Over the weekend I noticed a link to a nearly 16-year-old New York Times article appearing over and over in my Twitter feed. The piece, written by Saul Hansell and published June 9, 1998, is titled "America Online to Buy Internet Chat Service for $287 Million." In fact, the piece gained so much Twitter momentum that it turned up in the top 10 on The Latest, "an automatic list of the latest and greatest links from Twitter," by Saturday afternoon. (Background on The Latest here, courtesy of my colleagues at Creativity). Then I found a whole discussion about it on Hacker News, with more than 100 comments, also on Saturday.Hansell reported back in 1998 that ICQ, the instant-messaging service that AOL had just bought, was an attractive acquisition target "because it appeals to a much younger and more technologically sophisticated audience than the mainstream America Online brand." And also because of high engagement: "ICQ users spend an average of 75 minutes a day on the service, compared with fewer than 10 minutes a day for highly touted search and directory services such as Yahoo and Lycos," Hansell paraphrased AOL's then-president Robert Pittman as saying.Sound familiar? Of course it does. Fast-forward 16 years to Facebook's deal to buy WhatsApp, for similar reasons. (I did the math: Facebook founder-CEO Mark Zuckerberg was 14 years old when AOL bought ICQ. Was he paying attention at the time?) Continue reading at AdAge.com Continue reading at 'Advertising Age'
[ Advertising Age | 2014-02-25 00:00:00 UTC ]
Whether it’s heat waves, wildfires, or floods, news of weather events intensified by climate change is hard to miss. And the publishing industry has been paying attention. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-08-02 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Whether it’s heat waves, wildfires, or floods, news of weather events intensified by climate change is hard to miss. And the publishing industry has been paying attention. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-08-02 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Designer Elisha Zepeda has become a TikTok star for sharing his book cover design process. Are publishers are paying attention? Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-07-19 04:00:00 UTC ]
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If you’ve been paying attention to local news, you know the wave of book bans sweeping the nation isn’t slowing down—but people are pushing back. PEN America continues to speak out against censorship; a professor has offered to teach Maus to all students affected by its ban; the Authors Guild... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-03-17 15:55:49 UTC ]
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Welcome back! The US Copyright Office (USCO) is again refusing to grant copyright for a work of art that was created by an artificial intelligence system. Dr. Stephen Thaler attempted to copyright a piece of art titled A Recent Entrance to Paradise, claiming in a second request for... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2022-02-22 12:15:53 UTC ]
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If you’ve been paying attention to local news in the past year, you’ve likely noticed the concerning wave of book bans sweeping the nation. Books by authors of color; books that acknowledge historical atrocities; books featuring LGBTQ+ characters; sex education books for teens; all are under... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-02-09 19:49:33 UTC ]
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Those who have been paying attention to local education news and the critical race theory debate know that many school districts are battling over what materials can be kept in libraries and taught in classrooms. The battle is making its way to the courts: just this week a PEN America report... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-11-11 17:33:10 UTC ]
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Anyone shocked by the cancellation of six Dr. Seuss books hasn’t been paying attention. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-03-02 06:26:28 UTC ]
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Interviews Veronica Esposito John Keene is the author of Counternarratives, which received an American Book Award and the Republic of Consciousness Prize. He is also the recipient of a Lannan Literary Award and a MacArthur Fellowship. He is the... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-03-30 15:27:14 UTC ]
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With two acclaimed novels under her belt, Evie Wyld’s dazzling new work looks set to win further praise. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-03-09 17:03:29 UTC ]
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Size matters. At least when it comes to your inactive email list. That’s a message Google and other email providers have made loud in clear to publishers with bloated email lists. Email deliverability is an ongoing concern in publishing as spam filters become more selective, which in turn are... Continue reading at Folio Magazine
[ Folio Magazine | 2020-02-27 16:59:28 UTC ]
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Interviews Veronica Esposito Ottilie Mulzet is the principal English-language translator of Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai, winner of numerous international honors. Together, they received the 2019 National Book Award in Translation for Mulzet’s... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-02-20 14:05:36 UTC ]
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Voice user interface (VUI) is becoming a pressing navigation need as more consumers and offices are employing technologies such as Google Assistant, Alexa and others. As VoiceBrew points out, several publishers like the Financial Times, the New York Times, and the Business Insider’s “Ten Tech... Continue reading at Folio Magazine
[ Folio Magazine | 2020-02-11 18:18:29 UTC ]
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For a picture of what life was like in 2017, look no further than the apps, movies, books, and music that topped the App Store and iTunes charts. This week, Apple revealed the most popular titles that iOS users downloaded over the course of the year. In terms of media, the top choices weren’t... Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2017-12-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Sales figures for the most popular modern authors round up familiar suspects from Dan Brown to JK Rowling. Taken together, they hint at surprising sales secretsSteve Berry could be forgiven for asking himself every day what it takes to make a book a global bestseller. Back in 2003, the former... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2017-01-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[Sponsored] Want to be an email expert? There’s some analytics that you should be paying attention to. The post Three Email Metrics That Publishers Should Track appeared first on Folio:. Continue reading at Folio Magazine
[ Folio Magazine | 2016-10-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Sometimes the artists change, but the songs, well, they remain the same. A recent judge's decision to allow a copyright lawsuit over the opening bars of "Stairway to Heaven" to proceed against Led Zeppelin et al. brings to mind other twinned tunes, some of which resulted in legal battles and... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2016-04-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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"These are things all professional writers should be paying attention to," writes Emma Barnes in the address she made at our inaugural Author Day. "Not just the words, but the way you work." Predictably, Barnes' comments were challenging for some. A certain proportion of attendees at any... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-12-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Office, PDFs, ebooks, archives, audio, video, images: the average PC owner regularly encounters a lengthy list of file formats, and viewing them all typically requires an entire library of software. Free Editor claims it can simplify all that by opening 70-plus file formats from a single... Continue reading at Betanews
[ Betanews | 2015-02-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The social do-gooder just released its "attention minutes" source code. You paying attention?Clicks and pageviews are still the standard metric most online publishers use in valiant attempts to convince advertisers to write them checks so that they can keep the lights on. When pageviews are... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2014-06-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
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