WebProNews

Tag: News

  • Infographic Looks At Most Tweeted About News Of 2014

    Twitter is often the first place we turn when we want to know what people are saying about current events. While it doesn’t have the user base that Facebook does, it does have a wealth of real time information from around the world/country about every major news event. This has been, for the past several years, the best place to see public opinion and analysis.

    Echelon Insights released the following infographic looking at the most talked about news topics in the U.S. in 2014 based on 184.5 million Twitter mentions:

    As you can see, Ferguson and Eric Garner combined was the top most talked about story, which doesn’t come as much of a surprise. This was followed by the midterms, ebola, Israel, and Iraq.

    Via AllTwitter

    Image via Echelon Insights

  • Google News Gives Publishers New Newsletter

    Google announced that it’s giving publishers in Google News a newsletter to keep them up to date on things they need to to know.

    To get it, you’ll need to make sure your site is in Google News, log into the Publisher Center to check the status of its inclusion, and prove ownership of your site through Webmaster Tools.

    “Often times there are important announcements and product features we’d like to tell you about,” says Google’s Stacie C in a forum thread (via Search Engine Roundtable). “To help Google News publishers stay up-to-date, many publishers will see our first quarterly newsletter in their inbox shortly!”

    Stacie adds, “This first newsletter will showcase: the Google News Publisher Center, adding your Editors’ Picks feed, how to troubleshoot article crawl errors, and an update on image crawl. For Issue #2, we’d love to hear what *you*, the publishers, want to know more about.”

    You can opt out of the newsletter by hitting the unsubscribe link in the footer of the email.

    For now, the newsletter is English-only, but it will be expanded into additional languages in the future. It’s unclear if publishers in Spain will be getting it.

    Image via Google

  • Google News Closure Already Hurting Publishers [Report]

    As you may know, Google announced it would shut down Google News in Spain today as a new law takes effect, requiring such services to pay publishers to use small snippets of text.

    Google has indeed shut down the homepage of Google News in Spain, but as detailed earlier, you can still access Spanish Google News via web searches, which provide news results and a link to additional results via Google News. As of the time of this writing, the actual service is still up and running even if the main page has been replaced by an explanation of the service’s closure.

    It would appear that this is still enough to put a major dent in publishers’ traffic. GigaOm is reporting this to be the case, citing data from ChartBeat.

    Josh Schwartz, the chief data scientist at Chartbeat, said the company doesn’t track every Spanish news site or publisher, but it has enough data on them as a group to indicate just how dramatic the traffic decline was. The service tracks about 50 sites, he said, ranging from small media outlets to the largest newspaper publishers, and looking at the data shows “a pretty massive difference” in traffic compared to a similar day before the removal. On average the drop is between 10 and 15 percent (Chartbeat only includes traffic from clients who have consented to have their anonymized data used).

    The drop will presumably be even greater if Google stops showing news results altogether, which we should expect that it will, unless publishers are able to convince the government to allow Google to keep the service running. Ironically, they are currently trying to do just that.

    Image via Google

  • Should Google News Be Shut Down In Spain?

    Publishers aren’t fond of the idea of not having Google News to send them traffic, it would seem. Who knew? Last week, Google announced it would shut down Google News in Spain on December 16. The day is here, and as of the time of this writing, the site is operational, but it may be gone soon. The company’s hand was forced by legislation in that country requiring news aggregation services like Google News to pay publishers for using small snippets of content.

    Should Google be forced to pay publishers or shut down Google News? Do you agree with this law? Should it be implemented in other countries? Should publishers just be grateful for the traffic they get? Share your thoughts on the issue in the comments.

    The law is similar to one in Germany that ensured publishers could charge services like Google for doing just that, but the difference with the Spanish law is that publishers actually have to charge.

    You see, when the scenario played out in Germany, publishers eventually caved, coming to the realization that they actually relied on that Google traffic. Google wasn’t going to pay them for snippets, so it just wouldn’t index those who wanted to charge. Minds were changed.

    Minds have also changed in Spain, but given the different nature of the law, a reversal might not be as easy. The Spanish Report reports that the Spanish Newspaper Publishers’ Association (AEDE) wants the Spanish government and EU competition authorities to stop Google from closing Google News. The publication writes:

    The Spanish Newspaper Publishers’ Association (AEDE) issued a statement last night saying that Google News was “not just the closure of another service given its dominant market position”, recognising that Google’s decision: “will undoubtedly have a negative impact on citizens and Spanish businesses”.

