The best words about and around the hyperlocal industry. 

Tim Armstrong was back out there defending Patch again this week. Elsewhere, researchers noted the rapidly growing influence of Pinterest, which is gaining on Twitter as a traffic driver. Over at Foodspotting, Alexa Andrzejewski corrects any misconceptions there might be that her company is just “Instagram” for food. Damian Radcliffe says LBS products “haven’t quite lived up to the hype.”  And more: 

Tim Armstrong, AOL, February 1, 2012
Forbes: “We don’t have a massive number of patches on a run-rate profitability, and some of them have bounced in and bounced out.”

Tim O’Shaughnessy, LivingSocial, January 27,2012
TechCrunch: “Everybody knows a lot of marketing has gone into this space. Guess what? When you click on an ad and you are taken to a page, that is traffic. Once you get enough users, if you stop doing some of that marketing, you will have a significant drop in traffic.”

Researchers, Shareaholic, January 31, 2012
Mashable: Pinterest accounted for 3.6% of referral traffic, while Twitter just barely edged ahead of the newcomer, accounting for 3.61% of referral traffic. In July 2011, Pinterest accounted for just 0.17% of referral traffic, proving the site’s blockbuster growth.

Jessica Bennett, Tumblr, February 1, 2012
New York Times: “Tumblr is basically hiring a staff to celebrate creativity and innovation. How many companies can say that?”

Damian Radcliffe, researcher, February 1, 2012
Online Journalism Blog: “Facebook’s recent purchase of location-based service Gowalla … suggests that the social network still thinks there is a future for this type of “check in” service. Touted as “the next big thing” ever since Foursquare launched at SXSW in 2009, to date Location Based Services (LBS) haven’t quite lived up to the hype.”

Alexa Andrzejewski, Foodspotting, February 1, 2012
GigaOm: “We never meant for it [Foodspotting] to be just photo-sharing, it’s not Instagram for dishes or food … It’s trying to be a better food finding app and discovery app.”

Dan Street, Loku, February 2, 2012
AGBeat: “You simply can’t offer a local-focused service without it being hyper-personalized.”

My editors sent me a Mashable article with an infographic showing how Pinterest is becoming a powerhouse in driving buyers to retail sites and stores. I was intrigued. I had followed the rise of Pinterest with, well, interest. It’s a logical extension of Tumblr and StumbleUpon and falls into the Flipboardization and Facebookification of the Internet. The presentation layer is a mashup of stream-driven and tile-driven and it’s visually enticing. Think of it as a catalog of category-driven things represented in attractive images compiled by people on the Internet you may or may not know. So the question is — can Pinterest change the hyperlocal game?

I am fairly certain that a class of local pinters will begin to emerge who have followers and who specialize in a city or part of a city. Because pinterest is an extension of blogging and tweeting.

I think the answer to that question is 100% yes. First, a bit about Pinterest. It is a two-year-old social bookmarking site that encourages users to accumulate and share collections of things they find interesting or appealing on the Internet. Users create “pinboards” for categories. You can either follow a user or a category. A simple “Pin It” bookmarklet tool and iPhone app makes it very easy, à la Evernote, to save and tag items either found online or snapped offline with a smart phone camera. The service appears to be most appealing to women, who account for nearly two-thirds of Pinterest user traffic, according to Experian Hitwise. Pinterest traffic is exploding, showing a 4x hop during the last five months of 2011 to 7.5 million uniqes in December, according to Compete. The influence is beginning to show as Pinterest has become a major referral source for several leading apparel retailers, according to internal data from Monetate.

Right now, for local consideration, Pinterest is a mess. It’s very visually driven but falls down on geo-location around specific tasks. For example, you can’t search it for restaurants in Palo Alto. You can’t even really search it for food in Palo Alto. I know — Pinterest is NOT about search. It’s about discovery and curation. But for local merchants and advertisers to ever really tap into that dynamic, you have to be able to find them. That’s not possible in the current iteration of Pinterest. It might be if users began to organize their pin boards differently or start using tags that could make it easier to follow those sorts of things.

And it also could start to emerge if, like Yelp, a group of super users focused on specific local things emerged. And those users would need to be focused on experiences that are transactional as much as visual with pins that make it easy for viewers to move from a pin to a physical establishment. Again, that’s not happening right now. So while Pinterest may be driving referrals to retailers with big Web presences, that’s partly, I believe, a numbers game because, frankly, far more people are seeing those sites and are likely to “pin” those items to their boards. So many local merchants still don’t even have proper Websites that the bar for them is much higher.

