Sony Joins Vevo, Bing Moves to Number Two and More
Sony joins Vevo -- Sony Music Entertainment has announced it will be joining Universal Music Group on Vevo, a site for premium music video content. Described as "Hulu for music videos," Vevo is set to launch later this year. In exchange for contributing cash and content, Sony will become an equity partner in the venture. Vevo is also said to be courting Warner Brothers as well. That would leave EMI as the only major record company not on board with the deal. Vevo is a subsidiary of Universal Music Group partnering with Google to use the company's YouTube technology. [Source: All Things Digital]
Bing moves into number two most used search -- Less than a week after its launch, Microsoft's Bing has surpassed Yahoo to become the number two most used search engine behind Google. According to StatCounter, Bing, which is largely a rebranding of Microsoft Live search, now holds 16 percent of the market share compared to Yahoo's ten percent and Google's 71 percent. The spike in traffic is likely due to the hype and marketing of the search engine's launch, and the traffic may subside in a few days. Were Bing to continue its growth, it would be the first legitimate challenge to Google's stranglehold on the market. [Source: TechCrunch]
Digg serves inline advertising -- The social news site Digg announced it will offer advertising that is positioned in its stream of content. Like news stories, users will be able to "Digg" the advertisement to offer feedback about its relevancy. The ads will be designed similar to the stories with the exception of a "sponsor" border. Digg plans on rolling out the new ad system in the next few months. The site just recently ended its display advertising deal with Microsoft. [Source: paidContent]
Industry wide ad network proposed at "Secret meeting" -- Alan Mutter, known as the "Newsasaur" blogger, pitched an industry wide advertising network to the meeting of newspaper executive in Chicago last week. The network would be focused on e-commerce and offer highly targeted ads across all participating newspapers. Under the network, named ViewPass, newspapers would share demographic information. Yahoo has a similar arrangement with newspapers under its newspaper consortium. [Source: Nieman Journaism Lab]
Mag's founder to buy it back -- Five months after it was shut down by publisher Ziff Davis Media, the original owner of Electronic Gaming Monthly announced plans to buy the title back. Founder Steve Harris intends to purchase EGM sometime in the second half of the year and relaunch the title, though specific terms were not disclosed. Ziff Davis sold the title and its popular online counterpart 1UP.com in January to Hearst. After shifting PC Magazine to an online-only destination, Ziff Davis no longer has any print properties. [Source: Folio]