    “Given the dominant position of Google (which in Spain controls almost all of the searches in the market and is an authentic gateway to the Internet), AEDE requires the intervention of Spanish and community authorities, and competition authorities, to effectively protect the rights of citizens and companies”.

    Keep in mind, this is the group that lobbied the government for such a law in the first place. Apparently they didn’t expect Google to actually pull the plug. Now they seem to be panicking.

    Last week, Richard Gingras, Head of Google News, said:

    As Google News itself makes no money (we do not show any advertising on the site) this new approach is simply not sustainable. So it’s with real sadness that on 16 December (before the new law comes into effect in January) we’ll remove Spanish publishers from Google News, and close Google News in Spain.

    For centuries publishers were limited in how widely they could distribute the printed page. The Internet changed all that — creating tremendous opportunities but also real challenges for publishers as competition both for readers’ attention and for advertising Euros increased. We’re committed to helping the news industry meet that challenge and look forward to continuing to work with our thousands of partners globally, as well as in Spain, to help them increase their online readership and revenues.

    We’ve yet to see any comment from Google in light of this new news, and it remains to be seen if the government will indeed intervene again to keep Google News alive in the country.

    Currently, Google News is still operational from Google.es. If you go to the main Google News page, it presents the user with Google’s message about shutting down, but if you perform a regular Google search that lends itself to news, you still get news results within the regular search results, and can click through to the Spanish version of Google News like normal (h/t: Greg Sterling). This is likely how most people use the service as it is.

    This could very well go away soon, but we have to wonder if Google is in talks with the government in light of the publisher group’s recent comments. After all, they would be the beneficiaries of the law, so the law has little reason for existing if it doesn’t cater to those it’s supposed to protect.

    Do you think Google News will ultimately remain in operation in Spain, or do you expect it to actually be gone for good? Let us know in the comments.

    Images via Google

  • You Can Search Google News Archives Again

    Google News used to have an archive search feature. It enabled you to search back through the years for old news stories. This can sometimes be helpful in research (obviously).

    A few years ago, Google pulled the plug on it, but now it’s back. Google announced this in the Google News Publishers forum (via Search Engine Roundtable):

    Great news–we’ve re-enabled archives search! Our team listened to all your feedback you left here in the forum, and was hard at work to bring you an even better archive experience. From all the posts we received, we heard loud and clear how important these archives are to our users. You can now go digging back in time to 2003. Search on…)

    You used to be able to search back much further as Google provided old, scanned newspapers. Now it appears we’ll only be able to search back through just after Google News launched (which was in 2002).

    This comes as Google is about to shut down Google News in Spain because of a law that would require it to pay publishers to use snippets of content. Publishers, however, are trying to stop that from happening.

    Image via Google

  • New MSN Apps Released For iOS, Android

    New MSN Apps Released For iOS, Android

    Microsoft has launched some new MSN Apps for iOS, Android, and Amazon devices. These are platform expansions of apps currently available for Windows.

    There are six in all: Sports, Finance, News, Health & Fitness, Food & Drink, and Weather. They provide users with content from publishers and Microsoft’s partners as well as personalized experiences to let users follow topics of interest, sports updates for their favorite teams, and use diet/exercise tracking.

    “The MSN apps already sync across MSN.com, Windows and Windows phone devices, and now with availability on iOS, Android and Amazon devices, there is a new degree of scale across screens and platforms,” Microsoft said in a blog post. “The apps are customizable and intelligent, so you can choose your preferences in one place and enjoy content everywhere with your preferences syncing seamlessly across platforms and devices. For example – just in time for those New Year’s resolutions – you can use the Health & Fitness app to search from over 200,000 foods and log your calories in the Diet Tracker on your phone or tablet, while traveling or on the go. Then, access the same tracker on your computer at home.”

    “The apps are another example of Microsoft’s commitment to creating engaging and useful experiences for consumers, and continuing our investment in mobile and cross-screen platforms to provide scale and reach for our brand partners,” the company added.

    The new apps are available in 56 markets. They’ll make advertising available within the apps next month.

