New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street in New York, New York, United States(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Although the New York Stock Exchange dates back to 1792, it’s  operation of over 30 daily broadcasters is keeping up with the changing times. NYSE Euronext is, according to Business Insider, both one of the largest and most sophisticated studies in the world.

In 1987, Jan Hopkins became the first reporter to report live from the NYSE and the following year, the NYSE launched their broadcast and multimedia center. Reporters weren’t able to report live from the floor itself until 1995 when Maria Bartiromo did so. And as the shift to digital trading has taken place, more reporters have exchanged places with traders on the floor.

Business Insider says that the evolution of media and technology is what has transformed  the NYSE into the biggest stage in use for business news. They spoke to journalists on the floor and their video is available on their site below.

Business Insider

Made in NY (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Silicon Alley will soon become home to the 18,000-square-feet media center for the “Made In New York” initiative from Mayor Bloomberg’s Office. The center will have a gallery with multimedia artwork and other projects, a restaurant, educational classes, and a space for screenings. It will be open to the public as well.

The Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment said that the center will be a place for filmakers to come together to interact with each and grow in their craft. The thought, according to Mediashift, is that collaboration is key to success, a thought reflected also in the entertainment industry where content is being displayed across multiple platforms.

They city also hopes the Media Center that is scheduled to open in summer 2013 will help small digital firms gain traction because of the affordable office space and networking provided.

Mediashift

Image by AOL via CrunchBase

After losing its CTO, Tech Crunch Editor Erick Schonfeld, and others, AOL has experienced turmoil, but Cnet says that they are back on the rise under the guidance of CEO Tim Armstrong.  In the last year, shares of AOL have risen 112 percent from $17.67 to $37.48. The traffic on their news outlet, The Huffington Post, has increased traffic to 45.3 million unique visitors in February 2013.

Also, AOL has seen an increase in income and revenue in the last year from $22.8 million profit and $573.7 in revenue in Q4 2011 to $35.7 million and $599.5 million respectively in Q4 2012.

Cnet

Image via CrunchBase

Vimeo announced the acquisition of Echograph, an app for making videos appear as if they are animated GIFs. The app plays videos on a loop, similar to Vine from Twitter, and was Editor’s Choice in the App Store for over 130 different countries.

With the acquisition, Echograph will be a free download for iPhone and iPad instead of costing $2.99 in the iTunes store.

Social Times

English: Thrillist’s logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

With subscribers from NY to Seattle, men’s lifestyle guide Thrillist relies on their email newsletter to inform their subscribers about restaurants, bars and shops. According to Thrillist, the number of users accessing content from mobile devices has grown from a small percentage to 30-40%.

The company realized they needed to optimize their site for mobile use and began deleting extra sections that clutter the screen. They also updated their ads in a mobile format and they’ve seen click-throughs more than double. The company plans to update their iPhone, iPad, and Android apps soon too.

Media Post

Long Island Rail Road (Photo credit: eugene)

Social media provided essential communication between NY area commuters and New Jersey Transit and the Long Island Rail Road during Hurricane Sandy

Without a phone signal or other ways of finding transportation updates, commuters turned to LIRR and NJ Transit’s Facebook and Twitter accounts, according to The New York Times.

Transit officials realized keeping customers informed was just as important as fixing tracks and trains. The LIRR uploaded photos and videos, posted updates and answered passenger questions, and became a source of shared pain for commuters and transit workers. NJ Transit also updated its page often but, according to the Times, provided confusing information and incorrect advice.

The New York Times

Visual Revenue

Visual Revenue, a NY-based data analytics firm, provides real-time information management for news organizations including Forbes and the New York Daily News. According to Crain’s New York Business, it offers a new generation of data analytics — one that journalists fear might someday replace them.  Founder and owner Dennis Mortenson said the goal is providing editorial support, not substitution.

Visual Revenue analyzes the large amounts of content that media companies produce and offers insights based on data crunching. It recommends where stories and ads should appear on a home page, makes headline suggestions and offers other ways to generate traffic and optimize results. Paul Cross, media analytics manager at the New York Daily News told Crain’s, “It does a good job of projecting what will happen throughout the day.”

Crain’s New York Business

Image via CrunchBase

Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management recently released its own Flipboard channel. According to Wall Street & Technology, this is the first financial services firm to join Flipboard, a social media news site that allows users to curate their own content. Merrill’s channel will feature content for existing clients and the general public. Joe Corriero, head of digital marketing at Bank of America (of which Merrill Lynch is a part), said, their clients’ consumption habits are shifting to smartphone and tablets.

