reasonable and appropriate security measures in place to protect that data,” Broadcasting & Cable reported.

Apple: Following problems with iPhones and iPads storing location data, it is likely Apple will testify before Congress, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said Wednesday, according to Politico. Earlier this week, Sen. Al Franken, of Minnesota, said he will hold a hearing next month called “Protecting Mobile Privacy: Your Smartphones, Tablets, Cell Phones and Your Privacy.”

Google: The online search giant is also expected to testify at the same hearing, held by Franken. Lawmakers are concerned that Google’s Android phones, along with iPhones, “collect, store and track user location data without the user’s consent,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, of Vermont, according to Computer World.

Image: Rolo Del Campo’s flickr photostream

Royal wedding 6th largest event in Internet history

The royal wedding between Prince William and Cathrine Middleton today ranked as the sixth biggest event in the history of the Internet, falling behind top sporting events, including the World Cup soccer match and longest Wimbledon tennis match, as well as the 2010 U.S. midterm elections, CNN reported.

During both the World Cup match and Wimbledon match, which both happened in June 2010, more than 10.3 million people per minute clicked on related news stories. The wedding also fell behind the 2010 U.S. midterm elections; however, it did beat President Barack Obama’s election in November 2008, which got 4.3 million page views per minute, according to Internet service provider and traffic monitor Akamai.

However, although it’s more difficult to compare live streaming video events to one another, preliminary numbers show that more people watched live online video of the royal wedding than any other event Akamai has provided live video services for, the CNN report stated.

Image: Getty, via Telegraph.co.uk

Australian advertiser trials ‘conversational advertising’

Shopping centre company Westfield has become the first advertiser in Australia to try out the new online advertising format called “conversational advertising,” The Australian reported.

Say Media, which formed when online video ad network Video Egg merged with blog network Six Apart, is the main user of the ad format, a half-page takeover ad unit that allows users to view videos, answer opinion polls, write comments and share content on social media sites.

Coverage overload: Royal wedding audience may be largest in TV history

In what may command the biggest audience in television history, an estimated 8,500 journalists are expected in London tomorrow for the royal wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton, MediaGuardian reported today.

Outside, more than 36 studios, from the BBC, to Al Jazeera, to NBC, have been set up in a three-story structure. Surrounding the structure are broadcast vans and other equipment that take up so much room that part of Green Park has been closed to the public. In all, there are more than 100 overseas broadcasting organisations.

Meanwhile, inside Westminster Abbey, 40 broadcast cameras, 28 reporters and 12 photographers will be seated alongside the 1,900 guests.

A large portion of newsmedia outlets covering the wedding will be from the United States. Media measurement company Nielsen reported that online coverage of the nuptials is “considerably higher” in American than in Britain, The Telegraph reported.

Over the past two months, online media outlets have published a story about the wedding every 10 seconds, Global Post noted.

Of the 8,500 total expected journalists, 6,500 are officially accredited by the palace, according to MediaGuardian.

Image: Global Post

As state media weaken, new players to rise in Arab world

As uprisings sweep the Mideast and government control in many countries weakens, its grip on the media is also loosening, Zoe Holman wrote for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting today.

Audiences in these countries haven’t believed much of what these outlets, such as Egypt’s al-Ahram newspaper, have said for years, as “the government’s poorly disguised efforts to interfere with editorial content destroyed the paper’s ability to sway public opinion,” Holman wrote in an article, published by the Bellingham Herald.

And while social media is being lauded for spreading information needed for revolutions, it can’t take all the credit. Al Jazeera, for example, has an audience of 40 million Arab viewers each day.

“I don't support the notion that it was purely Facebook or Twitter, but it was a mixture of media, and the Internet was crucial,” said Ayman Moyheldin, al-Jazeera’s Cairo correspondent, according to Holman. “If competition doesn't take out state-owned newspapers and channels, dictators will dismantle them themselves, because they no longer serve any use.”

Credibility must be earned, a factor that will hinder state-controlled media in the future, even after regimes fall, Faisal Abbas, Middle East affairs specialist for the Huffington Post, wrote last month.

For a media outlet to do well, it must find the weaknesses in others, such as credibility of state-run media, and make them its strengths, Ayman Mustafa pointed out in an article today for the Gulf News. This is already happening, as media projects are actively being developed in the region, especially Tunisia and Egypt, and Arabic satellite TV news channels may be launched this year.

