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MySpace CEO: Cautiously Optimistic About 2009; Chance To Pick Up Startups On CheapMySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe was speaking at the Reuters Media Summit (not open to other reporters, only internal Reuters reporters), and said he is cautiously optimistic about growing its ad revenues in 2009, something that of course he has to say officially. "We're up 18 percent year-over-year as of last quarter," he said and hopes to grow it next year, despite the economic crisis. He continues: "We haven't really seen any impact, other than we think we could have grown even more than we have." Isn't that the impact? To think that they won't see a major impact this Q4 and next year is to be delusional, but I think they know that part and have to tow a corporate line publicly.... Updated: Later in the summit, he said the company sees opportunities to buy start-ups for a fraction of what they were asking even six months ago. And tons of them are knocking on MySpace's door these days, he said. DeWolfe said acquisitions are key and areas would include international markets, building its music offering and developing applications for mobiles. Social Media Deals Report: This 199-page report, filled with charts and data, examines the categories, number and size of VC and M&A deal in social media from 2007 through 2008. Visit the ContentNext Reports page After Layoffs, Newspapers Embrace Content Sharing; McClatchy And CS Monitor Exchange Foreign ReportsAs the newspaper industry's prospects darken, and rounds of buyouts and layoffs have left little room for more cuts, The McClatchy Company (NYSE: MNI) is joining with the non-profit Christian Science Monitor on sharing foreign news coverage on a trial basis. The trial will last for three months and then the two will evaluate whether the combo worked. The exchange will involve two CS Monitor correspondents, one in New Delhi and the other in Mexico City, and two McClatchy foreign correspondents in Nairobi and in Caracas. The arrangement comes two months after McClatchy said it would cut an additional 1,150 jobs—10 percent of its workforce—while CS Monitor is preparing to shift from a daily to a weekly print pub and going online-only for breaking news. Meanwhile, the Associated Press is planning to slash 10 percent of its staff next year. That could make arrangements like McClatchy's and CS Monitor's more common. Release -- Three Florida papers form tie-up with J-school: The trend of cooperative content has been happening in Florida since August, when three of the state's largest dailies came together to pool resources. Now, the three—Tribune Company's The Sun Sentinel, McClatchy's The Miami Herald, and Cox's The Palm Beach Post—are forming a news service with online and print pieces reported by Florida International University j-school students, E&P reports. The South Florida News Service launches next month and will run at least until March. Related Mark Logic Digital Publishing Summit, Thursday November 6, Westin Times Square. Insight and perspective from Outsell, Gilbane, Simon & Schuster, BusinessWeek.com, more. Evening cocktail reception. Cost is complimentary. Register now! --> Making Action Sports Pay: NBC, MTV Try Yet Another Variation With 'Alli'Six months after announcing an action sports joint venture built on the Action Sports Tour, divisions of NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) and Viacom (NYSE: VIA) are already revamping the concept—name and all. Meet Alli, the Alliance of Action Sports, a combo of former AST events like The Dew Tour with the Maloof Money Cup, AMA Motocross Championship and King of Wake events. (Maybe they're planning a revenue stream from people searching for Alli, the diet drug.) The spin itself could be an action sport as NBC Sports and MTVN Music Group pitch the notion that "the groundbreaking" partnership is only getting bigger and better by adding skateboarding, wakeboarding and more motocross, and will be better positioned to extract money from the niche sports. But the move comes just weeks after Wasserman Media Group slashed 41 percent of the staff of Sportnet, with its intense action sports emphasis, to "rationalize" the business in the difficult environment. The two media companies co-own the Alliance, airing the programming across their networks and other platforms. Allisports.com has been launched as the digital hub, with a social network "where fans can connect