Reuters - Movie studios try to harness "Twitter effect"

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Movie studios try to harness "Twitter effect"

Saturday, Jul 18, 2009 2:27AM UTC

By Alex Dobuzinskis

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Audiences are voicing snap judgments on movies faster and to more people than ever before on Twitter, and their ability to create a box office hit or a flop is forcing major studios to revamp marketing campaigns.

The stakes are especially high this summer season when big budget movies like "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," which opened on Wednesday, play to a core audience of young, plugged-in moviegoers.

Box office watchers say Twitter, a micro-blogging service that allows anyone to post on-the-fly wisecracks for all the world to see, is the latest weapon in an arsenal of cell phones and computers that audiences use to critique films quickly, often when they are still sitting in theaters.

Such word-of-mouth publicity from fan to fan can boost, or bomb, ticket sales.

"Has everything speeded up? The answer is yes," said Adam Fogelson, Universal's president of marketing and distribution. "Depending on how big your opening day audience is, word-of-mouth starts playing a factor immediately," he said.

Film marketers look at weekly declines in ticket sales to judge fan buzz. In recent years those "drops" have widened significantly as communication has speeded up thanks to the Internet and more recently social networking services like Twitter and Facebook.

This summer, which is the most lucrative movie season and can make up as much as 40 percent of annual box office, ticket revenues for new films have dropped 51 percent, on average, from week No. 1 to week No. 2, a figure matched only in 2007, according to tracking firm Box Office Mojo.

"If people don't like the movie now on Friday it can die by Saturday," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of tracking firm Hollywood.com Box Office.

BRUNO GETS TWITTERED

Last Friday, actor Sacha Baron Cohen's gay-themed comedy "Bruno," which was distributed by Universal Pictures, made an impressive one-day debut of $14.4 million at U.S. and Canadian box offices, but the next day it suffered a large single-day drop, falling 39 percent to $8.8 million.

Media reports speculated that "Bruno" suffered from the "Twitter effect," meaning audiences reacted quickly online to raunchy scenes of sex and nudity, scaring people away.

Soon after the movie's opening, Twitter was awash with comments such as this from user Cathy Zhang: "Some scenes from Bruno I'll never erase from my mind." On the flip side, many Twitter commentators raved about "Bruno."

Universal's Fogelson said even Twitter comments that seem critical can be good publicity because they show people are passionate about the movie and can spark discussion that increases attendance. He attributed "Bruno's" lopsided opening day not to negative fan buzz, but to an unusually large crowd of Cohen's fans rushing to see the film on its first day.

Hollywood has a long history of both embracing and spurning new technology. In the case of Twitter, it is giving an early embrace. Sony Pictures, for instance, has been notably aggressive, creating Twitter pages for upcoming movies "District 9," "Julie & Julia" and "The Ugly Truth."

Using Twitter, actor Ashton Kutcher has raised his profile and that of his production company among the most tech-savvy, and he is not alone. Filmmakers and actors often "tweet" from the set with the blessing of publicists looking to create interest in a film.

"As much as it seems chaotic, it's not. It's just extremely quick and real-time," said online marketing consultant Gordon Paddison.

(Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)

Reuters - Google sees YouTube profitable in near future

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Google sees YouTube profitable in near future

Friday, Jul 17, 2009 5:41PM UTC

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Web video site YouTube will be profitable for Google Inc in the near future, the Internet search leader said on Thursday.

Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006, but has lost money on the site that lets people post and share videos free.

Analysts have raised concerns about the huge costs involved in streaming millions of videos with only a tiny swathe of them being supported by advertising.

"YouTube is now on a trajectory that we're very pleased with," Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said during an earnings call on Thursday.

He added that Google is helping marketers and advertising agencies create "great ads easily" for YouTube.

Google executives have recently made bullish remarks on YouTube's revenue growth. Schmidt told reporters at the Sun Valley technology and media conference this month that new advertising formats, such as pre-roll ads that appear before a Web video program, will draw in more revenue.

On Thursday, Google's head of product management and marketing, Jonathan Rosenberg, said "monetized views" -- people viewing videos that are supported by advertising -- more than tripled in the past year.

"We're now monetizing billions of views of partner videos every month," he said.

In response to an analyst question, Google Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette said recent efforts to introduce new ad formats and promote videos have helped to establish YouTube's home page among advertisers as relevant and "desirable for customers."

"We're really pleased both in terms of (YouTube's) revenue growth, which is really material to YouTube, and... in the not long, too-long-distant future, we actually see a very profitable and good business for us," Pichette said.

Google reported a quarterly profit on Thursday that beat Wall Street expectations, but its revenue growth was not as stellar as some investors had hoped, sending its shares down nearly 3 percent.

(Reporting by Anupreeta Das; Editing by Tiffany Wu and Tim Dobbyn)

Reuters - Goldman makes peace with blogger in trademark case

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Goldman makes peace with blogger in trademark case

Friday, Jul 17, 2009 6:33PM UTC

By Martha Graybow

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc has quietly reached an agreement to end a legal dispute with a blogger who will be allowed to keep running a website critical of the investment bank.

