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02 December 2008

Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR YOU

PAUL KEDROSKY’S INFECTIOUS GREED

act to stabilize declining 401(k) and IRA savings plans. If quantitative easing is to stabilize financial markets, then the Fed should act with all haste to begin the implementation process.

One Word: Autos DEC 2, 2008 9:37PM Apparently you only had to do one trade this year to re-make your horrible 12 months into a decent one: Buy auto stocks ten days ago when people briefly thought they might not be bailed out. Check the following:

I’m with Tom that there hasn’t been enough focus on consumer balance sheets and income statements, but I’m not convinced this is the way to get there. Other thoughts?

PAUL KEDROSKY’S INFECTIOUS GREED

We’re (Almost) the Least Gloomy! We’re (Almost) the Least Gloomy! Ford has done a 123% run from the trough of despair, and GM a 70% climb. Turns out that this contrarian thing can pay. One day, of course, something big will be left to fail and a lot of investors betting on a bailout will get hurt, but this apparently isn’t the one.

DEC 2, 2008 9:04PM New chart from McKinsey global economic sentiment survey showing that North America, surprisingly enough, is actually among the less gloomy places on the globe with respect to thinking that the economy will weaken further from here. Maybe that shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did.

PAUL KEDROSKY’S INFECTIOUS GREED

Should the Fed Be Buying Stock Index Futures? DEC 2, 2008 9:23PM Tom Sowanick of Clearbrook has a suggestion sure to entrance and enrage investors in equal part: By purchasing outstanding debt directly from GSEs and commercial banks, the Fed is injecting liquidity into the coffers of select financial institutions, such as commercial banks. Unfortunately, these measures fall short of helping the consumer directly and efficiently. It is time for the Fed to focus on purchasing stock index futures to help stabilize the other financial markets (i.e., equities). Purchasing futures contracts on the US equity market would immediately squeeze the short-sellers who are running recklessly through the stock market because of the abandonment of the up-tick rule. Stabilizing US equities would certainly end the hemorrhaging of corporate and public pension funds and at the same time

Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR YOU

02 December 2008

PAUL KEDROSKY’S INFECTIOUS GREED

The Trouble with Recession Averages DEC 2, 2008 9:00PM Consider the following lovely chart (via (via Financial Philosopher)). It’s cute, and helpful-ish, but it also points to one of the problems with all the current chatter about how long the average recession runs. Scan it first, and my commentary follows.

PAUL KEDROSKY’S INFECTIOUS GREED

Reading: PIPEs, Harvard, Paulson II, China, Munis, etc. DEC 2, 2008 8:42PM Some more quick links worth reading: • Good list of broken bank PIPE deals (TheDeal) • Harvard, Other Big Endowments Selling Private Equity Stakes at Big Losses (Yves) • Interview with Jim Paulson: Much more pain to come (Bloomberg) • China growth projections plunge (TheDeal) • McKinsey Survey Economic conditions snapshot: Surprisingly sanguine, sort of (McKinsey) • Municipal Bond Liquidity (SSRN)

ALLEY INSIDER

Ad Sponsors Peeling Away From NASCAR, Too

In looking at the following chart you could argue that we have a cluster of duration data, and an outlier (the Depression). In the preceding case the use of an overall average makes sense. You could also, however, argue that we have a bimodal distribution, with one average duration for downturns unrelated to the long-term credit cycle, and another longer duration for downturns representing unwinding of the cycle. I lean toward the latter view, and thus think most of this discussion of recession durations is unhelpful and not nuanced.

DEC 2, 2008 7:00PM

Looking to catch a NASCAR wreck? Here’s one: The racing association’s sponsors are pulling out, NASCAR CEO Brian France told a Reuters summit. France insists he’s talking to potential new sponsors, but wouldn’t name names.

As a reminder, the following is the U.S. long-term credit cycle chart (from SocGen):

NASCAR saw a $150 million gain in sponsorship revenue in 2008, a gain France says won’t be repeated. “The question is, are we going to back up,” he said.

Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR YOU

02 December 2008

See Also: NASCAR: TV Ratings Down, Online Demand Up

See Also: Clearwire Dumping Sprint’s ‘Xohm’ Name For WiMax Service Sprint Nextel Still Winning The Mobile Internet Wars Sprint’s WiMax Delays Will Make The ‘4G’ Format War Worth Watching

BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL NEWS - CNNMONEY.COM

Delta to cut more flights in 2009

BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL NEWS - CNNMONEY.COM

Guns N’ Roses Dr Pepper promo misfires

DEC 2, 2008 6:53PM Delta Air Lines said it plans to cut overall flight capacity by 6% to 8% next year due to “the global economic recession and weaker demand for air travel.” As result, passengers can expect flights to be crowded and

DEC 2, 2008 6:24PM

fare deals to be scarce.

Guns N’ Roses became Guns N’ Roses N’ Lawyers this week.

ALLEY INSIDER

TECHCRUNCH

Clearwire CEO: Not Married To WiMax If Rival Format Takes Off (CLWRD)

Songbird Takes Flight With 1.0 Release DEC 2, 2008 6:00PM

DEC 2, 2008 6:40PM Clearwire (CLWRD), which recently closed a $14.5 billion merger/funding deal with Sprint Nextel (S), Intel (INTC), Comcast (CMCSA), Google (GOOG), and others, is betting on a next-generation, ‘4G’ wireless technology called WiMax for high-speed mobile Internet service. But its competitors, including much larger rivals AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ), and smaller rival T-Mobile (DT) are betting on a competing technology called LTE. Songbird, the open-source, media focused web browser, has launched its 1.0 milestone release to the public.

WiMax already exists today, whereas LTE won’t make it to market until late 2009 or 2010. But what happens if WiMax doesn’t take off — and LTE does? Clearwire could end up offering LTE service someday, CEO Ben Wolff said on a conference call.

In practice the browser works well (not much of the interface seems to have changed since the .7 release that I covered in August). The experience may seem odd for first time users, as it presents a strange fusion of iTunes, with with Firefox (the two browsers share the same Mozilla engine).

Unstrung: Wolff made it clearer than ever that the company is definitely prepared to use LTE to provide broadband services in coming years, if need be. “We can’t ignore the fact that many of the operators around the world are talking about deploying LTE,” he said. “In the future, our network vendors will be able to deliver to us equipment that runs both mobile WiMax and LTE,” Wolff continued. “If LTE truly becomes a global standard, as WiMax has, Clearwire will be well positioned to provide LTE.’

The app does have some acknowledged shortcomings - you can’t rip albums using Songbird, and there’s no way to sync an iPhone to the app. These pitfalls would probably be enough to put off most casual users, but Songbird appeals to a more hardcore listening demographic that is more willing to embrace emerging software (90% of the app’s users are on Firefox, and 80% have music libraries over 10 gigs in size).

Meanwhile, BusinessWeek summarizes some analysts’ latest concerns about Sprint Nextel: If Clearwire can’t build out its service fast enough, or can’t raise more money, Sprint — which is relying on Clearwire for the next-gen mobile Internet service it’ll offer its customers — could get screwed. Sprint shares rebounded 17% today after dropping 24% Monday.

Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR YOU

02 December 2008

Facebook)

ALL THINGS DIGITAL

Top of the Apps [Digital Daily] DEC 2, 2008 5:56PM

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Since its July debut some 10,000 iPhone applications have been released to Apple’s App Store and 9,887 of them are still available for purchase.

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MySpace CEO: Acquisition Targets Dirt Cheap And Getting Cheaper

10,000 apps. An impressively broad ecosystem for just under five months of development. Apple’s (AAPL) year-end list of Top App Store Downloads for 2008, then, is both handy and timely (Click on the image below to see the top 10 paid and free apps). It’s largely what you’d expect, with the Games and Entertainment categories proving most popular, Facebook and Pandora dominating the Paid App category, and Texas Hold ‘Em and Moto Chaser topping the Free App category. Fascinating to see the breadth on display here. Were you to purchase every app currently for sale at the store, it would set you back in excess of $30,000.

DEC 2, 2008 6:00PM One upside of the Web 2.0 shakeout: As companies with great ideas or innovative tech start to run out of money, they can be gobbled up cheap. That’s what MySpace (NWS) CEO Chris DeWolfe told a Reuters conference closed to outside reporters: DeWolfe said companies worth between $200 million and $300 million just six months ago are now running out of money and willing to sell themselves for less than one-tenth of that value. But he’s not ready to buy just yet — we still haven’t hit bottom. “At the lower levels the money dries up, everyone’s looking for some kind of exit and the valuations we’re seeing out there are definitely a small, small fraction of what they were even five or six months ago,” he said, adding that he expects these companies to become even cheaper in the next few months. DeWolfe said he considers acquisitions central to MySpace’s overall strategy of looking for growth overseas, in music, and on mobile phones. One company DeWolfe doesn’t want tor MySpace: Twitter, which recently flirted with Facebook. Twitter duplicates MySpace functionality without helping the company grow, he said. (Really?) See Also: Michael Wolff: MySpace And Its Braindead Users Are Going To Zero DeWolfe: Recession Hammering MySpace’s Growth MySpace CEO: Maybe We’ll Build An iPod Killer MySpace Will Come Out With A Payment Platform (Maybe Before

Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR YOU

02 December 2008

ALLEY INSIDER

Jezebel editorial assistant Maria-Mercedes Lara have all been let go, while three other editors at Jezebel are being made into part-time employees. At Gizmodo, Gawker Media’s top traffic-getter, reporter Benny Goldman was laid off. Last week, video assistant Nick McGlynn was fired after more than a year at Gawker.

13 Tips For Dealing With Your Laid Off Friends DEC 2, 2008 5:56PM

See Also: How To Lay Off Employees (And Not Get Sued)

From The Business Sheet: Yes, buy them dinner. No, don’t lend them money...

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Jon Miller Trying To Raise Money To Buy Yahoo (YHOO)

More Gawker Layoffs, Even As Ad Revenues Climb 39%

DEC 2, 2008 5:49PM

DEC 2, 2008 5:51PM Former AOL CEO Jon Miller is trying to raise money to buy Yahoo, says the WSJ. A great idea at this price, but probably tough to raise the money for a full buyout at the $20-$22 mentioned below. There’s another option, though...

About a month ago, Gawker Media owner Nick Denton scared the crap out of everyone saying ad revenues could plummet as much as 40% during the current downturn. Since then, Gawker Media’s revenues are actually up — just under 40%, he says.

WSJ: Mr. Miller has been talking to private equity investors and sovereign wealth funds for months in hopes of raising money for a Yahoo deal, and it is unclear whether the talks have progressed or are just continuing, these people say. Mr. Miller believes he can do a deal that would be worth around $20 to $22 a share to Yahoo shareholders, these people say, which would involve raising about $28 billion to $30 billion to purchase the entire company.

Specifically, Gawker Media’s November 2008 ad revenues were 39% higher than than they were in November 2007. So wherefrom all this growth amid all the gloom? (Before we continue, let’s all pause to wonder if and how much Denton benefits from his own doom and gloom public service announcements. For one, it must nice to be able to blame the pain associated with always painful business model adjustments on a macroeconomic climate. For two, do his pronouncements every petrify the competition into paralysis? Don’t know, but don’t doubt that people feel them physically.)

Sources close to Yahoo expressed deep skepticism that Mr. Miller would succeed in lining up investors. Indeed, given banks’ reluctance to lend money right now, financing a deal of this size would be extremely difficult, even from deep-pocketed sovereign wealth funds. An investment in Yahoo would also be extremely risky in the current advertising market and amid the company’s ongoing search for a new chief executive. Sovereign investors have lost money on many large investments in the past year and may be reluctant to make a bet on a company with Yahoo’s challenges.

Denton attributes about 20% of the gains to adding Google ads to each site’s search results. Other big drivers include more sponsored posts and larger ad units, such as marquee-takeovers and expanded leaderboards. “High-end sites need to run bigger and richer ads — the same way that glossy magazines run gorgeous spreads,” says Denton.

It is unclear whether Microsoft Corp., which has indicated that it is still open to doing some sort of deal with Yahoo, would be involved in any transaction.

The good November hasn’t put Denton out of his pessimitic mood. Gawker laid off three writers and an editorial assistant this morning anyway. The cuts come from popular and profitible Gawker sites Gawker.com, Jezebel and Gizmodo.

Mr. Miller has discussed the idea with some Yahoo board members, these people say, but the matter hasn’t come up for an official board discussion.

“You could argue that we’re being perversely conservative,” owner Nick Denton tells us.

The $20-$22 share offer is probably too high for Jon to be able to raise the financing. There is a deal to be done here, though. If Jon wants to take a run at the company, all he really needs to do is convince Carl Icahn, Gordy Crawford, Bill Miller, and a bunch of other Yahoo holders that he’s the guy to run it.

MediaBistro broke the news and has the details: Gawker editor Sheila McClear, weekend editor Alex Carnevale, and

Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR YOU

02 December 2008

GIGAOM

LoJack For Your Laptop

Six Apart and Pownce: Microblogging FTW?

DEC 2, 2008 5:43PM

DEC 2, 2008 5:40PM

TECHCRUNCH

The closure of Pownce, which was announced Monday via posts by cofounder Leah Culver and her new employer, blog software company Six Apart, didn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who’s followed Pownce since its launch last year. Despite help from co-founders like Kevin Rose of Digg and usability guru Daniel Burka, the service never really found an audience, or at least not one big enough to make a go of it. In the end, Pownce was just too much like Twitter (and Jaiku and Plurk, for that matter); the added features it had — including the ability to transfer files — weren’t enough to set it apart in people’s minds, much less turn it into a must-have utility.

It was only a matter of time before a location tracking app found its way into laptop security software. Laptop Cop, which lets you remotely control your computer and delete files if it is stolen, now has a geolocation feature based on WiFi-hotspot triangulation technology from Skyhook Wireless. It is the same technology that is used in the iPhone (along with GPS and cell-tower triangulation) to determine your location for geo-aware apps. Now you can tell the cops exactly what door to knock on, more or less. Laptop Cop costs $50. It does come with those other features as well. But if you want the same Lojack service for your laptop without paying, you can download MyLoki for free. It is a browser add-on from Skyhook that broadcasts the location of your laptop. And anyone can always check your personal MyLoki page to see where your is laptop (which is supposed to be a proxy for you, but not when it’s been stolen).

