Monday, November 29, 2010

foreclosure investing


The Wall Street Journal real estate blog reports that Federal banking regulators will conduct an examination of MERS, the electronic mortgage and servicing rights data service (hat tip ForeclosureHamlet). As much as scrutiny of MERS is very much in order, it remains an open question as to whether this effort is serious.


One impetus for this review is an article by Chris Peterson, which was very critical of MERS’ inconsistent roles. For instance, the manner in which MERS registers mortgages in local courthouses is problematic:


MERS’s rights vis-à-vis mortgages registered on the MERSCORP database have created a conundrum for courts, borrowers, and foreclosure attorneys. In boilerplate security agreements included in mortgages and deeds of trust around the country, lenders include this clause:


“MERS” is Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. MERS is a separate corporation that is acting solely as nominee for Lender and Lender’s successors and assigns. MERS is the mortgagee under this Security Instrument….


On the one hand, MERS purports to be acting as a nominee—a form of an agent. On the other hand, it also is claiming to be an actual mortgagee, which is to say an owner of the real property right to foreclose upon the security interest. It is axiomatic that a company cannot be both an agent and a principal with respect to the same right.19 In litigation all across the country, attorneys representing MERS frequently take inconsistent positions on the legal status of the company, depending on the legal issue at hand.


Both the MERS-as-an-agent and the MERS-as-an-actual mortgagee theories have significant legal problems. If MERS is merely an agent of the actual lender, it is extremely unclear that it has the authority to list itself as a mortgagee or deed of trust beneficiary under state land title recording acts. These statutes do not have provisions authorizing financial institutions to use the name of a shell company, nominee, or some other form of an agent instead of the actual owner of the interest in the land. After all the point of these statutes is to provide a transparent, reliable, record of actual—as opposed to nominal—land ownership.


Conversely, if MERS is actually a mortgagee, then while it may have authority to record mortgages in its own name, both MERS and financial institutions investing in MERS-recorded mortgages run afoul of longstanding precedent on the inseparability of promissory notes and mortgages. Since the 19th century a long and still vital line of cases has held that mortgages and deeds of trust may not be separated from the promissory notes that create the underlying obligation triggering foreclosure rights.2


As troubling is MERS’ lax corporate governance. The parent, MERSCORP, has under 50 employees; the subsidiary MERS, which is the database, has no employees. It instead relies on the peculiar procedure of having employees of MERS members (typically, bank servicing units and foreclosure mills) temporarily become MERS officers for the sole purpose of taking action in MERS’ name:


As a practical matter, the incoherence of MERS’ legal position is exacerbated by a corporate structure that is so unorthodox as to arguably be considered fraudulent. Because MERSCORP is a company of relatively modest size, it does not have the personnel to deal with legal problems created by its purported ownership of millions of home mortgages. To accommodate the massive amount of paperwork and litigation involved with its business model, MERSCORP simply farms out the MERS, Inc. identity to employees of mortgage servicers, originators, debt collectors, and foreclosure law firms.22 Instead, MERS invites financial companies to enter names of their own employees into a MERS webpage which then automatically regurgitates boilerplate “corporate resolutions” that purport to name the employees of other companies as “certifying officers” of MERS.23 These certifying officers also take job titles from MERS stylizing themselves as either assistant secretaries or vice presidents of the MERS, rather than the company that actually employs them. These employees of the servicers, debt collectors, and law firms sign documents pretending to be vice presidents or assistant secretaries of MERS, Inc. even though neither MERSCORP, Inc. nor MERS, Inc. pays any compensation or provides benefits to them. Astonishingly, MERS “vice presidents” are simply paralegals, customer service representatives, and foreclosure attorneys employed by other companies. MERS even sells its corporate seal to non-employees on its internet web page for $25.00 each.24 Ironically, MERS, Inc.—a company that pretends to own 60% of the nation’s residential mortgages—does not have any of its own employees but still purports to have “thousands” of assistant secretaries and vice presidents.


To be more precise, in Senate testimony earlier this week, MERS president R.K. Arnold said MERS has over 20,000 certifying officers.


To give you an idea of how little control MERS has over the activities of its supposed officers, consider this discussion from a November 11, 2009 deposition of MERSCORP’s William Hultman by Nick Wooten (see page 148):


Q. Is there anyone at MERS who verifies that the acts being undertaken in the name of MERS by its certifying officers are acts which are authorized by this corporate resolution?

A. There’s no one at MERS other than the officers who generally oversee the activities of the certifying officers. However, there are employees of the parent corporation MERSCORP that regularly audit the activities of our members to ensure that they are complying with our rules and procedures in our agreement with them.

Q. Who are those employees?

A. They are the people who work in the law department and the people who work in the products performance division — department.

Q. How many of those people are they?

A. I think there is, there are seven in the law department, and product performance department’s probably, and that — I don’t know off the top of my head because I haven’t looked at the org chart lately, but there’s probably seven or eight or nine people there.

Q. Well, let’s just go with the highest number. Seven in law and nine in product performance. So 16 people out of 47?

A. Give or take, yeah.

Q. And you say those 16 people are involved in auditing the thousands of transactions executed daily by the thousands of certifying officers of MERS?

A. I didn’t say that….

Q. Okay. How much time in a typical day do those 16 people spend auditing the activities of certifying officers?

A. I have no idea.

Q. You are in charge of the law department, aren’t you?

A. No.

Q. You are in charge of what department?

A. I’m in charge of the corporate group or the corporate division.

Q. Does that include the law department?

A. It does.

Q. Who’s in charge of the law department?

A. Sharon Horstkamp.

Q. Does Sharon Horstkamp report to you?

A. She does.

Q. Okay. Do you receive reports on the frequency of audits undertaken by her department?

A. I do not….

Q. Right. And so again my question is there are 16 people designated to look at that issue, and you have thousands of certifying officers; correct?

A. Are you asking me if I have thousands of certifying officers?

Q. Yes.

A. Yes.

Q. You have 16 people who look at their compliance with this resolution?

A. Generally, yes.

Q. And do you have any idea daily how many transactions are taken in the name of MERS by these thousands of corporate certifying officers?

A. Generally, no.

Q. Okay. Is there any way that MERS is able to track every transaction conducted in the name of MERS by a certifying officer?

A. Only to the extent that it’s reported to us either systematically or it’s reported to a certifying officer within the organi- — the servicing organization.

Q. So I mean I guess again my point is there are thousands of transactions on a daily basis that MERS has no record of; right?

A. I don’t know that there are thousands of transactions being taken daily by the certifying officers.

Q. Well, let’s just talk about this affidavit we were discussing with respect to the Harmon Law Offices. Do you have any records in MERS system of the number of affidavits of nonmilitary status executed on a daily basis?

A. In which systems are we speaking?

Q. In MERS system.

A. In the MERS, the computer automated systems?

Q. In any method of storage, retrieval, archiving that is available to you and that you use, do you have any record of the number of affidavits of nonmilitary status executed by a certifying officer on a daily basis in this country?

A. Only to the extent that that information has been reported to another certifying officer of the servicer.

Q. Okay. And how would you obtain that information?

A. I would call the servicer up.

Q. Okay. So that is not a MERS record?

A. Well, to the extent that it’s in the custody of the MERS certifying officer we would consider that a MERS record.

Q. Outside of the servicer’s own system — well, first of all, let me ask it this way. Is the servicer required to report these activities to you on a daily, weekly, monthly basis?

A. Which services?

Q. Affidavits of nonmilitary status.

A. They are not required to report that to us.

Q. Do they report that to you?

A. They do not.

Q. Okay. And on your own systems do you have any records of the number of affidavits of nonmilitary status that are executed on a daily basis?

A. If you’re talking about the MERS system, no.

Q. Okay. What about any other system owned or operated by MERS?

A. Generally, no.

Q. Okay. What about assignments of mortgage or deeds

of trust?

A. What about them?

Q. Do you have any idea how many of those are done on a daily basis by MERS certifying officers?

A. I do not.

Q. Do you have access to that through the MERS system or any other system maintained, owned, controlled and operated by MERS?

A. Only to the extent that we ask the servicer they provide that information to us.

Q. So they do not put that information on the MERS system as a matter of course?

A. Put what stuff on?

Q. I’m sorry. Let me try to ask a better question. Assignments of a mortgage or a deed of trust are not generally reported to MERS on a daily basis, are they?

A. Correct.

Q. And MERS has no records of its own about how many mortgage assignments or assignments of deeds of trust are undertaken in its name on a daily basis, does it?

A. Only to the extent that that information is not in the hands of the MERS certifying officer for a particular servicer.

Q. If you wanted to stop this deposition and go call someone at MERS and say how many assignments have been done in our name today of a mortgage or deed of trust, you could not get that information that simply, could you?

A. I could get the information, but it might take some time.

Q. So there’s nothing in your system that catalogs how frequently that occurs?

A. There’s nothing in the MERS system or the automated systems that we operate for our members that has that information readily available.

Q. And you rely on the servicers to keep any records of that if any records are kept?

A. Yes.

Q. How about foreclosure deeds? Do you have any record of how many foreclosure deeds are executed in the name of MERS on a daily basis in this country by certifying officers?

A. No….

Q. — I mean do you have any idea how many endorsements are done in the name of MERS?

A. No, I do not.

Q. Do you have any idea how many proofs of claim are filed in the name of MERS on a daily basis?

A. I do not.


It gets even better. Between this deposition, and an earlier one of MERSCORP president R.K. Arnold by Nick Wooten, one get a more complete picture of how lax MERS’ operational controls are. MERS does keep a record of who its certifying officers are, but it has not record of what actions any particular certifying officer has taken. This would seem to be a fatal shortcoming in conducting any kind of audit. Arnold maintained that MERSCORP did various quality reviews, but was unable to say what they consisted of or even who on his team was responsible for them.


Both depositions make clear that the integrity system rest entirely on timely and accurate entries by MERS members. Since MERSCORP lacks access to any of the underlying records, it is impossible for it to vet accuracy even if it wanted to absent extensive cooperation with the servicer and document custodian.


For those of you who have the patience, below are the depositions.

September 25. 2009 Deposition of R.K. Arnold, MERSCORP


November 11. 2009 Deposition of William Hultman, MERSCORP



Yves does a thorough smackdown on the departing Michael Barr’s description of all the things the government is going to get to the bottom of the foreclosure fraud problem, noting that the foreclosure task force simply isn’t investigating the problem in enough detail to understand, much less solve, the problem.


But I wanted to look just at Barr’s language, both in his interview with Felix Salmon and in his presentation to the Financial Stability Oversight Council yesterday. Here are the five things he described as the key focus of the Foreclosure Working Group:



  1. Determining the scope of problems

  2. Holding the banks accountable for fixing these problems

  3. Making sure individuals who have been harmed are given redress and that firms pay penalties where appropriate for their actions

  4. Getting the mortgage servicing industry to do a better job for households in financial difficulty by providing alternatives to foreclosure

  5. Acting in a coordinated and comprehensive way to hold the firms accountable, bring clarity and certainty, and help households


Note, already, the choice of language here. The working group will “hold the banks accountable … for fixing these problems.” The firms will “pay penalties where appropriate for their actions.”