Merrill isn’t offering research reports or investment tips. Content will consist of Merrill experts writing about a range of topics including the economy, retirement, divorce, remarriage and their true costs. “It’s not stock-specific content; it’s broader, more macro content,” Corriero told Wall Street & Technology.  Merrill also uses its web site and social media to distribute content. The firm’s Twitter account has over 34,000 followers. It also has a YouTube channel and a presence on LinkedIn.

Wall Street & Technology

Clay Shirky (credit: Wikipedia)

A major study released by Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism concluded that computer generated articles, crowdsourcing and bloggers are not expected to replace professional journalists. The report, titled “Post-Industrial Journalism,” said that the technological information boom coupled with economic shifts created both a negative and positive impact on journalism. The study was written by C.W. Anderson of CUNY and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, Emily Bell of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia and Clay Shirky of NYU.

According to AFP, the study said that in certain types of reporting, professional journalists cannot be replaced by algorithms or crowdsourcing. It indicated that since the traditional advertising-supported model of newspaper and broadcast journalism has changed, news divisions have had to cut costs, which led to a reduction in the quality of reporting. The authors added, “We are convinced that journalism in this country will get worse before it gets better, and, in some places (principally midsize and small cities with no daily paper) it will get markedly worse.”

AFP

English: Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army Plaza. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Brooklyn Public Library is moving ahead with a new strategic to plan to bring the institution into the digital age. The library has evolved into more than just a place to borrow books but also a social service agency, where people come to learn computer skills. Linda Johnson, the President and Chief Executive of the Brooklyn Public Library, has developed an agenda which reflects the shifts in the community of library users and in the publishing world, such as the introduction of e-books. Also, Johnson is looking to open two smaller branches next year that will focus more on technology than books, populating the main library with a special teen section and training residents to take their GEDs online.

One of the obstacles in the way for Johnson and the Brooklyn Public Library is figuring out how to raise money. Ms. Johnson has reached out to Russian billionaire and Brooklyn Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov, who recently donated $1 million to the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Crain’s New York

After | Hurricane Sandy Brooklyn, New York | Frankenstorm (Photo credit: MichaelTapp)

During Hurricane Sandy, government officials used a new alert system, which contacted anyone within an affected geographic area whose mobile device could get text messages, according to the New York Times. This was the first time the system was used in New York and now tech firms and the city are looking for other technology-related relief efforts. “It’s becoming very evident that just below filling basic needs of food, water and shelter is this connectivity issue, and connectivity can help fulfill other needs,” said Jessica Lawrence, the managing director of the New York Tech Meetup.

The New York Tech Meetup signed up over 800 potential volunteers to help build tools on the fly. One of the most useful has been the Sandy Coworking Crowdmap, which provided businesses displaced by the storm to find places to set up shop for free. Another relief project is Neepmapper, which allows people to text requests for volunteers or donations. The site then plots those requests on a map.

New York Times 

Pseudo.com (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Mary Branscombe, a freelance tech journalist, recently wrote a review on ZDNet for Andrew Smiths book titled, Totally Wired. The book is an account of Pseudo.com and its founder Josh Harris during the dotcom boom and bust. Pseudo.com was an early Silicon Alley web media portal. Branscombe explains, “Pseudo.com was trying to tap into the urge to record our lives and show them off that has powered Facebook to success, but in a much more frenetic and voyeuristic manner.” Pseudo.com ended up being the first Silicon Alley company to go bust and the book provides an account of the company and Josh Harris’s story during the dotcom boom and crash. Branscombe concludes in her review that the book provides a “fairly plausible” theory about the stock market manipulation that possibly crashed the tech IPO market in the 1990s.  She adds, “If you don’t find Harris equally fascinating, at least the book is stuffed with enough anecdotes, quotes and theories to make you an instant expert on some of the forgotten foundations of the web as we know it today.”

ZDNet 

Image via CrunchBase

Advance Publications bought NY-based Reddit for less than $5 million in 2006. Now its estimated value is upwards of $240 million. Bob Sauerberg, president of Advance’s Conde Nast magazine division, said that they basically left the startup alone so they wouldn’t screw it up.

Forbes recently reported that Reddit is a thrifty company and needs only a smattering of ad revenue to cover expenses. Aaron Magness, marketing vice president at Coastal.com, says to Forbes Reddit’s seedier posts don’t bother his company, which sells eyewear online. They advertise on the site’s front page, which doesn’t have questionable content. As long as they stay away from the more offensive areas, Magness says they’re safe.

Forbes

According to Advertising Age, bridge and tunnel closures blocked delivery of The New York Times in parts of Queens, Long Island, Brooklyn and Manhattan. Time Warner Cable’s hub flooded but workers quickly restored the service after activating backup generators.