So why did Six Apart, the blogging software provider founded by husband-and-wife team Ben and Mena Trott, decide to buy the company? It’s possible that they just saw Culver and her fellow Powncer Mike Malone as valuable hires in the programming department, and decided to acqu-hire them, as Google has done with so many startup founders over the years. But while the Pownce service is being shut down, could its features live on inside Six Apart and its Vox blogging service? I think that’s a very real possibility. Culver, for example, notes in her blog post that she hopes to “come back with something much better in 2009.”

It won’t be too long before all of your devices will tell you where they are. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Twitter and its ilk are often referred to as platforms for “micro-blogging,” because (in the right hands at least) a 140-character message posted to the service can be almost as good as a blog post. More than one blogger has said that the frequency of their blog posts has decreased since they began Twittering, and some have given up full-blown blogging altogether. Others, however (myself included), use Twitter as a kind of feeder system for their blogs. Not only do they use it to find ideas, links and conversation that spark longer blog posts, but they use it in reverse — to alert potential readers to their posts. And in many cases the conversation extends from the blog to the chat service and vice-versa.

Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR YOU

02 December 2008

There’s an almost symbiotic relationship between the two services, with each feeding off and benefiting from the other.

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Ivanka Trump’s Billionaire Boyfriend Accused Of Shady Money Funneling

Six Apart has made a number of acquisitions that indicate the company is thinking about how to extend its services, including social media application maker Apperceptive. Much like its blog software competitor Automattic, the home of WordPress (see disclosure below), the company seems to be looking for tools that can be incorporated into its platforms to make them more robust as media publishing services. Could a Twitterstyle tool be part of that vision for Six Apart? It would make a lot of sense, just as WordPress buying Buddypress (a startup that added social networking functionality to the platform) and launching a Twitter-style chat theme called Prologue made sense.

DEC 2, 2008 5:19PM From The Business Sheet: Did the Kushners use financing from real estate deals to prop up the NY Observer?

ALL THINGS DIGITAL There are already a variety of plugins and tools that allow WordPress and Movable Type bloggers to incorporate Twitter into their blogs, either by posting their messages automatically in a sidebar, or in some cases, by allowing them to post to Twitter from their blog dashboard. But having someone who understands how such services operate could help Six Apart integrate these kinds of features more fully into their platforms, as well as making it easier to develop new ones that could merge microblogging and “real” blogging. At the end of the day, Six Apart and Automattic aren’t just blogging services but content-management and content-publishing companies, and Twitter messages are just another form of content that needs to be managed and published.

Newest Unpleasant Ad Numbers: Mortgage Ads Down 62 Percent [MediaMemo] DEC 2, 2008 5:18PM

Auttomatic is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.

BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL NEWS - CNNMONEY.COM

Where to hide in the ‘bearcession’ DEC 2, 2008 5:30PM Welcome to the “bear-cession.” Not all bear markets have been caused by or accompany recessions but 2008 is clearly a year marked by both turmoil in the stock markets and the broader economy. Your grim advertising stats for the day: Financial advertisers pull back in 2008, and another ad agency predicts a spending decline for 2009. In other news, the sun rises in the East, and sets in the West. It’s no surprise, obviously, that financial advertising has slowed down in the first three quarters of 2008. The surprise is that it’s only been a 10 percent reduction (so far), according to Nielsen. There are also some interesting breakdowns: Mortgage and loan companies spent 62 percent less (of course). But credit service companies increased their spend by 22 percent, and investment service

Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR YOU

02 December 2008

companies boosted their spend by six percent.

ALLEY INSIDER

CNN ‘Hologram’ Provider Gets Bought By News Corp. Sports JV

Here’s Nielsen’s list of top 10 financial advertisers (click chart to enlarge): Note that Bank Of America (BAC), one of the comparative winners during the meltdown, has cut its spend by 30 percent so far this year–slightly more than teetering Citigroup’s (C) 26.5 percent cut. Previously left-for-dead ETrade (ETFC) meanwhile, bumped up its spend by 24.5 percent.

DEC 2, 2008 5:05PM Remember those bizarre “hologram” effects that Time Warner’s (TWX) CNN used on Election night? They’re now the property of a News Corp. (NWS) joint venture. Sports data company Stats, a joint venture of News Corp. and the AP, has acquired the “hologram” provider, Israel-based SportVU, SportBusiness reports. A Hebrew report cited by PaidContent’s Rafat Ali supposedly pegs the deal in the “tens of millions of dollars” range. Ali explains the deal: “From a sports perspective, its technology collects positioning data of the ball and participants within the playing field in real time, and then churns them to compile information and develop illustrations and scenarios in the playing field.”

Want more unpleasantness? OK. Comes now yet another ad executive to tell you that next year will be very unpleasant for anyone looking to make a living off of advertising revenue.

See Also: Tribe Has Spoken: CNN “Hologram” Ripped Off From Star Wars

U.S. advertising spending will drop 5-8 percent next year, says Steve Lanzano, chief operating officer of MPG North America, a unit of French advertising conglomerate Havas SA. Lanzano predicts that sports advertising, long considered one of the most impervious to downturns, will get roughed up as well:

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Frustrated Palm Investor Trolls BlackBerry’s Facebook Page (PALM)

Even television sports, which have become more popular with advertisers since audiences tend to watch the events live rather than recording them, will suffer from the broad pullback in marketing spending, said Lanzano.

DEC 2, 2008 4:55PM

Lanzano estimated 9 to 10 percent of spending on broadcast sports comes from financial services and automotive, both industries that have been in turmoil. ‘That’s a lot of money moving out,’ said Lanzano.

Elevation Partners spent $325 million on a 25% stake in Palm (PALM) in June 2007. Yesterday, Palm pre-announced fiscal Q2 revenues 40% below Wall Street expectations.

‘Because of the hits in the categories that support sports–whether it’s financial or automotive or retail–I think they might take a little more of a hit than they would in other recessionary periods,’ he said.”

But don’t worry about Elevation Partners investor Roger McNamee. Roger’s found a venue for taking out his frustrations: Trolling a Verizon (VZ) Wireless Facebook page touting the new RIM (RIMM) BlackBerry Storm, telling visitors to check out New York Times columnist David Pogue’s nasty review.

OK. Let’s break the glumness up a bit, shall we? If you’re looking for a cheap laugh, head to the Hollywood Reporter’s take on the Nielsen numbers. Then feast your eyes on the unintentional, yet very successful contextual advertising placed to the right of the story (which is where I

We know Roger, who plays in a rock band with former SNL band leader G.E. Smith, is a fun guy. So this is probably just Roger being Roger. But let’s hope that Palm’s sharp cost cuts aren’t affecting its trained P.R. team.

borrowed the image currently at the top of this story).

See Also: Palm: Fall Sales Horrible, Slashing Costs (PALM)

Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR YOU

02 December 2008

TECHCRUNCH

MobaMingle adds a Japanese flavor to mobile social networks DEC 2, 2008 4:52PM

We at TechCrunch expect a rapid expansion of the market for mobile social networks. And with the iPhone’s success as one of the main catalysts of the development, services like Facebook Mobile, MySpace Mobile, Loopt (which even offers a TechCrunch-branded version), akaaki, and others keep cropping up. One of the most recent social mobile networks catching our attention, MobaMingle, comes from Japan. MobaMingle is the internationalized version of Mobage-town, one of Japan’s biggest mobile social networks. The premise behind MobaMingle is to blend elements of virtual worlds, social networking, gaming and mobile blogging into one integrated concept.