with the sports and athletes by joining the Alliance." Members of "Flux" communities automatically have an Alli account. Online sports vet Doug Kirk (NBA, SI, ESPN) will oversee the hub as digital VP, according to SBJ; Alli also plans to add several sales and digital staffers. Release. SBJ: The event deals are a mixed set ranging from revenue sharing for the Maloof Money Cup and AMA Motocross Championships in exchange for air time and production costs. King of Wake signed over digital rights to Alli; the event will be streamed on allisports.com. Photo Credit: Alli Our streamlined mobile application for the BlackBerry and other smart devices brings you the latest headlines quickly on the go. Click here to download. Gaming Roundup: E-Books On Nintendo DS; Acclaim's RockFree; AOL's PlaySavvy; DoubleFusion/PS3—Nintendo releases e-Book collection for DS : Move over Kindle, there's a new e-Reader in town—the Nintendo DS. Well ... not quite, but the game giant did announce the availability of "100 Classic Book Collection" today. The game features classic tomes from Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and Shakespeare, among others. DS owners flip the portable console on its side to read, use the stylus to flip through pages, and can even search through and bookmark segments. Currently, the title is only slated for a European release, with 10 additional titles available via download via the DS Lite Wi-fi feature. Still, U.K.-based tech site Electric Pig begs the obvious question: does anybody really want to read an entire book on the DS' tiny screen? —Acclaim unleashes Rockfree, free music game : MMORPG publisher Acclaim is developing Rockfree, an online game that will let players create avatars, open up their own rock "club" and battle against other players online. Slated to go live in Q109, Gamasutra says Rockfree will feature tracks from Warner Music, Sony (NYSE: SNE) and EMI artists, in addition to more than 40 songs created just for the game. The title also has free written all over it: gamers don't have to pay to play it, nor will they have to pay for extra downloadable tracks. —AOL preaches game safety on new site : AOL (NYSE: TWX) has launched PlaySavvy.com, a new site aimed at helping parents understand gaming consoles, interpret the game rating system and better determine which titles are appropriate for their kids. The site features reviews and how-to guides, and of course, "relevant advertising." Wonder if there will be any conflict of interest issues (like the ones GameSpot faced last year, per Joystiq) or concern about ads being run for games that aren't exactly family-friendly ... Release. —Double Fusion beefs up in-game ad lineup for PS3 : Game advertising company Double Fusion has inked exclusive deals with THQ (NSDQ: THQI), Sega, Eidos and Midway to handle the in-game ads for their PS3 titles. This is in addition to the deal they first brokered in July with Sony to put ads in PS3 games, though Sony announced a similar partnership with Double Fusion rival IGA Worldwide in June, and launched its own in-game ad division in October 2007. Release. Mark Logic Digital Publishing Summit, Thursday November 6, Westin Times Square. Insight and perspective from Outsell, Gilbane, Simon & Schuster, BusinessWeek.com, more. Evening cocktail reception. Cost is complimentary. Register now! --> How Murdoch Wooed The Journal, and Zannino's RoleMichael Wolff's much anticipated book about Rupert Murdoch, which comes out tomorrow, is all the rage on this media Monday, and is at least something to help distract us from the depressing news all around us. Reviews are coming in fast, and most have their own judgments about Murdoch, not so much about the book. Our parent Guardian is the only one to run an extract (outside of Vanity Fair's long extract this month) of the book, and this one is about the time when Rupert met then-Dow Jones (NYSE: NWS) CEO Rich Zannino, when the wooing began. Some doubts will always be cast on Zannino's role in this. As former CEO Peter Kann asks in the book: "Why the f_ _k was Rich going for breakfast with Murdoch?" From the extract: Murdoch: "I was thinking I'd take the offer directly to the board. I know the family feels that way. I've called [Michael] Elefante in the past. He won't even take a number. The number I'm thinking of is ... 