John Battelle interviews Barry Diller at FM’s 2012 Conversational Media Summit

In today’s Signal, Barry Diller’s IAC  top Google’s returns; Facebook’s IPO gets its…er, close up; Ross Levinsohn wants to position Yahoo as more of a media company than a technology company; the Huffington Post tests the content creation waters; and much more.

To the links…

Diller Beats Google With Top Web Stock: Riskless Return (Bloomberg) Billionaire Barry Diller’s IAC delivered the best returns of any Internet media company worldwide, trumping Google Inc. and Baidu Inc. Diller, who has spent decades in media and entertainment, was interviewed by our own John Battelle last week at the FM’s Conversational Media Summit. Grab a front-row seat to their conversation here.

Facebook IPO Equality Under Scrutiny, Merriman Says (Bloomberg) This is just one of dozens of pieces about what has become a very rough debut for Facebook.

Yahoo Becomes Media Company Under New CEO (Reuters) Yahoo is hoping that Ross Levinsohn, its new interim chief executive, can turn the company into a digital entertainment destination that wins back the advertising dollars flowing elsewhere.

Social Media Marketer Vitrue Has Been Bought By Oracle For $300 Million (TechCrunch) Oracle’s acquisition of Vitrue will give it a strong Facebook marketing platform to offer its enterprise clients. Beating out several bidders, Oracle will instantly gain a massive list of notable clients.

The Huffington Post Wants to Help Brands Create Their Own Content Sites (AdAge) In an effort to expand the way it works with brands and cash in on the popular brand-as-publisher trend, HuffPost has been talking to agencies (Razorfish, specifically) and marketers about helping them build websites for brands, and subsequently aiding in content creation, curation and distribution to consumers. Plus…

HuffPost Names First Publisher Amid AOL Moves (AdAge) The appointment of Janet Balis as the Huffington Post Media Group’s first publisher is a sign that AOL is making a series of changes that seem designed, in part, to restructure the company in a way that makes individual content brands within the AOL portfolio more responsible for their businesses.

Battle of the Digital Brands: Ford vs. GM (Digiday) As solid templates for other brands in the social world, both GM and Ford understand the power of the social world, and each uses Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in creative ways. But Ford wins out, says Digiday, because of its social hub, Ford Social, where people congregate to connect on all things Ford.

Sears Marketer: The Big Idea is Dead (Digiday) Ian Gomar, CMO of sporting goods, fitness & toys at Sears Holdings, believes that retailers need to think about being wherever consumers are, both from a marketing and a commerce perspective: “Everything starts with small ideas that start in a social community and then developing the big idea from the small ideas. … It’s about solution-based content; it’s habitual. … Create a gravitational pull. Make people habitually come back to your site or Facebook page. Be a voice, but don’t try to control the community.”

Seven Things Ad Tech People Have Been Saying For the Last Five Years That Are Total BS (Kirby Winfield) Have a read, and then let us know below if you agree, disagree or have something to add to the list.

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Hello Signal readers, and forgive our hiatus. Last week’s CM Summit took a lot out of us, but we’re back, with a longer version of Signal today. Much to catch up on, including how ‘Mommy Bloggers’ earn influence; industries learn to balance expectations with privacy concerns that can threaten online business models; a look at how post-IPO culture challenges will effect the future of Facebook; why the golden age of Silicon Valley is (arguably) over; and, because we’re fresh off the 2012 Conversational Media Summit, a small taste of the press FM has received in the past few days.

To the links….

How Open Conversation Between Moms, Marketers Earns Influence (Forbes) “Moms who blog have become citizen journalists, and remarkably, the top 15 mom bloggers influence more people than the New York Times.” Exactly, and one knows this better than FM’s publishing partners — some of whom are featured in this piece: Cool Mom Picks, This Week for Dinner, Daily Buzz Moms, Sarah James, Doug French and John Pacini, and Helen Jane Hearn — and the driven folks who run our parenting vertical. Congratulations on a well-deserved focus to all the savvy individuals who contribute their talents and signature voices tirelessly to an incredibly powerful and influential media channel!

What FTC Privacy Scrutiny Means for Digital Media (Digiday) In this, the second article of its eight-part series, Digiday examines the issue of “Redefining Privacy” with Daren Orzechowski, a specialist in technology and data privacy and a partner at the international law firm White & Case.