“The pivotal role played by the Qatari channel Al Jazeera in the popular uprisings around the region has given new impetus to traditional media, even with the rising role of online media and social networking,” Mustafa wrote.

Indeed, as the global recession plays out and stability in newly freed countries is hoped to take hold, this may just be the perfect time to start a media business. He further noted: “Does the region need another news channel? Despite the apparent saturation, the answer is yes. The Arab news market has got spare capacity. Arab viewers are more politicised and their consumption of news is growing.”

Image: Menassat

BBC Trust approves new strategy for Worldwide

The BBC Trust has approved a new strategy for BBC Worldwide, with great focus on overseas, according to a company news release, Journalism.co.uk reported. 

The announcement follows an 18 month-long review of the company’s commercial activities. 

“The BBC Executive’s strategy for BBC Worldwide is now to develop a more integrated and ‘balanced’ internationally-focused portfolio that, within the agreed parameters, balances the need for growth with acceptable levels of risk. BBC Worldwide should also seek to invest in growth businesses which offer new rights monetisation opportunities,” according to the review. 

BBC Worldwide declared it would end mergers and acquisitions outside of exceptional circumstances, such as the controversial deal with Lonely Planet, and to become a "more internationally facing business," MediaGuardian reported. The company also decided to divest stakes in non-BBC-branded international channels, "where it makes commercial sense," and stop any activity that is not branded. 

According to a BBC Worldwide spokesperson: "Our strategy for continued growth will bring an even stronger focus on international markets and taking high-quality British content to the world," MediaGuardian reported.

Facebook investors want out

Early Facebook investors, who own nearly US$1 billion in the company’s stock, are cutting their asking prices and heading for the door, sources have told Reuters exclusively.

The shareholders seem worried that the social network is overvalued, and have already tried to sell their shares at a price that values the company at $90 billion, but buyers didn’t go for it. Now, they’re trying again with a sale on the secondary market, which would value the company at more than $70 billion, five sources “with direct knowledge of the situation” told Reuters in an article published yesterday evening.

In January, Goldman Sachs valued Facebook at $50 billion, The New York Times then reported. Last month, it was valued at $78.75 billion, according to a report by TechCrunch.

In November last year, Fast Company published a Facebook Valuation Timeline, which chronicled the previous ups and downs of the company’s valuation.

Image: Andrew Hur for Fast Company

Vevo launches in UK

U.S. music video site Vevo has launched in the United Kingdom, and is also talking with Channel 4, ITV and Virgin Media about possible future partnerships, according to IAB UK.

Users can watch music video content, original programming and live events on the website or Vevo's app, which can be downloaded on iPhones, iPads and Android-operated smartphones. They can also share videos on Facebook and Twitter, and create their own playlists on the site, which became available to UK users on Monday.

Vevo’s chief executive, Rio Caraeff, described the site as an "integrated MTV."

Caraeff wrote on the company blog: "The UK market is very different and very special, our aim is to make the platform chock-full of music videos, interviews, live events, competitions and much more - all from local artists (with some international superstars mixed in as well)."

He expects the overall business to start gaining profits "by this time next year" with the business performance "far exceeding expectations" set when the site was initiated, MediaGuardian reported.
 

Vevo was founded by two of the major record labels, Universal Music and Sony Music, in 2009. Caraeff added that although Vevo is not looking for just any investor, the door is open for the right investor, such as the world's other two major music companies, EMI and Warner Music.

Digital update: Yahoo! sells Delicious & MapQuest makes a ‘comeback’

Yahoo! Inc. has sold its Delicious bookmarking tool to YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, Bloomberg reported today.

The sale was part of Yahoo!’s plan to get rid of underperforming sites and cut staff to create more profit. Delicious will become part of Hurley and Chen’s new Internet company AVOS.

Meanwhile, AOL Inc. subsidiary MapQuest has been moved to new headquarters in Denver just in time for its 15th anniversary, the Denver Business Journal reported.

On hand for the celebration was Arianna Huffington, whose Huffington Post was acquired by AOL in February. She called the online mapping service “a great comeback story.” MapQuest is being expanded, and will soon be found as the technology behind maps, business information and location-based advertising across AOL’s websites, including the HuffPo and AOL’s Patch news service.