    Image via Microsoft

  • Yahoo Mail Desktop Adds Personalized News Stream

    Yahoo announced the launch of a personalized, real-time news stream with news summaries in the desktop version of Yahoo Mail. This was made available on the mobile version earlier this year.

    The stream includes top stories across different categories, with summaries, which are enabled by the technology from Summly, which Yahoo acquired last year.

    “The newstream is fast, fluid and intuitive to use,” says senior director of product management Raj Ramaswamy. “To read more about a topic, simply click on the article to launch the article summary. To see the full article, you can click on the ‘Read More’ link that will take you to the complete, original story. And if you’d like to save or share an article, hover over it and click the mail icon on the right side to email it to yourself.”

    “Email and news are two of the most important daily habits for our users and we’ve been hard at work to bring the two experiences closer,” says Ramaswarmy.

    To access the news stream, just click the news icon in the left-hand corner of Yahoo Mail any time.

    Image via Yahoo

  • Facebook’s Trending Feature Just Got A Lot Better (And Mobile)

    Facebook announced some updates to its Trending feature, including availability on mobile and new sections for different types of content.

    Availability on mobile is pretty self-explanatory other than to say it will only be available in the US for the web and Android for now with iOS support and additional countries coming “soon,” which in Facebook time could be a while.

    The new sections makes Facebook’s Trending feature considerably more interesting. Whereas before, it was basically a jumble of news stories with varying degrees of personal relevance, the experience is now split up into: Articles, In the Story, Friends and Groups, Near the Scene, and Live Feed.

    The Articles section will provide you with coverage of the topic from various news organizations.

    The In the Story section shows posts from people who are actually part of the story. Facebook has already been pretty good at that with its Newswire services for journalists, though the topics are limited. This could provide exposure for more relevant content that’s actually from Facebook itself.

    The Friends and Groups shows what people in your network are saying about the topic, making the trending topic more relevant to the user on a personal level.

    The Near the Scene section is exactly what it sounds like, and shows you posts from people near where the story is unfolding, providing an additional layer of geographical relevance. You could see where this would be helpful in a story like Ferguson, for example.

    Finally, the Live Feed section just shows you a real-time stream of reactions from people around the world, basically like Twitter.

    There will continue to be a feed below the new sections like the one that’s been there. This displays posts Facebook deems relevant, ranked by engagement, timeliness and other factors.

    Facebook isn’t making any changes to how it determines what’s actually trending.

    Images via Facebook

  • Google News Now Gives Personalized Suggestions

    Google News has had personalization feature for a long time now, but a new feature actually suggests stories for users based on their interests.

    Google’s Krishna Bharat announced the feature in a post on Google+ (via Search Engine Land):

    Google News now has a “Suggested for you” section with stories likely to match your interests. See my section today. The goal is to surface narrow and local topics specific to you. You can tweak by saying ‘Not interested’ until it’s more to your liking. The topics and stories shown here will change with the news, to keep things fresh and serendipitous. Nice work Google News team!

    Here’s what it looks like:

    Some might say this will only contribute to the “filter bubble” issue, which would suggest that “narrowing” news for people isn’t necessarily a good thing.

    Image via Google+

  • Google News Gives Publishers New Way To Submit Editors’ Picks

    Google is giving publishers who appear in Google News a new way to submit Editors’ Picks, which can appear on the Google News homepage or select section pages.

    The Editors’ Picks feature has been around for quite some time, and enables publishers to point Google to links to what they deem their best stories. You can select up to five links.

    Now, these can be submitted via the Google News Publisher Center. Google community manager Stacie C. announced the news in the Google News Help Forum (via Search Engine Roundtable), saying:

    To the right of your source name and URL, click Sections. Next, click the Add Editors’ Picks button towards the top of the screen. Next, enter the URL of your Editors’ Picks feed and click Submit. If there are issues with your feed, a message will appear explaining the error. Otherwise, your feed will be saved and sent to our team for final review.

    If your feed meets our technical and quality guidelines, we will start crawling your feed. Please note, pending our own quality measure and user feedback, we may re-review or disable your feed at any time.

    More details about setting up Editros’ Picks feeds can be found here.

    Image via Google

  • Megyn Kelly Would Like to Welcome Mike F––kabee to the Program

    It’s easy to accidentally slip an F-bomb into everyday conversation. Everyone does it. You mean to say you’re going to drop off the truck, and suddenly you’re dropping off f–k. It happens to the best of us.

