Mediagazer: LOL no more: it's time to take AOL seriously as shares soar again (Jeff John Roberts/paidContent)

11:25 AM ET, February 8, 2013

Top News:

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Tim Marches On: AOL Turns in Solid Q4 Earnings, With First Year-Over-Year Growth in Eight Years — AOL said it earned 41 cents a share, or $35.7 million in net income, in the fourth quarter, which was right on target with what Wall Street analysts had expected.

Discussion: Business Insider, CNET, AdAge, Forbes, VentureBeat, FishbowlNY, Reuters, TechCrunch, @jeffjohnroberts, Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle and 24/7 Wall St.

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

AOL Earnings: Revenue Turns Positive, But Patch Disappoints. Bad Omen For Hyperlocal? — Here's the good news: AOL managed to boost its total revenues on a year-over-year basis in the fourth quarter of 2012, the first time in eight years that's happened. And it wasn't a close-run thing, either.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest

Jeff John Roberts / paidContent:

LOL no more: it's time to take AOL seriously as shares soar again — A year ago, AOL was a laughing stock. The one-time internet king was surviving on dial-up dollars from yokels and its media properties were a mess. After it sold its patent portfolio to Facebook, it seemed only a matter of time until AOL dried up altogether.

Discussion: Marketing Land

Bernard Lunn / Emergent Business Networks:

Hyperlocal Slough of Despond. After EveryBlock, Hipster & Patch Will Authentically Local Create The Sustainable Model? — Today many online publishers will be eying the AOL Q4 results. A small sub segment will be poring over every number and word revealed about AOL's expensive experiment in hyperlocal news called Patch.

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

A Fish, Er, Storm Named Nemo — “We're ready for Nemo,” the Twitter account for the New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg wrote on Thursday before listing all the tools at the city's disposal for the blizzard that is expected to form on Friday. — Wait — Nemo?

Discussion: Forbes, PopWatch, Gawker, Tor.com Frontpage Partial, www.wnyc.org, Metropolis and New York Magazine

Caity Weaver / Gawker:

Snow Panic Has Driven Weather.com Completely Insane — You know how sometimes the best way to deal with a ranting, screaming maniac is just to leave him alone until he exhausts himself? It's time for us to do that with Weather.com. — Yesterday afternoon, The Weather Channel whipped itself …

Discussion: AccuWeather.com, @mathewi and Quartz

Amir Efrati / Wall Street Journal:

Pirated Movies Crop Up Again on YouTube — Google Inc.'s YouTube is facing the return of a pirated-content problem. — Hundreds of full-length feature films including blockbusters from Walt Disney Co. and Sony Corp.'s Columbia and Tristar studios have been illegally uploaded to the world's …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, SocialTimes and Gizmodo

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Macmillan settles with DOJ, leaving Apple last defendant standing in ebook pricing case — Macmillan, the last remaining publisher holdout in the Department of Justice's ebook pricing antitrust lawsuit against five publishers and Apple, has decided to settle about ten months after the lawsuit was originally filed.

Discussion: Tor.com Frontpage Partial, Reuters, PublishersWeekly.com, AllThingsD, GalleyCat, Publishers Lunch and Digital Book World

Filipe Alves / Reuters:

Google must extend payments across Europe for use of content — (Reuters) - Google Inc must extend its offer made last week to pay French publishers for use of their content to all media companies across Europe, the head of the European Publishers Council said on Thursday.

Discussion: TechCrunch, NetNewsCheck Latest, Engadget and bizjournals

Michael Neibauer / Washington Business Journal:

Washington Post polling users on possible paywall packages — The Washington Post Co. is taking a step toward paid Web content, surveying its users on potential packages. — The email survey, we're told by one recipient, includes standard questions about how often readers visit washingtonpost.com …

Discussion: Poynter

Jennifer Van Grove / CNET:

LinkedIn eyes future as professional publishing hub — The company seems set on making business content, not social networking, the focus of the site. — LinkedIn spent much of 2012 transforming itself into a place where workers could stay and play awhile — a strategy that paid off handsomely.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, Beyond Search, SocialTimes, Adweek, Forbes and VentureBeat

Eric Pfanner / New York Times:

Universal Unloads European Labels Bought From EMI — PARIS — Warner Music Group said Thursday that it had agreed to buy much of the European record label business that Universal Music Group acquired in its recent purchase of EMI. — The deal, worth £487 million, or $765 million …

Ben Sisario / Media Decoder:
Warner Music Group Buys EMI Assets for $765 Million

Discussion: BBC, Wall Street Journal, Billboard and Telegraph

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

What would a New York Times for the youngs look like? — The New York Times is testing some kind of “entry-level” product aimed at a younger, more Internet-y audience, new CEO Mark Thompson said in the company's earnings call Thursday. Forbes' Jeff Bercovici followed up …

Discussion: New York Times and eMedia Vitals

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:
Coming Soon: A Juniors' Edition of The New York Times?

Discussion: Media News, AdAge, Media & Entertainment, NetNewsCheck Latest, FishbowlNY and @jeffjohnroberts

Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:

The Valley Needs A Valleywag — Or Something — Here's an unpopular opinion, especially on TechCrunch: The Valley needs a new Valleywag. — On any given day, beneath the hype cycle of startups threatening to launch, then getting their VCs to blog/tweet about their launch threats …

Ken Doctor / Newsonomics:

NYT & Mark Thompson's First Report: Unsteady as She Goes — New York Times watchers were looking forward to hearing new CEO Mark Thompson's plummy tones this morning, as he hosted the company's quarterly earnings report for the first time. This report also included full-year, 2012.

Discussion: The Next Web

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:
‘Times’ C.E.O. Mark Thompson promises a ‘new strategy,’ details in April

Discussion: Corporate Intelligence

Rick Edmonds / Poynter:
At New York Times, 65% of digital-only subscribers are ‘entirely new’

Discussion: paidContent

Adrian Holovaty:

RIP Everyblock — I'm very saddened by today's news that EveryBlock has been shut down by NBC News. — I founded EveryBlock in 2007 after receiving a grant from the Knight Foundation. It was launched in January 2008 by an original team of four (Wilson Miner, Dan O'Neil, Paul Smith and me) and was acquired by msnbc.com in 2009.

Discussion: ReadWrite, Poynter, Nieman Journalism Lab, @lheron and GeekWire