Visa invests in credit card reader

Just a week after mobile payments startup Square made a deal to sell its credit card readers in Apple’s retail stores, it has made another big business deal: an undisclosed “strategic” investment from Visa, USA Today reported.

Square was co-founded by Twitter inventor Jack Dorsey, and makes a credit card swiping device that plugs into iPhones, iPads and Android devices.

The investment shows that “Visa believes the technology could take off,” paidContent noted.

The Los Angeles Times reported that the deal is in the “single-digit millions,” and that a Visa executive will join Square’s advisory board.

In the United States, where Visa is the largest credit card company, 27 million businesses do not accept credit cards; however, 90 percent of Americans carry them.

Image: paidContent

iSpy: Apple promises software fix for location tracking data cache

Apple today broke its silence on the controversy over iPhones and iPads collecting and storing location-based data since June 2010. The company issued a question & answer press release in which it admits the enormous data cache goes too far, and as well as promises an upcoming software update to fix the problem.

In the press release, Apple pointed out that it is not tracking the location of iPhone and iPad owners; rather, the devices store data based on locations of Wi-Fi hot spots and cell towers within range. However, although towers may be miles away, hot spots are mere feet away. In order for location-based tools to work, they must be accurate.

“This all demonstrates the complexity of privacy protection with locational services,” Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Information Privacy Center, told The New York Times in an e-mail. "Apple is moving in the right direction, but there is more that needs to be done.”

In order to provide location-based information quickly, the devices must be able to use Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers when GPS is not available, or when GPS calculations take several minutes. The problem, as security researchers pointed out last week, is when the devices store this data over long periods of time.

The location data “is a subset (cache) of the crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower database which is downloaded from Apple into the iPhone to assist the iPhone in rapidly and accurately calculating location. The reason the iPhone stores so much data is a bug we uncovered and plan to fix shortly … We don’t think the iPhone needs to store more than seven days of this data,” Apple stated in the press release.

In addition, the devices should not continue updating their Wi-Fi and cell tower data when their Location Services are turned off, according to Apple. “This is a bug, which we plan to fix shortly.”

The free iOS software update will be released in the next few weeks. According to Apple, the update will: reduce the size of crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower database cached on the iPhone; cease backing up the cache; and delete the cache completely when Location Services is turned off.

Image: petewarden.github.com

YouTube to launch movie rentals

Google Inc.-owned YouTube is planning to launch a movie-on-demand service in the United States, which would allow Internet users to stream films through the YouTube video service, The Wrap reported exclusively last night.

YouTube is expected to make an announcement on the service soon, and it could begin as early as “this week or next,” the report stated. The online video giant has been working to make deals with all of Hollywood’s major studios before making the announcement.

Currently, Netflix leads the video streaming market with 23.6 million U.S. subscribers – as many as Comcast, the country’s largest cable operator. iTunes is another major player, offering new releases to both download and rent online, according to MediaGuardian.

YouTube vice president of TV and film entertainment Robert Kyncl (and former Netflix boss) first hinted about the service at a conference earlier this month, saying “Imagine if you had a video store on YouTube, where you could rent or buy the movie without being sent elsewhere,” MediaGuardian quoted. “Obviously, there are things coming, but we can’t talk about them yet.”

The launch will provide answers to business model questions surrounding the online and streaming video business. Will consumers want to buy media on demand one by one, or will a subscription model like Netflix’s ultimately have greater mass appeal?

Answers to that, and other questions, will play out over time, but one thing is known: this is good news for Hollywood studios, which want to be paid for their work, while also reaching more consumers in the digital space.

How much YouTube will charge and how movies will be released via the service is still unknown.

Image: amyboemig’s flickr photostream

Jay Rosen ruminates: Four things ‘I think I know about journalism’

As his 25 year anniversary as a journalism professor for New York University looms, press critic and thought leader Jay Rosen has boiled down everything he has learned to four basic ideas:

1. The more people who participate in the press the stronger it will be.
2. The profession of journalism went awry when it began to adopt the View from Nowhere.
3. The news system will improve when it is made more useful to people.
4. Making facts public does not a public make; information alone will not inform us.

He elaborates and analyzes these points on his Press Think website.