60." Zannino: (internally) Holy s_ _ t! (externally) Silence. For a official version of how these meetings went down, read the old SEC filing, which we pointed out here last year. Mark Logic Digital Publishing Summit, Thursday November 6, Westin Times Square. Insight and perspective from Outsell, Gilbane, Simon & Schuster, BusinessWeek.com, more. Evening cocktail reception. Cost is complimentary. Register now! --> Six Apart Gobbles Up And Shuts Down PownceBlog tech and advertising company Six Apart has acquired micro-blogging platform Pownce for an undisclosed sum, VB reports. But don't expect Pownce, which lets users broadcast short messages (including videos, photos and mp3s) to be embedded into any of Six Apart's current blogging tools—at least not in its current form—as Six Apart is pulling the plug on the service as of Dec 15. Pownce's lead developers Leah Culver and Mike Malone will likely take on similar roles within Six Apart, and its technology will be pulled into Six Apart's overall infrastructure. Pownce was founded in January 2008 by Culver and Digg vets Kevin Rose and Daniel Burka; and though the service was hyped as Twitter's top competitor, it ultimately failed to catch its rival in terms of user adoption. But clearly, the micro-blogging space remains hot: Facebook was eyeing a Twitter buyout as recently as a month ago (for about $500 million worth of its stock, no less), Stocktwits, a Twitter-based stock tracking service got funding in late September, and social video startup Seesmic acquired Twhirl, a micro-blogging and messaging aggregation service in April. Related Mark Logic Digital Publishing Summit, Thursday November 6, Westin Times Square. Insight and perspective from Outsell, Gilbane, Simon & Schuster, BusinessWeek.com, more. Evening cocktail reception. Cost is complimentary. Register now! --> Apocalypse Soon? Forecast Says Half Of UK Media Jobs To Disappear By 2013Some thoroughly depressing news to start Monday morning: the founder of UK media research agency Enders expects the number of media jobs in the UK industry to halve between now and 2013. The last couple of months has seen urgent and accelerated downsizing from a glut of publishers, TV and other groups. Claire Enders (via Reuters): "We calculated the total jobs in the media in the UK at about 400,000 ... at the end of 2007. Between the beginning of 2008 and 2013 we're expecting half of those jobs to go. The big employers are the regional press, magazines, local advertising sales. Real numbers are in print." That kind of decimation might seem an unlikely apocalypse, but other analysts (via Reuters) are pessimistic, too… Numis' Paul Richards: "In terms of the really tough trading we've only had two months, maybe three" ... Screen Digest's Vincent Letang: "I see a long slowdown before a potential recovery in 2012. I don't expect, following that period of crisis, we'll have a strong rebound as we had after the dot-com crash."
Meanwhile, Rafat appeared on Bloomberg's TV channel in London on Friday morning, with his forecast for media and the economy in the next few months. It boils down to: layoffs, consolidation and pay-back time for social media. Here's the video, and also embedded after the jump…
Check out the best business jobs in digital media. Go here for paidContent.org Job Board. Social Net Aimed At The Rich Gets $1 Million In Funding, New CEODon't be surprised if you haven't heard of Total Prestige—you may not have made the cut. The NY-based, invitation-only social net is geared toward millionaires (boasting both Saudi Arabian oil magnates and former soap stars among its roughly 650 members); and it's about to get a $1 million cash injection from private investor Frank DeRose. According to the NY Post, DeRose is backing Total Prestige in the hopes of transforming it from a mere social site into a hub for affluent types to actually broker business deals: "This is a place you can come for trusted networking with established professionals--and sure, you might make a new friend along the way, but that's not our focus," he said. DeRose, a founding partner of NY-based PE firm Ferrata Capital, is expected to be named CEO of the site as well.
A number of exclusive, luxe lifestyle online communities have sprung up over the past few years, including A Small World (whose European IPO was postponed earlier this year due to market turbulence) and the California-based Black Card Circle. But given the VC belt-tightening, Total Prestige's focus on deal-making may help the network attract an influx of well-connected, hungry entrepreneurs that haven't been able to drum up funding through more traditional means.
