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5 June 2012 | Boston.com

Google buys Meebo to help social networking push

Google is buying Silicon Valley startup Meebo to help expand its social networking service. The acquisition announced Monday will bring more tools to Google Plus, an alternative to Facebook Inc.’s popular online hangout. Meebo started as a system for connecting people by instant message but has since built other communication features used by an audience of about 100 million Web people in the U.S. Both companies are based in Mountain View, Calif. Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Since its debut nearly a year ago, Google Plus has attracted more than 170 million users. Despite that impressive growth, Google so far has had trouble persuading people to visit its social networking website as regularly as Facebook’s more than 900 million users frequent its website. Meebo works with publishers and advertisers to help them connect with Web surfers for longer periods. Meebo has raised USD 70m in venture capital since it was founded in 2005 by Seth Sternberg, Elaine Wherry and Sandy Jen. Sternberg, who formerly helped IBM Corp. identify acquisition targets, served as Meebo’s CEO.

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5 June 2012 | AP

China tells US to stop reporting Beijing’s bad air

A senior Chinese environmental official told foreign embassies on Tuesday to stop publishing their own reports on air quality in China, a clear reference to a popular U.S. Embassy Twitter feed that tracks pollution in smoggy Beijing. Wu Xiaoqing, a vice environmental minister, told reporters at a briefing in Beijing that only the Chinese government is authorized to monitor and publish air quality information and warned that data from other sources may not be standardized or rigorous. The U.S. Embassy gives hourly readings of Beijing's air quality via a Twitter feed that has gathered more than 19,000 followers since it was set up in 2008. It uses a more stringent standard for acceptable amounts of pollution than the Chinese government does. Wu said it isn't fair to judge Chinese air by American standards because China is a developing country. He noted that the U.S. has gradually made its environmental guidelines more stringent over time. The standard China uses "takes into account the level of our current stage of development," Wu said. Wu also said that air quality reports should come from a network of monitoring stations. The U.S. readings for Beijing come from just one monitoring station inside the embassy grounds. Wu also said that air quality monitoring by foreign diplomats was inconsistent with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and urged diplomats to abide by China's laws and regulations.

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5 June 2012 | LA Times

Giant social network Facebook may give access to children under 13

How young is too young to join Facebook? The Menlo Park, Calif., company currently bans anyone under age 13 from joining the world's most popular social network. Yet an estimated 7.5 million preteens — most of them under age 10 — are already using the service, many with their parents' approval. The highly charged debate over privacy and safety in the Internet age picked up steam this week as word leaked that Facebook was considering allowing kids younger than 13 to use the service with parental supervision. Among the options the company is exploring: connecting kids' accounts to their parents' accounts and giving Mom and Dad control over what their children can do on the site, such as who they can "friend" and what apps they can use. After its troubled start as a publicly traded company, Facebook is under increasing pressure to grow revenue. Facebook's stock Monday fell 82 cents, or 3 percent, to a new low of USD 26.90. Lowering the age limit would help the company tap younger users, who advertisers are eager to reach. Kids are also avid users of games — a big moneymaker for Facebook.

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5 June 2012 | Reuters

Digital revenues not enough to lift US newspapers

The newspaper industry's attempts to increase digital revenue while ratcheting down costs is not enough to stem losses from a hemorrhaging print product, a report from Moody's said on Friday. The ratings agency, which keeps tabs on The New York Times Co, Gannett Co., Block Communications, McClatchy Co and Gatehouse Media, rated the industry outlook "negative" on declining earnings expectations. Moody's projected earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) to fall in the range of 11 percent to 13.5 percent this year and drop 12 percent to 14.5 percent in 2013. Indeed, the report comes as the organization that tracks revenue for newspapers said that for the first quarter, advertising revenue declined almost 7 percent to USD 5.2bn. The modest increase of 1 percent in digital revenue failed to offset an 8 percent decline in print, according to the Newspaper Association of America. Dogged by plummeting advertising revenue and readers who are choosing to get their news elsewhere, newspapers have been slashing costs over the past several years - including chopping the number of days the printed product is available. The report warns that even a "complete transformation away from print entirely would eliminate the sizable costs of print product and distribution but the revenue loss is still too great for companies to make the switch yet."

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5 June 2012 | DPA

4 sentenced in plot against Danish newspaper

Four men were each given 12-year prison terms Monday by a Danish court for plotting an attack on a Danish newspaper that published controversial caricatures of Prophet Mohammed. The four were arrested in December 2010 in a joint operation by Danish and Swedish police. All four lived in Sweden; three were Swedish nationals, one was Tunisian. The prosecution said the plot was linked to the caricatures of the prophet published in 2005 by the Jyllands-Posten. One of the 12 cartoons depicted Mohammed with a bomb in his turban. The cartoons outraged many Muslims. The newspaper and cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who drew the caricature with the turban, since have been the targets of foiled attacks. Prosecutor Gyrithe Ulrich, who had called for sentences of 14 to 16 years, told Danish broadcaster DR she would study the ruling handed down by the District Court in Glostrup, near Copenhagen, before considering her next move. Defense lawyers for the four men were to consider whether to appeal, the news agency Ritzau reported.

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5 June 2012 | Knight Center

New York Times looking for new audience on Hulu

Joining news outlets like ABC News, NBC News, and The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times now has a channel on Hulu, allowing users to watch videos produced for the Times' website, according to the NiemanJournalism Lab. Although known more for providing viewers access to popular TV shows, Hulu also offers documentaries and news videos. The first New York Times video available on Hulu is “Punched Out: The Life and Death of an N.H.L. Enforcer,” a piece that originally was published as a three-part series on hockey player Derek Boogaard. Future Times videos available on Hulu will be longer-form videos than those typically found on the newspaper's website. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal has 57 videos on Hulu, according to the website Media Buyer Planner. The Journal's channel, WSJ Live, also is a mobile app for accessing the newspaper's videos. When it launched in September 2011, the Nieman Lab called it a "model for the news industry."

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