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27 January 2012

New Intiative

Pure’s subscription-based music service has launched. They are offering a free trial for the cloud based service. Google has revealed a new ‘unified’ Terms of Service Agreement, which will be in place as of March.

Netflix has announced that their launch in the UK has been successful. It has seen  subscriber growth and a 15% share price boost for the final three months of 2011. Huffington Post has opened their french edition with Le Monde Group and Les Nouvelles Editions Indépendant, ‘Le Huffington Post’.

Company Structure

Future Publishing has announced that they will be letting go of 19 stuff in the US as part of a repositioning to a hybrid publisher. Only a few months ago they consolidated their US & UK based operations. Bauer Media is restructuring around its commercial operations to bring the small digital team together with sales to create a 100 strong ad team.

The Independent‘s online refurbishment has seen a 10% increase in daily users making it the only newspaper website to see an increase between November and December. The Mail Online, meanwhile, has become the world’s leading online newspaper, beating NY Times.

Gilt Groupe has also announced that is has let go 10% of its workforce and is closing down 6 regional offices in the US. Netflix is adding over 100 hours of archive content from FremantleMedia Enterprises.

FileSonic the file sharing site, along with many others, has shut down its public file sharing since the Megaupload fiasco of the last week, resulting in the arrests of its executives.

In acquisitions, Twitter has confirmed the acquisition of Summify, the news aggregation service. Rhapsody the digital music sservice company, has bought Napster with intentions to keep the infmaous name and subscribers with an aim to enter the eurpean markets.

Industry Moves

Richard Ayers, formerly of Trinity Mirror and Manchester City, has become the Head of Digital Business Development at The British Film Institute (BFI).

Terence Cassaono of News International, where he was a Strategy Director, has left as a part of cost-cutting its commercial operations.

Jo Bacon has joined MTV Networks UK as VP of Marketing, Creative and Publicity. She moves from RKCR/Y&R where she was Business Director.

Leigh Thomas has been announced as UK MD at Saatchi & Saatchi, replacing Michael Rebelo who is now the CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney.

Martin Trickey, Head of Cross-Platform Productions at the BBC, has left. He will be joining TwoFour as Digital Creative Director.

Yahoo has made 5 hires in the UK this week: Ben Murphy- formerly of BSkyB, Dan Durling- formerly of Global Radio, Gareth Shaw – formerly of Experian, Sam Coleman – formerly of MEC and Russ Williams -formerly of Wise Buddha.

Nick King has been appointed Digital Commercial Director at Future Pubishing. He was previously at New International, where he was Senior Digital Trader.

Andy Nelson, CIO at the Ministry of Justice will be taking on an additional role in March as Governement CIO. He replaces Joe Harley who is retiring.

Claire Round has been appointed Associate Publisher of Non Fiction at Harper Collins. She moves in April from Cornerstone where she is the Marketing Director.

Dawn Paine has been announced as VP of Marketing at Universal Pictures, leaving her role as Marketing Director & Assistant General Manager at Nintendo.

David Roth-Ey, Group Digital Director at HarperCollins has become Executive Publisher of 4th Estate and HarperPress, from the 6th of February.

Jenny Cossons, previously a Publisher at Net-a-Porter has been promoted to Head of Group Brand Relations.

Tess Macleod-Smith has been appointed Group Publishing Director at Net-a-Porter, previously working at Hearst where she held the same title.

Sarah Warby, former Marketing Director at Heineken, has been hired by Sainsbury’s where she will hold the same title. She takes up the role on Monday (30th Jan)

Tom Curley the CEO of Associated Press is leaving this year. He has been with the group since 2003.

Leslie Kilgore of Netflix is leaving her role as CMO after 12 years at the firm, but will remain a “key part of Netflix”.

Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie co-founders and CEOs at RIM will be leaving on Monday after 2o years.

James Roles, ex-Head of Client Development at News International, has been appointed JCDecaux’s Director of Client Development.

Rob Grimshaw MD of FT.com is relocating from London to New York to rub the digital operations from there.

Dan Rubin has been hired by Moo.com as their new Global Creative Director.

Andy Marrs has been announced as the new Market Insights Manager at O2 Media. He moves from IPC Media where he was Head of Audience Insight.

Stephen Wilson of Thomson Reuters where he is Global Head of the Exchange Traded Instruments Business, has been announced as the new EMAP CEO Insight as of April 9th.

Social Media

Twitter was a-buzz yesterday when a Labour MP Tom Watson’s intern wrote a tweet on his account that was swiftly regretted. She tweeted

“I should log out of my twitter so that my intern doesn’t twit-rape me …”

which then turned into Twitter backlash and also prompting the trend #savetheintern. However praise has been handed to Tom Watson who has handled the incident with the following blog post.

Twitter has also experienced backlash since the announcement that they will be able to censor tweets in certain countries where it may be considered “illegal”.

House of Fraser has started a social media campaign targeting students with a Facebook app created by We Are Social.

It has been revealed this week that Facebook is contributing £2.2bn to the UK economy through creation of jobs, increase of broadband and smartphone demand and an ‘app developer economy’, according to claims from Richard Allen, Facebook’s Director of Policy in Europe.

You Tube is showing success too as it reaches a whopping 4bn views per day, a 25% increase in 8 months.

Digital Products

Wikipedia‘s blackout against SOPA last week drove users to their mobile site increasing traffic by 1m last week.

In the argument about putting iPads into the classroom, a publisher in America’s yearlong program in California has found that 78% of students on the program scored “proficient” or “advanced”, compared to 59% using traditional textbooks.

UK smartphone ownership has reached nearly 50%  of the population, according to Google. This comes at the same time Apple announces that there is more iPhones sold everyday than there are babies born every day.

The Rest

Here is a Social Media Cheat-Sheet for small businesses to help you to become a social media extraordinaire.

Have a great weekend.