    Well, it happened to Fox News host Megyn Kelly on her show The Kelly File last night.

    Kelly was introducing fellow Fox News host Mike Huckabee when she made the slip. “Joining me now, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who’s the host of fucka– … Huckabee right here on the Fox News channel,” said Kelly.

    Kelly later acknowledged the slip-up, pointing to the fact that she was getting quite a lot of attention on Twitter.

    “Something else that happened on the program is also getting a lot of attention on Twitter and including this tweet from some nice man named Sean who said ‘Megyn you’re a delight to watch and gave a stoic performance after your slip up with Governor Huckabee’s name.’ I thought I was stoic too – I have a heart of a 12 year old boy,” she said.

    Check it out:

    To Kelly’s credit, she played it off like a champ.

  • CBS Launches New 24-hour Online News Channel

    CBS Launches New 24-hour Online News Channel

    CBS is taking another step into the streaming arena.

    Today, the network is launching a 24/7 streaming news channel. Broadcast on its website, as well as a handful of its apps and other streaming devices, the new online-only channel is called CBSN. And in a rather ambitious move, CBS says that it will offer live, anchored news from 9am to midnight every single weekday.

    “CBSN is an important example of how CBS is able to leverage the unique strengths, talent and competitive advantages of its businesses to create exciting, highly competitive new services that meet evolving audience preferences for content consumption,” said Leslie Moonves, President and CEO, CBS Corporation. “There’s a tremendous opportunity on these platforms for a true round-the-clock newscast. We’re confident this service will appeal to both traditional news consumers and a whole new set of viewers.”

    If you go to CBSN right now, you’ll see live coverage with a sidebar on the left-hand side. This sidebar allows viewers to jump around the different stories of the past hour. CBS touts this at a “DVR-like” feature. At any time you can just go back to the live story.

    CBS says the new online station will also offer breaking news simulcasts and “additional content from a range of CBS sources including CBS News, CBS affiliate stations, CNET, CBSSports.com, Entertainment Tonight and more.”

    This is CBS’s second move toward cord-cutting in recent history. Just a few weeks ago, CBS launched All Access, its very own streaming platform.

  • Would You Let Facebook Host Your Content?

    How much do you depend on Facebook for traffic? One day, you may depend on it even more, and in ways you didn’t even anticipate. The company is reportedly considering getting publishers to give their content directly to Facebook, where it would be hosted by the social network itself (at least for mobile).

    Would you give your content to Facebook in exchange for traffic and revenue share? Let us know in the comments.

    This is according to The New York Times’ David Carr, who warns us that Facebook is a big dog, who may lick us to death (or something). He writes that Facebook has been talking to publishers about this concept, which would involve a revenue share program and publishers forfeiting control and data in the process. Carr writes:

    The company has been on something of a listening tour with publishers, discussing better ways to collaborate. The social network has been eager to help publishers do a better job of servicing readers in the News Feed, including improving their approach to mobile in a variety of ways. One possibility it mentioned was for publishers to simply send pages to Facebook that would live inside the social network’s mobile app and be hosted by its servers; that way, they would load quickly with ads that Facebook sells. The revenue would be shared… If Facebook’s mobile app hosted publishers’ pages, the relationship with customers, most of the data about what they did and the reading experience would all belong to the platform. Media companies would essentially be serfs in a kingdom that Facebook owns.

    From the sound of it, this whole concept is just something that’s being kicked around at this point, and isn’t inevitable. As Carr notes, other Internet giants including AOL and Google have kicked around similar ideas in the past, which didn’t really pan out.

    While the idea of giving Facebook that much power over content seems a little scary to a lot of publishers, it could have its benefits. Getting Facebook to send that traffic has been increasingly difficult for many, as the social network continuously adjust its News Feed algorithm, and makes it harder to attain significant reach without paying for promotion.

    The concept Carr’s report discusses could potentially help increase that reach, while also offering another monetization stream for content that’s otherwise not getting as many eyeballs. It’s hard to say for sure without knowing more details about Facebook’s plan, but in theory, that same content could also continue to live outside of Facebook as normal.

    It will be interesting to see how this develops, if it even does. If there isn’t a significant advantage for publishers, they simply won’t bother. At the same time though, publishers will be watching to see if those involved with such a program start getting preferential treatment in the News Feed.