Image: PressThink.org

Forecast: 50% of households to have DVR by 2016

By 2016, 50 percent (61.9 million) of all U.S. households with a television will have a DVR subscription, up from 33.5 percent (39.2 million) as of the end of 2010, Magnaglobal announced today in its “On-Demand Quarterly” report.

The forecast also predicted that 57 percent (70.1 million) of TV households would use video on demand services by 2016, versus 45 percent (52.5 million) at the end of the fourth quarter in 2010.

In the United States, top DVR providers include DirecTV (an estimated 9.4 million DVR subscribers), Comcast (5.9 million) and Time Warner Cable (4.6 million).

The United Kingdom is the second largest DVR market outside the United States. There, Virgin announced it delivered 87 million VOD views per month in the fourth quarter of 2010 to 2.4 million (64 percent) of its subscribers, the report stated.

Other top markets are Japan and Australia. In Japan, cable company J:Com has 3.45 million subscribers, of which 16.5 percent have DVR services, versus 15 percent last year. In Australia, TV research group OzTAM reported that as of March 2011, DVRs were in 40 percent of homes, up from 28 percent last year.

The report also assessed Internet usage, forecasting that 99.4 million U.S. households will be online by 2016, 97.9 million of which will use broadband services. In contrast, 84.7 million homes were online at the end of 2010, and 90 percent of these households used broadband.

Image: Magnaglobal

Twitter in talks to buy TweetDeck

Twitter is in talks to take over TweetDeck, one of the most popular Twitter clients, for about for about US$50 million, according to a report, Los Angeles Times reported.

The desktop application allows users to do many of what they can on Twitter's website and apps, including tweets, direct messages, lists, and search trends.

According to the Wall Street Journal, this is part of Twitter’s plan to expand its micro blogging platform. Tweetdeck reportedly has 11 percent of Twitter's active users.

paidContent's ‘Social Standing’ finds out what people really think of your media company

“Likes” on Facebook and followers on Twitter are what media companies these days strive for, as they use social media to both reach and interact better with audiences and to build their brands.

But larger social media numbers don’t always mean better relationships with audiences, and paidContent today launched Social Standing in order to help newsmedia outlets answer that burning question: “what are people actually saying about companies on blogs and microblogs, and is it good or bad?”

Using social measurement company Trendrr, which mines blog posts, tweets and more, Social Standing will index top media and entertainment companies and brands “to gauge the ‘sentiment’ around those entities. Trendrr has assigned a real-time score, from zero to 100, to each company, and you can see how that score is changing daily, weekly and monthly. You can also click on any of the companies or brands to see specifically what people are saying about it.”

Trendrr classifies mentions of brands as positive, negative or neutral by “extracting words and phrases from social media conversions and then running them through natural-language processing tools,” the Social Standing page explained. “A company universally praised, for instance, would receive the top score of 100, while one that got only panned would receive a score of 0. An entity equally panned and praised would receive a score of 50. Any company or brand with a score under 50 is receiving a greater percentage of negative than positive mentions. A specific example: An entity that receives 100 positive mentions, 200 negative mentions, and 700 neutral mentions would receive a score of 45.”

Image: The top 10 companies on the Social Standing list, based on change, as of 18:42 CST

AP expands distribution of content from non-profit news orgs

The Associated Press is expanding its project to distribute material created by non-profit news organisations, which it hopes will make it easier for newspapers to find and use the content, the news network, itself a non-profit, announced last week.

The expansion will enable newspapers to request feeds of content from non-profit news outlets into their content management systems through the AP’s Webfeeds software. The changes won’t be immediate, however, as the project will begin testing with non-profits in California first.

The project began last year when the AP created partnerships with news outlets such as ProPublica, the Center for Public Integrity, the Center for Investigative Reporting and the Investigative Workshop, Nieman Journalism Lab explained. The expansion is worth noting because when it launched, the nonprofits’ content “simply wasn’t picked up by newspapers.” With the expansion, newspapers will be able to better pick up on the content, and more readers will have access to journalism from the groups.

Do Flipboard’s new challengers have what it takes?

Last month, social media reading app for the iPad Flipboard managed to rake in US$50 million in funding and snag a $200 million valuation, its co-founder and CEO Mike McCue confirmed to AllThingsDigital. Now, the well-funded Palo Alto-based start-up will have to face two new competitors in the increasingly competitive RSS news reader field: Trove and News.me.