I am fairly certain, however, that a class of local pinters will begin to emerge who have followers and who specialize either in a city or a part of a city and, most likely, down to a specific specialty. And this will happen because pinterest is an extension of blogging and tweeting, really. Lots of pins actually drive through to a blog post, in fact, so it’s already seen as a traffic augmentation vehicle. I also see Pinterest getting integrated into social media dashboard tools that will make it easy for local merchants running Facebook pages to add a Pinterest stream to their arsenal. Again, Pinterest is a different tool — far more about curation and discovery. But, say, your favorite restaurant added a Pinterest presence that was constantly updated with pictures of specials of the day or of new menu items — that could fly and could be interesting, more interesting than Facebook pages or image collections because Pinterest is less of a mashup medium and more of a pure visual layer. At any rate, this is a rough assessment of a shooting star Website. I’ll certainly be tracking it going forward and following some Pinterest users I have already noted as having similar pinterests to mine.

The Spectrum
Editor in Chief Matthew Parrino eloquently describes what happened after an assistant news editor for The Spectrum, the student newspaper at SUNY’s University at Buffalo, expressed her opinions on tattoos:

Beware of what you write. It can destroy

… Read more

The Times of India carries this front page advertisement in its Madras edition today, in response to The Hindu‘s video campaign which was a response to The Times‘ insinuation in an earlier TVC that the “Mount Road Mahavishnu ” put readers to sleep.

Also read: Good morning, it’s time to go back to bed

How Hindu aimed at Times but shot DNA

Times readers affluent, not middle class. Mind it.

BT Group reports 18% rise in profits and announces plan to roll out 330Mbps broadband on demand to business

BT Group took just over half of the UK's new broadband subscribers in the last three months of 2011 and cheered the City by indicating it would review its fibre broadband investment, with a focus on getting businesses to pay for installation.

The company won a 56% share of new retail broadband subscribers, adding 146,000 customers in the company's third quarter and taking its UK total to 6.1 million. The announcement came as BT chief executive Ian Livingston announced upbeat forecasts for the full year and a rise in third quarter earnings, prompting a 6% share price rise in morning trading.

A spokesman indicated BT is to cut its commitment to spend £2.5bn to bring fibre to the doorstep of 25% of UK premises by 2014, and instead offer speeds of up to 330 megabits per second for businesses on demand, so long as they are willing to pay to be connected.

The new 330Mbps service will be available from the Spring on 2013 and is likely to involve installation costs of up to £1,000. It will deliver fibre to workplaces on request in areas where BT already runs fibre to street cabinets.

It is expected to appeal to small businesses rather than residential customers, and is likely to be available to over 10m premises from launch and about two thirds of UK premises from 2014.

"Fibre to the premises is a significant development for broadband Britain," said Olivia Garfield, chief executive of BT's Openreach division, which resells the BT network to other telecoms companies and BT Retail.

"This will be welcome news for small businesses who may wish to benefit from the competitive advantage that such speeds provide."

A spokesman for BT said of the original commitment to building fibre to 25% of UK premises: "That was only an estimate which we gave some years ago before we knew we could offer fibre on demand. We will have to sit back and review that following these developments."

BT is also doubling the speed of its standard fibre broadband product, from 40Mbps to 80Mbps, from this spring. This will as previously promised be available to 75% of the UK by 2014.

The take-up of super-fast broadband increased to 400,000 of BT's retail customers, with 95,000 added in the three months to 31 December.

Elsewhere, Ian Livingston brought forward his target of generating £6bn in annual underlying earnings by 2013 to the end of this financial year. However, BT said its pension deficit ballooned to £4.1bn due to high inflation and the knock on impact of the government's quantitative easing measures.

Group revenue was £4.8bn for the quarter. Excluding the impact of cuts to mobile termination rates, revenue was down 1.8% in the first nine months, in line to reach BT's target of –2% to flat for the full year, and halting years of revenue slides by the end of next financial year.

Profit before tax was up 18% to £628m for the quarter, while earnings (before interest, tax, depreceiation and amortisation) rose by 3% to £1.5bn in the quarter. Net debt fell 11% to £7.7bn, in line with previous quarters which have seen BT reduce its borrowings by £3.3bn over three years.

There was no news from BT about the early payment some analysts had expected to reduce its yawning pension deficit, which has risen from £1.4bn in March 2011.

The company blamed inflation, saying: "The deficit includes the impact of particularly low real corporate bond yields partly reflecting the impact of quantitative easing and recent inflation being higher than the long term assumptions. This higher inflation will be applied to the annual pension increase in April and has contributed to increased liabilities."

Openreach helped boost BT's overall earnings by increasing revenues by 5% to £1.3bn and earnings by 7% o £591m. Capital expenditure reduced 1% thanks to lower investment in copper broadband as the focus switched to fibre.

BT Global Services, which provides networks to multinational, saw revenues fall 4% to £1.9bn for the quarter, with earnings up 2% to £144m.

Total order intake for the quarter was £1.6bn, after contract wins from Sainsbury's and Standard Life in the UK and Bristol-Myers Squibb and the European Parliament abroad. Orders were up 50% so far this year in Asia Pacific and Latin America.

