Online Media Cultist

MySpace, while still by far the most popular social networking site in all the humanoid galaxies, may be starting to peak out in terms of traffic and usage. In the UK, at the least, MySpace overall traffic dropped in May while traffic to second-tier powerhouses Bebo and Facebook increased. Interestingly, average time spent on Facebook and [...]

Lost Remote reports that popular gossip site TMZ.com will branch out into a half hour syndicated television show starting on September 10. TMZ’s bluster aside – “We’ve become like The Associated Press in the world we cover,” says founder Harvey Levin – this is yet another sign that the online world is competing with television head [...]

Apparently there’s been a bit of a brouhaha the last few days over allegations that sites that use Federated Media as an advertising partner were sullying their credibility in some way by taking payoffs to write “advertising content.” Mike Arrington of Techcrunch came out swinging hard against all critics this morning, and particularly against FM CEO [...]

It’s common knowledge now that presidential politics has moved full bore into the online world. YouTube videos, parodies, and non-sanctioned advertisements are all part of the political conversation. We’re in a presidential cycle now that sees major candidates who are female, African American, and Mormon. But has the time of presidential blogging arrived? Somewhat surprisingly, not-quite-but-almost candidate and [...]

Everyone has words or terminology that they hate. For instance, I have a personal grumble with referring to inanimate objects as “sexy,” as in: My new Dell has a sexy hard drive. No, it doesn’t. Let’s leave sexiness to people, please. A new study looks at words spawned by the Internet that people hate. Blog, netiquette, [...]

It’s insanely frustrating, the Internet connectivity troubles I’m having these days. In very short, I’m on the verge of making some new hardware purchases, ripping out some equipment, and switching back from DSL and giving cable broadband another go. Hopefully, I’ll be back to posting more regularly soon. You gotta keep it on the positive, right?

A New York Times story posits that online shoppers are growing “web-weary”, bringing us to a new era of “Dot Calm.” I can only figure that writers Matt Richtel and Bob Tedeschi got caught up in the cute phraseology vortex. Their argument is sound: Internet sales are up, but just not as high as the insane [...]

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign broke news of an online sort this week in announcing the endorsement of Hollywood mogul Steven Spielberg. The online part comes in where the announcement was made: HillaryHub.com. Billed as something of an anti-Drudge Report, HillaryHub.com is a really tidy and clean one page source for all things going on in Hillary [...]

The old adage is that content is king, and as an online media cultist, I still believe it. However, Mike Masnick over at Techdirt makes a compelling argument in stating content essentially equates to advertising in the YouTube era. Technology companies, for starters, are now media companies (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc.). Being a media company today [...]

The buzz on Facebook’s “Platform” – an easy way for Facebook users to easily add custom-made-for-Facebook widgets onto Facebook profiles – continues to grow. Super quick refresher on Facebook for anyone not hip to it: it’s the MySpace of 2007. There, I said it. I was therefore motivated to take a closer look, add some widgets, and [...]