    In terms of social referrals, Facebook drives four times as much traffic to sites as Pinterest, which is its closest rival in that regard. Look at these charts from the latest Shareaholic report on social media referrals.

    Facebook traffic is actually doing really well. As you can see from the images above, there’s not a whole lot of hope coming from all the other popular social networks, however.

    We knew Twitter wasn’t nearly on Facebook’s level, but it’s really going downhill as a driver of traffic. Since September 2013, its share has declined from about 25% to a 13-month low.

    YouTube was even the biggest loser in this. It decreased its share of traffic over the past year by a whopping 87.27%.

    Google+, which people always like to declare is dying, is actually growing. I suppose that’s some shred of hope for generating traffic, but it’s so far down on the list in terms of volume that it’s not exactly anything to get too excited about. It looks like Pinterest is still your second-best bet for getting social traffic at this point, but Facebook is so far head that it seems like the one you should really be focusing on most.

    That means that if Facebook goes through with this hosted content plan, you may seriously want to consider looking into it, and that’s likely what Facebook is betting on.

    Do you like the Facebook hosted content concept? Let us know what you think in the comments.

    Images via Facebook, Shareaholic

  • Ebola Patient Did Take Uber, But Company Says Nobody’s At Risk

    Ebola Patient Did Take Uber, But Company Says Nobody’s At Risk

    Dr. Craig Spencer, the third person diagnosed with Ebola in the US and first in New York City, did in fact take an Uber ride just a day before testing positive for the virus.

    Uber confirmed this in a statement, saying that it’s sure that neither the driver nor any passenger who later rode in said car are at any risk.

    “We reviewed our records and were able to confirm that one of our driver partners in New York provided a ride to the patient yesterday evening. We immediately contacted the CDC and NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (NYC DOHMH), which stated that neither our driver partner nor any of his subsequent passengers are at risk. We have communicated this to the driver, and the NYC DOHMH medical team met with the driver in person, assuring him that he is not at risk. Our thoughts are with the patient and his loved ones,” said Uber.

    33-year-old Spencer came back from Guinea eight days ago after a stint aiding in the humanitarian crisis with the group Doctors Without Borders. It wasn’t until Thursday that Spencer became symptomatic and was taken to an isolation area at Bellevue Hospital. The night before, Spencer took an Uber ride to a bowling alley. He’s also reported to have ridden the subway, and possibly visited a restaurant.

    Although the Uber driver and any passengers in the New York City area who called a ride that night are no doubt concerned, officials say there’s no risk of infection as Spencer wasn’t yet symptomatic at the time of his ride.

    Though Ebola is a very serious disease, the most threatening thing facing the nation right now is fearbola. You have a much better chance of dying in a plane crash, a lightning strike, or even a bee sting than you do of dying from Ebola.

    If you want to worry about a disease right now – make it the flu. The flu kills thousands of otherwise healthy Americans every year. Go get a flu shot. Hey, maybe Uber will bring you one.

    Image via Uber, Facebook

  • Google Gets Apparent Victory Over German Publishers

    Google and publishers in Germany have been going back and forth for years. Well, Google and publishers everywhere have been going back and forth for years, but in Germany, a group of publishers pushed for an ancillary copyright law last year, trying to force Google to pay for using snippets from their content in search results, but ultimately, Google was able to get around it.

    The publisher group (VG Media), which is made up of over 200 publishers, filed a complaint against Google, but in August, a secret document was leaked, indicating that Germany’s Cartel Office decided that the legislation wasn’t entirely clear, and that it wouldn’t pursue the complaint. Reuters shared this statement from the regulator at the time:

    “Sufficient suspicion is always necessary to initiate an abuse procedure. The complaint from VG Media did not establish this.”

    Google decided to just stop showing snippets for the disgruntled publishers earlier this month. VG Media has apparently given up now, at least on its current strategy for dealing with the search giant, and will allow them to pull snippets. Via TechCrunch:

    VG Media said the publishers it represents are being forced to take this step because of the ‘overwhelming market power of Google’. Mountain View commands a more than 90 per cent marketshare of search in Europe.

    The publisher consortium has a press release about it here, but it’s in German.

    Yes, Google does have a huge part of the market. There’s no question about that. However, just being in Google is no guarantee of traffic anyway. Just ask anyone that’s ever been affected by an algorithm update like Panda. Publishers should be more focused on how to improve their traffic from Google and from other sources rather than trying to play hardball with the traffic providers.