BT Retail revenue decreased 5% reflecting a decline in calls and lines revenue and lower IT hardware sales. TV service BT Vision added 39,000 to BT Vision net customers in the quarter. Business revenue fell 6% because of lower IT hardware sales "reflecting tougher market conditions".

BT Wholesale revenue fell 8% due to a £64m reduction in transit revenue mainly driven by mobile termination rate cuts. Total order intake was £340m, including a three year extension to a calls contract with Virgin Media and a renewed six year outside broadcasting contract with Sky Sports.

David Molony, analyst at research company Ovum, said: "Openreach is delivering good results on the back of the company's fibre investment. However, the main focus must remain on BT Retail and BT Global Services.

"BT must keep innovating to deliver faster broadband speeds and more enticing bundles for consumers, as well as developing Global Services' capabilities through cloud services, professional services and further regional investment."

Neil Hyde, 32, has signed contract that police hope will convict the killers of Sunday World journalist Martin O'Hagan

A man who had been accused of murdering the only reporter killed covering the Northern Ireland Troubles and their aftermath has been jailed for three years.

Neil Hyde, from Lurgan, Armagh, received a lesser sentence after signing a contract which the police hope will convict the killers of the Sunday World journalist Martin O'Hagan.

Hyde, 32, secured a deal with the authorities in return for a shorter sentence related to 48 offences linked to the outlawed Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF), of which he was a member.

O'Hagan, 51, was shot dead in front of his wife as they walked home in Lurgan in September 2001.

The killing was claimed by the Red Hand Defenders, a cover name used by both the LVF and Ulster Defence Association.

During Hyde's trial, the court heard that while he was being questioned by detectives from the Police Service of Northern Ireland's retrospective murder review unit in September 2008, he confessed to a number of offences and formally agreed to help police early in 2009.

He admitted six charges relating to petrol bombs, nine of affray, dealing cannabis and cocaine, five relating to arson, seven firearms offences, two charges of withholding information in relation to a murder and a wounding.

He also pleaded guilty to robbery and attempted robbery, aggravated burglary, causing actual bodily harm and managing a meeting in support of the LVF.

All the offences occurred on various dates between 1 January 1992 and 24 January 2008.

The court also heard that Hyde told police of the other people connected to the LVF who he said were involved in O'Hagan's murder.

The murdered reporter specialised in revealing the details of loyalist terrorist murders and operations, particularly in the so-called murder triangle of North Armagh during the Troubles.

Before his death in 2001, O'Hagan had spent several years living in the Irish Republic following a string of death threats and murder bids by loyalist terror groups.

Photographer Carlos Miller, who publishes the blog "Photography Is Not A Crime," was arrested while covering the police evacuation of Occupy Miami and he has spent the last few days working to successfully recover images police illegally deleted from his camera.

What do journalists do all day? Press Gazette (PG) has decided to find out by asking us to spend next Wednesday compiling diaries of our working day.

The magazine is calling on as many journalists as possible - in newspapers, magazines TV, radio and online - to contribute to its A day in life of British journalism project.

PG's contributing editor John Dale is urging people to send in "written snapshots" of their work over a 24-hour news cycle, from 6am Wednesday 8 February to 6am the following day.

He wants participants to write a summary of about 100-500 words "or whatever" that describes what they do during that period - the news jobs, stories, features, photos, mishaps, interviews, events, meetings, humour, even an office party.

"Include colour and emotion," he writes. "Rushed breakfasts. Watery coffee. Lunch at desk. Lunch with contact in greasy spoon/posh restaurant. The perils of alcohol. Quotes. Being married to the job. Story spiked - misery! Story splashed - ecstasy!"

The resulting article will be a third-person 24-hour narrative, so it's important to provide timings, Dale gives an example of the format he expects on both the PG site and on his own blog.

Any journalist anywhere can take part as long as they are working for a British news media outlet. So a paparazzi in Hollywood may take part or a war reporter in Afghanistan.

The project has been given the blessing of the Society of Editors, the British Society of Magazine Editors and the National Association of Press Agencies.

"When journalism is under profound scrutiny," says Dale, "let's celebrate the richness of our work."

Contributions should be emailed to johnkdale@msn.com as soon as possible after the date. Press Gazette will publish its news-day special report in its March issue, and a fuller version may run online.

Sources: Press Gazette and The irrepressible John Dale

What do journalists do all day? Press Gazette (PG) has decided to find out by asking us to spend next Wednesday compiling diaries of our working day.

The magazine is calling on as many journalists as possible - in newspapers, magazines TV, radio and online - to contribute to its A day in life of British journalism project.

PG's contributing editor John Dale is urging people to send in "written snapshots" of their work over a 24-hour news cycle, from 6am Wednesday 8 February to 6am the following day.