Advertising Age

Image via CrunchBase

As the NY tech community still struggles to get back on its feet, employees are working from home, other people’s apartments, coffee shops and basically anywhere with power and Wi-Fi. Boxee opened their offices to Kickstarter employees, while a few people located at the Hearst Tower building. Co-working space Secret Clubhouse  took in employees from Gawker, Tumblr and SpokenLayer.

According to The New York Times, even Billboard took refuge at QuadGraphics. Bill Werde, editorial director, publicly thanked the startup on Twitter.

The New York Times

Whether traffic spikes translate into long-term gains is unclear. Baristanet founder Debbie Galant said to Advertising Age that six years ago local sites were the only place to find pictures of storms in progress. But with Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and even platforms like CoveritLive, Scribblelive and Storify, there is less advantage in being the sole purveyor of local news.

Advertising Age

Image via CrunchBase

NY-based Wenner Media and Yahoo announced a cross-promotional content deal this week. Editorial teams from both companies will co-create exclusive entertainment content.  The deal includes Rolling Stone, Men’s Journal, Us Weekly, as well as Yahoo’s omg! and Yahoo Music.

MediaPost

Image via CrunchBase

Datagram, the NY ISP that hosts locally based media sites BuzzFeed, The Huffington Post, Gawker and other sites, lost power during Hurricane Sandy. Located in Lower Manhattan, their basement was flooded with five feet of water as a result of the mega-storm.

Gawker and other sites found alternatives. Founder Nick Denton urged his staff to post on Facebook and Twitter and at a backup site called updates.gawker.com (where many of their posts are still being made, as the main Gawker site is still down).  Buzzfeed posted on Tumblr and The Huffington Post redirected traffic to a backup site as well.

Scott Kidder, Gawker’s operations director, said they plan on opening a second data center in 2013.

NBC News

Times Square Connect the Dots action before Hurricane Sandy (Photo credit: 350.org)

Frankenstorm scared NY into canceling major entertainment events. After the city announced a public transit shutdown and evacuation of low lying areas, Broadway and Off-Broadway went dark. Outdoor shooting permits were canceled until further notice. TV stations went into disaster protocol, with only an essential crew allowed. Films including Warner Bros’ A Winter’s Tale and indie film After the Fall halted production. Monday evening premier’s of Denzel Washington’s film Flight and Universal’s The Man With the Iron Fist were both postponed. The Navy SEALs are undaunted by the prospect of the storm of the century. The Weinstein Co. and National Geographic say they are still opening Tuesday with SEAL Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden.

The Hollywood Reporter

Cover of BusinessWeek (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

While some older media companies are still adjusting to the web, web-based content providers are still far from profitable. Business Insider has more web traffic than Bloomberg BusinessWeek and the Financial Times, but after four years it does not make a profit. CBS News, however, does make a profit. But brands including The New York Times face an uncertain future as people get most of their news from Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Facebook has its own share of issues, too. It’s having a hard time adapting to mobile technology.

Crain’s New York Business

Yuli Ziv Founder & CEO, Style Coalition (L), Elena Silenok – Founder & CEO, Clothia (2-L), Shauna Mei – Founder & CEO, AHAlife (2-R) and Inga Nakhmanson – CEO, Fitting Reality (R) (Photo credit: Hubert Burda Media)

Yuli Ziv of Style Coalition says fashion bloggers are the next generation of media influencers. Lucrative businesses in their own right, they are at the forefront of social media and have hundreds of thousands of followers. A site like Corporette makes half of its revenue from affiliate linking to products and external websites. The rest comes from online advertising and brand partnerships. Zephyr Basine’s style blog, College Fashion, gets hundreds of emails daily from PR and marketing teams requesting collaboration. But London-based blogger Bip Ling doesn’t feature any ads. The “celebutante blogger” says they ruin the aesthetics of the page. Instead the blog is a “stepping stone” for larger aspirations.

Financial Times

Mayor Bloomberg

“New York City’s technology and entertainment industries have never been more exciting than they are today, and our new ‘Made in NY’ Media Center will help bring developers, entrepreneurs and artists together to continue their growth,” said Mayor Bloomberg.

MikeBloomberg.com

Mercy College (New York) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

BronxNet announced recently that it will be building a TV Studio at Mercy College in the East Bronx. The studio will give tech access and media production training at Hutch Metro Center, and will be called BronxNet at Mercy College. It is expected to open in early 2013 and attract jobs and industry to the area. Included in the new space will be an express TV studio, access to cameras and equipment for editing and finishing programs. Production classes will be offered for Bronx residents in addition to the opportunity to create programs for BronxNet channels.

