Mediagazer: The Pied Piper of Social Media (Ben Popper/New York Observer)

3:55 PM ET, February 8, 2011

Top News:

Olbermann Said to Be Going to Current TV — Keith Olbermann, the former top-rated host on the news channel MSNBC, will announce his next television home on Tuesday, and people on Monday familiarwith his plans pointed to a possible deal with the public affairs channel Current TV.

current.com:

Keith Olbermann to Host Major New Nightly Primetime News and Commentary Show on Current TV — Keith Olbermann, the acclaimed broadcaster and writer whose verbal pyrotechnics and moral passion have outraged, informed, and dazzled viewers of “Countdown With Keith Olbermann” for the past eight years …

Discussion: New York Times, The Huffington Post, Lost Remote, Moneywood, rbr.com, Yahoo! News, LA Observed, The Wire, paidContent, Politics Daily, The Marquee Blog, @howardkurtz, Chickaboomer, @laceyvrose, Tuned In and AOL News

Keith Olbermann / @keitholbermann:

Greetings from Keith Olbermann, Chief News Officer of Current Media! And awayyyyyy we go! #FOK

Discussion: Moraes on TV, @brianstelter, @algore, @howardkurtz, Faster Forward and AOL News

Tom McGeveran / Capital New York:

AOL-HuffPo: Acquisition of means of production without being revolutionary at all — It's not a marriage, this purchase of The Huffington Post by AOL. It's more like Arianna Huffington and Tim Armstrong have decided to bunk up so they can move to nicer real estate at lower prices.

Discussion: DealBook, Guardian, Mixed Media, Fortune, eMedia Vitals, @ariannahuff, Scocca, AmSpecBlog, Poynter, CJR, The Awl, Salon and ReveNews

Felix Salmon:

Why the NYT will lose to HuffPo — Tom McGeveran asks an important question, in his analysis of the AOL-HuffPo deal: … The answer to this question, I think, is also a key part of the reason why the NYT paywall is a bad idea. — It's worth using a specific example here …

Discussion: Future of Journalism, Runnin' Scared, Mediaite, TVNewser, New York Observer and On Media's Blog

Elisa Lipsky-Karasz / Harper's BAZAAR:

ARIANNA VS. TINA? — As founders of influential news sites the Huffington Post and the Daily Beast, Arianna Huffington and Tina Brown seem like natural Darwinian enemies. But anyone hoping for a juicy media catfight will have to get their kicks elsewhere.

Discussion: Washington Post, FishbowlNY, The Daily Beast and SAI

Drudge Report:

ARIANNA: $18 MILLION WOMAN! — Hard work and endless media lifting has finally paid off for Arianna Huffington — after she personally scores nearly $20 million in a sale to AMERICA ONLINE! — Top sources close to the deal reveal Huffington will bank $18 million, after all is said and done …

Discussion: The Wire, Gawker, SAI, New York Observer, New York Magazine and Screenwerk

Laura Kusisto / New York Observer:
HuffPo Bloggers to Invade Dial-Up Daddy's ‘Funhouse’

Discussion: SAI

Jeff Jarvis / BuzzMachine:
AriannaOL — They laughed when Arianna sat down to the keyboard.

Scott Rosenberg / Scott Rosenberg's Wordyard:
Huffington is to AOL as AOL was to Time Warner

Discussion: BoomTown, The Daily Beast, GigaOM, mediabistro.com and The Wrap

Ken Doctor / Newsonomics:
The New HuffPo-AOL Combo: The Free, Anti-Murdoch Alternative?

Discussion: paidContent, The Wire and SAI

Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Live Blogging: Aol's Tim Armstrong & Arianna Huffington At Signal LA

Discussion: John Battelle's Searchblog

Jason Pollock / The Huffington Post: HuffPo AOL Deal is A Gigantic Step Forward for Social Media

Media Decoder:

Jeff Fager to Be Named Chairman of CBS News — 12:27 p.m. | Updated Jeff Fager, the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” will be named chairman of CBS News Tuesday, with Sean McManus, the president of CBS News and Sports, returning exclusively to the sports division as chairman, the network said.