Trove was launched by the Washington Post on Wednesday, while The New York Times launched News.me, created in partnership with Bit.ly, just a day later.

Both offer news and headlines based on a user’s social media preferences, but in slightly different ways, PC World reported. Trove is free and “lives independently on the Web,” but also has an iPhone app and an iPad version coming soon. News.me, meanwhile, costs $1 a week or $35 a year. Users can access it on News.me’s iPad app, or sign up online for a daily e-mail digest of news.

Flipboard, meanwhile is “THE product any big media company or, better, any group of media companies should have invented. It’s an iPad application (soon to be supplemented by an iPhone version), it allows readers to aggregate any sources they want: social medias such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr or any combination of RSS feeds. No need to remember the feed’s often-complicated URL, Flipboard searches it for you and puts the result in a neat eBook-like layout,” media consultant Frederic Filloux wrote in an analysis for Monday Note last week.

GigaOM’s Matthew Ingram also wrote that Flipboard is superior in terms of usability and the ability to customize, and aggregation tools like it do something very important: they are a “much more natural way to consume content on a tablet, and the aggregation they provide is like having a customized newspaper – the so-called “Daily Me” – available any time.” Trove and News.me aren’t as appealing as iPad apps, and are more like “fancier version[s] of their websites.” And although their interactive advertising offerings likely appeal to advertisers, they don’t necessarily appeal to readers, he pointed out.

Instead of viewing companies like Flipboard as competitors, newsmedia companies must begin thinking about them as an important way to monetize their digital content.

Other than Flipboard, the top iPad apps created for news include Instapaper, SkyGrid, Pulse News Reader and Taptu, which Mediabistro reviewed.

Image: News.me

Sirius XM Radio makes a deal with National Latino Broadcasting

U.S. satellite radio company Sirius XM Radio Inc. announced it will lease four channels on its platforms to National Latino Broadcasting, the new subsidiary created by national multicultural media company Eventus, Beacon Equity reported today.

The North American satellite radio company made the deal following a requirement from the Federal Communications Commission to enter into long-term lease agreements with bodies outside the company to “help ensure programming options that are relevant to otherwise underserved communities,” the article explained.

The deal was required by the FCC as a condition for approval of the SiriusXM merger, according to a press release. The NLB, which was picked from many candidates, will provide programming targeting the Latino market.

Image: Orbitcast

Report: Media M&A worth $13.8 billion in Q1 2011

Media mergers and acquisitions in the first quarter of 2011 totaled US$13.8 billion in transaction value, increasing greatly from $2.4 billion in the previous quarter, according to a new report by investment bank Berkery Noyes, FOLIO reported.

The largest transaction in the quarter was West Australian Newspapers Limited's acquisition of Seven Media Group, which accounted for $4.15 billion.

AOL Inc. and WebMediaBrands, Inc. were identified as the most "active inquirers" in this period. AOL had four transactions, including About.me, Inc., Outside.in, The Huffington Post and GoViral, while WebMediaBrands Inc. also four, including Twittercism, SemanticOverflow.com, FacebookMarketing.de and European Semantic Technology Conference, according to the report.

The total number of acquisitions in the first quarter of 2011 was 214. The total value of media M&A in 2010 was $28.6 billion, according to Berkery Noyes.

Image: UMBC ebiquity

TV ads reach $69 billion in 2010, online and mobile video viewing up

The U.S. television advertising market grew 8 percent in 2010 compared to 2009, reaching US$69 billion, according to a Nielsen report, out yesterday.

TV advertising now makes up 57 percent of all U.S. advertising, which totaled $120 billion last year. It is also growing faster than overall advertising, which saw a 5.4 percent growth, MediaPost reported.

Online video viewing saw a large growth rate as well, with almost half of all U.S. citizens (143.9 million) viewing some video online in January 2011, Nielsen reported.

Mobile video viewing was up 41 percent in 2010 compared to the year before. In January, almost half of all U.S. citizens (143.9 million) viewed some video online, the report stated.

Timeshifting was also a major player in how audiences are watching TV, with 38 percent of all TV households in the U.S. using a DVR last year, according to Nielsen.

