Welcome to the 43rd episode of the Mediatwits podcast, this time with Mark Glaser and the Rachel Sklar as co-hosts. Sklar is a writer and social entrepreneur, and is filling in for Rafat Ali. She is back from SXSW and slowly recovering from the interactive, music and film festival. The big news this week is Pew’s annual State of the News Media report, which painstakingly explains how people are consuming news (more and more on mobile) and where the digital ad revenues are going (mainly to tech companies and not traditional media companies). Special guest Amy Mitchell was one of the Pew researchers who worked on the report, and she explains that Twitter and Facebook were growing but still only referred 9 percent of traffic to news sites.
We also looked in-depth at Yahoo’s recent patent lawsuit against Facebook, timed perfectly before Facebook’s upcoming IPO. Special guest Edward Weisz is a longtime patent attorney, and Brad Plumer is a business reporter at the Washington Post. They explain how patent law works, the reasons for inventors taking out patents, and the difficulty that startups have in going up against established companies like Yahoo that have a 1,000+ patent hoard. Even former Yahoo developers are upset that Yahoo has decided to sue Facebook, and recently Facebook decided to buy 750 patents from IBM to help defend itself. Should patent law be reformed for software?
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Intro and outro music by 3 Feet Up; mid-podcast music by Autumn Eyes via Mevio’s Music Alley.
Here are some highlighted topics from the show:
Intro
0:20: Co-host Rachel Sklar recovering from Austin
2:10: Rachel’s Top 3 bands heard at SXSW: Delta Rae, The Midgetmen, Tournament of Hearts
4:30: Rundown of topics on the show
Pew’s State of the News Media
5:55: Special guest Amy Mitchell from the Pew Research Center
7:40: People are getting more news on mobile platforms than ever
10:00: News orgs aren’t figuring out how to monetize increased mobile use
13:40: Mitchell: We will continue to survey on social network use
15:20: Rachel’s Snooki moment
Yahoo sues Facebook
17:50: Special guests Edward Weisz and Brad Plumer
20:50: Are Yahoo’s patents too broad?
23:20: Former Yahoo developer Andy Baio upset about the lawsuits
26:40: Rachel: Startup community views Yahoo as patent troll
29:00: Plumer: Facebook has thin amount of patents, needs to beef them up
31:45: Weisz: Much more difficult to find patents related to software
34:30: What really happened in Yahoo’s patent negotiation with Facebook?
37:15: UPDATE: Facebook bought 750 patents from IBM to help defend itself against lawsuits.
More Reading
State of the News Media: Newspapers Need Initiative, Innovation and Investment at MediaShift
Newspapers: Building Digital Revenues Proves Painfully Slow from PEJ
State of the News Media: Key Findings from PEJ
Digital: News Gains Audience but Loses Ground in Chase for Revenue
Yahoo sues Facebook. Are software patents out of control? at Washington Post
Here are the 10 patents Yahoo is using to sue Facebook at VentureBeat
Software patents are impractical — unless we’ve got 2 million extra lawyers at Washington Post
A Patent Lie: How Yahoo Weaponized My Work at Wired
Yahoo’s Patent Suit Against Facebook is Business as Usual at Forbes
Yahoo’s Suit Against Facebook: A Quest for Self-Respect at BusinessWeek
Facebook Buys 750 IBM Patents to Boost Defenses at Bloomberg
Weekly Poll
Don’t forget to vote in our weekly poll, this time about how you get your news on-the-go:
Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit. and Circle him on Google+
