Should Facebook create its own phone?

Facebook is said to be collaborating with HTC Corp. on releasing a mobile phone in mid-2013, according to an anonymous source, Bloomberg reported. Neither company has commented on the news.

For the owner of the largest social network, it is high time Facebook considered reaping profits from mobile. Last year, none of the US$3.15 billion advertising sales of the company came from ads on phones, given that half of the 900 million users access Facebook via mobile devices.

Lack of profit from mobile advertisers has dragged the stock of Facebook down by 23 percent since its initial public offering on May 17, Bloomberg added.

“We think every mobile device is better if it is deeply social,” Facebook said in a statement, according to Bloomberg.


However, this doesn't necessarily mean that social is better if it is deeply rooted in a new mobile device. Doubts have arisen concerning Facebook is heading for a wasteful direction by working on a Facebook phone.

“Although social is a key part of today’s mobile life for many consumers, only a sub-set of users would actually want a phone that totally centers on social networking,” Carolina Milanesi, an analyst for Gartner, wrote for the BBC.

Facebook has assembled a team of former Apple programmes to improve its iPhone application and is developing a modified operating system for the device. “Facebook relationship with Apple has never been better…and I’m sure they are working to better monetize their apps. But by building a phone, they are going head to head with Apple and Google, fighting much more established products in untested waters, rather than collaborating,” Billy Gallagher commented in Techcrunch.

In Gallagher’s point of view, Facebook would do better if it spent its resources elsewhere instead of directly competing against Google and Apple "in every theater."


“Jobs didn’t lead Apple into social for a reason. Google hasn’t done that well, comparatively, with social. Twitter isn’t in hardware, presumably for a reason,” he pointed out.

Perhaps that’s why Facebook is working with HTC.

Previously, Evan Niu commented on a possible phone debut that “Facebook will need to deploy extensive engineering efforts that it doesn’t have, enter the consumer electronics space where it literally has no experience, find manufacturing partners, forge relationships with wireless carriers that are notoriously difficult and controlling… all for a minuscule chance that it finds but a modicum of success.”

Cooperating with HTC, Facebook might foresee a win-win situation. Not only the formidable obstacles aforesaid could possibly be solved, HTC can also save it self from the now troubled position. The share price of HTC has dropped 8.9 percent since last year, according to International Digital Times.

Before HTC and Facebook have collaborated in bringing to market the HTC ChaCha and the HTC Salsa, with disappointed performance of sales. “You can bet that HTC and Facebook are thinking everything they can do to avoid a repeat,” the Slashgear noted.

Image: Slashgear

The Daily's losses cast shadow over iPad publishing

The iPad-only Daily, originally hoped to be News Corp.'s digital future, is now on probation, facing an estimated loss at around US$30 million a year, The New York Times reported.^.

Launched in 2011 and with the consultation of Steve Jobs, the Daily is expected to “take the best of the traditional journalism – competitive, shoe leather reporting, good editing, a skeptical eye – and combine it with the best of contemporary technology,” said Rupert Murdoch, according to the Guardian.

The reality, according to media analyst Frédéric Filloux, is that the Daily never took off. The number of 100,000 subscriptions that was released on February was only one-fifth of the necessary amount to break even, and “totally out of step with the growth of the iPad installed base,” he pointed out.

And the prediction that the publication would “redefine the news,” as Eddy Cue, senior vice president of the Internet software and services at Apple, said at the Daily’s introduction last year, quoted by the New York Times, seems also an illusion.

“Something’s wrong with the Daily’s concept,” Filloux commented. "It’s a sophisticated container for commodity news – ie the news that you can get everywhere, in real time and for free.”

The Daily's subscription rates are 99 cents a week or $39.99 a year.

“I think the trouble with the Daily is not the iPad itself, but the fact that the content is locked behind a pay wall … That’s something that customers have proven reluctant to embrace, even with well-established brands such as the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times,” Nick Kolakowski, senior editor at technology website Slashdot commented, the International Business Times reported.

