ChasNote

Story at Wired. Accompanied by an image of the 24-ounce can; you know that can’t be good.

(Thanks, Ben!)

It’s great to see Dooce and Confessions of a Pioneer Woman among the leaders in the “hottest mommy blogger” contest! (Pioneer Woman makes a second appearance in the “best photography blog” category too, as does Dooce in the “blogitzer” category for sites with the best writing.)

Boing Boing’s among the “best geek blog” list and Sweet Juniper’s on the “best parenting blog” and “hottest daddy blogger” lists.

Congrats!

From Gardian Unlimited:

“The internet is set to overtake magazines to become the world’s third largest advertising medium in 2010, according to a new report. Media planning and buying agency ZenithOptimedia’s global advertising report estimates that in 2010 the internet ad market will be worth almost $61bn (29.5bn), compared with the magazine market at around $60.5bn (29.3bn). By 2010 the internet will account for 11.5% of global ad spend, trailing just TV, at a 37.5% share, and newspapers with 25.4% of an estimated $530bn (£257bn) total spend, according to Zenith.”

(Thanks, Karleen!)

From NY Times:

“In a posting Friday afternoon, Emily Gould, a Gawker editor, dropped the bomb: both she and Choire Sicha, the site’s top editor, were quitting. A third editor, Joshua David Stein, confirmed on Saturday that he was leaving, too. Gawker’s three remaining staff members were all hired within the last three months.”

More interesting to me is why:

“Ms. Gould, who has been with Gawker for a year, said she was upset about a new compensation system that pays writers according to how many times people view their blog posts rather than only by how many posts they write. The system, she said, pits writers against one another. ‘It really gets in your head in this weird way because you’re getting so conscious of how many people are reading what,’ Ms. Gould said. ‘You get focused on being sensational and even more brain candyish than Gawker was to start with.’”

Here, for example, is the image that usually accompanies coverage of rumors related to FM — FM’s founder and CEO, John Battelle, giving the Battelle Salute, taken sometime in the late 1990s:

In an interview with Beet.tv, Ask A Ninja’s Kent Nichols threatens to kill Beet.tv, but I’m assuming that’s just Ninja humor. Meanwhile, TV Week reports that the Ninjas are doing well financially:

“Near the top of the pile [of digital video programmers] sit Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine, who have parlayed their ‘Ask a Ninja’ Web program into about $100,000 a month in ad revenue and income from merchandising and licensing….. Mr. Nichols and Mr. Sarine, the ‘Ask a Ninja’ duo, learned all about the threshold between Web video as an avocation and a vocation.

“They started their ‘weekly-ish’ Web show two years ago with about $60,000 from friends and family. Since then, they’ve generated 70 million views on YouTube, AskaNinja.com and other sites. They managed to live on that income, supplementing it with occasional odd jobs. About a year ago, they decided to focus on wringing money from their Web popularity.

“‘You can’t take views to the bank. You need a concrete plan to turn those views into money,’ Mr. Nichols said.”

“So they paired up with video-sharing site Revver, which splits ad revenue 50-50 with content creators, and earned between $40,000 and $50,000 in an eight-month period.

“The pair then signed a deal with Federated Media, which now sells ads for the show. In the last year, the number of ‘Ask a Ninja’ views has jumped from 2 million to 2.7 million per month.

“‘That pays the bills,’ Mr. Nichols said. ‘Advertisers now have a credible way to reach the target demo of young men who have abandoned TV, and we are providing a concrete way to get into those kids’ brains.’

“Companies including SanDisk, Palm, Doritos and Toshiba have signed on as sponsors.”

(FM manages advertising and sponsorships for Ask A Ninja, but FM does not disclose revenue figures for any of its partners.)

From TechCrunch:

“See the list of TV networks featured on iTunes at right? NBC used to be right after National Geographic. Its absence leaves a very noticeable hole, and is a marked reminder of how Apple is not able to dominate digital video to the same extent that it has digital music.”

According to Kevin Rose at Digg’s blog, Digg Images will launch later today.

The post, which includes a note of thanks to Intel — “The new images section has been sponsored by Intel, a longtime Digg partner — many thanks for their support” — has been Dugg 2242 times in the past two and half hours. Puts to shame the also-strong community enthusiasm for the Digg Arc, the previous site feature sponsored by Intel. In that case, it took nearly ten hours for the first 1000 Digg members to give it a thumbs-up.

The story has over 200 comments so far. Foenetik’s remark seems to capture a widespread eagerness for Images: “wow….bout fookin time.”

UPDATE 12/4: It’s about 30 hours since Kevin announced Images, and the story’s been Dugg almost 5600 times. Here it is:

We put out a press release announcing several new relationships with leading Facebook applications, such as Graffiti Wall, PROTRADE and Watercooler, and early sponsorships by HP and Wacom.

Some coverage at AllFacebook, the unofficial Facebook blog:

“This announcement provides legitimacy to the Facebook application advertising space and serves a massive blow to existing Facebook advertisers. One of the main issues facing large Facebook developers is the difficulty to connect with the companies (and brands) best fit to integrate advertising campaigns into applications. Federated Media will help bridge this gap for larger application developers and existing Federated Media partners. Federated Media is now the largest advertising network to join the Facebook platform. This is a monumental step that will surely legitimize the platform’s potential.”

I’ll accept that positioning!

Here’s more on Wacom’s Graffiti Monster Contest.

UPDATE: From WebProNews:

“A number of recent stories have noted rifts between Facebook and advertisers; the launch of Beacon was, all in all, a bad move. But Federated Media Publishing wasn’t scared away, and has actually partnered with the owners of some Facebook applications. Graffiti Wall and the ‘Addicted To…’ series aren’t the most popular apps in existence - I’ve been asked to become a zombie or vampire far more often than I’ve been bothered by anything having to do with them. Still, they boast some impressive user counts - there are 300,000 of the ‘daily active’ variety for Graffiti Wall alone, according to company stats - so the development is rather important.”

UPDATE 12/4: Here’s ClickZ and Mashable coverage.

Waiting for the crew at Farley’s to brew up a cup of tea this afternoon, I flipped through the print edition of AdWeek for the first time in about a decade, and two stories caught my attention, both reminders that size still matters in publishing.

First, Starcom USA Unveils New Print Accountability Tool: The agency “has been doing bigger deal in print but with fewer magazines” in order to get a better read on the performance of campaigns, creative messages and publications. If other agencies are doing the same, it means the financial pain across the print-publishing landscape will be felt more acutely at niche magazines.

Second, Will a Free WSJ.com Pay Off for Murdoch?:

“‘Because of the their model,’ said Jeff Lanctot, svp, global media at Avenue A/Razorfish, ‘they are a smaller property.’ That by nature, can sell only so many ads. Consider that Yahoo Finance generated 470 million page views in October, versus 11 million for WSJ.com, per comScore. ‘They could instantly become a more attractive property’ if the site goes free, Lanctot added.”

Niche publications are great for advertisers in terms of targeting and audience composition, but without scale to go along with quality small publishers may not get a seat at the table.