Google News launches personalisation features

It’s not déjà vu.

Beginning yesterday, logged in Google users may find stories based on articles they’ve clicked on before. They will also find a “Recommended Sections” side column that suggests topics they may be interested in adding to their news pages as custom sections, and all these sections will also be based on previously clicked on stories, the Google News Blog explained.

Users can choose to opt-out if they’d rather not see personalised news based on their Web histories.

Image: Google News Blog

Fairfax may sell online or radio assets

In an attempt to “close the gap” between low share prices and the value of its assets, Fairfax Media may be looking to sell its radio assets or 50 percent of its New Zealand-based classified website Trade Me, analysts told The Australian.

Should Fairfax sell off some assets, it could use the earnings to pay down debt, raise its dividend or fund a buyback, the report explained.

Analysts said that should Fairfax sell off some of its stake in Trade Me, the company's stock would "fly off shelves," Stuff.co.nz reported.

On this news Wednesday, shares were up more than 2 percent to A$1.32, but this is still well under levels of more than $5 in 2007.

Image: TradeMe.co.nz

Spending cuts may result in the BBC’s ‘slimmed-down’ news channel

The BBC is considering proposals that include a “slimmed-down” BBC News channel, MediaGuardian reported today, quoting “internal documents seen by MediaGuardian.co.uk.”

The documents detail options in which the BBC would “release 20% (£89m) in overall savings between 2013/14 and 2016/17” under the “Delivering Quality First” initiative by director general Mark Thompson, which aims to cut costs by 20 percent.

A BBC spokeswoman told MediaGuardian that no decisions have been made yet, and any upcoming decisions will have to be approved by the BBC Trust.

The cuts are due to an agreement made in October between the BBC and the government that would result in a six-year license fee freeze.

The BBC World Service is funded by the license fee, and when it was announced last week that some deep cuts would have to be made in that area, British lawmakers said plans to cut funding should be dropped. As of October last year, the BBC said in its first announcement about the license fee freeze that the World Service came with a price tag of £272 million, paid for by the Foreign Office.

Nokia, Microsoft close mobile deal worth billions

Microsoft and Nokia signed a deal today worth billions of dollars, The Seattle Times reported today. The agreement will make Windows Phone 7 the primary operating system for Nokia’s smartphones, helping Microsoft to better compete with Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android operating system.

Meanwhile, Nokia will take over mapping and navigation services for the Windows Phone “ecosystem” with its Navteq, which could extend to non-Nokia devices, paidContent explained. Search, of course, will be given to Microsoft’s Bing, which will be the default search service on all Nokia devices. The two will also launch a Nokia-branded app store.

The deal between the world’s largest software maker and the world’s largest handset maker comes as Nokia reported an 18 percent slump in quarterly earnings, with sales at €10.4 billion for the first quarter this year.

Although Microsoft is paying billions for the deal, it hopes to earn that money back, with royalties on each handset sold, the San Francisco Chronicle pointed out.

“Microsoft will receive a running royalty from Nokia for the Windows Phone platform, starting when the first Nokia products incorporating Windows Phone ship. The royalty payments are competitive and reflect the large volumes that Nokia expects to ship, as well as a variety of other considerations related to engineering work to which both companies are committed. Microsoft delivering the Windows Phone platform to Nokia will enable Nokia to significantly reduce operating expenses,” Nokia stated in a press release.

Image: MobileTechWorld.com

Washington Post introduces social media news site Trove

The Washington Post Co. on Wednesday launched its free social news aggregation site Trove in public beta, TechCrunch reported. 

The site pulls news from over 10,000 sources on the Web. Users can set up contents sorted by interests, and personalise on the site or in apps by adding or subtracting “channels”, which filters news on a specific topics, the Los Angeles Times reported. 

Trove can also sort news by connecting to Facebook and getting a user’s information. Then the algorithms will decide what a person would be interested in.

"Because Trove is all about the individual user, the experience is customised and different for everyone, We believe launching Trove is a good step toward understanding what the future of news could look like," said Vijay Ravindran, Washington Post's chief digital officer, in a statement. 

The publisher said more social media features will be added to Trove later, as well as higher integration with Facebook, the LA Times reported. 

