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Techrunch is reporting that magazine publisher Condé Nast has purchased the social news site Reddit. Condé Nast is the owner of a number of popular magazines suchs as Wired, Vogue, GQ, Glamour, Bon Appétit and the New Yorker.

I think this is a fascinating and smart acquisition by Condé Nast. We’ve already seen Reddit partner with media companies like Slate to create “Reddit” views of their data. The Slate experiment just sort of scratched at the surface of what might be possible if traditional publishers embrace social technologies.

For a publisher like Condé Nast the potential uses of Reddit technology are staggering. The publisher could create a single destination site where all the articles from its various publications are aggregated and voted on using Reddit technologies. Alternatively, Condé Nast could add Reddit views to the websites of all the magazines they own in order to provide a “social” view of the magazine’s content in addition to an “editor” controlled view.

I think this is a great move by Condé Nast. Look for Wired.com to serve as the testing ground for how the publishing giant incorporates Reddit into their other offerings.

Update: Check out the links below for more on this:

• Wired Acquires Reddit (instead of just white labeling it) - Read/Write Web
• Reddit Acquired: Interiew with Founders - Talkcrunch
• Wired Digital Acquires Reddit - Wired

The Best of the Blogs (the BOBs) awards program has narrowed its 5,500 nominees down to 150 finalists in fifteen categories. As the result of some sort of oversight, our blog, The Bivings Report, is a finalist in the Best Corporate Blog category.

The BOBs gives out two different kinds of awards:

(1) The User Prize for each category is determined by user voting. You can vote here. Voting is open until November 11th and by voting you’ll be entered in a drawing to win an iPod.

(2) The Jury Prizes will be voted on by a panel of respected journalists and bloggers, including Lisa Stone of Blogher and Mark Glaser of Mediashift.

Anyway, I’d encourage you to check out the nominees and vote for your favorites (by favorites, I mean The Bivings Report). And while you’re at it, vote for Ze Frank in the Best Podcast category too.

Those interested in the newspaper/media business will do well to read a story published in the New York Times yesterday about the Rivals sports network.

Rivals maintains a website for every large college in the country and has 1-4 reporters dedicated to covering each school’s athletic department in depth (many of the reporters are part timers who have other jobs). There is no print product. These team sites provide insider news as well as in deptch football, baseball and basketball recruiting news. This kind of reporting isn’t really done by the mainstream media. In addition to the news, as a subscriber you also get access to a private, team-specific bulletin board where the reporters interact with the subscribers.

Rivals charges $9.95 per month for access to the website for a single team (such as the University of Texas). According to the Times article, Rivals has 160,000 paying subscribers. Assuming each user is paying an average of $9.95 per month, that would mean Rivals is clearing a little over $19 million a year just on subscriptions. (more…)

Xeni Jardin filed a report with Wired magazine to describe the new pressure placed on military bloggers, or "milbloggers" by the Department of Defense. Milblogs are written by active duty military personnel, with some directly reporting from the frontlines. Jardin notes that with the number of reporters in Iraq decreasing, milblogs are possibly the only way to get a firsthand account of ground operations in Iraq.

The controversy over blogging is thought to be representative of a culture clash between  Internet generation recruits and seasoned military personnel who are used to controlling information released to the public.

Currently, all milblogs are being reviewed by the Virginia National Guard for information thought to put military operations at greater risk. 

Currently, there are more than 1,500 active milbloggers. An annual convention (not affiliated with the DoD) is held in Washington, DC, to bring together military bloggers and explore blogging and compliance issues.

Check out Xeni's article here.

Just got an email from the Republican National Committe (I'm on every political mailing list known to man) inviting me to join GOP Mobile, their brand spanking new text messaging network.  According to the email, the RNC intends to use the service over the next week to send out election-related breaking news and action alerts to people who sign up.

Good stuff.  Anyone know if the Democratic National Committe has a similar program? Or of any similar programs abroad?