Barr uses the language the federal government has been consistently using since the scope of this problem became widely clear, in which the government envisions “holding banks accountable” by forcing them to operate effectively going forward, while making right the crimes of the past. Nowhere, in his presentation to the FSOC at least, does Barr envision holding the people who committed fraud accountable. In fact, there’s a lovely detail at 7:54 where Barr describes that the process is designed to assess whether affidavits and claims “are accurate.” Now, the government learned sometime since May–six months ago now–that they are not. But they have not yet prosecuted anyone for fraud. Which leads me to believe that when Barr says “assess whether affidavits are accurate,” he means, “assess whether they accurately reflect the state of the loan,” and not whether “the claims made by robo-signers are in fact true.”


And besides, how in hell could the government give those who have been harmed redress if the government is only reviewing a select subset of the loan files? Is the government going to provide everyone who believes they were screwed some legal aid to prove their claim?


Now compare what the soon-to-be-gone Barr told the FSOC in its kabuki public session with what he told Salmon.



http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/alpine-payment-systems-c270446.html


http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/alpine-payment-systems-c270446.html


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Saturday, November 27, 2010

Making Money Job


OK, so there’s this Democratic president who’s really good on spending. Meaning, he does it a lot. Among the most ever, in fact.


For more than 18 months he spent like there was no midterm.


He authorized the government takeover of a car company. When in doubt — or not — get the government involved. Something about saving jobs, union jobs.


But now the government’s getting out by selling stock. And it looks to be making money. Which is an unknown thing in government but in private business usually involves getting back more money than was put it. It’s called a profit. He couldn’t bring himself to say the word. But that’s what it is, a profit for taxpayers.


So do you think that profit will be returned to taxpaying shareholders whose money saved the day?


Here’s how that president put it:


THE PRESIDENT:  Hello, everybody. Good afternoon. Today, one of the toughest tales of the recession took another big step towards becoming a success story.


General Motors relaunched itself as a public company, cutting the government’s stake in the company by nearly half. What’s more, American taxpayers are now positioned to recover more than my administration invested in GM.


And that’s a very good thing. Last year, we told GM’s management and workers that if they made the tough decisions necessary to make themselves more competitive in the 21st century — decisions requiring real leadership, fresh thinking and also some shared sacrifice –- then we would stand by them.


And because they did, the American auto industry -– an industry that’s been the proud symbol of America’s manufacturing might for a century; an industry that helped to build our middle class -– is once again on the rise.


Our automakers are in the midst of their strongest period of job growth in more than a decade. Since GM and Chrysler emerged from bankruptcy, the industry has created more than 75,000 new jobs. For the first time in six years, Ford, GM and Chrysler are all operating at a profit.


In fact, last week, GM announced its best quarter in over 11 years. And most importantly, American workers are back at the assembly line manufacturing the high-quality, fuel-efficient, American-made cars of tomorrow, capable of going toe to toe with any other manufacturer in the world.


Just two years ago, this seemed impossible. In fact, there were plenty of doubters and naysayers who said it couldn’t be done, who were prepared to throw in the towel and read the American auto industry last rites.


Independent estimates suggested, however, that had we taken that step, had we given up, we would have lost more than 1 million jobs across all 50 states. It would have also resulted in economic chaos, devastating communities across the country and costing governments tens of billions of dollars in additional social safety net benefits and lost revenue. 


That wasn’t an acceptable option –- to throw up our hands and to quit. That’s not what we do. This is a country of optimistic and determined people who don’t give up when times are tough. We do what’s necessary to move forward.


So these last two years haven’t been easy on anybody. They haven’t been without pain or sacrifice, as the tough restructuring of GM reminds us.


And obviously we’ve still got a long road ahead and a lot of work to do -– to rebuild this economy, to put people back to work, to make America more competitive for the future and to secure the American Dream for our children and our grandchildren.


But we are finally beginning to see some of these tough decisions that we made in the midst of crisis pay off. And I’m absolutely confident that we’re going to keep on making progress. I believe we’re going to get through this tougher and stronger than we were before.  Because just as I had faith in the ability of our autoworkers to persevere and succeed, I have faith in the American people’s ability to persevere and succeed. And I have faith that America’s best days and America’s — and American manufacturing’s best days are still ahead of us.


Finally, I just want to embarrass a couple of people. Ron Bloom and Brian Deese are key members of the team that helped to engineer this rescue of GM and Chrysler. So it had not been for these two gentlemen, a whole lot of people might be out of work right now. We are very proud of them and I figured that I’d go ahead — you can see they’re all looking sheepish — point them out to you. So thank you very much, everybody.


(Malcolm is the Top of the Ticket blogger at latimes.com/ticket )


Update (AP): Here’s the clip. The good news? We’ve only lost $4.5 billion on share sales thus far.


Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy







by James Bianco

Bianco Research

November 18, 2010


>


The Wall Street Journal – GM Stock Sale in High Gear

General Motors Co. is on pace to sell $18.1 billion in shares in what likely will be the second-largest U.S. initial public offering ever, capping a remarkable two-year turnaround in which the car maker went from begging for a government bailout to posting its first steady profits in more than six years. GM sold about 478 million shares Wednesday at $33 each, a price higher than the company and its bankers thought was possible just days ago. An additional 71.7 million shares are expected to be sold by GM’s bankers as part of an “overallotment” allowed when sales are stronger than expected. And it sold $4.35 billion in preferred shares…The proceeds will help pay back the U.S. government for the $49.5 billion it spent on its controversial rescue of GM, which has gone from losing billions of dollars a year to making $4.07 billion so far in 2010…The U.S. Treasury will cut its ownership stake in GM to about 26% from 61% through the stock sale, including the overallotments. That could ease the “Government Motors” taint that had turned off some car shoppers as well as potential GM investors…Investors and analysts watch for the size of the first-day “pop” of an IPO. If the shares rise more than the usual 10% to 20%, some observers may say GM and the U.S. charged too little and left money on the table. If the shares falter, it will mean some investors still question GM’s future.


Comment:


The job of the seller in an IPO is to receive as high a price as possible. The job of the buyer is to receive as low a price as possible. Who does a better job?


See the table below. It shows the Conrail IPO (then a record size) and the 10 largest deals done since then. Many of the largest IPOs were done right before a market peak and just as the market was coming under stress (rushed out?). The average return of the S&P 500 over the 6 months following these blockbuster IPOs is -2.41.


The table below suggests that the sellers of the largest IPOs are often excellent market timers. The majority of the time the S&P 500 is lower 6 months later.


<Click on table for larger image>



Similarly, as the monthly chart of IPO flows shows below, when IPO volume peaks, the market often struggles over the next 6 months. Again, if you’re the seller and doing your job correctly, this is what you want.


<Click on table for larger image>



Academic studies of M&A deals show that the seller often gets the better deal even though the buyer gets all the positive press and accolades. The same appears to be true of IPOs.


How well did Tim Geithner do his job? If he received as good a price as possible, then the market should be near or at a peak. If the bull market is still intact GM has further upside, then he did not do as good a job.


Trading started yesterday morning.



bench_craft_company

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bench_craft_company

OK, so there’s this Democratic president who’s really good on spending. Meaning, he does it a lot. Among the most ever, in fact.


For more than 18 months he spent like there was no midterm.


He authorized the government takeover of a car company. When in doubt — or not — get the government involved. Something about saving jobs, union jobs.


But now the government’s getting out by selling stock. And it looks to be making money. Which is an unknown thing in government but in private business usually involves getting back more money than was put it. It’s called a profit. He couldn’t bring himself to say the word. But that’s what it is, a profit for taxpayers.


So do you think that profit will be returned to taxpaying shareholders whose money saved the day?


Here’s how that president put it:


THE PRESIDENT:  Hello, everybody. Good afternoon. Today, one of the toughest tales of the recession took another big step towards becoming a success story.


General Motors relaunched itself as a public company, cutting the government’s stake in the company by nearly half. What’s more, American taxpayers are now positioned to recover more than my administration invested in GM.


And that’s a very good thing. Last year, we told GM’s management and workers that if they made the tough decisions necessary to make themselves more competitive in the 21st century — decisions requiring real leadership, fresh thinking and also some shared sacrifice –- then we would stand by them.


And because they did, the American auto industry -– an industry that’s been the proud symbol of America’s manufacturing might for a century; an industry that helped to build our middle class -– is once again on the rise.


Our automakers are in the midst of their strongest period of job growth in more than a decade. Since GM and Chrysler emerged from bankruptcy, the industry has created more than 75,000 new jobs. For the first time in six years, Ford, GM and Chrysler are all operating at a profit.


In fact, last week, GM announced its best quarter in over 11 years. And most importantly, American workers are back at the assembly line manufacturing the high-quality, fuel-efficient, American-made cars of tomorrow, capable of going toe to toe with any other manufacturer in the world.


Just two years ago, this seemed impossible. In fact, there were plenty of doubters and naysayers who said it couldn’t be done, who were prepared to throw in the towel and read the American auto industry last rites.


Independent estimates suggested, however, that had we taken that step, had we given up, we would have lost more than 1 million jobs across all 50 states. It would have also resulted in economic chaos, devastating communities across the country and costing governments tens of billions of dollars in additional social safety net benefits and lost revenue. 


That wasn’t an acceptable option –- to throw up our hands and to quit. That’s not what we do. This is a country of optimistic and determined people who don’t give up when times are tough. We do what’s necessary to move forward.


So these last two years haven’t been easy on anybody. They haven’t been without pain or sacrifice, as the tough restructuring of GM reminds us.


And obviously we’ve still got a long road ahead and a lot of work to do -– to rebuild this economy, to put people back to work, to make America more competitive for the future and to secure the American Dream for our children and our grandchildren.


But we are finally beginning to see some of these tough decisions that we made in the midst of crisis pay off. And I’m absolutely confident that we’re going to keep on making progress. I believe we’re going to get through this tougher and stronger than we were before.  Because just as I had faith in the ability of our autoworkers to persevere and succeed, I have faith in the American people’s ability to persevere and succeed. And I have faith that America’s best days and America’s — and American manufacturing’s best days are still ahead of us.


Finally, I just want to embarrass a couple of people. Ron Bloom and Brian Deese are key members of the team that helped to engineer this rescue of GM and Chrysler. So it had not been for these two gentlemen, a whole lot of people might be out of work right now. We are very proud of them and I figured that I’d go ahead — you can see they’re all looking sheepish — point them out to you. So thank you very much, everybody.


(Malcolm is the Top of the Ticket blogger at latimes.com/ticket )


Update (AP): Here’s the clip. The good news? We’ve only lost $4.5 billion on share sales thus far.


Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy







by James Bianco

Bianco Research

November 18, 2010


>


The Wall Street Journal – GM Stock Sale in High Gear

General Motors Co. is on pace to sell $18.1 billion in shares in what likely will be the second-largest U.S. initial public offering ever, capping a remarkable two-year turnaround in which the car maker went from begging for a government bailout to posting its first steady profits in more than six years. GM sold about 478 million shares Wednesday at $33 each, a price higher than the company and its bankers thought was possible just days ago. An additional 71.7 million shares are expected to be sold by GM’s bankers as part of an “overallotment” allowed when sales are stronger than expected. And it sold $4.35 billion in preferred shares…The proceeds will help pay back the U.S. government for the $49.5 billion it spent on its controversial rescue of GM, which has gone from losing billions of dollars a year to making $4.07 billion so far in 2010…The U.S. Treasury will cut its ownership stake in GM to about 26% from 61% through the stock sale, including the overallotments. That could ease the “Government Motors” taint that had turned off some car shoppers as well as potential GM investors…Investors and analysts watch for the size of the first-day “pop” of an IPO. If the shares rise more than the usual 10% to 20%, some observers may say GM and the U.S. charged too little and left money on the table. If the shares falter, it will mean some investors still question GM’s future.


