LikeMe App for the Pre

Having one of the first apps on the new Palm Pre offers a swelling of pride, and a pain in the head. I will do my best to keep a smile on my face, but I am not in love with social media geared towards only liking things. It keeps thing positive, but doesn’t allow for much wiggle room of opinion. That being said, our site and our iPhone app are very useful and fun. Here is a somewhat shabby article written on the subject.

LikeMe, a social recommendation site similar to Yelp.com lets users rate and review local businesses, attractions, restaurants, and clubs. After you join the service, you can upload info about yourself, your favorite places, and your favorite things to do in order to kick start the service’s personalized social recommendation engine.

Now the app joins a handful of others (really, just a handful) on the new Palm Pre. But before you go and download this one, there’s something you need to consider about LikeMe: their reviews may be compromised.

At the beginning of this year, LikeMe came under fire when it came out that a lot of the reviews on the site were written by ad representatives for Village Voice Media (VVM), owner of over a dozen weekly papers and a LikeMe partner. The reviews, all good of course, focused on businesses that advertised in the VVM papers. Talk about a conflict of interest!

Read the rest of the article at: readwriteweb.com

VVM Sites Now Get 40 Percent Of Traffic From Blogs

This is actually quite a transition. Those involved in traditional media can understand the challenges of transforming 1 news organization around… print staff becoming web savvy, retail finding and shifting to new forms of revenue, IT staff gearing up for a complete digital transition… now try that times 15. We have a dedicated organization driven to succeed in this new arena. Thank you techcrunch.com for giving us a little pimpin’

techcrunch.com – The future of the weekly city paper is the daily blog. Hints of this future can already be seen at Village Voice Media, which owns and operates 15 of the top weeklies in the country, including the Village Voice, SF Weekly, and LA Weekly. Bill Jensen, the director of new media who oversees all the Village Voice Media sites tells me that 40 percent of pageviews comes from the blogs on the sites, up from 20 percent a year ago. Some of the more popular ones include columnist Michael Musto’s blog, Nikki Finke’s Deadline Holywood Daily, and Topless Robot.

Of course, the sites feature music listings, restaurant reviews, and articles from the print editions as well, but the blogs are driving an increasing portion of the traffic. The online and print newsrooms are combined and everyone is expected to post on the Web. Long gone are the days when a music reviewer could attend a rock show and turn in his copy three days later. “I don’t care how drunk you are,” says Jensen, “you post by 9 AM.”

Read the rest of the article at: techcrunch.com

Craig Wants an Apology… Good Luck.

Craig Craig Craig… This was a real glimmer of weakness from an .org that seemed untouchable. Of all the responses to a statement by a redneck/right-wing hillbilly complaining about online porn, you use classified competitors as an example? Huh? What about imgonnadoyourmominthebutt.com? Jeesh Craig, I expected more from a beatnik SF hippie.

bizjournals.com – Jim Buckmaster, CEO of classified ad business Craigslist, asked for an apology from South Carolina’s attorney general, who threatened to prosecute him because of sex ads on the site.

In a blog entry on Monday, Buckmaster said Henry McMaster’s threats of “criminal investigation and potential prosecution” were unwarranted and also unconstitutional.

McMaster, who is considering a possible run for governor in his state, made his threats against both Buckmaster and Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, as well as other employees of the San Francisco business. He said in a letter to Craigslist that the ads constituted prostitution and were therefore illegal.

Read the rest of the story at bizjournals.com.

Fun at The East Bay Express

For what it’s worth, I miss Stephen. We had daily contact and his drive is contagious.

Metro Pulse – I wish we had the time, energy, and photogenic qualities to do stuff like this:

The East Bay Express in Oakland is one of my favorite alt-weeklies; it’s really well written and they do stuff like run Sarah Palin songwriting contests. A few years ago, editor Stephen Buel managed to actually buy back his paper from former corporate overlord Village Voice Media. (Plus, back when I was living there, he let me write up some winners in their “Best of the East Bay” poll, though I was by no means an expert on local culture.)

The video is great fun, and the answer to the newspaper industry’s woes is not surprising.

VVM @ SXSW Part 1

The Daily’s are Drying Up

USA Today notices that San Francisco, Miami, Minneapolis or Cleveland may soon be without a daily newspaper. This is sad because then they’ll have to read USA Today. There’s always the fine Village Voice Media products in three of those cities. [USA Today]