It was announced and demoed back in March, and now it’s finally here: the Wired Magazine iPad application. When iPad was first announced, many thought that Wired Magazine’s version for the device would be the one to redefine the way we look at magazines. From the looks of it, it doesn’t disappoint: there’s a lot of interactive content (June issue features an interactive map of Mars), as well as slide shows, video and music. It’s also a hefty download: 527 MB is more than enough to store a lot of multimedia content, but you might want to download it over Wi-Fi instead of 3G. The app is available in the App Store for $4.99. For more mobile coverage, follow Mashable Mobile on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook Reviews: App Store , Facebook , Twitter Tags: apple , conde nast , ipad , Wired
Two topics that have been burning up our newsroom lately have been Facebook privacy and Twitter advertising. In the light of public and media scrutiny — and growing user frustration — Facebook has decided to roll out a simplified suite of privacy settings starting tomorrow. The company is also holding a briefing for Congressional staffers to explain what these changes mean and what the new tools will do in a way that both legislators and the citizens they represent can understand. But Mashable founder and CEO Pete Cashmore isn’t certain that Facebook’s current measures will adequately address people’s concerns. More changes to Facebook’s “buttons and levers” might be just another complication for users to navigate. Meanwhile, back at the Twitter ranch, the powers that be made the decision to ban advertisements from third-party apps . The move proved less than popular among most developers, some of whom had built Twitter-based ad networks that were rendered essentially useless with the new ban. Twitter said they wanted to “protect the integrity of the stream;” Cashmore said the truth is that Twitter will be building their own ad network. Have a look at this quick news brief from Cashmore on Bloomberg, and as always, let us know your opinions in the comments. Reviews: Facebook , Twitter Tags: ads , Bloomberg , cashmore , facebook , privacy , twitter
AT&T is rolling out a stopgap solution to its ongoing service woes in at least one major market: they hope to alleviate data congestion issues by blanketing New York City’s Times Square with free Wi-Fi. Any current AT&T customers with 3G smartphones or mobile broadband cards, or who have AT&T as their high speed Internet provider, will be able to hop on to what is essentially a giant hotspot being installed in the north central area of Times Square. Smartphone users should even automatically be switched over from 3G service and connected to the hotspot when they come within acceptable range. For now it’s just a pilot project, but if all goes well the company has said it will be considering free Wi-Fi implementations in other congested major markets in the U.S. It’s an interesting solution that shows the carrier is more than well aware of the service issues faced by customers in crowded locations, but it does leave other parts of the city (and country) out of luck for now. What do you think of the idea of alleviating cell bandwidth woes by providing free Wi-Fi? And would it be enough to prevent mass exodus if AT&T were to lose iPhone exclusivity? [via Boy Genius Report ] Image courtesy of iStockphoto , SVLumagraphica For more mobile coverage, follow Mashable Mobile on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook Tags: 3g , att , iphone , new york , NYC , smartphones , times square , wi-fi
MTV is using a novel approach to generate buzz for their upcoming new television series The Hard Times of RJ Berger : the company is launching a casual game that will tie into the show via episodic content. The “Chain of Thought” game centers on the theme that it’s “difficult to talk to one’s crush.” Players get points and level up by completing “conversation challenges” in which objects must be connected in the correct order to produce a sentence that elicits a positive response from the crush character. The game introduces new users to the show about an unpopular 15-year-old boy who deals with a sudden influx of newfound popularity at school and wants to figure out how to talk to his object of affection, Jenny. The title also features a “build mode” that brings in an aspect of user-generated content. Players are invited to set up their own conversation challenges along with positive or negative responses, and see them played out in a level of their own creation. The idea is to help break the ice with an actual crush or at least have fun with a friend who knows about the situation — and MTV hopes that aspect of the game will encourage players to virally share it with their friends. We spoke with VP of MTV Digital Colin Helm and Supervising Producer at MTV Digital Tom Akel about the project and wanted to know what led to the idea behind introducing a game before the series launch. Early on the team was looking for a way to “raise awareness outside of what we normally do.” As one of the first scripted shows that MTV has produced in some time, they had the benefit of a longer lead time with available assets including visuals and scripts. Using a viral casual game to promote a television series seemed like a timely play in the context of interactive digital entertainment. As the TV show progresses, new “episodes” of the game will be unveiled as well, featuring actual dialogue and plot themes from the series. This type of tight integration between a television show and its companion game is a novel approach to episodic content, and we’ll be interested to see how much repeat interest is generated from the series to the game and vice versa. The game itself is live now, so if you have a chance to check it out on MTV.com be sure to let us know what you think in the comments. The Hard Times of RJ Berger series itself premieres on June 6 at 11 p.m., and you can check out a trailer to get a sense of the show as well. For more entertainment coverage, follow Mashable Entertainment on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook Tags: casual games , facebook , games , Hard Times of RJ Berger , mtv , MTV Digital , tv