Related Social Media Deals Report: This 199-page report, filled with charts and data, examines the categories, number and size of VC and M&A deal in social media from 2007 through 2008. Visit the ContentNext Reports page AP Acknowledges Threat From CNN's Wire Service; But Challenger Still 'Needs Improvement'As CNN prepares to go head-to-head with the Associated Press when it launches its new wire service, the cable news outfit will have to prove to newspaper editors that it can transfer its cable TV credibility to breaking print news. A long piece in the NYT takes a look at the challenges the upstart CNN Wire faces, as well as how its established rival is reacting. CNN Wire has been in limited trial at a handful of newspapers the past month. Editors from about 30 papers have been invited to CNN's Atlanta headquarters for a presentation called the CNN Newspaper Summit this week. Acknowledging that it lacks ties with newspapers, CNN hopes it can dazzle editors enough to get them to give its services a try. -- Playing one off the other: CNN's challenge—which is largely based on offering similar breaking news to what the AP offers, but at a lower cost—wouldn't mean much at any other time, except that the showdown comes as the AP has been struggling with its members over pricing for the past year. Meanwhile, newspapers have been attempting to slash costs and lay off staffers for the past year. The high-profile competition offers newspapers a chance to play one off the other. Still, given the existing competition from Thomson Reuters (NASDAQ: TRIN)—whose services were dropped by CNN in August 2007—as well as Bloomberg, it remains to be seen how CNN will position itself against those two.
-- "Still needs work": NYT obtained a tape of AP President and CEO Tom Curley speaking to staffers last week about the growing pressures on the non-profit organization's business. In addition to the dismal economy and the poor business prospects of newspapers, Curley identified CNN as major threat. CNN, flush with revenues from the recent election cycle, is in an excellent position to take on AP. Plus, it can offer brand names like Anderson Cooper to produce columns that might be attractive to newspaper readers and advertisers. Still, Curley had a fairly negative take on the actual reporting that CNN Wire has produced in its trial. "The current CNN wire, if you look at it truly is, still, and remarkably, abysmally written," Curley was quoted as saying. But he noted that CNN is in hiring mode and in addition to targeting the waves of professional newspaper reporters who have been laid off this year, the company is actively recruiting AP staffers as well. That should allow CNN to improve the quality of its wire service fairly quickly.
Related Check out the best business jobs in digital media. Go here for paidContent.org Job Board. Facebook Connect Set To Expand; Includes Discovery, Digg, Hulu and OthersFacebook, in an increasing attempt to prove its utility beyond its own site (and hence build on its advertising potential in the long run), is expanding its Facebook Connect service on some major media and services sites, including Discovery.com, SFChronicle, Digg, Citysearch, CBS.com and Hulu. The Connect service allows a federated identity system of sorts, competing with other services/efforts such as OpenSocial (backed by Google and MySpace) and OpenID, and also allows Facebook services to go outside its own site onto other services. It allows Facebook users to sign in on these third-party sites, connect with their friends who also use the sites, and then share their info and actions on the social networking service. Facebook, which has 120 million members worldwide, will not be monetizing Connect in any direct way yet, reports the NYT, mindful of the Beacon disaster last year, but down the line could help serve more personalized ads on partner sites. Connect on other sites will drive traffic back to Facebook, thus increasing possibilities. For now, the service on third-party sites is available by approval only, but in the next few weeks Facebook plans to allow sites to register themselves for Connect, without having to seek approval. It will be interesting to watch this battle among social networking sites, and which wins out in making its identity systems more pervasive… Related Mark Logic Digital Publishing Summit, Thursday November 6, Westin Times Square. Insight and perspective from Outsell, Gilbane, Simon & Schuster, BusinessWeek.com, more. Evening cocktail reception. Cost is complimentary. Register now! --> Huffington Post Closes $25 Million Third Round; Plans Include 'Focused Acquisitions'After weeks of denials and "no comments," political blog The Huffington Post has closed a $25 million third round funding from Oak Investment Partners, the company said in an e-mailed press release this morning. We reported earlier about a $20 million and above round with post-money valuation in the $110 million range. This probably puts it right at $115 million. The company said it planned to use the proceeds to support general growth efforts and for "focused acquisitions." HuffPo also wants to build up its in-house ad sales team, as even the internet is succumbing to the wider economic turmoil. The three-year-old HuffPo had previously raised roughly $12 million from Softbank Capital, Greycroft Partners, co-founder Ken Lerer and Bob Pittman. On the content side, the $25 million will go towards the jump-starting of a new investigative journalism initiative, expanding its video offerings and a rollout of local versions of the HuffPo aimed at an unspecified number of cities. It already has a Chicago-centric site. The funding comes as HuffPo says farewell to what appears to have been a successful and long campaign season. With interest in politics expected to wane compared to the height of its election coverage, HuffPo hopes to become known for more than its left-leaning politics coverage, by building on its other sections, which include media, living, style and green. While broadening its content should attract more advertisers, this is a tough time on the local ad front, as Borrell Associates and other analysts have pointed out that the growth in that area had and will continue to slow down considerably. In conjunction with the funding, Oak Investment's Fred Harman is joining HuffPo's board. Harman said in a statement: "Much of the news media business needs to be reassembled online around an ad-supported model and the timetable for this has been accelerated, not slowed, by this economic down cycle." Related Mark Logic Digital Publishing Summit, Thursday November 6, Westin Times Square. Insight and perspective from Outsell, Gilbane, Simon & Schuster, BusinessWeek.com, more. Evening cocktail reception. Cost is complimentary. Register now! --> Redstone Sells Midway Games For Pittance—And A Massive Tax WriteoffScrambling to restructure National Amusement's $1.6 billion debt this month, Sumner Redstone has sold off the company's disastrous 87 percent stake in Midway Games for $100,000 in cash, assumption of debt—and a tax loss of $800 million, the WSJ reported. Mark Thomas, described by the Journal as an investor without prior connections to Midway, is paying $100,000, or $0.0012 a share, for National Amusement's stake in Midway and assuming $70 million of senior secured and unsecured debt. Redstone will be able to use some of the loss as a write-off this year and possibly for refunds, but that alone won't solve the problem. Redstone continues to insist that National Amusement's remaining stakes in Viacom (NYSE: VIA) and CBS (NYSE: CBS) are not for sale, following the forced $233 million sale in late October, but is exploring the sale of other assets, including movie theaters. Related Social Media Deals Report: This 199-page report, filled with charts and data, examines the categories, number and size of VC and M&A deal in social media from 2007 through 2008. Visit the ContentNext Reports page Industry Move: Yahoo's Coppel Leaving After 18 Months As Europe & Canada MD; Riley To SucceedAnother senior executive departure from Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO)—Toby Coppel is leaving after 18 months as EVP and MD for Europe and Canada, Kara reports. Speculation may continue over Yang's successor but a replacement for Coppel was announced at the same time—Rich Riley, now SVP of Yahoo Europe's Advertiser & Publisher Group. Coppel, who oversaw Yahoo Europe's exodus from London to Switzerland in March, will remain in his post until the end of Q109. He tells Kara that in his tenure, as well as stealing display ad market share from MSN and AOL (NYSE: TWX) in almost every European market, Yahoo's Canadian business has grown by 50 percent this year. But like everybody else Yahoo still trails in Google's wake in that market—meaning that Coppel has had to make some big cuts this year to keep up, including selling price comparison site Kelkoo. AllThingsD also has the full internal memo from Yahoo President Sue Decker on Coppel's departure and the company's moves in Europe and Canada. Related Mark Logic Digital Publishing Summit, Thursday November 6, Westin Times Square. Insight and perspective from Outsell, Gilbane, Simon & Schuster, BusinessWeek.com, more. Evening cocktail reception. Cost is complimentary. Register now! --> The Narco Appeal Of BloggingSlight navel-gazing on a U.S. holiday: a good longish story from Andrew Sullivan in the latest issue of The Atlantic magazine. One of the earliest columnist/bloggers, Sullivan documents his own learnings in his blogging life, and the visceral appeal of the format. And even though it is a different focus and sensibility than what we have done at our company, there are a lot of similarities that I can identify with. Some gems after the jump Photo Credit: Jeffrey Keefer -- "A blog is not so much daily writing as hourly writing. And with that level of timeliness, the provisionality of every word is even more pressing--and the risk of error or the thrill of prescience that much greater." As a journalism-driven blog media company, the last part is seductive but dangerous territory, and we have had to balance it over the years.
