You can’t escape CNN, no matter where you go: The Time Warner-owned cable network and sister channel HLN are now streaming live on CNN.com, and via the CNN App for iPad and the CNN App for iPhone and iPod Touch.
Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews. 
CNN RSVPed with its online plans for coverage of the United Kingdom’s royal wedding between Prince William and Catherine Middleton, set for Friday, April 29.
CNN.com has already launched The Wedding Planner, a special section that includes background, profiles, photo galleries, video-on-demand, and other exclusive content.
Also up and running is blog Unveiled, which covers all of the behind-the-scenes details leading up to the big event.
iReport, the cable news network’s citizen journalism outlet, is holding a Royal Wedding iReporter Contest, with one U.S.-based winner traveling to London to cover the wedding. Contestants are asked to submit 90-second videos explaining why they should cross the pond.
Beginning April 22, iReport is also inviting citizen journalists to share their experiences, as well as launching CNN iReport Open Story: Royal Wedding, which will feature photos and videos placed along an interactive time line and map.
And CNN set up a CNN Royal Wedding page on Facebook.
CNN.com has a new homepage editor: Tenny Tatusian, previously associate editor for LATimes.com.
Tatusian will oversee the overall messaging and tone of the cable network’s home page.
CNN.com and TIME.com teamed up to launch Global Public Square, a new blog that will feature insights on global news from CNN Fareed Zakaria GPS host and TIME editor at large Fareed Zakaria, as well as journalists from the cable network and the magazine, and other expert guests.
Global Public Square is edited by CNN.com World producer Amar Bakshi, and guests set to contribute over the next few weeks include: foursquare co-founders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai; statistics guru Hans Rosling; and Nina Hachigian, co-author of The Next American Century.
CNN’s Nic Robertson will also provide analysis on Libya’s tipping point, and CNN Cairo bureau chief Ben Wedeman will report on the ongoing unrest in the Middle East and north Africa. Global Public Square will also feature a weekly news quiz, and a books of the week entry.
CNN.com launched the Freedom Project blog as the online base for CNN’s The CNN Freedom Project: Ending Modern-Day Slavery, a project that will run throughout 2011 on the cable network and Web site, aimed at detailing modern-day slavery, stopping the trading and exploitation of humans, and hearing from the victims.
Regular features on the blog will include: The Number, a weekly graphic examining the numbers related to human trafficking; Solutions, success stories about people and nations fighting the problem; iReport Challenge, giving members of user-generated news community CNN iReport assignments to allow them to participate in the discussion; and data visualizations demonstrating the scope of the problem, local and global aspects, and the lack of consistent numbers.
All content from the Freedom Project blog will also be available via CNN Mobile, and the project has a Twitter account and a Facebook page.
The revolutions in Egypt and Libya helped push CNN.com to a 10 percent traffic gain in February compared with the year-earlier month.
During the first three days of the month, Egypt helped drive the cable news network’s site to a daily average 17 percent higher than that of the prior four weeks. It was Libya’s turn Monday, Feb. 21, when traffic was 55 percent higher than the prior-four-Sunday average and 6 percent higher than the last Monday holiday (Jan. 17).
Total video starts (live and video-on-demand) were up 30 percent compared with the fourth quarter of 2010, and live video starts were up 20 percent.
Feature content also performed well for CNN.com in February, with Tech averaging 1 million daily page views, up 18 percent; versus February 2010 Opinion at 500,000, up 51 percent; Health at 860,000, up 46 percent; and Living at 800,000, up 66 percent. And CNN.com said blog traffic accounted for 97 million page views in February.
User-generated news community CNN iReport announced the launch of the CNN iReport Awards, which will recognize the best user-submitted content of 2010, with winners to be announced March 15.
The iReport Awards will be divided into six categories: Breaking News, Original Reporting, Compelling Imagery (photos or video), Commentary, Personal Story, and Interview. A team of journalists and producers from CNN chose five nominees in each category from the total of more than 150,000 iReports received in 2010 from more than 740,000 iReporters around the world.
The panel that will select the final winners — other than the Community Choice winner, which will be voted on by iReport visitors — is made up of: CNN International anchor and correspondent Errol Barnett, ParentDish columnist Rachel Campos Duffy, Star.me CEO Ze Frank, StoryCorps founder Dave Isay, Pictory founder Laura Miner, Vice president and co-founder Shane Smith, and Next New Networks president and co-founder Tim Shey. Voting for the Community Choice winner is open until noon ET March 7.
Nominees will be featured on-air during the week of March 7 from 3 p.m.-5p.m. ET during CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin, and on CNN International’s iReport for CNN, which airs Thursday, Feb. 17, at 11:30 p.m. ET and replays the following weekend.
CNN.com said traffic spiked to 5.3 million global page views during the hour when Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak announced his resignation, up 50 percent compared with the average for the same hour during the past four Fridays.
The total marked the best 11 a.m. hour on a weekday the site has experienced all year, and CNN.com added that global live video views increased by six times versus the prior-four-Friday average, as well.
Driven by the Jan. 8 shootings in Tucson, Ariz., and the political turmoil in Egypt, traffic to CNN.com was up 10 percent in January compared with the year-ago month.
The site drew 44 million page views on the day of the shootings, up 48 percent versus typical Saturday traffic, and more than 2.7 million video starts, up 63 percent.
The first three days of the protests in Egypt brought 121 million page views to CNN.com, up 11 percent compared with the prior-four-week average, and 11 million video starts, up 78 percent.
The site’s blog network tallied 116 million page views in January (United States only), a 164 percent leap versus January 2010. The Piers Morgan Tonight blog drew 1.2 million page views in the first week that the show was on the air.
On the social-networking front, CNN’s total of more than 1.7 million Facebook fans leads all news sites, and it added 100,000 fans in January. The news network’s Twitter accounts reached a total of 11 million followers, led by @cnnbrk with 3.7 million. And the CNN YouTube Channel logged more than 1.6 million video starts in January, up 79 percent versus its average for the previous four weeks.
CNN.com announced the promotions of Amy Cox, Dan Gilgoff, and Kristi Keck Ramsey, and the addition of Amar Bakshi.
Cox was named World editor, after leading beat blog Afghanistan Crossroads and playing major roles in Home and Away and the Haiti iReport database. She will now oversee serving international news to the Web site’s U.S. audience.
New World editor Bakshi has worked with PostGlobal, a former blog from The Washington Post hosted by David Ignatius and Fareed Zakaria, as well as with the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
CNN Belief Blog writer and editor Gilgoff was promoted to religion editor on the CNN.com enterprise reporting team.
And Ramsey, who spent the past three years with CNN’s political team, was promoted to weekend editor.
