TechSpotter.com - New Media & The Digital Economy.

PaidContent is a highly respected and established media blog with a lucrative events business, so we weren’t surprised to hear that Guardian Media acquired ContentNext, its parent company for $30 million.

PaidContent is the flagship brand and was founded by Rafat Ali who is still considered their best and most prolific writer. TheAlarmClock suggests that this is how a media mogul is born these days. He’s not just dividing up his conquests, but rather is an essential part of the content and brand itself.  they have a point.  Technorati, Mashable, AlleyInsider and GigaOM, not to mention Arianna Huffington’s HuffingtonPost all fit this new medial mogul mold.  While blogs have grown up into modern online newspapers, the founder’s voice remains one of its strongest assets.

New owners Guardian Media Group owns the iconic Guardian and Observer newspapers and is itself owned by the Scott Trust. According to Rafat Ali’s own entry on PaidContent:

“We will be part of Guardian Professional group, which is the B2B media division for GNM, and runs targeted sites such the MediaGuardian, as well as online data businesses and conferences.

This starts the 2.0 phase of our company ContentNext Media: we will remain a stand-alone business under GNM. This also marks a major expansion of Guardian’s U.S. presence….it already runs the Guardian America website, focused on U.S. audiences.”

Congratulations to Rafat Ali who by any measure, has worked hard to build his content network and is well poised for future growth with this lucrative and sensible acquisition by Guardian Media.

No longer content to “organize the world’s information”, Google is now venturing into virtual entertainment along the lines of Second Life.  To that end, Google unveiled “Lively”, software that “enables people to congregate in electronic rooms and other computer-manufactured versions of real life.” - NYTIMES

The difference between “Lively” and Second Life & Co. is the difference between open spaces and enclosed playgrounds.  After installing a small packet of software, users can enter the Lively experience from any site, like Facebook or a blog for example.

More specifically, the popular Wordpress blogging platform now has a $37 off-the-shelf, and DIY ad network.  oiopublisher.com is aiming for a homerun that will be milestone in blog publishing.  Now, already successful blogs will be able to sell their ad inventory without a middleman.

Only middlemen who ad real value to the relationship, generally by increasing performance thru technology, will have room at the table.  This is a great tool for publishers looking to control their ad inventory, but what we like about it most is its ability to allow advertisers to self-serve.

Gawker.com and blog network founder Nick Denton has reduced his unique pay-per-thousand pageviews salary (PPM) of his writers from $7.50 per 1,000 pageviews to $5.00 per thousand. Ouch.

Without being snarky about a snarky site, we think paying salaries just based on pageviews is ultimately a bad strategy, since there is no variable filtering for the quality of the article (just the audience response).

This may lead to more salacious content, but not necessarily accurate or relevant stories. Lindsay Lohan will always beat Harvey Weinstein as keywords competing for pageviews. Using this system starts a kind of race towards the bottom, and we think more of Gawker than that.

If Nick Denton wants to relie on performance and technology, he should go all the way, by allowing user-generated ratings of each article to determine its visibility (e.g. on main page and featured articles pages).

A lower PPM is intriguing because there are a number of explanations, all of which are bearish on blog networks and ad revenue in general. For one thing, there’s alot of competition out there. Celeb blogs, such as the just-launched celebjunky.com sprout like mushrooms after a hard rain.

Ad campaigns may also be performing poorly on his site, yet another explanation is higher overhead costs. Bottom line, he’s probably taking less money in, since a 33% reduction in PPM for his workers, is probably reflective of a similar reduction in the rate he’s able to charge advertisers.

A reliable source has leaked this photo which the source says will soon appear on NikonUSA.com.  The Nikon D700 will be a full-frame DSLR for $3,000 - significantly less then the $4,900 Nikon D3.

Want a full-frame DSLR, but can’t afford the nearly $5,000 Nikon D3?  Then you’ve been waiting for the rumored Nikon D700, which is now starting to appear in real life.  The price for 12 megapixels of full frame glory?

Expect to pay about $3,300 (body only MSRP), with a full blown Nikon media blitz in August and available storeside in December.  The competition on the Canon side is the rumored Canon 5D Mark II, which is expected to be a slightly less expensive full-frame update to the excellent 5D (Mark I), and features 15-16 megapixels of full-frame glory.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Taking advantage of New York City’s growing prominence in the tech sector, Techspotter.com announces its launch today from the big Apple. The tech magazine will cover the latest technology news, review emerging websites and uncover gadgets worth owning.

“The difference between TechSpotter.com and other websites will be in quality over quantity,” says Media Telekom digital strategist Steven Eng. “While we are fans of the big tech websites out there, they use a rapid-fire approach to delivering any and all tech news. Perhaps this is to appease the search engines, but we believe that these days, the audience no longer has the time to read through 8 irrelevant stories to get to the two that he’s really interested in.

As a result, we will focus on providing a better filter on the tech category. Showing you for example, only the gadgets that we lust after, analyzing news that is ascendant, game-changing or part of a bigger trend and revealing new websites and resources you may not have seen anywhere else before. As I result, we hope the experience will not only be more useful, but enjoyable to read as well.”

TechSpotter.com is part of Media Telekom’s growing network of lifestyle titles that will be providing blog coverage for its flagship, The New York Herald.

Media Telekom properties include: The New York Herald, TechSpotter.com, BattleStates.com, CelebJunky.com, UrbanExports.com, BargainTravelers.com, MetroPost.com, NabeNews.com and BookTix.com.

PR contact: mediaverse (at) gmail