Life after the Facebook IPO: What’s Next for Zuckerberg (Forbes) Elaine Pofeldt talks to Todd Vernon, CEO of FM’s Lijit Networks, about how FB’s Mark Zuckerberg will navigate some inherent challenges to the company culture after the excitement of an IPO.

‘The Golden Age of Silicon Valley Is Over, and We’re Dancing on its Grave’  (The Atlantic) Serial Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Blank believes that the Facebook IPO marks“the beginning of the end of the valley as we know it.” VC’s are dumping their life science divisions in favor of investing in social media, he notes. His is an interesting take on the demise of the Valley’s interest in solving the hard problems.

The endangered public company (The Economist)  The number of public listings has fallen dramatically over the past decade—by 38% in America since 1997 and 48% in Britain — and Facebook’s stock market flotation shines a light on those numbers and the problem with going public these days.

Twitter breaks into social TV dollars with ESPN deal (LostRemote) A strategic relationship between ESPN and Twitter to co-produce unique social experiences around larger sports events will allow advertisers to buy into both ESPN’s properties and the Twitter components in a single integrated buy. Video is the key to advertisers’ pocketbooks, it seems.

On Developing and Operating Content Marketing Platforms (Clickz) Creating a compelling content experience efficiently and at scale is more challenging than ever. Here’s Our very own Matt Jessell on how to successfully execute content marketing strategies.

Zuckerberg Receives Hoodie, Says “Our Mission Isn’t To Be A Public Company” In Pre-IPO Remarks (TechCrunch) Well, Mark, it is now. And, as the writer of this piece points out, “It’s going to be hard to convince investors to wait around” if Zuckerberg keeps making statements like these.

Facebook vs. Twitter (NYTBlog) Sure, the big difference between the two companies is the way they treat their customers’ privacy, but there’s much more to it than that. Twitter is inherently a public service, after all.

Google+ a Ghost Town as Brands Decamp for Pinterest (AdAge) Google’s +1s are no match for Pinterest’s Pins. ComScore data shows that the average Google+ user spends three minutes on the platform every month; the average time spent by each Pinterest user per month is 50 minutes.

Confessions of a DSP Salesperson (Digiday) Hype versus reality of programmatic buying, as seen from the perspective of a demand-side platform sales person: “Anyone that has not worked at a DSP or a trading desk, consider yourself lucky. It is the cesspool of our industry, with the DSPs racing towards an acquisition or IPO and the trading desks trying to validate themselves as valuable within the holding companies.”

Silicon Valley Can Do Better Than Facebook (TechCrunch)  Alexander Haislip, author of Essentials of Venture Capital, writes that Silicon Valley is at its best when it uses its unique combination of talent and capital to advance society, build better tools for creation, and unlock the potential of people across the globe.

Do You Want the Good News First? (NYTimes) It’s all about empowering the individual, according to Thomas L. Friedman. To grow as a country, we must preserve that trifecta of wisdom that’s come out of Silicon Valley and Seattle, the belief in that magic combination of cutting-edge higher education, government-funded research, and immigration of high-I.Q. risk-takers.

John Battelle — A Tech Zombie Interview (YouTube) John Battelle recently talked to students in the Social Media Optimization and the New Web class at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater about his vision of the future of social media, marketing a business online, Facebook “likes” vs. long-term engagement, and the importance of bringing value to an online audience.

Coverage and discussion associated with FMP’s CM Summit last week featured a wide number of leaders in the digital and tech space. Here are some of the highlights:

Coca-Cola’s New World of Marketing: Facebook + TV = Sales (Forbes)

Does digital advertising need its own operating system? (GigaOM)
Facebook IPO Colors Internet Week Diller down, ecosystem up on the stock (AdWeek)

Marketers Still Not ‘Jumping In’ to Digital (Internet Evolution)

Setting Down a Manifesto for Web Content (The Content Strategist)

Federated Media’s CM Summit 2012: ChasNote Round Up (ChasNote)

Conversational Marketing Summit 2012 (Slideshare)

Internet Week, Day 1 Live from CM Summit (ShareThis)

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Curtain Raiser: The CM Summit in NYC Next Week

As New York City gears up for its annual Internet Week, the team at FMP has been diligently working away on creating another stellar program for our 7th annual CM Summit, held this coming Monday and Tuesday in SoHo. The CM Summit is like our regional Signal events, but much bigger….

