In a survey taken in the early part of December, 40 percent said they get most of their national and international news online, up from 24 percent in Septembe 2007, according to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. The internet has surpassed all other media except television for that news with 35 percent use newspapers with 70 percent saying they go to television.

But 59 percent younger than 30 say they get most of their national and international news online. The same percentage cites television. In September 2007, 68 percent said television as oppsed to 34 percent on the Internet.

What does this mean? Somebody better come up with an online advertising model that works for newspapers and magazines or else quality journalism going to decline quickly.

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Haute Secure introduced a free online service that will allow consumers to detect and halt Internet-borne computer code created to steal private data. The service is similar to those offered by Symantec and McAfee.

Businesses can pay for Haute Secure to regularly scan their sites for damaging code. The fees start at $20 a month, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Glam, a network that targets women with its own sites and its online publishing partners, announced today that it raised $64.6 million from investors and secured an additional $20 million in debt. The equity-financing round is led by Hubert Burda Media, which publishes more than 260 magazines and invests in about 25 digital holdings. Hercules Technology Growth Capital is delivering the debt financing.

The new capital will fuel Glam’s global expansion in 2008 across new territories and categories, focusing on transforming brand display advertising online. The company will target display because revenue from banner ads and its ilk is quickly outpacing traditional sources of ad revenue like print and television, Glam says.

“Glam Media is ideally situated as an influential player in the emerging global digital media landscape,” said Samir Arora, chairman and CEO of Glam Media. “In 2007, Glam Media was the fastest-growing in comScore Media Metrix Top 50 properties, becoming the number one women’s property on the Web in the U.S. with unprecedented speed. With fragmentation increasing on the Web, our proven distributed media network model both supports our key publishers and is the optimal way to bring premium brand display advertisers to the Web.”

Adconion, an online ad network, plans to announce that it has closed an $80 million investment led by Index Ventures and Wellington Partners, the Wall Street Journal reports. London-based Adconion will use part of the funding to expand its operations stateside – the remainder will be used on new technology and acquisitions, the Journal writes.

Adconion partners with large publishers, advertisers and agencies to connect all parties on its ad network; the platform combines behavioral targeting, predictive optimization and media to sell ads that appear on north of 350 Web sites.

Networks like Glam and Adconion have a better shot at weathering a significant economic downturn because they’re specialty shops with distribution networks; goliath destinations like Yahoo, Google and MSN are left to lumber clumsily about while smaller, nimbler companies can react swiftly and accurately to consumer and client needs.

Content providers will be able to customize content for consumption by end users, using community based, geographic, demographic and behavioral data. So far, Stream Syndicate has been adopted by a number of its customers including WTVG Toledo, Quincy Newspapers, thirteen ABC, CBS and NBC television affiliates, Village Voice Media and the Arizona Daily Star.

“Stream Syndicate is a brand our company has been cultivating for years. Under this brand, we’re pleased to be releasing what we believe to be the next generation of advertising delivery,” David Ide, Chief Executive Officer for Modavo, said in a release. “This introduction leaves Modavox well positioned within the growing online advertising market. Most importantly, we are providing our customers with an advertising delivery platform that gives them more features for less of their advertising spend, a true win win. In fact, because we own our patented platform we can help our customers achieve greater margins and advertising yields through fixed cost solutions our competitors simply don’t offer.”

BoomBox Video 3.0 will be utilized in a launch of a news distribution system for the Black Hills Pioneer’s South Dakota News Network in March that features a citizen journalist video submission system and advanced affiliate broadcasting capability. The system is also being utilized by West Virginia Media Holdings, Inc. supporting live remotes and on-demand news distribution for news operations throughout West Virginia.

Modavox produces online audio and video broadcasts and offers online tools to reach targeted niche communities worldwide.

Scarborough studied the top 50 local markets and discovered that a growing online presence is compensating (in part) for the precipitous decline in print readership. From August of 2004 to March of 2007, website readership grew 14%, but the increase online only mitigates the loss of print readership by 28%.

“The Internet has injected new life into an industry that has been battling declining audiences for decades. There is a new era of opportunity knocking at its door — one that did not exist previously,” said Gary Meo, senior vice president, print and digital services, Scarborough Research. “Newspaper websites, together with other products such as free daily papers and various niche publications, are part of a powerful advertising portfolio.”

“Newspapers need to get the story out about the value of their Web site readers to agencies and marketers, especially as the Internet’s role in the marketing mix continues to grow. Brands have new cross-promotional opportunities, as people are interacting with newspapers in multiple ways: reading the printed publication, visiting the Web site, and using other products like free dailies or niche publications,” Meo said.

