In 2007 News Corporation (NYSE:NWS.A) bought Dow Jones, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal and WSJ.com for $5.6 billion.  At the Goldman Sach’s Communacopia conference today, News Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch announce that WSJ.com’s online revenue will grow by $100 million per year over the next few years.  The site was redesigned this week.  For advertisements on the homepage, News Corporation charges $100,000 per day.  MySpace charges $500,000 per day and up to $1 million.

In response to the Google missing revenue expectations for powering contextual ads on MySpace, Murdoch stated “It’s going fine. They knew they wouldn’t make the $300 million the first year, and they wouldn’t make it the next year, and by the third year they’ll be very close. But take a look at the market out there. If they didn’t renew, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) would be out there in a minute with a big check.”

Last year, WSJ.com has about 2 million paper subscribers and about 1.1 million online subscribers.  WSJ.com was started in 1996.  The last time WSJ.com had a design change was in 2006.  And that was the first time WSJ had ads on their sites. 

Loomia Inc. put together an application on Facebook that shares the news stories that users have read on certain publications, most notably, The Wall Street Journal.  The application is supposed to display what other friends and groups read the same articles that another user has.  This is a great concept, but the application is still somewhat buggy.

Below is a screen shot of what the application looks like on my Facebook profile page.

In the above screen shot, I have not read any of listed stories, but it still shows up anyway.  Referring to the above screenshot, the application is supposed to show how many friends, groups, and people in my network have read those same stories.  Those links are all broken.  But when you click on “Click to see more popular articles,” a new page will load and the application appears to be running better there.  See below the below screen shot:

I clicked on the groups link for the MySpace related article and found that the article was popular among 4 groups that I’m a part of on Facebook.  So the application is doing something right, but I’d like to see it populate the articles I read so I can show it off in my profile page.  Not have random articles appear.

Other partners involved with the SeenThis? application includes NBC Universal and CNET.  NBC wants to have this app track what users are watching on their site and having the application show the users’ friends what he or she watched.  I think this is a better use of the application especially since the user is opting in. 

Microsoft announced yesterday that they are the exclusive provider for advertising on The Wall Street Journal web site.  This is a big win for the Redmond, Wash.-based software conglomerate.  Microsoft has similar deals with Digg and Facebook.

Through this deal, Microsoft will also power the ads for Barrons.com, MarketWatch.com, AllThingsD.com, and other WSJ-owned online properties. 

“Relevant and targeted digital advertising is important to our business and to the quality of the experience that we deliver to our users,” stated Gordon McLeod, President of The Wall Street Journal Digital Network. “Microsoft’s state-of-the-art advertising platform will enable us to dramatically improve our revenues from this key sector, and we look forward to working together.”

Altogether, the websites in The Wall Street Journal Digital Network generate 20 million unique visitors per month.  The Microsoft ads will start appearing in February.

“This deal is a significant win for Microsoft for two key reasons. First, it makes the extended Microsoft advertising network the premier destination for advertisers interested in reaching financially minded users, as it complements our offering in this vertical through MSN Money and other syndication partners,” stated Brian McAndrews, Senior VP of Advertiser and Publisher Solutions at Microsoft. “Second, this deal is a strong indicator that we’re gaining significant traction with our advertising platform. The Wall Street Journal Digital Network is one of the largest financial services publishers in a very dynamic vertical segment, and we’re delighted to add it to our portfolio.”

Microsoft affirmed their position in the digital advertising industry through its acquisition of aQuantive for $6 billion in May 2007.

[Information Source: Microsoft PressPass]

Talk about irony. I just renewed my subscription to WSJ.com for $9.95/month today and Kevin Rose up and decides that “The Wall Street Journal Online is adding Digg buttons across the entire site, and you’ll now have full (free) access to the articles submitted to Digg. The Digg buttons have started appearing on WSJ.com articles tonight [Digg blog].”

Did I read that correctly? WSJ.com articles that are submitted to Digg can now be read for free? What if I use my Digg account to submit every WSJ.com article I’m interested in, just so I can read it for free and save myself the $9.95/month? Or wait, I have a better idea, how about Rupert Murdoch hurries up, buys Dow Jones and WSJ.com, and makes WSJ.com for free like he said he was going to.

Regardless, I think this is a great move for WSJ.com. Its great to see big media companies embrace Web 2.0 technologies like Digg and Sphere. Digg users will have access to more information. WSJ gets more people to read their content, thus generating higher advertising revenue. But I think for publishers like myself, WSJ adding Sphere is a bigger deal because it gives us an avenue to promote our related content and opinions on the WSJ also.

