Mediagazer: String of Executive Departures Leaves a Leadership Vacuum at the Top of Tumblr (Nitasha Tiku/Betabeat)

3:10 AM ET, April 12, 2013

Top News:

Twitter's New Music App Launches Friday — Next up on the jukebox — Twitter Music. — The microblogging service plans to launch its new, standalone music application on Friday, according to sources familiar with the matter. — Update 7:59 pm PT: Of note — another source claims the app …

Discussion: TechCrunch, SlashGear, CNET, Pocket-lint, The Next Web, Mashable and Engadget

Matt McGee / Marketing Land:

Twitter Acquires We Are Hunted, Should Open New Marketing Doors For Artists — The music discovery service We Are Hunted has announced that it's joining Twitter. The news hit almost at the same moment that American Idol host Ryan Seacrest tweeted about “playing with @twitter's new music app.”

Discussion: The Next Web and Engadget

Mike Isaac / AllThingsD:

Yep, LinkedIn Acquires Newsreader Startup Pulse for $90 Million — LinkedIn announced on Thursday it has acquired mobile news aggregation startup Pulse, as Kara Swisher reported last month that it would, signaling another step by the massive professional network toward becoming an online content powerhouse.

Discussion: Official LinkedIn Blog, LinkedIn media information …, GigaOM, NetNewsCheck Latest, The Next Web, MobileSyrup.com, The Verge, CNET, Reuters, SlashGear, VentureBeat, ZDNet, Mashable, AppleInsider and GalleyCat

Janko Roettgers / paidContent:

Netflix users watched four billion hours of video in Q1 — Looks like House of Cards is starting to have an impact: Netflix members watched more than four billion hours of video during the first three months of 2013, according to the company's CEO Reed Hastings, who took to Facebook to publish the milestone Thursday.

Discussion: Variety, AllThingsD, Deadline.com, Home Media Magazine and The Huffington Post

Bloomberg:

Time Warner Said to Be Frontrunner in Bid for Calik's ATV — Time Warner Inc. (TWX), the owner of HBO and Warner Bros. film studio, is in talks to buy Turkey's ATV television network from Calik Holdings AS, three people with knowledge of the situation said.

Nitasha Tiku / Betabeat:

String of Executive Departures Leaves a Leadership Vacuum at the Top of Tumblr — Late Tuesday night, while most of New York City was “afk” enjoying the balmy weather, Tumblr CEO David Karp snuck a post onto the staff blog paying tribute to Storyboard—a team of journalists and editors assigned to …

Discussion: Digiday, Marketing Pilgrim, @justinnxt, AppNewser, Daily Dot, Mashable and Mashable

Jack Shafer:

Our national pastime: Press criticism — In early 1946, Albert Camus emptied into New Yorker press critic A.J. Liebling's ear his plan for a new newspaper. — “It would be a critical newspaper, to be published one hour after the first editions of the other papers, twice a day …

Jim Romenesko:

Missing the good old days when Pulitzer finalists were leaked — I responded: “I think the demise of the old E&P, which was obsessed with the prizes, has a lot to do with it.” Joe Strupp used to do a great job getting judges to leak the finalists to Editor & Publisher.

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Flipboard Adds 3 Million Users Since Launch Of Personalized Magazines, Over 500,000 Magazines Created To Date — Mobile magazine Flipboard revealed today that over half a million personalized magazines have been created on its platform since the launch of the new feature just two weeks prior.

Discussion: VentureBeat

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Ebooks made up 23 percent of US publisher sales in 2012, says the AAP — Ebooks accounted for nearly a quarter of the U.S. trade book business in 2012, according to statistics released Thursday by the Association of American Publishers. The ebook industry appears to be maturing, however …

Discussion: Media & Entertainment, Digital Book World and PublishersWeekly.com

Kelly Faircloth / Betabeat:

Yup, Looks Like It's Mostly Overworked Bloggers Who Use Google Reader — As part of its quest to build the perfect Google Reader replacement, Digg is surveying 17,000 people about how they used the service. With 8,000 responses already in, Digg has released some insight into what they've found.

Discussion: Digg Blog, BetaNews, paidContent and Marketing Land

Joe Flint / Los Angeles Times:

‘The Bible’ on Fox News Channel? It almost happened — News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, right, wanted the miniseries “The Bible” for the Fox News Channel. (The Bible/Lightworkers Media and Hearst Entertainment/Rupert Murdoch/Associated Press / April 10, 2013)

Discussion: TVNewser

Eriq Gardner / Hollywood Reporter:

IMDb Wins Lawsuit Against Actress Suing Over Age Revelation — Huong Hoang sued IMDb after her age was revealed, which she says cost her jobs in an entertainment industry where perception matters. — On Thursday, a jury in Seattle handed a loss to Huong Hoang, the actress suing IMDb for revealing her age.

Discussion: Technology & … and FishbowlLA

Caitlin Dewey / WorldViews:

What time machine? Iranian news agency quietly deletes a report that Iran had built one. — Iran's semiofficial Fars News Agency seems to have retreated from its earlier, mind-boggling story saying that an Iranian scientist had invented the world's first time machine.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, VentureBeat, SlashGear, Gawker and Foreign Policy