Yandex has partnered with Twitter in an agreement that will license the full feed of all public tweets to Yandex's search engine. Tweets in Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, or Kazakh will appear in Yandex's Blog Search results in real time.

Getty Images, Inc., released Connect by Getty Images, a content distribution service. Connect users can integrate Getty Images' content and metadata within their publishing tools, products, and services through the company's API.

News International, part of News Corp., released figures detailing print and digital subscriptions for The Times and The Sunday Times. While print circulation has steadily declined, it has yet to be trounced by digital counterparts.

Despite heavy competition from tablets and smartphones, Sony will introduce a new hand-held game player to the U.S. market on Feb. 22. The PlayStation Vita is a stand-alone player but can also control a PlayStation console.

Amazon has closed off its Amazon Mom program to new members and reduced its discounts on baby supplies. Amazon has been directing parents to its Prime program in order to continue receiving the benefits of Amazon Mom.

In an effort to help brands better understand the intent and motivations of their target audiences, San Francisco-based Twelvefold Media--which calls itself "an emotive-based media company that helps brands target, reach and persuade engaged audiences"--introduced the Mindset Index on Jan. 24.

Hot gossip, recipes, cute baby photos and juicy tidbits about office Christmas party shenanigans aren't the only things being shared on Facebook these days. Many folks actually use the social network king to pass on interesting news articles, too. In fact, a look at what made the list of the top 40 most shared articles on Facebook in 2011 can offer some interesting clues to publishers and media outlets as to what makes a story "shareable."

Ireland, once seen as country with an economy based solely on manufacturing, has blossomed into what some call "the Internet capital of Europe." Many of the top tech companies, such as Google, Facebook, Zynga, PopCap, IBM, Microsoft, Apple and HP, have international offices in Ireland, an otherwise relatively small country. In September Twitter announced its plans to locate an international office on the green isle, tweeting "Ireland is trending. Twitter to establish international office in Dublin. #idairl". According to Emmanuel Dowdall, global department manager for content, consumer and business services for the Industrial Development Agency Ireland (IDA), that announcement was re-tweeted over 650,000 times.

Scout Analytics last week announced a new research division, Scout Research, which is "dedicated to providing revenue intelligence for digital publishers," according to the Issaquah, WA-based company that calls itself "the leader in digital revenue optimization for publishers." Scout kicked off its new venture with an analysis of the age-old problem of the print vs. digital revenue models.

In 2008, Rafat Ali sold ContentNext media--the company behind paidContent.org--to UK-based Guardian News and Media, Co. for a reported $30 million. He left the company in 2010, and now Guardian is looking for a buyer for the property. Based in New York City, the company covers the business of digital media, serving decision makers within the media, entertainment, publishing, advertising, marketing, and technology sectors.

When it comes to digital content, we always seem to be looking for the next big thing-from websites to social networking to apps. In that quest to be the next big thing, many technology startups come and go, while others strike with that magical combination of the right technology for the right device at the right time.Still others quickly grab our attention, only to reveal a lack of staying power over time. For example, "We saw a big pop a year or so ago around funding mobile companies based on location-based [technology], such as Foursquare, and those companies are not too hot right now," says Richard Hull, a former film and TV producer who advises many of the nation's largest media and entertainment companies on content strategy, finance, and distribution.

According to IDC (International Data Corp.), the number of U.S. users accessing the internet via mobile devices will exceed those using wireline devices, such as PCs, by 2015. The research firm cites the use of smartphones and enthusiastic adoption of tablets as the force behind this trend. These statistics have long been a source of excitement for publishers looking for new revenue streams, but with the explosion of platforms comes the pressure to be all things to all people. From iPhones to Android devices, from the Kindle Fire to the iPad, from mobile-optimized sites to custom-designed apps, publishers struggle to find the right balance between fiscal responsibility and being on their readers' platforms of choice.

From an outsider's perspective, being a professional freelance writer may seem like the dream job. After all, you can make your own hours, work from the comfort of home (or from your local Starbucks), and handpick which projects you want to pursue based on your level of expertise or interest. Those who are active in the field know this is far from true. For many freelancers, finding a job that appropriately compensates their level of skill, and relaying that job into a steady gig takes patience, perseverance, and a whole lot of practice writing query letters. But there's good news for freelancers. The market is changing.

Few, if any, would argue that the internet has dramatically and permanently changed the publishing industry. As print publishers have scrambled to find ways to compete with and, ultimately, embrace the digital world, some are excelling through a combination of traditional and online options. Others, new to publishing, are operating in the online-only world, but everyone is dealing with the age-old problem of circulation building and audience development.

Somewhere between unknown, independent bloggers and traditional publishers with well-respected reputations are the sites known as content farms--websites that generate a large quantity of content specifically designed to rank high in search engine results. They range from local, content-driven sites such as AOL's Patch and Examiner.com to how-to sites such as Howcast and Demand Media's eHow.com to topic-focused sites such as Suite101 and Associated Content.

It's been a busy year for U.K. media. It started off with the pomp and ceremony of the Royal Wedding, moved to the embarrassing unravelling of News Corp. over a phone-hacking scandal, and ended with the devastating riots, which started in North London and then inspired copycat lawlessness in cities across the country for a few alarming days in August. When you look at it all written out like that, it's a wonder we survived at all!

My family has a long history with the border town of Laredo, Texas. As a child my mother moved around a lot along with her six older siblings, as part of an Air Force family. Laredo just happened to be one of the towns that stuck. Two of my aunts and one of my uncles still call it home, along with their families. As a born and bred New Englander, it's pretty much another planet to me.

I recently jumped on the Mad Men bandwagon. That Jon Hamm sure is handsome, and boy oh boy, did they smoke a lot. There's plenty to gawk at-and cringe at-on that show. The sexism. The debauchery. All those pregnant ladies hitting the bottle and smoking up a storm. As I watch--floating somewhere between awe and disgust--the goings-on of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce have got me pondering the modern business of advertising.

For the past year, I researched the business practices of the Grateful Dead as I wrote (with co-author Brian Halligan, CEO of HubSpot) a book published by John Wiley & Sons recently called Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn from the Most Iconic Band in History. As I was preparing the manuscript, I was struck by how many lessons apply to content businesses of all kinds.

We've seen the shuttering of dozens of B2B publications, we see some moving online only, and we see the emergence of web-native alternatives that leverage work-at-home flexibility to create content at a lower cost: no offices, no benefits, no salaries, lower freelance fees, etc. However, even these nimble web-based companies are struggling to survive on banner ads and webinars.