The Center for Citizen Media is currently collecting bloggers' questions in order to publish a comprehensive legal guide to blogging election day. Student Fellows from Stanford Law's Center for the Internet and Society will be tasked with answering those questions, ensuring that those planning on covering the elections will understand state laws that would affect how bloggers can report on November 7th.

The site provides a few examples on what bloggers can't do when covering the polls:

• In Delaware, bloggers can't hang around the voting area unless they are specifically there to vote.
• In Rhode Island, bloggers can't ask a voter how they voted if they are within 50 ft. of the polling area.  
• Bloggers in California can't record voters entering or exiting the polling areas. That means no snapping pics with the cameraphone or taking video footage to upload on YouTube.

You can submit your questions on legal blogging behavior on Election Day here.

So Hotsoup, the much hyped political social networking site, launched quietly a few days back.  I hope for the sake of founders Mark McKinnon, Joe Lockhart  Matthew Dowd and Carter Eskew that this is an alpha release or something because it is a mess. 

I've been working in web development for ten years now and after wasting spending thirty minutes going through Hotsoup I still don't really understand what they are trying to accomplish here.  The site just doesn't make a lot of sense.

Here are a few of the more glaring problems I saw: (more…)

There has been a lot of buzz about using Google Bombs to disseminate negative articles in political races (such as this recent article on MSNBC’s site and this one on the New York Times site), and we even wrote about it briefly here yesterday. While I agree with my colleague, Todd Zeigler, that the overall impact of such efforts is probably minimal, I do think that it can work from an execution standpoint, although I question its efficacy in making an impact on the actual results of the election.

Given that the election is now less than two weeks away, Google Bombing plans have been criticized for being too late because Google can take up to 30 days to index a website.  While it is true that Google can take up to that long, it does not always require that much time and it can work within a matter of days - if the correct set of conditions are met. From experience and reading various articles, I have learned that if an established website or blog (that has already been included within Google’s index), which receives a lot of links from other sites and is updated frequently, posts a given piece of information, it will begin appearing within the search results fairly quickly and relatively high within the rankings for relevant terms.  On the other hand, if something is posted on a site that is new, that has few links from other sites, that has not been included within the search index previously, and/or does not produce new content on a regular basis, it can take weeks to begin appearing and it will likely not appear as high within the results.

Why does this happen?  Because Google’s algorithm skews towards re-indexing sites that have been established as ‘quality sites’ (i.e. it has a lot of links from other ‘good sources’ on the same subject) on a more frequent basis than those that have not.  It also re-indexes sites that have a track record of continuously adding new content.  This clearly makes sense from an efficiency standpoint for Google as it attempts to cover the vast amount of data that makes up the Web.  It also seems to be a boon to bloggers, as blogs tend to be both link-rich and frequently updated.

In short, a campaign or politically active organization could very well manipulate the system to show negative content pieces higher within Google’s results, if they employ a popular, frequently updated, established site/blog.  It probably would not work if a new / less popular site/blog were used as the central dissemination point (a less popular site would also generate less pick-ups from the blogosphere).  Whether or not paid search placements would have a significant effect is hard to say.  Officially, Google contends that it does not give preference to advertisers within its organic search results.  That said, obviously a site that is seen and visited more frequently because of the ads will likely do better within the regular search results. 

Vox, the hybrid blogging/social networking platform, has left its beta test phase and is now allowing anyone to sign up. I've written about it before and think it is fantastic.  Give it a look.  I really think it is going to catch on with personal bloggers.

Read more about it on the Team Vox blog and on Techcrunch. 

MSNBC has a story today about the efforts of liberal and conservative bloggers to articially raise the search ranks of negative articles about candidates they oppose. 

The idea is that if I search for "George Allen" on Google, the liberal bloggers want the macaca video to show up high in the results.  And if I search for Harold Ford, the conservative bloggers want me to see the video of Ford crashing a Bob Corker press conference. 