Discussion: Company Town, MediaPost, Multichannel, The Wire, The Wrap, mediabistro.com, Mediaite, rbr.com, Talking Biz News, On Media's Blog, Broadcasting & Cable, Moraes on TV, Poynter and New York Magazine

David Cohen / mediabistro.com:

Social Media Week: The Internet and Uprisings in the Arab World: Are We Already in a Post-Social-Media World? — The Science and Technology Hub at Google's New York outpost was the site of Monday afternoon's The Internet and Uprisings in the Arab World: Are We Already in a Post-Social-Media World? …

Ben Popper / New York Observer:
The Pied Piper of Social Media

Discussion: mediabistro.com and Media News International

Stephen Coles / Fonts In Use:

The Daily - Design trumps content in launch of first major tablet newspaper. — Founded by the world's most notorious media magnate, preceded by months of speculation and fanfare, and backed with unusually strong support from Apple, The Daily is the most anticipated digital publication since publications went digital.

Discussion: The Atlantic Online, TeleRead and MacStories

Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:

ComScore: Hulu Is Watched Twice As Much As The 5 Major TV Networks Online Combined — In a new report on digital trends in 2010 — When it comes to premium video on the Web, Hulu still rules. In the fourth quarter, the U.S. online audience watched 19.4 billin minutes of video on Hulu …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, comScore, Inc. and GigaOM, more at Techmeme »

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:

Washington Post's Chris Cillizza Advice to Journos: Serve a Bounty of Content, Like a Late Night Las Vegas Buffet — WASHINGTON — The days of newspapers serving up just “meat and potatoes” are over and it is essential for journalists to serve a “buffet” of content, says Chris Cillizza …

Discussion: WebNewser

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:
Here's Why the AP Declined White House Video Feed and Passed …

Discussion: WebNewser

Paul Bradshaw / Online Journalism Blog:

How private is a tweet? — The PCC has made its first rulings on a complaint over newspapers republishing a person's tweets. The background to this is the publication in The Daily Mail and the Independent on Sunday of tweets by civil servant Sarah Baskerville.

Discussion: pcc.org.uk, Guardian, paidContent, Press Gazette and Jon Slattery

Paul Bradshaw / Online Journalism Blog:

Twitter promoted tweets - the AdWords for live news? — Remember all that fuss about newspapers bidding on Google Adwords to drive traffic to their site? Well here's a Web 2.0 twist on the idea: Al Jazeera using sponsored tweets to raise awareness of their Egypt coverage. — Twitter itself has the background.

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab

Robinsloan / Twitter Media:
I Want My AJZ — As Egypt turns upside down, Al Jazeera has found its moment.

Discussion: Lost Remote and Media Research Center

BBC:

Newspaper publishers warn Apple over iTunes sales — Apple is being warned against trying to squeeze cash out of the newspaper industry by controlling subscriptions for iPads and iPhones. — The European Newspaper Publishers' Association (ENPA) says it is concerned by the company's plans to direct online sales through iTunes.

David Kaplan / paidContent:

Meebo Acquires Psychographic Ad Targeter Mindset — Social content sharing and IM platform Meebo is putting last fall's $25 million funding round to work: the company is buying online ad measurement and targeting firm Mindset Media. As an online branding specialist that has a particular focus …

Discussion: NetworkEffect, AdAge, IAB SmartBrief, Mashable! and TechCrunch

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Mashable, tackling info overload, launches a Follow function keyed to user networks and interests — Mashable currently boasts 12 million unique visitors per month — making the social media-focused news site the largest independent tech news site on the web. It churns out huge quantities of stories, every day.

Discussion: Mashable!, Thanks:lavrusik

ADM / Fimoculous.com:

Ghost, Blogging — I thought it would be funny. — So I walked into Fimoculous on Christmas and started blogging anonymously, without telling Rex, the owner, beforehand. Which — you guessed it — means that pretty much everything posted here since then is by me, not him.

Discussion: Fimoculous and Snarkmarket