Koobface is not the latest thingamajig in the arsenal of objects you can throw at other Facebook users. Instead, Koobface is a set of two new computer worms (like viruses, but more interested in spawning than infecting) that are spreading themselves all around Facebook and its lesser predecessor MySpace through the sites' comments sections. Users are tricked into involuntary computer infections when they click on links titled "Paris Hilton Tosses Dwarf On The Street," which might've been a headline on TMZ but is actually a nefarious attempt to get people to download a video player "patch." And if you upgraded to the "new" Facebook, you probably deserve it. [D'Technology]
Speaking of trying to be a working reporter in Beijing, a few of the 20,000 journalists covering the Olympics have been checking in with us about their Internet access. Perhaps you've heard China is filtering the web?
While The Drudge Report is operational and The Huffington Post is not, we're also told Jossip is A-OK, while MyDD.com is "sometimes available," XTube.com "won't even load," and one fella's "[sister's] blog on Blogger is banned."
Backtracking off previous backtracking, the International Olympic Committee says it never reached a deal with China to permit Internet filtering, and says all along it's insisted there must be unrestricted access to the web just as there was in previous host cities. They're blaming the mix up on a miscommunication; IOC president Jacques Rogge made his statement in English, which isn't his first language. So now that the IOC's position on censorship has been cleared up, where does the media's Internet access stand? CONTINUED »
To get some advice on how to merge its print and web operations, the Washington Post — which currently eschews its completely separate online unit to an office outside D.C. — visited archival The New York Times to get some advice. Top Post-ies were led on a building-wide tour, with a stop in the Times cafeteria, with tips delivered along the way. If all goes accordingly, the Post will have learned that inane slideshows of fashion non-trends is where it's at.
Remember that obnoxious writers strike that brought all of Hollywood to a standstill and ruined the spring television season? You might recall one of the main tenants that producers and writers were squabbling about was digital revenues — as in, the writers weren't be compensated very well for the Internet revenues generated from their works. But!, said media companies, there are no digital revenues; DVD sales of TV shows is still where it's at, they claimed, and streaming ad revenues were basically worth pennies.
That was then. CONTINUED »
NewYork.com, the domain name Adam Moss wishes he owned, is now a fledgling little Internet company that, so far, mostly attracts lazy Internet users typing in the web address and hoping for the best. [MIN]
Kathy Griffin, comedian and victim of a quitting assistant, normally charges in the tens of thousands of dollars to appear at your corporate retreat or nine-year-old's birthday party.
But there is another way to attach yourself to Griffin and generate at least a fraction of the buzz that would come with actually booking her: Trying to book her, getting no response, and then launching a marketing campaign that says "We tried booking Kathy Griffin but she ignored us" when you're actually trying to get everybody mentioning the non-scandal and linking to your site.
Still with us? 'Cause there's a gay porn site involved if you are. CONTINUED »
Olympics reporters in Beijing hoping to sign on to the website of, say, Amnesty International shouldn't even bother; China has blocked it, along with any website relating to "cult" Falun Gong, and perhaps anything else the government deems unacceptable. Not that China is acknowledging it might be filtering the Internet access of the Main Press Centre and International Broadcast Centre, nor the Athletes' and Media Villages, which have opened in advance of the Aug. 8 opening ceremony. All of this has led the International Olympic Committee to begin investigating potential censorship by China, which promised media outlets the same reporting freedoms they enjoyed at previous games. But no matter what the IOC finds, China isn't going to admit it's done anything wrong. Rather, it's the fault of the websites you're all trying to visit — they probably didn't validate their HTML or something! CONTINUED »
Back in the good old days of the Internet, when you Googled "dumb motherfucker," the first result you got back was a link to a store selling George W. Bush tees. It was the result of a "Google bomb," where crafty blogger types gamed Google's search engine algorithm by linking specific keywords to a single site, to juice up the chances anyone searching for those keywords would be pointed to the site they favored. There have even been contests to see who could come up with the most creative use of search engine optimization tricks to get various phrases linked to specific web addresses. But now, no fun Google — who has long frowned on the practice — says it's disabled the loophole entirely. CONTINUED »
Whew. The CW is finally ending what they've been calling an "experiment" — that ridiculous decision to stop streaming episodes of Gossip Girl on its website for fear of cannibalizing its television audience. After kicking off the second part of season one without free web streams, Nielsen's numbers for the show didn't exactly go up by anything significant. Instead, they did this.
What magazine isn't getting into the reality TV business? Well, not Vogue! Except they are. They've got a new web series out next month — the annoyingly punctuated Model.Live — that'll track three models as they run from casting calls to runway shows in eight-minute webisodes. Naturally, because this is Vogue doing it, the project is the most expensive of its kind. With a budget of $3 million, the show costs about $31,000 a minute. But fret not! There is sponsorship attached. Express paid a low seven-figure fee to take part, somehow convinced that stocking its clothes in the closets of the models will produce a decent ROI. (It won't. At least not without additional integrations.)