One culture- and age-specific factor, which might become a problem as far as reaching out to a broad, world-wide target audience is concerned, are the anime-style avatars through which users are represented. MobaMingle’s Japanized style can surely attract a certain segment of mobile web users but will also fence out a massive number of people who will just hate the design of the site. In order to minimize this danger, MobaMingle offers a number of avatar designs and virtual items geared towards the broader diversity of the global population (different hair styles, various face shapes, more clothing options, etc.). Just like in the case of MySpace’s mobile version, MobaMingle seems to attract some adults, too: DeNA Global claims around 10% of users access their site via Blackberrys.

Any new mobile social network faces the critical challenge of differentiating itself from the dozens of competitors. But the mobile-only MobaMingle, which launched as a beta version in September, has some factors going for it. In the first place, it has the advantage of being backed up by a large-cap parent company in Japan (DeNA), which has already managed to build a highly successful mobile social networking site in that country. Having invested $3 million to get the US subsidiary started, DeNA seems to bet high on the advancement of the mobile web outside Japan. The company says it’s fully dedicated to the cell phone and not interested in bringing MobaMingle to the fixed Internet (the Japanese version, however, can be accessed through PCs since July, albeit in a rather halfhearted way).

If what works in Japan is any indicator, being reduced to pursuing a niche strategy isn’t necessarily a disadvantage for social networks. In Nippon, Mobage-town logged in over 15 billion page views in September alone, generated by 11.6 million registered members (DeNA Global won’t disclose statistics for the US market). In contrast to Facebook’s mobile version, for example, MobaMingle’s business model isn’t solely based on ads or affiliate models. In the Japanese original, users need to acquire MobaGold (a virtual currency) by clicking ads to buy virtual items. In the US, users currently accumulate MobaGold for activity on the site, i.e. for making friends or introducing new members.

DeNA Global, the San Mateo-based subsidiary behind the service, even tries to bring the Japanese phenomenon of writing and reading novels on cell phones to the west (“MobaStory”). In this field, the site is mainly competing with Quillpill, which exclusively focuses on cellular storytelling.

But soon the free service will be additionally monetized through adopting the Japanese MobaGold system. In addition, virtual items costing several dollars a pop will be sold, a concept that (provided users embrace it) leads to high profit margins and amplified user involvement. Revenues and profits suffered a dip recently, but in Japan the service still boasted sales of $47.2 million for the second quarter of fiscal 2008. $21.2 million were generated through avatar-related transactions.

Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR YOU

02 December 2008

In order to replicate this success outside Nippon, however, MobaMingle must improve the quality and quantity of the games currently available on the site. Not leveraging the huge library of free Flash Lite games, which is the essential element of the Japanese version, is a clear drawback (DeNA Global cites the lack of support of Flash Lite in US handsets as the main reason). In its current form, MobaMingle is almost the same as Facebook without applications and a relatively easy target for copycats.

GIGAOM

Phorm Execs Jump Ship DEC 2, 2008 4:49PM Phorm’s chief operations officer and several members of its board have left the company, citing disagreements with CEO Kent Ertugrul. According to a regulatory filing, Steven Heyer, David Dorman, Christopher Lawrence and Virasb Vahidi — who also served as the controversial ad firm’s COO — have stepped down from the Phorm board. The four blamed their departure on “a result of differences with Mr. Ertugrul as to the management and future direction of the Company.” Phorm has already replaced them, and plans to continue selling ISPs on a program that delivers targeted advertisements based on where a customer surfs on the web. However, with other UK broadband providers rejecting Phorm’s rather invasive technology, another investigation into the legality of Phorm’s actions and worries in the U.S. over privacy, maybe the executives were getting out while the getting was still good.

BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL NEWS - CNNMONEY.COM

Fed extends credit programs through April 30 DEC 2, 2008 4:48PM Read full story for latest details.

ALL THINGS DIGITAL

Oldest Ever LOLcats photo [Digital Daily] DEC 2, 2008 4:42PM From 1905

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR YOU

02 December 2008

BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL NEWS - CNNMONEY.COM

ALLEY INSIDER

What about the free market?

Creepy Ask.com Commercials Not Helping (IACI)

DEC 2, 2008 4:41PM There’s an elephant in the room every time Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson steps to a podium to recount the serial emergency actions he and other top officials have taken (and, as revealed Monday, will continue to take) to prop up, bail out, Gerry-rig, bolster, stabilize, or

DEC 2, 2008 4:20PM Ask.com’s latest TV commercials — weird people hanging limply on other people as they ask questions — haven’t won many fans. And they haven’t helped IAC’s (IACI) search engine’s market share, which is down almost one-third year-over-year.

otherwise rescue capitalists and property owners.

Below, we’ve embedded one of Ask’s more recent spots, where a deadlooking woman drapes herself over a young lad. A similarly creepy ad, featuring a dead-looking guy, aired this past weekend, drawing jeers on Twitter:

ALL THINGS DIGITAL

Clearwire Sinks; Attractive Spectrum Isn’t Enough [Voices]

• “Ask.com, please revamp your ad campaign before my nausea and repulsion cause me to do something rash to my TV. Ugh.”

DEC 2, 2008 4:21PM By Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron’s, Tech Trader Daily

• “...seriously, why are the Ask.com TV commercials ... so..... bad.......???”

Clearwire shares are down sharply following negative comments on the company this morning from analysts at J.P. Morgan and Stanford Group.

The ads would be fine, of course, if they were helping Ask.com’s business. But according to Hitwise, they’re not: Ask.com garnered 3.15% of U.S. Web searches during the week ending Nov. 29, down from 3.61% of searches a month ago and 4.52% of searches a year ago. (That’s a 30% market share drop in a year.)

The company’s shares gained ground yesterday following the completion of its deal to acquire Sprint’s (S) Xohm wireless broadband business; it also closed a $3.2 billion investment from Google (GOOG), Comcast (CMCSA), Time Warner Cable (TWX), Intel (INTC) and others. But there are concerns that the company still faces daunting challenges, including a highly competitive market and a need for substantially more capital.

Usual disclaimers apply: This is just one metric from one source. (We’ll keep an eye out for comScore’s November search stats.) But it’s not good news for Ask.com.

J.P. Morgan’s Mike McCormack resumed coverage with a Neutral rating, from Overweight previously. That’s an eye-opening change, given that Morgan was one of Clearwire’s advisers on the Sprint deal. He has a $6 price target on the stock.

BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL NEWS - CNNMONEY.COM

Stocks rally after rout DEC 2, 2008 4:02PM

Read the rest of this post Stocks rallied Tuesday morning as investors scooped up shares hit in the previous session’s selloff, in which the Dow lost 680 points on worries about the economy.

Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR YOU

02 December 2008

TECHCRUNCH

BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL NEWS - CNNMONEY.COM

Note to Self, You: Don’t Roam Internationally on AT&T;

Oil still below $50

DEC 2, 2008 3:59PM

Oil prices remained below $50 a barrel Tuesday, after dropping below that mark the previous day, on concern about slowing global demand.

