Top News:


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
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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.


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


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 …


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


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


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 …


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


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


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


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 …


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