News

Moderator of the Medill Club Ethics Panel 2012, Professor Jack Doppelt with alums Joyce Hanson and Sally Fryberger

Brian Moylan, an editor at Gawker Media (and self-proclaimed “Gawker shit talker” on Twitter), remembers a recent spate of 20 minutes that seemed like the longest ever. He couldn’t click the refresh button on enough browsers fast enough. Having just spotted a Tweet on Billy Crystal’s feed announcing the nine-time Oscars host would be emceeing the Academy Awards yet again in 2012, he posted the news.

Moylan then realized the Academy had not yet confirmed the information—and anxiously awaited confirmation hoping the post would not have to be taken down (or crossed out and amended).

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SoundTracking is becoming more and more popular and, of course, that means that it’s becoming more and more attractive to investors — to the point that it has just received some $4.75 million in venture capital.

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This year, editor in chief of Black Enterprise, Derek Dingle, started Tweeting. It wasn’t during a press conference. It was during a boxing match. He was watching Bernard Hopkins, who was about to become the oldest heavyweight champion ever, cheering him on through the social network.

Readers joined his playful oldies-take-on-young-bloods banter. “Yeah,” one of his followers responded. “We’re going to show those young guys.”

“I was getting an immediate response from readers,” says Dingle, “developing connections with individuals, and a network.” In a flash, he got it.

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It may seem like the web has coughed up more than enough social networks by now but, if the internet has taught me anything over the years it’s that no digital niche will ever go unfilled. Meet Agent155, the recently announced site that plans to launch a network aimed at the entertainment industry.

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Buying and selling used DVDs, CDs and other physical media has been around for as long as the media itself. Doing the same with used digital media is a bit trickier though and, until now, setting up a legal marketplace has seemed all but impossible. This is set to change with tomorrow’s launch of ReDigi’s beta, a service that looks to give its members an avenue for selling and trading their (non dog-eared and moisture-damaged) virtual media.

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Who would’ve thought, all those years ago, that Napster would go on to change hands more than a well-worn penny over the years. Well, maybe a lot of people with astounding foresight into the music industry’s future would have  . . . but that’s besides the point. The latest news regarding Shawn Fanning’s baby is Rhapsody‘s impending acquisition of Napster, a business deal that will see the Headphoned Kitten sharing its customers with the notable social music site.

The recently signed agreement between Napster and Rhapsody will give the latter company access to the former’s subscribers and “certain other assets”. In return, Best Buy (which Napster is considered a unit of) will receive a minority stake in Rhapsody — something that could lead to substantial changes for the music service and its users in the near future.

Jon Irwin, Rhapsody’s president, expects the deal to “further Rhapsody’s lead over [its] competitors in the growing on-demand music market.”

It could very well do just that.

Rhapsody’s acquistion will give both company’s access to Napster’s existing subscriber base and the ability to bring together vastly different lessons for achieving success in the digital music marketplace. Rhapsody and Napster users can expect to see a big difference in the way they experience their services of choice later this fall as the companies begin to implement new business practices that take advantage of one another’s respective strengths. Whatever the result of the acquisition, observers can look forward to a substantial shake-up from two key industry players before long.

The agreement was announced today (Monday, October 3rd) with the actual deal expected to close at the end of November of this year.

Pandora has just launched a comprehensive redesign that makes the streaming radio/music discovery service, like a backward-time-traveling grandparent, both prettier and more functional than before. The new look (which provides a bit more context for the company’s rising IPO this past summer) is available to all Pandora users and adds improvements like streamlined cross platform communication, bulked-up social networking features and more.

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The social media site started by three entrepreneurial moms and geared toward kids younger than 13 years of age, Everloop.com, announced a new partnership today with two globally recognized kids’ brands, National Geographic’s Animal Jam and Mattel’s Monster High.

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The data-hungry among you may have noticed that Google Correlate, the research tool released by the Google team for experimentation in May 2011, has just graduated from Google Labs and can now be found on Google Trends.

The newfangled research tool finds search patterns, ready for analysis, that correspond with real-world trends (think Bird Flu).

According to the Google Blog, the idea for Correlate stemmed from a wish-list request made by researchers “who wanted to be able to enter the trend of some real-world activity and see which search terms best matched that trend….they wanted a system that was like Google Trends but in reverse.”

Correlate allows you to upload your own data series. Then, delivered to you promptly and magically is a list of search terms that have popularity to match the trend.

In one Google experiment, a few years of flu activity data from the CDC was uploaded. It yielded the finding that people searched for the terms “cold” and “flu” in a pattern that mirrored the actual flu rates. Very cool, no?

The masterminds at Google went on to use the correlated terms they discovered to build Google Flu Trends.

It’s worth mentioning that you can also use the Correlate research tool to identify which pattern of activity across the US matches the activity in your own state or the state you are studying (search terms can vary in popularity according to state).

“Search activity is an incredible source of data that may lead to advances in economics, health and other fields,” reads the Google blog, “but we need to handle that data with privacy controls on mind.”

Well said. As per the usual, new technological developments bring a whole new slew of challenges along with the nifty discoveries. And while relationships can be identified using Correlate, the tool is not able to determine causation (we’re nodding to you, scientists).

Go here now to try Google Correlate for free.

Ah, to think back on all those jokes.

“Do I Twitter?” went the classic question-in-response-to-a-question, often asked with a look of befuddlement, or boredom, or busier-than-thou disgust, and always followed by the “who cares what so-and-so ate for breakfast?”

Well, a few fans of MC Hammer cared what he was up to (to date @MCHammer attracts a whopping 2, 204, 299 followers).

Others cared about people’s whereabouts and updates, too, realizing Twitter, along with other social networking sites could be about so much more than who ate their Wheaties (the breakfast cereal which, we were pleased to just discover, boasts 67,000-plus fans on Facebook).

Last week, it was reported by the San Francisco Chronicle that Twitter has crossed the 100 million monthly active users mark and has 50 million users that log on daily, as tracked by the San Francisco micro-blogging service. That’s an 82% increase since January 2011, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo told Chronicle staff writer Benny Evangelista.

Still, as impressive as this number of active users sounds, Evangelista’s article points out that it is hard to decipher which Twitter users are actually having meaningful interactions and engaging, not to mention which users are paid to Tweet marketing material about a brand, company or business as part of their jobs. And then there is the whole question of multiple accounts for the same entity.

Of particular interest among the stats mentioned in Evangelista’s article is a 40% representing “active users” who have not posted any Tweets in the last month.

We’re not sure how they qualify as active, either.