He wants participants to write a summary of about 100-500 words "or whatever" that describes what they do during that period - the news jobs, stories, features, photos, mishaps, interviews, events, meetings, humour, even an office party.

"Include colour and emotion," he writes. "Rushed breakfasts. Watery coffee. Lunch at desk. Lunch with contact in greasy spoon/posh restaurant. The perils of alcohol. Quotes. Being married to the job. Story spiked - misery! Story splashed - ecstasy!"

The resulting article will be a third-person 24-hour narrative, so it's important to provide timings, Dale gives an example of the format he expects on both the PG site and on his own blog.

Any journalist anywhere can take part as long as they are working for a British news media outlet. So a paparazzi in Hollywood may take part or a war reporter in Afghanistan.

The project has been given the blessing of the Society of Editors, the British Society of Magazine Editors and the National Association of Press Agencies.

"When journalism is under profound scrutiny," says Dale, "let's celebrate the richness of our work."

Contributions should be emailed to johnkdale@msn.com as soon as possible after the date. Press Gazette will publish its news-day special report in its March issue, and a fuller version may run online.

Sources: Press Gazette and The irrepressible John Dale

HuffPost Streaming Network, featuring 12 hours' programming for five days a week, described as 'never-ending talkshow'

It is the internet blogs empire that made its exuberant founder a millionaire. Now the Huffington Post is making its first move into TV, with a live online video channel described as a "never-ending talkshow".

Arianna Huffington announced that the HuffPost Streaming Network would launch in the summer and feature 12 hours of original programming for five days a week.

Roy Sekoff, co-founder of the Huffington Post, described the ambitious video network as CNN meets YouTube and said it would be staffed by about 100 employees.

Huffington announced the plans in a blogpost to mark a year since her punchy politics and opinion website was bought by AOL for $315m (£193m).

"The network will be built around segments spotlighting the biggest, hottest, most engaging stories HuffPost is covering at any given moment and using them as the jumping-off points for conversations, commentary, and comedy," Huffington said.

"These segments will be as long – or as short – as they need to be. We won't be limited by the usual time constraints of TV. Instead, the HuffPost Streaming Network will emulate the online experience."

Huffington said the HuffPo Streaming Network would be "more relaxed, more free-flowing, and much more spontaneous and interactive" than traditional TV.

The internet entrepreneur – who enigmatically described the acquisition of AOL as "1 + 1 = 11" – said the 12 months under AOL had been "amazing". "It turns out that 1 + 1 actually equaled 44. And 54,000,000. And 1,200,000,000," she said.

This referred, respectively, to the number of "verticals" launched since the merger, the number of comments posted on the network last year, and the number of page views in December 2011.

The US Huffington Post network reported 36.2m unique views a month, a 47% rise year on year, according to Huffington.

"Without you, 1 + 1 would still equal 2, instead of 44, and 54,000,000 and 1,200,000,000," Huffington said.

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".

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Dinah Rose QC v Clare Montgomery QC

For two days Dinah Rose QC (below left) and Clare Montgomery QC (below) have contradicted one another over the precise meaning of the words "judicial authority", interspersing assertions with curt dismissals of "my learned friend's" argument.

The appearance of two of the most prominent women barristers as leading counsel in such a high-profile case is a reflection of the changing composition of the bar; more than a third of the profession is now female.

Montgomery is the longer established, having taken silk in 1996. Rose, who became QC 10 years later, is an authority on human rights and employment law. This week Rose drove her submissions through smoothly, with minimal interventions from the judges. Montgomery has a more abrasive, stacatto delivery.

In September last year the Guardian launched our Facebook app as one of the media partners working on new features announced at the company’s f8 conference. The app uses the Open Graph to implement “frictionless sharing”, where the act of reading an article automatically pushes it as an action into Facebook’s database.

The Guardian Facebook app

Several of us at the Guardian - including colleagues Meg Pickard and Dan Catt - had thought for some time about what a “social news experience” might be like, but when we came to build the app we concentrated on shifting one particular metric. We knew that 77% of visits to the Guardian from facebook.com only lasted for one page. A good hypothesis for this was that leaving the confines of Facebook to visit another site was an interruption to a Facebook session, rather than a decision to go off and browse another site. We began to wonder what it would be like if you could visit the Guardian whilst still within Facebook, signed in, chatting and sharing with your friends. Within that environment could we show users a selection of other content that would appeal to them, and tempt them to stay with our content a little bit longer, even if they weren’t on our domain.

When we launched the app, some people were quizzical about the approach.

Christine Burns said in two tweets: “The Guardian are going the right way to kill off normal social exchange of references to their articles. Almost as bad as Times paywall. The Guardian has been pretty sure footed with social media until now, but their Facebook integration is a fundamentally illiberal mistake”

Jason Cartwright tweeted: “The whole thing is weird - why would you cede control of the distribution to FB? Feels like old AOL walled garden model”

And @Playwert got straight to the point...