Besides desktop, Trove is also available on the Android and Blackberry phones. Don Graham, chairman and CEO of the Washington Post Company said that iPhone and iPad apps are also ‘coming soon’ in a welcome letter on Facebook. 

Image: Los Angeles Times

Independent to launch Saturday edition of i

UK newspaper The Independent will launch a Saturday edition of its Monday-Friday spin-off newspaper i beginning May 7, The Independent announced yesterday.

i Saturday, priced at 30p, will aim to give readers across the United Kingdom and Ireland “an essential weekend briefing” that “will combine intelligence with brevity, and depth with speed of reading,” the report stated.

The weekday edition of i hit newsstands in October last year at a price of 20p. It was the first national UK daily to be launched in 25 years, and was created to target “readers and lapsed readers of quality newspapers,” as well as those wanting a digest of news in print.

In March, average daily circulation was 171,415, according to a report from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, Journalism.co.uk noted.

“With the growing success of the weekday edition of i, it is natural that we would want to add a Saturday edition. The demand from readers has been such that this is a no-brainer, and we are looking forward to producing a quality one-section companion to the weekend,” Simon Kelner, editor-in-chief of i and The Independent, said in the announcement of the new launch.

Image: The Independent

Doubling down on social media: Who’s doing it, and why

The newsmedia industry is at the forefront of putting in place social media strategies across their businesses, and usage of social media varies by news outlet.

Below are three social media creations being discussed this week, along with the reasoning behind the creation of each. Do you think they will work?

1. Google: The search giant's +1 application is the equivalent of Facebooke’s “Like” for search results. According to Google: “Click +1 to publicly give something your stamp of approval. Your +1's can help friends, contacts, and others on the web find the best stuff when they search.” According to CNet, the +1 button will also “keep a log of your favourite discoveries on Google, and (almost more importantly) use that to customize what sorts of ads you see. It’s also a way for the company to get a better gauge on the quality of content” and more easily separate search results from so-called content farms.

2. Huffington Post: It announced yesterday it has made permanent its “follow features,” with which users can elect to follow news by topic, or follow specific reporters and bloggers. “These days, even the most diligent newsreader can have trouble keeping up. Between newspapers, blogs, apps, RSS, Twitter and Facebook, the options can seem endless. And yet, frustratingly, it's the story we most care about that so often slips through the cracks. That's why HuffPost is now allowing readers to follow topics, reporters and bloggers on the site and across social platforms. Want a tweet every time Arianna blogs? An email when Sam Stein lands a great scoop? Or an update to your Facebook Wall when the latest news from Japan breaks? It's all as simple as the click of a mouse,” explains Rob Fishman, the HuffPo’s social media editor.

3. Al Jazeera: Instead of creating a television show and trying to build a social media community around it, Al Jazeera decided try the opposite, building a 24-hour news show with a 30 minute broadcast component called The Stream, set to begin airing May 2. “The concept of The Stream is actually a web community that has its own daily television show on AJ,” the show’s co-host, Derrick Ashong, told Fast Company. With The Stream, Al Jazeera is pushing further into using social media as a tool to do a job and to find more ways of using citizen journalism – not just to get more viewers and readers for its current content. It’s also a means to engage a new generation of cable “cord cutters” and find a space in the American media market, Fast Company explained.

Image: Wired

Will Facebook block content if it moves into China?

As talk over whether Facebook will enter into the Chinese market grows louder, a Washington lobbyist for the company said that the social networking giant could block content in some countries.

“Maybe we will block content in some countries, but not others," Adam Conner, a Facebook lobbyist, told the Wall Street Journal. "We are occasionally held in uncomfortable positions because now we're allowing too much, maybe, free speech in countries that haven't experienced it before.”

How the company handles censorship will be scrutinised, especially following its reported role in the uprisings in the Middle East, most notably the example of Egypt blocking social media sites in an attempt to hinder pro-democracy organisers, MediaGuardian noted.

Facebook is currently blocked in China, but Chinese media recently reported that the company reached a deal to create a service in China, and founder Mark Zuckerberg visited China in late 2010, and was photographed with Baidu CEO Robin Li.

Should the site launch in China, it would legally be required to give user data to the Chinese authorities. Google was able to side-step this issue in the past, by not launching services within the country that required user information, Bill Bishop, a digital media entrepreneur in Beijing, explained to MediaGuardian. Facebook, obviously, would not be able to avoid user data.