DEC 2, 2008 3:48PM

TECHCRUNCH

Actns/Swif.T virus affecting embedded YouTube vids? DEC 2, 2008 3:47PM Apparently some sort of relatively aggressive virus is affecting certain embedded YouTube videos. Some are saying it affects IE and Firefox users, while others say it’s only going after IE. The virus is called Actns/Swif.T and seems to contain a redirect to a phishing website embedded within a SWF file. The site apparently installs Antivirus 2009, which is malware. Be careful because this one appears to have just broken out today. If you find yourself being automatically redirected or experience other weird pop-ups, especially for something called Antivirus 2009, don’t click on anything.

BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL NEWS - CNNMONEY.COM

Ford unveils turnaround plan DEC 2, 2008 3:37PM Ford Motor became the first of the three U.S. automakers to unveil its turnaround plans to Congress Tuesday, but the plan contained little in the way of new cost cuts or other changes beyond what the company had previously announced. I’m not a vindictive man. I believe in sweetness and light. But I would encourage anyone with a brain who travels, especially in these trying economic times, to buy an unlocked GSM phone and purchase pay as you go SIM cards or a MaxRoam SIM and a Rebel SIMCard for the iPhone 3G. I also encourage you to use Boingo for Wi-Fi roaming in airports and, increasingly, cities. Why? Because I just paid the equivalent to a flight to Paris and back just because I wanted to use Google Maps on the iPhone 3G to find my way around gay Pareee. Note that I understood the costs involved in roaming, but I think it’s worth a post to warn business travellers of potential pitfalls and to call out a few good services I’ve used over the year (MaxRoam, Boingo) but, for various reasons, weren’t able

BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL NEWS - CNNMONEY.COM

Obama: I’ll help cash-strapped states DEC 2, 2008 3:35PM President-elect Barack Obama on Tuesday told governors from across the country to work with him to “help design” a massive economic

to help me on this trip.

recovery package he hopes to sign shortly after he takes office.

Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR YOU

02 December 2008

ALLEY INSIDER

activated by the user if and when they need them. Like any other external card for computers, as wireless networks become more commonplace, and users are willing to pay for connectivity everywhere, the card’s functionality gets embedded into the machine. This is slowly happening.

Palm: Fall Sales Horrible, Slashing Costs (PALM) DEC 2, 2008 3:20PM

That means rather than working with Qualcomm to buy chips for the Sierra wireless cards, Sierra finds itself competing with Qualcomm’s Gobi platform. The deal for Wavecom offers Sierra an entry into the growing market for Internet connectivity for other devices – from the telematics in cars to point of sales systems–as its wireless card business faces its likely decline.

Palm’s (PALM) fiscal second quarter was so bad they had to tell us about it in advance: The once-hot smartphone maker says sales for the quarter that ended Nov. 28 will be between $190 million to $195 million, 40% below the $331 million that Wall Street expected. Palm, which is still selling an old, uninspired smartphone lineup, says the economy has further pinched sales. The company will now slash costs by $20 million per quarter by next spring, as it prepares for its Hail Mary pass: A new smartphone platform that no one knows anything about, which will face extreme, building competition from the likes of Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), and BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIMM).

ALL THINGS DIGITAL

Which Media Mogul Would You Rather Be Right Now: Arianna Huffington Or Jim Cramer? [MediaMemo]

Late last month, Palm said its new platform was still on track to be released this year, with the first phones on sale in the first half of 2009. See Also: Palm’s New Smartphone Platform DOA? Palm Still Pining For Next Year Why Microsoft Should Make Its Own Phone: Windows Mobile Revenue Stinks

DEC 2, 2008 3:13PM

GIGAOM

Sierra Wireless Deal Signals Shift in Data Cards DEC 2, 2008 3:14PM

Today, Sierra Wireless, the maker of wireless data cards agreed to spend about 218 euros ($274.9 million) buying Wavecom, the Paris-based maker of machine-to-machine communications chips. It’s a good move for Sierra, which paid a 108 percent premium over Wavecom’s last trading price, in order to beat rival bidder Gemalto. For Sierra, the deal gives it the ability to follow the growth of the web as it moves beyond people to machines — providing a new avenue for growth as Sierra sees interest in wireless cards fade as communications chips are embedded directly into laptops.

Doug McIntyre at 24/7 Wall Street makes a provocative point: With a new $25 million round of funding secured, Arianna Huffington’s Huffington Post is now worth about as much as Jim Cramer’s TheStreet.com.

A leader in this trend is Qualcomm with its Gobi platform. The platform contains a variety of wireless chips embedded into the laptop, and

Huffpo’s newest round values the company at about $100 million, which

Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR YOU

02 December 2008

means its investors think it will be worth much more one day. That’s the same value, more or less, that investors place on TheStreet (TSCM), even though it generated some $65 million last year and has about $80 million in cash on hand. McIntyre: Huffington has several important advantages over TheStreet. For starters, it does not rely on one person for most of its traffic. If Jim Cramer left TSCM, the company would be in real trouble. Second, Huffington has diversified beyond it political news base. Over the next year or so, it will become clear whether that was a good idea or not. Adding “style” and “entertainment” sections puts it into competition with a lot of other online success stories. Third, Huffington aggregates a lot of content from around the web. The cost of doing this is remarkably low. The company pays little if anything to most of its bloggers. TheStreet has a relatively large staff and produces most of its own content.

YouTube is trying to clean up its act by cracking down on sexually explicit videos that are just short of porn and spam videos with misleading titles and descriptions. (Porn has always been grounds for removal). On its most visited pages, YouTube will now apply a “stricter standard for mature content” and demote sexually explicit or graphic videos from its “most viewed,” “top favorited,” and other popular pages. Also, thumbnails will now be algorithmically selected.

The final difference between the two companies is probably the most telling. At its current rate of growth, which could be hurt by the end of the 2008 election process, Huffington may double in size again over the next year or so, if its efforts to diversify its content works.

These new standards are not just about YouTube trying to class itself up. The more it polices itself, the less likely that Congress or the FCC will try to police it in the future. (For the FCC, its jurisdiction would probably be limited to mobile devices that access the Web over cellular networks).

It would be hard to find analysts who believe TSCM is going to expand its audience or revenue at a rate of 100%. I can think of some counterarguments to this, but they’re half-hearted: TSCM’s affluent readers should be worth more to advertisers than Huffpo’s; TSCM still has a revenue stream from subscribers to buffet it from ad market turmoil; Huffpo’s aggregation model isn’t unique and could be replicated by anyone who wants to hire some devilishly clever Web editors, etc.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

But better to acknowledge that the HuffPo crew have built something very big, very fast. And that anyone who does that gets rewarded for it,

BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL NEWS - CNNMONEY.COM

Word to your portfolio: Rebalance

even in an econalypse.

DEC 2, 2008 3:01PM TECHCRUNCH You can always make a case to regularly retool your account - and this

YouTube Cracks Down On Sexy, Spammy Videos

year, it’s especially important.

