Viacom's Redstone rules out bidding for Facebook
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Viacom Inc.  has ruled out bidding for social networking site Facebook, despite suffering a stinging defeat in losing a deal to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. to purchase MySpace.com, chairman Sumner Redstone told U.S. journalist Charlie Rose in a televised interview.
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Media conglomerate Viacom Inc.   VIAb.N on Monday said it will cut in half Executive Chairman   Sumner Redstone's salary and cash bonus compensation to about   $4.5 million annually amid criticism that he was among one of   the most highly paid executives in the United States.
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Thanks to GameSpot for its article discussing more evidence that Viacom may be considering a takeover of publisher Midway, following Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone&#39;s increasing financial stake in the company.
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A slumping stock price led to the ouster of Viacom Inc. chief executive Tom Freston yesterday, company executive chairman Sumner M. Redstone said, only eight months after Freston entered the job as a ballyhooed media baron on the rise.
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Viacom Inc. VIAb.N Chairman Sumner   Redstone, who in August severed ties with Tom Cruise, on   Tuesday ousted Chief Executive Tom Freston, in a surprise move   to exert more control over the company amid a lagging stock   price.
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The chief executive of media giant Viacom expressed reservations Thursday about Google's plan to enter YouTube content into a database and give owners the chance to take down the material.Viacom is suing Google for $1 billion over content being used on Google's YouTube Web property without permission. Speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit event San Francisco, Viacom President/CEO Phillipe Dauman expressed a willingness to work with online media properties but was skeptical of the Google plan, called Video Identification.Dauman said he had an open mind about reaching an agreement and that the announcement of Video Identification was a positive evolution. But it is not enough."I don't think we're quite there" said Dauman. Google, he said, can do things quickly if it wants to, he added. "I guess they haven't wanted to at this point," Dauman said.Google wants a proprietary system that benefits just one company, but the solution has to be a cooperative effort, said Dauman. He added he suspects Viacom at some point in the future will work with Google. The company does have a good relationship with Facebook, he said.Viacom has had its defenders, according to Dauman. "A lot of the technology companies out there welcome what we do," he said. Companies have said it was about time somebody took a stand, Dauman added.Like Google, Viacom has to protect its intellectual property. "I don't see their algorithms being shared openly with competitors," said Dauman."We took a step reluctantly because we had to," he said.Content producers need to be rewarded for what they do, Dauman said. "That nurtures creativity," he said.Viacom was part of a group of media and technology companies, along with vendors like CBS and Microsoft, that detailed Thursday principles intended to enable growth and development of user-generated content online while respecting intellectual property rights.Featured in these principles is implementation of filtering technology to eliminate infringing content; upgrading of technology and cooperation in technology implementation, and development of procedures to address claims that content was blocked in error. Removal of content also is addressed.Google was not a party to Thursday's announcement.
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Search giant argues Viacom's agreement to shift its ads from DoubleClick to Redmond's ad platform shows online ad competition concerns are unfounded. Microsoft, naturally, disagrees.
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Viacom said Sumner M. Redstone was restructuring his pay to more clearly align it with shareholder interest.
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(InfoWorld) - On Friday, media conglomerate Viacom upbraided YouTube for continuing to host throngs of Viacom videos without permission and demanded that over 100,000 of its clips be removed from the popular video-sharing site owned by Google. Viacom, whose properties include MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, Comedy Central, and Paramount Pictures, ran out of patience after months of discussions with Google and YouTube, the company said in a statement. "It has become clear that YouTube is unwilling to come to a fair market agreement that would make Viacom content available to YouTube users," the statement reads. YouTube and Google have failed to deliver efficient filtering tools, allowingÂ "vast amounts" of unauthorized Viacom video to exist on the video-sharing site, the company said. YouTube acknowledged receiving a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) request from Viacom to remove the videos. "It's unfortunate that Viacom will no longer be able to benefit from YouTube's passionate audience, which has helped to promote many of Viacom's shows," YouTube said in a statement, adding that it will comply with the request. Viacom's move is the latest from copyright owners who are upset over the unauthorized uploading and streaming of their videos on YouTube, which is one of the most popular Web sites in the world. The copyright issue has long been a known liability for YouTube. Founded in early 2005, YouTube quickly became the world's most popular video-sharing site, beating established players including Yahoo, Microsoft's Internet unit, AOL, and Google. Impressed with that popularity, Google bought YouTube last November for $1.65 billion in an all-stock transaction, but it put 12.5 percent of the amount in an escrow account for one year to "secure certain indemnification obligations," it said. Since the acquisition, Google and YouTube have been busy negotiating with video content owners and developing technology to detect and remove copyrighted videos uploaded by users without permission. Beyond its attempts to strike deals with corporations, Google has recently also indicated its intent to share revenue with individual content owners. It has also begun integrating YouTube with the similar Google Video service. "We're pushing very, very hard for the success of YouTube as a brand. It has tremendous traction with the demographic that we care about. An awful lot of people are now using YouTube every day in their daily lives," Google CEO Eric Schmidt said this week duringÂ the company's quarterly earnings conference call. Schmidt said Google's primary focus with YouTube is user adoption, while it also experiments with advertising models. YouTube is growing its user base and advertising very fast, to the point that it's now clear to Google that the price it paid for YouTube is clearly justified, Schmidt said. In its statement, Viacom precisely complained that Google is benefitting from its content without providing Viacom with adequate compensation. "YouTube and Google retain all of the revenue generated from this practice without extending fair compensation to the people who have expended all of the effort and cost to create it," Viacom said.