Besides this, the inherent competition between the iPad publication and the web (mobile) received little attention, Filloux noted. He compared a report on the Mitt Romney tax return controversy between the Daily and the Huffington Post. Audience responses differ significantly in the two news outlets, with 179 comments in the former vs. 28,464 in the latter.

Image: The Daily

Penguin books moves into self-publishing

Pearson PLC, the parent company of Penguin books, announced last Thursday the purchase of self-publishing company Author Solutions Inc., paidContent reported.

The US$116 million deal indicates that traditional publishers are more aware of the potential and power of author-published books, largely due to the rise of e-books and tablet devices. A good example is EL James' erotic novel, Fifty Shades of Grey, which began as a self-published title and became the first bestseller on Amazon's Kindle.

Penguin already offers self-publishing services through Book Country, which is also a platform where readers and writers of genre fiction share opinions. According to Penguin CEO John Makinson, self-publishing "has become more professional and added more value for writers and readers." He added that "it is growing and converging with traditional publishing. It's an important market and it's not unusual for self-published titles to hit the bestseller lists.”

"This acquisition will allow Penguin to participate fully in perhaps the fastest-growing area of the publishing economy and gain skills in customer acquisition and data analytics that will be vital to our future,” stated Makinson in a press release.

In response to a Publishers Weekly question as to whether there are any concerns about the acquisition of a self-publishing company damaging Penguin’s reputation for editorial selectivity, and he said, “there’s no concerns. Penguin is associated with editorial selection and standards, while Author Solutions is using different filters, they’re allowing more writers to find more readers. We will work to make sure our audiences know what they’re getting.” 


As Author Solutions CEO Kevin Weiss said the acquisition "means more opportunity for authors and more choice for readers."

Both Weiss and Makinson emphasised that Author Solutions will continue its partnerships with other publishers.


“We separate all of our businesses with big fences from the other imprints and do not mix leads. We have security for our data and give assurance to our partners that they are segmented out from our other imprints. We do not share info with our paren,” Weiss said.

However, Deputy General Secretary of The Society of Authors, Kate Pool, claimed told the BBC that "ASI companies are very misleading to aspiring authors. They are not self-publishing, nor are they proper publishers, though the apparent endorsement of the Penguin/Pearson brand may lead some authors to think they are."

"The acquisition by Penguin of Author Solutions is another way for a trade publisher to source and find product which it will hopefully edit and enhance and thereby find new readers," explained agent and former editor Peter Strauss in the Guardian.

Since its founding in 2007 and based in Indiana, ASI has enabled 150,000 authors to publish more than 190,000 books in print and electronic formats. Last year the company generated revenues of approximately $100 million, growing at an average annual rate of 12 percent over the past three years. The company has approximately 1,600 employees, located primarily in Bloomington, Indiana and Cebu City, the Philippines. 

Image: news.doddleme.com

Huffington Post plans Chinese-language edition

The Huffington Post plans to launch a Chinese-language edition, Arianna Huffington, president and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group, told The Telegraph.

At this stage, the firm is in discussions with several newspapers in the U.S. to partner on the launch. The partners haven’t been disclosed yet. And the Chinese-language edition will not be launched until an editor-in-chief is found, The Telegraph reported.

If successful, the Huffington Post will become the fourth English news media to operate Chinese-language services.

Last Month, The New York Times became the third to launch its Chinese-language edition, following The Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal. The New York Times’s two social media accounts were suspended for several hours after its launch, according to the Guardian.  The Huffington Post will also face similar censorship problems from the Chinese government.

According to The Telegraph, The Huffington Post has already become the world's most read English-language news site, overtaking The New York Times.  Launched in the U.S. in 2005, The Huffington Post “mixes original journalism with links to content on third-party websites and blogs and articles by unpaid members of the public.”

According to The Drum, The Huffington Post has already expanded to the United Kingdom, France, Canada and Spain. It is set to launch its local editions in Italy, Brazil and Turkey before the end of the year.

Image: The Moderate Voice

The protesters’ savior? YouTube releases face blurring tool

As more and more dissidents use YouTube as a way to communicate with the world, anonymity and privacy are primary issues they have to be careful. Therefore, the new service YouTube released Wednesday attracted everyone.