The agreement required blogger Michael Morgan to post a disclaimer on his goldmansachs666.com website, saying it has no affiliation with the financial firm.

Morgan, a Florida investment adviser, uses his blog -- whose name combines Goldman's name with numbers used to evoke connotations with the devil -- to criticize the bank and its large profits.

The bank this week posted a 33 percent increase in quarterly earnings on blowout trading results, putting its employees on pace for big bonuses at a time when many Americans are struggling.

A Goldman attorney had sent Morgan a cease-and-desist letter in April, contending he was violating the firm's intellectual property rights by using its trademark. Morgan then filed a complaint in federal court in Florida, seeking a ruling that he had not infringed on any trademarks.

The two sides agreed to have the litigation dismissed in court papers filed last month. The agreement was reported by The Am Law Daily legal publication.

Goldman spokeswoman Gia Moron said on Friday that "our concern about this site ceased when Mr. Morgan posted a prominent disclaimer making it clear that his site was not associated with Goldman Sachs."

(Reporting by Martha Graybow; editing by Andre Grenon)

Reuters - ooVoo takes on Skype, Cisco in video conferencing

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ooVoo takes on Skype, Cisco in video conferencing

Friday, Jul 17, 2009 10:48PM UTC

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Start-up ooVoo is hoping to take on everybody from Skype, the Internet telephony arm of eBay, to Cisco Systems with a new video conferencing offer for small businesses.

While Skype has the higher profile, New York-based ooVoo has quietly built up 7.5 million registered users in the last few years with a service that supports video chats between up to six people and up to six phone participants.

Now, the fledgling company is adding a desktop sharing option that will let business colleagues view each other's computer screens and enable remote collaboration. It will also block advertising for business users who pay a monthly fee.

"We took what we had with the consumer and packaged it with a business plan," said ooVoo CEO Philippe Schwartz who said that about 20 percent of the company's current users were business customers even before its business-targeted plan.

Cisco's development of a telepresence video conferencing system, which uses large screens and shows life-like images, has created renewed interest in video communications in recent years. But such systems cost thousands of dollars to install, at a time small businesses are looking to shave costs.

A few years ago, Cisco also bought firm WebEx, which lets people share documents and collaborate online.

Schwartz hopes to double ooVoo's customer base this year and increase business users to as much as 40 percent of total customers as companies look to cut costs in a weak economy.

"You're seeing people use more video because of the economy and the need to travel less," Schwartz said.

ooVoo's business service costs $39.95 a month per person or less, depending on the number of users in a company, ad-free. The consumer service starts at no fee to as high as $17.95 a month for six-way chats. Voice calls to phones are extra.

In comparison, Skype, which had 443 million customers at the end of March, does not charge a fee for video chat between computers, but charges per-minute for calls to telephones.

Skype recently added the option of screen sharing, which allows users to share all or part of their screen, and says it does not charge for this service.

But Skype, which provides voice conferencing options for up to 25 people, only provides one-to-one video and does not offer the call recording feature that ooVoo has.

IDC analyst Rebecca Swensen said that ooVoo's ability to combine video and phone participants in the same call is a big plus for attracting business customers. She also noted that the option of setting up a Web video call with non-ooVoo users could help it attract new customers.

But she said Skype would likely be a formidable rival.

"They also are starting to focus heavily on the business market, which leads me to believe more features and functionality are on their way," Swensen said.

Howard Lichtman, president of consulting firm Human Productivity Lab, said that while large companies would be more likely to opt for a high-end telepresence system, many smaller companies would be content with a cheaper option.

"There's a kind of a virtuous cycle going on in that more and more companies are deploying video, so more and more people want to use it," he said. "A lot of little companies are saying, we'll just use Skype or WebEx or some of these other services."

(Reporting by Sinead Carew; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

Reuters - Verizon says it will limit new handset deals

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Verizon says it will limit new handset deals

Friday, Jul 17, 2009 7:55PM UTC

By Diane Bartz and Sinead Carew

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Verizon Wireless is dialing back on its exclusivity agreements with handset makers after pressure from U.S. lawmakers and smaller carriers.

The biggest U.S. mobile service said on Friday it will limit exclusivity periods with cellphone makers to six months and then allow the country's smallest wireless service providers to sell the devices.

The move comes after reports that the U.S. Department of Justice was taking a preliminary look into whether U.S. operators had violated antitrust laws by obtaining exclusive deals to sell specific phones.

Exclusivity deals are common among the biggest U.S. carriers but have recently faced strong opposition from small, rural carriers, which say they lack the clout to make deals to carry the most popular advanced phones.

The iPhone has drawn such deals into the spotlight because AT&T Inc <T.N>, the second biggest U.S. wireless service, has had exclusive U.S. rights with Apple Inc <AAPL.O> since 2007.

