The Pitch is on fire: Your SFB writers are here to serve you with a fifth week of friendly competition. Head over to our Facebook photo album and vote on which story you want us to delve more deeply into. From the whooping cough epidemic in Washington to a new social network start-up whose main focus is to be less ad-focused. Voting closes on Friday evening.
Utah’s nominating convention on Saturday favors Hatch: Back in 2010, a fellow Republican Senator, Bob Bennett, lost his seat in a similar nominating convention, facing tough competition from Tea Partiers, eventually losing his seat to current Sen. Mike Lee. Hatch, who spoke very unfavorably of his competition, is looking fairly strong in polls leading in to the convention, which picks the candidates which eventually will take the Republican nomination. If Hatch can get 60 percent, he can avoid a primary outright. And recent polls show that he’s at 59 percent, with a 4.43-percent margin of error and 15 percent undecided. Utah is strongly Republican, so winning at this convention is tantamount to winning the race. If the 78-year-old Hatch wins, he says it’ll be his last term — he’s currently finishing out his sixth term. (photo by Gage Skidmore) source
When I started planning the site last summer, my plan was to make it more of a general-interest site. Then in November, when I left Poynter, I pretty much abandoned that plan to compete against my former employer. Finding a new tagline is on my to-do list.Blogger Jim Romenesko • Discussing why his “blog about media and other things I’m interested in” only seems to feature media posts. For a single individual, Romenesko is doing quite well on the blogging front, nearing the level of his former employer, Poynter, all by himself. He’s doing so well that his ad provider, BlogAds, is already talking about raising his rates. Not bad for a guy whose reputation took a public hit (though not without his defenders) a couple of months back.
Read: Google’s product is competing with our product. Google Wallet has drawn a lot of attention in recent months for its end-to-end reinvention of the paying experience — one that, if it takes off, could make carrying around credit cards a thing of the past. However… the first phone on Verizon’s network that could support the technology behind Google Wallet, the Galaxy Nexus, has the software disabled. The company says they’ve blocked it in an effort to provide “the best security and user experience.” However… Verizon is working with AT&T and T-Mobile on a competing service, Isis, which has yet to launch. Perhaps that’s it? Yeah, we think so. source
» Loss leader vs. straight-up leader: Amazon knows that the thing that was going to get the Kindle Fire to sell was the price, and it appears that even though the device is going to sell at a $10 loss per unit, they’ll make that back quickly through the sale of music and other stuff. This is a situation unlike that of Apple, which sells its devices at a profit and makes money through the sale of content. But that said, Jeff Bezos is looking particularly Jobsian these days.
Posterous goes social network: In an interesting move for the uber-simple direct Tumblr competitor, they appear to have taken some cues from Google Plus, basically creating its own twist on the Google Circles idea, and calling it Posterous Spaces. This seems like a reaction to the fact that Tumblr and WordPress are growing big time, while it’s been relatively stagnant. Think it’ll catch on, or will it just frustrate older users?
Speaking of Ryanair: The ultra-cheap airline congratulated its Irish competitor, Aer Lingus, on its 75th anniversary with this wonderfully evil newspaper ad. (via Twitter user @simonog)
But seriously … I am not kidding.
I’m not watching all of...
Yahoo wants to buy Hulu now too. They’re going on an “I...
I’m moving back to New York in a few days. Unlike past...
OMG. I got so...
In this week’s Newsweek, a little...
Tumblr this morning. [h/t anne]
#@#$%!.tumblr.com
At this point, no one has come forward, no one in leadership for a long time. It will be very tough. It is probably a race we can’t win. But we need a moderate voice in the Democratic Party.Blue Dog Democrat Rep. Heath Shuler • Suggesting he might challenge Nancy Pelosi for the House leadership. Shuler, known as much for being conservative on social issues as he is for his mediocre NFL career, has been one of Pelosi’s strongest critics in the wake of her planned run for House Minority Leader. Shuler would be an interesting wrench in the whole House Leadership mess, and we bet he’d get a bunch of support simply because he offers a clear alternative to Pelosi, who’s not exactly popular right now. source (via • follow)
Copyright 2009-2013 Ernie Smith • Ask us stuff! • E-mail us • Follow us on Twitter • Follow us on Facebook