YouTube’s new face blurring tool is under the category of enhancement tool. Once users upload the videos, they can apply the face blurring function and then get previews before sharing with the world.

YouTube policy associate Amanda Conway, wrote in the official blog that “Whether you want to share sensitive protest footage without exposing the faces of the activists involved, or share the winning point in your 8-year-old’s basketball game without broadcasting the children’s faces to the world, our face blurring technology is a first step towards providing visual anonymity for video on YouTube.”

However, YouTube’s face blurring tool still has a loophole needed to be addressed. Users cannot choose who to blur; every person gets blurred in the footage.


“This is emerging technology, which means it sometimes has difficulty detecting faces depending on the angle, lighting, obstructions and video quality,” Conway explained. “It’s possible that certain faces or frames will not be blurred. If you are not satisfied with the accuracy of the blurring as you see it in the preview, you may wish to keep your video private.”

YouTube’s face blurring tool stems from a group of lobbyists, trying to protect themselves while delivering their messages.


"We are at an evolution point where pictures and video are the most powerful ways to get our stories across, but people need to have the option to protect themselves," said Sam Gregory, program director of Witness, which provides support to people who use video for human rights work.

Keith Wagstaff, a contributor of TIME’s Techland, wrote that the footage of the Arab Spring shot by citizens from Tunisia, Egypt and Libya didn’t occupy the major news but spread fast via websites like YouTube and Facebook, winning lots of support from around the world. 


“Still, the fact that YouTube, by far the world’s biggest video-sharing site, is implementing this technology before anyone else is good news for democracy activists.” Wagstaff wrote.

In addition, more than a third of all news video on YouTube was filmed by a bystander, noted Pew Research. YouTube is playing an increasingly large role as a news source around the world, and it hopes the blurring face tool will encourage people to share video more widely without putting themselves at risk.

Image: Mashable

LinkedIn's simpler homepage will look more like Facebook

LinkedIn plans to redesign its homepage in order to place more emphasis on simplicity and connecting with people, and will likely make the site look more like Facebook, the Examiner reported. The changes, announced Monday, are expected to be rolled out to all 160 million plus users in the next couple of weeks.

The key of the update will be “simplicity,” a stronger link to the site's newsfeed, LinkedIn Today, as well as an interface that will make it easier to connect people, and check on what others are doing, according to TechCrunch. The new homepage aims to make the site more social and hopes to keep users on the site rather than leaving it to browse elsewhere.


New features include a newer, simper, and more modern design; more relevant updates up top; and a richer, cleaner updates stream, LinkedIn Product Manager Caroline Gaffney explained on the social network's official blog. 



"We’ve revamped the entire Homepage experience with a new look and feel to make it easier to scan and find the information that matters most to you.” Gaffney wrote in the blog.


The new page will also feature larger pictures. “We’ve completely refreshed the way updates look and feel in the stream with richer visuals for easier scanning and viewing,” Gaffney noted.


Image: TechCrunch

China's media censorship increases ahead of party transition

Two senior executives of Shanghai-based newspaper Oriental Morning Post who were known for irritating government censors were removed from their posts and coverage has been cut, the South China Morning Post reported.


This happens ahead of the government's transition of power, which happens once a decade.

Lu Yan, publisher of the Oriental Morning Post, has reportedly been transferred to another division of the group, Wenxin United Press Group. Sun Jian, deputy-in-chief, has been suspended, according to the Guardian. 

Lu's transfer was the result of his so-called radical style, including an article about reform-minded liberal economist Mao Yushi, the South China Morning Post stated. Sun was removed because he posted a picture of the cover of a book "Conversations with Chen Xitong." Chen Xitong was related to the 1989 pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square.

The two senior executives’ removal was a day after a newspaper in Guangdong dismissed its editor-in-chief, Lu Fumin. Guangzhou-based New Express also cut its national and international news coverage, as well as eliminated its op-ed page.