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CBS Corp. and Viacom Inc. Chairman  Sumner Redstone have settled a lawsuit with his son, according  to the online edition of the Wall Street Journal on Sunday.
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I&#8217;ve heard the warnings at conferences and especially in the Social Media Optimization field that spamming or multiple submissions to Digg and other social news sites could lead to the banning of that URL from future Digg listings. Seems that such a horrible fate was brought about on SearchBliss.com although they say that they were not [...]
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By Frank Michael Russell, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.  May 27--Zuckerberg is chief executive of Palo Alto social-networking site Facebook, which has chosen to go it alone as it competes with MySpace and other Internet giants.
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SUN VALLEY, Idaho  - Google Inc. co-founder Sergey Brin said on Thursday his company would be happy to talk with Facebook about potential ties, but that the social network did not appear to be courting takeover bids.
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Facebook will sell a $240 million minority stake to Microsoft, which as part of the deal will also expand the advertising services it provides to the social networking phenom, the companies said Wednesday in a statement.The size of the ownership stake Microsoft will take during Facebook&#39;s next round of financing puts Facebook&#39;s valuation at a whopping $15 billion.&#160;Google had reportedly been courting Facebook as well.In addition to the ownership piece, Microsoft will also extend its existing agreement to provide banner ads to Facebook in the U.S. With this deal, Microsoft will become Facebook&#39;s exclusive third-party ad platform as well as provide Facebook ads internationally.Facebook will likely devote the cash influx from its next financing round to bankroll the torrid growth it is expecting in the coming 12 months in usage and headcount.With about 300 employees now, Facebook expects to have about 700 a year from now, its CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg said last week at the&#160;Web 2.0 Summit.Meanwhile, the site is growing its usage at breakneck speed with about 250,000 new users registering every day.Founded in 2004, it currently has about 49 million active users today, up from 12 million in December. More than half of its active members return to the site daily. Some 59 percent of its users are outside the U.S.Earlier Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post reported that Facebook was in the final stages of making a decision on whether to do this deal with Microsoft or Google.For Microsoft, which hasn&#39;t attained as strong a position in online advertising as it had hoped and lags behind Google, landing this deal could be a major win, as long as Facebook proves to be as attractive an advertising vehicle as expected.The Journal reported later on Wednesday that Facebook expects a profit of about $30 million this year, on revenue of $150 million.Google and Yahoo provide ads for Facebook rival MySpace.Still, questions remain about social networking sites&#39; full potential for advertising, since most of their content is largely unregulated and created by millions of individuals, resulting often in material that is vulgar and objectionable.Facebook plans to share more ideas for revving up its advertising business on Nov. 6, at an event in New York to which it has invited what it calls &quot;its closest advertisers.&quot;&quot;As part of [the event], Facebook executives will discuss new approaches for advertising online,&quot; a Facebook spokeswoman said. &quot;We are not sharing any further details.&quot;Facebook, MySpace, and others are also under close scrutiny from law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad because sexual predators use social-networking sites to stalk and victimize people, in particular minors.The Journal first reported Google&#39;s and Microsoft&#39;s pursuit of the Facebook investment a month ago.
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No change is good RSA Facebook has defended its privacy protection despite the possibility that this has been circumvented for the first time by an alleged sexual predator.â¦
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Viacom Inc. Chairman Sumner Redstone  on Tuesday ousted Chief Executive Tom Freston, in a surprise  move to exert more control over the company amid a lagging  stock price and a perception it has fallen behind on the  Internet.
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Rio Tinto  , the world's second-largest mining group, on Tuesday dismissed talk that it was lining up a bid for Canadian aluminum maker Alcan  as speculation, but did not to deny the rumor outright.