Comment:


The job of the seller in an IPO is to receive as high a price as possible. The job of the buyer is to receive as low a price as possible. Who does a better job?


See the table below. It shows the Conrail IPO (then a record size) and the 10 largest deals done since then. Many of the largest IPOs were done right before a market peak and just as the market was coming under stress (rushed out?). The average return of the S&P 500 over the 6 months following these blockbuster IPOs is -2.41.


The table below suggests that the sellers of the largest IPOs are often excellent market timers. The majority of the time the S&P 500 is lower 6 months later.


<Click on table for larger image>



Similarly, as the monthly chart of IPO flows shows below, when IPO volume peaks, the market often struggles over the next 6 months. Again, if you’re the seller and doing your job correctly, this is what you want.


<Click on table for larger image>



Academic studies of M&A deals show that the seller often gets the better deal even though the buyer gets all the positive press and accolades. The same appears to be true of IPOs.


How well did Tim Geithner do his job? If he received as good a price as possible, then the market should be near or at a peak. If the bull market is still intact GM has further upside, then he did not do as good a job.


Trading started yesterday morning.



bench_craft_company

Portland terrorist bomb plot: <b>News</b>, opinion from The Oregonian and <b>...</b>

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Jade Raymond making Splinter Cell 6 <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

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Sun TV <b>News</b> application approved - Need to know - Macleans.ca

Sun TV News has been green-lit by the CRTC after a long war with the regulator and critics who are opposed to the 24-7 news-and-opinion channel nicknamed “Fox News North.” The CRTC had previously refused to grant the Quebecor property a ...


bench_craft_company

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Jade Raymond making Splinter Cell 6 <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our news of Jade Raymond making Splinter Cell 6.

Sun TV <b>News</b> application approved - Need to know - Macleans.ca

Sun TV News has been green-lit by the CRTC after a long war with the regulator and critics who are opposed to the 24-7 news-and-opinion channel nicknamed “Fox News North.” The CRTC had previously refused to grant the Quebecor property a ...


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Friday, November 19, 2010

Secrets to Making Money

bench craft company rip off

rework by flyzipper


bench craft company rip off

<b>News</b> Corp developing a tablet-exclusive publication

News Corp Logo Reuters is reporting that News Corp, the world's third-largest media conglomerate, has confirmed they will be releasing a news publication developed specifically for tablet computers like the iPad. "It's a tablet-only ...

Photos Implant &#39;Memories&#39; of Fictional <b>News</b> Events | Smart <b>...</b>

Participants in a study were far more likely to “remember” a fictional news event when a headline was accompanied by a tangentially relevant photograph.

Good <b>news</b>: James Bond and Indiana Jones hooking up to fight aliens <b>...</b>

Good news: James Bond and Indiana Jones hooking up to fight aliens.


bench craft company rip off

rework by flyzipper


bench craft company rip off

<b>News</b> Corp developing a tablet-exclusive publication

News Corp Logo Reuters is reporting that News Corp, the world's third-largest media conglomerate, has confirmed they will be releasing a news publication developed specifically for tablet computers like the iPad. "It's a tablet-only ...

Photos Implant &#39;Memories&#39; of Fictional <b>News</b> Events | Smart <b>...</b>

Participants in a study were far more likely to “remember” a fictional news event when a headline was accompanied by a tangentially relevant photograph.

Good <b>news</b>: James Bond and Indiana Jones hooking up to fight aliens <b>...</b>

Good news: James Bond and Indiana Jones hooking up to fight aliens.


bench craft company rip off

<b>News</b> Corp developing a tablet-exclusive publication

News Corp Logo Reuters is reporting that News Corp, the world's third-largest media conglomerate, has confirmed they will be releasing a news publication developed specifically for tablet computers like the iPad. "It's a tablet-only ...

Photos Implant &#39;Memories&#39; of Fictional <b>News</b> Events | Smart <b>...</b>

Participants in a study were far more likely to “remember” a fictional news event when a headline was accompanied by a tangentially relevant photograph.

Good <b>news</b>: James Bond and Indiana Jones hooking up to fight aliens <b>...</b>

Good news: James Bond and Indiana Jones hooking up to fight aliens.


bench craft company rip off

<b>News</b> Corp developing a tablet-exclusive publication

News Corp Logo Reuters is reporting that News Corp, the world's third-largest media conglomerate, has confirmed they will be releasing a news publication developed specifically for tablet computers like the iPad. "It's a tablet-only ...

Photos Implant &#39;Memories&#39; of Fictional <b>News</b> Events | Smart <b>...</b>

Participants in a study were far more likely to “remember” a fictional news event when a headline was accompanied by a tangentially relevant photograph.

Good <b>news</b>: James Bond and Indiana Jones hooking up to fight aliens <b>...</b>

Good news: James Bond and Indiana Jones hooking up to fight aliens.


bench craft company rip off

<b>News</b> Corp developing a tablet-exclusive publication

News Corp Logo Reuters is reporting that News Corp, the world's third-largest media conglomerate, has confirmed they will be releasing a news publication developed specifically for tablet computers like the iPad. "It's a tablet-only ...

Photos Implant &#39;Memories&#39; of Fictional <b>News</b> Events | Smart <b>...</b>

Participants in a study were far more likely to “remember” a fictional news event when a headline was accompanied by a tangentially relevant photograph.

Good <b>news</b>: James Bond and Indiana Jones hooking up to fight aliens <b>...</b>

Good news: James Bond and Indiana Jones hooking up to fight aliens.


bench craft company rip off

rework by flyzipper


bench craft company rip off
bench craft company rip off

<b>News</b> Corp developing a tablet-exclusive publication

News Corp Logo Reuters is reporting that News Corp, the world's third-largest media conglomerate, has confirmed they will be releasing a news publication developed specifically for tablet computers like the iPad. "It's a tablet-only ...

Photos Implant &#39;Memories&#39; of Fictional <b>News</b> Events | Smart <b>...</b>

Participants in a study were far more likely to “remember” a fictional news event when a headline was accompanied by a tangentially relevant photograph.

Good <b>news</b>: James Bond and Indiana Jones hooking up to fight aliens <b>...</b>

Good news: James Bond and Indiana Jones hooking up to fight aliens.


bench craft company rip off

bench craft company rip off

<b>News</b> Corp developing a tablet-exclusive publication

News Corp Logo Reuters is reporting that News Corp, the world's third-largest media conglomerate, has confirmed they will be releasing a news publication developed specifically for tablet computers like the iPad. "It's a tablet-only ...

Photos Implant &#39;Memories&#39; of Fictional <b>News</b> Events | Smart <b>...</b>

Participants in a study were far more likely to “remember” a fictional news event when a headline was accompanied by a tangentially relevant photograph.

Good <b>news</b>: James Bond and Indiana Jones hooking up to fight aliens <b>...</b>

Good news: James Bond and Indiana Jones hooking up to fight aliens.


bench craft company rip off

<b>News</b> Corp developing a tablet-exclusive publication

News Corp Logo Reuters is reporting that News Corp, the world's third-largest media conglomerate, has confirmed they will be releasing a news publication developed specifically for tablet computers like the iPad. "It's a tablet-only ...

Photos Implant &#39;Memories&#39; of Fictional <b>News</b> Events | Smart <b>...</b>

Participants in a study were far more likely to “remember” a fictional news event when a headline was accompanied by a tangentially relevant photograph.

Good <b>news</b>: James Bond and Indiana Jones hooking up to fight aliens <b>...</b>

Good news: James Bond and Indiana Jones hooking up to fight aliens.


bench craft company rip off

One and a Half Cheers for Fox <b>News</b>, David Henderson | EconLog <b>...</b>

Senator Jay Rockefeller made a splash Wednesday by suggesting that the Federal Communications Commission shut down the Fox News Channel and MSNBC. My guess is that he mentioned MSNBC because he wanted to sound equally oppressive of both ...

WGN <b>News</b> Anchors Flip Out

WGN News Anchors Flip Out: Chicago news anchors comically go nuts when a bridge implodes the second they cut away from it...

Middle East violence increases « Liveshots

Another cycle of violence in the Middle East as Israel strikes targets in Gaza in retaliation.


bench craft company rip off

WGN <b>News</b> Anchors Flip Out

WGN News Anchors Flip Out: Chicago news anchors comically go nuts when a bridge implodes the second they cut away from it...

EA launching Facebook golf game PC <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our PC news of EA launching Facebook golf game.

Rivet returning to lineup - Sabres Edge - Blogs - The Buffalo <b>News</b>

The Buffalo News updated every day with news from Buffalo, New York. Links to national and business news, entertainment listings, recipes, sports teams, classified ads, death notices.


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Police <b>News</b> at Steven Landsburg | The Big Questions: Tackling the <b>...</b>

1 Tweets that mention Police News at Steven Landsburg | The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics, and Physics -- Topsy.com. Pingback on Nov 19th, 2010 at 3:23 am. 2 Police News at ...

The Tools of Ignorance: Friday <b>News</b> - Pinstripe Alley

A big offer, the big man's snub, a little trade, and a call for a dose of sanity.

Photos Implant &#39;Memories&#39; of Fictional <b>News</b> Events | Smart <b>...</b>

Participants in a study were far more likely to “remember” a fictional news event when a headline was accompanied by a tangentially relevant photograph.


bench craft company rip off

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Making Money Scams

eric seiger

stopstressingstartcashgifting by j91romero


eric seiger

Sen. Rockefeller: FCC should shut down Fox <b>News</b> and MSNBC « Hot Air

You see, Rockefeller says he hungers for quality news and believes that the FCC should play a part in facilitating that end. He believes that without the extremes of Fox News and MSNBC, the American people would have more faith in their ...

<b>News</b> Corp developing a tablet-exclusive publication

News Corp Logo Reuters is reporting that News Corp, the world's third-largest media conglomerate, has confirmed they will be releasing a news publication developed specifically for tablet computers like the iPad. "It's a tablet-only ...

Good <b>News</b>, College Grads (Except Lawyers)!

Moderately good news, unemployed college graduates! A new report on hiring trends says that hiring of graduates with bachelor's degrees or MBAs will surge by 10% next year. Green shoots! As long as you didn't go to law school.


eric seiger

stopstressingstartcashgifting by j91romero


eric seiger

Sen. Rockefeller: FCC should shut down Fox <b>News</b> and MSNBC « Hot Air

You see, Rockefeller says he hungers for quality news and believes that the FCC should play a part in facilitating that end. He believes that without the extremes of Fox News and MSNBC, the American people would have more faith in their ...

<b>News</b> Corp developing a tablet-exclusive publication

News Corp Logo Reuters is reporting that News Corp, the world's third-largest media conglomerate, has confirmed they will be releasing a news publication developed specifically for tablet computers like the iPad. "It's a tablet-only ...

Good <b>News</b>, College Grads (Except Lawyers)!

Moderately good news, unemployed college graduates! A new report on hiring trends says that hiring of graduates with bachelor's degrees or MBAs will surge by 10% next year. Green shoots! As long as you didn't go to law school.


eric seiger

Sen. Rockefeller: FCC should shut down Fox <b>News</b> and MSNBC « Hot Air

You see, Rockefeller says he hungers for quality news and believes that the FCC should play a part in facilitating that end. He believes that without the extremes of Fox News and MSNBC, the American people would have more faith in their ...