NY street chaos (Photo credit: mararie)

StreetEasy and Sonia’s Travels are launching a new a new video series about NY neighborhoods. The NY-based real estate website and the online travel series teamed up and for a look at NY neighborhood history, atmosphere and residents. Sonia Gil walks around the neighborhoods and narrates in a voiceover. Six episodes are already available online and 10 more will come out later in the fall.

Cynopsis

At News Corp. there has been discussion of improving the Post‘s website for some time. In March, editor of the iPad newspaper The Daily, Jesse Angelo, became more involved with nypost.com. Then Stern was hired from Gawker in August, who has since been making sure the reporters are working within the website. However, many at the Post would still prefer for their stories to be in the print edition for fear that if their stories go online sooner, other competitors will be able to steal their “exclusives.”

The Daily News site, however, has risen 21.6 percent to 19.1 million unique U.S. visitors, up from 15.7 million in June. In August alone, the site had 13.6 million U.S. visitors. On the other hand, nypost.com, dropped to 5.8 million in August, down from 6.7 million a year earlier.

Capital New York

Bloomberg LP

Citybizlist

English: Established in Spring 2003. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Journalism schools and media departments across the country are experimenting with entrepreneurship.  According to MediaShift, CUNY is the first in the country to feature an entrepreneur-specific discipline for journalism students called the Entrepreneurial Journalism Program.

CUNY’s efforts began two years ago when the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism was created to help quality journalists with a sustainable future. The graduate school now offers two programs for their entrepreneurial students, a certificate or a Master’s degree in Entrepreneurial Journalism. Jeremy Caplan is the educational director of the program and explains that the Master’s degree is for “mid-career journalists” who are interested in a traditional graduate education with a chosen concentration. In the final semester, students take an array of entrepreneur and business related classes. For the certificate program, participants are expected to be passionate about starting something new.

Caplan said, “We like for them to come in with an idea. We expect that they’ll improve it and pivot as the program goes on but with just one semester it’s important to hit the ground running. This way they’re spending the time building and refining rather than just dreaming up something raw. Really, the execution is what matters most in the end.”

The Newhouse Center for digital Media Entrepreneurship at Syracuse was started last March and is run by Sean Branagan, serial entrepreneur. There is no strict degree program in place yet, but mentorships, courses, and connections to entrepreneurs are offered. In classes students try to understand the trends of media and information. There is also a study about different startups that can be developed. Newhouse has also made an effort to bring current entrepreneurs in to teach in the program.

 MediaShift

English: Thrillist’s logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The NY based men’s digital lifestyle magazine Thrillist has an e-newsletter, a mobile app, a local deals provider and a shopping recommender. CEO of Thrillist, Ben Lerer, spoke with AdExchanger about how Thrillist has combined editorial and shopping into one package. The company is also currently working on a new product called ThrillSeeker which packages data.

Lerer explained more about this new addition to Thrillist when he said, “We’ve created a product here called ThrillSeeker, where we take our first party app data from Thrillist, and in some cases from JackThreads and all the information about this audience and we provide advertisers with an ability to retarget our guys on other platforms. To expand the reach of what we do to more guys beyond the exact Thrillist target consumer, or to go in and re-message — that’s a product that we’ve started rolling out with success.”

Lerer explained the Thrillist marketing strategy when he said, “There’s a fundamental belief that we have about content and commerce living in one place that brings those properties together. It reflects the fact that a reader and a buyer are exactly the same thing. Traditionally, media companies look at a reader and simply aim to monetize them through advertising sales. In being committed to that relationship, traditional media companies have developed a good sense of how to build loyalty and create an emotional connection between brands and readers.”

AdExchanger

English: Toni Maticevski’s catwalk show during New York Fall Fashion Week 2007 at the tents in Bryant Park New York (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

VFiles, a social media site focused on style and fashion, launched recently after a month of beta testing. The site was created by Julie Anne Quay, previous executive editor at V magazine. V is a strategic partner in the site. According to WWD.com, Quay and her team work in an office on Mercer Street in Manhattan. The site includes an online vault of issues of Visionaire, V, VMan, Project X, and Stop magazines. Users will eventually be able to upload their own multimedia files, and Quay expects the site to one day be 90% generated by users.

The main concentration of the site is on VFiles, which are online folders that users create for multimedia items, which are then searchable by tags. Users can search through various VFiles and tags to find things that interest them. In October, a partner site is set to launch in China which is being overseen by Bentham Liu, a media entrepreneur who helped launch editions of Vogue and Elle in China and Taiwan. The VFiles site also includes original video series, like TMI, Etreme Fashion Week, and others. Additionally, there is an e-commerce shop that sells collaboration products. Currently, there is no paid advertising on the site, but VFiles plans to create showcases for the brands on their site to showcase revenue.

WWD