Hyperlocal gets another boost in Seattle

Seattle is turning into the busiest hyperlocal market out there with yet another addition as The Seattle Times partners up with a number of local blogs and community sites.

According to the blog Techflash, The Seattle Times (the city's sole surviving newspaper) is teaming up with West Seattle Blog, Next Door Media (publisher of MyBallard.com, PhinneyWood and other sites); The Rainier Valley Post and Capitol Hill Seattle.

In a post on its site MyBallard said: "My Ballard is powered by the neighbourhood, not us. The vast majority of stories originate from our readers, and now some of the best stories will be linked from Seattle’s largest news site. We’re very pleased that the Times has chosen to work together with organic, neighbourhood-grown news sites instead of creating competing efforts designed to draw advertising dollars away from the neighbourhood."

The launch by The Seattle Times follows Fisher Communications announcing last week it was launching 43 community sites in Seattle based around its TV and radio stations.

Again its interesting to note that this is another traditional media player going for the hyperlocal market and the different models that are emerging. The Seattle Times has chosen to partner with homegrown community players while others have chosen different routes.

Media firms like The New York Times Company, Fisher and The Washington Post, which pulled the plug on its hyperlocal experiment LoudounExtra.com, went with their own ventures. Others like AOL and MSNBC have bought start-ups (Patch and Everyblock.com respectively).

Seattle has it all going on with a newspaper, a former newspaper (Seattlepi.com), a broadcaster and all the local community players fighting it out. It must make for such a vibrant market in that fantastic American city.

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He'll tweet you: Ben Stiller and Ryan Seacrest talk followers

Comedian Ben Stiller is suffering follower envy. Clearly what he needs is a meeting with American Idol media machine Ryan Seacrest who has followers to spare.

Very funny video for anyone who has ever spent any time thinking about followers as Ben Stiller (@redhourBen - 172,574 followers) tries to tap Ryan Seacrest (@RyanSeacrest 2.1 million followers) for a little help.

The bad news for Ben Stiller is that tweeting machine Ryan Seascrest (who doesn't do it for fun) doesn't even talk to people with less than 900,000 followers. I mean who does (okay I don't know anyone with 900,000 followers)?

Do you think that Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk 3.3 million followers) talks to Ryan Seacrest (excuse me a second, I'm just going to stare into space and ponder these questions of the age)?

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Farewell Big Brother - for now at least

So Big Brother is to be axed from Channel 4 according to an The Sun. Let's hope the news is true. The show has really run its course. That has been said several times in the past but with ratings falling every year it was a surprise that Channel 4 signed another three-year deal with Endemol, meaning that an 11th series is locked in.

Last year Channel 4 showed its desire to chase ratings when it kept housemate Alexandra in (remember her? No me neither) despite proving one of the worst bullies the show had ever had the displeasure to host.

All the signs were there last year that it had run its course, but Channel 4 has ploughed on and has been rewarded with some of the lowest ratings in years for the 10th series. I think this is good news for Channel 4. Yes it leaves a hole in its schedule, but surely that is a creative opportunity as well and a challenge to be met?

Not only having ratings been low, but it was virtually ignored by the media. Even the stalwart Sun provided no haven. Not even a NIB, a tiny paragraph, each day has been warranted.

Channel 4 executives looking for coverage of their once cash cow must have been dismayed, or more likely depressed, by its absence from Britain's media diet.

There is no denying that Big Brother has provided us with much entertainment. There was a time when casual viewers would more regularly tune in on a Friday to see an eviction (Channel 4 says 38m viewers watched Big Brother at least once - that's 69% of population), but that time has past.

I suspect many of us could pass the housemates in the street this year and not recognised one of them. They are going to be more shocked by its axing than anyone. More shocked that they have been in there for more than 80 days and few will know who they are.

No D-List media careers are going to be kick started this year. What's a former Big Brother contestant to do? Opening up a new branch of Lidl might be a stretch even for the winner which ever loser that might be.

