So the big guys like Rupert Murdoch and Barry Diller have already told us that paid content for newspapers is the wave of the future.

Remember not so long ago when Rupert Murdoch was espousing the future of paid content? It is unavoidable was the cry but there has been not much said since. That is, until Barry Diller stated his version of the story at the Goldman Communacopia conference as reported by the Business Insider.

Interesting data from Hitwise indicates that content-driven websites get a whole lot more traffic than transactional-based ones. To put a number on it, that would be 73% more.

Robin Goad of Hitwise shares the following graph comparing sites in the Shopping and Classifieds, Business and Finance, Travel, Entertainment, Computes and Internet -Social networking and Forums, News and Media, and Lifestyle categories. This is in the UK, mind you.

Depending on who you listen to the Facebook Lite offering that was inadvertently sent to many Facebook users is everything from a direct frontal assault on Twitter to a speed enhancer. Since this product was not even supposed to be released as it was it may not really matter what it really is because it’s not really ready to even ‘be’ quite yet. Two takes came from Mashable and TechCrunch and they are very different.

Have you signed up for Sponsored Tweets on Twitter? Or Magpie? Or TweetROI? Do you offer sponsored posts and paid reviews on your blog? If so, you might have to re-think how you share this information, thanks to a Terms of Service update from Facebook.

As if there wasn’t enough change on the Internet these days the Associated Press (AP) is now putting together a program that will cost anyone who uses anything that they publish a minimum of $12.50. While that may seem a bit much it gets even worse when you discover that that price is for using just 5 words or less of their material!

I long ago gave up trying to get spammers to "cease and desist" their scraping of Marketing Pilgrim’s content–I never was much good at playing whack-a-mole.

Well, it appears that The Associated Press loves carnival games as the NYT reports the news organization is determined to put an end to the scraping of its content.

YouTube is finally preparing to take on Hulu with premium content and better quality video from YouTube XL—preparing for a real big screen interface. You know, such as a television. Hulu is rather adamant about not going to television, so this could get to be a bit of a big deal.

Bill from SEO By The Sea published a good article entitled "Writing Content for Small Businesses Online", in which he talks about search taxonomies.

For those new to the topic, I thought I’d go over it, and show it applies to SEO strategy.

Comments are the backbone of the social web. Everything is going social if it has not already been that way for some time. Why is that? People are social by nature. It’s how we communicate. It’s how we learn. It’s how we teach. Do you find comments to be valuable resources? Share your thoughts.

There is no question that Twitter and RSS have some things in common. However, they are not the same, and Twitter will not kill the feed reader. This is a concept I have seen come up a number of times, and frankly, I just don’t see it happening, at least not without some dramatic changes in how Twitter is presented to its users.

Last week, Digg released the DiggBar, a toolbar that sits at the top of your browser as you view content from Digg. It frames the content not only with the bar itself, but with a custom Digg URL. The following clip demonstrates what it does if you have not encountered it yet.

Let’s pretend for a moment that you’re the newspaper industry. Your ranks are dwindling as even old stalwarts are dropping like flies.

Last week, Digg unleashed the much-anticipated DiggBar. It’s basically a StumbleUpon-like toolbar that sits at the top of your browser as you view content from Digg (and it comes equipped with a URL shortener).

The Associated Press has announced its plan to launch an initiative to protect news content from "misappropriation" online.

"We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories," says AP Chairman Dean Singleton.

Nielsen has shared results of its "State of the Media" research. Not that this fact is surprising, but television is still the most preferred gateway for media consumption.

Our exploration of utilizing content to increase conversion rates began with analyzing statistics to uncover opportunities for improvement, followed by how to create and implement good content to compel visitors to take action. The natural next step is testing.

Fair use is back in the news courtesy of a New York Times article on publishers being unhappy with the use of excerpts of their content. The main focal point of the article is Henry Blodget of Silicon Alley Insider, who recently quoted a WSJ columnist.

Nielsen Online’s VideoCensus indicates that in February, 17-month-old Hulu grew to become the second most popular video site (after the behemoth YouTube)—so, Hulu, what are you going to do now?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) writing, as a distinct style, was born in the Internet era and has matured before our very eyes in a relatively short span of time. Although it is evolving and maturing still, and will continuously do so, we can define some of the tried and tested steps of content optimization to help unique pages place at or near the top of search engine rankings.

If you’re a blogger who has been at it for a while, you’ve probably run across other blogs stealing your content at one point or another. These are commonly referred to as scrapers, and will often use your content to post Google AdSense ads and make money off your work.