Mediagazer: Bracing for Product Plugs (Javier Espinoza/Wall Street Journal)

1:05 PM ET, August 17, 2010

Top News:

Joseph Tartakoff / paidContent:

AOL's Patch Aims To Quintuple In Size By Year-End — Patch, which has already established itself as the biggest network of neighborhood blogs in the country since being acquired by AOL last summer, plans to accelerate its growth dramatically. Patch President Warren Webster tells us the company …

Discussion: Crain's New York Business, Romenesko, New Jersey Online, Silicon Alley Insider, eMedia Vitals, Morristown Patch, Tarrytown-Sleepy Hollow Patch, Springfield Patch, Merrick Patch, Wellesley Patch, Chatham Patch, Fairfield Patch, Port Washington Patch, NYConvergence, Media Week, Garden City Patch and NetNewsCheck Latest

Sarah Rabil / Bloomberg:

AOL CEO Armstrong Aims for 500 News Websites in Local-Ad Bet — Aug. 17 (Bloomberg) — AOL Inc. is betting on the success of Chief Executive Officer Tim Armstrong's vision for community news and advertising as it plans to start 400 more local-news websites by the end of the year.

Discussion: Lost Remote, MediaMemo, Newsonomics, TechCrunch, Forbes and Associated Press, more at Techmeme »

Wired:

The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet — Sources: Cisco estimates based on CAIDA publications, Andrew Odlyzko — Two decades after its birth, the World Wide Web is in decline, as simpler, sleeker services — think apps — are less about the searching and more about the getting.

Discussion: Boing Boing, Gizmodo and TechCrunch, more at Techmeme »

Michael Calderone / Yahoo! News:

News outlets split in describing mosque — There is no mosque being built on the site of Ground Zero. It's a simple fact, but one that news consumers can be forgiven for missing as they her hourly cable news updates and scan the headlines about a growing—and increasingly heated …

Discussion: The Awl, FishbowlNY, The Fix, Salon, The Wrap, Washington Post, The Huffington Post, mediabistro.com, Runnin' Scared, Mediaite and The Daily Caller

Sam Gustin / DailyFinance:

News Corp., the Saudi Prince and the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ — Amid the howls of outrage over the proposed Islamic community center and mosque near Ground Zero, some political pundits on Fox News, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's media conglomerate News Corp. (NWS), have been particularly vocal in their opposition to the project.

Janko Roettgers / NewTeeVee:

ComScore: Four Out of Five Videos on Hulu Are Ads — Hulu has been taking a dive in comScore's monthly video metrics since the market research company recalibrated the way it is measuring online video last month. However, comScore's new reporting methodology reveals that Hulu reigns supreme in ad viewing …

Discussion: SocialTimes.com

comScore, Inc.:
comScore Releases July 2010 U.S. Online Video Rankings

Discussion: TechCrunch, Dow Jones Newswires, hypebot, msnbc.com and Beet.TV

Stephanie Clifford / New York Times:

Aisle by Aisle, an App That Pushes Bargains — It's like the most persistent sales clerk you've ever encountered. — Major retailers are working with a new smartphone application that tracks and offers promotions to shoppers as they move from outside the store, to counters, to cash registers …

Discussion: Poynter Online, Media Buyer Planner, ReadWriteWeb, Silicon Alley Insider and AdPulp, more at Techmeme »

Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:

Google CEO Suggests You Change Your Name to Escape His Permanent Record — Google CEO Eric Schmidt has a great way of making public statements that are at once frank, unorthodox, thought provoking - and a little frightening. This weekend The Wall St. Journal ran an interview with Schmidt …

Discussion: danah boyd, The Register, Google Watch, Preston Gralla's blog, Google Operating System, Digital Daily, broadstuff, The Atlantic Wire, MarketingVOX, TechCrunch, Gawker and Asa Dotzler, more at Techmeme »

Reuters:

Nielsen plans to raise $2 billion in IPO: filing — (Reuters) - Private equity-owned Nielsen plans to raise up to $2.01 billion through an initial public offering, more than the $1.75 billion it was originally aiming for, it said in a U.S. regulatory filing on Monday.

Discussion: DailyFinance

Mark Milian / L.A. Times Tech Blog:

AP decides not to LOL — The Associated Press almost shared a page with LOLcats. — Pet Holdings Inc., which owns a network of blogs that post pictures of felines with silly captions, and videos of men getting hit in the groin on its Fail Blog, had been wrapped in rather lengthy negotiations …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals, Romenesko, FishbowlNY, PlagiarismToday, Techdirt and Gawker, more at Techmeme »

Javier Espinoza / Wall Street Journal:

Bracing for Product Plugs — Change in EU law means U.S. style of marketing is set to take off in TV shows produced in U.K. and Continent — Hiro Nakamura, the fictional character in U.S. TV series “Heroes” with the ability to manipulate time, has discovered a comic book from the future …

Discussion: Gawker

Speakeasy:

'I'm Still Here' Trailer Debuts: Is Joaquin Phoenix Pulling a Fast One on Audiences? … Big public meltdown or huge practical joke? Or something in between? Audiences will soon find out if Oscar-nominated actor Joaquin Phoenix, who spent most of 2008 attempting to jump-start a hip hop career …

Discussion: Gawker and The Wrap

Joe Pompeo / Silicon Alley Insider:

Fortune.com Is No Longer A “Second Class Citizen” — Fortune scored big with its announcement Monday that it had poached Dan Primack from Reuters' peHUB as an online senior editor. — Primack, who created and grew peHUB's daily morning newsletter from about 300 readers in 2002 to roughly 60,000 today …

Discussion: New York Observer, Romenesko, PE Hub Blog, Talking Biz News and The Wire

Robinsloan / Twitter Media:

Four ways to use Fast Follow — The mobile team here at Twitter has rolled out a new feature called Fast Follow, and its genius lies in its simplicity: text “follow [account]” to 40404 (Twitter's U.S. shortcode) and you'll immediately start getting that account's tweets via SMS—without ever signing up for Twitter.

Discussion: InsideTheCBC.com

Claudia Eller / Company Town:

David Ellison raises $350 million to co-fund movies with Paramount — In an era when outside movie capital is tough to come by, David Ellison, the 27-year-old son of Oracle founder and Chief Executive Larry Ellison, has raised $350 million to co-finance movies with his studio partner Paramount Pictures.

Discussion: Deadline.com, Deal Journal, PE Hub Blog, The Wrap and The Huffington Post

Patrick / Clicker Blog:

It's SHOWTIME (Literally) on Clicker.com!! — In celebration of tonight's premiere of The Big C, starring Laura Linney, and the new Season 6 of Weeds, Showtime has teamed up with Clicker to offer some EXCLUSIVE awards for fans who tune in and check-in, either directly on Clicker.com or using our new Clicker Mobile on Android devices.

MediaShift:

Experts Weigh Pros and Cons of Social Media — OurBlook.com has been conducting an ongoing interview series on the current and future role of journalism and social media. In previous posts for PBS MediaShift, I shared some of the insights we've gathered about the future of journalism …

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Who's Going to Sell Hulu to Wall Street? — Can Hulu really go public? — Yes, say sources talking to the New York Times who imagine the video site launching an IPO “as soon as this fall.” — And it's not the first time we've heard the idea: Some of Hulu's network owners have been murmuring privately about an IPO for a while.