<b>News</b> Corp developing a tablet-exclusive publication

News Corp Logo Reuters is reporting that News Corp, the world's third-largest media conglomerate, has confirmed they will be releasing a news publication developed specifically for tablet computers like the iPad. "It's a tablet-only ...

Good <b>News</b>, College Grads (Except Lawyers)!

Moderately good news, unemployed college graduates! A new report on hiring trends says that hiring of graduates with bachelor's degrees or MBAs will surge by 10% next year. Green shoots! As long as you didn't go to law school.


eric seiger

Sen. Rockefeller: FCC should shut down Fox <b>News</b> and MSNBC « Hot Air

You see, Rockefeller says he hungers for quality news and believes that the FCC should play a part in facilitating that end. He believes that without the extremes of Fox News and MSNBC, the American people would have more faith in their ...

<b>News</b> Corp developing a tablet-exclusive publication

News Corp Logo Reuters is reporting that News Corp, the world's third-largest media conglomerate, has confirmed they will be releasing a news publication developed specifically for tablet computers like the iPad. "It's a tablet-only ...

Good <b>News</b>, College Grads (Except Lawyers)!

Moderately good news, unemployed college graduates! A new report on hiring trends says that hiring of graduates with bachelor's degrees or MBAs will surge by 10% next year. Green shoots! As long as you didn't go to law school.


eric seiger
eric seiger

stopstressingstartcashgifting by j91romero


eric seiger
eric seiger

Sen. Rockefeller: FCC should shut down Fox <b>News</b> and MSNBC « Hot Air

You see, Rockefeller says he hungers for quality news and believes that the FCC should play a part in facilitating that end. He believes that without the extremes of Fox News and MSNBC, the American people would have more faith in their ...

<b>News</b> Corp developing a tablet-exclusive publication

News Corp Logo Reuters is reporting that News Corp, the world's third-largest media conglomerate, has confirmed they will be releasing a news publication developed specifically for tablet computers like the iPad. "It's a tablet-only ...

Good <b>News</b>, College Grads (Except Lawyers)!

Moderately good news, unemployed college graduates! A new report on hiring trends says that hiring of graduates with bachelor's degrees or MBAs will surge by 10% next year. Green shoots! As long as you didn't go to law school.


Wednesday, November 17, 2010

how to manage personal finances

In the digital age, nobody likes carrying a lot of cash around – I know I don’t, anyway. This can be especially frustrating when you go to keep track of your expenses, who you owe money to, who you lent some to and just where it all goes over the month.

As always, there are a lot of apps out there to help you do various things with your money. There are apps to figure out how to manage your money, oversee expenses, send money to people, keep track of who owes you, and more.

In this article, I’ll show you some of the applications you can take advantage of to do everything I’ve mentioned here, leaving you free to pick and choose the apps that will make your life easier.

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How to Manage Your Money

I’m beginning to learn just how difficult managing your expenses can be. For the most part, I use my debit card tied to my checking account to make purchases. I use it at the grocery store, when I go out to lunch with my coworkers and on the weekend when I’m out exploring the city.

At the end of the month, my bank statement looks pretty ridiculous. All of these small transactions make it difficult to sift through. I still know what everything is, but if I wanted to see where I could be saving some money I wouldn’t know the first place to look.

Sounds like you? Even if it doesn’t, you could still reap the benefits of visually being able to manage your money. These apps make the process a lot easier.

Mint

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Mint has been on our radar since back in 2007 when Karl wrote about it. Plain and simple, if there is one app I want you to keep in mind it’s this one.

Mint is a free personal finance application that can help you compare your bank accounts, credit cards, CDs, brokerage and 401(k) to the best products out there. It offers a visual representation of your finances and is very easy to set up. Use it to manage your budget, get credit card advice and understand investing.

Here’s a great video showcasing an overview of Mint’s features:

For some helpful tips on how to use Mint, check out Bakari’s article on How To Use Mint To Manage Your Budget & Spendings Online.

Thrive

Thrive (directory app) is also a great application if you’re looking for a simple way to keep track of your spending. With Thrive, you get an overall Financial Health score, which is one number that shows you how financially fit you are. It also shows you scores in other areas and offers you advice on how to make improvements.

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Thrive breaks down your spending for you and shows you where you can save. Compare your current budget to last month’s, as well as view a six month average and target budgets to follow.

Texthog

Looking for an even simpler way to track expenses? Texthog (directory app) lets you easily store, organize and access your receipts, expense reports and more via text message, the web, your email, iPhone and even Twitter.

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A Texthog free account gives one user the ability to track expenses, view unlimited reports and get budget/bill reminders. Take a photo of your receipts and utilize tags and categories to keep track of everything.

To check out Texthog on your iPhone, you can find the application on iTunes.

Venmo

Speaking of text messages, have you heard of Venmo? Venmo (directory app) is a nice little app that lets you pay and charge friends with your phone. Send and receive secure payments by linking your card to your account. This allows you to settle small loans you give/get by eliminating paper transactions for small amounts of money.

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To use Venmo, all you do is create an account. You can then send and receive money to other accounts simply by using text commands in SMS. Accept a “trust” request from your friends and make transactions without having to authorize them by texting a 3 digit code.

This is a pretty solid application that I have been using a lot lately with my friends/coworkers. It’s great for when a bunch of you are out to lunch and not everyone has cash on them. “I’ll just put it on my card and Venmo you all afterwards.”

Owe Me Cash

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Owe Me Cash is a nice app I found recently that is also very easy to use. If someone owes you money, you just sign into Owe Me Cash with your Twitter, Facebook, OpenID, or regular account and tell the app about the debt. The app will send automatic reminders to those that owe you money by phone, text and email, so you can get paid!

This app is more fun than serious, but it doubles as an easy way to keep track of who owes you what. Let the app bug your friends to pay you so you don’t have to do it yourself – it’s a win-win.

Conclusion

With these applications, your finances will never look better. Say goodbye to paper money and change.

What do you think of these money-managing applications? Will you be using any of them?

Image Credit: marema


For those of you new to Free Money Finance, I post on The Bible and Money every Sunday. Here's why.


Here's an interesting verse from Proverbs 13:20:



He who walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm.



Let me put a personal finance spin on this:



He who associates with and listens to those who are doing well financially becomes wealthy. But someone who follows the advice of those who can't handle their money is destined for the poor house.



Ok, so I'm not a wordsmith (but you already knew that, didn't you?), but you get the idea. If you hang around people who follow the solid financial principles that can make you wealthy, then it's likely those principles will rub off on you and you'll do well too. But if you associate with people who continually make bad money mistakes, you'll probably do the same -- and thus kill your finances.


I'm not talking about having only friends who have it all together financially. But I am saying that it's wise to have friends, on average, who are doing fairly well or at least making good financial choices. And I'm not saying the friends have to be experts on everything. But I learn something from almost all of my friends -- how to save money from one, how to manage retirement from another, how to network for another, and so on.


If I spent most of my time with people who shopped for enjoyment, I'd probably want to do the same. If my friends spent every penny they had on "stuff" to fill up their houses, I'd probably follow suit. And if my friends all had boats and cottages, it probably wouldn't be long before I needed one (or both) too.
Let's face it, you're influenced by who you hang out with. So who do you want influencing you?


I once heard a speaker say that the person you'll be in five years will be determined by the people you know and the books you read. So choose your friends (and your books) wisely!!!



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autosport.com - F1 <b>News</b>: F1 closing on HD coverage for 2011

Formula 1 is close to giving the final green light for High Definition television coverage of the sport to begin from the first race of the 2011 season, AUTOSPORT has learned.

Google <b>News</b> Blog: Credit where credit is due

News publishers and readers both benefit when journalists get proper credit for their work. That can be difficult, with news spreading so quickly and many websites syndicating articles to others. That's why we're experimenting with two ...

New Yorker&#39;s Music Critic Moves to <b>News</b> Corp.&#39;s Daily - NYTimes.com

Sasha Frere-Jones, a music critic at The New Yorker, will become the culture editor of The Daily, News Corporation's so-called iPad newspaper which is currently in development.



MABUHAY ALLIANCE HOST THE 6TH ANNUAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CONFERENCE by mabuhayalliance


autosport.com - F1 <b>News</b>: F1 closing on HD coverage for 2011

Formula 1 is close to giving the final green light for High Definition television coverage of the sport to begin from the first race of the 2011 season, AUTOSPORT has learned.

Google <b>News</b> Blog: Credit where credit is due

News publishers and readers both benefit when journalists get proper credit for their work. That can be difficult, with news spreading so quickly and many websites syndicating articles to others. That's why we're experimenting with two ...

New Yorker&#39;s Music Critic Moves to <b>News</b> Corp.&#39;s Daily - NYTimes.com

Sasha Frere-Jones, a music critic at The New Yorker, will become the culture editor of The Daily, News Corporation's so-called iPad newspaper which is currently in development.


alpine payment systems scam

autosport.com - F1 <b>News</b>: F1 closing on HD coverage for 2011

Formula 1 is close to giving the final green light for High Definition television coverage of the sport to begin from the first race of the 2011 season, AUTOSPORT has learned.

Google <b>News</b> Blog: Credit where credit is due

News publishers and readers both benefit when journalists get proper credit for their work. That can be difficult, with news spreading so quickly and many websites syndicating articles to others. That's why we're experimenting with two ...

New Yorker&#39;s Music Critic Moves to <b>News</b> Corp.&#39;s Daily - NYTimes.com

Sasha Frere-Jones, a music critic at The New Yorker, will become the culture editor of The Daily, News Corporation's so-called iPad newspaper which is currently in development.


Making Easy Money


Online video is well and truly, having the best time of its life right now. It seems to be factoring in every marketing plan worth its salt, with some incredible videos being produced by brands that are lighting up social media. I wanted to explore the state of the online video industry a bit further and delve into the stats that show the huge growth curve online video is currently on. Right now it is one of the most fascinating aspects of online, as brands continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible and engaging the audience in completely new ways. It is a seriously big business and one that every brand wants to be a part of. And it’s easy to see why..


Over 35 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute


This stat on its own is pretty stunning and quite hard to get your head around. But when you look at in in the context of the past 3 years, or even 6 months, you realise just how impressive this is. The graph below from Youtube shows the average hours of video uploaded every minute, back to June 2007. While this started at 6 hours, in the past 6 months it stood at 23. That’s a huge increase of 12 hours per minute in just 6 months :



That is some seriously impressive growth and also shows that just as much as brand video is growing, ugc is growing at a staggering rate, due largely to the growth in mobile and ease of uploading. As Youtube note themselves there are other factors, such as upping the time limit in videos, which would obviously attribute for an increase in the total length of video uploads. But this is impressive nonetheless.


Blinkx shares up by 400%


At the business end of video, Blinkx are showing that online video is starting to become a profitable industry. While Google still won’t reveal whether Youtube is making them money or not, Blinkx have recently announced their first ever turn in profit in the 6 months up to September. And it comes 3 years after they first launched. Blinkx make money through running ads alongside the videos they index, acting as a huge video search tool. They have certainly had a good year, as the 400% share increase shows. It’s also encouraging to see that online video isn’t just about Youtube and there are some other serious players in the market with unique offerings.


Online video ads reach half of U.S. users


While some research shows that advertisers are cautious over online video advertising, due to factors such as standardisation of ad formats, online video advertising is going from strength to strength. A recent study from ComScore (the people who measure things), found that just over 45.4% of users in America viewed at least one video ad over a month. But more impressively, were exposed to 32.2 videos each, on average. That’s over 4.3 million video ads that were served to the online U.S. population in September 2010. This shows the power of online video ads to get right in front of your target audience. And while there are some definite rights and wrongs in the content of the video ad, I think we’ll see this grow even more and prove itself as a valuable industry up there with TV.