    Image via Google

  • Google Now Shows Reddit And Others In ‘News’ Box

    Google Now Shows Reddit And Others In ‘News’ Box

    Update: According to Danny Sullivan, who spoke with Google about the subject, the “In the News” box is now showing content from additional sources, including reddit, the Yoast blog, and other content deemed newsowrthy. This includes things that are not actually in Google News, but also includes the traditional Google News content.

    It looks like Google News is now using reddit as a content source, which is interesting for a variety of reasons.

    Search Engine Land, working off a tip from a reader, points out that Google is showing a link from reddit in its News results for the query “dunkin donuts”. We were able to reproduce this:

    Reddit is the self-described “front page of the internet,” which is actually a pretty accurate description for a lot of people. The Internet’s biggest, most important, and most interesting stories, pretty much always end up on reddit one way or another. That said, so do a bunch of other ridiculous things.

    It’s unclear just how much of reddit Google is tapping here. Interestingly enough, this particular result isn’t even from a news-themed subreddit, but is from r/funny. On top of that, it’s not even an article or particularly newsworthy, but an image someone uploaded to Imgur, as a great deal of the content on reddit is.

    Google isn’t just showing users the Imgur image, however. It’s showing them the reddit page, which comes with the user’s headline, as well as all of the discussion that ensues.

    As we’ve seen in the past, big stories sometimes hit reddit before they hit the mainstream, and this could be why Google has included it, as it’s not the typical type of content Google News is looking for, as evidenced by its guidelines.

    Reddit frequently provides a source for interesting content that many publishers latch onto and regurgitate into articles that then in turn may show up in Google News, so it’s quite interesting to see Google just going straight to the source even when not in article form.

    Images via Google, Imgur/reddit

  • To Minimize Legal Risk, Google Stops Showing Snippets For Some Publishers

    To Minimize Legal Risk, Google Stops Showing Snippets For Some Publishers

    As you may know, Google and publishers in Germany have been going back and forth for quite some time. Google wants to continue providing search results for news stories like it has for years, but publishers think Google is taking advantage of them, and want to get paid.

    This is actually a storyline that gets played out in different countries all over the world, but in Germany, a law went into effect last year that gave publishers explicit rights to their own content except for cases in which single words or small snippets were used, but publishers think that should keep Google from being able to function as usual.

    Google has apparently given in to “minimize” legal risks. The company addressed the situation in a blog post. The post is in German, but here’s the rough translation via Google Translate:

    According to the unanimous opinion was the first newspaper in the world, of all relation Fürnemmen and gedenckwürdigen Historien , published in 1605 in German by Johann Carolus. He followed – almost half a millennium – already the target to achieve with his publication as many readers, so the effect that any newspaper strives to today. Google supports press publishers by forces online to build a community of readers – and to make money.

    Every month we derive over half a billion clicks to German news sites. Each of these clicks is worth publishing estimates of the American Newspaper Association According 12-16 cents. In addition, we have distributed in the past three years one billion euros in German advertising partners from the media. For all these reasons, many news providers choose to make their content via the Google Search or Google News available – by FAZ to Süddeutsche from mirror to time – a total of around 5,000 German news sites. But thousands more providers work with Google together as an advertising partner.

    Nevertheless, some German publishers have – represented by the collecting society VG Media – recently decided to Google (and other providers) to sue because we text snippets (“snippets”) and preview images (“thumbnails”) use to alert readers to the pages of the respective publishers. We regret this legal approach very much because every publisher could always decide whether and how its contents are displayed in our services themselves.

    Against the background of this action, we will not show snippets and thumbnails of some famous websites like bild.de, bunte.de or hoerzu.de, so that publishers who are organized in the VG Media. For these pages we will show only the link to the article and its headline. Other big German providers have the content of members of the VG Media even completely removed . centuries was the reach of the printed paper for publishing houses limited.

    The Internet has changed significantly and this brought great opportunities, but also poses significant challenges for publishers with it. Thus, for example, competition has intensified to the attention of readers and advertising income. We see it as our task to support the publishing industry doing to meet these challenges. Therefore, we look forward to further joint work with thousands of publisher partners all over the world and of course in Germany.

