Microsoft’s New Bing TV Advertisement for the UK
Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine, has just launched its first UK TV advert. Its an interesting ad, but doesn’t seem very inventive.
Archive for the ‘News’ Category
Retweet Has Been Sold for Buy It Now Price of $250,000: Quite Cheap
Yesterday Retweet.com found a buyer for their site at a “buy it now” price of $250,000. Retweet is just a Tweetmeme clone, but still surprisingly has some great pageview numbers, 26 million pageviews last month to be exact.
After looking at these numbers I really think the “buy it now” price of $250,000 was quite cheap and if I had that kind of money spare Im sure I would have purchased Retweet. Retweet is of course a great domain with a site that is performing ok, but it still lacks a real identity or brand (but this could be easily changed). Mainly, the based upon the pageviews of 26 million it would only take approximately 10 months for the new owner to get their money back based upon a $1.00 CPM which is very achievable.
b5media Restructure and Sack All Blogger and even Problogger, All in Favour of Glam Partnership
b5media have been is the news a lot lately but for all the wrong reasons. It seems as though b5media has dropped all of its women bloggers from contracts.
Inquisitr also reported that b5media has also dropped their most popular sites owned by Darren Rowse (b5media co-founder) Problogger and Digital Photography School.
The new b5media strategy seems to be with former Gaweker editor Elizabeth Spiers and it seems to be focused around celeb/fashion with Crushable and The Gloss. After inspecting both sites it seems as though b5media has partnered with Glam for advertising, which based around the fashion industry will bring in decent eCPM rates. These new fashion eCPM rates are going to be a lot higher than their current sites, so in theory they only need to receive lower traffic numbers.
Verizon and the NFL Will Stream All NFL Games Next Season onto Mobile Phones
The National Football League and Verizon Wireless has partnered with a mobile distribution deal that will bring live NFL games onto phones at the start of next season.
The paid service will work on BlackBerrys and Android phones. Verizon hasn’t set prices for service, but an announcement is expected in weeks.
More from the WSJ: The deal marks a significant shift in strategy for the NFL, which has never before allowed mobile access to its games on Sunday afternoons. Doing so was long considered by broadcasters to be a threat to the NFL’s golden goose—its Sunday afternoon broadcasts that generate some $1.4 billion in license fees from News Corp.’s Fox and CBS Corp’s. CBS, whose executives have said they will keep a close eye on the impact of mobile distribution on their ratings.
Verizon’s four-year deal, which they took over from Sprint, is reportedly worth about $720 million.
Canadians Can Now Watch Ice Hockey Night Streamed Live on the Net for Free
After the winning the gold medal at the 2010 Winter Olympics, Canada has again beaten the USA when it comes to Ice Hockey. Canadians can now watch Hockey Night in Canada streamed live on the Yahoo Canada site for the rest of the season.
The Yahoo-CBC deal runs from this Saturday through the Stanley Cup Playoffs, including live playoff games. They’re not disclosing financial details and I haven’t been able to confirm whether any money is actually changing hands or if ad rev share is involved. Release.
Minimalist Lego Homage to Disney/Pixar’s ‘Up’
Teensy little Lego vignette by Peter Aoun.
via Brothers Brick and Albotas.
New York Times Advertise on Rival Gothamist
The New York Times and Gothamist have united over content and advertising opportunities.
In early February, the two news organizations got into an online battle in which Gothamist publisher and co-founder Jake Dobkin blasted the New York Times for “sucking on the teat of some old rich guy (or heir).”
But now, the New York Times is prominently advertising on the Gothamist site. Interesting!
Google Becomes Default Search Engine for T-Mobile. Goodbye Yahoo!
It has been reported over at MocoNews that Yahoo! has been dropped by T-Mobile in favour of Google. The default search engine on the Motorola Backflip will be Google.
Yahoo will continue to provide some content services like mail, messenger, and news on certain phones, but the company confirmed to MocoNews that they are no longer providing search results to T-Mobile USA phones.
Google already had a deal in place to provide search results via their default status on all of T-Mobile’s line of Android phones. However, AT&T raised eyebrows this week when it opted to replace the built-in Google search functions in Android in favor of Yahoo! search. The very premise of Android is that it should increase Google’s position among the mobile search market. However, Android’s open-source nature means that companies are not obligated to make Google the default search engine on Android phones.
