Nicholas Carlson

The Virginia Tech massacre isn’t “news” on Facebook and across the social Web. It’s reality. Looking at pictures of shooting victims Ryan Clark and Emily Hilscher, once uploaded to represent themselves to their friends and classmates online, the comfortable distance a headline can create collapses. On Facebook, Clark and Hilscher’s profiles are still linked to […]

UPDATED: When Google bought DoubleClick on Friday for $3.1 billion, there were approving nods all around, a sharp contrast to the company’s purchase of YouTube last fall for $1.65 billion. There is speculation, however, that the deal will leave online publishers in a bind. Some in the online advertising industry wonder if Google DoubleClick will […]

Even with CBS on board, soon-to-be-launched Internet video portal Joost will have to fight for viewer attention. Joost, a peer-to-peer video-streaming portal developed by the founders of Skype and to be launched later this spring, along with CBS, announced the addition of CBS shows, including CSI, Survivor, and the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric […]

Google accounted for 64 percent of all U.S. searches in the four weeks ending March 31, 2007. That’s an increase from the year-ago figure of 58.33 percent, according to Hitwise market research. Google’s next closet rival Yahoo took 21 percent, a decrease from 22 percent a year ago. Hitwise general manager of global research Bill […]

Lesson learned. Facebook today launched its redesigned site, which includes 47,000 new network portal pages. But this time, the site let its users know the changes were coming. The three goals for the redesign were simplifying navigation, creating more efficient messaging between users and providing a network portal page that gave users access to live […]

Reporter’s Notebook: NEW YORK — Presidential campaign War Rooms are wired in 2008. Obama, Clinton, Romney, McCain and the like are using the medium in every way they can. Mostly to raise money. But they’re also bringing supporters together on a grassroots level. What’s such a meeting like? I found out on a recent Thursday […]

While Viacom fights Google in court, it is making deals with one of the search company’s rivals. As of today, Yahoo is the new exclusive provider for sponsored search and contextual ads to all of Viacom’s 33 broadband sites. Viacom said that Yahoo ads could potentially expand to more than 140 additional sites across the […]

UPDATED: Google News will once again index content from the Agence France-Presse (AFP), settling a lawsuit the French news agency brought against the search engine giant in 2005. The two parties inked a licensing agreement that will put AFP headlines and photographs back on Google News, Google Actualities and other Google  services. Financial terms were […]

Cable networks are pulling out of eBay’s Online Media Exchange systems. The Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau (CAB), a television advertising advocacy group, announced the decision after member networks tested eBay’s online system for buying and selling TV ad time and came away disappointed. “It became apparent that the Media Exchange was too narrow an application, had […]

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Google’s board of directors recommended shareholders vote against a proposal by New York City’s Comptroller that would require the company to follow a set of standards “to help protect freedom of access to the Internet.” The Comptroller’s office is custodian and trustee for 486,617 Google […]

Yahoo might regret losing its chance to buy its way into the lucrative social-networking market, a report published this week by Needham & Company says. Mark May, financial analyst with Needham, said he couldn’t comment beyond his report, which says backed off its efforts to acquire Facebook too soon and underestimated the social network’s potential […]

Google today launched a new mapping feature that lets anyone be a cartographer. Well, almost. My Maps allows users to mark locations on a map from a library of icons, draw lines and shapes to highlight paths and areas, and add text, photos, or YouTube/Google videos. Users can also add HTML to their maps, a […]