With a dedicated staff of just five people, and more than a dozen shared with other Yahoo sites, the company has settled on a formula that Yahoo Media Group head Jimmy Pitaro calls “highly profitable,” though Yahoo wont reveal details.

The fact that Yahoos entertainment site outdraws rivals that aim to break news - such as TMZ.com, which broke the news of Michael Jacksons death - helps illustrate that success online doesnt always mean being first and having exclusives.

It also marks a rare success for the struggling Internet portal, which has shed thousands of employees and shuttered several businesses, a process CEO Carol Bartz accelerated after being hired in January.

While Bartz said at a shareholders meeting in June that she felt too many entertainment stories make Yahoos front page, Pitaro said shes a solid supporter of the companys media properties in general.

Omg puts a light, positive spin on articles and other tidbits that mostly come from other news organizations such as Access Hollywood and The Associated Press. The vital placement of omg links and blurbs on Yahoos home page gives it access to some 500 million unique visitors a month.

The strategy has vaulted the 2-year-old site past People and TMZ, both units of Time Warner Inc., as well as other popular celebrity sites like PerezHilton.com.

According to the latest figures from tracking firm comScore, omg clocked 20.6 million unique visitors in May, a 65 percent increase from a year ago and more than No. 2 TMZ and No. 3 People combined.

The majority of the omg traffic comes from people who click through Yahoos home page, which critics and competitors view as giving it an unfair advantage. Although omg readers view on average half the number of pages once they arrive - about 16 compared with 29 for all entertainment news properties - the site is still top-ranked in overall page views in the category.

Other large media organizations have taken notice. In February, Microsoft Corp. and Hollywood production company BermanBraun jointly launched Wonderwall with a similar strategy of drawing traffic from a large portal - in this case, Microsofts MSN. Like omg, Wonderwall runs on a small staff, about a dozen full time.

“Our traffic has been beyond any estimates that any of us had projected,” said BermanBraun co-owner Lloyd Braun, a TV executive and former head of the Yahoo Media Group.

In April, the last month its data were broken out, Wonderwall had 9 million unique visitors, putting it past People and into third behind TMZ had it been ranked by comScore among other entertainment news sites.

Omg, like its rivals, says it has been gradually succeeding at deriving more of its traffic “organically,” through search queries or people bookmarking the pages. But theres no question traffic from the portal helps it stand out among some 1,000 or so celebrity news sites that have popped up, and occasionally dropped out, over the past several years.

The tone of omg, like Yahoo itself, is bright, breezy and nonjudgmental. Blurbs written by omg staff link to original stories and photos elsewhere on Yahoo or at other sites.

Following Jacksons unexpected death, omg took a respectful, celebratory view of the pop icons life through photo galleries and celebrity reaction stories, leaving the hard-driving news pieces to Yahoos front page and news site.

“We just like to tell the happy view on whats going on in the entertainment world,” said Sibyl Goldman, an entertainment group vice president.

That bright spin has attracted advertisers worried that appearing next to salacious scandal stories would turn off some consumers. State Farm Insurance Cos. has sponsored a series of short celebrity-mom interviews, targeting mothers in a conflict-free format that avoids some of the celebrity muckraking of other sites.

Source

“The U.S. has reviewed public comments expressing concern that aspects of the settlement agreement may violate the Sherman Act,” Cavanaugh said. “At this preliminary stage the U.S. has reached no conclusions as to the merit of those concerns or more broadly what impact this settlement may have on competition.”

Google, operator of the worlds most popular Internet search engine, is also under investigation by antitrust regulators for possible collusion with other technology companies in hiring practices and for sharing two board members with Apple Inc.

“We feel very comfortable that the decisions that we have made, including the ones that have gotten us into hot water, have been pro-consumer,” Eric Schmidt, Googles chief executive officer, said this week in an interview on CNBC.

Millions of Titles

The Mountain View, California-based company is creating an online database of books by scanning millions of titles. It reached the agreement with publishers last year to settle a 2005 lawsuit filed by the Authors Guild, Pearson Plcs Penguin unit and other publishers claiming the digitizing process infringed their copyrights.

The deal could make Google the main online source for millions of out-of print books, raising antitrust concerns because it puts the distribution of those books in the hands of one company. Before the settlement, publishers and authors fought the project on the ground it constituted massive copyright infringement.

The agreement won preliminary court approval in November.

Under the settlement, authors and publishers will have the final say on whether their copyrighted works may be included in the project. Google and the publishers will use $34.5 million of the settlement fund to create a registry program to compensate rights holders, and another $45 million will be used to pay authors whose works have been scanned without their permission, according to court papers.