Nicht nur der in den USA zum 6. April eingeführte, globale iPhone/iPad-Wahlschalter ist jetzt auch im Deutschen AppStore angekommen, auch bei den bislang als “Kostenlos” bezeichneten AppStore-Downloads hat sich eine Kleinigkeit geändert: Der Button zum Download ist nun AppStore-weit mit “Gratis” betitelt. Ansonsten bleibt alles beim Alten. Wir bedanken uns bei Florian, Pascal und Franz Weiterlesen…
LinkedIn already syncs status updates with Twitter , but now the business social network is taking its Twitter integration to the next level to help users better track and follow their connections. LinkedIn’s Tweets application, which the company announced has over one million users, has gotten a major upgrade. It is now divided into four parts: Overview, Connections, My Tweets and Settings. The overview tab shows you a basic outline of what your friends are tweeting, which people you are following and even suggests LinkedIn connections that you can follow. Of course, you can also update your Twitter status right from LinkedIn. Connections is one of the more interesting parts of the updated Tweets application. It shows all of your connections that also use Twitter and whether you follow them. If you don’t, you have the option to add them to your Twitter stream right from LinkedIn. LinkedIn has also launched Twitter List integration. You can now save your LinkedIn connections as a dynamic Twitter List. It will even update the list when you add new connections to your LinkedIn profile. The business social network has made a big bet on Twitter as a source of growth. While LinkedIn has more than 50 million users, growth has stagnated, according to Compete . Deeper integration with Twitter should be good for its growth, but we do wonder if Facebook integration could be in the works, or if the social networks compete too much for the same users for that to happen. For more social media coverage, follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook Tags: linkedin , tweets , twitter , twitter list , Twitter Lists
Dating site OkCupid sent an e-mail to some of its users late last week informing them that they’ve been placed in the top half of users in terms of attractiveness by its algorithms. As a result of the categorization, the attractive users will be more likely to see one another in match searches, while the users who are in the lower tier will not see a change. The e-mail (which was sent by the “OkCupid Summer Interns”) specified that the determinations were made through analysis of clicks on users’ photos and reactions in the Quiver and QuickMatch features. Those two tools ask users to quickly respond positively or negatively to photos accompanied by segments of profile text. When users are presented in searches, QuickMatch or Quiver, their pictures are featured most prominently, but some profile data is included as well — usually just one paragraph. You can’t get a sense of who someone really is from that paragraph, of course, but a user may write someone off because of poor spelling or other factors that are apparent in the clips. So sure, it’s not entirely based on looks, but they’re probably the biggest factor. Is OkCupid Shallow? People who don’t believe in “leagues” of attractiveness might find this division a little crass, but others will see it as a win-win move for the dating site and its users. A dating site needs attractive users to thrive, of course. They’re more likely to remain active on the site if they’re easily able to reach men and women they consider desirable prospects. And since they’re attractive themselves, their continued presence will drive pageviews. Just think: When an attractive user’s photo shows up in a search of currently active users, it’s more likely to receive clicks than a photo of an unattractive member. OkCupid is primarily ad-supported, and those extra clicks and pageviews generate more revenue. Unattractive users won’t notice a difference — except, perhaps, fewer messages from attractive ones, but they probably weren’t receiving those messages to begin with. The Thinking Person’s Dating Site The Boston Globe called OkCupid “the Google of online dating.” That’s not because it’s the biggest dating site (it’s not), but because it’s arguably the most innovative and cerebral in its approach and features. OkCupid tracks data very closely, just as Google does in many cases, and it maintains a blog called OkTrends where it applies user data research to come to fascinating and helpful conclusions about how people approach online dating. Subjects have included how different approaches to profile pictures affect the amount of messages received, why young men should try to date older women and what the best first messages say. OkCupid also just launched a site called MyBestFace , which is like a very elaborate, almost-scientific Hot or Not -type tool that invites users to tag themselves and then vote on photos. The person who uploaded his or her photos eventually receives a report sharing which photos fared best with which kinds of people so he or she can make an informed decision about which ones to feature more prominently. Add that to the blogging features, a newsfeed and detailed matching algorithms, and you have an approach to dating that’s unique to the web-driven twenty-first century. Just don’t screw it up with any Facebook dating faux pas after other websites have found you the love of your life, alright? image courtesy of iStockphoto , CREATISTA For more social media coverage, follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook Reviews: Facebook , Google , Twitter , iStockphoto Tags: dating , okcupid , online dating , romance , sex