Comedian makes $315,000 from online video


A recent study found that comedians top the bill for online video earnings, and one in particular is doing very well. A recent study found that comedian Shane Dawson, who amassed 431.7 million online video views in the past year made $315,000 from his content, through ad revenue. He came out top for independent earners on Youtube and it’s certainly an aspirational case study that shows the business of online video isn’t just for big brands.


Kia spend a third of budget on online video



In a bold move, Kia Motors have invested a third of their £2 million marketing budget for the new Sportage model, into online video. We’ve seen the motor industry embracing social media more and more – with Ford launching a model through Facebook – and this shows the commitment that some brands are making to online video. Not so much an add-on or a nice to have, but a central facet of a multi-million pound campaign. The online campaign will focus on the central characters from the TV adverts and include home-page takeovers and video ads. Cases like this help to solidify online video as a serious marketing avenue that can bring a campaign to life and help you get that extra bang for your buck.


20% of downstream internet traffic is to Netflix


In a huge coup for Netflix, a recent study found that 20% of peak time donwstream internet traffic was streaming video from their site. This is great news for Netflix, and perhaps not so great news for the DVD market. If Netflix were available in Ireland I would be there in an instant and would choose to view all films in this way, as it simply doesn’t make sense to invest in a DVD anymore and I expect that even the gift market for this may eventually die out. 20% is a huge figure and shows how much Netflix has staked its claim in this market.


2 billion videos viewed each month Facebook


In June 2010 Facebook released some interesting stats into their online video offering, which show the huge potential it has to own this market. They revealed that as well as 2 billion video views on its site each month, there were 415,000 online video uploads each day. While it may not be a contender to Youtube just yet, the sharing capabilities within Facebook and the ease of connecting with your community show the potential for this to grow. Interestingly, Youtube now offer the option of connecting with Facebook instead of logging in with your gmail account. This shows Youtube recognises the power to use the huge community on Facebook, something it can’t compete with, to combine with its own wealth of online video.


Live stream video viewing up by 650%


In their most recent report into online video, Comscore announced that the amount of live-streamed video we’re watching has grown by 648% over the past year. This is absolutely phenomenal growth and compares to a (still impressive)  68% increase in video views on Youtube. While it may still form a minor part of the online video  market, live streaming is growing in popularity and use, as we become more accustomed to this form of content, both as consumers and producers. UStream are owning the market here, but Facebook are quickly getting in on the game – recently introducing LiveStream integration with Facebook pages. This has the potential to hugely increase the live stream video market and see it really reach the mainstream.






Though social media has proved itself an effective tool in helping journalists gather news and connect with their communities, a pervading question among the skeptics still remains: Where’s the money?

As social sites like Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter and Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook build their empires and seek to remedy their own financial instability in the hope of turning profits, news organizations are experimenting with ways to monetize their social media presence and leverage the social web to complete an online revenue puzzle.

The revenue is there, but the social web won’t necessarily solve that puzzle. “There’s no silver bullet,” Jim Brady, the general manager at TBD.com, said at the Online News Association Conference last week. “There’s just shrapnel, pieces of revenue.” Brady, who launched TBD.com this summer, said display ads are certainly not the future in revenue for news and that it will come from multiple revenue streams. class='blippr-nobr'>Newsclass="blippr-nobr">news organizations have certainly been experimenting where they can to get revenue in pieces, from mobile applications to launching group buying sites. Here’s a closer look at some of these efforts.

Self-Serve “Real Time Ads”

Much of online advertising consists of static display ads that are sold based on a CPM ad model, a varying price per 1,000 impressions. An advertiser delivers an ad design that then rotates with others on the site. What if small business advertisers could change the message of that ad in real time?

That’s the idea of Minnpost.com’s Real Time Ads, which essentially use customized widgets that pull in messages from an advertiser’s Twitter, Facebook or YouTubeclass="blippr-nobr">YouTube accounts. Local businesses can buy the widget space for a specified amount of time, instead of a CPM model, and are able to update the content whenever they’d like, making each message timely and perfect for a daily deal or promotion.

It is especially useful for local business. Even if they don’t have a social profile or an RSS feed to attach to the ad, they can update their ad by e-mailing a new message to their account, said Karl Pearson-Cater, director of operations at Minnpost.com — a non-profit news organization that relies largely on donations.

“Advertisers love real-time ads. The biggest benefit is how easy it is to get set up and how easy it is to maintain,” Pearson-Cater said.

If real-time ads work for Minnpost.com, Pearson-Cater said they can help adapt the platform for other publishers as well. In the past few months, he said they’ve begun to see a significant revenue stream. They now have approximately $15,000 in annual contracts using real-time ads.

At Yahoo! News, Anna Robertson, director of social media and original video, said they’re considering sponsorships around social widgets on pages as well, or another form of sponsored modules. It’s likely that this form of advertising will become more prevalent across news sites.

Revenue Share

At TBD.com, Brady and his team are leveraging a network of blogs to sell distributed ads. When they come to advertisers, they’re able to sell ads across a network of 196 blogs, which they share 35% of the revenue with. It’s a win-win for TBD and its partners that get revenue they may not have gotten otherwise.

Another approach, of course, is being on the receiving end of social partnerships or revenue sharing. YouTube, for example, shares revenue made through AdSense and publishers can have Promoted Videos run on their page. And as of late, YouTube has become even more sophisticated in making money off of copyright infringers, sharing revenue with the original publishers.

In-stream Advertising

On websites, display ads coexist beside content on a page. But more and more content is becoming part of the social news stream. Users are becoming more accustomed to receiving and digesting information in a stream format on Facebook, Twitter and other sites that display updates in real time. Because people often engage the content in the social space and may not even come directly to the site, monetizing social media off-site is just as important, said Mike Orren, president and founder of Pegasus News in Texas.

“The thing that hasn’t been figured out is how to do so without alienating the social media audience that seems generally trained to disdain ’sponsored’ postings,” Orren said. But of course, that could change.

It’s also important to set clear user expectations of what’s what. Robertson from Yahoo! News said if done effectively, while protecting “church and state,” it can be a good option. She said it’s up to the news organizations to be transparent about what is an ad and what’s content in order to protect journalistic integrity.

Twitter has begun releasing several products to monetize its service, including Promoted Tweets, which are sponsored messages that are featured within a user’s stream. However, news companies have experimented with selling in-stream messages to advertisers and sponsors. The Austin-American Statesman experimented with selling sponsored tweets for $300 per day for two tweets. And according to the paper’s social media editor Robert Quigley, who had to approve the tweets before they went out, followers found them non-intrusive.

In fact, sites like Ad.ly work with advertisers who buy sponsored messages that appear on their participating partners’ Facebook Pages, Twitter accounts and mobile and site widgets. Its partners include a slew of celebrities like Kim Kardashian and publications like TIME.com.

Laura Heck, director of business development at TIME.com, said more publishers are starting to experiment with this format. At TIME.com, Heck said they’ve recently begun to offer advertisers access to its 2.2 million Twitter followers and 165,000+ Facebook fans for sponsored messages. Heck said they’ve put strict rules in place for the type of messages they will feature, frequency, etc., to make sure it doesn’t hinder the user experience.

Selling Traffic and Amplification

The ROI for news companies putting resources to build their social presence has often been a more “engaged” community of readers, a notion that is too often measured by a sheer increase in traffic referrals from social sites or more time spent on site. Many defend social investment by showcasing an increase in traffic, traffic that can then, hypothetically, sell more ads.

Ken Doctor, author of Newsonomics and news industry analyst at Outsell, said social networks have become the fastest growing source of traffic referrals for many news sites. For many, social sites like Facebook and Twitter account for 10% to 15% of their overall referrals, but are number one in growth. The results are even more heavy on social for news startups like CapitalNY, Doctor said, who get 40% or more of their traffic from social. And of course, the quality of these referrals is often better than those readers who come from search. They yield better conversation and are more likely to become regular users of the site, he said.

Though many news organizations have driven traffic organically, The Washington Post recently bought #Election as a “Promoted Trend” on Twitter, which then highlighted its tweet above others using the hashtag in Twitter conversation, likely resulting in a big increase in referrals from visitors who came across the Promoted Trend above all others in the Trends sidebar.

“When we talked with Twitter about the idea, we thought it was a great opportunity to be innovative, go to readers and highlight our content front and center with Twitter’s vast and engaged audience,” said Katharine Zaleski, executive producer and head of digital news products. “The idea wasn’t just to sponsor The Post, but rather, we chose a broad hashtag, probably the broadest for elections, to be able to aggregate the best election tweets from multiple sources and not just us.”

But perhaps more importantly, social amplification has become part of the sell. On top of the site metrics and reach, advertisers want to now know how the content will be amplified off the site with social media. Such is the case with content sponsorships. If an advertiser has its name on a piece of content that they sponsored, they also want to know how many times it was retweeted, shared on Facebook, dugg on class='blippr-nobr'>Diggclass="blippr-nobr">Digg, etc. For example, TIME worked with an advertiser on a “Stay class='blippr-nobr'>Connectedclass="blippr-nobr">Connected” package, which included leveraging social features on TIME.com and its social networks.

Making Ads More Social

Advertisers have begun trying to make ads more social by adding a Facebook “Like” button within the frame or a stream of tweets that make the ad something that readers can interact with. It’s a light-weight way to get users to engage with and even sometimes share advertisements with their social networks while helping advertisers increase their one-to-one relationship with readers by growing their own social following, said Heck from TIME.com.

“Ads are increasingly becoming more social as we’re giving users the ability to engage with and share the ad content,” Heck said.

The idea of course is that users are far more responsive to content recommended by their friends or personal connections rather than content from a branded account or page. At TIME.com, Heck said they’re working on identifying ways to include advertiser branding within shared content. But the details of that formula have yet to be worked out.

Sponsored Contests and Social Campaigns

On-site social media contests can often satisfy an advertiser’s need for amplification and offer a way to engage readers and users with their product in a unique way. There are several routes. Contests can be sold as a package –- on their own or as an up-sell to a sponsorship or ad on the site. Orren from Pegasus News said his organization will only run contests for paying advertisers.

“Part of the promise there is a push through all of our relevant social media,” Orren said. “This is still an added value, but increasingly, advertisers want to know about the reach and engagement of our social nets in making their buying decisions.”

Depending on the product readers are competing for, it may have enough value for the news site to simply use it as a tool to drive traffic and engagement among its audience. In such a case, the advertiser gets exposure to its product or company, while the news site has a community that perhaps feels more appreciated. Contests, however, take time and effort by the staff conducting them and the ROI should be strongly considered. It’s not just a display ad, but results in essentially being a campaign for the product. If a contest wasn’t sold, the amount of time and investment should be considered appropriately.

Leveraging Social Site Real Estate

Though display ads may not be the future, they can be simple to integrate on social sites. News organizations like TIME and more recently the Silicon Alley Insider have sold their Twitter backgrounds as a social display ad.

Similar to readers landing on TIME.com and being exposed to display ads on the site, Twitter users landing on @TIME on Twitter were also exposed to a display ad in the background. Thinking creatively and putting effort to sell those spaces can make them more valuable by adding another spot for display inventory.