I think the whole thing is kind of silly.  This snippet from the article sums up my feelings pretty well.

"Kari Chisholm, a Democratic new media strategist for one of Burns' opponents who lost in the Democratic primary, doubts that the Google-bombing campaign will be very useful. "It's not about chasing the 1 percent of voters that haven't figured out there's a difference between [Democrat] Jon Tester and Burns," Chisholm said."

It's about getting the folks that are predisposed to support your candidate of choice to get off their butts, get to the polls and vote.

CNET has a great article today detailing the worst political campaign sites on the web. The list mostly focuses mostly on calling out the bizarre elements of sites for obscure House candidates. 

But the piece also points out a personal pet peeve of mine: campaign blogs with zero content.   Here's a sample from the site of Congressmen Jay Inslee, a Dem Congressman from Washington.

Remember, it's better to not blog at all than to do so badly (or in this case to launch a blog you don't even make an attempt to update).

Inspired by our meeting last week with LA Times reporter T. Christian  Miller, I decided to take a closer look at some of our data from the newspaper study we conducted this summer.  I wanted to see how the online versions of newspapers are performing compared to their print circulations.  The findings were interesting and indicate that there are many  factors besides Web features that play a role in making a newspaper website successful.

(more…)

Erin had a little free time today so we decided to build on our campaign study and do some quick research to see which US Senate candidates had the most popular websites.   Please note that the site rank and reach per million data included in the table below is taken from Alexa.  We included the blog column based on our own research.

Note that many people consider Alexa data to be extremely flawed. So take our findings as anecdotes.  No one should write their PHD dissertation based on what you see here.

Before listing the data, here are some observations about the findings:

(1) The sites of CT candidates Ned Lamont and Senator Joe Lieberman are #1 and #2 in traffic due to the intense amount of interest their primary battle attracted both in the blogosphere and in the mainstream press.   Their sites are well ahead of those of any other candidates.

(2) 13 of the top 20 (65%) sites that attracted the most traffic were run by Democrats.  Six (30%) belonged to Republican candidates and one (5%) was run by an Independent (Lieberman).

(3) The least popular sites were equally split among the parties. Ten of the sites belong to Republican and ten belong to Democrats.

(4) 14 of the 20 (70%) most popular sites included blogs.  Only six of the 20 (30%) least popular sites had blogs.  While factors like how competitive a race is and the size of the state undoubtedly play a big role in traffic figures, I think it is pretty clear that blogs do play a role in driving traffic.

Following are the results:

Candidate Name	Party	Site Rank	Reach per million	Blog?
Lamont, Ned	D-CT	69,223	27	Yes
Lieberman, Joe	I-CT	106,399	19	Yes
Webb, Jim	D-VA	252,000	5.3	Yes
Clinton, Hillary	D-NY	259,810	4.05	No
Allen, George	R-VA	318,516	4.15	Yes
Harris, Katherine	R-FL	333,619	3.65	No
Casey, Bob	D-PA	338,532	3.55	Yes
Santorum, Rick	R-PA	373,240	2.85	Yes
Kennedy, Ted	D-MA	384,977	3.3	Yes
McCaskill, Claire	D-MO	451,708	2.75	Yes
Tester, Jon	D-MT	476,381	2.15	Yes
Ashdown, Pete	D-UT	476,452	2.05	Yes
Klobuchar, Amy	D-MN	498,905	1.85	No
Cantwell, Maria	D-WA	517,918	1.9	Yes
Brown, Sherrod	D-OH	539,171	1.8	Yes
McGavick, Mike	R-WA	562,788	1.5	Yes
Corker, Bob	R-TN	584,685	1.55	No
Ford, Harold Jr.	D-TN	609,777	2	No
Carter, Jack	D-NV	642,398	1.1	Yes
Burns, Conrad	R-MT	828,534	0.8	No
Bouchard, Mike	R-MI	991,558	0.75	Yes
Tarrant, Rich	R-VT	997,650	0.55	Yes
Nelson, Bill	D-FL	1,008,100	0.6	No
Dewine, Mike	R-OH	1,030,216	0.7	No
Pederson, Jim	D-AZ	1,061,624	0.5	No
Raese, Jim	R-WV	1,088,769	0.4	No
Kean, Tom	R-NJ	1,158,875	0.45	Yes
Kennedy, Mark	R-MN	1,158,875	0.45	Yes
Hay Bright, Jean	D-ME	1,229,651	0.35	Yes
Chafee, Lincoln	R-RI	1,272,159	0.45	No
Talent, Jim	R-MO	1,370,825	0.5	No
Radnofsky, Barbara Ann	D-TX	1,425,639	0.3	Yes
Kyl, Jon	R-AZ	1,433,237	0.45	No
Stabenow, Debbie	D-MI	1,459,546	0.45	Yes
Whitehouse, Sheldon	D-RI	1,663,920	0.25	Yes
Mountjoy, Dick	R-CA	1,727,518	0.25	No
Ricketts, Pete	R-NE	1,870,334	0.25	No
Spencer, John	R-NY	1,919,976	0.35	Yes
Byrd, Robert	D-WV	1,989,144	0.2	No
Fleming, Erik	D-MS	2,098,929	0.15	No
Ensign, John	R-NV	2,156,985	0.2	Yes
Steele, Michael	R-MD	2,776,888	0.2	Yes
Groutage, Dale	D-WY	2,872,933	0.1	No
Hatch, Orrin	R-UT	4,203,588	0.1	Yes
Ting, Jan	R-DE	4,931,853	0.05	No
Nelson, Ben	D-NE	5,608,587	0.05	No
Kohl, Herb	D-WI	5,618,551	0.1	No
Conrad, Kent	D-ND	5,621,699	0.05	No
Carper, Thomas	D-DE	5,877,096	0.045	No
Menendez, Bob	D-NJ	6,152,317	0.045	Yes
Hutchinson, Kay Bailey	R-TX	6,530,867	N/A	No
Grotberg, Dwight	R-ND	6,050,491	0.045	No
Akaka, Daniel	R-HI	N/A	N/A	No
Bingaman, Jeff	D-NM	N/A	N/A	No
Chase, Ken	R-MA	N/A	N/A	No
Feinstein, Diane	D-CA	N/A	N/A	No
Lugar, Dick	R-IN	N/A	N/A	No
McCulloch, Allen	R-NM	N/A	N/A	Yes

Two pieces of news just sort of jumped out at me today:

(1) Dick DeVos, who is running for Governer in Michigan, just announced the winner of a video contest they were running on their website.  The DeVos campaign invited site visitors to make their own political ads in support of DeVos, giving a video iPod to the winner.

Fantastic idea.  If you watch the videos you'll see the power and weakness of this concept.  The quality is all over the board.

(2) Business Week online has a great story on the use of Web 2.0 by European political candidates.  Most interestingly, British Conservative Party leader David Cameron has a video blog. 

In a move that can be described as either truly genius or truly bizarre, the Associated Press reported  that the Motion Picture Association of America has developed a curriculum to teach the Boy Scouts of America about the necessity of entertainment copyright law and the ill-effects of pirating movies. Scouts receive a merit badge after completing the program, which includes learning the fundamentals of copyright law, how to identify copyrighted works and understanding how copyright law can be violated. The curriculum also requires them to either visit a movie studio to meet the people hurt by film piracy or create a PSA which encourages others not to pirate entertainment.

Earlier this month, a Techdirt post discredited the MPAA report that piracy cost the industry $20.5 billion, calling their stastistics "bogus." Blogger Tim Lee of the Technology Liberation Front pointed out flaws in the study in a post linked by Techdirt.

No word yet on whether or not the Electronic Frontier Foundation or Public Knowledge have finished designing their own curriculum and merit badges.