Revenue Split

The deal lets Google keep 37 percent of revenue from online book sales and from advertisements that run next to previews of book pages. The remainder will be passed on to the registry, which will keep an administrative fee.

The government will have discussions with the parties in the settlement and with “other interested parties, in order to assess the competitive impact of the proposed settlement,” the letter said.

A hearing about the fairness of the settlement is scheduled for Oct. 7 in federal court in Manhattan. U.S. District Judge Denny Chin said the government can weigh in on the matter in writing and in person.

Google, which began scanning books in 2004, uses volumes from Harvard University, the New York Public Library and other sources. The project lets users search through books, bringing up pages or excerpts that contain sought-for terms.

The case is Authors Guild v. Google Inc., 1:05-08136, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

Source

The financial benefits may not be quite what the states anticipate, though. Rather than gearing up to collect taxes, Amazon and other Web retailers are simply shutting down their affiliate marketing programs. As the small businesses that participate in these programs get cut off, a state could lose tax revenue rather than add to it.

A look at what the affiliates do helps explain why. Theyre just one of several methods that e-commerce companies have for driving visitors to their Web sites, so nixing them is not necessarily a big loss for the companies.

Its a far bigger deal to people like Rich Owings.

By running Web sites like GPSTracklog.com from his home in Asheville, N.C., Owings serves as an affiliate for Amazon and other companies. Owings, 53, spends most of his time reviewing GPS gadgets and covering industry news. He links to navigation products of his choosing on Amazons site, and if his readers click through and buy one, he gets a commission.

Owings estimates he brought in about $80,000 in affiliate revenue from various companies in 2008, about $50,000 of which came from Amazon. After Amazon recently shuttered its North Carolina affiliate program in response to that states attempt to collect sales taxes, Owings said he and his wife were thinking about heading elsewhere to run their business.

“Were terrified,” he said. “We just bought a house here a year ago and were looking at having to move out of state just to keep our business going.”

The amount of money at stake overall for state governments is somewhat murky. According to a recent University of Tennessee study, uncollected state and local taxes from online sales could total $7 billion this year. However, only a small part of this would stem from consumer purchases, because transactions between businesses make up the bulk of e-commerce sales. (Consumers are generally supposed to pay a “use tax” themselves on online purchases, but few do.)

Because any extra revenue is precious, several states, such as New York, have passed laws seeking to cash in on Web retailers affiliate relationships, while others are considering doing so.

Amazon cut off affiliates in North Carolina in late June, anticipating legislation requiring it to collect sales tax will soon pass there. The company has also stopped working with affiliates in Rhode Island and Hawaii because of similar laws that already have passed. (Hawaiis Republican governor, Linda Lingle, vetoed the bill Wednesday, so Amazon plans to reinstate affiliates there if the states Democratic majority does not override Lingles decision.)

Discount retailer Overstock.com Inc. and online jeweler Blue Nile Inc. have also closed down affiliate programs in Hawaii, Rhode Island and North Carolina, and Overstock stopped working with affiliates in New York last year.

Rebecca Madigan, founder of the Camarillo, Calif.-based Performance Marketing Alliance, which represents affiliate marketers, called the new state rules “pretty devastating.” Echoing opinions of several online retailers and associates, Madigan argues that the nations estimated 200,000 affiliate marketers are advertisers, not salespeople.

Thats not how the states see it. In 2008, New York started requiring retailers to collect sales tax if they solicit business in the state by paying anyone there for leading customers to them. Matt Anderson, spokesman for the states Division of the Budget, said New York expected the change would bring in $23 million for the fiscal year that ended March 31, and estimates $34 million for the current fiscal year.

“We believe we have to keep the tax code in line with technology, and that online retailers shouldnt have an unfair competitive advantage over off-line businesses,” he said.

Amazon and Overstock sued New York in 2008, arguing it unlawfully imposes tax-collection obligations on out-of-state entities. A judge dismissed the cases in January, and Amazon is collecting taxes in New York. The company has not shuttered its associate program there.

North Carolina expects it could collect an additional $13.2 million in the coming fiscal year on sales generated by Web retailers that use affiliates, and from a new sales tax on downloads of music, video and software, according to a legislative fiscal analysis.

But while states may see these marketing programs as a way to shore up budgets, theyre just one way these companies drive visitors to their Web sites. Companies also use ads on Google and links on comparison shopping sites.

Source

The London-based company said it will shift its focus from being an online video site for consumers supported by advertising - similar to Google Inc.s YouTube. Instead, it will help businesses manage their videos on the Internet as they build brands.