It's Vogue's "at last" foray into the reality segment, because editor Anna Wintour, one who hates the word "blog," passed when Project Runway came calling (you know, in the days before it started charging magazines seven figures to take part). So why this web project? Because everything else that came their way was "not reality at all, just amateurs live," insists Vogue's Tom Florio.
Hah. CONTINUED »
News that Bronx prosecutors subpoenaed the indie political Room 8, looking to identify some of the site's anonymous commenters — and threatening legal action if the blog even mentioned that they'd been served with a subpoena — shouldn't have been entirely surprising. Because where there are blogs, there are potential lawsuits.
Actually, not just potential lawsuits. Actual lawsuits. Like this one against Perez Hilton. CONTINUED »
Google's virtual world cross-over Lively — it's part Second Life, part chat room — is supposed to be a safe, fun space for Internet nerds to geek out over their latest obsession, whether it be the iPhone or some new limited edition action figure. It is not, as far as Google's original intentions would suggest, a place for Internet trolls to gather for live sex shows. Except that's what's been happening. CONTINUED »
If immune-from-backlash Craigslist can reduce the hassle or finding an apartment (or increase it, depending on how you look at it), brings two strangers together who exchanged a smile on the sidewalk only to walk away without exchanging numbers, and find somebody willing to take a few of your Topps baseball cards off your hands, why can't Craigslist do the impossible — and save the very newspaper industry it's supposedly killing? CONTINUED »
Blogger accounts. Twittering. Facebook status updates. Everyone is pouring their personal lives out online, which leads the Journal to ask, Does everybody need their own personal website? "The answer is still 'no' — but that 'no is no longer quite so firm as it used to be. And sometimes that hesitation is a sign that the wheels of social change are starting to turn — that 'no' will turn into 'maybe' and then from there move quickly to 'yes' and then finally to 'it's weird that you don't.' If you're a thirtysomething, you've seen answering machines, voice mail, email addresses and cellphones complete the journey from curiosities to perceived necessities, just as our elders saw the same thing happen with TVs and phones."
But how to tell where this trend is really headed?
By looking to a certain pair of individuals who have dictated whether any trend in life is noteworthy, or not worth persuing at all.
Their names? Brad and Angelina. CONTINUED »
Sound familiar? Indeed: Back when John Kerry bungled the Democratic party's hope for the White House, he also left his campaign with 3 million people on his listserv. Guess who's still worth talking to so he can press the forward button on your fundraising drive? Though Politico doesn't say how big Clinton's email list is, she does have 158,000 “supporters” on Facebook and more than 191,000 “friends” on MySpace. Maybe they'll even post her iPod playlist. [Politico]
After many months and months in development, former Radar editor and up-and-coming new media titan Remy Stern today launches Cityfile, a database of who's who in Manhattan industry circles. Artists, media types, socialites, designers, and foodies are all on board, with Stern's crack team of writer-researches having already compiled 2,109 names. The site promises to add new profiles all the time — but also, more excitingly, to drop names, too, because sometimes important people are suddenly no longer important, and this distinction MUST BE MADE.
So what's a site like this good for? For blogs like ours, the answer is obvious: Free research tool! For others, however, Cityfile as a resource might be less clear. Allow us to help. CONTINUED »
It's certainly not our personal mission to make Google a cause célèbre, but we have a special place in our hearts for any company that challenges Nielsen Media Research, the bumbling audience analytics firm headed toward further catastrophe by David Calhoun, the former General Electric vice chairman. Google recently unveiled Google Ad Planner, a new framework that combines website metrics with media buying, which is supposed to replace the guesswork employed by companies like Nielsen and comScore, which use a complicated and mostly flawed mixture of audience panels and computer logging to tell clients how many people visit a website, and what type of people they are. Google, which collects metrics data itself, directly from websites that carry its tracking code, wants to challenge these industry leaders in a market they've long owned, and which media buyers have always had to rely on to know where best to spend their millions in ad buys. Except now that the service has debuted and the biggest media agencies have had a look, it appears Nielsen isn't in much danger of no longer holding clients hostage. CONTINUED »
SOHH, the enormously popular hip-hop website, was 0wnz0red during the overnight. In its place, oh so clever hackers claiming to represent Ebaumsworld.com (itself an enormously popular "funny video" dumping ground), plastered various racist and anti-Semitic hate speech, Nazi logos, and horrific sex pics (think goat.cx, if you're familiar). While one blog has screencapped the takeover, the website is still in disrepair, so if you're of the faint of heart, at work, or not a morning person, we don't suggest you visit. [SOHH, Street Knowledge - NSFW]
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