"I think these can probably be read as the surfacing of tensions playing out on a daily basis across the country's media. These are probably more egregious examples of the tightening of everyday control ahead of the 18th party congress [where the new leadership will be unveiled]," David Bandurski, from Hong Kong University's China Media Project, told the Guardian. He pointed out that local as much as national issues likely played a role.

The Communist Party bosses of both Guangdong and Shanghai are expected to be promoted to Politburo Standing Committee this coming autumn.

"Any topics or reports that might draw excessive attention or cause trouble are not tolerated by the authorities.” Professor Zhan Jiang, from Beijing Foreign Studies University journalism department, told the South China Morning Post. “Stability is everything." 

According to South China Morning Post, The Oriental Morning Post is the most outspoken newspaper in Shanghai. On May 13, 2008, the day following the earthquake in Wenchuan, Sichuan, the Oriental Morning Post published the number of victims in bold on a black cover. 

Top Shanghai party officials had ordered the city's publicity department to tighten control over the paper. “The moves will make media in Shanghai more conservative and cautious in future reporting,” a veteran journalist in Shanghai told the South China Morning Post.

Image: The Telegraph

Three Hong Kong TV stations partner to broadcast Olympic Games

People in Hong Kong will be able to watch the London Olympics Games for free after rights holder i-Cable reached an agreement with free-to-air broadcasters ATV and TVB, South China Morning Post reported today. 

Viewers in Hong Kong will be able to watch at least 200 hours of Olympic broadcasts on free-to-air TV, according to the Standard. In the contract, TVB and ATV will pay i-Cable an undisclosed amount to buy 200 hours of Olympic events, including the opening and closing ceremonies. TVB and ATV will also cooperate to produce the Games package.


The contract between IOC and iCable indicates the broadcaster has to try to reach the widest possible audience if they want to hold the rights.

TVB, the biggest TV broadcaster in town, has more than 90 percent of the audience. TVB applied to IOC last week to show the Games.

After the talks between the three parties, TVB group general manager Mark Lee Po-on told SCMP: "We will pay a reasonable fee to iCable so that we could have 200 hours of programmes of our own choice, and they would be broadcast evenly on TVB and ATV. This is the commercial arrangement made today."

Lee also described the agreement as a “win” for the public and the broadcasters.

"Firstly, iCable can charge a reasonable fee. Secondly, both two free-to-air stations can now broadcast the Games evenly; and thirdly, the public can watch the Games. This is the best result. All the disputes before are now resolved," Lee said.

The concrete agreement will be announced by the three TV stations later, and they are expected to meet for further talks.

Image: The Standard

Digg to be combined with news briefing service

Digg has been bought by New York technology investment firm Betaworks, a move that marries the news-sharing website with a daily briefing service that sends users links to top stories shared on their social networks.


Betaworks bought Digg for just US$500,000, the BBC reported.

Founded in 2004, Digg allows users to collect and vote on news content. Then, the most prominent news is promoted to the top of the site's homepage. However, most of the time this was decided by a hundred so-called "power users," according to PC World. In early 2010, Digg's popularity fell due to the popularity of Facebook and Twitter, as users preferred reading articles shared by their friends.


Betaworks launched News.me in April 2011. The daily briefing service sends users links to top stories their friends share on Facebook and Twitter. News.me uses an iPad app, iPhone app and daily e-mail newsletter.

"Digg has always been a site built by the community, for the community," wrote Digg CEO Matt Williams on a post. "Betaworks is combining Digg with News.me. Digg will join a portfolio of products developed by Betaworks designed to improve the way people find and talk about the news," he added.

According to VentureBeat, Digg’s underlying technology wasn’t very valuable in comparison to what other news aggregation services were doing. Digg raised $45 million in funds from investors, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Betaworks CEO John Borthwick will become Digg's new chief.

Image: soshable.com    

Journatic plagiarism scandal: When outsourcing falters

The Chicago Tribune has suspended its relationship with Journatic – the third-party local news provider of its suburban TribLocal publications, Poynter. reported.

“We made the decision after it came to light Friday that a sports story published in this week’s Deerfield TribLocal contained elements that were plagiarized and fabricated,” the Chicago Tribune noted in its announcement on Friday.

