Digital Media

Greg Coleman, a longtime Yahoo executive, has been named the new president of AOL's advertising division, Platform-A.

Greg Coleman

(Credit: AOL)

"Greg Coleman is the perfect person to build on the foundation we created at Platform-A and drive branded display sales across our fast-growing MediaGlow programming network," AOL chairman and CEO Randy Falco said in a release, referring to the network of blogs and media properties that the online conglomerate formally packaged and announced last month. "Greg's a seasoned sales pro who understands that online brand building is the next frontier in digital advertising, and that whoever can deliver marketers measurably improved branding online will be positioned for long-term success."

Coleman, who will report to AOL chief operating officer Ron Grant, left Yahoo early last year amid a management shuffle and became president and CEO of ad targeting start-up NetSeer. Around the time of his departure, AOL itself went through a shakeup in which Platform-A president Curt Viebranz left the company. Viebranz was replaced by Lynda Clazirio, who was president of AOL acquisition Advertising.com.

CNET News asked a representative from AOL, which relocated its corporate headquarters from Dulles, Va., to New York in 2007 to position itself close to the advertising and media industries, whether Clazirio would remain at the company. The e-mailed response was, "Lynda hasn't yet announced what she's planning to do next."

Blogging service Tumblr has raised $4.5 million in a second round of funding from its current investors, according to a report on AllThingsD.

Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital ponied up another round, bringing the company's total VC funding to $5.25 million and giving the company an estimated valuation of $15 million, according to the report. Tumblr provides a means for people to create, edit, and post blogs.

Tumblr is a free site that reportedly is leaning toward developing premium services to sell to its members, rather than latching onto an advertising-based revenue model.

Founder David Karp is aiming to generate revenue early next year, according to the report.

That should bode well for the company, which earlier this year launched a new feature that provides bloggers with the means to let others add content to their blogs.

HTC's Dream, aka the T-Mobile G1, next to an Apple iPhone

Updated 4:28 p.m. PST to reflect that it's T-mobile's ad campaign, with no Google involvement.

T-Mobile plans to flood the market with a billion ads in two days for its G1 Android phone, with AOL's Platform-A network delivering the advertisements, according to Advertising Age.

Platform-A President Lynda Clarizio estimated the campaign will reach 81 million people when it runs next week, according to the article, which quoted an unnamed source as saying the ad campaign will cost about $1.5 million.

"The goal for T-Mobile was to reach as many people as possible in a short period of time," AdAge quoted Clazario as saying.

Google said the campaign is T-Mobile's and it's uninvolved in the marketing effort.

The T-Mobile G1, a version of an HTC phone called the Dream, is the first phone to use Google's Android operating system. The phone went on sale October 22, but future Android phones are expected in 2009 from other companies including Motorola, Kyocera, Samsun, and LG Electronics.

Miva announced Monday it secured a $10 million credit line, as the digital advertising and media company seeks to expand its brand and introduce a new ad platform amid a troubled economy.

Miva, which received its credit line from a subsidiary of Bridge Capital Holdings, plans to use the proceeds toward expanding its Alot toolbar and homepage brand, as well as its Miva Media ad platform.

The credit line will give some leeway to the company, which initiated a restructuring in the second quarter and announced a 15 percent cut in its workforce.

Miva also rejected the unwelcome advances of British video search site Blinkx in August, saying its buyout offer of $1.20 a share undervalued the company.

"I believe this credit line will provide the company liquidity at this pivotal time in our growth and development," Peter Corrao, Miva's CEO, said in a statement. "I believe it represents an important step in our efforts to expand our Alot toolbar and homepage brand, as well as support the rollout of our new Miva Media ad platform, which we launched in beta earlier this month."

AOL's advertising product, Platform-A, is continuing its overseas expansion with Tuesday's launch of a French edition. In the past few weeks, AOL has launched Platform-A in the U.K. and Germany as well.

Platform-A already reaches 24 million people in France, AOL said in a release Tuesday. The technology serves ads on all AOL-owned sites as well as third-party participants in the Advertising.com network.

"Global advertisers are demanding online performance, and that's why Platform-A is aggressively extending its reach in both the United States and Europe so that marketers can generate results more quickly and measurably than ever before," said Platform-A president Lynda Clarizio, who replaced the outgoing Curt Viebranz in March. "No other online advertising business can offer the reach, relevance, and richness of Platform-A, and we're focused on rapidly extending our global reach as we near the end of 2008."

