65% of Buzzfeed traffic now mobile

Buzzfeed now sees 65% of its traffic coming from mobile devices, according to Kenneth Lerer, chairman of Buzzfeed and Betaworks. “Everything is going to the phone,” Lerer said.

via netnewscheck.com

Guggenheim on Hulu

Hulu has hired Guggenheim Partners to advise on a sale of the company, even as the financial services firm is considering making its own bid for the video streaming service, according to a report from Reuters.

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LinkedIn Acquires Pulse

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) -- Professional networking website LinkedIn is paying about $90 million to acquire Pulse, which makes an e-reader platform used on mobile devices.

More than 30 million people worldwide use Pulse's e-reader applications on devices running both Apple (AAPL) and Android-based operating systems. The San Francisco-based company was founded in 2010 by Akshay Kothari and Ankit Gupta while they were students at Stanford University.

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The deal, which is expected to close in the second quarter, is a combination of 90 percent stock and 10 percent cash.

Following the close, Pulse employees will join LinkedIn at its headquarters in Mountain View.

via netnewscheck.com

Newspapers abandoning iconic buildings

Traditionally located downtown, close to the centers of power, newspaper headquarters were once a paper's most potent branding tool, a high-visibility signifier of place — not to mention a corporeal reminder of the publication's significant first amendment powers. In recent years, newspaper buildings have become something else: fabulous real estate. That explains why so many struggling newspapers are now scrambling to convert their flagships into cash.

via netnewscheck.com

Examining Marissa Mayer's Out-of-Office Message to Yahoo Employees

Ed Frauenheim is on assignment.

The business case for telecommuting was established more than two decades ago.

No doubt Yahoo chief Marissa Mayer knows that. I'm guessing that in the days and weeks leading up to her recent call to ban telecommuting at the search engine giant she considered 20-year-old-plus arguments favoring thousands of her employees working remotely.

You know: Telecommuting is a strategic tool, it empowers employees to create flexible solutions, the technology is available, results can be measured … They are all legitimate arguments with case history that dates back to at least 1991. That's as far back as our online archives go—back to the days when Workforce was called Personnel Journal. And sure enough, there's a reference to telecommuting in a story about Marriott's corporate culture.

You could also argue that telecommuting's origins lie just up the 101 from Yahoo's corporate headquarters at Silicon Valley neighbor Hewlett-Packard. In 1967, the pioneering computer-maker allowed its plant in Germany to offer flextime—a truly radical concept for its time. HP then implemented large-scale telecommuting in the mid-1990s as technology advanced.

And from its earliest days after being founded in 1994 Yahoo has employed legions of telecommuters. So Mayer—a Stanford University grad, by the way—is no stranger to the culture of a remote workforce.

Mayer's decision leaves no doubt that she believes the merits of telecommuting are outweighed by the other side of the argument: Collaboration truly happens at the office. That chance meetings at the water cooler and tooling down the halls on a Razor scooter help push innovation.

It also implies that Yahoo's previous commitment to telecommuting created a bloated, lazy and unproductive remote workforce. Will Mayer's office-centric edict change that? By permanently etching a line not only across Yahoo's addiction to telecommuting but through a massive sector of the workforce who work out of the office, this is a defining moment of her career.

If indeed Mayer and her HR boss, Jacqueline Reses, have done their homework on overhauling a workforce, they should understand that merely swinging the doors wide open and offering a posh cafeteria and shiny new smartphones won't make collaboration happen overnight.

I don't think I am overstating it by saying Yahoo's culture shift is like building a brand-new workforce from scratch—a team of thousands at that. First, construction crews are going to be working 24/7 to facilitate a horde of new employees in an office setting. Then there are the inevitable technology glitches (and they will happen) that will impair the workforce for weeks, if not months, driving stress to dangerous levels.

But before they knock down that first wall, has Yahoo management considered office culture? Who gets seats near the window—employees or managers? Trust me, that's a big deal.