“WHY THE FUCK IS THERE A GUARDIAN APP ON FACEBOOK WHEN THEY HAVE THEIR OWN FUCKING WEBSITE” - @Playwert

A new audience for our journalism

One of the reasons we did the app was the relative audience sizes. The Guardian reaches 60m people digitally, and Facebook reaches 800m people. Which means there are at least 740m on there who could be reading our journalism but aren’t. That is a massive opportunity.

So far nearly 6 million people have signed up and installed the app, and one of the most exciting things is the demographic profile of those users. Over 54% of them are 24 and under, and 15% of them are between the ages of 13 and 17.

Demographic make-up of users of the Guardian’s Facebook app

This is a demographic that it is incredibly difficult for news organisations to reach. The app is putting our reporting and features in front of the grown-up audience of the future. Ken Doctor described Facebook as “a potential hothouse of new, younger customers.”

The younger demographic means that content that appeals to them become popular in the app. Some of the most read stories have been about the X-Factor, and I’ve seen some tweets suggesting that represents a “dumbing down” of the Guardian. To my mind, if we are producing that content anyway - which we do - then why wouldn’t we want it to reach as wide an audience as possible. We’ve also noted that stories about students or stories about Facebook prove to be very popular amongst students using Facebook.

How does the app work?

Our Facebook app is an opt-in alternative way to read our content. We don’t specifically edit it or choose which articles appear. It is entirely driven by user actions, and we were able to build it because of the Guardian’s Open Platform API. Any article, video, photo gallery, podcast or audio clip available in the API can appear in the app. Any link to the Guardian that appears within Facebook is a gateway into the app, whether posted on one of our on Facebook pages, or organically shared by someone pressing the Facebook share button on our site.

When a user clicks on a link to guardian.co.uk, we offer them the chance to try the app. This is in much the same way as when we detect the referral has come from a mobile device we redirect the user to m.guardian.co.uk. If the user declines the app, we take them through to guardian.co.uk as normal, and set a cookie so as to try not to ask them again. If they say yes, they read the article in the app environment, and that action is shared with their friends.

This has proved to be a divisive, and there has been some strong criticism of the social reading apps from people like Molly Wood - “How Facebook is ruining sharing” - and Kevin Anderson, who wrote “Why Facebook’s new reading apps are so darned annoying.”

We knew that this was going to be the case, as my colleague Karen Loasby user tested a prototype in advance. Half of those tested recoiled in horror at the very idea, and said that basically they never installed any apps on Facebook. The other half seemed completely unfazed, and even sometimes a little perplexed when she was suggesting to them that just maybe they should be a little more concerned about their privacy settings on Facebook.

Archive content lives again

One effect of this has been that old content has resurfaced by the app, and gained a whole new lease of life. Someone shares an old article with their friends, some of their friends either already use or install the app, and the viral effect begins to take hold. A piece from 2009 headlined “Too fat to be a model? The picture that caused a storm in the fashion world” about reaction to a picture of Lizzie Miller in an edition of Glamour has been viewed over 650,000 times in the app. It has generated over 1,000 new comments on Facebook, and some of those comments themselves have generated nearly 1,500 “Likes”.

This article has been a phenomenal success in the app

I’m comfortable with stories like that getting audience attention. The story itself might be from 2009, but it isn’t as if the debate about the size of the models used by the fashion industry was done and dusted a couple of years ago. Our archive content, presented in a social environment, has sparked a contemporary conversation. And if you’ve got a brilliant feature about the Rolling Stones discussing fifty years of their career, it will always be a brilliant feature about them at this stage of their lives, whether you read it in two weeks, two months, or twenty years time.

We’ve got over 1.3 million articles live on the website, so that is a lot of content to be discovered, and the app means that suddenly any page, languishing unloved in our database, can become a new landing page. When an article becomes popular in the app, we sometimes package it with content. Because we know the attention has come at a specific time from a specific place, we can add related links that are appropriate to the audience rather than to the original content.

For example, a piece about Derren Brown spread virally because of the headline just around Halloween. We packaged it with other spooky and paranormal pieces that had been popular in the app around that time. It looks a little incongruous now, this 400 word 2003 piece that everybody had forgotten we ever published, splashed with content about Halloween from 2011, but when you’ve got the audience there, you need to optimise for them.

This 2003 article has been repackaged now it is a landing page on guardian.co.uk

We’ve made continuous changes to the design. Some tweaks are small - for example pulling the dateline up above the headline to try and make it clearer for users when they are reading archive material. And in the last few weeks we have added photo galleries, video and audio into the app. We’ve just revamped the homepage to showcase these new types of content.

The article dateline is subtly more prominent in the app iteration on the right

And it isn’t all old stories or X-Factor gossip that is getting read and shared. A Jonathan Jones piece “The meaning of 9/11’s most controversial photo” has had more than three-quarter of a million views in the app, and other immensely popular pieces from the last few months have included Naomi Wolf writing about Occupy, a piece about twins with different skin colour and the arrest of a woman accused of a racist outburst on a South London tram.

