Pfc. Bradley Manning will be arraigned on February 23rd on all 22 charges, including theft of public property and aiding the enemy, and could face a court-martial depending on the outcome. The U.S. government has already said that it will not seek the death penalty for Manning although he could receive a life sentence if convicted.

Earlier this month, Birgitta Jónsdóttir, who produced a movie based on a classified video that was was included in the leaked classified material, nominated Manning for the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize for his work with Wikileaks.

The newspaper industry has always been more interested in keeping money in-house rather than sharing even a little with others. Publishers have big egos, and depending on someone else to bring home the bacon doesn’t have much appeal, even with the newsprint industry facing financial troubles.

Even the newspaper-savvy duo of Yahoo’s Sue Decker and Hilary Schneider, architects of Yahoo’s HotJobs alliance with the print classified industry, aren’t appealing enough to keep the publishers’ eyes from wandering to other girls and fantasizing about their revenue undergarments.

Classified Intelligence recounted the recent deal with Kaango by Hearst and MediaNews, a $20 million infusion that gave them an 80 percent stake in the company. Kaango has deals with about a hundred newspapers for community-oriented classified sites.

There is no mincing of words when it comes to why Hearst and MediaNews bought into Kaango, as well as cutting Lee Enterprises in for a ten percent stake. They want to take on Craigslist as well as eBay’s classifieds product, Kijiji.

Details of the deal came as news to Yahoo, according to Classified Intelligence. A Yahoo spokesperson said the company was not aware of the Kaango announcement and requested more details about it from Classified Intelligence.

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Classified Intelligence cited the announcement, which was posted on the Craigslist forums:

Over the last 6 months we have received a lot of feedback in this forum and by email, the consensus of which is that a $25 fee for posting jobs in these four cities would be beneficial, with many recent comments to the effect that we may have waited too long to implement such a fee.

Though some have balked at the new fee, many Craigslist devotees welcomed the announcement. Classified Intelligence noted the impact of adding job posting fees in markets previously by the site:

Job ads are a cash-cow for Craigslist; the number of job listings in New York and Los Angeles dropped substantially when the fee began, “but the volume quickly rebounded and by 2007 had more than tripled in each city,” the company said.

“After an initial drop-off in ad volume (in Boston, San Diego, Seattle and Washington) similar to that experienced in NYC and LA, the volume of legitimate job ads in these four cities has more than doubled.”

In addition to the job fees, Craigslist charges $10 for brokered apartment listings in New York City. Classified Intelligence believes the site’s job listings perform better, as fees drive out the junk postings.

A 50 percent drop in listing fees, and the replacement of inexpensive email-based customer support with pricier telephone customer service, at eBay’s German division represents the company’s try at recovering from a downturn.

The Fear is in full effect at eBay.

Giving up revenue while adding costs shows this, as a new report from Classified Intelligence described eBay’s German woes:

The announcement came in the wake of signs that all was not well with the core business, which had prompted observers to ask whether the impressive growth phase of the 12-year-old marketplace might be drawing to a close.

In July, EBay Inc. said the number of products listed worldwide dropped 6 percent in the second quarter compared with the year-ago period. In Germany, the online publication iBusiness reported “a clear drop in the number of concurrent auctions running on EBay.de” in 2007. Axel Gronen, an EBay.de analyst, suggested the number of active new members might be declining from year to year.

With eBay Germany’s newly-rediscovered love for consumer-to-consumer business, Classified Intelligence suggested the growth potential on the professional seller side could be hitting a ceiling.

German sellers can place a listing, with photo, on eBay for about 67 cents. An earlier <a href=http://investing.reuters.co.uk/news/articleinvesting.aspx?type=media&storyID=nL04854337>Reuters</a> report about this said Germany and the US are eBay’s top two markets.

Profitability losses from their upgraded support, which lowered phone question costs to 14 cents from 59 cents per minute, and reduced listing fees will need to be offset with a larger volume of participants.

That will be the real trick for eBay.

Sellers should be eager to capitalize on the lower fees with more competitive pricing for buyers, and that could set up a nice cycle of growth for eBay to recoup these new costs.

eBay has been spending money on promotion on the US side of their business. Forbes cited one analyst who thinks the impact on margins will be offset by sellers using more auction features.

Listings have been rising since late August, after a year of declining, according to Forbes. eBay’s strategy looks like it’s working.

Save me. Save me from tomorrow
I don't want to sail with this ship of fools.
-- World Party's song Ship Of Fools is very appropriate

At the Los Alamos Nuclear Labs, a company called Los Alamos National Security manages the efforts to keep sensitive information out of the hands of the bad guys.

The most recent episode involving data loss makes it look more like we’ll see a mushroom cloud hanging over the crater that used to be Manhattan before they get their act together in the New Mexico deserts.

Only a few weeks after announcing "extensive security improvements" at the Labs, news of another data leak has emerged. Techworld said an errant email contained classified data made its way to members of the Los Alamos National Security board:

In January Harold P. Smith, a LANS board consultant and former Pentagon atomic weapons adviser, sent a message containing classified data to at least two other board members. He used the ordinary Internet instead of a secure Defense department network. The message was relayed to at least three more board members.

The incident has been described as comprising “the most serious breach of US national security,” and has been rated as Impact Measurement Index-1 (IMI-1), the most serious level of security violation.

Those board members received security sensitivity training, something they evidently did not have previously, according to the report.

Techworld’s article also recounted a couple of other entertaining yet horrifying incidents over the past year. One Labs staff member took a laptop to Ireland, where it was promptly stolen. The Labs claim information on the laptop was of a low sensitive nature.

Then there was the case of the drug dealer being busted with a USB stick in his possession. The stick just happened to contain "classified as Secret Restricted" data about nuclear weapons on it.