They also better realize that some employees won't play nice together. Try as you might to establish a friendly, open, warm environment, the bottom line is no good deed goes unpunished. Personalities will clash.

It's people management 101, and hopefully Reses already has her HR team equipping managers with the training to put out every office fire from perfume policies to flaps over the office candy dish.

Learning personalities, nuancing situations and creating a team atmosphere will take time. And lots of patience. When teamwork clicks it's a thing of beauty. It's like watching the Harlem Globetrotters run circles around the Washington Generals.

Whether intended or not, Mayer's declaration to collaborate in person rather than cooperate virtually is turning Yahoo into a large-scale laboratory overhauling its corporate culture.

I'm glad I can watch the experiment play out—remotely. Because I don't think I'd want to be a one of the lab rats at Yahoo.

Rick Bell is Workforce's managing editor. Contact him at rbell@workforce.com.

via workforce.com

“I haven’t worked for a newspaper for quite a while...”

Jeff Zeleny, who will leave the New York Times for ABC News next month, says the decision to jump from print to TV was a no-brainer. “I haven’t worked for a newspaper for quite a while,” Zeleny, The Times‘ national political correspondent, tells TVNewser, acknowledging the paper’s moves toward video in its storytelling.

“The web has prepared me a lot for this new fast-paced tempo of reporting from morning to evening,” says Zeleny. “I think it’s just an interesting moment in our reflective businesses that we’re doing more TV at The Times and ABC is doing great reporting.”

And he’ll have plenty of platforms on which to report: ABC News programs, ABCNews.com and Fusion, the upcoming ABC/Univision cable network.

“We’ll see if I can keep up,” says Zeleny. “I think I will.”

The easiest part of the decision to leave the Old Gray Lady — ABC approached him — was joining the ranks of ABC’s DC team. “I’ve long admired the tradition of ABC. I’ve been big fan of their coverage. The news division is on a roll and doing great things and I’m excited to join George Stephanopoulos and Martha Raddatz and Jon Karl, who’s been a friend.”

For ABC, Zeleny will focus on his main beats, Capitol Hill and politics. “At the end of the day reporting is reporting, storytelling is storytelling, and breaking news is the centerpiece. And this is one heck of a time to be explaining this dysfunctional Congress.”

via mediabistro.com

Nascar signs with video news agency SendtoNews

21 February 2013 | Posted in Broadcast, Motorsport, Global | By David Cushnan

Nascar has signed a major worldwide digital partnership with video news agency SendtoNews, which will see race highlights and other content distributed to thousands of news outlets.

The announcement comes on the eve of the Daytona 500, the first race of the 2013 Sprint Cup season.

SendtoNews will distribute cuts from the 500, plus the rest of the Sprint Cup series, the second tier Nationwide Series and the Nascar Camping World Truck Series via its News Partnership Network. The package will be tailored for local and international digital media.

"We’re always thinking about ways to offer fans more Nascar content, no matter where they are," said Marc Jenkins, Nascar's vice president of digital media.

• Nascar agrees eight-year extension with Fox
• Nascar and Twitter sign 'unique digital partnership'

"This partnership allows us to better reach fans in communities across the country and enhance the coverage of our sport at the local level. After fully vetting the category, we feel confident that SendtoNews’ flexible platform provides the most turnkey solution in the local content space and the most powerful way to distribute our content to local outlets."

SendtoNews' chief executive Greg Bobolo, whose company debuted its distribution platform at the 2010 winter Olympics in Vancouver, added: "This deal enables SendtoNews to guarantee our media and advertising partners complete highlights of Nascar and multi-year access to one of the largest and most engaged audiences in pro sport."

Meanwhile, as the build-up to Sunday's season-opener intensifies, Nascar has signed a partnership with brake pad manufacturer FDF Friction Science. The company's Duralast brand will become the 'official brakes of Nascar'.

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