Time Out is selling its New York edition for $40 million (£26.8 million) after its investors pushed for a return on their 13-year investment—the magazine's founder Tony Elliot wants to hold on the mag but can't afford to buy them out. He tells Times Online that a TONY sale will take place for the right price, but "if somebody offers $10 million, it won't happen". TONY's investors ploughed in a good deal of capital to set up the magazine in 1995—The Times puts it at between $10 million and $30 million—but Elliot has not found a way, or the money,...
Eco Factor: O2 launches energy-efficient universal charger. A research conducted by O2 states that about £30 million worth of electricity is wasted every year in the UK just because of the improper use of cellphone chargers. The same amount of electricity is saved can prevent tons of CO2 from being released in the atmosphere. Answering the need for energy-efficient chargers, O2 has launched a new universal charger that saves about 70 percent electricity and can charge almost any phone model that is currently available in the market. The charger meets the energy efficiency guidelines set by the US Energy...
If you thought Randall Stross’ attack on Tesla yesterday was in poor taste, wait until you read what Michael Wolff has to say about MySpace. In a dinner interview with BusinessWeek columnist Jon Fine, Wolff says: …if you’re on MySpace now, you’re a [expletive] cretin. And you’re not only a [expletive] cretin, but you’re poor. Nobody who has beyond an 8th grade level of education is on MySpace. It is for backwards people. That’s just part of a much longer interview in which Wolff goes into detail on exactly why he thinks MySpace will go the way of AOL. He...
I received the below email from "3 Dog Agency" which is "eager to fill me in their new strategy to conquer social publishing" because "she is a huge fan of Wired Magazine". Om Malik received the same email and call: Haroon Mokhtarzada, CEO of Webs, you may want to check how your PR agency is helping you, unless the whole purpose is to get buzz around how to handle PR... ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Loic, I am writing to see if I can grab a few minutes of your time next week to take a call or meet for coffee...
After a great London SEO event the night before at the Freemasons Arms, it was somewhat surprising to see such a packed room first thing in the morning. Rob Kerry from Ayima who organised the previous evening’s social event was up bright and breezy moderating this first session of the day. After a light-hearted introduction from Rob, the first person up to present was Lyndon Antcliff. Lyndon Antcliff – www.cornwallseo.com Lyndon talked the audience through a particularly well-known viral news story he worked on this year. The case study was a ‘13 year old credit card fraud story’. He dissected...
by Michelle Lentz Magnify.net is a service that allows you to create your own video channel, showcasing videos from across the Web, as well as your own Webcam captures. Magnify offers a free version and a more in-depth Pro version for content enthusiasts, online communities, and small businesses. Additionally, Magnify offers an Enterprise version for larger corporations. For most of us though, Free is all we need. The free version allows you to build your channel, capture videos from your webcam, find videos from the more popular video sharing sites, and social networking integration. There is also an ad inventory...
When you think that Sarah Palin and Janet Napolitano are both governors of Western States, for a moment it doesn't compute. Janet Napolitano was a summa cum laude graduate of Claremont, attended University of Virginia Law School, and was Attorney General of Arizona before becoming Governor. How do I know this? Because I just came home from a talk Napolitano gave at the Ivy Council of Phoenix, at which everyone was wearing name tags with the names of their colleges on them, and the education credentials of both the Governor and the participants in the Q&A session that followed were...
LinkedIn, the business social network, has surged to 30 million profiles, most of them for business people with titles of director or higher. Still, a lot of people get their LinkedIn accounts, expand their networks, then wonder what to do with it. Chuck Hester, communications director for email company iContact, is a LinkedIn power user and author of an upcoming book on the social network. In this FIR Interview, Chuck explores the various ways LinkedIn can serve a communicator in his or her work. Listen to this podcast now: Get this podcast: Download the MP3 file (10.1Mb, 22:06) Get the...
After much talk about experimenting with live streaming video, YouTube dipped its toe in the water on the weekend, with a much-hyped event (at least in blogosphere terms) called YouTube Live, featuring some of the “cewebrities” that have emerged on YouTube over the past year or two — including Tay “Chocolate Rain” Zonday, LisaNova and Chad Vader, as well as a few big-name entertainment-industry stars like Katy Perry and Will.i.am. The show had the feel of an awards show, although it was one featuring stars most people probably wouldn’t recognize. So was it a success for YouTube? That depends...
Germany-based business networking service Xing today announced its CEO Lars Hinrichs will step down and be replaced by Ebay Germany head Stefan Gross-Selbeck effective January 15, 2009. Hinrichs founded the company in 2003 and led it to an IPO three years later at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange where the market cap is currently hovering at around $182 million. (Which is a fraction of LinkedIn’s reported $1 billion private valuation). He will join Xing’s supervisory board as a consultant. We asked about the reasons for his withdrawal, mainly bringing up Xing’s recent performance and the increasing encroachment of LinkedIn in...
The Knicks’ plan is clear, wait until July 2010 and then sign LeBron James and possibly Chris Bosh or another superstar as well. The problem is there is a lot of work left to be done to realize that plan. The Knicks will enter the 2010-11 season with four players under contract: Eddy Curry, Jared Jeffries, Wilson Chandler and Danilo Gallinari. That gives the Knicks plenty of space under the salary cap, but it is hardly the makings of a good team and that is what is most important to LeBron. Just this week James said, "When I decide to...
How successful does Twilight look like it's going to be? Try "Very." Thursday's midnight opening grossed around $7 million, which was above estimates, but is that because everyone is estimating it based upon the wrong guidelines? It's a definite possibility - especially when you find out what movie was used for comparison purposes. Box office tracking site Box Office Mojo wasn't alone in comparing Twilight's midnight haul to that of Sex and The City, earlier this year. That movie, which earned $2.5 million during its midnight premiere, was chosen as a comparison because both movies are "event movies for women"...
Earlier this month I spoke with FreeWebs CEO & Co-Founder Haroon Mokhtarzada about how FreeWebs was doing and what updates were in the pipeline. The first bit of news that Haroon shared was that they planned to rebrand the site into Webs.com. Webs began operations in 2001 and raised a round of funding in 2006. Haroon shared that the company has 30 million monthly unique visitors and 20,000 new site signups each day. The other big update that Haroon and I discussed was the launch today of their "social publishing platform". The updated platform includes a mailing list tool...
