Bambi Francisco

The new news model (in black and white)

The news business has changed dramatically in the last 50 years, since the days of pioneer TV news broadcaster Edward Murrow, who delivered his segments with cigarette in hand and opened and closed his newscasts with his signature phrases: "This is CBS" and "Goodnight and good luck." In this smoking, black and white episode of Vator Box, we bring you back to those days (well, at least we try). And, who better to be our guest host than Chris Tolles, outspoken CEO of Topix, a local news site whose content is 85% user-generated with 125,000 comments posted daily. John Shinal, veteran journalist and Vator managing editor also joined us. Get two guys passionate about the imploding news business and you get a lot of fireworks and sideswipes.

In this episode we look at two companies - Intense Debate and NowPublic - changing the news paradigm, not so much for the companies themselves, but for their participating in ushering in those changes. Both companies are shaping the way individuals and society are interacting with one another and interpreting the world.

RockYou's Jia Shen: 'Hands down bigger than Slide'

In a world where marketers care more about engagement than passivity, RockYou, a top application maker on social networks, has a great shot at being the place to distribute ads to reach today's youths. The trick is innovating faster than RockYou's oft-mentioned rival, Slide, and building a bigger and better ad sales team. To that end, RockYou, which raised $35 million at a roughly $230 million valuation, plans to double its staff to 100 people by the end of this year, Jia Shen, RockYou's 28-year-old co-founder and CTO told me in this interview. 

RockYou, which makes popular applications such as Super Wall, is gunning to be a top five Web destination in the world. RockYou hopes this can be achieved as more Internet users browse and interact on the Web through a social context. 

It's not a modest goal, but it's something that’s not out of reach for this first-time entrepreneur and his team. Despite what some other publications say, RockYou is bigger than Slide across Facebook, Beebo, hi5, Friendster and Orkut, Jia says with confidence.

“We’re pretty much hands down bigger than them (Slide) on every statistic,” he said, referring to the number of applications installed and users engaged on Facebook. According to Jia, Super Wall – an application that lets you send photos, videos, and graffiti to friends – is the No. 1 application on Facebook. (Go to Vator.tv to read the rest.)