Tim's Picks

Two Hearst newspapers' websites have gone live with new sections from Demand Media, one of the content-generation companies that tap thousands of freelancers to generate countless articles.

Some observers argue that these so-called content farms are winning web traffic and ad revenue away from traditional publishers without matching the quality that traditional newsrooms provide.

Facebook's ad traffic is expected to post phenomenal growth - even as its ad prices rise, according to comments made by the company's COO Sheryl Sandberg. Advertisers have taken advantage of the stable pricing, with some of Facebook's biggest advertisers boosting spending 10-fold and a few increasing spending by as much as 20-fold or more, Sandberg told Bloomberg. (via MediaBuyerPlanner).

As if Facebook wasn’t live enough, the top social net recently debuted Facebook Live — a live video streaming channel. Along with special celebrity-oriented videos, the live video channel will be used for official Facebook announcements, press events, live chats with Facebook engineers and live streaming of its developer conference, f8, ReadWriteWeb reports.

StumbleUpon CEO and cofounder Garrett Camp recently talked about the social discovery site’s revamped ad system.

About six months on, the site reports that on top of a 20% growth in users, the year-over-year ad inclusion rate has doubled, with about 2,000 active monthly customers (a 20% increase) running around 3,000 campaigns daily.

Since the iAd announcement, the advertising world has been delighted by the idea of apps within apps. Video tech company Qoof is the latest to offer a similar solution — apps within rich media.

enableTV, the interactive TV software and services that in 2008 was spun out of Vidiom Systems by Vidiom founder, Tim Wahlers (see the article published on itvt.com, September 29th, 2008), announced its InterActive TV Application Center, which it bills as a "fully integrated solution providing a robust interactive application delivery and test system."

Rachael Ray, the best-selling cookbook author and TV personality, is expanding her brand in the digital arena with a new iPhone app and Twitter account.

The app, called Tasty Bytes, is similar to the growing number of foodie and celebrity chef apps in that it has a range of tools designed helps users get a meal from the grocery store to the table - besides, of course, the obligatory signature recipes.

Apple's hired an expert in near-field communications to be its new product manager for mobile commerce. This is big news, in ways you may not immediately grasp: Propelled by Apple's cachet and iPhone's appeal, wireless payment tech may now be about to sweep over the world.

Cox Communications, the third-largest cable company in the United States, will promote the TiVo Premiere digital video recorder to its subscribers in conjunction with its own video services. It is the first time that an American cable operator will make its full video-on-demand library available through a retail digital video recorder, while enabling access to competing online video services.

The more apps are built on its API, the easier it is for Foursquare to grow faster, which in turn would allow the company to start monetizing its efforts to bridge physical and digital worlds. Foursquare (and others like it) can essentially bring a cost-per-action business model to the real world, perhaps either supplanting or complementing traditional forms of advertising.