One of the most popular articles in the Guardian’s Facebook app

Where’s the money?

The Guardian Facebook app is a canvas app. That means the bulk of the page is served by us within an iFrame on the Facebook domain. All the revenue from advertising served in that area of the page is ours, and for launch we engaged a sponsor to take the full inventory across the app. Facebook earn the revenue from advertising placed around the edges of the page. The app is growing us audience in a new space, and as those people use the app, they also promote our content to all of their friends, who, even if they decline to try the app, often still end up on our website.

And the future?

Facebook have invested heavily on the Open Graph and their new timeline feature. They see this as the future of their platform.

In effect, once we push an action into the Open Graph, we hand the responsibility for the UI and presence of our content within that environment over to them. One of the criticism’s of the new “frictionless sharing” has been that a few companies are dominating people’s news feeds. As more and more apps start to use the feature, this effect will diminish.

The “frictionless share” comes in at the bottom of a hierarchy of activity, where a “Like” and a “Comment” are still much stronger signals of activity. The Guardian actions of reading, watching and listening are pretty conservative - I’m sure that in time you will see that friends playing games will be frictionlessly sharing that they just harvested a crop, or assassinated a mugwump. For Facebook to succeed, they will need to keep their users happy that this level of information is manageable and interesting.

For the Guardian’s part, the app will continue to iterate. We are constantly looking at ways that we can improve the social side of the app. The key to success will be surfacing the right content for the right users.

Thank you

I’d like to thank the many people who have worked on this app, amongst them: Matt Andrews, Gideon Goldberg, Stephen Wells, Sheena Luu, Lynsey Smyth, Karen Loasby, Lisa Villani, Piers Jones, Joanne Ellis, Anthony Sullivan, Grant Klopper, Daithi Ó Crualaoich, Nathaniel Bennett, Sally Goble, Meg Pickard, Dan Catt, Hayley Dunlop, Andrew Lepki, Hannah Freeman, Charlene Prempeh and Nina Lovelace.

With video becoming increasingly important to consumers, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have each announced they are launching new daily video programmes. The New York Times has launched a new daily business-related programme while The Wall Street Journal has started a new daily lifestyle show.

On 1 February, NetNewsCheck reported that the New York Times has launched a new program called "Business Day Live."

In a related press release, the New York Times stated that "the program is broadcast live from The Times newsroom, and offers the insights and analysis of reporters and columnists from The Times's business, media and technology desks."

 It features five rotating hosts, including David Gillen and Winnie O'Kelley, deputy business editors, and reporters Peter Lattman, Catherine Rampell and Louise Story. The Times said the show will run about six minutes at launch, with plans to expand it in the future.

"We are committed to delivering the crucial business news stories to our readers as they happen, across all platforms," said Lawrence Ingrassia, business editor at The New York Times. "Business Day Live will provide NYTimes.com users immediate accounts of the day's essential business news in real time, with exclusive insights from top business reporters from The Times's newsroom." The "Business Day Live" programs are being produced each weekday morning on the NYTimes.com website.

In the first episode, David Gillen noted a few of the main business-related headlines and then discussed Facebook's plans for its IPO with NYT DealBook reporter Evelyn M. Rusli.

On the same day that the Times launched "Business Day Live," Media Bistro's Fishbowl NY reported that the business-based Wall Street Journal has launched a YouTube channel and a new daily lifestyle show to be called "Off Duty", based on its namesake section of WSJ Weekend.

Dow Jones stated in a press release that "Off Duty" is being "hosted by Wall Street Journal reporter Wendy Bounds, and will bring to life many of its namesake's features, and other culture coverage from the Journal - from food to fashion, music and movies, travel to tech."

"Off Duty" airs on business days at 6 p.m. ET on WSJ.com and WSJ Live, the Journal's interactive video application, followed by availability on YouTube and other channels. Live episodes will start on Monday, 6 February.

Dow Jones says "Off Duty" will feature a range of topics presented by Journal and Dow Jones reporters and editors, including: Joe Morgenstern (movies), Jim Fusilli (music), Dan Neil (auto) and Lettie Teague (wine) as well as recipe how-to's from Off Duty's "Slow Food Fast" columnist Kitty Greenwald.

Other regular features are to include: "Heard on the Runway" with a round-up of the week's fashion news and trends, and "WSJ After Hours," which offers an insider's look at the newest trends, social scenes and fashion statements of New York City nightlife.

Sources: NetNewsCheck, New York Times, Media Bistro, Dow Jones

OLD FRIEND YESTERDAY: i'm enjoying your new teenage girl blog persona
ME: OMG.
ME: great.

