Top News:
Shan Wang / Nieman Lab:
Limited resources and paywalls limit some publishers experiments with AMP while others go all in — Diving all in or dipping a toe? How publishers are approaching Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages initiative — “Mobile web performance is bad — I challenge you find someone who disagrees with that …
Discussion:
Backchannel, Adweek, Official Google Blog, GitHub, Wired.co.uk, The Tech Portal, @s_m_i, @jbenton, @jbenton and CNET
RELATED:
Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:
WordPress.com sites now automatically support Google's AMP to speed up mobile page loading; self-hosted WordPress sites can enable AMP with a plugin — WordPress Sites Now Support Google's AMP To Make Mobile Pages Load Much Faster — Google has some big plans when it comes to making the web faster on your mobile phone.
Lucia Moses / Digiday:
Yahoo stops signing up new publishers to its ad network Yahoo Recommends as company faces uncertain future — Yahoo is pulling back on its Outbrain/Taboola competitor — The content recommendation wars have claimed another casualty: Yahoo Recommends, Yahoo's two-year-old widget …
Discussion:
WebProNews, dmwmedia.com, AdNews and @lmoses
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Warner Bros. Acquires DramaFever from SoftBank — Warner Bros. has bought DramaFever, a streaming-video subscription service specializing in Korean TV shows and film dramas, and is eyeing the deal as paving the way to launch new over-the-top services. — WB is acquiring DramaFever …
Frédéric Filloux / Monday Note:
Publishers need to use predictive and conversational bots to add a service on top of their content if they want to survive — News Publishers Need To Jump Into Bots (1/2) — The survival of the news industry depends, for a large part, on its ability to create services on top of their contents streams.
Discussion:
Nieman Lab, @structstories and Motherboard
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
Google launches Project Shield, a free DDOS mitigation service, to all non-state news sites — Google Wants to Save News Sites From Cyberattacks—For Free — Mehdi Yahyanejad thought that after Iranians voted on June 12, 2009, he would finally get some rest.
Discussion:
World News Publishing Focus …, The Next Web, blog.wan-ifra.org, The Next Web and 9to5Google
Nieman Lab:
New report surveys over 30 newsrooms on how they use analytics to make editorial decisions — The next step: Moving from generic analytics to editorial analytics — Big screens with real-time traffic data have become ubiquitous in newsrooms. They illustrate how news organizations …
Discussion:
On First Thought, @janebsinger, @risj_oxford, Journalism.co.uk and Reuters Institute …
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
After nine years without ads, Pocket experiments with sponsored content in Recommended feed; Premium subscribers will remain ad-free — Pocket Wants You To Read Ads Later Too — People love Pocket. Its 22 million registered users have saved over 2 billion articles.
Discussion:
Pocket Blog, Digital Trends, Life Hacker, @cjc, @viticci, VentureBeat, Android Police, The Verge, The Next Web and Engadget
BBC:
Iran ‘releases former BBC Persian journalist on bail’ — A former BBC Persian journalist detained in Iran has been released from prison on bail, his friends say. — Bahman Daroshafaei, who has dual British and Iranian citizenship, was arrested at his home in Tehran on 3 February on unspecified charges.
Discussion:
Reuters
Corey Hutchins / Columbia Journalism Review:
How journalist Gary Harki's reports of police with disciplinary issues may have prompted a bill in Virginia to make names of police unavailable under FOIA — Here's the backstory to a bill allowing Virginia police to keep officers' names secret — Photo credit: Rama, Wikimedia; Treatment by CJR
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Technorati, former Web 2.0 darling that raised $32M in its heyday, acquired for $3M by Buffalo advertising monetization service Synacor — Synacor Buys Technorati For Just $3M To Build Out Its Mobile And Ad Tech Business — Yet more consolidation underway in the ad tech business …
Alex Weprin / Politico:
Fusion revenue jumped from $28.1M in 2014 to $63.5M in 2015, while losses grew from $27.3M in 2013, to $35M in 2014, and $37.6M in 2015 — Still a joint venture, Fusion more than doubled its revenue in 2015 — Univision CFO Francisco Lopez-Balboa brushed aside reports that the company wants …
Discussion:
FishbowlNY, @tomgara, Deadline, Variety, @alexweprin and @alexweprin