Last year we eliminated panels from our program, the move was met with great success – attendees love our fast-paced approach, which features short, high-value presentations from leaders in digital marketing and technology platforms, interspersed with conversations with CMOs from Fortune 500 brands and entrepreneurs driving change in digital.

Monday kicks off at 2pm with one of New York City’s media elites — Barry Diller of IAC, Expedia & Trip Advisor. Diller is more recently known for backing the controversial streaming video startup Aereo as well as high-flyer Pinterest. After his conversation, we move into a rapid fire succession of presentations including Joe Frydl, recently appointed SVP of Marketing at FMP, who sets the stage for this year’s theme with his talk on The Law of Content on the Web.

That’s a perfect segueway to our next speaker, Linda Descano, President & CEO of Women & Co., a service of Citi that brings together the voices of independent writers on relevant and thoughtful financial content. Linda is also a Managing Director and the Head of Digital Partnerships for North America Marketing at Citi, driving brand health and customer engagement goals.

After a deep focus on content, we move to the world of analytics with Amy Chang, Head of Product for Google Analytics, who will show and tell the Next Generation of Measurement. Amy is followed by Terence Kawaja of LUMA Partners, who gives his State of the State, a detailed look at today’s marketing landscape in line with the conference theme of Marketing from the 30,000-Foot View. Expect to laugh a few times….

Post refreshments, we continue with a series of conversations with Lisa Weinstein, President of Global Digital & Search at Starcom MediaVest Group; Sarah Bernard, Deputy Director of The White House Office of Digital Strategy; and Alfredo Gangotena, Chief Marketing Officer of MasterCard.

Day one’s sponsor spotlight is Luminate. CEO Bob Lisbonne takes us on a visual journey that highlights New Opportunities for Consumers, Publishers & Brands.

Tuesday, May 15th presents a full conference day that begins at 9am sharp with an intellectual and entertaining conversation with one of Silicon Valley’s most well-connected investors, Ron Conway of SV Angels. From there we move forward with a day centered around the industry’s major technology platforms with presentations from Microsoft, Twitter, Nokia, Tapjoy (a youthful yet successful startup that’s creating a marketplace for mobile games), Salesforce.com, and StumbleUpon.

Day two conversations feature:

• Heather Armstrong, mother, blogger and independent publisher of Dooce, one of Forbes’ Top 100 Websites for Women.

• Marc Speichert, Chief Marketing Officer at L’Oreal USA, not only responsible for driving and enhancing innovation for the company’s Consumer, Luxury, and Professional Products, as well as Active Cosmetics, in this role, Marc also runs Corporate Strategic Marketing, Media & Digital, and Consumer Market Intelligence.

• Jim Lanzone, President of CBS Interactive, on a discourse about the current and future state of premium video content and Internet video channels.

• Clara Shih, Founder of enterprise social media software company Hearsay Social and New York Times bestselling author of The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Market, Sell and Innovate. 

• Alison Lewis, who’s official title of SVP of Marketing for North America at The Coca-Cola Company really translates to being the force behind how one of America’s historic companies maintains its brand leadership.

To add a little visionary spice to the mix, I’ll also be interviewing Gil Elbaz, an accomplished entrepreneur and pioneer of natural language technology. As the CEO of Factual, Gil lives in “the data layer,” making data more accessible for machines, developers, and marketers.

Additional companies presenting include The Wyndham Hotel Group, Sharethrough, and Upworthy. These sessions help highlight how existing content around the web can create real business ROI with just the right amount of attention and curation.

Day two’s sponsor spotlight is Meebo. CEO Seth Sternberg will focus on how to Balance User Experience with Revenue Generation. 

We bring the event full circle with closing conversations by two well-respected figures in New York’s digital marketing community: Randall Rothenberg, President & CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), and Susan Sobbott, President of American Express OPEN.

This year the CM Summit has moved venues, and will be hosted at Skylight Soho (pic above), a creative and beautiful loft space custom-built to accommodate both CM Summit audiences, and the IAB conference which follows.