According to reports though Celebrity Big Brother might still return and there's nothing wrong with that. I can see that still have a good set of legs and exciting interest.

I can also see the format being adapted and tweaked. If it goes anywhere that's what it needs most. New ideas. As it is the lack of innovation that has as much as anything done it for this show. It has turned into something relentless. Kind of like The Long March - but probably less fun (and not in China). Maybe it won't be the same show exactly and maybe it won't be on the same network. There is nothing to say that it has to be on Channel 4. You could easily see ITV or Sky having a crack at taking the format on. I'm pretty sure there is life in it yet - just not 13 weeks of life.

As that was the one thing above all others that struck me this year. It was more or less the only thing that struck me this year as the updates from the Big Brother press office popped into my in box was how the day count inexorably built.

Big Brother used to be much shorter and have fewer contestants, but when you get an email and the headers says day 67, 75, 80 and 84 you have to ask will this show never end? Well yes it will and it the very near future - but I'm pretty convinced that in some form or another it will be back.

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Is Twitter killng Hollywood's multi million $$$ movie marketing campaign?

The era of the big movie marketing campaign might be over. Hollywood might spend millions marketing its new movies only to find that expected hits like 'Bruno' and 'G.I. Joe' are being sunk by a bunch of tweets and status updates as word of mouth becomes almost instant.

We all know that word of mouth can make or break a movie and that recommendations we get from our friends often mean more than some reviews.

According to a piece in the Baltimore Sun (Twitter effect rattles Hollywood'), the word of mouth process might have previously taken days to affect the box office, but with the rise of Twitter and Facebook, it now happens in hours, hardly giving leather fetish bad guys ('G.I Joe' not 'Bruno') a chance to strut their stuff.

People can walk out of a movie theatre and immediately tell hundreds if not thousands of their not-so-close friends and followers what they thought about it. If it is really bad kids can be tweeting and updating in the aisles.

Lindsay Wailes, a cook and barista, told the paper, "Almost every time after I go out [to a movie], I'll tweet about it. I tweeted about 'G.I. Joe' as soon as I left the theater." Her take on the movie: "If you like science or plot, this isn't a movie for you; if you like explosions for no reason, you'll love it."

Of course, you have to wonder why Wailes went to see 'G.I. Joe' in the first place, but that's another question (some people like leather). In the same vein Wailes told Michael Sragow of the Baltimore Sun that she also listens to what others have to say and on that basis rejected Sasha Baron Cohen's 'Bruno' on the back of bad Twitter reviews.

"A lot of my friends are crazy young people - I'd expect them to like 'Bruno' more than an actual critic, and even they said, 'It's crass, don't see it.' So I didn't bother."

It's a problem for movie studios as real-time reviews are not going away anytime soon, but it is also an opportunity.

'Inglourious Basterds' got lukewarm reviews, but fans had much more time for it than a lot of critics who were giving the film only two and three star reviews, allowing Quentin Tarantino's biggest opening ever weekend helped by a wave of tweeting and other user generated reviews.

By Saturday after the hardcore fans had rushed to see it, tweets were still enthusiastic and heaping praise on Tarantino's World War Two effort.

It could, of course, be that these movies that have bombed or done less well than expected are just bad movies and no amount of marketing is going to save them. In the case of 'Bruno', was the story of a gay fashionista who goes to Hollywood and does stuff that is hard to watch, really a mass market movie?

The Baltimore Sun piece quotes others saying that the Twitter Effect is "more urban legend" than real trend and cites a recent Movietickets.com poll in which 88% said Twitter had no effect on them.

But as Ad Age points out that still means that more than 1 in 10 polled moviegoers are using Twitter to get recommendations, which considering that it is still a newish thing is perhaps still significant and food for thought for movie studios. Further its Trendrr Chart of the Week showed that gross takings for a number of recent movies ('Star Trek', 'The Hangover' and 'Ice Age' correlates) correlated with their Twitter peaks.