DEC 2, 2008 3:12PM

Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR YOU

02 December 2008

ALLEY INSIDER

GIGAOM

Ning Kicks Out Its Sex Communities

Nokia Announces N97 SuperPhone, Won’t Sell It For Months

DEC 2, 2008 3:00PM The homepage of Ning invites users to “create your own social network for anything.” Well, not anything — not anymore. Starting on Jan 1, Ning is kicking adult-oriented networks off its platform.

DEC 2, 2008 2:57PM

Why? Ning CEO Gina Bianchini makes her case, and it’s pretty convincing: • Adult social networks don’t pull their own weight. Specifically, they require other social networks to work harder because they don’t generate enough advertising or premium service revenue to cover their costs. Plus, our ad partners aren’t big fans of the adult networks and therefore require us to identify adult networks or risk our healthy advertising revenue. We don’t want to be in the policing business and, unchecked, that’s where this is heading. Over two years after Apple launched iPhone, and months after its rivals launched their versions of touch screen phones, Nokia today started selling a touch screen phone (5800 XpressMusic) and announced N97 Superphone that has touch and keyboard, which will be made available sometime in second quarter of 2009. Maybe. Despite the collective oohsand-aahs of the Internet, it would take a lot more for Nokia to beat competitors, especially Apple iPhone.You can buy Xpress device, first announced in October 2008, for $314 unsubsidized though in India and Russia the prices are higher. On 5800 Xpress, a friend of mine recently brought one to the US and after I played around with it for an hour, my response was meh! The touch was okay, just like it is okay on any other device, but not as responsive as the iPhone. And no, that wasn’t an iPhone killer by any means.

• By having legal adult social networks on Ning, we’ve seen a rise in volume of illegal adult social networks. We are always going to do the right thing as it pertains to social networks that are illegal or violate our Terms of Service. That’s nonnegotiable. However, the time involved in reporting and assisting the authorities on illegal adult social networks is simply too time and cost intensive for the benefits derived by having adult social networks on Ning. • Adult social networks on Ning receive a disproportionate number of DMCA take down notices creating additional work for our team. We respect intellectual property rights and comply with the DMCA. Compared to our other social networks on the Ning Platform, the additional work created by adult networks alleged to have violated the copyrights of others is enough for us to discontinue adult networks in favor of investing time and energy in growing the Ning Platform from here. Needless to say, adult communities and pornography are hugely popular, even if most companies don’t acknowledge it publically. But for a company looking to sell ads against content, all adult communities are good for is pulling in ads from other adult-related services. See Also: Ning Launches OpenSocial Support. Will They Support Facebook Next?

The N97 however seems like a worthy competitor, in an Aston Martin versus Infiniti sort of a way. I am withholding judgment till I have had

Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR YOU

02 December 2008

sometime to play around with it. Just as an FYI, LG Prada II has similar approach and combines touch-with-a-qwerty keyboard.

BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL NEWS - CNNMONEY.COM

N97 is a Symbian S60 touch screen device with a slide out QWERTY keyboard, 5-megapixel cameras and 32 GB of on-board memory and features an upgraded version of Nokia Maps. You can bump the memory by adding a 16 GB microSD card. It features a large 3.5″ touch display with 640 X 480 resolution. And yes it will be sold in US and is going to cost $650 and will go on sales sometime in June 2009. (Translation: June 29, 2009.) One of its more attractive features is this concept of ’social location’.

DEC 2, 2008 2:46PM

5 tips for keeping your job The numbers just keep getting scarier. So how do you hold on to your job when it seems like no one is safe?

TECHCRUNCH

MySpace And Vidoop Help Build OpenID Add-On For Flock

With integrated A-GPS sensors and an electronic compass, the Nokia N97 mobile computer intuitively understands where it is. The Nokia N97 makes it easy to update social networks automatically with real-time information, giving approved friends the ability to update their ’status’ and share their ’social location’ as well as related pictures or videos.

DEC 2, 2008 2:18PM

They are taking a cue from other phone makers like INQ Mobile who have already released their version of Facebook phones and are finding early success for it. From the looks of it, this is an impressive entry. My frustration with Nokia phones is that they are either underpowered or sometimes are hampered by the S60 OS which is not very reliable and makes the phones crash all the time. (Well more than my iPhone and less than Windows Mobile.) (Related post: Symbian, iPhone and the New Mobile Reality.) The very fact that it is only now getting out touch screen phones shows that as a company it is stuck in bureaucratic quicksand and has a culture of consensus which makes it difficult to respond to new challenges. Nokia, and I have been following them for a while has become one of those companies –say like Microsoft – good on announcements, not so great on follow-ups. There is word that company has a whole arsenal of touch screen phones coming in later half of 2009 and I am sure they will pretty impressive. Lets hope they can get their mojo back and start coming out with great devices – especially one that will make me go back to using Nokia devices on a daily basis. Up until then Apple and its iPhone has the pole position all to itself.

MySpace and provider of authentication and identity management solutions Vidoop have teamed up with Flock to develop an OpenID management addd-on for version 2.0 of the ’social’ browser. Here’s how works: the extension will enable Flock to collect and manage OpenID credentials and use them whenever you browse an OpenIDsupported service. It will also automatically alert you if you can use a stored OpenID to log into a website. The plugin, currently in alpha, can be found here. Further details on the IDIB project and OpenID for Flock (which is open source, under GPL) are also available at the project’s Google group page. MySpace confirmed its support for OpenID last July. Vidoop, on the other hand, got on our radar when they hired the Chairman of the OpenID foundation; they also recently signed up AOL to make use of their technology.

IDIB OpenID for Flock from phatbuddhaz on Vimeo. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR YOU

02 December 2008

Stein Bagger apparently got his hands really dirty: he’s wanted by Interpol for financial fraud and by the Danish police for a possible assault on a business man (reportedly executed by members of the Hell’s Angels, a group he was connected to somehow). Nobody has seen Bagger since last Thursday, when he disappeared somewhere in Dubai, where he was attending a business conference in the company of his wife and child (his wife is also the one who reported his disappearance).

BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL NEWS - CNNMONEY.COM

Delta plans to cut capacity, hints at jobs

The Danish press dugg up his background after Computerworld did some research in the context of the award that was handed out to IT Factory last week, and it turns out Bagger has connections to two Swedish business men (Carl Freer and Mikael P. Ljungman), both convicted fraudsters. Further investigation is still being carried out.

DEC 2, 2008 2:14PM Read full story for latest details.

Reporters also found out Bagger had been renting a secret office in a conference hotel since two weeks near the IT Factory offices, which he reportedly used to forge documents and signatures in order to keep the massive-scale fraud going (it concerns about half a billion Danish Kroner or $85 million). Overall, sources assess that up to 90 percent of IT Factory’s turnover had been based on non-existing or false contracts. There’s also talk of a scam where non-existing IT equipment and other stuff was sold to leasing firms, and the cash was sent off to shady offshore companies.

BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL NEWS - CNNMONEY.COM

GE lowers the bar on guidance DEC 2, 2008 1:52PM Conglomerate General Electric lowered its fourth-quarter earnings guidance range Tuesday and provided details on restructuring plans.

The fraud scandal has many corporations and banks in Denmark licking their wounds. One of the victims is international cycling team CSC-Saxo Bank, led by Bjarne Riis, who counted on IT Factory as one of their main sponsors.

TECHCRUNCH

The Extraordinary Rise And Fall Of Denmark’s IT Factory

Most of the information above comes from a tipster and translated versions of Danish articles. We’ll update this post whenever we get more information.