Its target market will be media companies such as cable and satellite TV providers, broadcasters and video aggregators.

“In these tough economic times, its been increasingly challenging to operate as an independent, ad-supported online video platform,” Volpi said in a statement.

Joost was co-founded by Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, the same people behind Internet phone service Skype and the file-sharing site Kazaa. It has minority investments from Viacom Inc. and CBS Corp.

It started as a peer-to-peer sharing site but wasnt successful, then switched to online video. But Joost has suffered from poor traffic and had trouble making money.

Joost, which also has offices in New York, is closing its Leiden office in the Netherlands. The company declined to say how many people its laying off.

Volpi will be replaced by Matt Zelesko, whos currently senior vice president of engineering. Zelesko will continue to head the engineering division.

Stacey Seltzer, senior vice president of international business development and content acquisition, will run the business operations.

Source

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company said Wednesday that the new settings will give people greater control over what photos, updates and personal details they share with their friends, family and strangers on Facebook and, eventually, the wider Internet.

To make the settings easier, Facebook is consolidating its existing six privacy pages and more than 30 settings on to a single privacy page. It will also standardize the options for each setting so the choices are always the same, which hasnt always been the case.

Facebooks chief privacy officer, Chris Kelly, said in a conference call with reporters that the changes dont have anything to do with advertising or the information Facebook is going to make available to advertisers.

Rather, the site wants people “to be able to share information with as many or as few people as they choose.”

The changes come as Facebook tries to become a broadly used destination, competing not just with other social networks like Twitter and MySpace but also more established hubs like Google and Yahoo.

To do this, Facebook needs its 200 million-plus users to share content and interact with more people than their close friends and families. To make this more palatable, the site will let users assign different privacy settings to each piece of information they make available on Facebook. This includes photos, contact information and work info, as well as status updates, links and photos.

The site is also getting rid of its regional networks. Facebook said those separate zones have led to too much confusion over which information can be widely seen or kept relatively private. In the past, someone who joined a New York network, for example, could inadvertently make personal information available to everyone else in that network, including complete strangers.

Facebook will continue to have social networks related to schools and work.

Source

“Exiting the U.K. wouldnt be a great loss for T-Mobile,” said Joris Franssen, who helps manage about 400 million euros ($562 million) at Kempen Capital Management in Amsterdam, including Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone stock.

Selling the U.K. unit would give Bonn, Germany-based Deutsche Telekom an exit from a market that has five mobile- phone operators and is more competitive than Italy with four and France with three. The unit, the U.K.s fourth-largest, had the biggest drop in subscribers of Deutsche Telekoms 16 wireless divisions last quarter. The company in May reported a loss after a writedown at the U.K. mobile-phone unit of 1.8 billion euros.

For Vodafone, Telefonica SA, France Telecom SA and Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., which operate mobile-phone services in the U.K., taking over or partnering with T-Mobile would remove a rival, allowing them to boost margins and earnings.

“Fewer players in the market often means more stable pricing, which will make the business more profitable,” said Franssen.

Profit Squeeze

France Telecom spokeswoman Beatrice Mandine and Guy Middleton, a spokesman for Hutchisons local mobile-phone unit 3 U.K., didnt return calls seeking comment. Simon Gordon, a spokesman for Vodafone, Silke Armann, a T-Mobile spokeswoman, Andreas Fuchs, a spokesman for Deutsche Telekom, and Miguel Angel Garzon, a Telefonica spokesman, all declined to comment.

Phone companies are looking to save costs as earnings decline because clients are spending less amid the economic slowdown. Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, Royal KPN NV and Mobistar SA said in May that the recession was eroding profit as consumers and businesses cut back on mobile-phone use.

Deutsche Telekom, Europes second-biggest phone company by market value, said May 9 its cutting costs on employees, marketing and advertising in the U.K. as it seeks to boost profitability there amid “a difficult business environment.”

Vodafone Interest

Subscribers to its U.K. services fell 2.6 percent in the year to March 31. The unit was one of only two among Deutsche Telekoms mobile divisions to post a decline in subscribers, it said in its first-quarter presentation.

Vodafone, the worlds largest mobile-phone company, is considering a bid for T-Mobile UK, a person familiar with the situation said yesterday. Newbury, England-based Vodafone may make an offer or form a joint venture, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private.

Vodafone fell 0.3 percent to 117.25 pence as of 9:50 a.m. in London. Deutsche Telekom rose 0.6 percent to 8.46 euros in Frankfurt.