With digital ad dollars hanging in uncertainty in the U.S., many would-be leaders are looking overseas for growth: upstart Silicon Valley media company Glam has made several international moves by acquiring existing ad networks.

AOL plans more European launches for Platform-A before the end of 2008.

It looks like social music site iLike will launch its developer platform early next week.

The Seattle-based company, which announced plans to build a third-party developer platform in July, has begun notifying news outlets that it will have a "significant technology announcement" on Wednesday.

Two weeks ago, iLike's President Hadi Partovi, wrote an e-mail to third-party developers notifying them that the company was "gearing up to prepare for launch" of the platform. According to Partovi's e-mail, the iLike Developer Platform is designed to add "interactive music features to Facebook apps and Web sites."

"We'll open up detailed information very soon," Partovi said in his August 29 e-mail. "In the mean time, we'd love to encourage a few Web sites or (Facebook) apps to be early adopters."

"If you're working on a Web site or Facebook app and are interested, shoot me an e-mail and we'll get you into the early preview. And if you're interested in being referenced as part of our launch and PR efforts, let me know too. We're considering picking a short list of launch partners to promote to our 15mm Facebook users."

An iLike spokeswoman declined to comment.

A source close to the music industry, who requested anonymity, also said that iLike's platform was opening next week.

iLike is making this announcement in conjunction with the Web 2.0 Expo, the O'Reilly Media-organized confab set to hit New York next week. But conferences aside, this is a particularly notable time for iLike, which rose to fame as an application on Facebook's developer platform, to make this move. The News Corp.-owned social network MySpace will be launching its much-anticipated MySpace Music service soon, and has confirmed that on Monday it will be announcing the program's initial brand advertisers.

This is a time when other social music businesses, iLike among them, are scrambling to make their own moves and snag a bit of the limelight. The rapid-fire, competing-announcement phenomenon is something the tech industry saw last spring when the press was barraged with data-portability announcements: Google Friend Connect, MySpace Data Availability, and Facebook Connect all were announced within a week of each other.

Next week, likewise, should shape up to be a big one for digital music. iLike already has a partnership in place with RealNetworks' Rhapsody music service so that members can stream full-length songs, and the company announced this summer that membership has surpassed 30 million users.

CNET News' Caroline McCarthy contributed to this report.

It's hard to think of Apple and Facebook as obstructions to innovation and the free flow of information, but that's exactly what the companies could become one day, according to Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard law professor and a proponent of free speech on the Web.

Apple and Facebook have generated lots of consumer satisfaction by each creating environments where third-party developers can tailor software for the iPhone or Facebook's social network. Part of their success is due to the quality control the companies maintain over the applications running on their platforms, Zittrain said. But he also worries that Apple and Facebook--as well as other companies that might be tempted to follow their lead--will begin to exert more control over independent software development than ever before. He's skeptical this would be good for anyone.

Harvard professor is skeptical that platforms similar to those built around Apple's iPhone and Facebook provide the best environment for developing software.

(Credit: Jonathan Zittrain)

In an interview with CNET News.com last week, Zittrain said his fears were stoked recently when Apple and Facebook each made news for booting software apps off their platforms.

Last week, Apple banned the bloody electronic comic, Murderdrome. The comic's creators wrote on their blog: "This is due to the part of the SDK that suggests content must not offend anyone in 'Apple's reasonable' opinion.'" Some of the other apps axed by Apple include Box Office, which provides movie information; Tris, a Tetris-like game app and PhoneSaber, a feature that simulates the light-saber sounds from the film Star Wars.

Last month, Facebook disabled Scrabulous, the digital game that looks a lot like the popular board game Scrabble in numerous countries around the world including the United States. Mattel and Hasbro, which share ownership of Scrabble, pressured Facebook to remove Scrabulous, citing copyright concerns. To sidestep the copyright issue, the brothers who created Scrabulous modified the game's look feel and relaunched it in North America as Wordscraper.

"What I object to is that these companies have put themselves into a position where they can be bullied into making decisions that leads to taking stuff down," Zittrain said. "It's becoming commonplace that code is either prevented from reaching an audience, or once it reaches an audience it can be yanked back because of the architecture."

Zittrain, co-founder of Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society who calls himself a "happy Facebook and iPhone user," said he doesn't believe that Apple or Facebook created the platforms with the intention of asserting heavy-handed control over software development. He suspects that they control their platforms the way they do for sound business reasons.

But Zittrain warns in his book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It, that anyone who creates these controlled environments is vulnerable to pressure from outside parties. Some requests to remove an app will be made for legitimate reasons while others may be made to gain a competitive edge, according to Zittrain.

