Earlier today CNN.com invited people to check out their new website at the One Time Warner Center office in New York City. At the same meeting CNN President Jim Walton announced that the news company increased profits year over year. CNN receives 38 million visitors per month and has about 100 million monthly video views. In the websites entire history, it received 121 billion page views. The new CNN.com will launch on Monday. The Cable News Network is owned by Time Warner.
The iPhone finance section is heating up now that CNNMoney has stepped into the market. The CNNMoney application is currently one of the top free Finance applications on the iTunes App Store, competing against companies such as Bloomberg, Associated Press, and The New York Times.
The CNNMoney application is a portal with a built in stock search engine, market index tracking tool, company and economic news, video highlights, and sharing feature. There is a tool called My Stocks to add the stocks that you want to track.
News about real estate, small business, technology, autos, jobs, and personal finance can be added to the homepage of the application. Additional headlines can be added from Fortune and Money Magazine as well.
Personally I believe that the application looks a bit generic and could use something to make it stand out from every other finance news application, but that is just my opinion. Some people are comfortable looking at generic finance news applications. The operating system required for the application is iPhone OS 2.1 or greater.
Conservative news reporting agency FOX news and social network MySpace have launched a citizen journalism website called uReport. On uReport, MySpace users can contribute videos, pictures, stories and add their favorite FOX News personalities such as Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. So far I think the website design itself looks poorly designed and executed.
There is literally nothing under the World, Entertainment, and Politics section as of right now (screenshot below). Based on first impression, I would have no reason to come back to the website. uReport is very similar to the citizen journalism service put together by CNN called iReport.
Using Facebook, CNN iReport contributors can send footage, photos, etc. Initially iReport had some flaws because someone had posted a story about Steve Jobs having a heart attack. This caused Apple’s stock to plummet temporarily. Since that event iReport has been monitored closely.
Both citizen journalism services have their own advantages and disadvantages. MySpace has over 150 million users and CNN airs in over 100 million households on TV. Both services are also competing against Twitter users where people are quickly reporting the news and uploading pictures as it happens.
This is the first time I’ve heard that a Twitter account has been acquired where the buyer was actually believed to be the product owner to begin with. The product is an account called CNNbrk on Twitter. CNNbrk reports breaking news that occurs on CNN and it has been managed by James Cox over the last two years. Today the account has almost 1 million followers and it is racing with Britney and Ashton to hit 1 million followers. CNN was personally working with Cox on the account for over two years.
CNN.com probably received additional pageviews by the hundreds of thousands through the CNNbrk account so it is likely that CNN paid a healthy amount to take control of it. The financial details were undisclosed. If you’re interested in following Cox on Twitter, visit him at: http://twitter.com/imajes.
Social media will be in full effect during Inauguration day. Tweets will be sent back-and-forth, Flickr enthusiasts will be snapping pictures away, live streams of the event will be all over the Internet, and people will be able to watch the event from their mobile phones.
Twitter: Tweet tweet! The amount of tweets being sent back-and-forth on Twitter tomorrow will be so substantial that the company is doubling their capacity. Current TV and Twitter have partnered to showcase interesting tweets throughout the day tomorrow.
Live Streaming: The New York Times, Hulu, Joost, and UStream.tv will be live streaming the inauguration event. Anyone that owns an iPhone can watch the inauguration on their phone using UStream’s iPhone application.
Flickr: Flickr will is hosting an event at a bar nearby the inauguration in Washington D.C. Photo enthusiasts will be able to see images pulled from the election and from the induction ceremony.
Microsoft and CNN are working on a way to release a digital panorama of the event using Microsoft’s Photosynth software. Microsoft is looking for professional photographs and user-generated photos to put together a final panorama of the event.
iPhone Application: There is a free 2009 Presidential Inauguration Guide iPhone application available for those who are travelling to D.C. The application lets iPhone users look up public transit information, find Wi-Fi hot spots, and includes a Zagat guide for the city.