Maybe all that says is you can read anything into statistics. I think it certainly has an impact and one thing looks clear: one way or another real-time (whether it is Twitter or something) will grow and its ability to build buzz (as a marketing tool) and to kill buzz with instant reviews, will only grow.

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Saving Newspapers - The Musical

It's an oldie, by today's standards, but still a goodie. In April, the East Bay Express - a freesheet out of Oakland, California released 'Saving Newspapers - The Musical', an underappreciated YouTube gem.

Handing out such pearls of wisdom as 'invest in internet porn' and, simply, 'boobs', the video is surprisingly poignant, and I'm hoping the editors at The Observer take notice - dumb it down, and throw in some off-the-cuff nudity - ipso facto, newspaper saved.

Yet, I'm happy to report that the East Bay Express is still up and running, despite not taking their own advice.

The Musical was accompanied with a humorous and on-point editorial, written by Stephen Buel, East Bay Express' editor, giving further examples of how newspapers can make money in this day and age, including:

-         Partnering with medicinal marijuana retailers to create branded 'buds'

-         A paid circulation model, which charges Republicans to have the East Bay Express NOT deliver the newspaper to their front stoop

-         Renting out the freestanding newsracks as homeless storage lockers

-         User-generated copyediting, and a Wikipedia fact-checking partnership

Well, for the time being, I don't live anywhere near Oakland, but if I did, I would probably be a regular East Bay Express reader, talented reporters who don't take themselves too seriously, it's the best of both worlds and the only way ahead, I'm afraid. The era of serious journalism is dead, well not dead, but I'm just going to read it online for free, long live the Onion.

It's just a damn shame that these are the kinds of publications shutting down every other week, but none the matter, sit back and enjoy the video, and imagine your newsroom being this much fun.

Paid content and closing TheLondonPaper

No one thing killed TheLondonPaper, but one of my first thoughts on hearing the sad news that TheLondonPaper was to close was is this part of Rupert Murdoch's paid content strategy?

The facts are pretty simple: London is the most competitive newspaper market in the world and NI Free Newspapers, which publishes the TheLondonPaper, posted a £12.96m loss this year and £16.48m last year.

Unless there is a radical shift in the economy there is little prospect of TheLondonPaper being profitable any time soon. London Lite doesn't make any money either and even after the withdrawal of its rival it still faces an uphill battle as does The Evening Standard, which leads online with TheLondonPaper's closure (London Lite doesn't have a website).

Whether this will be good news for The Evening Standard is tough to say while London Lite continues to publish. Besides, the Standard had problems long before the arrival of London's evening freesheets.

Given that News Corporation has stated that it intends to charge for all forms of online content, a free newspaper and its free website makes ever less sense. Maybe this is the reason that the website will close along with the print title.

Newspapers are closing around the world and unless publishers are making money out of content increasingly they are not going to publish it.

The closure of TheLondonPaper with its 500,000 copies daily is a radical example of that.

Rupert Murdoch is not usually the one to blink first, and he has in the past clobbered rivals with price wars (the Sun is still 20p), but given the changing economic model for content and the fall in advertising revenues not blinking first no longer makes sense.

For Associated Newspapers it might be a hollow victory. Yes its situation is immediately improved, but there is no change to the weakness of overall market conditions.

In his statement James Murdoch said that the move was about streamlining operations and focusing on its core titles. As News Corp prepares to consider a rollout of paid content it makes perfect sense.

Looking at the TheLondonPaper in light of paid content it looks like a remainder and one that has not been carried.

None of this, of course, makes getting money out of consumers for the content that News Corp plans to charge for any easier, but then we will have to wait and see what it does next. As one thing is for sure, Murdoch is full of surprises.

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Floodgates open on Hyperlocal as Seattle firm launches 43 sites

This must be hyperlocal week. Suddenly there is an avalanche of activity with the latest being that US media firm Fisher Communications is launching 43 sites in Seattle.

The regional media player is making a land grab that is likely to be repeated across the states if this week is anything to go by.

