UK regional paper publisher to charge for web access

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Local news publishers in the UK have had a fairly hard time of it recently, hit by falling readership and reduced advertising revenue, but now one of Britain’s largest regional newspaper publishers is to begin charging users to read full stories on six of its titles’ websites.

Johnston Press will charge £5 (about $8) for three months full access to content on the Worksop Guardian, Ripley & Heanor News, Whitby Gazette, Northumberland Gazette, Carrick Gazette and Southern Reporter.

Readers who don’t wish to subscribe will be given access to excerpts and then encouraged to buy the paper copy to read the full stories. [Read more…]

TweetBookz: Would you turn 200 tweets into a book?

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tweetbookz-logoI’ve written just over 4,000 tweets since I signed up for Twitter several years ago, but I think I’d be hard-pressed to choose 200 of a high enough quality to turn into a book.

However, new startup TweetBookz has decided there must be enough Twitter fanatics who would like to do just that.

Cofounders Jacob Schwirtz and Asael Kahana said that the service offered a “fun way to look back on your favourite tweets and capture all the emotion of those moments to keep forever.” [Read more…]

Google turns to algorithms to create better-looking ads

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The constant push to make ads more visually appealing — reducing the effects of ‘ad blindness’ and helping them to convert better for advertisers and pay more to publishers — continues, as Google announces a pending deal with the Californian startup company Teracent.

Teracent specialises in machine-learning algorithms which have been put to use on the image ads of Google and its partners.

The example given in the announcement shows a standard, human created ad (left) and a similar ad that’s been picked in real time from thousands of different creative elements by these algorithms.

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[Read more…]

Twitter finally ready to roll out pay-for business accounts

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It’s been a very long time coming, but Twitter could roll out a commercial service before the end of the year, according to founder Biz Stone.

Though precise details haven’t been announced yet, Stone’s interview with the BBC suggested that additional pay-for features could include advanced analytics and information about their accounts and who is visiting them. [Read more…]

Twitter adds geotagging to its API

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Though a number of mobile Twitter clients have been able to add their own level of geographical information to tweets, Twitter has now officially added geotagging capability to its API (Application Programming Interface).

It doesn’t change how the web interface works, but given that many mobile users (where geotagging is most useful) will use third-party clients, this isn’t much of a problem. [Read more…]