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"While at least Life-magazine-killer TV has served as a platform for the creation of some great artworks (HBO's "The Wire," created by newspaperman-turned-TV-auteur David Simon, comes to mind) and inspired the creation of new art forms (see the upcoming Smithsonian retrospective of the work of "father of video art" Nam June Paik), it's hard to imagine what of lasting value hot web-native media brands like Gawker and BuzzFeed are contributing to visual culture and art history. Which brings me to an email I got last Wednesday from Gawker promoting its "top story" of Dec. 5., titled "The 13 Most Powerful Images of Naked Celebrities of 2012," which quickly racked up more than a million page views. It was a sequel to a Gawker post from the previous day titled "The 19 Most Powerful Images of 2012," which was mostly a shameless, edited-down rip-off of a BuzzFeed post titled "The 45 Most Powerful Images Of 2012," consisting of intense wire-service photojournalism from Reuters, the AP, Getty and others, which derive most of their support from old-school print-centric publications around the world. Gawker's excuse for its act of, uh, curation: "Who has time to scroll through 45 pictures?""

In a reversal of today's content publishing model, print magazines pretty soon could start looking a lot like their app equivalents. "The next redesign of our titles will see them redesigned with our tablet versions in mind," magazine publisher Future's tablet editor-in-chief Mike Goldsmith told an industry forum this month. As publishers extend their print titles to iPad, they can choose either to repurpose the paper originals, which can seem lazy and ill-suited to the touch screen, or to custom-produce interactive apps with a native interface in mind, which is expensive.

daily 10.5

Game Informer Magazine's paid and verified circulation leapt particularly after GameStop beefed up the loyalty program that includes a subscription to the title. All You's "Enjoy Life for Less" message continued to resonate with readers as the economy kept sputtering, according to publisher Suzanne Quint.  Most intriguing, however, was a program under which bloggers began touting All You subscriptions in exchange for a small cut of any sales generated.

Interesting perspective: consumers could begin purchasing games knowing they're buying the platform/creative assets and that they will have to make micropayments for shorter-form content. Already being done with DLCs on major titles, but it could alter the way people think about the games they purchase.

"Vimeo took a first step towards pay-per-view Tuesday with the roll-out of a limited slate of six paid-streaming titles. The movies, which include We Are Legion: The Story of Hacktivists as well as the LCD Soundsystem concert movie Shut Up and Play the Hits are meant to preview different features that will be available to all content producers once Vimeo rolls out pay-per-view in earnest early next year."

the BilioTech will be an entirely new public space equipped with computers, e-readers and wifi access. Upon launch, the county hopes to have around 10,000 titles available to peruse on its devices. Personnel will still be on hand to help customers with their research and members will be able to take their e-books home with them by checking out e-readers.

"Gawker, Huffington Post, The Atlantic, and Forbes, among others include content created by advertisers or are experimenting with them. And it's not always easy to tell the difference between paid and so-called real content other than the appearance of a label of whatever company is sponsoring it. But 6-year-old Buzzfeed, whose motto is to capture the viral web in realtime, has started creating cool list articles, with titles such as "20 Grandpas Who Own the Internet" for its advertisers. That earned a glowing review from the Wall Street Journal, even though the content shows a thorough disregard for copyright and internet etiquette."

the title says all --

decline  in daily active users of Zynga's blockbuster titles

Coliloquy, a Palo Alto-based publisher focusing on interactive fiction for adults, launches its first four serial titles today on Kindle. The books are active content apps, rather than static e-book files-allowing for multiple story lines, personalized content, in-book reader/author engagement and the delivery of prompts and extras.

title says it all

Goal: The Wild Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to protecting the wilderness, started the Forever Wild Rhino Protection initiative to save Rhinos from extinction due to hunting in Asia.  Problem: Like all non-profits they had no money to create awareness and get support.  Insight: People don't always pay attention to these types of serious causes, but they sure seem to have a lot of time to watch silly viral videos on the internet.  Strategy: Find a way to have the message integrated into these silly viral videos... for free.  Solution: Download the top trending viral videos from YouTube, edit part of the video to include messaging about their initiative, re-upload the video with the same exact title as the original and call it YouTube Interventions. 

The Denver Museum of Nature & Science which has started a clever social media campaign to promote its new exhibit about snakes and lizards. Titled Tweetaconda, the campaign encourages users to tweet #tweetaconda or insert a message at their website to help grow the largest digital snake. While you're on the site, you can learn some facts about reptiles, too. Created through Carmichael Lynch.