Aza Raskin, the creative lead for Firefox, has just posted about a new type of potential phishing attack , dubbed “tabnabbing.” Raskin has a proof-of-concept and an explanation for how this type of attack could work. Tabnabbing operates in reverse of most phishing attacks in that it doesn’t ask users to click on a obfuscated link but instead loads a fake page in one of the open tabs in your browser. Check out this tabnabbing scenario: You have a bunch of open tabs in your web browser, an e-mail page, Facebook, your bank account and maybe a bunch of news sites. While you’re reading your favorite Mashable.com content, the attack is able to hone in on tabs that haven’t been used or aren’t in focus and replace the favicon (the icon in your tab bar) and the title of the tab. When you click on that tab, a fake page is loaded in its place, maybe it is loaded to look like a standard login page. Because you already had this tab open legitimately before, you don’t bother paying any attention to the URL in the address bar and you enter in your login information. You’ve just sent your info to a nefarious third party. Raskin shows off how this works in this video: Pretty scary, right? Raskin details some methods that could make this sort of attack even more insidious, including checking to see if a user is currently logged in or out of a certain site in order to better offer up a believable fake page. How would this attack get on your system to begin with, you might ask? Plugins and add-ons are the most common way that intruders can gain access to your system. Client-side script injections by way of JavaScript, Flash, ActiveX and so on are responsible for many browser attacks. This is just one more reason to always make sure you’re using an up-to-date web browser. The Fix Raskin’s proof of concept is scary, but it isn’t fool proof. This is what you can do to keep yourself safe from these types of attacks: Keep your web browser up-to-date. Also make sure that plugins and extensions are up-to-date and from trusted sources. If you’re a Windows user, make sure you have anti-virus or anti-malware software on your computer Pay attention to the address in your browser’s toolbar, especially when it comes to login pages. It’s easy to get into muscle-memory mode and just assume that a tab is unchanged, but for important user accounts, keep an eye on that location bar. Consider using some sort of password management tool. Raskin points to the Firefox Account Manager as one method of using the browser for your identity manager, but plugins and tools like 1Password are good choices too. Rather than typing in user names and passwords individually, using an identity manager that compares the site you are on against the stored data in its database (making sure the addresses and DNS addresses matchup) will prevent you from entering in information into a false site. As of right now, this is not an attack that is out in the wild — it’s a proof of concept. However, tabnabbing does illustrate some of the ways that users can have information compromised by way of indirect attacks. For more technology coverage, follow Mashable Tech on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook Tags: Browsers , phishing , security , tabnabbing
For someone who has been famously wary of the web — to the point where he called Twitter a “tool of terror” — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is becoming quite the social media maven. That’s right, in addition to (surprisingly) getting hip to Twitter , Chavez now has his very own blog . Before you go adding the pres’ blog to your RSS in anticipation of juicy gossip or amusing commentary, let us assure you that Perez has nothing to worry about — the site basically contains news about meetings with Chinese officials, columns by Fidel Castro (who Chavez has already urged to join Twitter ), as well as speeches, photos and videos. In short, this is a pretty standard political website — there’s even a comments section (although all comments are suspiciously positive). According to the AP , the president launched his website and accompanying blog today mainly to combat untruths that he says people are spreading online. This sentiment falls in line with statements he made two months ago when he called for greater regulation of the Internet after a website posted a story falsely suggesting that Diosdado Cabello, a senior minister and close aide of Chavez, had been assassinated. Back then, he was quoted by Reuters as saying: “The Internet cannot be something open where anything is said and done. Every country has to apply its own rules and norms.” Now it seems that Chavez is taking the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” approach — jumping into the Internet trenches and taking control of his own image. What do you think of the president’s foray into social media? Let us know in the comments. For more social media coverage, follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook Reviews: Facebook , Internet , Twitter
