Earlier this week Arianna Huffington said anonymous comments would be banned from Huffington Post later this year. The move is a controversial one, given the debate about the balance between privacy and transparency online. Mathew Ingram, writing for GigaOm, takes issue with the HuffPo plan. He argues anonymity has value and that the move will not seriously reduce the amount of abusive comments but will eliminate an important shield for users to speak freely.
Bloomberg will be changing corporate policies, including the hiring of a standards editor and separating journalists and salespeople, following the release of two reports that examined the controversial use of client information by its reporters. The Guardian reports that Bloomberg's acceptance of the investigations is swift and broad.
Amy Davidson, writing for The New Yorker, reviews the cases of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden and concludes that journalism is inappropriately under siege as a form of terrorism. She argues Manning's 35-year sentence imposed Wednesday was harsh and an excessive deterrent, considering there was little or no evidence of harm arising from his provision of material to WikiLeaks. And she says the detention Sunday of the husband of Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald and destruction of computer files at the newspaper by authorities indicates an enormous battle is under way that is worth fighting.
U.S. advertising projections suggest digital will comprise 24.7 per cent, or more than $42.2 billion, up from 22.3 per cent last year. The main growth area will be mobile, which is expected to rise 95 per cent, eMarketer suggests, and will be one-fifth of all digital advertising. Television will remain the largest element, 38.8 per cent of the $171 billion pie (up 3.6 per cent).
TechCrunch reports on Facebook's recent move to permit posts to be embedded on external sites. It is Facebook's latest attempt to become a news source and emulates Twitter's earlier moves into embedding content externally. TechCrunch cites Facebook's strong video and mobile display as attractive attributes in this latest move.