New look for IPC’s Look magazine

IPC Media has launched a website for its fashion title Look - its first magazine site designed out of house.

The new site, launched last week, offers fashion and beauty news alongside an online shopping facility.

The design will aim to capitalise on the 77 per cent of the magazine’s readers, which research suggested, access the web every day, a press release from the publisher said.

The site will be headed by online editor Jayne Cherrington-Cook, who has previously worked with Yahoo and AOL.

Tags: AOL, Jayne Cherrington-Cook, magazine site, online shopping facility, Yahoo

Spleak apps deliver politics and sport news to social networks

Spleak Media Network has launched two new applications for delivering short-form sport and political news to social networks.

SportSpleak and VoteSpleak will serve up news headlines and gossip to users on social networks and instant messaging services, who can then comment on the updates to their friends.

Both will function along the same lines as CelebSpleak, which offers ‘tattles’ or short snippets of celebrity news to users including content from Hearst’s digital titles.

Content deals for SportSpleak and VoteSpleak, which have been launched in time for the forthcoming Olympics and US presidential election, will be announced shortly, the company said in a press release.

Spleak’s applications, which currently have over 100,000 active daily users, are available on AOL’s AIM, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, Facebook, MySpace and through SMS alerts.

Tags: AOL, google, instant messaging, instant messaging services, SMS, social networks, United States

Hearst in content deal with social network firm

Hearst Magazines Digital Media division has entered into an agreement with instant messaging and social network firm Spleak, Media Week reports.

The deal will see content from titles including CosmoGirl and Teen distributed through the recently launched CelebSpleak application, which is now available on MySpace, Facebook, and AOL and MSN’s instant messaging services.

The app delivers ‘tattles’ - nuggets of celebrity news - and allows users to respond.

“There’s great value in both UGC [user-generated content] and professional, editorial content. Most of the time the two end up in conflict with one another, but Spleak has found the right way to combine the best of both worlds.” Morrie Eisenberg, CEO of Spleak Media Network, told Media Week.

Tags: AOL, Facebook, Hearst Magazines Digital, instant messaging, instant messaging services, Morrie Eisenberg, MSN's, Myspace, Spleak, Spleak Media Network

USA Today links up with AOL for instant messaging service

USA Today is hoping to tap into users of AOL’s instant messaging service AIM with the launch of a real-time news alert system for the service this week.

Users will also be able to search current and archived USA Today headlines through the feature, while the keyword alert service will supply a headline, article summary and link back to the complete story in an instant message.

Another means of distribution for the paper’s content and method of reaching new audiences, says USA Today’s publisher Jeff Webber in a press release.

Tags: AOL, instant messaging, Jeff Webber, USA Today

Top US news sites for February

Top 50 US news sites for February 2008, according to Nielsen Online.

(Also, have a look at: February Worries Boost News Traffic)

Brand Uniques  (000) Time Per Person (hh:mm:ss)
All Events & Global News 101,336 127:01

CNN Digital Network 37,181 0:40:11
Yahoo! News 35,274 0:23:10
MSNBC Digital Network 34,013 0:29:50
AOL News 21,119 0:36:14
NYTimes.com 18,975 0:33:29
Tribune Newspapers 14,716 0:10:09
Gannett Newspapers 13,998 0:21:28
ABCNEWS Digital Network 12,324 0:09:54
Google News 12,050 0:10:14
WorldNow 10,588 0:13:16
USATODAY.com 10,571 0:14:16
Washingtonpost.com 10,441 0:17:30
Fox News Digital Network 10,177 0:41:10
CBS News Digital Network 9,970 0:09:09
Hearst Newspapers Digital 8,349 0:17:38
McClatchy Network 8,343 0:11:41
IB Websites 7,565 0:11:00
Advance Internet 6,791 0:13:08
BBC News 6,437 0:10:42
Slate 6,261 0:07:29
Gannett Broadcasting 6,174 0:09:18
Topix 6,121 0:06:30
MediaNews Group 5,850 0:12:41
Associated Press 5,353 0:07:03
Cox Newspapers 5,197 0:20:08
Boston.com 4,904 0:07:47
Belo Television 4,827 0:05:58
Fox Television Stations 4,758 0:06:06
New York Post Holdings 4,605 0:09:12
NewsMax.com 4,054 0:10:35
TheHuffingtonPost.com 3,749 0:08:04
Freedom Interactive 3,613 0:07:51
Daily News Online Edition 3,563 0:06:46
Belo Newspapers 3,476 0:05:52
Drudgereport.com 3,445 0:59:49
Guardian.co.uk 3,391 0:02:49
Daily Mail 3,364 0:09:11
Telegraph 2,990 0:03:39
Times Online 2,852 0:06:37
Community News Network 2,846 0:10:40
Swift Newspapers 2,750 0:05:42
Scripps News Group 2,713 0:18:00
Netscape 2,709 0:11:03
Breitbart.com 2,674 0:09:20
Int Herald Tribune 2,598 0:02:02
Fisher Interactive Network 2,526 0:05:08
Seattle Times Network 2,245 0:11:03
Philly.com 2,204 0:04:52
Chicago Sun-Times 2,203 0:08:29
Star Tribune 2,108 0:25:08

Tags: AOL, Associated Press, BBC, Belo Television, CBS News, Chicago Sun-Times, CNN, Cox, Daily News, Gannett, google, Guardian.co.uk, MediaNews Group, New York Post Holdings, online edition, Scripps News Group, Seattle Times, Star Tribune, Tribune, United States, Yahoo

AOL Buying Bebo For $850 Million

AOL has announced that it’s buying social network Bebo for $850 million in cash.

Tags: AOL, social network, USD

AOL to showcase fashion content from IPC Media

Content from IPC Media’s instyle.co.uk is to feature on AOL’s UK portal, as part of a new deal between the two Time Warner subsidiaries.

Fashion tips, celebrity photos and shopping advice from In Style will form part of AOL UK’s lifestyle channel, a press release from IPC said.

Kirsten Price, publishing director of In Style, said the partnership would give the title the opportunity to tap into the internet portal’s users and that content would be delivered on a daily basis.

Tags: AOL, AOL UK, internet portal, Kirsten Price, Time Warner, United Kingdom

Telegraph to offer open OpenID

Shane Richmond is claiming a first for telegraph.co.uk, saying that from the end of next month it will become the first newspaper in the world to provide OpenID to its readers.

OpenID is a technology that allows people to carry the same user names across several different websites, thus removing the tiresome process of having to log-in 137 times each day and remember the plethora of necessary passwords.

OpenID claims are over 160-million OpenID enabled URIs with nearly 10,000 sites supporting its logins.

The system is growing in popularity with publishers. AOL and Microsoft are amongst a host of other using it. At the very basic level for them it means less time having to vet and manage user accounts, as well as removing a barrier to a greater level of interaction with users.

However, some users may be put off by by the security issue of effectively placing all eggs in one basket.

Plenty more innovation expected from the Tel in 2008, adds Mr Richmond:

“I could describe this as the biggest development of 2008 but I won’t. I know what else we’ve got planned.”

Tags: AOL, microsoft, Shane Richmond

Gawker: Why blogs don’t make money on Apple day

‘It’s a scheduled event with a guaranteed boost; last year Gizmodo and competitor Engadget earned four times their normal visitors (and 10 times the page views), with Engadget breaking 10 million page views thanks to a boost from AOL.’

Tags: AOL