But Facebook isn’t in the business of “promoting free communication;” rather, “it exists to harvest self-provided user data to sell to advertisers and, at this point, any users who attribute other motives to it are kidding themselves,” Foreign Policy commented.

Image: Foreign Policy

Slovakian media team up for online paywall

Major media companies in Slovakia have teamed up for a common online paywall, which they plan to charge a €2.90 monthly flat fee for accessing key sections of their websites, The Irish Times reported.

The unusual alliance, lobbied by a consultancy, is among Slovak television companies and newspaper publishers. They agreed to place their content behind the paywall and charge a small fee for unlimited access to niche areas, including sports, entertainment, video, opinion pieces, archives and anything else considered exclusive. General news will still remain to be free.

A two-week trial and an information campaign began on April 18, and the paywall will be in effect on May 2, The Associated Press reported.

According to a poll last year, about one half of Slovakians opposed to paying for online news, but the two companies behind the project are confident, due to the surprising consensus among the major media in the country. Only a few tabloids decided not to join, the AP reported.

"The most important thing is that all the media now understand that we have to find a way of making people realize that newspapers online cannot be for free," said Matus Kostolny, the editor-in-chief of SME, one of the participants and the country's leading broadsheet.

Marian Zima, director of Sport Press SRO, another participant and the publisher of a sport daily, told the AP that all publishers agree that "it is not sustainable in the long term to provide everything for free ... We have to make it clear to the public that what we create has a value."

Tomas Bella, of the Prague-based media consultancy company NextBig, said the initiative would be much like paying a flat fee for all the channels on cable television. "One payment covers all. It's simple and the sum can hardly be a problem for anyone," he told AP.

Bella said the model would best suit a small, single-language media market, such as Slovakia.

"It would be impossible to do the same in big countries such as the United States because thousands of media organizations would have to get involved to have the market share that we have," he added, AP reported.

Image: J-School Buzz

Your iPhone tracks your whereabouts

If you have an iPhone, it has been keeping a record of everywhere you have been since June, and the reason why is unclear, Gizmodo’s Sam Biddle reported today.

Mobile providers can always store location-based data, but this goes further, according to two security researchers:

“The most immediate problem is that this data is stored in an easily-readable form on your machine. Any other program you run or user with access to your machine can look through it.

“The more fundamental problem is that Apple are collecting this information at all. Cell-phone providers collect similar data almost inevitably as part of their operations, but it’s kept behind their firewall. It normally requires a court order to gain access to it, whereas this is available to anyone who can get their hands on your phone or computer.

“By passively logging your location without your permission, Apple have made it possible for anyone from a jealous spouse to a private investigator to get a detailed picture of your movements.”

To see how your iPhone has been tracking your movements, visit the researchers’ how-to posting.


Image: petewarden.github.com

Mail Online kicks HuffPo out of 2nd place

Mail Online has passed the Huffington Post, becoming the second most popular news website in the world in March, MediaGuardian reported today. The New York Times is still the most popular English-language news website.

Associated Newspapers’ online network saw a 27 percent rise in unique visitors between February and March, reaching more than 39.6 million. HuffPo, which was bought by AOL for US$315 million in February, had just over 38.4 million uniques, up 20 percent.

The NY Times reported a 41 percent increase in traffic, reaching a record 61,964,000 unique users. However, this figure is expected to decrease, as the title implemented a metered paywall March 28.

Report: U.S. online ad revenue hit record high in 2010

U.S. Internet advertising revenue hit a record US$26 billion last year, outpacing traditional media and surpassing newspaper ad revenue for the first time, according to a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers report commissioned by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The boost, up 15 percent from 2009, was due to the popularity of online videos and social media, according to the report. 

In the last quarter of 2010, advertising revenue also hit a record, at $7.4 billion, up 19 percent year-over-year, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.

Search was the most popular ad format, contributing 46 percent, or $12 billion, of the total revenue in 2010. Display made up 38 percent, or $9.9 billion, while classifieds accounted for $2.6 billion, or 10 percent.

The report also released estimated U.S. mobile ad revenue for the first time. It totaled between $550 million and $650 million in 2010, The Associated Press reported. 

Image: LEADSExplorer