Before we ask why the terrorists hate us, maybe we should ask Los Alamos the same question. An outfit from Coolibar and Hawaiian Tropic Ozone 70 SPF sunscreen aren’t going to help against a nuclear blast.

Newspapers Sniping Over CareerBuilder

Online job classifieds at McClatchy’s existing newspapers have performed well in 2007. But the Knight Ridder papers it acquired, which use CareerBuilder as their employment presence on the Internet, have seen their job revenue drop 14.4 percent.

Classified Intelligence reported the awful truth McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt discussed at a recent Newspaper Association of America event. “We would prefer to stay with CareerBuilder … but we have to consider all options, which would include selling our share,” Pruitt said at the NAA’s Mid-Year Review.

At one point, Knight Ridder owned a third of CareerBuilder, as did Gannett and Tribune. When McClatchy bought Knight Ridder, the papers renegotiated the ownership. McClatchy ended up with 15 percent, a figure that has reduced its revenue opportunity, according to McClatchy VP of interactive media, Christian Hendricks.

Classified Intelligence indicated that neither CareerBuilder nor Gannett are too concerned about McClatchy crying foul now. CareerBuilder’s CEO said his firm would be successful “whether McClatchy’s in or McClatchy’s out.”

Gannett CFO Gracia Moore told Dow Jones that Pruitt “knew what the deal was when he signed up for it.” If comments were music, Moore’s statement would be a very tiny violin playing for Pruitt, it seems.

Classified Intelligence reported how Monster will respond to events like the million-share selloff its CEO and chairman, Andrew McKelvey, just conducted. Classified Intelligence writer John Zappe cited stock analysts who perceived the stock sale as meaning Monster isn’t going to be sold at a premium anytime soon.

They will build on their success internationally. Monster ranks well in Europe, with comScore figures showing the cumulative Monster properties ranking first in traffic there.

Some price cutting will take place, as they seek to undercut CareerBuilder for listings:

Monster, like CareerBuilder, took a price increase at the end of last year that raised the single job-posting price to $475 (vs. $419 at CareerBuilder and $349 at HotJobs for a specific geography). Monster now cut its single-listing price back to $395 and reduced its multiple posting packages as well.

Monster will take other strategies from Europe, and bring them to the United States. One of those will be the implementation of mobile services for US customers. Monster Mobile will come to the US, but a date has not been announced.

Another hasn’t been connected to a US move, but we would be surprised if it didn’t happen. Zappe said Monster wants to grab passive job-seekers, those who have a job and are desirable to other companies due to their skills and experience.

That passive market has been coveted in the US as well. Monster will have to communicate to people the adage that the best time to look for a better job is when you already have a job. First, they will refine that strategy in Europe and build on their existing strength on the Continent.

The news zipped around Yahoo today via an internal email from Hilary Schneider, Finnegan’s boss. Classified Intelligence reported on the announcement earlier today.

Schneider credited Finnegan for his work on constructing the partnership with 12 newspaper companies, encompassing 264 newspapers. Finnegan joined Yahoo in April 2002 as EVP and GM of HotJobs.

Also, Schneider said Finnegan remarked last fall that he planned to look into entrepreneurial opportunities once the newspaper deals had been completed. Classified Intelligence said, "He was not expected to stay long after Schneider joined the company."

Schneider had been Finnegan’s successor as president at Knight Ridder Digital. She became his boss upon arriving at Yahoo in 2006.

Numbers from Compete show HotJobs enjoyed a spike in traffic through December and January, but is now relatively flat compared to the same period last year.

Google Flips PennySaver With Ad Deal

When the PennySaver deal was formally announced during a New Orleans meeting of the Association of Free Community Papers, Classified Intelligence elicited this money quote from a PennySaver representative:

“This could give Google the

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/google-flips-pennysaver-with-ad-deal-2007-04/feed 1 http://www.webpronews.com/online-video-shifts-into-high-gear-2007-03 http://www.webpronews.com/online-video-shifts-into-high-gear-2007-03#comments Wed, 07 Mar 2007 21:25:44 +0000 Doug Caverly http://www.webpronews.com/?p=35926 “This is my car. That’s where I spilled coffee. Oh, and this is where the dog vomited.” All right, so perhaps that wouldn’t be the best use of online video advertising. But according to a new report, automotive online video classifieds - and many other types of car-related, Internet-only videos - are on their way.
]]> “This is my car. That’s where I spilled coffee. Oh, and this is where the dog vomited.” All right, so perhaps that wouldn’t be the best use of online video advertising. But according to a new report, automotive online video classifieds – and many other types of car-related, Internet-only videos – are on their way.

Classified Intelligence, a Florida-based consulting group, has proclaimed that “[t]his is the year video becomes an integral component of online auto advertising.” If you doubt the group’s word, that’s okay – it also relayed the opinions of ad-service providers, automobile dealers, and representatives from sites such as Edmunds.com.

Each person had his or her own aspect of the market to promote, but they all indicated that online video will become an omnipresent factor in the automotive experience. From manufacturers (think BMW’s “The Hire” series), to dealerships (an Acura dealer named in the report already takes “short videos of certain cars”), to private buyers and sellers, it seems that everyone is expected to hop on board.

Some of the trends and technologies on which the concept depends are certainly taking off: Spending on online video ads is going up, broadband penetration is steadily increasing, and mobile video, as Classified Intelligence described it, is “surging.” And that’s all in addition to popular sites such as StreetFire.net, or the more general-purpose YouTube.

Classified Intelligence’s report is titled “Auto Advertising 2007: Are You Ready to Roll Video?” The answer appears to be an emphatic “yes.” All sorts of nifty stuff should follow, and, with any luck, not too many clunkers will fall into the mix.

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