We started the week with MSNBC buying Everyblock.com and since then there has been a steady flow of news, mostly positive, save the Washington Post, which pulled the plug on its hyperlocal experiment LoudounExtra.com.

No one is yet sure if anyone is going to make any/much money, but increasingly it looks like media firms of any description must be in this market.

Other little news snippets on the hyperlocal market this week are the American University’s J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism choosing five news organisations to develop hyperlocal projects. It is to work with The Seattle Times, The Miami Herald, The Charlotte Observer, Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times and TucsonCitizen.com (newspaper that has become a web-only).

Also AOL-owned Patch is launching new sites in Summit, New Jersey and Darien, Connecticut, bringing the total number of hyperlocal sites in its network to eight.

Not to be left out of it back the UK, UK local reviews website TrustedPlaces has joined DMGT's 50 strong hyperlocal project that beta-launches this week.

The growing amount of activity is really encouraging for those who have been in the market for a while and it does look like competition will get fierce.

The Seattle market alone already has one newspaper (The Seattle Times), one former newspaper (Seattlepi.com), and 43 new sites.

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NCAA fails in sideline Twitter ban

A college football division (the American kind) has u-turned on its policy that attempted to clamp down on bloggers and amateur sportswriters, effectively 'banning' social media from its stadiums, by prohibiting fans from recording sideline video, audio or photographs - oh yeah, and the illegal Tweeting about games.

The NCAA's South Eastern Conference, arguably the US' most fearsome college football division, issued new rules for fans at all game events - no Twitter feeds, no Facebook photos, no YouTube videos.

Understandably, the outrage was swift and immediate, as hundreds of angry fans took to the internet to express their disbelief.

No Twitter feeds? Seriously?!

The official policy, released Monday, said fans could not "produce or disseminate (or aid in producing or disseminating) any material or information about the event, including, but not limited to, any account, description, picture, video, audio, reproduction or other information concerning the event."

Within a day, three leading media organisations sent a letter to the SEC, protesting the restrictions - and with due cause, the rules affected big media too (ie, the Twitter thing and SEC videos used on newspaper websites).

The SEC hastily backtracked on its policy, issuing a public, and defeated tweet (yeah, a tweet): "To our Twitter fans, we have heard you. We're working on clarifications to our policy and should have something done soon."

A SEC spokesman has since said: "The intent of the policy was never to eliminate social media" adding, "Twitter fans, please share the great times you have at our stadiums with your friends".

The spokesman, Charles Bloom, hit the nail on the head with this one: "We probably took traditional media rights language and tried to apply it in a new media world."

Hear, hear!

The revised policy now reads "personal messages of scores or other brief descriptions of the competition throughout the event are acceptable."

Games can't be recorded on video, but pictures can be taken for personal use.

College football in the United States is a huge billion dollar industry, with its fans renowned as some of the loudest, drunkest, most fervent louts in the world of sport.

Why the bigwigs at the SEC wanted to take away their fans Twitter and YouTube is understandable - money - but they honestly could not have thought that they were going to get away with such blatantly draconian restrictions.

Does it remind anyone of the state of the music industry, but on a larger, real life scale? Ivory towered suits issuing ridiculous thou shalt not's towards their dedicated fan base at the behest of their bottom lines?

If anything, it serves as an example of social media secretly worming its way into every facet of our waking lives. Who would have thought that Tweeting about a football match would be deemed illegal, like, ever?

Is this where we are headed, where live, public events are not to be broadcast through our own trivial means, seems like a step in the wrong direction to me.

Just another clumsy attempt of big-boardrooms trying to lock down the growth of social media, good luck with that.

Anna Wintour gets the web

News continues to filter out of Conde Nast Towers in New York as consultants McKinsey & Co comb the building. The latest snippet of news concerns Vogue editor-in chief Anna Wintour. Apparently she gets the web.

The news will come as a relief to many. It's tough when your top ed doesn't "get it".

According to the New York Observer, as part of McKinsey's 11-week tour of duty at Condé Nast (which recently sent Vanity Fair boss Graydon Carter to the...canteen), they have been looking very closely at Anna Wintour's Vogue and Klara Glowczewska's Condé Nast Traveler.