If you have not already done so, buy your tickets today, and we’ll see you at the CM Summit.

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It was a great run, but this year we decided to replace one Hudson for another…

This year CM Summit will be held at the Skylight Soho venue, 275 Hudson Street, situated between Broome and Spring on the West side of the street, corner of Dominick.

The team is on-site today working away at a custom build-out of the spacious venue, including a tented outdoor space for meals, networking and lounging, and a sponsor gallery that will actually match its aesthetics to the phrase.

It takes a monstrous number of people to put this together, and we’re having a ball in our ballroom to get this place ready for our executive audience.

And the end result will be fabulous, as FMP delivers nothing but the best.

If you will be joining us, please note that Hudson Street goes uptown, and if arriving by car, coming from the West side is best to avoid Holland Tunnel traffic!

Please take a look at the map below for more details.

Photo By Anonymous9000

In today’s Signal, John Battelle raises the curtain on next week’s CM Summit and also talks to Larry Lessig, who explains why those who celebrate the “free and open” net are in denial; Bravo celebrates 1M followers on Google+; Facebook’s got a new App Center; and brand videos are making a large impact on consumers.

To the links…

Curtain Raiser: The CM Summit in NYC Next Week (Searchblog) An overview of our crown jewel gathering in NYC next week.

BREAKING NEWS: Twitter Stands Up For One Of Its Users (ALU) Good to see Twitter standing up. Sad that it has to come to this.

Don’t Sleep on Google Plus (Digiday) Cable TV network Bravo recently trumpeted how it crossed 1 million followers on Google Plus. Bravo’s success story is one of a growing number. “The idea that Bravo is going to focus on who they are instead of chasing typical Google Plus audience has worked for Bravo,” says Noah Mallin, group director of social strategy at Digitas. “They are staying true to who they are as a brand, and sometimes that’s more powerful.”

App Discovery By Quality, Not Popularity: Facebook Announces App Center For Web, Mobile, Pre-Paid (TechCrunch) Facebook’s soon-to-launch App Center could usher in an age where your news feed is filled with apps you actually want to use — the ones with the highest customer ratings, engagement, session length, and voluntary sharing — not just those with the biggest marketing budgets. Lots of details inside.

Larry Lessig on Facebook, Apple, and the Future of “Code” (Searchblog) Our own John Battelle talks to Larry Lessig, author, lawyer, professor and, until recently, one of the leading active public intellectuals in the Internet space. Lessig believes that if we don’t realize the Internet is quite possibly the most regulatable technology ever invented, and if we don’t protect ourselves from that fact, we’re in for some serious pain down the road.

Brands are seeing a greater impact with online video, says 33Across (VentureBeat) The folks at 33Across reveal that they’re seeing “unprecedented levels of video viewership and social sharing habits” among consumers. An infographic provides a full rundown of consumer behavior across eight industries.

Publishers Get on Responsive Design Bandwagon (Digiday) How do you reach online audiences when each group requires a different version of the content you provide? Responsive Web design is one way. But for publishers that rely heavily on advertising and sponsorships for their revenues, it can be difficult to work those opportunities into a responsive site successfully.

The Morning Download: The Age of Mobile Is Upon Us (WSJ) People around the world are adopting mobile technology at a rate that’s somewhat astounding. More than 3.4B mobile coupons were redeemed globally in 2011, according to Juniper Research. WSJ editor Michael Hickins talks about why now is the time to start developing a mobile strategy of your own.

What Should We Call Social Media Extremely clever bits to make you smile on a Friday.

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If it suits your information consumption goals, sign up for Signal’s email newsletter or RSS feed on the Signal home page (upper right box).

And don’t forget to secure your spot at next week’s CM Summit, held May 14-15th in New York City. REGISTER today for one of the most exciting and connected digital marketing events of the year. Held in partnership with the IAB at Skylight Soho.

As New York City gears up for its annual Internet Week, the team at FMP has been diligently working away on creating another stellar program for our 7th annual CM Summit, held this coming Monday and Tuesday in SoHo.