Deutsche Telekoms T-Mobile UK has an enterprise value of about $4.2 billion to $5.6 billion, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The unit had a goodwill asset value of 2.07 billion euros, according to Deutsche Telekoms 2008 annual report, down from 2.7 billion euros a year earlier. T-Mobile UK had sales of 4 billion euros last year.

More Subscribers

An acquisition of Deutsche Telekoms U.K. operations, including connections for Virgin Mobile subscribers, would boost Vodafones users to more than 35 million, or about 50 percent of the market. Vodafone had 18.7 million U.K. mobile customers at the end of March, it said May 19, while Deutsche Telekom had 16.7 million, according to its Web site.

Paris-based France Telecoms Orange has about 18.6 million mobile-phone U.K. customers. It lags behind O2, owned by Spains Telefonica, which has a 27 percent market share, and Vodafone.

On May 26, France Telecom Chief Executive Officer Didier Lombard said the company doesnt have plans for any major acquisitions in the foreseeable future. The company said it will conserve its cash to maintain its credit rating.

Source

Katherine and Joseph Jackson are seeking control over their late sons estate in anticipation that others will step forward with inaccurate claims they have a will, the family said in court filings. A will Michael Jackson drafted in 2002, dividing the estate among his children, mother and charities, is expected to be submitted this week, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday, citing unidentified people close to the late singer.

“It is possible that the court will have to review many wills and evaluate the competing claims of the presenters,” Katherine and Joseph Jackson said in court filings. “Someone with legal authority needs to be in place now to properly protect the estates interests.”

The 2002 will was written by John Branca, who was Jacksons primary attorney from 1980 to 2006, according to the Wall Street Journal report. It names Branca and music executive John McClain as executors. Branca didnt respond to requests for comment and McClain couldnt be reached, the newspaper said.

“Mrs. Jackson is asking to be appointed the representative of the estate under the assumption there is no will,” said Lawrence Heller, an attorney at Bryan Cave LLP in Los Angeles, who has created trusts and estates for celebrity clients and has no role in the Jackson case. “If a will materializes, her petition would most likely be knocked out.”

Recent Hire

Jackson hired Branca the week before his death to represent the singer on his planned concert, the lawyer said in a June 26 e-mail to Bloomberg News. He declined to comment further and didnt respond to requests for comment yesterday.

Katherine Jackson also won authority to secure and marshal assets. Her son died June 25 at age 50 after suffering a cardiac arrest at his home in the Bel-Air neighborhood of Los Angeles.

The court put off until a July 6 hearing Katherine Jacksons request to collect income from her sons business ventures, including Sony/ATV Music Publishing, gain legal power to protect the estate, attend to contracts involving the singer, continue to meet payroll and make payments on debt, according to the filing.

Tokyo-based Sony Corp. “may immediately seek to assert rights and remedies under the terms of the joint venture agreement that would cause irreparable harm and irreversible loss,” the Jacksons said in the filing.

In Transition

The singers assets cant be quantified at this time, the family said in the filings.

“The decedents financial life was in transition at the time of the death and no one individual or entity has a complete overview of his various enterprises,” Jacksons parents said in documents filed with the court.

Katherine Jackson earlier gained custody of the pop singers three children. Michael Joseph Jackson Jr., 12, Paris- Michael Katherine Jackson, 11, and Prince Michael Jackson II, 7, are in their grandmothers care, according to court filings.

The estates assets would be used only for the children, who are the sole beneficiaries under state law, the Jacksons said in court documents.

Singers Portfolio

Michael Jacksons assets include interests in the Sony/ATV collection of songs by the Beatles, Bob Dylan and others, as well as the Neverland Ranch near Santa Barbara, California, along with undetermined debt.

In 2006, the singer gave Tokyo-based Sony an option to buy half of his 50 percent stake in Sony/ATV, allowing the singer to refinance $300 million of loans.

Source

Investors have gotten comfortable with Apples management team and its ability to run the company without Jobss oversight, said Ryan Jacob, head of the Jacob Internet Fund in Los Angeles. Jobs, a cancer survivor, received a liver transplant during his five-and-a-half-month leave. His doctors said last week that he was recovering well.

“If you look at how the stock has performed as the ultimate barometer, one of the reasons it held up is that the company performed well during his absence,” Jacob said. Apples stock is his firms biggest holding. “If we were talking last year or even six to nine months ago, Id be complaining that they werent doing enough to show off the depth of the team behind Steve Jobs.”

Jobs, 54, was back at work yesterday, making good on a promise to return by the end of June. He will come to the office a few days a week and work from home the rest of the time, said Steve Dowling, a spokesman for the Cupertino, California-based company.