What’s Next? Personalized Social Ads

The start and glimmer of what’s possible with personalized and more socially targeted ads has been the result of news organizations like The New York Times and others selling advertising that specifically targets readers who came to the site through Facebook or Twitter. Twitter itself has targeted its Promoted Tweets in the stream based on relevancy, though it is sometimes tied to a Promoted Trend.

News organizations could take advantage of building structured data to better target their advertisements to readers, and perhaps even making advertisements more useful. Of course, this already takes place at a lot of organizations. At Pegasus News, Orren said its entire business model centers on using structured data to customize display ads with all of its content being tagged using a hierarchical taxonomy of more than 3,000 local topics and geography. But, he said, the company hasn’t yet figured out how to take that offsite or to open the flow of data between its sites and the social web, while at the same time respecting privacy.

Doctor said he sees social media optimization as a driver of audience and engagement, and that engagement getting monetized through targeting, rather than blasting social marketing pushes. Being able to get more sophisticated in targeting individuals and specific communities will make monetization efforts easier.

Social media, which effectively has infiltrated all corners of the web, has great potential in not only bringing in revenue but also making ads more useful to readers while also satisfying the needs of advertisers aiming to effectively reach the public. The social web can change the way we think about ads, by making them social and personalized to create utility for the user.

Robertson, from Yahoo! News, said we’re just at the beginning of this space. Yahoo acquired Citizen Sports close to a year ago and it’s done a good job of bringing in revenue attached to social media streams. Yahoo is working to scale some of the concepts to news, Robertson said.

“This is still a fairly new space with a lot of opportunity for news organizations and brands to experiment and innovate,” she said.

More Social Media Resources from Mashable:

- 5 Most Engaged Brands in Social Media/> - 5 Winning Social Media Campaigns to Learn From/> - HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Your Business Facebook Page/> - 5 Huge Trends in Social Media Right Now/> - A Field Guide to Using Facebook Places

For more Social Media coverage:

    class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Social Mediaclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Social Media channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

bench craft company scam

NPD: Big debuts for Fallout, NBA 2K11 <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our news of NPD: Big debuts for Fallout, NBA 2K11.

Google <b>News</b> experiments with metatags for publishers to give <b>...</b>

One of the biggest challenges Google News faces is one that seems navel-gazingly philosophical, but is in fact completely practical: how to determine authorship. In the glut of information on the web, much of it is, if not completely ...

Nintendo hasn&#39;t discontinued Wii Speak Wii <b>News</b> - Page 1 <b>...</b>

Read our Wii news of Nintendo hasn't discontinued Wii Speak.


bench craft company scam

Online video is well and truly, having the best time of its life right now. It seems to be factoring in every marketing plan worth its salt, with some incredible videos being produced by brands that are lighting up social media. I wanted to explore the state of the online video industry a bit further and delve into the stats that show the huge growth curve online video is currently on. Right now it is one of the most fascinating aspects of online, as brands continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible and engaging the audience in completely new ways. It is a seriously big business and one that every brand wants to be a part of. And it’s easy to see why..


Over 35 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute


This stat on its own is pretty stunning and quite hard to get your head around. But when you look at in in the context of the past 3 years, or even 6 months, you realise just how impressive this is. The graph below from Youtube shows the average hours of video uploaded every minute, back to June 2007. While this started at 6 hours, in the past 6 months it stood at 23. That’s a huge increase of 12 hours per minute in just 6 months :



That is some seriously impressive growth and also shows that just as much as brand video is growing, ugc is growing at a staggering rate, due largely to the growth in mobile and ease of uploading. As Youtube note themselves there are other factors, such as upping the time limit in videos, which would obviously attribute for an increase in the total length of video uploads. But this is impressive nonetheless.


Blinkx shares up by 400%


At the business end of video, Blinkx are showing that online video is starting to become a profitable industry. While Google still won’t reveal whether Youtube is making them money or not, Blinkx have recently announced their first ever turn in profit in the 6 months up to September. And it comes 3 years after they first launched. Blinkx make money through running ads alongside the videos they index, acting as a huge video search tool. They have certainly had a good year, as the 400% share increase shows. It’s also encouraging to see that online video isn’t just about Youtube and there are some other serious players in the market with unique offerings.


Online video ads reach half of U.S. users


While some research shows that advertisers are cautious over online video advertising, due to factors such as standardisation of ad formats, online video advertising is going from strength to strength. A recent study from ComScore (the people who measure things), found that just over 45.4% of users in America viewed at least one video ad over a month. But more impressively, were exposed to 32.2 videos each, on average. That’s over 4.3 million video ads that were served to the online U.S. population in September 2010. This shows the power of online video ads to get right in front of your target audience. And while there are some definite rights and wrongs in the content of the video ad, I think we’ll see this grow even more and prove itself as a valuable industry up there with TV.


Comedian makes $315,000 from online video


A recent study found that comedians top the bill for online video earnings, and one in particular is doing very well. A recent study found that comedian Shane Dawson, who amassed 431.7 million online video views in the past year made $315,000 from his content, through ad revenue. He came out top for independent earners on Youtube and it’s certainly an aspirational case study that shows the business of online video isn’t just for big brands.


Kia spend a third of budget on online video



In a bold move, Kia Motors have invested a third of their £2 million marketing budget for the new Sportage model, into online video. We’ve seen the motor industry embracing social media more and more – with Ford launching a model through Facebook – and this shows the commitment that some brands are making to online video. Not so much an add-on or a nice to have, but a central facet of a multi-million pound campaign. The online campaign will focus on the central characters from the TV adverts and include home-page takeovers and video ads. Cases like this help to solidify online video as a serious marketing avenue that can bring a campaign to life and help you get that extra bang for your buck.


20% of downstream internet traffic is to Netflix


In a huge coup for Netflix, a recent study found that 20% of peak time donwstream internet traffic was streaming video from their site. This is great news for Netflix, and perhaps not so great news for the DVD market. If Netflix were available in Ireland I would be there in an instant and would choose to view all films in this way, as it simply doesn’t make sense to invest in a DVD anymore and I expect that even the gift market for this may eventually die out. 20% is a huge figure and shows how much Netflix has staked its claim in this market.


2 billion videos viewed each month Facebook


In June 2010 Facebook released some interesting stats into their online video offering, which show the huge potential it has to own this market. They revealed that as well as 2 billion video views on its site each month, there were 415,000 online video uploads each day. While it may not be a contender to Youtube just yet, the sharing capabilities within Facebook and the ease of connecting with your community show the potential for this to grow. Interestingly, Youtube now offer the option of connecting with Facebook instead of logging in with your gmail account. This shows Youtube recognises the power to use the huge community on Facebook, something it can’t compete with, to combine with its own wealth of online video.


Live stream video viewing up by 650%


In their most recent report into online video, Comscore announced that the amount of live-streamed video we’re watching has grown by 648% over the past year. This is absolutely phenomenal growth and compares to a (still impressive)  68% increase in video views on Youtube. While it may still form a minor part of the online video  market, live streaming is growing in popularity and use, as we become more accustomed to this form of content, both as consumers and producers. UStream are owning the market here, but Facebook are quickly getting in on the game – recently introducing LiveStream integration with Facebook pages. This has the potential to hugely increase the live stream video market and see it really reach the mainstream.






Though social media has proved itself an effective tool in helping journalists gather news and connect with their communities, a pervading question among the skeptics still remains: Where’s the money?

As social sites like Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter and Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook build their empires and seek to remedy their own financial instability in the hope of turning profits, news organizations are experimenting with ways to monetize their social media presence and leverage the social web to complete an online revenue puzzle.

The revenue is there, but the social web won’t necessarily solve that puzzle. “There’s no silver bullet,” Jim Brady, the general manager at TBD.com, said at the Online News Association Conference last week. “There’s just shrapnel, pieces of revenue.” Brady, who launched TBD.com this summer, said display ads are certainly not the future in revenue for news and that it will come from multiple revenue streams. class='blippr-nobr'>Newsclass="blippr-nobr">news organizations have certainly been experimenting where they can to get revenue in pieces, from mobile applications to launching group buying sites. Here’s a closer look at some of these efforts.

Self-Serve “Real Time Ads”

Much of online advertising consists of static display ads that are sold based on a CPM ad model, a varying price per 1,000 impressions. An advertiser delivers an ad design that then rotates with others on the site. What if small business advertisers could change the message of that ad in real time?

That’s the idea of Minnpost.com’s Real Time Ads, which essentially use customized widgets that pull in messages from an advertiser’s Twitter, Facebook or YouTubeclass="blippr-nobr">YouTube accounts. Local businesses can buy the widget space for a specified amount of time, instead of a CPM model, and are able to update the content whenever they’d like, making each message timely and perfect for a daily deal or promotion.

It is especially useful for local business. Even if they don’t have a social profile or an RSS feed to attach to the ad, they can update their ad by e-mailing a new message to their account, said Karl Pearson-Cater, director of operations at Minnpost.com — a non-profit news organization that relies largely on donations.

“Advertisers love real-time ads. The biggest benefit is how easy it is to get set up and how easy it is to maintain,” Pearson-Cater said.

If real-time ads work for Minnpost.com, Pearson-Cater said they can help adapt the platform for other publishers as well. In the past few months, he said they’ve begun to see a significant revenue stream. They now have approximately $15,000 in annual contracts using real-time ads.

At Yahoo! News, Anna Robertson, director of social media and original video, said they’re considering sponsorships around social widgets on pages as well, or another form of sponsored modules. It’s likely that this form of advertising will become more prevalent across news sites.

Revenue Share

At TBD.com, Brady and his team are leveraging a network of blogs to sell distributed ads. When they come to advertisers, they’re able to sell ads across a network of 196 blogs, which they share 35% of the revenue with. It’s a win-win for TBD and its partners that get revenue they may not have gotten otherwise.

Another approach, of course, is being on the receiving end of social partnerships or revenue sharing. YouTube, for example, shares revenue made through AdSense and publishers can have Promoted Videos run on their page. And as of late, YouTube has become even more sophisticated in making money off of copyright infringers, sharing revenue with the original publishers.

In-stream Advertising

On websites, display ads coexist beside content on a page. But more and more content is becoming part of the social news stream. Users are becoming more accustomed to receiving and digesting information in a stream format on Facebook, Twitter and other sites that display updates in real time. Because people often engage the content in the social space and may not even come directly to the site, monetizing social media off-site is just as important, said Mike Orren, president and founder of Pegasus News in Texas.

“The thing that hasn’t been figured out is how to do so without alienating the social media audience that seems generally trained to disdain ’sponsored’ postings,” Orren said. But of course, that could change.

It’s also important to set clear user expectations of what’s what. Robertson from Yahoo! News said if done effectively, while protecting “church and state,” it can be a good option. She said it’s up to the news organizations to be transparent about what is an ad and what’s content in order to protect journalistic integrity.

Twitter has begun releasing several products to monetize its service, including Promoted Tweets, which are sponsored messages that are featured within a user’s stream. However, news companies have experimented with selling in-stream messages to advertisers and sponsors. The Austin-American Statesman experimented with selling sponsored tweets for $300 per day for two tweets. And according to the paper’s social media editor Robert Quigley, who had to approve the tweets before they went out, followers found them non-intrusive.

In fact, sites like Ad.ly work with advertisers who buy sponsored messages that appear on their participating partners’ Facebook Pages, Twitter accounts and mobile and site widgets. Its partners include a slew of celebrities like Kim Kardashian and publications like TIME.com.

