Google Launches 'Newsstand' Android Reading App

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Mix Google Play magazine store with the two-year-old Currents magazine app, stir gently, and you get Google's Newsstand Android reading app that supports publications' paywalls, the Gigaom.com Web site reported.

The Google app launch will offer more than 1,900 free and subscription-based content sources, including paywall publications The New York Times, Financial Times and Wall St. Journal, according to the Gigaom.com post. Present Currents and Google magazine users will have to upgrade their apps to benefit from Newsstand.

The move is intended seriously to challenge Apple's mobile magazine and newspaper store, Gigaom.com reported.

Paywalls Across the Pond

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The Telegraph Media Group, owner of The Daily Telegraph, has announced the U.K. daily will become the first national general interest paper to erect a metered paywall for its digital edition.

Visitors will be able to view 20 free articles a month before being offered two subscription packages; one that charges 1.99 pounds a month ($3.01) or 20 pounds annually ($30.25), and a comprehensive "full digital pack" for 9.99 pounds a month ($15.11) or 99 pounds a year ($149.75) that also includes tablet access to the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph and loyalty club membership (complete with secret decoder ring?). Under either option, subscribers will enjoy a one-month free trial. No start-up date for the paywall was indicated.

Meanwhile, The Sun, also expects to be charging visitors to view its online content sometime this year. The tabloid's online edition's monthly users are tenfold its print edition readership. The Pearson PLC-owned Financial Times has already enjoyed success in the U.K. with a metered paywall system.

(Hard) Financial Times: Biz News Buyouts Help to Enlarge Digital Footprint

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In an email this week to staffers, Lionel Barber, Editor of the Pearson PLC-owned Financial Times ("FT"), outlined plans to bolster FT's digital presence while expressing hope that offered buyouts might negate the need for layoffs.

According to a report on the paidcontent.org site, FT hopes 35 staffers will accept buyouts to enable the business news giant to save 1.6 million pounds ($2,534,732) so that layoffs could be avoided.  Barber said the organization plans to increase its digital side workforce by 10. FT's mobile now accounts purportedly constitute a quarter of FT's digital traffic.

Part of  FT's plan to emphasize its digital platform over its print version, the paidcontent.org post said, involves streamlining its international presence.

Calif. Federal Judge Denies Facebook Motion to Dismiss Privacy Suit

Image via WikipediaImage via CrunchBaseImage by Getty Images via @daylifeIn her 38-page decision last week in Fraley v. Facebook (Case No. 5:11-cv-01726), United States District Court for the Northern District of California Judge Lucy H. Koh refused to dismiss a putative class action suit against  Facebook based on the social media leviathan's use of "Sponsored Story" ads.

Although she dismissed an unjust enrichment count against Facebook, Judge Koh found Angel Fraley and her co-plaintiffs had legal standing to proceed with their claims of unfair competition and violation of California's Right of Publicity statute [Calif. Civ. Code sec. 3344]. The plaintiffs contend Facebook, without their consent, appropriated their names, likenesses and photographs for use in Facebook's "Sponsored Story" paid advertisements.

A "Sponsored Story" ad is generated when a Facebook user clicks on the raised thumb Like icon concerning a product or service, which then appears on the user's friends' Facebook page. At issue is whether that turns the user into a spokesperson/endorser of that product or service.

As reported in the Financial Times and elsewhere, Judge Koh kept the plaintiffs' suit afloat by finding "logical" the plaintiffs' argument that they should benefit from the ad revenues flowing to the defendant social network from their unwitting endorsements.  Unequivocally, Facebook's "Sponsored Story" marketing strategy has been successful.

Judge Koh specifically ruled that Facebook cannot benefit from the defense afforded by Section 230(c)(1) of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 that shields Internet Service Providers from liability as publishers. Facebook has also raised a First Amendment argument that the "Sponsored Story" ads are newsworthy, which characterizes the plaintiffs as public figures rendering newsworthy consumer opinions.

Tweet by Twit Has Authorities in Snit

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The Financial Times and www.DailyRecord.co.uk report that a 26-year-old Englishman is the first person held criminally liable under a 2003 British law that prohibits sending "indecent, obscene or menacing" messages over a public electronic communications network.

Paul Chambers was upset that a snowstorm shut down Robin Hood Airport in Doncaster, England, a week before his scheduled flight, possibly derailing a planned liasion in Ireland with his girlfriend. Chambers fired off a Tweet that set a one-week deadline for Robin Hood to re-open or "I'm blowing the airport sky high." Authorities were neither amused nor impressed that the purported threat was within Twitter's 140-character message limit and Chambers, who is training as an accountant, soon found his number was up.

It's a scary world and vigilance by law enforcement is necessary and commendable, but a threat to free expression is equally alarming. It can be a fine line between danger and dumbness, and Chambers knows the risks that lurk on the mean "tweets" of Doncaster.