This series is supported by The Poynter Institute’s Mobile Media blog – your guide to the intersection of mobile and media. Sign up to receive the blog in newsletter format and be entered into a drawing to win an iPad at Poynter.org/ipadgiveaway . News media — including newspapers, news weeklies and TV news programs — was struggling long before the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent recession. It was a struggle, however, that many investors in 2006 and 2007 perceived as merely a temporary setback — a setback they attempted to capitalize on by snatching up seemingly undervalued media companies. In 2006, newspaper publisher McClatchy acquired what was then the second largest newspaper publisher in the U.S., Knight Ridder, for $4.5 billion in cash and also financed $2 billion of the company’s debt. In 2007, Rupert Murdoch purchased Dow Jones for $5.6 billion and Sam Zell bought the Tribune Co. for $13 billion — a move he quickly regretted when the company filed for bankruptcy one year later. Following that consolidation, more than 100 newspapers shut down in 2009. The recession has forced news organizations to face what they have long suspected: Their business models are broken. The advent of the 24-hour TV and web news cycles and the convenience of digital distribution mean that many consumers no longer need or want newspapers and news weeklies. Combined with mounting print and distribution costs and the loss of classified advertising revenue — previously the bread and butter of newspapers — to websites like eBay , Craiglist and Google , news media has a serious crisis on its hands. The numbers are ugly. Newspaper revenue fell 28% in the first three quarters of 2009, after declines of 17.7% in 2008 and 9.4% in 2007. Rounds of pay and staff cuts followed each bad quarter; nearly 15,000 employees were laid off in 2009 alone. Declining circulation also accelerated, dipping below pre-World War II levels — impressive, given that the U.S.’s population then was roughly half of what it is today. As the number of subscribers dwindled, so did the value of print ads on a per-ad basis. Weekly news magazines suffered to a lesser extent; between 2002 and 2009, Newsweek lost 25% and Time lost 18% of its subscribers, while U.S. News & World Report shuttered its print edition and moved its operations fully to the web. What’s more, evening TV news audiences also slid in 2008 , even though it was an election year. As a result, content quality and quantity have suffered, while subscription rates have gone up. Traditional media outfits have been less able to support costly investigative and foreign news items. By and large, newspapers have reduced news pages, eliminated entire sections and closed their Washington and foreign bureaus in favor of outsourcing. Another problem, of course, is that when newspapers began to put their content online in the late 1990s and early 2000s, they allowed readers to access it for free. That decision has created a major dilemma, because consumers now feel that they have a right to free news content, yet online advertising does not currently generate enough revenue to support the free content model. These are just some of the many challenges that news media companies are facing. And while this story strikes many as devastating, others find it inspiring. New technologies and business realities are forcing traditional companies to innovate, and new ones — from online news aggregators to Facebook news groups and dozens in between — are constantly emerging. Since we’ve already profiled several sites experimenting with creative new business models, let’s take a look at five experiments traditional U.S. newspaper companies have recently developed to innovate and improve revenue. 1. Erect a Paywall In October 2009, Newsday , a Long Island daily owned by Cablevision, became one of the first non-business papers to erect an impermeable paywall around its website, newsday.com . Charging readers for access to content has been one of the most obvious solutions to declining print circulation and ad revenue, and the move attracted significant media attention as a result. Newsday.com charged $5 a week, or $260 a year for individual access to its site — expensive when compared to business papers like The Wall Street Journal , which charges $149 per year for full online access. Parts of the site, like the homepage, classifieds, weather, obituaries and stocks, remained free. In addition, all print and Cablevision subscribers — which already made up roughly 75% of Long Island residents (Newsday’s target audience) — continued to have free access to the site. The paywall was accompanied by a site redesign and launch that cost $4 million. How many paid subscribers did the paper attract during the first three months? A mere 35, netting the paper a whopping $9,000 — which may or may not have made up for the accompanying decline in traffic and thus online ad revenue. Arguably, the paywall was designed to enhance the value of Cablevision’s existing services. But it also suggests that users do not take kindly to paywalls after having become used to years of free Internet content — or at least they don’t take kindly to paywalls at Newsday’s price point. In the next four weeks, The Times’s network of news sites will also go behind impermeable paywalls . Unlike Newsday.com, however, none of the articles will be available for free, and they will not be indexed by search engines. The latter decision might prove damaging, since search engines account for over 20% of upstream traffic to news sites. The Times is making it more difficult for subscribers to find the articles they are looking for — since they will now be dependent on the search engines available at each respective site — and these companies will be losing out on valuable exposure to non-subscribers. 