Last year we eliminated panels from our program, the move was met with great success – attendees love our fast-paced approach, which features short, high-value presentations from leaders in digital marketing and technology platforms, interspersed with conversations with CMOs from Fortune 500 brands and entrepreneurs driving change in digital.

To get a full overview of the day and half program, please read John Battelle’s post on Searchblog here.

If you have not already done so, buy your tickets today, and we’ll see you at the CM Summit.

To the links…

On Thneeds and the “Death of Display” (BattelleMedia) Online display isn’t dead. It just needs to be rethought, re-engineered, and reborn. The hundreds of people working here at FM, at Lijit, and at a burgeoning ecosystem of companies are coming to realize it’s time to wake up from our “standard display” dream and create some new models, ones that honor and reward good content. It’s not the big platforms’ job to create that model – but it will be their job to not stand in the way of it.

NBC Plans Olympic-Size Test of Digital Limits (AdAge) NBC Sports is positioning itself to carry the torch, so to speak, for the promise of digital viewing. Ad Age notes that digital ad sales for the London Olympics have passed $55 million (more than double the digital revenue for Beijing). Plus, NBCS has struck a deal with YouTube and, as part of their agreement, YouTube is building a video player for NBCOlympics.com.

Dropbox Ran Afoul of Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines: So What? (Future of the Internet) Dropbox and others are discovering that iOS developers are entirely dependent on Apple’s whims. But Apple should be careful. If it breaks the Web for too long, the Web will route around it.

Agencies Ditch Blogs for Social Media (Digiday) Agencies tend to maintain blogs to highlight things like awards, hires and news, but some are casting their blogs aside in favor of social media platforms, feeding the misguided notion blogging does little to enhance their brands. Hey, agencies (and everyone else): Put Your Taproot Into the Independent Web!

Zuckerberg Kicks Off Facebook’s IPO Road Show in New York (Reuters) Investors waited in long lines on Monday to hear Mark Zuckerberg talk IPO at the Sheraton Hotel in Manhattan. He took (very few) questions about FB’s slowing revenue growth and its $1 billion Instagram purchase, but he did say that FB moved quickly to strike a deal when it became clear that Instagram was open to being acquired.

Facebook News Reader Apps Decline Amid Tests (TechCrunch) Facebook is in firm control of what apps and content types receive traffic from its news feed. It can dial up and down the presence of anything. In other words, what FB gives, it can take away. Sound familiar? If you were around in 2004, you’d have thought we’d be talking about Google.

Why Publishers Don’t Like Apps (Technology Review) Sure, apps are often pretty, but outsourcing their development is expensive and, most important, they don’t do what readers want and need them to do. This is an critical read, folks. Apple’s approach to the market doesn’t help independent voices.

Mozilla’s Mitchell Baker on Being the Alternative to Microsoft, Google and Apple (Wired) Mozilla chair Mitchell Baker explains why she thinks Mozilla’s new push to create a mobile operating system to rival Apple’s and Google’s matters just as much as Firefox did. The mobile implications of this bear watching, so we’ll be following up on developments.

Twitter ‘will be more valuable than Facebook’ (The Telegraph) Rory Sutherland, the vice-chairman of Ogilvy & Mather, finds Twitter’s 140-character “haiku element” so appealing that he “wouldn’t bet against it being more valuable [than Facebook] in the long term.” Is Twitter ‘intelligent’ enough to prove Sutherland right, or is it, as one commenter noted on the page, just a “useful headline feed”? We’ve got a sense it depends on which way the wind blows in those gardens we’ve been talking about…

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If it suits your information consumption goals, sign up for Signal’s email newsletter or RSS feed on the Signal home page (upper right box).

And don’t forget to secure your spot at the upcoming CM Summit, held May 14-15th in New York City. REGISTER today for one of the most exciting and connected digital marketing events of the year. Held in partnership with the IAB at Skylight Soho.

Huffington’s Role Shrinks at AOL (WSJ) AN interesting story developing here.

The Storytelling Animal: The Science of How We Came to Live and Breathe Stories (BP) A book we will be reading for sure.

Million Short: A Search Engine for the Very Long Tail (Wired) Worth checking out – almost like going back in time, when the web wasn’t dominated by the head end.

The Path from a Social Brand to a Social Business (Brian Solis) He’s speaking our language here, again.

