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Discovery Communications to acquire HowStuffWorks.com

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901am.comDiscovery Communications, a leading nonfiction media company, has announced that it has agreed to acquire HowStuffWorks, the leading online source of high quality, unbiased, and easy-to-understand explanations of how the world actually works.

Acquiring HowStuffWorks further strengthens Discovery Communications’ global position as the number-one nonfiction media company dedicated to providing knowledge and satisfying curiosity across all platforms.

In addition to an editorial team that creates new content every day, HowStuffWorks leverages the exclusive digital rights to over 30,000 books, 800,000 images and more than 180,000 maps as it explains the world from brains to bats, from rocket engines to roller coasters, from hybrid cars to HDTV, and countless other topics.

“Contextually integrating engaging clips drawn from Discovery’s vast video library of more than 100,000 hours of programming with the family-friendly and evergreen collection of expertly written articles on HowStuffWorks will ultimately deliver an accurate ‘video wikipedia.’ Information-seeking consumers will find a rich, multimedia experience to answer the world’s questions, and our business partners will find new opportunities to reach targeted audiences of engaged consumers,” said Jeff Arnold, who will continue his role as CEO of HowStuffWorks.

Originally posted on October 15, 2007 @ 10:49 am

mywedding.com launches wedding guide for Bakersfield couples

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mywedding.gifmywedding.com, one of the best online wedding planning tools in the country, has launched Bakersfield Wedding Planning Guide, its 45th local wedding planning guide.

Bakersfield marks the company’s 7th guide in the state of California, making it easier for couples all over the state to access local vendors and plan their weddings. Cool features include wedding planning tips and free Website with online RSVP feature, photo sharing tool, and a personal wedding blog.

“Now nearly all California brides and grooms have access to the best wedding vendors in their respective areas. The central towns of California are often overlooked, but with Sacramento and now Bakersfield we’re doing our best to access all areas of this large and diverse state,” said Larnie Bryant, Vice President of Sales and Marketing.

Originally posted on October 13, 2007 @ 2:06 pm

Job applicants shifting to Internet

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conference-board.gifAlthough this trend is already obvious, it would be better to have a more specific measure of its usage.

According to The Conference Board, the world’s leading business membership and research organization, job seekers are steadily increasing their use of the internet as a key part of their job search.

In the most recent survey of workers who searched for a job between January and September 2007, 73 percent reported using the internet compared to 66 percent of job seekers in the same time period in 2005.

Moreover, the research shows that the Internet is being used for a variety of job search functions, from gathering employer/job information (59 percent of job seekers), submitting resumes and applications (57 percent), to posting resumes on a website (40 percent), and signing up for email notifications (30 percent).

However, over half (51%) of job seekers reported networking through friends and colleagues as part of their job search.

“Newspapers are still popular as a major job search method, but job seekers reported using them less, dropping from 75 percent to 65 percent between 2005 and 2007,” said Gad Levanon, Economist at The Conference Board.

Originally posted on October 13, 2007 @ 1:37 pm

Mozilla outlines plans for Firefox Mobile

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901am.com Mozilla is indeed very “serious about bringing the Firefox experience and technology to mobile devices.” In a blog post of Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla’s vice president of engineering, he laid out the key actions plans to increase their mobile presence.

As for the timetable, Mozilla did not give specific date saying “Mobile Firefox will arrive later (certainly not before 2008)”.

Although there was a strong demand to make Firefox available to mobile phones in recent years, Mozilla has deferred its entry due to low CPU or memory specs of available phones at that time. With the launch of iPhone and better smartphones, they have no doubt this is the right time to dominate the mobile web browser war. To quote from Schroepfer:

Absolutely! Up until very recently device limitations required writing new mobile browsers from the ground up. Being able to leverage all the investments in the Mozilla platform across both desktops and devices is the right approach. There is far from a dominant player in this marketplace and even the best mobile browsers today have compromises in user experience, performance, and compatibility. There is still *plenty* of room for innovation.

Originally posted on October 11, 2007 @ 12:05 pm

Facebook traffic dips but…

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Based on the upcoming comScore September 2007 user engagement and page views data, GigaOM pointed out that Facebook’s unique visitors has declined by 9.3%, from 33.75 million in August 2007 to 30.6 million in September 2007. Moreover, page views also went down by almost 4%.

facebook.gif

But TechCrunch is quick to refute Om Malik’s analysis, saying there isn’t enough information yet to make any kind of definitive statement about Facebook traffic. Since comScore only tracks US traffic, it can be misleading because Facebook’s growth is propelled by non-US users over the last year.

These traffic statistics are very important these days in light of Facebook’s attempt to get additional funding.

Originally posted on October 11, 2007 @ 10:49 pm