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UK government pulls YouTube ads over hate speech concerns (update)
The UK government has pulled adverts from YouTube after a report from The Times found they were running alongside extremist content. Ads for campaigns such as promoting blood donation and Army recruitment have been restricted after the apparent failings of Google's ad platform, which is supposed to work within guidelines set by the advertising party. Other UK brands, including Channel 4 and The Guardian, have also pressed the pause button on advertising with Google after learning their names were appearing alongside content from the likes of hate preachers and rape apologists.
The Times UK offers digital newspaper subscriptions with subsidized Nexus 7
While News Corporation's big tablet newspaper experiment, The Daily, may have ended with a whimper, it's not stopping the global media company trying new strategies to pick up more (paying) digital readers. The Times, one of the only UK national papers to keep its content firmly behind a paywall, has decided to offer a discounted Google Nexus 7 tablet alongside its digital subscriptions. Knocking £149 from the original £199 price of the 32GB Nexus 7, the device will arrive accompanied by an 18-month subscription with access to the full site and its mobile apps, costing £18 per month, discounted to just shy of £300 in total if you're willing to pay it all upfront. However, it's not the first time we've seen a news organization fold in a gadget incentive for new subscribers -- Barnes and Noble offered discounted Nooks alongside one-year subscriptions to The New York Times at the start of the year. UK readers can check out the deal at the source below.
Mozilla Persona sign-in launches in beta, skips the social networking ball and chain (video)
We all know those web pages where the only alternative to a site-specific login is a social networking account. That's not very reassuring for anyone skittish about linking their commentary to a Facebook account relatives might see, if they're even willing to join a social network in the first place. Mozilla has been aware of that hesitation long enough to have just released its long-in-development Persona sign-in service as a beta. Although it has the same kind of simple approach to a login as a Facebook or Twitter pop-up window, Persona's emphasis is on privacy: it stops paying attention the moment credentials go through, keeping any diatribes or subscription details from landing in social streams or central databases. Users don't have to play a rousing game of guess-the-username, either, as they just need to sign in with one or more familiar e-mail addresses and a single password. Persona faces an uphill battle in getting web developer adoption when the establishment sign-in services are open to hundreds of millions of internet citizens, but it does have The Times' online crossword section, OpenPhoto and Voost as early poster children -- and anything that lets the privacy-minded join the party has our vote.
UK's The Times becomes WoW pusher this Saturday
This Saturday, UK newspaper The Times will offer readers a disc with a 14-day trial of World of Warcraft. The edition will also include an eight-page guide to the game. Like a good drug dealer, Blizzard knows that you just have to give a customer that first hit of WoW to keep them coming back for more. The only real difference between a drug dealer and Blizzard is that dealers can't advertise in The Times -- well, not legally.We can certainly expect Blizzard to start using more unorthodox approaches in growing their customer base. With 8.5 million WoW players, they've got plenty of money to blow on marketing now and continue the march toward the mind-blowing 10 million user mark. Blizzard is sure to announce their upcoming WoW expansion in the next few months, along with whatever new title they're working on.
