Diginews - Onion up for sale - Amazon buckles, promises to replace cracked kindles - Fortune launches tech site - FT editor says most news sites will go pay - Yahoo deal with MS coming soon - Amazon MVNO in UK - Twitter fights back -
Ramakrishnan Laxman
The Onion Said To Be Negotiating Sale
The Onion this month told staff that resisting advertiser pressure is a "losing game." But it seems the humor publication isn't just keen to sell its soul to sponsors; we hear The Onion is talking about selling everything.
A tipster says word out out of the publication is that it's in negotiations to sell to a large media company. It's not clear how far apart the two sides are; we're not assuming any deal is imminent. more
Amazon Promises To Replace Cracked Kindles
The move marks a change in Amazon's previous position over the apparent flaw, which was to charge customers $200 to replace the device. Amazon had said the damage wasn't covered under the warranty. more
Fortune Launches Tech Site To Complement Its Conference
Financial Times Editor Says Most News Web Sites Will Charge Within a Year
The Financial Times editor, Lionel Barber, has predicted that "almost all" news organisations will be charging for online content within a year.
Barber said building online platforms that could charge readers on an article-by-article or subscription basis was one of the key challenges facing news organisations.
"How these online payment models work and how much revenue they can generate is still up in the air," Barber said in a speech at at a Media Standards Trust event at the British Academy last night. more
Yahoo Search Ad Deal With Microsoft “Down to the Short Strokes”
Unless there is some major glitch, there might finally be a search and online advertising deal struck between Yahoo and Microsoft at long last.
Top executives at Microsoft–including SVP of the Online Audience Business Group Yusuf Mehdi, search head Satya Nadella and top digital exec Qi Lu, as well as others–have all flown down to Silicon Valley from their Redmond, Wash., HQ today to iron out the remaining issues, which seem to have to do with the deployment of technology. more
Amazon Plans to be MVNO in UK?
According to a report over on itproportal, US retailer Amazon has plans to become an MVNO. Amazon US is in negotiations with a mobile operator with a view to becoming a mobile virtual network operator in the United Kingdom. Amazon has already launched Amazon Wireless in the states which offers wireless plans and mobile phones, so they are looking to do something similar in the UK.
Twitter Fights Back
TechCrunch began publishing documents stolen from Twitter by a hacker this week, claiming they got the "green light" from Twitter Inc. Not so, say the Twitter founders.
In an embarrassment similar to having your seventh-grade diary read aloud to the whole school, the stolen documents have revealed Twitter's possible plans for an IPO, swipes at Facebook, outlandish forecasts, and even a burn on P. Diddy ("Diddy values his contribution higher than we do").
Twitter co-founder Evan Williams reacted via Twitter [ed. note: how else?] and co-founder Biz Stone reacted in a post on the Twitter blog, saying, "The publication of stolen documents is irresponsible and we absolutely did not give permission for these documents to be shared." more