Times ombud Brisbane agrees with readers on unwarranted intrusions:

“In cases where a victim’s privacy competes with the journalist’s desire to get the story, I often side with the victim … Journalists should do more to protect the privacy… Read more

A series of events last night:

1. Was messing around on Tumblr for a few minutes before watching an episode of Downton Abbey on Netflix.
2. Clicked on the “steenbeck” tag I had saved previously.
3. They all reminded me of editing rooms back in college at NYU.
4. Clicked on the first NYU tag I see.
5. Scrolled through a series of posts most often authored by high school kids dreaming of going to NYU. Including at least one screenshot of — not an admission letter, but a “your application is complete” response screen on what appears to be an Internet.
6. Saw someone claiming their roommate’s TA was dating Tumblr founder David Karp. OK, then.
7. Spotted a clever bit of satire about the prevalence of vegetarian and vegan options in NYU dining halls. (I assure you this is not the way things were in my day, youngsters. In my day, we walked to the animal rights protests at NYU uphill both ways in the snow in our Chuck Taylors.)
8. Noticed that the blog with the satirical vegan rant thing was called “[RYAN’S UNMISTAKABLE FRESHMAN YEAR DORM ROOM NUMBER HERE].”
9. Whoa.
10. Click through, confirm that indeed, this is a blog written by residents of a space where I once [MANY, MANY STORIES REDACTED HERE FOR MANY GOOD REASONS].
11. Click on link to the Facebook page for said blog, post on their wall to say hello.

WHAT’S NEXT, INTERNET? DO I DARE LOOK AT THE TUMBLR TAG FOR MY HIGH SCHOOL? 

The Times of India carries this front page advertisement in its Madras edition today, in response to The Hindu‘s video campaign which was a response to The Times‘ insinuation in an earlier TVC that the “Mount Road Mahavishnu ” put readers to sleep.

Also read: Good morning, it’s time to go back to bed

How Hindu aimed at Times but shot DNA

Times readers affluent, not middle class. Mind it.

Yemen Times is today launching a new website and has begun to restore its archive after technical difficulties resulted in it being taken offline last year.

The independent English-language newspaper’s site suffered technical problems, resulting in data loss involving the organisation’s digital archive of news dating back to 1997.

“This was especially heart breaking,” said Yemen Times publisher and editor-in-chief Nadia al-Sakkaf in a release.

2011 was a time when the world wanted to know more about Yemen with the Arab spring and the deaths of Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaqi.

Despite the technical difficulties with the site, al-Sakkaf, who has an MSc in information systems management, and journalists on the ground in Sana’a, Taiz, Aden and Hodeida, reported on the political situation in the May 2011 leadership crisis in Yemen.

“We write news in a neutral and professional way. However the world did not know,” said al-Sakkaf in the release.

In a time of technology and web 3.0 if you are not online, you don’t exist. Being online is not just having a functional website, it is also about traffic and how many people read your news.

This new website is like a rescue boat. Now we are at last visible, and can recover our old database manually.

The new site is based on open source software Newscoop made by Sourcefabric, which is also behind radio platform Airtime which al-Sakkaf plans to use in to broadcast news firstly via an online station and eventually creating Yemen’s first independent FM station.

Under al-Sakkaf, Yemen Times has published several books such as Breaking the Stereotype, a book on Yemeni women’s experience as political candidates in elections.

In 2008 the Huffington Post’s Magda Abu-Fadil said of al-Sakkaf, who is also a TED speaker, “her stride is fast, her energy seems boundless, she seeks reforms, she’s bold, she’s articulate, she’s young, and she has her own newspaper in Yemen to use as a platform for action.”Similar Posts:

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Forget Facebook, says media boss Rupert Sawyer, we want you to share your trailer-tastic show ideas with us on YouTube

Memo: To all staff at Channel 8

From: Rupert Sawyer, chief executive

Subject: Let's face(book) facts, the future online is in video.

Channel 8 has always been an early adopter of new technology and a trailblazer for the best innovations across television, publishing and in our online businesses.

I am proud that we are still the only television channel in the world to issue all our programming on both Laserdisc and 8-track formats. I'm tickled pink that Tosspot TV is the only special interest programmer to offer fully biodegradable disposable groin attachments to subscribers, and I cannot tell you how delighted we all should be with the stereoscopic 3D pages of All-Right magazine.

But, in order to move with the times in the 21st century, I understand that a company must be fully hooked up with the social networks. Already a regular Twitter user, with many tens of loyal followers, it was with intrigue, excitement and some trepidation that I built my first Facebook page after learning of the company's $100bn valuation – surely 845 million users can't be wrong?

"If you build it, he will come," whispered the wind in Kevin Costner's informative 1989 documentary Field of Dreams – well, maybe that's true in Idaho cornfields (and on Tosspot TV), but not on Facebook. Despite my obvious CEO celebrity status, my extremely well-furnished Facebook page has barely been touched by fact fiddlers.