These two magazines are seen as the model for other Conde Nast magazines. Vogue is the ad-heavy big magazine model while Traveler is the smaller midsize magazine (but with hefty staff).

As well as the print magazines, McKinsey is looking at the web strategy of Conde Nast, which is a mess.

Anna Wintour's US Vogue doesn't have a website of its own. It lives at Style.com, while Traveler is represented online by Concierge.com.

If you type Vogue.com into Google you get taken to Vogue.co.uk with a big logo saying Vogue.com.

Anyway, Style.com, great URL that it is ain't Vogue. Maybe Anna Wintour has twigged this as well. As Condé Nast insiders have told The NY Observer in recent weeks that "Anna Wintour is beginning to 'get the web'". Isn't that like in the nick of time. Good work.

Maybe we will get to see this in the upcoming documentary film about the behind the scenes drama that surrounds Anna Wintour and Vogue. Called 'The September Issue' it is to be released in US theatres next week and is directed by R.J. Cutler.

This all comes after Conde Nast last month said it would close its standalone website Men.Style.com, which was the home of GQ on the web. It is easy to criticise in hindsight about how the decisions were made by Conde Nast not to trumpet its biggest brands on the web, but to develop portals -- so I will.

The whole portals strategy was fine back in the day, but it has been many years since most people realised that your biggest brands need to have their own well-developed web space. You can have portals alongside those, but make sure they have a reason for being.

It looks like a good bet that Style.com will go the way of Men.Style.com and US Vogue (as it should) will take control of Vogue.com.

Who knows what they will do for Traveler. The dotcom for that is owned by a cheeky travel website and blog – their passion is travel as well apparently.

The other portal site that Conde Nast has alongside women's fashion site Style.com and travel site Concierge.com, is foodie site Epicurious.com. What a name, it just sounds like a dodgy pun to me.

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FT: people will pay for general news content

There is a longish piece in the New York Times over the weekend looking at The Financial Times and its paid content strategy. The paper quotes John Ridding, the chief executive of the FT, insisting that people will pay for general news content.

It's a sort of Field of Dreams approach. You know, charge them and they will p(l)ay approach. I'm sure Shoeless Joe Jackson is on his way. There is an argument that if you say it enough you will convince not only yourself, but others out there as well (I'm not sure it is a very good one though). 

From the NY Times piece:

For other online publishers seeking to charge readers, the big question is whether consumers would be willing to pay for general news, as opposed to specialized financial news.

Some analysts doubt it, but Mr. Ridding said he thought they might. “I sometimes think there’s too much fatalism around — people throwing up their hands and saying it’s not possible for general publishers to charge,” Mr. Ridding said. “I think it is possible, and necessary, for them to charge.”

It's a tag team approach. Ridding's comments come a couple of weeks after Financial Times editor Lionel Barber told Channel 4 News why news organisations have to act now and charge for online content (and how they can do it like the FT).

More interesting that Riding's comments, which I think are plain wrong (people will not pay for general news -- lucky for the FT as it does not deal specifically in general news), is that the New York Times ran such a piece in the first place. Maybe the paper was just giving its readers a heads up of the charges that it is preparing to levy although the piece gives no new details on that.

What it feels like right now is like the dam is slowly cracking and any moment now the floodgates will open. Rupert Murdoch is planning some online charging coup and the Guardian Media Group is talking about "members clubs". Whose next?

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Hyperlocal; a goldmine or fool's gold?

Fast Company takes a look at the hyperlocal market that everyone is watching, which some say is a multi-billion dollar future of online, but might not amount to anything much more than a sizeable pile of nickels.

The projections say, according to Borrell Associates, that the hyperlocal market could (one day) be worth $15bn by 2013. Whether they happen or not, the big numbers are enough to attract the likes of The New York Times Company (the Local) and AOL (Patch) in the US and the likes of Newsquest, Trinity Mirror and Associated Newspapers in the UK.