Few Details

Apple hasnt provided details on Jobss current medical condition. Last week, the Memphis hospital where he had his liver transplant said Jobs has an “excellent” prognosis. He was the sickest patient on the waiting list at the time a liver was available, the hospital said.

The disclosures about Apples CEO should come from the company and not from outside sources, corporate-governance experts said. Since Jobs is so closely aligned with Apples brand, and since speculation about his health caused the companys shares to fluctuate last year, investors should be kept apprised of his health, said Charles Elson, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.

“They need to put out a statement to explain what happened during his departure, to explain what happened between now and then to put him in good health,” Elson said. “It has to come from Apple.”

Dowling declined to comment on Apples disclosures.

If Jobs is fully capable of doing his job, the company may feel it doesnt need to disclose specifics about his health, said James Balassone, executive in residence at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University in California.

Need to Know?

Jobss return was a missed opportunity for him to shift into more of a design role, leaving day-to-day management to others, said Apple investor Michael Obuchowski. When he went on leave, Jobs handed the reins to Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook. In 2004, Cook also filled in for Jobs, while the CEO recuperated from surgery for a tumor in his pancreas.

Cook has been running the company with a team of executives, including marketing chief Phil Schiller, design leader Jonathan Ive and retail manager Ron Johnson. Under their guidance, Apple introduced Mac computers, redesigned its iPod media player and began selling a faster version of the iPhone.

Strong Culture

In April, the company reported profit and revenue that topped analysts estimates. Apple releases third-quarter results next month.

“Steve Jobs created a great team with a very strong culture,” said Obuchowski, chief investment officer at First Empire Asset Management Inc. in Hauppauge, New York. “I believe that this team is more than capable of functioning really well without a need for daily supervision.”

Jobs first talked about potential successors in March 2008, saying Apples board would have “great choices” among the executive team if he decided to leave for any reason. The board told shareholders at their annual meeting in February that the company has a succession plan, which is confidential.

“As a public company with a celebrity CEO, Apple really should directly address Steves health and present a transparent succession plan,” Obuchowski said.

Source

He replaces Gideon Yu, who left abruptly in March. Facebook said at the time it was looking for someone with “public company experience,” even though Yu had previously worked at Yahoo Inc. - which is public.

Ebersman hails from Genentech, which has been sold to pharmaceutical company Roche Holding AG.

“He was Genentechs CFO while revenue tripled, and his success in scaling the finance organization of a fast-growing company will be important to Facebook,” founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a prepared statement.

Facebook, which turned 5 years old earlier this year, does not share specifics on its profitability because it is a privately held company. Research firm eMarketer, estimates that the company will reap $300 million in worldwide ad revenue this year, up 20 percent from 2008.

But Facebook has yet to turn a profit. In May, the company got a $200 million investment from Russian Internet investor Digital Sky Technologies. This valued Facebook at $10 billion and gave a nearly 2 percent stake in the companys preferred stock.

Ebersman worked at Genentech for 15 years.

Source

EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen said a standardized charger will cut costs for manufacturers and reduce the number of chargers thrown away when consumers buy new phones.

Though the agreement applies to the EU, its likely that the standardization will apply to phones and chargers sold outside the member countries.

Nokia Corp., Samsung Electronics Co., LG Electronics Inc., Sony Ericsson, Apple Inc., Motorola Inc., Research in Motion Ltd. and NEC Corp. committed to developing a standard for phone charging based on the Micro-USB interface. Together, they account for more than 80 percent of the world market for cell phones.

Several of those companies already make phones that charge through Micro-USB ports, but they dont guarantee that they will work with chargers made by other companies.

“What we are doing here is we are agreeing that any external power supply will be able to charge other manufacturers phones,” said Tony Graziano, technical director for DigitalEurope, which represents digital technology associations and companies that do business in Europe.

This doesnt mean that all new data-enabled phones will come with Micro-USB ports. Graziano said manufacturers can satisfy the terms of the agreement by producing an adapter. Apple, for instance, has consistently used a proprietary connector for its iPhone and could produce an adapter that plugs into the phone to accept a Micro-USB charger.

Bridget Cosgrove, director general of DigitalEurope, said the group is “optimistic” other countries and regions across the world will adopt the same universal charger soon.

Consumer rights groups called for more ambitious plans.

“You could have extended this to different small appliances, such as MP3 players, small digital cameras and PDAs,” said Gabriele Fleischer from the Consumers Council in Berlin.

Texas Instruments Inc. and Qualcomm Inc., two U.S. companies that make components for cell phones, also signed the agreement.

—

Source