It’s unclear how profitable mobile search deals can be for search engines, but they are very enticing for carriers. How enticing? Well, Microsoft paid Verizon $500 million for the privilege of making Bing the default search engine on Verizon-branded devices. That’s big money for a small device.
Apple iPad Commercial Debuts During Oscars
Apple’s iPad made its TV advertising debut at the Oscars a few minutes ago. Here’s the clip (via Engadget and Alley Insider):
Wedding Invitation with a 8-bit Video Game
“We are geeks. We love video games. Why not have a video game invite?” said Darina when offbeatbride.com asked her about how they came up with the amazing idea to use a 8-bit video game as their wedding invitations.
Here’s how it works, the invitations include the video game that has a two-player choice, you can decide to be either the bride or the groom. And the goal in this Mario-Bros-Type video game is to go through the entire level and you’ll see all the wedding info.
Here’s the gamplay of Niko’s and Darina’s wedding game:
And even more, you can download the game from this link and see it for yourself.
Should I say “I love it!!” or you already got the idea?
Facebook Revenues for 2010 and Predicted To Go Public in 2011
The WSJ’s Jessica Vascellaro has a long profile on Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, and the forthcoming IPO.
Here are the highlights:
- Mark confirms that Facebook is going public, but not for a while
- Accel partner Jim Bryer says that the IPO won’t be in 2010 (read: 2011)
- Facebook expects to do between $1.2 billion and $2 billion of revenue this year
- Employees are agitating for an IPO to cash in, but the private-market sale plan mollified them somewhat
- Facebook got around the rule the forced Google to disclose its financials (having more than 500 shareholders) by switching to restricted stock units instead of options. Now employees won’t become shareholders until the company goes public.
- Mark is worried (justifiably) that going public will reduce the company’s flexibility
- Mark used to end meetings by thrusting his fist in the air and leading employees through a chant of “domination!” Someone hurried to tell the WSJ that this was a joke. Mark stopped doing it after he was advised that it was ridiculous and that some people might not think it was a joke. We doubt it was a joke (“jokes” like this get old quickly).
- Mark started wearing a tie instead of a t-shirt recently because “This is a serious year.”
- Mark is a micro-manager who has recently begun to step back and focus on broader strategic issues.
- Yale professor Jeff Sonnenfeld says Facebook is at the point where some companies blow up because the founders are “too sure of themselves.” Facebook, Prof. Sonnenfeld says, “is at a crossroads where we have to see if Mark can build a team strong enough to challenge him.”
- Mark used to brag about his ability to delay gratification
- Mark’s Mom calls him “Princely”
Skype Now Available for Free Download on All Nokia Phones
Skype has announced a partnership with Nokia. The plan is to integrate Skype onto all Nokia devices. Although Nokia devices were able to get a default Skype client it is only now that it is finally made available for majority of Nokia’s smartphones – specifically those running on Symbian ^1.
Skype for Symbian will let you to use Skype even while on the move, either through WiFi, GPRS, EDGE or 3G. Skype for Symbian is now available for download at the Nokia Ovi Store and you can install it on your smartphone if it belongs to the following long list of Nokia devices that support it:
Nokia N97, Nokia N97 mini, Nokia X6, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and Nokia 5530 and the following non-touch devices: Nokia E72, Nokia E71, Nokia E90, Nokia E63, Nokia E66, Nokia E51, Nokia N96, Nokia N95, Nokia N95 8Gb, Nokia N85, Nokia N82, Nokia N81, Nokia N81 8 Gb, Nokia N79, Nokia N78, Nokia 6220 classic, Nokia 6210 Navigator, Nokia 5320.
If your current Nokia phone is any of those devices listed, then you can enjoy the following features of Skype on your device:
- Make free Skype-to-Skype calls to other Skype users anywhere in the world
- Save money on calls and texts (SMS) to phones abroad.
- Send and receive instant messages to and from individuals or groups
- Share pictures, videos and other files.
- Receive calls to their existing online number
- See when Skype contacts are online and available to call or IM
- Easily import names and numbers from the phone’s address book
Of course before you go on a Skype holiday, make sure that you are subscribe to an unlimited data plan, since even though Skype-to-Skype call is free, you are still using up air time of your mobile carriers.
You may download Skype for Symbian by following this link.
