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As It Moves Away From The Wikis, Wetpaint Launches TV News And Entertainment Site

posterbot — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 07:18:14 +0000

Online publishing company Wetpaint has been undergoing a strategic shift in its business model over the past year. Wetpaint began as a simple wiki/social publishing tool but then started to build entertainment sites for big brands, including MSN. And the heavily funded startup succumbed to layoffs last July and December. But today, Wetpaint is taking the company in a new direction: original content. The startup is launching Wetpaint Entertainment; a TV news site that covers news and gossip from over 15 major TV shows, such as Glee, Grey's Anatomy, and Gossip Girl. Each show has a dedicated online channel (the site is launching with 15 channels), and will compile the most popular photos, videos, fashion gossip, and headlines to provide one place for all the information about fans’ favorite shows.

Facebook, Relationships And “Catfish”: It’s Complicated

posterbot — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 07:18:13 +0000

If ever a trailer did not depict what a movie is actually about it's this trailer for Universal Pictures "Catfish", a movie about Facebook the subject matter of which could not be further from that other movie about Facebook. I'd like to use this sentence to say "Spoiler Alert" about fifteen times because the next couple paragraphs are going to be full of them -- If you hate spoilers do yourself a favor and stop reading. That said, the following exposition shouldn't prevent you from seeing the movie, I've seen it twice and enjoyed both times. "Catfish" is a movie about Nev Schulman, a 24-year- old New York photographer and his relationship with Abby Pierce, an eight-year-old girl and her 19-year-old sister Megan whom he meets on Facebook in 2007. I'm sure all of you can see this coming, but Megan isn't who she claims to be. Nev and Ariel Shulman, Henry Joost and the viewer get taken for a wild and well documented ride, especially for the last 40 minutes of the movie.

Rollover Minutes: How Adam Penenberg Has Legitimised New, New, New Journalism. Again.

posterbot — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 05:28:54 +0000

Adam Penenberg. If you call yourself an online journalist, and yet that name doesn’t immediately prompt a nod of recognition - a smile, even - then it’s time to close your laptop and bow your head in shame. Or at least head over to Netflix. It was Adam Penenberg who, back in 1998, first forced traditional journalists to sit up and take online reporting seriously. And he did so with a double whammy: scooping them on a big story - a scandal that went to the heart of one of America’s journalistic institutions - while also exposing a rising star of print journalism as a hack and a liar. The lying hack was New Republic wunderkind Stephen Glass and the story of how Penenberg - then a reporter for ‘Forbes Digital Tool’ (now sadly swallowed by the execrable Forbes.com) - exposed Glass’ fabricated reporting was subsequently made into a movie. (Penenberg was portrayed in the movie by Steve Zahn while Glass was played by Hayden Christensen. Weirdly, Jonathan Chait was played by Chloë Sevigny.)

Is Android Only Surging Because Apple Is Letting It?

posterbot — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 02:38:26 +0000

This weekend, I've been catching up on some reading. One post that was of particular interest to me was David Beach's article from last week about developing for Android. Beach, who is a product manager at eBay Mobile and a co-founder of 12seconds, basically says that the experience sucks for a number of reasons (all of which Google can fix, but will take quite a bit of work and time). But one quote in particular stuck out to me:

Android has succeeded despite Google. In fact it's safe to say that Android is successful for one primary reason. The iPhone is only available on AT&T. If the iPhone was on Verizon a year ago. Android would be no where near as popular.

Obviously, Beach isn't the first person to bring this idea up. But he brings it up in a way that he's able to back-up his feelings from a developers' perspective, while at the same time roping in what isn't ideal from a consumer perspective about Android as well.

Guest Post: Could Tiny Somaliland Become the First Cashless Society?

posterbot — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 22:11:51 +0000

Bob Dylan once said that 'money doesn't talk, it swears', but in Hargeisa the capital of Africa's Somaliland it stinks. It literally stinks, reeking of rotten paper, like a leaky library in a monsoon. That's because there's so much of it. For every dollar there are almost 17,000 Somaliland Shillings and the highest-denomination note is 500 Shillings, which is by no means the most common note in circulation. Money-changers sit within self-built stacks of money (picture left, video below) and children take wheelbarrows of it from one place to another, reminiscent of 1930s Weimar Germany when the Deutsch Mark became worthless. By all criteria, cash doesn't work here. Could tiny, unknown Somaliland become the first nation to become a cashless society? It is not only possible, it is almost certain. There is already a surprisingly strong base for this to happen. Thanks to a cobbled together-by-necessity system of money-transfer posts from Somaliland's diaspora and a surging mobile banking industry, the country has to do away with cash. But first some background...

Blogging And Mass Psychomanipulation

posterbot — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 11:23:42 +0000

If I ever write another book it will probably be about one of three topics. The first is the truth about how the press and journalism really works - the sausage making - to show just how much of a beautiful, subjective and chaotic mess it all is. The second idea is to talk about how perfect blogging is, with its constant feedback loop, as a training ground for mass psychology and manipulation. The third idea I'm keeping to myself for now, but it's more startup focused. It's the second one that's been on my mind lately. Mostly because it's become pretty clear to me that any blogger worth her salt could start, say, an extremely successful militant religious cult. Any blogger will tell you how frustrating the early days are. Getting someone, anyone, to link to you. Your first comment! etc. And as your audience grows you are introduced to the first rule of anonymous human behavior - it's dark and brutal, and reminds me how thin the veil of civilized behavior really is. If there is something nasty that can be said, someone will say it. Over and over.