Laura Heck, director of business development at TIME.com, said more publishers are starting to experiment with this format. At TIME.com, Heck said they’ve recently begun to offer advertisers access to its 2.2 million Twitter followers and 165,000+ Facebook fans for sponsored messages. Heck said they’ve put strict rules in place for the type of messages they will feature, frequency, etc., to make sure it doesn’t hinder the user experience.

Selling Traffic and Amplification

The ROI for news companies putting resources to build their social presence has often been a more “engaged” community of readers, a notion that is too often measured by a sheer increase in traffic referrals from social sites or more time spent on site. Many defend social investment by showcasing an increase in traffic, traffic that can then, hypothetically, sell more ads.

Ken Doctor, author of Newsonomics and news industry analyst at Outsell, said social networks have become the fastest growing source of traffic referrals for many news sites. For many, social sites like Facebook and Twitter account for 10% to 15% of their overall referrals, but are number one in growth. The results are even more heavy on social for news startups like CapitalNY, Doctor said, who get 40% or more of their traffic from social. And of course, the quality of these referrals is often better than those readers who come from search. They yield better conversation and are more likely to become regular users of the site, he said.

Though many news organizations have driven traffic organically, The Washington Post recently bought #Election as a “Promoted Trend” on Twitter, which then highlighted its tweet above others using the hashtag in Twitter conversation, likely resulting in a big increase in referrals from visitors who came across the Promoted Trend above all others in the Trends sidebar.

“When we talked with Twitter about the idea, we thought it was a great opportunity to be innovative, go to readers and highlight our content front and center with Twitter’s vast and engaged audience,” said Katharine Zaleski, executive producer and head of digital news products. “The idea wasn’t just to sponsor The Post, but rather, we chose a broad hashtag, probably the broadest for elections, to be able to aggregate the best election tweets from multiple sources and not just us.”

But perhaps more importantly, social amplification has become part of the sell. On top of the site metrics and reach, advertisers want to now know how the content will be amplified off the site with social media. Such is the case with content sponsorships. If an advertiser has its name on a piece of content that they sponsored, they also want to know how many times it was retweeted, shared on Facebook, dugg on class='blippr-nobr'>Diggclass="blippr-nobr">Digg, etc. For example, TIME worked with an advertiser on a “Stay class='blippr-nobr'>Connectedclass="blippr-nobr">Connected” package, which included leveraging social features on TIME.com and its social networks.

Making Ads More Social

Advertisers have begun trying to make ads more social by adding a Facebook “Like” button within the frame or a stream of tweets that make the ad something that readers can interact with. It’s a light-weight way to get users to engage with and even sometimes share advertisements with their social networks while helping advertisers increase their one-to-one relationship with readers by growing their own social following, said Heck from TIME.com.

“Ads are increasingly becoming more social as we’re giving users the ability to engage with and share the ad content,” Heck said.

The idea of course is that users are far more responsive to content recommended by their friends or personal connections rather than content from a branded account or page. At TIME.com, Heck said they’re working on identifying ways to include advertiser branding within shared content. But the details of that formula have yet to be worked out.

Sponsored Contests and Social Campaigns

On-site social media contests can often satisfy an advertiser’s need for amplification and offer a way to engage readers and users with their product in a unique way. There are several routes. Contests can be sold as a package –- on their own or as an up-sell to a sponsorship or ad on the site. Orren from Pegasus News said his organization will only run contests for paying advertisers.

“Part of the promise there is a push through all of our relevant social media,” Orren said. “This is still an added value, but increasingly, advertisers want to know about the reach and engagement of our social nets in making their buying decisions.”

Depending on the product readers are competing for, it may have enough value for the news site to simply use it as a tool to drive traffic and engagement among its audience. In such a case, the advertiser gets exposure to its product or company, while the news site has a community that perhaps feels more appreciated. Contests, however, take time and effort by the staff conducting them and the ROI should be strongly considered. It’s not just a display ad, but results in essentially being a campaign for the product. If a contest wasn’t sold, the amount of time and investment should be considered appropriately.

Leveraging Social Site Real Estate

Though display ads may not be the future, they can be simple to integrate on social sites. News organizations like TIME and more recently the Silicon Alley Insider have sold their Twitter backgrounds as a social display ad.

Similar to readers landing on TIME.com and being exposed to display ads on the site, Twitter users landing on @TIME on Twitter were also exposed to a display ad in the background. Thinking creatively and putting effort to sell those spaces can make them more valuable by adding another spot for display inventory.

What’s Next? Personalized Social Ads

The start and glimmer of what’s possible with personalized and more socially targeted ads has been the result of news organizations like The New York Times and others selling advertising that specifically targets readers who came to the site through Facebook or Twitter. Twitter itself has targeted its Promoted Tweets in the stream based on relevancy, though it is sometimes tied to a Promoted Trend.

News organizations could take advantage of building structured data to better target their advertisements to readers, and perhaps even making advertisements more useful. Of course, this already takes place at a lot of organizations. At Pegasus News, Orren said its entire business model centers on using structured data to customize display ads with all of its content being tagged using a hierarchical taxonomy of more than 3,000 local topics and geography. But, he said, the company hasn’t yet figured out how to take that offsite or to open the flow of data between its sites and the social web, while at the same time respecting privacy.

Doctor said he sees social media optimization as a driver of audience and engagement, and that engagement getting monetized through targeting, rather than blasting social marketing pushes. Being able to get more sophisticated in targeting individuals and specific communities will make monetization efforts easier.

Social media, which effectively has infiltrated all corners of the web, has great potential in not only bringing in revenue but also making ads more useful to readers while also satisfying the needs of advertisers aiming to effectively reach the public. The social web can change the way we think about ads, by making them social and personalized to create utility for the user.

Robertson, from Yahoo! News, said we’re just at the beginning of this space. Yahoo acquired Citizen Sports close to a year ago and it’s done a good job of bringing in revenue attached to social media streams. Yahoo is working to scale some of the concepts to news, Robertson said.

“This is still a fairly new space with a lot of opportunity for news organizations and brands to experiment and innovate,” she said.

More Social Media Resources from Mashable:

- 5 Most Engaged Brands in Social Media/> - 5 Winning Social Media Campaigns to Learn From/> - HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Your Business Facebook Page/> - 5 Huge Trends in Social Media Right Now/> - A Field Guide to Using Facebook Places

For more Social Media coverage:

    class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Social Mediaclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Social Media channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

benchcraft company scam

NPD: Big debuts for Fallout, NBA 2K11 <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our news of NPD: Big debuts for Fallout, NBA 2K11.

Google <b>News</b> experiments with metatags for publishers to give <b>...</b>

One of the biggest challenges Google News faces is one that seems navel-gazingly philosophical, but is in fact completely practical: how to determine authorship. In the glut of information on the web, much of it is, if not completely ...

Nintendo hasn&#39;t discontinued Wii Speak Wii <b>News</b> - Page 1 <b>...</b>

Read our Wii news of Nintendo hasn't discontinued Wii Speak.


benchcraft company scam

benchcraft company scam

Make Money With Jack Zufelt by Jack M. Zufelt-&quot;Mentor to MIllions&quot;


bench craft company scam

NPD: Big debuts for Fallout, NBA 2K11 <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our news of NPD: Big debuts for Fallout, NBA 2K11.

Google <b>News</b> experiments with metatags for publishers to give <b>...</b>

One of the biggest challenges Google News faces is one that seems navel-gazingly philosophical, but is in fact completely practical: how to determine authorship. In the glut of information on the web, much of it is, if not completely ...

Nintendo hasn&#39;t discontinued Wii Speak Wii <b>News</b> - Page 1 <b>...</b>

Read our Wii news of Nintendo hasn't discontinued Wii Speak.


benchcraft company scam

Online video is well and truly, having the best time of its life right now. It seems to be factoring in every marketing plan worth its salt, with some incredible videos being produced by brands that are lighting up social media. I wanted to explore the state of the online video industry a bit further and delve into the stats that show the huge growth curve online video is currently on. Right now it is one of the most fascinating aspects of online, as brands continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible and engaging the audience in completely new ways. It is a seriously big business and one that every brand wants to be a part of. And it’s easy to see why..


Over 35 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute


This stat on its own is pretty stunning and quite hard to get your head around. But when you look at in in the context of the past 3 years, or even 6 months, you realise just how impressive this is. The graph below from Youtube shows the average hours of video uploaded every minute, back to June 2007. While this started at 6 hours, in the past 6 months it stood at 23. That’s a huge increase of 12 hours per minute in just 6 months :



That is some seriously impressive growth and also shows that just as much as brand video is growing, ugc is growing at a staggering rate, due largely to the growth in mobile and ease of uploading. As Youtube note themselves there are other factors, such as upping the time limit in videos, which would obviously attribute for an increase in the total length of video uploads. But this is impressive nonetheless.


Blinkx shares up by 400%


At the business end of video, Blinkx are showing that online video is starting to become a profitable industry. While Google still won’t reveal whether Youtube is making them money or not, Blinkx have recently announced their first ever turn in profit in the 6 months up to September. And it comes 3 years after they first launched. Blinkx make money through running ads alongside the videos they index, acting as a huge video search tool. They have certainly had a good year, as the 400% share increase shows. It’s also encouraging to see that online video isn’t just about Youtube and there are some other serious players in the market with unique offerings.


Online video ads reach half of U.S. users


While some research shows that advertisers are cautious over online video advertising, due to factors such as standardisation of ad formats, online video advertising is going from strength to strength. A recent study from ComScore (the people who measure things), found that just over 45.4% of users in America viewed at least one video ad over a month. But more impressively, were exposed to 32.2 videos each, on average. That’s over 4.3 million video ads that were served to the online U.S. population in September 2010. This shows the power of online video ads to get right in front of your target audience. And while there are some definite rights and wrongs in the content of the video ad, I think we’ll see this grow even more and prove itself as a valuable industry up there with TV.


Comedian makes $315,000 from online video


A recent study found that comedians top the bill for online video earnings, and one in particular is doing very well. A recent study found that comedian Shane Dawson, who amassed 431.7 million online video views in the past year made $315,000 from his content, through ad revenue. He came out top for independent earners on Youtube and it’s certainly an aspirational case study that shows the business of online video isn’t just for big brands.


Kia spend a third of budget on online video



In a bold move, Kia Motors have invested a third of their £2 million marketing budget for the new Sportage model, into online video. We’ve seen the motor industry embracing social media more and more – with Ford launching a model through Facebook – and this shows the commitment that some brands are making to online video. Not so much an add-on or a nice to have, but a central facet of a multi-million pound campaign. The online campaign will focus on the central characters from the TV adverts and include home-page takeovers and video ads. Cases like this help to solidify online video as a serious marketing avenue that can bring a campaign to life and help you get that extra bang for your buck.


20% of downstream internet traffic is to Netflix


In a huge coup for Netflix, a recent study found that 20% of peak time donwstream internet traffic was streaming video from their site. This is great news for Netflix, and perhaps not so great news for the DVD market. If Netflix were available in Ireland I would be there in an instant and would choose to view all films in this way, as it simply doesn’t make sense to invest in a DVD anymore and I expect that even the gift market for this may eventually die out. 20% is a huge figure and shows how much Netflix has staked its claim in this market.


