Internet & Media

Imeem, Lala investments not paying for Warner

Investments made in Web music services Lala, Imeem, and MySpace Music haven't paid off for Warner Music Group, at least not yet.

The third largest of the four biggest recording companies said Thursday it would write down $33 million, most of it from investments made in Lala and Imeem. Edgar Bronfman Jr., Warner Music's CEO, also said after the company issued quarterly earnings report that MySpace Music's performance has so far "disappointed."

Warner Music's write down--$16 million in Imeem and about $11 million in Lala--is a reflection of the company's valuations during … Read more

Google confirms FTC 'discussion' pending over Schmidt-Apple relationship

Correction at 2:50 p.m. PDT: This story initially misquoted Kent Walker. He confirmed that Google was aware of a "pending FTC discussion" into Schmidt's board seats.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Google confirmed that the Federal Trade Commission plans to hold discussions with the company over a possible conflict of interest due to CEO Eric Schmidt's participation on both Google and Apple's board of directors.

In response to questions posed by reporters during a lunch meeting with Google executives--including Schmidt--Google vice president and general counsel Kent Walker confirmed that Google was aware of a "… Read more

Facebook death threats for soccer referee

I understand that not everyone loves soccer.

However, Wednesday saw one of the most important events in the annual soccer calendar--the UEFA Champions League semifinal between Chelsea and Barcelona.

Barcelona prevailed with an excellent goal in the very dying seconds. Which, unfortunately, has resulted in many Chelsea fans turning to Facebook and other media in order to suggest that the Norwegian referee, Tom Henning Ovrebo, should be doing some dying too.

In their somewhat warped view, he refused to award four penalties to Chelsea. And he should, therefore, suffer the consequences.

Here is a sample from just one of the … Read more

Google number-crunching to find good TV ads

Google believes the TV remote control is the next mouse, at least when it comes to measuring the fickle behavior of TV viewers and Web surfers regarding advertising.

Google TV Ads has been a formal project for a little over a year, and the company released new data Thursday showing how it's trying to help television advertisers quantify the impact of a good TV ad versus a bad one. Google has been quietly measuring the viewing habits of Dish Network customers, including how likely they are to watch all the way through a compelling, relevant ad or click away … Read more

Sirius XM's net loss widens as sales rise

Satellite radio company Sirius XM Radio, despite recording a greater net loss for the first quarter of 2009, says it is encouraged by higher sales.

New York-based Sirius XM on Thursday reported a net loss of $236.6 million, or 7 cents a share, compared with $104.1 million, or 7 cents, in 2008's first quarter. Sales grew to $587 million from $270.4 million in the year-ago quarter, while operating costs dropped 23 percent.

Subscribers to the company's services dropped to 18.6 million, from 19 million at the end of 2008, which Sirius XM attributes to … Read more

Dominate me, Google. Please

Google is apparently "getting ready to fully cast its social net over its web properties," according to TechCrunch, the latest signal being the automatic creation of a Google account when opening a YouTube account.

It's a clever, almost Microsoft-esque move designed to make Google the center of our social universe. It can't happen fast enough. But Google shouldn't stop with its own properties.

The social Web is currently a morass of mostly siloed choices. I can be on Facebook but also have to build a profile on LinkedIn, not to mention Digg, Slashdot, Bebo, Classmates.… Read more

Execs reveal why newspapers don't block Google

To hear the poobahs of traditional media tell it, Google is to print media what global warming is to the polar caps. At many once-stalwart print publications, profits are melting away.

For several months, leaders at some of the nation's most influential newspapers and periodicals, including The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, and the online arm of Forbes magazine have begun blaming Google and similar Web services for at least some of their deepening financial troubles. Google sells ads tied to the news blurbs it "scrapes" from news sites. It links back to the Web sites … Read more

Twitter Search to dive deeper, rank results

Correction: Santosh Jayaram's title at Google has been corrected.

Twitter Search will become a lot more useful soon, the microblogging site's new vice president of operations said Wednesday night.

Santosh Jayaram, who until recently was manager of search quality operations for Google, was on a panel I was moderating in the evening. During the panel and later in a one-on-one discussion, Jayaram confirmed that Twitter Search, which currently searches only the text of Twitter posts, will soon begin to crawl the links included in tweets and begin to index the content of those pages.

This will make Twitter … Read more

With new DX, Amazon supersizes the Kindle

roundup The debut of the larger, but still svelte, Kindle wasn't exactly a secret. Now we have all the details on the $489 device. As expected, education is a big market for the bigger Kindle DX.

Kindle DX: Hands-on impressions While Amazon's new Kindle DX won't be out until sometime this summer, we got a chance to play around with a unit at the launch event. Check out our first impressions. • Early analysis: Overview • Early analysis: E-news • Early analysis: E-textbooks (Posted in Fully Equipped by David Carnoy) May 6, 2009

Amazon's big-screen Kindle DX makes its debut … Read more