WebProNews

Newsday To Charge For Online Access

Newsday said today it will begin charging $5 a week for most of its online content. Newsday said it will start charging for access next Wednesday, except for its customers who are current home subscribers or those who are Optimum Online customers, the Internet access service offer by its parent company Cablevision.

Botnets Driving Click fraud Traffic

There was a significant jump in click fraud traffic from botnets in the third quarter of 2009, according to the latest data from Click Forensics. Click Forensics told WebProNews that the amount of click fraud traffic from botnets generally hovers around 33 percent, and it believes the sudden rise may be to due to the increasing sophistication and proliferation of botnets. Botnets accounted for 42.6 percent of all click fraud in Q3 2009, more than doubling in the past two years and up from the 27.5 percent reported for the same quarter last year.

MySpace Introduces New Music Features

MySpace is making a big push to reposition itself in the social networking space by introducing a number of new music offerings. The social network has rolled out what it calls a new comprehensive MySpace Music Video experience, a MySpace Artist Dashboard, and the ability for users to now purchase music on iTunes. "Artist Dashboard and Music Videos are an important step forward in our mission to define the future of how content is socialized on the Web," said Owen Van Natta, CEO of MySpace.

Google Preparing For Future With 10 Million Servers

If McDonald's ever goes out of business, perhaps Google can buy up its empty buildings and use them all as data centers.  A representative of the search giant recently stated that he's working on a storage and computation system capable of accommodating 10 million servers. If Google ever gets its hands on 10 million servers, that means it'll have one for every person in New York City and Phoenix, Arizona.  Or if you want another point of comparison, we found out earlier this month that Facebook only has around 30,000 servers.

Ning Launches Virtual Gift Feature

Ning, the social platform that allows users to create their own social networks introduced a virtual gifts feature today for its 1.6 million networks and 36 million registered users. Ning Virtual Gifts offers a built-in revenue-generating feature for network creators, allowing them to create custom gifts and stores related to the topic of their network.

The Wall Street Journal Launching Professional Edition

Dow Jones & Company said today it would launch "The Wall Street Journal Professional Edition," aimed at providing business readers with more in-depth information.

More People Plan To Shop Online During The Holidays

 More people plan to shop online during the holiday season this year (55%) compared to last year (49%), according to a new survey by MarketLive and the E-Tailing Group. More than a quarter (26%) of shoppers plan to buy more gifts online, up from 21 percent last year. Eighty-five percent of consumers report the main reason for shopping online is still time savings, but 40 and 38 percent of shoppers respectively also rate wish lists and reviews as increasingly important.

Google And Virgin America To Offer Free WiFi During The Holidays

Virgin America has partnered with Google to offer free in-flight WiFi to all of its passengers during the holidays. From November 10 to January 15, 2010, passengers on all Virgin America flights will be able to access email, shop online and visit social networks free of charge. In May Virgin became the first airline to offer Gogo Inflight Internet service on every flight.

Majority Of Consumers Want To Interact With Brands Online

The majority (78%) of new media users interact with brands via new media sites, an increase of 32 percent from 2008 (59%), according to a new report from communications firm Cone.

Using Facebook And Twitter To Fight Depression

Monitoring posts on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace could help to prevent suicide, according to two researchers from New Zealand's Victoria University. Dr. Tiong-Thye Goh and student assistant Yen-Pei Huang have developed a decision support system to scan social networking sites to flag keywords that people between the ages of 18 and 24 are posting. A high proportion of certain keywords could mean that a user is at risk of depression, suicide and other mental disorders.