2. Put Up a Semi-Permeable Paywall Although Newsday has not fared well with the tried-and-true “freemium” model, whereby a percentage of articles are available for free in order to entice a small fraction of visitors to become paying customers, The Wall Street Journal has fared significantly better with it; it currently has the highest number of paid subscribers of all U.S. newspapers and has witnessed steady year-over-year growth even through the economic downturn. The WSJ’s current model is not perfect, however. Most of the news outlet’s content is still accessible for free via Google, and thus many regular readers do not feel compelled to pay for unlimited access to the site when they can easily slip in the back door. More dangerously, other sites have avoided linking to the WSJ’s articles because it’s highly likely that their readers won’t be able to access those stories. In fact, a study published earlier this week showed that although the WSJ had more than double the number of print subscribers as The New York Times in 2009, it was not one of the most-linked-to news outlets on blogs, Twitter or YouTube. Thus the company has lost, and continues to lose out on, both potential subscriber and page view-generated ad revenue. The WSJ’s overseer, Rupert Murdoch, has promised that the WSJ’s current set-up will not last. 3. Implement a Metered System In January 2011, The New York Times will go behind a paywall that is slightly different than the ones set up at Newsday.com and WSJ.com. Instead, the NYT will emulate the Financial Times’s “metered system” model, whereby visitors can read a set number of articles per day (at the Financial Times’s website, the limit is five) before being prompted to pay for further access. The subscription rate for full access to NYTimes.com has not yet been disclosed. Like the news sites mentioned previously, The New York Times believes it will be more profitable to target the 19% of readers who say they will pay for online news content than to extract revenues from increased page views and/or higher online ad revenues. One thing’s for sure: It’s unlikely that The New York Times will remain one of the most-linked-to news sources on blogs or other social media platforms in 2011 if a paywall is in place. 4. Remain Free Not everyone is going the premium route. A number of traditional news sites are going after more page views and thus more ad impressions; undoubtedly, many are hoping for a boost in traffic once the WSJ fills the holes in its paywall and the NYT implements its metered system. The trick for these sites is to generate more page views more cheaply, and the best way to do that is by creating a lot of inexpensive content. The New York Times , in a way, pursued this same strategy when it launched its network of blogs (and when it acquired About.com in 2005). Blog posts on the NYT’s website do not undergo the same extensive editing process that articles do, and thus more pages are published more quickly and less expensively by the newspaper’s editorial staff and network of paid contributors. The Chicago Tribune and The Washington Post are both pursuing a more aggressive strategy than the one pursued by the NYT. As fellow Mashable writer Samuel Axon detailed recently, The Chicago Tribune has launched a site called ChicagoNow , a site “created by Chicagoans for Chicagoans.” It focuses on local events and culture, as well as national news with a local twist. What’s great from a business perspective is that the site’s 100 daily posts are generated entirely by a network of volunteer bloggers and overseen by a handful of community managers and web developers; undoubtedly, ChicagoNow is much cheaper to produce on a page-by-page basis than The Chicago Tribune’s main site, chicagotribune.com. The Washington Post is pursuing a very similar strategy, where a small number of curators oversee a network of unpaid writers, but with a political emphasis that is much broader, geographically-speaking. Both companies are essentially lending their curatorial skills — as well as their brand names — to fuel this additional subset of content. While these strategies will generate more pageviews to monetize, both companies risk damaging their brands if the quality of the content is poor. 5. Create Better Value for Advertisers Instead of creating more pages to place display ads on, some traditional news companies are seeking more creative solutions to the problems of online ad revenue. Historically, newspapers were able to demand a premium for advertising because there were limited opportunities for advertisers to run display ads in front of a high-quality audience. Now that the web offers nearly infinite ad space, display advertising has become a commodity and newspapers find it difficult to compete with ad networks that specialize in more efficient, targeted advertising packages across multiple platforms. As Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 recently pointed out , news sites need to work on