The Strategist picks the day’s most relevant and interesting stories about the world of content from around the web. Here’s what you should be reading today:
Flipboard is Hiring
Paid Content reports that tablet magazine Flipboard has brought on eight new employees, some of which include three former Hulu execs.
Eric Feng of Erly and Hulu signed on, as did Eugene Wei of Erly, Hulu, and Amazon. Five others were added to the engineering and product teams this week. There are now a total of 77 workers at the company, which has 20 million users.
Fresh’s Shared Review Site
Lisa Lacy of ClickZ writes about Fresh, a startup that promotes social product testing and reviews for home and kitchen goods, as well as consumer electronics.
She says, “It rewards users who share their desire to try out a product by increasing the odds they will receive said product, thereby gaining exposure for the site as well.” The site requires Facebook verification, and right now, 1,000 people are using the app.
Magazine Newsstand Sales Decrease
Newsstand sales decreased by 8.2 percent in the second half of 2012, the New York Times reports.
The magazines that took the biggest hits were gossip titles, including People, which dropped 12.2 percent, and In Touch Weekly, which saw a 14.8 percent drop. Cosmopolitan had one of the worst decreases at 18.5 percent, and Glamour dropped 14.5 percent.
Industry consultant John Harrington said the decline is due to social media, where all that information can be found.
Illegal Movies on YouTube
According to the Wall Street Journal, YouTube is dealing with illegal movies that are being uploaded to its website.
Disney recently took down “Peter Pan,” “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” and “Fantasia,” some of which had been on the site for as long as 12 months. YouTube claims that over 4,000 media companies use Content ID, which helps track violations of copyright law.
Meowing on Twitter
Twitter users can now speak in LOLCATZ.
The Mashable articles says, “Who to Follow” translates as “HOO 2 FOLLOW” and “View My Profile Page” will say “VIEW MAH PROFILE PUJ.” Users can check out the Beta by clicking Settings, Language, and hitting Lolcat-LOLCATZ (beta).
Want to Go Freelance?
The Guardian covers freelance writing and what it takes to work at home. Before jumping into it, workers need to ask themselves if they can give up the weekly pay, company of co-workers, and holidays/paid holiday time.
They need to figure out if there’s a market for what they do, and if they can work from a computer and not get too distracted. If absenteeism is sickness are common, freelancing won’t be best, since work at home writers are their own bosses.