Digital Content NewFronts marks an online milestone  (LAT) A focus on the largest players, but the new tradition is here to stay.

Article: For Brands, Social Media Shows Returns but Measurement Hurdles Remain (EM) Continuing coverage of our current fascination.

Tumblr At A Glance (DBT) A quick primer on the growing platform.

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If it suits your information consumption goals, sign up for Signal’s email newsletter or RSS feed on the Signal home page (upper right box).

And don’t forget to secure your spot at the upcoming CM Summit, held May 14-15th in New York City. REGISTER today for one of the most exciting and connected digital marketing events of the year. Held in partnership with the IAB at Skylight Soho.

In today’s Signal, native advertising takes center stage; Bing takes a spin on the retro train to Minimalist Town; and, thanks to AdInsight, the online/offline divide might get a bit smaller. To the links …

Defining Ads Down (Digiday) What constitutes an ad is changing, and there’s a lot of wordplay around the ad unit as content. “Featured stories,” “recommended articles,” and “trends” are now Silicon Valley euphemisms for ads. Is this just semantics, or something else? Whatever it is, we need to make sure we don’t lose transparency. Oh, and the right of the content creator to make money from his/her work.

Bing Goes Search-Retro With Cleaner Look For Results (SearchEngineLand) A big change is a ‘comin for Bing. In an effort to create a “fresh, de-cluttered experience designed to help you find the results you want faster” and to make the page “easier to scan,” Microsoft has started to roll out a simpler Bing. More on this soon, I’d wager.

AdInsight Raises $2.6M From Eden Ventures For AdTech That Bridges Online And Offline Analytics (TechCrunch)  AdInsight’s flagship product, AdInsight Clarity, is a proprietary solution that tracks how every single website visitor has found a company’s website, what pages they looked at when there, and at what point they picked up the phone to call the company. They’re tracking the missing link across the online/offline divide, and we’ll be watching closely.

The Big Doubt Over Facebook’s IPO (WSJ) With new features, such as its much-talked about Sponsored Stories, Facebook is pushing ad methods that haven’t been fully tested, notes one FB advertiser with deep pockets. He and others are wondering if they’re getting their money’s worth. This (almost) obligatory ‘maybe this isn’t the second coming’ piece about Facebook suggests that WSJ is raising the flag now just so they can point to it later, if the FB IPO doesn’t work … But it most likely will, given the hype.

Tumblr’s Big Brand Bet (Digiday) Tumblr has set a $25,000 minimum for buying placement in “Radar,” the space it reserves on user dashboards to highlight interesting Tumblr accounts. The goal is to empower creative advertising by tapping into the originality that thrives on the platform. But rolling out an ad platform to a community virulently opposed to ads is a gamble. As is assuming you can roll your own, when advertisers want ROI compared to other approaches to reaching the same audience. Related:
The Ever-Affable David Karp Talks Tumblr’s Two-Pronged Advertising Strategy at Decoded Fashion Conference (BetaBeat) Tumblr’s David Karp detailed the company’s growth and his new plan for advertisers at Decoded Fashion on Monday. In doing so, BB’s Rebecca Seel notes, “he did not hide his (friendly!) contempt for advertising, emphasizing that Tumblr is a creative community which values expression, which advertising, in his opinion, is not.” Actually, advertising is, in fact, expression. And I’m not certain that folks on Tumblr are going to be happy about being left out of the deal. Cue the next link…

Ad Industry Takes Major Step To Fight Online Piracy (AdWeek) To cut off the financial support that keeps unscrupulous sites alive, the nation’s two major ad industry associations have recommended that agencies and marketers take steps to keep brands’ ads off those sites. Bob Liodice, president and CEO of the Association of National Advertisers, sums up the reasoning behind the decision: “The ads can lend inadvertent legitimacy to the illicit business models and can mislead consumers into believing that these ‘rogue’ websites are offering authentic products and complying with the law.”

Why Native Ad Formats Are the Future (Digiday) Native advertising lets brands experiment with creating entertaining content – longer-form videos, Web films, photo streams, interactive games – instead of being limited to the confines of banners or 15-second pre-roll ads. To be sure, native ads will be part of the future, but not the entire future. More on this from jbat soon.