One day after the announcement, Mike Fourcher, the production manager of Journatic, submitted his resignation.


“I did so because the founders and I fundamentally disagree about ethical and management issues as they relate to a successful news business,” Fourcher wrote in his blog.

Journatic began its operations in 2006 with an undisclosed sum of investment from the Chicago Tribune’s parent company, Tribune Co. It produced content for TribLocal publications — 90 town websites and 22 weekly print editions since then, according to The Associated Press.

“The issue has sparked discussion throughout the news industry, which is struggling to cut costs while still trying to serve local markets, sometimes by outsourcing specialized content,” the AP noted.

In explaining his resignation, Foucher commented that the hyperlocal news provider’s core premise is sound. “Most data and raw information can be managed much more efficiently outside the traditional newsroom; and, in order for major market community news to be commercially viable, it needs to be conducted on a broader scale than ever before,” he noted.

“The company’s model falters, however, when it attempts to treat community news reporting the same way as data reporting. Inevitably, as you distribute reporting work to an increasingly remote team, you break traditional bonds of trust between writers and editors until they are implicitly discouraged from doing high quality work for the sake of increasing production efficiency and making more money,” Fourcher pointed out.


GateHouse announced it will also end its deal with Journatic.

Echoing Fourcher’s viewpoint, David Arkin, vice president of content and audience for GateHouse Media, wrote in an e-mailed reply to Poynter that “Journatic’s model, at least for us, was based on an agreed number of stories that would be published each month. But sometimes production goals got in the way of good content decisions.”

Earlier, Journatic was also discovered to have used a number of false bylines in its products for Chicago Sun-Times.

Image: JIMROMENESKO.com

Future of TV is interactive: wywy lands €2.5 million

Munich-based social TV platform wywy has secured €2.5 million in new capital from Cipio Partners, a deal that will also see it take over a majority of Cipio’s auto detection company Idioma, wywy announced in a press release today.


wywy creates interactivity products, while Idioma specialises in broadcast TV monitoring and automated detection services, which it offers to research companies like Nielsen. The two types of technologies, when put together, make the synchronization of TV streams possible. Synchronization is necessary for social apps that need the ability to check-in automatically, GigaOm explained.


Synchronization on television is difficult, “because live TV streams get delivered through a variety of technologies – cable, IPTV, satellite and so on – and they all have different latencies.”


wywy’s (pronounced why-why) aim is to take a leading role in the development of synchronizing.


Currently, 49 percent of TV viewers engage with online communities on a second screen while watching television, the press release stated.


“The way in which viewers watch television has seen little change in the last century. In the next few years TV viewing will undergo massive changes, particularly in the field of interactivity,” stated Dr. Andreas Schroeter, managing director and co-founder of wywy.

Tablets gain momentum with Nexus 7 launch

Google will launch its first tablet this month, the Washington Post reported. The Nexus 7, with a price of US$199, has a 7-inch screen and a Tegra 3 quad-core processor and runs the latest Android operating system called Jelly Bean.

Google’s announcement came days after Microsoft’s tablet Surface was announced. Both are regarded as emulating Apple's iPad, which has been making hardware themselves to maintain the customer market for their software since 1979, the San Francisco Chronicle pointed out.

“Google is very likely selling the $200 Nexus 7 at less than cost, but will do so happily if that’s what it takes to win the love of would-be Kindle Fire buyers,” PCWorld commented.


The average tablet price dropped 21 percent in the first quarter of 2012, according to another report from the San Francisco Chronicle, citing a research from IMS. Since the debut of the iPad only two years ago, “the tablet market is well on its way to achieving critical mass over the next few years,” the report noted.

“Businesses must now communicate with their customers, whether B2B or B2C, across all new interactive channels,” said Randy Frisch, Chief Operating Officer of Uberflip, according to the Chronicle. Developing mobile communication strategies and having an appropriate mobile presence are necessary steps to reach customers, he said.

