Media News - Friday, July 18, 2008

Telegraph to unveil new-look website

Telegraph Media Group is to roll out an overhauled website next week - the first major project to be produced through the publisher's new innovation lab after six months of development. The innovation lab, which combines teams from the editorial, technical and commercial departments, is designed to speed up development of new products and services. Developed in response to focus group feedback, the aim of the new telegraph.co.uk design is to encourage users to view more stories during each visit. At present each user views an average of 16 pages a month. Changes to the site include a more prominent main picture in each article, a more spacious story layout, an A-Z navigation tool and more links to related content. The left-hand column has been removed to make way for more editorial, with navigation simplified in a horizontal bar at the top of the page. News, sport and travel sections will launch first, with feedback informing the development of other content. The Telegraph Media Group also announced this week an enterprise deal with Google that will offer web-based calendars, e-mail, collaborative office documents and customisable search pages for all company staff through Google Apps Premier Edition. (The Guardian)

Bookmark this : | Listen to this article | Sphere: Related Content

The devil wears online video

Vogue magazine isn’t about displaying cheap knockoffs. In keeping with its expensive tastes, the magazine’s Vogue.tv video site is prepping a $3 million, 12-episode reality series called Model.Live. With eight minutes per show, WSJ calculates, that’s $31,000 for each minute. Contrast that with the average online video, which Forrester says generally costs around $4,500. Of course, most online video series can’t attract big commitments from marketers like clothing retailer Express LLC, which is said to have agreed to pay something in the “low seven figures” to be Model.Live’s lead sponsor. In return, the Conde Nast property has promised Express it will receive 83.4 million impressions on Bebo.com during the three-month life of the series. And though that number is hard to measure, Express is willing to take the gamble. The company felt comfortable after working on a much smaller video series with Ford Models last year, garnering two million hits after the modeling agency ran the videos on its own site. So whether or not Vogue.tv can fulfill its guarantee on how many users will view the ad, Express should be able to get greater exposure greater, as Model.Live will also run on Hulu, Veoh and AOL’s community site Bebo.com, which aims to connect viewers with the series’ stars. (PaidContent)

Bookmark this : | Listen to this article | Sphere: Related Content

YouTube partners with TiVo

Just what the television industry needs, increased competition from those wacky YouTube videos that 68 million people watch every month. Only now, it will be easier than ever to view them on television screens. Beginning Thursday, TiVo offers thousands of its subscribers the ability to stream YouTube videos onto their television sets through their broadband-enabled TiVo boxes. It's TiVo's first deal for streaming online content, though the company has partnerships with 60 Internet sites that provide content to TiVo. Unlike with those relationships, TiVo users won't be able to store YouTube video clips, just watch them and bookmark them for easy retrieval later. According to Nielsen//NetRatings, YouTube attracted 68 million unique users in May who streamed 3.8 billion videos, making it by far the most popular video brand on the Internet. Fox Interactive Media, which includes MySpace, was second with 18 million unique users and 328 million video streams. (Yahoo!)

Bookmark this : | Listen to this article | Sphere: Related Content

Revamped Last.fm boasts ‘smartest’ ads on the web

A new type of web advertising that interacts with the site on which it appears is to make its debut on Last.fm, the social music site. Last.fm, which announces a major relaunch today, will start showing advertising that can tap into the community features of the site, making adverts more engaging, the site said. An example of the new "smart" adverts displays an image of a mobile phone handset which changes according to what the Last.fm user is doing. For instance, if someone is listening to Bon Jovi, the phone would appear to start playing a Bon Jovi track, showing off its MP3 player. Hotel chains will be able to tap into a Last.fm user's list of favourite artists and display adverts for hotels in cities where those artists have upcoming gigs. Train companies, similarly, will be able to advertise services running to other music-based events that may be of interest to the user. Based in London, Last.fm has more than 1.5 million users in Europe, according to Nielsen Online, 10 percent of which are in the UK. The site was bought by CBS, the US television network, for $280 million in May last year. (Times Online)

Bookmark this : | Listen to this article | Sphere: Related Content

Israelis allowed to watch Olympics on Sabbath

Israelis will be able to watch broadcasts from the Olympic Games in Beijing even on the Sabbath. A special agreement has been reached between the country’s broadcast authorities and employees, which details how TV studios can be used on weekends during the Olympics. Studios will be opened for one-third of their capacity on the Sabbath. Statements from both sides note the importance of the step, adding that such flexibility will allow further reforms and restructuring of the industry. The Olympics will be broadcast through TV, radio, Internet, cellular network and the VoD system. (Russia Today)

Bookmark this : | Listen to this article | Sphere: Related Content

Report: Mobile Internet use has reached “critical mass”

Using the Internet from mobile devices is a lot more popular than some of us realize, and even more surprising is the fact that the US leads the pack when it comes to mobile Internet usage. That's the gist of some new data from a new report form Nielsen Mobile, "The Worldwide State of the Mobile Web," which says that adoption of the mobile web has reached a critical mass and can now support "large-scale mobile marketing efforts." Nielsen says that, as of May 2008, 15.6 percent of mobile subscribers in the US make regular use of the mobile Internet on their devices, totaling some 40 million subscribers. This is just a subset of the 95 million US mobile subscribers who pay for access to the mobile Internet (through data plans or some other setup) but don't use it quite so regularly. The UK and Italy weren't far behind, with 12.9 percent and 11.9 percent actively using the 'Net on their mobile devices. It should be noted, however, that while the US may lead in mobile Internet use, other countries lead in terms of mobile being the primary way that their population gets online. In Russia, Brazil, and India, mobile lines far outnumber landlines, and as those countries continue to flourish, they will become a greater driving force in mobile Internet use. (Arts Technica)

Bookmark this : | Listen to this article | Sphere: Related Content

• Home |
• Seminars  |
• Events |
• Media Landscape |
• Newsroom|
• Media News|
• Resources

Terms of service and Privacy policy.

Copyright © 1992-2007 European Journalism Centre. All rights reserved.

Valid XHTML and CSS.

European Journalism Centre

Sonneville-lunet 10
6221KT Maastricht
The Netherlands

Tel. : +31 43 325 40 30
Fax : +32 2 400 42 20

E-mail: info[at]ejc.net