coming up with premium ad solutions — something no one else on the web can offer. These companies need “to create REAL consumer value,” Karp argues, “the kind of value that complements and even enhances the value of high quality editorial content; the kind of value that high-end brand publishers specialize in creating.” Microsites and front page takeovers are simply not going to cut it. Recently, I spoke with Chadi Irani , the online manager of The Palm Beach Post . Like many other traditional news organizations, The Palm Beach Post has suffered from declining print circulation and advertising revenue. Local advertisers are no longer interested in what Irani describes as “the old-fashioned, standard [ad] packages we used to throw out.” What local businesses need, Irani has discovered, are not advertising solutions in the form of display advertising packages, but advertising partners. These businesses don’t understand how to advertise online and they want advice. A few years ago, Irani and his team began blogging and holding free seminars in an attempt to educate local businesses about online advertising. They cover topics ranging from how to claim your business on Google to the basics of search engine and social media marketing, yet do not try to sell ad space on palmbeachpost.com during these meetings. Instead, they have positioned themselves as a go-to resource for questions about online advertising. After the seminars, Irani’s team offers free one-on-one website evaluations and a media buy assessment if a business asks for one. “The key thing is to establish ourselves at The Palm Beach Post as the online experts,” Irani explained. “If [local businesses] have online questions, they come to The Palm Beach Post first. We begin with conversations, which leads to a meeting, which leads to further appointments [and] eventually leads to a campaign with us.” “We’ve opened up a mini-advertising agency here,” Irani said. “We learn about local businesses, have brainstorming sessions and bring them back ideas. They tell us what they like and then we produce solutions based on the goals they select. We didn’t use to listen as much. Now we work hand-in-hand. It’s more about selling the idea than the product.” The Palm Beach Post has also begun to offer creative advertising opportunities beyond simple banner ads. For instance, realtors can now stream their tweets on palmbeachpost.com to showcase their listings, and nearby restaurants can buy space on the website during lunch hours to tweet their lunch specials. The news site is launching a “What’s For Lunch?” hub soon, where users can browse lunch specials from a large number of local venues via a Twitter aggregator. Not only has ad revenue picked up, but The Palm Beach Post’s audience has also grown in the last several years, Irani says. Although print circulation continues to decline, the site’s traffic has grown to roughly 40 million page views per month, while its mobile site garners another 600,000. Irani acknowledged that this model would not scale to large, national or multi-national news organizations. “This is more of a local approach. Most newspapers thrive on their local business, their local partners. Most of the national papers deal with large brands that have agencies dedicated to them. Local companies don’t have ad agencies, so we need to provide those services for them.” Conclusion Traditional news organizations have had a lot of issues to tackle in the last several decades, including a decline in readership, loss of ad revenue, the climbing cost of print production and new (digital) models of distribution, among other things previously mentioned. I spoke with Jay Rosen , a member of the faculty at Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University and author of PressThink , about potential solutions to monetize news media. Because “the business model crisis is actually five or six things overlapping,” Rosen contends, “there isn’t going to be one thing that works. There isn’t going to be one model that replaces the old model.” “Therefore what news organizations have to do is experiment with lots of different ways of raising revenues and cutting costs. Creative combinations of revenues from advertising, membership events, direct commerce, selling the services, selling the brand in different ways, some unknown combination of things will be successful — but as to what that combination is, I don’t pretend to know,” Rosen confessed. “Instead of placing your hopes on one thing, it’s better to try them all.” News organizations should continue to cut costs where possible and seek out new, creative streams of revenue to leverage what has always been their greatest assets: the quality of their content and readership. Do you agree or disagree? How do you think traditional news media can monetize itself? Special thanks to Vadim Lavrusik for his help with this post. Series supported by Poynter Institute’s Mobile Media blog This post is part of a Mashable series providing analysis of how mobile use impacts journalism. The series is supported by The Poynter Institute’s Mobile Media blog – your guide to the intersection of mobile and media. Sign up to receive our blog in newsletter format and be entered into a drawing to win an iPad. Learn more at Poynter.org/ipadgiveaway . Image courtesy of iStockphoto , ProfessorVasilich Reviews: Facebook , Google , Internet , Mashable , Twitter , YouTube , blog , eBay , iStockphoto , news Tags: Google , mobile media series , News , news media , newspapers , online advertising , recession