Why is that, Rupert? No, it's not because people are snubbing my witty retorts and insightful media commentary – it is simply because Facebook is rubbish.

I ask you, what self-respecting business would float on the stock market with a letter from its boss who personally owns more than a quarter of the firm – and is happy with $500,000-a-year in pay, saying "we don't build services to make money …" and believe "people want to use services from companies that believe in something beyond simply maximising profits"? Good luck with selling those shares.

Compare this sentiment to the Channel 8 prospectus – and my own cool £1.25m per annum package – that simply promises: "We'll double your money in a year or we'll give you a blender" and I think it's now fairly clear why only half the people signed up are actually using Facebook daily.

However, I do have something to thank Mr Zuckerberg and company for – if it wasn't for discovering how little time I have for their social network, I would never have discovered another fine online property, YouTube, and then had a brainwave …

What are we? We're the peoples' channel, Rupert, I hear you cry. But how can you call yourself the peoples' network when you don't let Joe Public make programmes? I couldn't agree more.

And so, with this in mind, I am excited to announce a brand new Channel 8 project – Trailer Idol.

No longer will the shows that our viewers see be dictated by the few, they will be created by the many. Unlike the BBC, who tax honest hard-working folk only to force worthy dramas and low-budget game shows down their throats like foie gras-ready geese, Trailer Idol will be a true meritocracy, I'm inviting anyone with a good idea# (and access to a computer) to send in trailers*, up to a minute long for show ideas – and if we like them, we'll make them into full programmes and screen them across our network.

Take a look at a few of the ideas we've already received, I'm sure you'll be suitably impressed and inspired. Catch this explosive C8 trailer, or this on our news coverage, a flavour of our new ground-breaking observational documentary, and The Max Factor, a take on the reality show revolution.

So, it's over to you – my staff, my viewers, and a few left-leaning pseudo-intellectuals (once the Guardian hacks my email again and publishes this message).

All you need to do is upload your videos to YouTube and then pop them on my brand new Facebook page (I've left the wall open for you) … remember to keep checking back throughout the week to see just how much talent Britain/Vietnam has … I think you'll be surprised.

The very best of luck!

Happy uploading, Rupert

* by submitting a video you give up all rights to the show, its concept and content to the Channel 8 Television Corporation. You may also be asked for a non-refundable contribution towards production costs.

# please do not upload content ideas intended for Tosspot TV online. These films should be sent direct to Rupert Sawyer, Floor 52, Channel 8 Plaza, Ha Noi, Vietnam.

I’m at NewsRewired again doing a bit of live(-ish) blogging about some of the talks that I find interesting.

Everyone wants to be The Economist because it has managed to increase both its print and digital subs over the last few years, and unlike most publishers, it has see its readership and revenue grow through the recession. Speaking at Journalism.co.uk’s NewsRewired conference*, he gave some insights into its success.

In the current environment, for any publication that acts like a filter the noisier the media environment gets the better you do.

Standage also sees The Economist brand this way that if someone was stranded on a desert island and had to choose one publication so that they believe they are informed that they would choose The Economist. That’s a great statement of how The Economist sees itself.

Their attitude to digital is that it is not a zero-sum game. About a third of their print readers are also using their digital apps. From their own market research, they realised that they needed to cater to their readers who wanted a digital experience for two reasons.

1. Readers see digital as more convenient. The biggest reason that readers give when they cancel their print subscription to The Economist is that they don’t have enough time to read it.
2. In their own market research, currently, readers prefer print to digital by a ratio of 80% to 20%, but asking them what they will prefer in two years.

Standage says:

We sell this content bundle, this feeling of being informed when you get to the end of it. That is what we sell. That is essentially the proposition. You can still sell this in a mobile environment.

Some observations: How many other publications have the clarity about what they provide? How many other publications have the clarity of the value proposition they offer?

Standage also gives us this nugget of golden insight. In the past, The Economist’s archive was hidden behind a paywall. The result:

Before 98% of our content was invisible to Google.

They have shifted to metered paywall similar to the Financial Times and the replicated by the New York Times. Any reader on the web gets 5 stories a week free to read. The Economist’s traffic actually went up. Some pay for a digital only subscription, but print subscribers get access to the digital content.

The metered paywall plus all access to print subs is a great model. You get users used to paying for digital.

He added this caveat. “This will not work for everyone. You need to know who your readers are.” He said that such a model would be difficult for The Guardian that sells most of their print copies through newsstands, and he said that The Guardian  doesn’t know about its readers. The Telegraph is starting to build a database of reader information, but he sees The Guardian as behind in this effort. (Any Guardian folk want to take issue with that?)

He closed by saying that there is not one new model but many new models. However, we’re beginning to find some ideas that work. They might require a change to your publishing business – especially in getting to know your readers much more – but we have some elements of a working model.