But whether that cash will materialise is another question, considering how the growth rate for online advertising is not the steam train it once was.

The thing with Hyperlocal as Fast Company points out is that it is lauded by many, but success always "remains perpetually around the corner". The reason for this according to Mark Josephson, CEO of the hyperlocal aggregator Outside.in is that local advertisers are not online in force, but he insists they will be.

The piece also quotes Debbie Galant who runs Baristanet, one of the models for hyperlocal (championed by Jeff Jarvis), as saying only that they are making "real money" and that "ad revenue is six figures", but she won't go into more detail than that – probably because after costs there is not a lot left.

This growth in hyperlocal revenues is dependent upon a number of things. One is local advertisers ditching the Yellow Pages and local newspapers on mass, those mom and pop advertisers, which are not exactly overflowing with local classified advertising (anyone remember craigslist?).

Add to that their is an increasing amount of competition. The New York Times Co's Local project is going up against established local sites as well as the likes of Baristanet and Brownstoner in New York and Examiner.com, which has domains for sites in 70 US cities. The San Diego News Network is another established hyperlocal player, but look what is happening in that city. The San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper is to cut 112 jobs and says it too will focus on more local community news and advertising. It doesn't look like there are enough ad dollars to go around, which is part of the problem already.

For bigger advertisers to come in the hyperlocal market is also dependent upon sites having the right content to attract them. Local crime and townhall stories are not typically the kind of thing that many brands what to hook up with, but it is a catch 22,  to develop other content takes time and more importantly staff -- something of a problem today for America's struggling local media as papers close and jobs are cut.

The conundrum about hyperlocal appears to be that it can be profitable if you employ next to no one and your content is user generated and free, but if it is user generated and free then the quality and appeal of that content becomes an issue.

Fast Company quotes Jim Schachter, editor of digital initiatives at the New York Times, as saying: "We're talking about several hundred thousand dollars a year in personnel costs. I don't think the local digital-advertising market anywhere would cover those costs."

With those costs in mind, The NY Times plans – if its experiment proves successful – to license the Local's platform to bloggers in other towns across the US who would like to be associated with the Times.

"We could help those people mobilize their communities and gather local-advertising dollars in extremely low-cost ways. That could work, economically, for these local journalism entrepreneurs, and, at scale, it might work for us."

That, of course, brings back the question of the quality threshold, which you can't do without an investment and in so doing cut any profit and the reason for doing it in the first place.

But the pioneers insist that eventually someone will make it work. Somehow.


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Tweeting athletes: the curious case of Michael Vick

A strange trend in the world of sports has emerged, tweeting athletes, particularly within the NFL and NBA.

Zzz, boring. American. I know.

But yesterday, ESPN broke some interesting news, that Michael Vick had signed a two-year deal with the Philadelphia Eagles.

Those scratching their heads at the previous sentence should probably turn back now before it's too late.

But for the curious, Michael Vick was a superstar, highlight-reel, exciting, inspiring quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons, until 2006, when he was convicted of running a dogfighting operation out of his home, and sentenced to two-years in prison.

Oh yeah, and he was kicked-out of the NFL.

They were controversial times. Even though Vick oversaw the torture, drowning and etc. of a number poor, poor dogs, some felt the sentence was heavy handed, and were worried that a player with such exceptional talent would ever be welcomed back into the league.

Thanks to Twitter, we now know that players are ready and willing to welcome Vick back, with open arms.

Mashable has compiled a great list of tweeting NFLers all commenting on the Vick saga, like the evangelical (and excitable!) Saints running back Reggie Bush: "I think it's great the Mike Vick has signed with the Eagles! Everyone deserves a second chance! The only person who can judge us is God..."

Or the insane Chad Johnson (who prefers the handle Ocho Cinco, seriously): "Mike Vick and McNabb on the same team, damn!!!!!! Glad I don't play defense, good luck planning to stop that shh!!".

It's cool, see? I think half the fun is trying to translate what they're on about.