    Last year, Google avoided having to pay German publishers by making Google News opt-in. Last year, it also announced deals with various countries to handle publisher threats. Arrangements varied from country to country. You can browse some of our past coverage here.

    Image via Google

  • Macworld Ends Print Publication, Reduces Staff

    News broke today that the print version of Macworld is being shut down as IDG laid off most of the staff. The online version will continue, but also with a reduced staff.

    The news emerged from tweets by staff, which were picked up by Valleywag earlier.

    From Senior Editor Roman Loyola:

    From Editor Dan Miller:

    The fate of the Macworld/iWorld conference is unclear.

    Image via Macworld

  • Diane Sawyer Says Goodbye To World News

    Diane Sawyer Says Goodbye To World News

    Last week, Diane Sawyer signed off from World News for the last time.

    Sawyer, who has spent five years on the news show, ended the broadcast with her saying what a privilege it was for her to sit in the World News chair.

    “Now it is time to say goodnight. I want you to know what a deep privilege it has been to sit in the World News chair,” Sawyer said.

    Although Sawyer will not be appearing on the show anymore, she will still be working for the network, conducting interviews and creating specials.

    “I’m not going far. Down the hall and up the stairs,” Sawyer continued. “I am not slowing down. I am gearing up in a new way — already at work on the stories that take you into the real lives around us, the ones we barely get to see.”

    Sawyer started working on World News in 2009. Before her, Charles Gibson hosted, and before him was Elizabeth Vargas and Bob Woodruff, who were co-anchors. Peter Jennings held the position for 20 years until he left in 2005.

    Sawyer will be replaced by David Muir, who she praised in her final goodbye. “You have seen David Muir at this desk, in this chair so many times. You know his command and commitment to bringing you the news,” Sawyer said of her replacement. “I cannot wait to see you in high gear.”

    “So one last time, it is good to know you are watching tonight,” she said, finishing her final segment. “To Mike and the four grandchildren and their perfect parents, I look forward to being home early for some dinners again. And with gratitude for these years, I thank you and I’ll see you right back here on ABC News very soon. Good night.”

  • Google Blog Search Goes Away (Kind Of)

    Google Blog Search is no more – at least as a standalone offering from the search engine. Search Engine Land points out that if you go to its previous home – google.com/blogsearch – it simply redirects you to the Google home page.

    You can still search through blogs specifically with Google’s search tool from Google News. For example, if you search “SEO” from Google News, it will bring up a list of articles. You’d then go to the “Search Tools” box, and click the drop down where it says “All News”. From there, another option is available for blogs.

    At this point in the Internet’s evolution, I’m not sure how useful the feature is. There’s a lot of gray area when it comes to distinguishing blogs from other sources. In the end, it’s really more about who’s writing the story. Strangely enough, Google just did away with authorship in search results – the best indicator that. Go figure.

    I doubt many will miss the Blog Search destination Google previously offered. There was a time when it was helpful, but there’s really just not much need for it anymore. Still, you might say the Google News feature is even less helpful, as it is limited to news.

    Image via Google

  • Pinterest Tests Social ‘News’ Section On iOS

    Pinterest Tests Social ‘News’ Section On iOS

    Pinterest is becoming more things to more people. Most recently, in addition to an advertising platform, it’s become more of a search destination as the company has placed a great deal of emphasis on search features.

    In fact, co-founder Evan Sharp seemed to downplay the social experience of Pinterest in a recent interview with The Atlantic, explaining that using Pinterest is more about you than it is your friends. You might get the impression that the social aspects of Pinterest are taking a backseat to other features.

    That’s not exactly the case, however. Not long after that interview was published, Pinterest launched a new social messaging feature.

    On Friday, Pinterest announced the launch of a new “News” section in its iOS app. It’s still in testing, but here’s what the company had to say about it in a blog post:

    Your News tab gives you a snapshot of what’s up with your Facebook friends and all the different Pinners, brands and boards you follow.You’ll discover things like the latest projects people are collecting Pins for, or interesting companies they’ve found to follow. (The one thing you won’t see are Pins that people save to their secret boards—as always, those are totally under wraps.)

    It looks pretty similar to Twitter’s “Activity” feed.

    Pinterest says it will be testing the feature over the course of the next few weeks. No word on when the feature might be available for Android or the web.

    Image via Pinterest