The Messaging Times

AOL IS ACTIVE on the Internet monopoly board again agreeing yesterday to purchase Weblogs, home of more than 85 blog-hosting websites. While no price for the sale has been confirmed, most reports suggest a cool $25 Million.

I wonder if they’d be interested in The Messaging Times?

Full Story: NY Times (you might need to register to view full articles)

Spymedia LAUNCHED an online photo-journalism site that aims to protect citizen and professional photographers from copyright abuse. The surge of independent news reporting on the Internet continues, and many bloggers today focus on current events with local, national and international perspectives. One concern that Internet users have during these times is the lack of copyright protection for content, especially as RSS syndication of material becomes more and more popular. During October, all news-photo uploads on the site are free.

Read BBC News for more information about Spy Media’s project.

YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED that the functionality of the Internet is undergoing a resurgence. Today, it’s all about creating social networks, collaborating, tagging, blogging, RSS, podcasts and other interactive ventures. Resulting from this new approach to the Internet are new products like 37signals’ newest contribution; Writeboard. Writeboard is a new collaborative document-sharing utility that makes online document management easy by tracking revisions as they are made and never permitting overwrites to previous revisions or the original. The best part of it is that, like so many Internet services today, it’s FREE!
Thanks guys!

CARMA International, Inc., A LEADING MEDIA CONTENT ANALYSIS FIRM has launced a new service for measuring the interaction with journalists against media measurement results. The CARMA JRM (Journalist Relationship Management) System allows users to track and measure relationships with journalists by comparing media relations activities with earned media coverage.

“CARMA’s JRM System helps communication professionals measure the return on their investment of time and money in media relations activities by providing concrete data about what’s working and what’s not with key journalists,� said CARMA founder Albert Barr. “By integrating relationship management software with media measurement, CARMA Online helps leading organizations streamline PR services with one platform for both activity tracking and measurement.�

JEREMY ALLAIRE, founder of Brightcove, has created an online channel for video broadcasting. The service has already attracted interest from several dozen production companies, to include Viacom and A&E television networks, who are testing the platform for commercial use. Mr. Allaire developed the website design app ColdFusion back in the 1990s and later sold the company to Macromedia, where he was assigned as Chief Technical Officer helping to develop Flash. This new project plans to revolutionize online multimedia efforts.

“We’re letting producers reach 300 million people instantly with high-quality video content and they don’t have to sign a contract,” Mr. Allaire said. “We say, ‘Use it, and if you are successful we are successful.’”

Smaller production companies are also set to benefit from improved video integration on the Internet. Using online advertising models and video commercials, an Internet video operation can stay in the black with as few as 100,000 subscribers. Traditional television production required millions of viewers to keep a program running. Small independent producers, however, don’t feel that they need a platform like Brightcove to be successful.

ChannelBlast recently launched its first program, NewzViewz, an interactive public affairs program. They are running videos directly on their own site. The executive producer of ChannelBlast, Mark Lipsky, said that they don’t need a supporting platform like Brighcove. “Our distribution is the Internet,” he said; “Two to three years from now, we will be able to compete with any television network, but we will be global and they won’t be.”

They might be right. Josh Bernoff, an analyst with Forrester, said, “The advertising model is extremely simple and very attractive: you simply put your 30-second commercial in front of the video.” “Advertisers are paying $25 per thousand users who see their online commercials, more than they pay for network television.â€? he said.