The question is, now that we can essentially interact with these superstar players, do we really need commentators, or sports 'journalists' anymore?

Just look at Shaq's Twitter, its hysterical, insightful and most importantly the real thing.

Plug John Madden's live Twitter feed to the bottom of the screen to call the play by play, that'd work for me.

I would rather hear what Peyton Manning thought of the Cowboys pass rush than some washed-up NFL 'personality'.

Obviously, the NFL has a huge opportunity on its hands if it embraces Twitter as a new way to reaching out to fans. Which is why I find it strange they're fining its players for doing just that. But they don't call it the 'No Fun League' for nothing.

Tweeting athletes is great, and the season hasn't even started yet. Although I can understand why the league doesn't want its players updating Twitter from the sidelines during games, anytime before or after should be heavily encouraged.

As for Vick, I think fans are still split on the guy. Some see him as a great athlete, others as a vile dog killer. Some just both (like me).

Vick doesn't have a Twitter account. But he should. It would be an excellent way for fickle fans to connect, or even vent their frustration, so he can clean some of the mud off his name.

It's so bad at Conde Nast: Graydon Carter spotted in the canteen

Job elimination experts McKinsey & Co are currently touring Conde Nast's New York office with one of those people zapper phasers. Okay, it’s a spreadsheet really, but the end result is all the same. No job is apparently safe unless you work at the New Yorker magazine.

The New York Observer has a long piece about the McKinsey's visit to Conde Nast's building at 4 Times Square, where the management consultancy firm is reviewing the way the magazine firm does business from top to bottom.

The piece has lots of telling observations and interviews from various editors about how bad things in the once super-glamorous magazine company (hey it must be, they put in two movies*) have got that even Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter has been seen, get this, in the staff cafeteria. Seriously. Apparently, he was checking out the stir fry options and looking uncomfortable. Maybe he was wondering if people really ate the food? Just a thought.

"I saw Graydon in the cafeteria this week!” said one business-side insider told the New York Observer. "In all my years here, I’ve never seen him in my life there. He was behind me in the line at checkout with his little swipe card. He was milling around uncomfortably with the commoners."

The reason he was down there could have something to do with the $5.3m interest free loan Conde Nast gave him, according to Gawker, to buy some four-story greek revival townhouse in Greenwich Village. Maybe they asked for it back.

People shouldn't fear too much as it wasn't clear he actually sat down and ate lunch, but apparently the sight of him put the Observer's source into a bit of a panic.

Either that or he could have merely been on a reconnaissance mission. He might return, or maybe he thought that really Conde Nast owed him at least one last splash of an order from the New York restaurant Balthazar where apparently Vanity Fair staffers would order takeouts of sandwiches and cheese plates several times a week.

Now it seems you are more likely to hear Conde Nast staff say things like "Let's go to Pret A Manger instead". Wow they're almost like us. It's scary.

Well not all of them. When it was initially revealed that McKinsey was being brought in, reports said there would be no sacred cows - staff at the recently closed Portfolio magazine and Men.Style.com. However, the New York Observer now says that  Conde Nast CEO Chuck Townsend has told the New Yorker's editor David Remnick that the magazine would be immune. Probably why he hasn’t been spotted in the staff canteen.

*The Devil Wears Prada – based on Conde Nast's Vogue and How To Lose Friends and Alienate People, based on Toby Young's time working for Graydon Carter at Vanity fair.

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Is the Mail Online heading for domination with change to moderation policy?

The news today that the Mail Online is to stop checking user comments before they go live could not only make it the most visited website in the UK, but possibly the one with the largest and most active community. A potentially very powerful combination.

New Media Age is reporting that Associated Newspapers plans to end its long standing policy of pre-moderation. It is, I think, concerns aside, a smart move.

The Mail Online has already stolen the crown of the UK's most visited newspaper website after it boosted traffic in June by 19% and in doing so, attracted over 29m users.

This saw it leapfrogging the Telegraph.co.uk and the Guardian.co.uk to become the most popular UK national newspaper site.