DEC 2, 2008 1:52PM Last week, Danish Computerworld awarded IT Factory, a provider of CRM, HRM and Business Intelligence add-on solutions based on a SaaS delivery model, with the prestigious “Denmark’s Best IT-company 2008″. This week, the company has been declared bankrupt and its managing director Stein Bagger went missing in Dubai while under scrutiny by the police and Interpol.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

The remarkable story is all over the Danish press but has remained largely unnoticed outside of the country so far.

ALL THINGS DIGITAL

Palm CEO Circa 2006: Apple Win in the Smartphone Sector? Never Gonna Happen [Digital Daily] DEC 2, 2008 1:49PM

Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR YOU

02 December 2008

BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL NEWS - CNNMONEY.COM

Middle-class tax cut may come soon DEC 2, 2008 1:43PM Remember all the talk during the presidential campaign about a middleclass tax cut? It could be showing up in your paycheck early next year.

BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL NEWS - CNNMONEY.COM

BA in merger talks with Qantas DEC 2, 2008 1:35PM Looks like Palm (PALM) will end 2008 much the way it ended 2007, with layoffs.

British Airways is in merger talks with Australian airline Qantas, BA confirmed Tuesday.

After market close Monday, the downtrodden handset maker warned that sales for its fiscal second quarter will come in well below expectations. “We are seeing unprecedented dynamics in the global markets as economic uncertainty hampers demand for consumer products,” Palm CEO Ed Colligan said in a statement. “In order to ensure Palm’s long-term success during these uncertain times, we’re taking several steps to significantly reduce our cost structure.” First among those steps: layoffs–just in time for the holidays.

ALLEY INSIDER

When To Show A Video Ad DEC 2, 2008 1:25PM

Palm blamed its dire straits on “reduced demand for maturing smartphone and handheld products,” which is apparently a handy euphemism for “reduced demand for Palm products.” Because demand for RIM’s (RIMM) Blackberry and Apple’s iPhone seems to be holding up pretty well during this period of economic uncertainty. Apple (AAPL) is, after all, now the world’s third-largest mobile phone supplier in terms of revenue.

After clicking play, viewers only watch to the end of 5-minute long Web videos about 10% of the time. Only 16% make it through three minutes, reports Web video services provider TubeMogul after measuring 23 million streams on six top video sites over two weeks. TubeMogul draws two conclusions: • “Post-roll ads are of limited effectiveness. A three minute video that has a post-roll ad in the final seconds, for example, will only be viewed by 16.62% of the initial audience, on average.”

Which reminds me of a funny story. Asked in 2006 about rumors that Apple was developing a smartphone, Palm’s Colligan scoffed at the idea. “We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this

• “Overlay ads should be displayed as early as possible in a video. On YouTube, where most overlay ads appear at about 10 seconds in, 10.39% of a video’s initial viewers are not likely seeing the ad.”

out. They’re not going to just walk in.”

We might nuance that first point a bit. If an advertiser is trying to reach as many people as possible, the post-roll ads are indeed useless. But if the ad buyer wants to reach the 16.62% of the audience that most identifies with the content the ad follows, then a post-roll could be the way to go. Post-roll marketers just need to know they’re paying a premium for every real, though targeted, impression. See Also: Magnify.net Raises $750K For Web Video Service

Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR YOU

02 December 2008

for a perfect holiday eGreeting. To activate the special holiday look, just click on the ‘Santa’ button beneath any video. Of course, you’ll have to come up with photos suitable for the holiday season yourself - Animoto will just make them look festive.

TECHCRUNCH

Nokia World 2008: Nokia N97 DEC 2, 2008 1:19PM

We’re big fans of Animoto - the site may not offer an expansive list of products or features, but it does a great job of automatically spicing up photo albums, with little effort needed on the users’ part. For other holiday eGreeting options, check out MyPunchbowl’s eCards, which we covered last week. To see a sample Animoto holiday video, click on the photo below.

Introducing the Nokia N97, the next generation high-end mobile phone from Nokia. Described by Nokia folks as a “handheld computer” this device is a pretty comfortable high-end phone. It has a tilting (resistive) touch-screen display, and is the first N-series phone with a QWERTY keyboard. It has 32 gigabytes of memory, expandable to 42 GB via 16 GB memory card. It has a digital compass, a 1500 milliamp battery, and DVD quality video capture. It’s extremely comfortable to hold, easy to use, and represents a solid solid evolution of the Nokia smarthphone

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

line.

TECHCRUNCH

PAUL KEDROSKY’S INFECTIOUS GREED

Animoto Adds Some Holiday Cheer To Its Rockin’ Custom Music Videos

Reading: Ford, BRICs, IATA, Vikings, etc.

DEC 2, 2008 1:14PM

Some quick items worth reading:

DEC 2, 2008 1:08PM

• BRIC shoppers will rescue world (Bloomberg) • International air traffic decline continues for second month (IATA) • Iceland crisis sends Viking descendants back to Norway (Bloomberg) • Asian money costs climb as recession deepens (Bloomberg)

Animoto, the impressive startup that automatically generates high quality music videos from a set of photos, has unveiled a new feature for the holiday season that will allow users to append any of their videos with a holiday intro/outro movie and a snow-themed backdrop, making

• Ford to present plan for retooling to smaller and more efficient cars (WSJ)

Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR YOU

02 December 2008

• Paulson may clash with Chinese over yuan later this week in China (Bloomberg) • Tax-free munis are yielding record 136% of a 10-year Treasury (Bond Buyer) • More than two-thirds of institutional investors claim to be below hedge fund target allocation (PI) How-to site 5min is expanding beyond its roots as a video portal and has launched a syndication network for its videos called VideoSeed, which uses semantic matching to deliver relevant clips to participating sites. The platform matches keywords found on syndication partner pages and pairs them up with videos in the 5min database according to title and tag information (along with relevant ads to go with the video). Clips are all played in 5min’s speciailized video player, which it launched earlier this year.

ALLEY INSIDER

Is The Huffington Post Worth More Than Your Newspaper Conglermate? (LEE) DEC 2, 2008 1:02PM

The company says that it can successfully distribute videos to syndication partners because its videos are all screened for quality and decency purposes and appropriately tagged with metadata, as opposed to the vast quantities of untagged footage that litter some more popular user-generated video sites.

The Huffington Post took $25 million in funding to set a $100 million valuation yesterday. AdAge’s Michael Learmonth points out that makes the Internet’s paper-less newspaper more valuable — on paper, so to speak — that quite a few of the kind printed on dead trees:

And unlike some other how-to sites, 5min’s videos aren’t exclusively user-generated. Instead, the site has formed content partnerships with a number of other sites and media publications, including Ford Models, Elle, Car & Driver, Encylopedia Britannica, and Woman’s Day. Sydication partners (which will be displaying both videos from these content providers as well as 5min’s users) include Answers.com, wikiHow, and Ultimate Guitar. Through these sites 5min says that it will be reaching a whopping 110 million unique users a month, though this assumes that users will be reaching pages that feature the 5min videos (many entries in the aforementioned sites don’t have matching clips).