This “appropriate mobile presence” is heavily powered by the repertoire of each company’s application. “Apple, Google, and Microsoft want to sell you a device (in this case, a tablet) that is tightly linked to their own content store (Apple Store, Google Play, Windows Live), and that displays the books, music, apps, and movies bought at the store beautifully and seamlessly,” PC World analysed. It added that the device can suggest relevant content and sell it to consumers with only a few clicks.

After all, “the real competition is not about the devices in the long run but about Google Play versus iTunes,” Forrester analyst James McQuivey said, the Washington Post quoted.

About 25 percent of all U.S. smartphone users own a tablet today, meaning that the tablet industry witnesses a 100 percent growth in only one year, according to a research from comScore, Chronicle reported.

“The companies’ hardware partners should be watching the product announcements with a wary eye,” the Washington Post noted. For example, Nokia, the critical Microsoft partner, and Samsung, the Android partner of Google, need to be cautious that they are willing to go alone with their own hardware.


Despite the ambition of Google, analysts are concerned that Nexus 7 might lack application built for it – the same problem as other Android tablets, the San Francisco Chronicle noted.

Image: Google Nexus

China shuts down the NYT's Sina Weibo account

The New York Times has launched its online Chinese edition and social media account on Sina Weibo last week, conducting an experiment of press freedom in China, TechCrunch reported.


The results? For starters, the newspaper's  Sina Weibo account was deactivated July 4.

It is obvious “the Great Wall of China” has taken measures to prevent the Chinese people from interacting with the NYT. Because Sina Weibo, the "Chinese Twitter," allows the Chinese people to share news immediately with each other, it is the perfect platform for the NYT to use to connect with them too, making that account a target for the Chinese government, TechCrunch suggested.

The disappearance of NYT’s social media account on Sina Weibo was first found by Great Fire, a Chinese Internet Monitoring service. Great Fire notes that the NYT is not the first international media that be treated under severe censorship. YouTube and Twitter have already been blocked by China’s firewall. In addition, only 25 percent of the population in China are able to access Bloomberg’s website, according to Great Fire.

“We’re not tailoring it to the demands of the Chinese government, so we’re not operating like a Chinese media company,” editor Joseph Kahn told the company’s Media Decoder blog last week. “China operates a very vigorous firewall. We have no control over that. We hope and expect that Chinese officials will welcome what we’re doing.”

The good news is that the NYT’s Chinese website is still running, though it may be blocked anytime. Mashable reported that the decision to block an entire domain,  such as the NYT’s Chinese website, would presumably come from a high-level government agency, such as the State Council Information Office or the Chinese Communist Party’s Propaganda Department.

In contrast to the regular NYT website, the Chinese edition hasn’t implemented a paywall yet.

Image:  Mashable

New partnerships try subscription paywalls & advertising

News reading apps last week announced new partnerships with publishers: Pulse with Wall Street Journal and Flipboard with The New York Times, Gigaom reported.

Pulse, founded in May 2010, creates an interactive mosaic by integrating the user's favourite websites and is available for iPad, iPhone, Android, Kindle Fire and Nook. 

Pulse launched a new tab called "Premium Sources" that will allow readers have access to specific news channels from the Wall Street Journal, owned by News Corp.: Water Cooler (US$.99/month), Political Report ($3.99/month) and Technology Digest ($3.99/month), according to a post from the site. 

The subscription revenue will be shared among Pulse, News Corp., and Apple, which takes a 30 percent cut of any revenue coming from its apps.

"What we have tried to do with these publishers is align ourselves with their goals (paid content)," said Akshay Kothari, co-founder of Pulse, according to Bloomberg. "Some want to increase page views, some want to increase the number of paid subscriptions."

Meanwhile, the app Flipboard is betting on an advertising model. The New York Times subscribers will read articles, view videos and blog posts directly through Flipboard's app on any mobile device. Non-subscribers can also access a free sampling of articles from the Top News section of The Times. It is the first time that the NYT has allowed full access to the news content through a third party, blog Bits from the NYT reported. 

The revenues will be split between the app and The Times. Full-screen ads will appear between Flipboard pages.

"This move was part of a broader strategy to expand the reach of Times content, including to third-party digital products," said Denise F. Warren, general manager of The Times's website.

Image: Answerguy.com