Its stories already attract a large amount of comments (this considering that some - we don't know how many - never get published for various reasons) and it is not uncommon to see articles on its homepage with several hundred comments.

The NMA article looks at some of the problems that ending pre-moderation could pose. There's the issue of what it could do to advertisers who suddenly find themselves next to offensive or legally problematic comments.

It is definitely a cause for concern, but it should be one that a well-funded newspaper website with an active loyal readership should be able to deal with.

One of the problems with pre-moderation is the wait. It can kill debate or the desire to debate. If people don't see their comment go up pretty swiftly they are more likely to be deterred from further interaction. That can hit traffic as well.

The only other title of note out there doing post moderation is the Guardian and it can get many hundreds of comments on its news and blogs posts. The Daily Express and Daily Star also post moderate, but there are so few comments on these sites that it is hardly any kind of comparison. It's lead story had eight comments and a quick look around did not uncover a vast amount of interaction.

A quick tally of this morning's homepages shows, even with moderation still in place, the Mail Online has the most comments. Its lead Baby P story had 113 comments; The Guardian with its jump in unemployment story had 60; the lead story on The Times Online (also unemployment) had one; and the Telegraph doesn't have comments on any of its stories.

Not exactly scientific, and to be fair Times Online has plenty of older stories with a high number of comments (its most commented from yesterday had 106).

All that said it will be very interesting to see what switching to a post moderation system does for the Mail Online. If the number of comments it is receiving with moderation is already high, with post moderation like the Guardian it could rocket. This will have interesting implications for its traffic, which could also receive a boost and perhaps helping to cement its position as the most visited on and commented upon website.

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Apple getting social with iTunes

A new month, and a new salvo of Apple rumours to wade through - this time concerning iTunes, with the web salivating over the prospect of an iTunes/Twitter/Facebook/Last.fm partnership.

Thing is, it ain't gonna happen.

It certainly looks like Apple is planning some sort of social networking integration with iTunes, and soon, but don't expect Twitter or Last.fm to be involved.

Those in the know have probably seen a couple of screengrabs from the purported iTunes 9, which curiously followed rumours that the newest version of Apple's music player would integrated with Twitter, Facebook and Last.fm.

The photos have since been debunked as a hasty Photoshop job, by someone with far too much time on their hands.

But even with photographic evidence, a rumour such as this just doesn't make sense.

The idea is that iTunes would broadcast what songs its users are listening too, to Twitter and Facebook profiles, which would be simply, annoying - especially those among us to keep music playing several hours of the day.

Furthermore, Apple has never been a company to jump on a bandwagon, especially concerning a faddish little microblogging website with major operational issues.

A partnership with Last.fm makes less sense. The two companies work in a similar vein, and Last.fm (as much as I love it) is far from an established brand, Apple would have nothing to gain. Many of the features that makes Last.fm shine, such as it's 'similar artists' tab, are available on iTunes anyways (iLike).

But Facebook. Maybe, just maybe. The two companies established a partnership a while back, by allowing iPhoto users to publish their pictures to their Facebook profiles.

Looking at the big picture, the rumours generally deduce that Apple is planning to push a social networking strategy through its iTunes platform, even though the details might have been mixed up.

Digging deeper into the rumour pile, it appears Apple is preparing to launch some sort of social media app, whether for iTunes, its OS desktop, or the iPhone, that would consolidate various streams into one juicy platform.

Sound suspiciously like FriendFeed - rather a FriendFeed killer, which gives this rumour (some) legs and puts some more weight behind the companies surprise sell-out to Facebook this week.

Better late than never, it looks like Apple is ready to embrace social networking, but likely on its own terms - a sort of "social media browser", which would allow users to search and share content with their friends.

Perhaps this will be part of Apple's plans to 'reinvent' the digital album, by including loads of additional content with iTunes purchases.

Apple rumours, as per usual, are common and vague, but this one is keeping an eye on. Speaking of which, where's my iTablet?