Check out the best business jobs in digital media. Go here for paidContent.org Job Board. Chinese Video Software Site Baofeng Gets $15 Million FundingThe Chinese online video fundings are still continuing, and now seems to have graduated into more tech-backed type of deals than consumer: Video software company Baofeng.com has received $15 million in VC funding. The round was led by Matrix Partners China and IDG, and the money will be used in developing its flagship product, the Baofeng Storm Codec. It is like the Brightcove of China, providing online video services to media companies such as Sohu.com and PPS. Some more about the company here. Our streamlined mobile application for the BlackBerry and other smart devices brings you the latest headlines quickly on the go. Click here to download. FCC Floating A Free Wireless Internet Plan As Part Of New AuctionKevin Martin, the outgoing FCC chairman, is pushing for a controversial free wireless internet plan, as part of the agency's plan for the next slate of spectrum auction, reports the WSJ. At its December meeting, the FCC wants to put forth a plan to offer free, adult-material-free wireless Internet service to all Americans, despite objections from the wireless industry and some consumer advocacy groups. The plan calls for the winning spectrum bidder to set aside a quarter of the airwaves for this free service, and would also allow it to charge for a faster wireless Internet connection. The free service could be slower and would be required to filter out pornography and other material not suitable for children, the story says. The consumer groups object to the filtering part, for which FCC has a workaround: Adults could opt out of the filter and access all Internet sites. The FCC could also discuss some other digital-media related plans, including the evergreen debate over cable unbundling. The agency has, however, shelved plans to consider some other controversial issues, including the broadcast flag request by Hollywood studios, which want to offer copy-protected theatrical releases sooner on TV.
Check out the best business jobs in digital media. Go here for paidContent.org Job Board. Online Video Services Provider The FeedRoom Acquires ClearStoryThe FeedRoom, a longtime player in the online video services sector, has acquired ClearStory Systems, a digital asset management (DAM) software provider, for an undisclosed sum. The two are focused on enterprise and white label online and digital video services. FeedRoom has been around since 1999, and has raised at least $61 million since launching. More details in the release. Related Mark Logic Digital Publishing Summit, Thursday November 6, Westin Times Square. Insight and perspective from Outsell, Gilbane, Simon & Schuster, BusinessWeek.com, more. Evening cocktail reception. Cost is complimentary. Register now! --> CNBC's Own Bad News May Be Coming, Soon, Despite 'Massive' Marketing CampaignCNBC, high on its viewership numbers as the markets continue to nosedive, is in for its own downturn possibly by Q1 of next, a long cover story in the latest issue of B&C says. "Despite the yuks and the huge numbers, the network is now in the process of slashing as much as 10% from its budget. People at the network, says one staffer, are 'scared s---less.'...As CNBC enjoys a new level of visibility and is about to launch a massive new marketing campaign to capitalize on the momentum, it must do so while navigating through the same flailing economy that has sent the network's proverbial stock soaring." This far into Q4, the channel viewership is up 66 percent compared to the year-ago quarter. CNBC execs are working to implement next-year's $500 million cost-cut directives across parent NBC Universal (NYSE: GE), and CNBC's longform unit has already been downsized from 25 to about a dozen, the story says. And despite all that, today CNBC is rolling out four 30-second promotional spots each week featuring its more than 40 anchors and reporters, continuing on its "I am CNBC" campaign launched last year. One of the video ads, below:
Related Our streamlined mobile application for the BlackBerry and other smart devices brings you the latest headlines quickly on the go. Click here to download.
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