Now that The Wall Street Journal is in the pockets of Rupert Murdoch and his News Corp. crew, Murdoch has the power to make changes to the most powerful financial news publication at his own discretion.  And Murdoch said that he might make The Wall Street Journal free.  The advantage of this is that more users will flood into the web site and that would increase advertising opportunities. 

But there are a couple problems with making the WSJ free.  Less people would want the actual WSJ newspaper.  With less people wanting the newspaper, that would mean less jobs for paper boys and the graphic communications department.

The second problem is that the U.K. equivalent of The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times might be pressured to become free online too.  The Financial Times is owned by Pearson PLC (NYSE:PSO).

Usman Ghazi, a Dresdner Kleinwort analyst stated, “If the Wall Street Journal goes free, the marginal buyer of the FT is going to say ‘hang on, why am I paying for a service I can get for free elsewhere?’”  The price of the online subscription of The WSJ is about $99 and FT.com subscriptions range from £99 to £400.

Polo Tang, a UBS media analyst has a different viewpoint than Ghazi though.  “Even assuming a worst case scenario, where all these (Web) subscribers were lost, there would only be around a £7 million impact, suggesting only around 1 percent downside risk to group profits,” stated Tang.

Regardless, as long as there is free content out there, plenty of advertising will follow.

Reference:
[1] Reuters: Murdoch free wsj.com plan raises risk for Pearson

The Wall Street Journal is a part of American history and has set the standards for today’s journalism. I’d say the Journal is nothing short of being the world’s most renown newspaper. Everyday the Journal makes its way to the doorstep of millions of households all over the nation and its content reaches people all over the world. And now, News Corp. has wrapped its icy grip around it through its definitive agreement with Dow Jones & Company Inc. News Corp. is putting up $5.6 billion to do so.

“It appears that News Corp. is set to enjoy a successful ending to its masterful pursuit of Dow Jones,” stated Deutsche Bank analyst, Doug Mitchelson. “Cost synergies should be meaningful and could offset the dilution the market fears from the deal.”

If I were to summarize my thoughts in a couple words about the parent company of MySpace, News Corporation’s definitive agreement of the Dow Jones/The Wall Street Journal announced today, they would be: “total clusterf**k [pardon my language].” Why do I say this? I don’t trust the spam, porn, and pedophiles that are constantly crawling on MySpace whatsoever. Now take the exact opposite and you get the WSJ. The WSJ stands for education, sophistication, and global progression. These two companies mix just as well as water and oil.

Any thoughts? MySpace lovers, try to be unbiased in comments.

I just received an e-mail a few minutes ago with the announcement that AllThingsD.com is live and online.  AllThingsD is a news content website spun-off of The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).  The e-mail came from Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher who wrote:

That’s right, it’s finally live. Thanks for waiting. We appreciate your patience. But we couldn’t have launched until we were absolutely ready. Walt never would have been the same if he’d had to pan his own Web site. You know what a bad Mossberg review can do to the ego. Thankfully, we didn’t get one. And today AllThingsD.com, the Web extension of our D: All Things Digital executive conference, is live online and awaiting your visit. There’s a lot to see, so here are a few good places to start.

Some of the places mentioned include BoomTown, Walt Mossberg, Digital Daily, Voices, and video posts from Kara.

Both Mossberg and Swisher are both involved with the Wall Street Journal.  Mossberg is a creator and author of the Personal Tech column at the WSJ and Swisher is the author of BoomTown in the Marketplace section.

Previous coverage of AllThingsD on Pulse 2.0 is available at:
http://pulse2.com/category/all-things-digital/

Below is a screen shot of some of the content that is currently on the website:

Yesterday, I wrote about some big news by Dow Jones & Company Inc.  They are acquiring eFinancialNews for $51.8 million.  Now The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), a Dow Jones publication is launching a spin-off website called AllThingsD.com (The “D” stands for Digital).

The producers of AllThingsD is Walt Mossberg and and Kara Swisher.  Mossberg is the creator and author of the Personal Technology column in The WSJ since 1991.  Swisher is the author of a section called “BoomTown” which appears on the Marketplace frontpage in The WSJ.

John Paczkowski, a previous Good Morning Silicon Valley correspondent is also joining on board for the project.  The website is expected to launch tomorrow.