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If it suits your information consumption goals, sign up for Signal’s email newsletter or RSS feed on the Signal home page (upper right box).

And don’t forget to secure your spot at the upcoming CM Summit, held May 14-15th in New York City. REGISTER today for one of the most exciting and connected digital marketing events of the year. Held in partnership with the IAB at Skylight Soho.

Photo By Michael Gil

The tech press, it ain’t what is should be, says Anil Dash. And what about the bubble so many are expecting? Is it already here? Well, Facebook is starting its roadshow soon, and the answer depends on the people you choose to ask. To the links…

Why You Can’t Trust Tech Press to Teach You About the Tech Industry (Dashes.com) An obvious graduate from the no-nonsense school of life, Anil Dash tells it like it is: “If there were one lesson I’d want to impress upon people who are interested in succeeding in the technology industry, it would be, as I’ve said before, know your shit.” Sparking quite a conversation with this piece, Dash comes down on tech bloggers and journalists who don’t know what they should about the disciplines they cover.

Turntable.fm: Where Did Our Love Go? (Inc.) Billy Chasen and Seth Goldstein, the partners behind troubled Turntable.fm, go to South by Southwest in an attempt to again woo the tech world and figure out how to make their partnership work. It’s a long but great piece about the ups and downs of running a business in this crazy industry.

Nope!  Still No Bubble Here, Says Marc Andreessen (AllThingsD) Marc Andreessen, who just might be Silicon Valley’s most prominent investor, does not think we’re in a bubble. His opinion is based partly on the fact that highly celebrated tech companies that have gone public in the last year have mostly seen their stock prices take a beating. And, while we’re on the subject…

Ron Conway: Tech Is Nowhere Near a Bubble (CNN Money) Ron Conway, one of the earliest investors in Google, Facebook and Twitter, as well as a recent investor in Instagram, says any talk of a tech bubble is, well, inflated.

Simulmedia Raises $6 Million More For Web-Like TV Ads (AllThingsD) There are lots of people chasing targeted TV ads, and to date none of them have gotten very far… except Dave Morgan. Morgan is a Web ad pathfinder, who promises to merge Web-style targeting with traditional TV ads through his New York City-based ad company, Simulmedia.

Signpost, the AdSense for Local Business, Raises $3.75M (GigaOM) Here’s another example of the big money being put behind advertising-related startups. Signpost, a New York start-up aimed at providing local businesses with a customized online marketing campaign, has been growing quickly, commanding the space once dominated by Yellow Pages, and investors have taken notice.

With 16.4% Growth, Digital Is Adland’s Star Performer (AdAge) Ad Age DataCenter reports that in 2011, U.S. agencies generated 30.3% of revenue — that’s $10.1B — from digital, compared with 28.0% in 2010. Agencies of all types are dialing up digital, but the shift is most evident in CRM and direct marketing, where agencies pulled in an estimated $2.8B in U.S. digital revenue. The DataCenter’s digital tally came from a bottoms-up analysis based on Agency Report data compiled for nearly 1,000 agencies, agency networks and agency companies.

Mobile Video Ads Start to Catch On (digiday) Brands are starting to see results from video campaigns that reach people on the go. Reebok’s mobile video ads for the RealFlex sneaker ran on tablets, desktop and mobile, and resulted in a 131 percent lift in brand response conversions, 27 percent higher than average video ad interaction rates. Volvo also turned to mobile video when the carmaker wanted to invoke passion and buzz around the launch of its new S60 sedan.

Confessions of an Ad Network Salesperson (Digiday) One the heels of the lsat Signal, in which we posted a link to this piece on Growth Hackers, today we find evidence of the need for those folks. Digiday tracked down a young media salesperson to get a view from supply side of the fence, and the anonymous source opined on tangible meetings, using summer houses to build relations, lying to clients and, more to the point, he answered a question that piqued our interest, Do salespeople always understand what it is they’re selling? The short answer: Not always.

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If it suits your information consumption goals, sign up for Signal’s email newsletter or RSS feed on the Signal home page (upper right box). And don’t forget to secure your spot at the upcoming CM Summit, held May 14-15th in New York City. REGISTER today for one of the most exciting and connected digital marketing events of the year. Held in partnership with the IAB at Skylight Soho.