2 billion videos viewed each month Facebook


In June 2010 Facebook released some interesting stats into their online video offering, which show the huge potential it has to own this market. They revealed that as well as 2 billion video views on its site each month, there were 415,000 online video uploads each day. While it may not be a contender to Youtube just yet, the sharing capabilities within Facebook and the ease of connecting with your community show the potential for this to grow. Interestingly, Youtube now offer the option of connecting with Facebook instead of logging in with your gmail account. This shows Youtube recognises the power to use the huge community on Facebook, something it can’t compete with, to combine with its own wealth of online video.


Live stream video viewing up by 650%


In their most recent report into online video, Comscore announced that the amount of live-streamed video we’re watching has grown by 648% over the past year. This is absolutely phenomenal growth and compares to a (still impressive)  68% increase in video views on Youtube. While it may still form a minor part of the online video  market, live streaming is growing in popularity and use, as we become more accustomed to this form of content, both as consumers and producers. UStream are owning the market here, but Facebook are quickly getting in on the game – recently introducing LiveStream integration with Facebook pages. This has the potential to hugely increase the live stream video market and see it really reach the mainstream.






Though social media has proved itself an effective tool in helping journalists gather news and connect with their communities, a pervading question among the skeptics still remains: Where’s the money?

As social sites like Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter and Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook build their empires and seek to remedy their own financial instability in the hope of turning profits, news organizations are experimenting with ways to monetize their social media presence and leverage the social web to complete an online revenue puzzle.

The revenue is there, but the social web won’t necessarily solve that puzzle. “There’s no silver bullet,” Jim Brady, the general manager at TBD.com, said at the Online News Association Conference last week. “There’s just shrapnel, pieces of revenue.” Brady, who launched TBD.com this summer, said display ads are certainly not the future in revenue for news and that it will come from multiple revenue streams. class='blippr-nobr'>Newsclass="blippr-nobr">news organizations have certainly been experimenting where they can to get revenue in pieces, from mobile applications to launching group buying sites. Here’s a closer look at some of these efforts.

Self-Serve “Real Time Ads”

Much of online advertising consists of static display ads that are sold based on a CPM ad model, a varying price per 1,000 impressions. An advertiser delivers an ad design that then rotates with others on the site. What if small business advertisers could change the message of that ad in real time?

That’s the idea of Minnpost.com’s Real Time Ads, which essentially use customized widgets that pull in messages from an advertiser’s Twitter, Facebook or YouTubeclass="blippr-nobr">YouTube accounts. Local businesses can buy the widget space for a specified amount of time, instead of a CPM model, and are able to update the content whenever they’d like, making each message timely and perfect for a daily deal or promotion.

It is especially useful for local business. Even if they don’t have a social profile or an RSS feed to attach to the ad, they can update their ad by e-mailing a new message to their account, said Karl Pearson-Cater, director of operations at Minnpost.com — a non-profit news organization that relies largely on donations.

“Advertisers love real-time ads. The biggest benefit is how easy it is to get set up and how easy it is to maintain,” Pearson-Cater said.

If real-time ads work for Minnpost.com, Pearson-Cater said they can help adapt the platform for other publishers as well. In the past few months, he said they’ve begun to see a significant revenue stream. They now have approximately $15,000 in annual contracts using real-time ads.

At Yahoo! News, Anna Robertson, director of social media and original video, said they’re considering sponsorships around social widgets on pages as well, or another form of sponsored modules. It’s likely that this form of advertising will become more prevalent across news sites.

Revenue Share

At TBD.com, Brady and his team are leveraging a network of blogs to sell distributed ads. When they come to advertisers, they’re able to sell ads across a network of 196 blogs, which they share 35% of the revenue with. It’s a win-win for TBD and its partners that get revenue they may not have gotten otherwise.

Another approach, of course, is being on the receiving end of social partnerships or revenue sharing. YouTube, for example, shares revenue made through AdSense and publishers can have Promoted Videos run on their page. And as of late, YouTube has become even more sophisticated in making money off of copyright infringers, sharing revenue with the original publishers.

In-stream Advertising

On websites, display ads coexist beside content on a page. But more and more content is becoming part of the social news stream. Users are becoming more accustomed to receiving and digesting information in a stream format on Facebook, Twitter and other sites that display updates in real time. Because people often engage the content in the social space and may not even come directly to the site, monetizing social media off-site is just as important, said Mike Orren, president and founder of Pegasus News in Texas.

“The thing that hasn’t been figured out is how to do so without alienating the social media audience that seems generally trained to disdain ’sponsored’ postings,” Orren said. But of course, that could change.

It’s also important to set clear user expectations of what’s what. Robertson from Yahoo! News said if done effectively, while protecting “church and state,” it can be a good option. She said it’s up to the news organizations to be transparent about what is an ad and what’s content in order to protect journalistic integrity.

Twitter has begun releasing several products to monetize its service, including Promoted Tweets, which are sponsored messages that are featured within a user’s stream. However, news companies have experimented with selling in-stream messages to advertisers and sponsors. The Austin-American Statesman experimented with selling sponsored tweets for $300 per day for two tweets. And according to the paper’s social media editor Robert Quigley, who had to approve the tweets before they went out, followers found them non-intrusive.

In fact, sites like Ad.ly work with advertisers who buy sponsored messages that appear on their participating partners’ Facebook Pages, Twitter accounts and mobile and site widgets. Its partners include a slew of celebrities like Kim Kardashian and publications like TIME.com.

Laura Heck, director of business development at TIME.com, said more publishers are starting to experiment with this format. At TIME.com, Heck said they’ve recently begun to offer advertisers access to its 2.2 million Twitter followers and 165,000+ Facebook fans for sponsored messages. Heck said they’ve put strict rules in place for the type of messages they will feature, frequency, etc., to make sure it doesn’t hinder the user experience.

Selling Traffic and Amplification

The ROI for news companies putting resources to build their social presence has often been a more “engaged” community of readers, a notion that is too often measured by a sheer increase in traffic referrals from social sites or more time spent on site. Many defend social investment by showcasing an increase in traffic, traffic that can then, hypothetically, sell more ads.

Ken Doctor, author of Newsonomics and news industry analyst at Outsell, said social networks have become the fastest growing source of traffic referrals for many news sites. For many, social sites like Facebook and Twitter account for 10% to 15% of their overall referrals, but are number one in growth. The results are even more heavy on social for news startups like CapitalNY, Doctor said, who get 40% or more of their traffic from social. And of course, the quality of these referrals is often better than those readers who come from search. They yield better conversation and are more likely to become regular users of the site, he said.

Though many news organizations have driven traffic organically, The Washington Post recently bought #Election as a “Promoted Trend” on Twitter, which then highlighted its tweet above others using the hashtag in Twitter conversation, likely resulting in a big increase in referrals from visitors who came across the Promoted Trend above all others in the Trends sidebar.

“When we talked with Twitter about the idea, we thought it was a great opportunity to be innovative, go to readers and highlight our content front and center with Twitter’s vast and engaged audience,” said Katharine Zaleski, executive producer and head of digital news products. “The idea wasn’t just to sponsor The Post, but rather, we chose a broad hashtag, probably the broadest for elections, to be able to aggregate the best election tweets from multiple sources and not just us.”

But perhaps more importantly, social amplification has become part of the sell. On top of the site metrics and reach, advertisers want to now know how the content will be amplified off the site with social media. Such is the case with content sponsorships. If an advertiser has its name on a piece of content that they sponsored, they also want to know how many times it was retweeted, shared on Facebook, dugg on class='blippr-nobr'>Diggclass="blippr-nobr">Digg, etc. For example, TIME worked with an advertiser on a “Stay class='blippr-nobr'>Connectedclass="blippr-nobr">Connected” package, which included leveraging social features on TIME.com and its social networks.

Making Ads More Social

Advertisers have begun trying to make ads more social by adding a Facebook “Like” button within the frame or a stream of tweets that make the ad something that readers can interact with. It’s a light-weight way to get users to engage with and even sometimes share advertisements with their social networks while helping advertisers increase their one-to-one relationship with readers by growing their own social following, said Heck from TIME.com.

“Ads are increasingly becoming more social as we’re giving users the ability to engage with and share the ad content,” Heck said.

The idea of course is that users are far more responsive to content recommended by their friends or personal connections rather than content from a branded account or page. At TIME.com, Heck said they’re working on identifying ways to include advertiser branding within shared content. But the details of that formula have yet to be worked out.

Sponsored Contests and Social Campaigns

On-site social media contests can often satisfy an advertiser’s need for amplification and offer a way to engage readers and users with their product in a unique way. There are several routes. Contests can be sold as a package –- on their own or as an up-sell to a sponsorship or ad on the site. Orren from Pegasus News said his organization will only run contests for paying advertisers.

“Part of the promise there is a push through all of our relevant social media,” Orren said. “This is still an added value, but increasingly, advertisers want to know about the reach and engagement of our social nets in making their buying decisions.”

Depending on the product readers are competing for, it may have enough value for the news site to simply use it as a tool to drive traffic and engagement among its audience. In such a case, the advertiser gets exposure to its product or company, while the news site has a community that perhaps feels more appreciated. Contests, however, take time and effort by the staff conducting them and the ROI should be strongly considered. It’s not just a display ad, but results in essentially being a campaign for the product. If a contest wasn’t sold, the amount of time and investment should be considered appropriately.

Leveraging Social Site Real Estate

Though display ads may not be the future, they can be simple to integrate on social sites. News organizations like TIME and more recently the Silicon Alley Insider have sold their Twitter backgrounds as a social display ad.

Similar to readers landing on TIME.com and being exposed to display ads on the site, Twitter users landing on @TIME on Twitter were also exposed to a display ad in the background. Thinking creatively and putting effort to sell those spaces can make them more valuable by adding another spot for display inventory.

What’s Next? Personalized Social Ads

The start and glimmer of what’s possible with personalized and more socially targeted ads has been the result of news organizations like The New York Times and others selling advertising that specifically targets readers who came to the site through Facebook or Twitter. Twitter itself has targeted its Promoted Tweets in the stream based on relevancy, though it is sometimes tied to a Promoted Trend.

News organizations could take advantage of building structured data to better target their advertisements to readers, and perhaps even making advertisements more useful. Of course, this already takes place at a lot of organizations. At Pegasus News, Orren said its entire business model centers on using structured data to customize display ads with all of its content being tagged using a hierarchical taxonomy of more than 3,000 local topics and geography. But, he said, the company hasn’t yet figured out how to take that offsite or to open the flow of data between its sites and the social web, while at the same time respecting privacy.

Doctor said he sees social media optimization as a driver of audience and engagement, and that engagement getting monetized through targeting, rather than blasting social marketing pushes. Being able to get more sophisticated in targeting individuals and specific communities will make monetization efforts easier.

Social media, which effectively has infiltrated all corners of the web, has great potential in not only bringing in revenue but also making ads more useful to readers while also satisfying the needs of advertisers aiming to effectively reach the public. The social web can change the way we think about ads, by making them social and personalized to create utility for the user.

Robertson, from Yahoo! News, said we’re just at the beginning of this space. Yahoo acquired Citizen Sports close to a year ago and it’s done a good job of bringing in revenue attached to social media streams. Yahoo is working to scale some of the concepts to news, Robertson said.

“This is still a fairly new space with a lot of opportunity for news organizations and brands to experiment and innovate,” she said.

More Social Media Resources from Mashable:

- 5 Most Engaged Brands in Social Media/> - 5 Winning Social Media Campaigns to Learn From/> - HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Your Business Facebook Page/> - 5 Huge Trends in Social Media Right Now/> - A Field Guide to Using Facebook Places

For more Social Media coverage:

    class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Social Mediaclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Social Media channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

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