Why Microsoft will win
While online service providers like Google and Yahoo have focused almost their entire business models on online services, Microsoft has maintained a vision, albeit a cloudy one, on the seamless integration between internet and desktop. Back in 1996, when Microsoft was kicking Netscape’s hiney with their shiny new Internet Explorer 4, they also introduced Windows Desktop Update, which moved Windows 95′s shell, Windows Explorer, onto an Internet Explorer-based platform, adding now common Windows Explorer elements like the address bar, and forward & back buttons. Windows Desktop Update also came with something called Active Desktop, which was designed to let users seamlessly integrate HTML content and widgets like stock tickers and weather reports, with their desktop wallpaper — something that Yahoo’s Widgets and Apple’s Dashboard do now.

Obviously Microsoft’s attempt at integrating the desktop with online data was all thumbs. Active Desktop frankly sucked, but it shows that Microsoft was clearly thinking about full-on internet integration long before anyone had realized the web could have version numbers. Because of mediocrity and because of a lack of competition, Microsoft pretty much gave up dabbling in online integration for a long time to focus on their core businesses.

It’s not easy to move away from a business model that brings home several billion dollars worth of bacon every year. But clearly some LED in Bill Gates’s mind suddenly flipped on again. Maybe it was all the hype over Google, maybe it was the buzz that follows anything Web2.0-related. Who knows? Something clicked, and Microsoft began examining online integration again. In June 2005, Microsoft announced they would be fully integrating RSS with their Internet Explorer 7 and their upcoming operating system, Vista (then known as Longhorn). In November 2005, Microsoft began re-branding many of their MSN services into Windows Live, which they have been constantly updating with new features to mach services offered by Google and Yahoo. And also in November, Microsoft launched a closed beta for their MSN adCenter to rival Google’s contextual ad platform.

There’s been a lot of speculation about desktop PCs eventually becoming thin clients, with all services being provided off-site by a third party. Both Google and Yahoo offer some desktop software, notably their instant messenger clients, but they’re still focused on driving customers online. Every computer, no matter how thin, needs an operating system. And guess who’s in the operating system business? Microsoft wants to destroy the line between desktop and Internet, and OS-level integration is the only way to do that. The operating system is the gateway to the Internet, not the web browser. The long-standing Microsoft vision of braiding online and desktop together is what gives them a clear advantage over their online service competitors. Oh yeah… that and revenue of nearly $40 billion a year.

Chinks in the armor
Despite Microsoft’s vision and the massive resources they have to draw on, there are a couple of things that could knock them off the one-way track to the top of the web services industry:

• Microsoft loses speed. If Microsoft truly is an overweight behemoth, and they can’t develop services fast enough to satisfy the fickle consumer, they will lose agility and be quickly overtaken by others. Microsoft has taken steps to avoid this; the most noticeable one was splitting the company up into three nearly-independent divisions in September 2005: Microsoft Products and Services, Microsoft Business, and Microsoft Entertainment and Devices.
• Microsoft loses their OS advantage. It’s not likely, given consumers familiarity with Windows, and Microsoft’s partnerships with PC manufacturers. But if Windows somehow becomes dethroned by another operating system, it could spell disaster for their online efforts as well. Contenders could be Linux on the business-side, or Apple’s OSX on the consumer side. Also, if Google were to release a polished, public version of their in-house Goobuntu version of Linux, it could cause some problems for Microsoft. But Google has publicly stated that their operating system is for in-house use only.
• Microsoft avoids standards. If Microsoft, while they’re still developing their online services ignores standards-compliance, say making Web2.0 pages that only work with Internet Explorer, they will fail. It’s a strategy Microsoft used before Firefox to try and get more people to use IE. It’s failed and people hate it. ’nuff said. The point of making general services available online (like email, or personal data management), whether they’re ad-supported, or paid, is to make them available to as wide an audience as possible.

MS contextual ads
Tales of text-ad blindness aside, Microsoft must release a superior contextual ad platform. There’s no question that Google’s AdWords and AdSense combo are what has propelled them to the top of the online charts. It’s Google’s core business, and where they make the big bucks. Google’s success also illustrates the success of self-serve CPC text advertising itself. It’s a platform that not only brings in revenue for Google and lets them offer most of their services for free, but it also lets small web publishers earn money from advertising themselves.

If Microsoft wants to challenge Google on Google’s own turf, it has to be done here. MSN adCenter has been in a closed beta since late 2005, which means that Microsoft is giving some serious thought to its development. Consumers increasingly expect their web services to be free, and advertising is one of the few ways to generate revenue from a free online service.

Microsoft: past and future
Microsoft’s past attempts at integrating online data and services failed not because of a lack of vision, but because of a lack of technology. It was something no one had ever done before, so there were no standards, and no competition to drive development forward. It’s only now that technologies and web standards have been developed and pioneered by others that Microsoft can realize their original vision for the Internet, making the gap between online and offline data seamless and invisible. And it’s Microsoft’s offline core that will cause them to succeed online.

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