The funding means Arianna Huffington’s news blog is now considered more valuable by its backers than quite a few publicly traded newspaper companies, such as Lee Enterprises (LEE), owner of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and 52 other papers (market cap: $36 million), A.H. Belo (AHC), owner of the Dallas Morning News and the Providence Journal (market cap: $35 million), and Media General (MEG), owner of the Tampa Tribune and Richmond Times-Dispatch (market cap: $34.6 million). It puts Huffington Post in the same league as McClatchy Corp. (MNI), owner of the Sacramento Bee, Miami Herald and 28 other dailies (market cap: $150 million).

This is a crowded space, with competition from Howcast, Instructables, and a host of others. Provided 5min’s matching technology can live up to its promises (in my testing I could only find a few matches that displayed videos, so it was hard to gauge how accurate they were), these new syndication deals could help elevate 5min above the rest of the pack.

See Also: Newspapers Prepare To Make Savage Cost Cuts (NYT) Photo: DRB62

TECHCRUNCH

5min’s VideoSeed Syndicates How-To Videos To Answers.com And Others DEC 2, 2008 1:00PM

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications,

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02 December 2008

Delivered Daily. ALL THINGS DIGITAL

Why Are Music Sales Dropping? Because It’s Hard To Buy Music [MediaMemo]

ALLEY INSIDER

Analysts Pan Nokia’s iPhone Killer (NOK)

DEC 2, 2008 12:34PM

DEC 2, 2008 12:38PM Nokia (NOK), the world’s largest mobile phone-maker, put out a new one: the N97, which features a touch screen and costs $693 before taxes and subsidies. It’ll hit the market during 2009’s first six months, said CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo in a news conference. The WSJ calls it an all-in-one phone: The N-97 has the touch screen popularized by Apple Inc.’s iPhone, a real keyboard that appeals to users of BlackBerrys and Nokia’s own E-Series devices, and fast Wi-Fi Internet access to complement third-generation broadband access. But other analysts don’t think the phone will do much to help Nokia avoid what’s expected to be a 1% to 9% industry-wide decline in sales next year.

Digital is the future, but analog is the present. Which is why CD sales remain the biggest revenue driver for the music business. But big box retailers, who sell almost all of the industry’s discs, are determined to change that, by relentlessly cutting back on the amount of floorspace they allocate to CDs.

“[Nokia] tried to cram in lots of different technologies such as a touch screen, full qwerty keyboard and plenty of memory, but it had to make trade-offs in its size and features,” CCS Insight’s Research Director Ben Wood told Reuters. “It has ended up with a relatively thick device that lacks some of the benchmark features expected in flagship products in mid-2009.”

Latest example: Borders Group (BGP), the struggling book chain, has cut its music inventory by 30% in the last year, the company said. Music now occupies about 7% of its floorspace, and the space it used to take up has been given over to higher-margin products like children’s books.

Said Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi: “It might give Nokia a little edge, but it’s six months until this reaches the market.”

Borders makes up a relatively small portion of US music sales, but most big retailers have been doing the same thing for more than a year. If you don’t believe me, try to find the CD section next time you visit a Target (TGT) or Best Buy (BBY) this month.

Gadget blog Gizmodo’s take: The model we briefly handled tonight in NYC was, of course, the Euro version, with no U.S. 3G (and, sadly, no Wi-Fi). Its handlers were keeping it close to the vest, and with no connectivity there wasn’t much testing to be done, but we can say that the hardware is indeed prettybefitting a $700 Nokia piece. The desktop Symbian widgets look nice, but the drawbacks of a resistive touchscreen (there, as always, to ensure character recognition via a stylus for Nokia’s Asian market) were immediately noticeable when dragging widgets around the desktop.

The big stores will embrace individual albums — if they have an exclusive, like Best Buy’s deal with Guns N’ Roses, or Wal-Mart’s (WMT) recent AC/DC promotion. (That’s Best Buy’s GNR promotion, pictured above. Lonely, isn’t it?) But beyond that, they are basically telling music shoppers, who bought some $7 billion worth of discs last year, to take their business elsewhere.

Those desperate to see the N97’s every angle should check out Engadget’s slide show. See Also: Nokia To Show Off iPhone Killer This Week? Another Tablet? (NOK)

Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR YOU

02 December 2008

ALLEY INSIDER

If the economy deteriorates too far too fast, partnerships of convenience may give way to outright mergers in markets shared by multiple newspapers.

Newspapers Prepare To Make Savage Cost Cuts (NYT)

This would be especially likely in cities where one or both of the properties is financially distressed, enabling the publishers to argue that the traditional antitrust objections to such transactions should be waived in the interests of preserving the editorial voice of at least one surviving publication. To make a merger more palatable to regulatrs, the publishers might agree for a while to have the surviving paper continue printing some features carried over from the one that does out of business...

DEC 2, 2008 12:17PM The dean of newspaper analysts, Alan Mutter, says that demolished newspaper companies are finally preparing to make extreme cost cuts to save themselves. The level of these cuts will vary depending on the speed with which the companies’ revenues disappear, but at least the industry appears to finally be moving beyond denial: [P]ublishers are systematically reviewing every aspect of their businesses with an eye to saving a buck any way they can.

Things could get particularly dicey for individual, free-standing publishing companies like the Star Tribune, Boston Herald and Philadelphia Media Holdings, the latter of which may find it increasingly difficult to sustain the publication of both the Inquirer and Daily News.

They are preparing cascading contingency plans that can be implemented according to the degree that sales might decline. The industry’s revenue crisis is detailed here in the first installment of this series... Here’s a glimpse of what may lie ahead:

Even though this is the worst time in history to be selling or financing a newspaper company, several operators, including Copley, Cox and Journal Register, have put publications on the block. Journal Register, which was among the first of the many precariously financed publishers to default on its debt, has stated that it will close papers it cannot sell.

The list of potential expense reductions includes squeezing staffing, shuttering bureaus, carving out layers of middle management, telescoping multiple sections of the paper into one, tightening newshole, scrapping syndicated features and wire serevices, axing op-ed pages and book sections and eliminating classified ads on certain days of the week.

Companies like GateHouse Media, Lee Enterprises, McClatchy, MediaNews, Morris, New York Times Co., Philadelphia Media, Star Tribune and Tribune are obligated to improve their profitability in the coming years to repay the principal and interest on money they have borrowed to make acquisitions.

In an example of what could become commonplace, the Newark StarLedger reduced headcount by almost half in the fall by threatening to close the paper by the end of the year if its costcutting targets were not met. The reduction was enabled through enriched severance benefits and concessions from labor unions throughout the plant.

In the event the publishers are unable to meet those obligations, their creditors will move in to slash expenses; attempt to sell off assets to generate cash, and take every other step necessary to sustain the properties as going concerns.

Another alternative will be to ask employees to accept voluntary pay cuts, to agree to work longer hours, and to ease manning requirements and other work rules. Bonuses may be reduced or eliminated for the fortunate few who still would have qualified for them.

This will last as long as the newspapers continue to generate operating profits. But it is highly unlikely in this environment that any creditor would provide additional cash to prop up a money-losing newspaper.

Publishers will outsource anything that makes sense, including ad sales, ad composition, copyediting, page layout, printing, customer service, fleet maintenance and delivery.

See Also: New York Times Cash Crunch: $400 Million Due In May