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For nearly four decades, the popular children’s program “Sesame Street” has held court solely on Public Broadcasting Service-affiliated television stations. Until now. Sesame Workshop on Monday said Sesame Street fans will now be able to see episodes and clips of the show on Web channels iTunes, Hulu and YouTube, according to Reuters. YouTube will start a Sesame Street [...]

Facebook is debuting a new ad format. Again. The format, called “engagement ads,” further blurs the line between marketing and social networking, WSJ.com reports. The ads, which appear on the main screen when a user logs in to Facebook, prompt a user to do something with the ad, such as comment on a movie trailer. Facebook’s previous [...]

Barack Obama’s aides and allies are aiming to create the first truly “wired” presidency, according to the Washington Post. The Obama team is preparing a major expansion of the White House communications operation, fueled by millions of e-mail addresses collected throughout the presidential campaign. The president-elect’s transition Web site features a blog and a suggestion form, signaling [...]

BitTorrent, which has been trying to develop a business related to the open source P2P delivery technology, is in disarray. Company co-founder and president Ashwin Navin has left the company to start an incubator with other well-known tech executives, including YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, according to paidcontent.org. Navin’s departure was followed by CEO Douglas Walker; CTO [...]

Spending online by local advertisers, which has grown at a whopping 47% this year, is expected to diminish to a paltry 7.8% in 2009, according to a 2009 report from Borrell Associates.

“Local media companies projecting doubel-digit and even triple-digit increases in their interactive budget next year will have a very difficult time meeting those expectations [...]

Let the arms race begin. Facebook and MySpace, the symbols of social networking, have outlined audacious plans for the future, per The Guardian. At the Web 2.0 Summit, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said he would continue to expand aggressively around the world while MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe suggested the company might bring out its own music [...]

Google is gunning for Hulu. YouTube, which is owned by Google, will begin offering feature films produced by at least one of the biggest Hollywood movie studios as early as next month, according to CNET. Google and some of the studios are reportedly trying to hammer out an ad format. The move puts to rest the [...]

On the next installment of ‘From Print to Digital,’ we’re joined by media veteran Gene DeWitt, founder of DeWitt Media Strategies, to discuss how the financial crisis is affecting media buying and selling. In a dire economy, how will the dynamics of both offline and online media change? How severe will the retrenchment be among media companies? Is there a silver lining amid the dark clouds? We’ll tackle these and several other questions now facing the media industry.

Marketing executives remain cool to social media. To wit, more than two-thirds (67%) of marketers consider themselves beginners at using social media for marketing purposes, according to a new survey by the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG). The survey, which was conducted online, garnered 139 responses. In a somewhat troubling sign, more than 87% of respondents [...]

Following a slew of layoffs among traditional media companies (McGraw-Hill Cos., Time Inc., Hearst Corp., Wenner Media) because of the financial crisis, online media companies are now swinging the axe. Business-related social networking site LinkedIn said Wednesday that it is cutting 10% of its workforce, or 36 jobs, as part of a restructuring to focus on [...]