"You can see where outsiders might want to force (Apple and Facebook's) hand for business reasons," Zittrain said. "The last thing Apple and Facebook want is to be embroiled in court fights for some app that hasn't taken off yet with a big audience. So it's rational for the platform owner (to remove the app), but it's not good for the ecosystem."

As supreme rulers over their platforms, Apple and Facebook hold unchecked power over what apps live or die. This harms consumers, entrepreneurs and the Internet by making it harder for disruptive software to survive. Often such controversial applications turn out to benefit software, Zittrain argued.

Would Kazaa or Skype have flourished in a platform similar to Apple's, asks Zittrain? Or would the music and telephone companies have forced Apple to ban them by threatening legal action?

Zittrain reminds anyone who will listen that all of the major operating systems of the 20th century; Windows, Linux, and the Mac OS, never sought to impede third-party applications written for them. "Nobody ever asked Bill Gates to kill BitTorrent," Zittrain said.

Apple may need to follow Facebook's lead
Apple declined to comment for this story, but Facebook defended its procedures for removing applications.

Chris Kelly, chief privacy officer at Facebook, said Tuesday that the social network has established a set of rules and standards for developers designed to protect consumers. "The idea that there are some rules at the margins I don't think significantly hinders the ability to be generative," Kelly said.

To protect developers accused of breaking rules, Facebook has a system to listen to their side of the story. A "platform team" assesses rules violations and makes a determination, Kelly said, adding that Facebook also has an appeal's process.

It's important to note, however, that the people who hear the appeals are not independent parties but Facebook employees. Still, this is more than what Apple currently offers. At this early stage in the iPhone platform's development, it appears Apple is without any formal process to allow developers whose apps are removed a chance to challenge the decision.

"Apple will remove your app without telling you why they're doing it," said Cyrus Najmabadi, a software developer whose application, Box Office, was taken down in July for over a week without warning. He brought it back under a new name, Now Playing. "This is frightening, given the traditional open nature of the computing market. Apple needs a notification system and to be more transparent."

Najmabadi said he couldn't detail why the app was banned, citing the non disclosure agreement Apple makes third-party developers sign.

One important question is why, if Najmabadi is unhappy, doesn't he develop elsewhere? The reality is that iPhone and Facebook's platforms have become enormously influential and potentially lucrative for developers, Zittrain maintains. Walking away isn't easy, Najmabadi said.

The more successful the platform, the more control they can assert over developers, said Colin Sebastian, a video game analyst with Lazard Capital Markets.

Microsoft, Sony, or Nintendo operate walled-garden environments in the videogame sector, Sebastian said, but developers haven't complained much about the console makers throwing their weight around. That's due to the intense competition in the sector, which prevents the companies from issuing too many demands on developers. "I suspect that could change if any one of them ever became the dominate player," Sebastian said.

In the case of Apple and Facebook, Zittrain wants to see developers band together to pressure those companies to provide guarantees. He would also like to see platform creators get some protection under the law.

"There's plenty of people who argue to let the market solve the problem," Zittrain said. "That's fine. It's not like I'm racing to have the UN to send in the helicopters. The market will sort it out once they know the problem. They just have to know. I've been trying to bang the drum and rally the nation's developer communities because I think the platforms aren't yet fully dug in. So you could actually see flexibility."

Update 12:35 p.m. PDT: I corrected a reference to AOL's parent company.

AOL said Wednesday it's integrating interactive "widget" ads with Platform-A, the Time Warner subsidiary's advertising network.

An example of a widget ad from Advertising.com.

(Credit: Advertising.com)

Widgets are small Web-based applications, and widget ads offer more interactive possibilities than conventional ads. AOL acquired Goowy in February to advance its widget push, and the Goowy technology for creating and managing widgets is now integrated with Platform-A.

Widgets already could be distributed on AOL's Bebo and on Facebook through Advertising.com service, which is part of Platform-A, but Platform-A has a much broader reach. According to June statistics from ComScore, Platform-A is the top-ranked ad network, reaching 90 percent of the nearly 190 million Americans who are online. (The Yahoo Network was second, at 83 percent, followed by the Google Ad Network at 81 percent, and Specific Media at 78 percent.)

AOL said distributing widget ads through Platform-A won't cost extra.

"Widget-based advertising is gaining momentum in the industry, and Platform-A's network approach allows our customers to build brands, encourage interaction, and drive site traffic--all at scale," said Lynda Clarizio, president of Platform-A, in a statement.