In an apparent effort to preempt any regulatory changes, Verizon Wireless, a venture of Verizon Communications <VZ.N> and Vodafone Group <VOD.L>, sent a letter to major lawmakers on July 17 offering to limit exclusivity.

Verizon said the offer would apply to carriers with 500,000 or fewer subscribers. However, Verizon spokesman Jeffrey Nelson said it applies to all "small" operators, without giving a specific definition. Cellular South, a vocal activist against phone exclusivity deals would be able to avail of the offer even though it has roughly 800,000 customers, he said.

However, the offer will not extend to larger companies such as U.S. Cellular Corp <USM.N>, which has about 6 million customers and has been a vocal opponent of the practice, Nelson said. U.S. Cellular did not immediately comment.

"Effective immediately for small wireless carriers ... any new exclusivity arrangement we enter with handset makers will last no longer than six months -- for all manufacturers and all devices," Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam said in the letter.

He said 24 small wireless carriers had asked Verizon to eliminate its long-term exclusive handset agreements with LG <066570.KS> and Samsung <SAGR.UL> in February. The company was now expanding that idea to all handsets.

Stifel Nicolaus analyst Rebecca Arbogast described the letter as a "significant move to diffuse the heightening pressure for regulation to curtail" exclusive deals and said it would put pressure on other big carriers to follow suit.

"It will likely not be the end of the debate, in our view, as US Cellular, one of the more vigorous advocates for eliminating exclusives, will not benefit," Arbogast said, but she said the move would take pressure off of the U.S. telecom regulator, the Federal Communications Commission, to change laws.

But Consumers Union, a Washington based consumer advocate, said Verizon's focus on the smallest carriers would mean more phone choices for a very limited number of consumers.

"For the rest of the hundreds of millions of wireless consumers its not nearly enough," said Consumers Union policy analyst Joel Kelsey. "This is Verizon trying to dodge tough questions about its anti-competitive behavior."

A spokeswoman for the Justice Department was not immediately available for comment. The DoJ's preliminary examination is believed to be focused on deals like AT&T's with Apple and Sprint's <S.N> with Palm's <PALM.O> Pre cellphone. Another is Verizon's deal with LG for its Voyager phone.

AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel declined to comment on how it might respond to Verizon's move, but defended exclusive deals.

"Without question exclusive handset deals have given America's wireless customers big benefits, including more choices, lower prices, and a level of innovation that is the best in the world," he said in an emailed statement.

Sprint declined immediate comment and a spokesperson for the FCC was not immediately available for comment.

Arbogast said AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile USA, the No. 4 U.S. mobile service owned by Deutsche Telekom <DTEGn.DE>, would come under pressure to follow suit.

The letter was sent to Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, and committee members John Kerry of Massachusetts and Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. The letter also was sent to Representatives Rick Boucher, Henry Waxman, Joe Barton and Cliff Stearns.

Boucher, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, who met with McAdam on Friday, praised Verizon's actions.

"Verizon has taken an important and forward-looking step. I think it does ensure that smaller carriers get rapid access to the latest devices," Boucher told Reuters.

Smaller telecommunications companies and consumer advocacy groups also have complained that bigger companies use their size to squeeze out smaller rivals by refusing roaming deals, or block applications like the Skype Web-based phone service.

(Additional reporting John Poirier; Editing by Phil Berlowitz, Tiffany Wu, Richard Chang and Carol Bishopric)

CNN - Tracking Michelle Obama's slave roots

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Tracking Michelle Obama's slave roots

In many places across the South you can walk in the footsteps of slaves, and if you understand the history, it is not a happy journey. The same is true at Friendfield Plantation outside Georgetown, South Carolina.

It's not exactly "Gone With the Wind," but what makes this overgrown 3,300 acres of marsh and pine trees stand out is this: The family of first lady Michelle Obama believes her great-great grandfather was held as a slave here and labored in the mosquito-infested rice fields.

It makes Friendfield Plantation a symbol of something more than servitude. It's the symbol of something that's never happened before: One important segment of an American family's journey from the humiliation of slavery to the very top of the nation's ruling class.

CNN recently was the first television network allowed to visit the plantation and shoot video. It's not a museum. It's just private land, still with shadows of its past.

Friendfield's most distinctive historical feature, perhaps, is the dirt road known as Slave Street.

Six white-washed little shacks are all that remain of the slave quarters, even though rows of these houses once stood on the property. About 350 slaves lived here during the 19th century.

The houses are nothing special -- no plumbing, of course. The wooden walls are paper thin in places. It would have been hot and humid in summer, and most certainly cold in winter, although the shacks had fireplaces.

They would have been crowded: probably one or two families living in a space smaller than a modern-day garage.

The White House is some 472 miles from Georgetown, South Carolina. But long before Michelle Obama was born, her great-great grandfather, Jim Robinson, likely toiled in the fields here six days a week, from sunup to sundown.

The place he probably called home was a little white shack smaller than -- by comparison -- a Secret Service security shed on the grounds of the executive mansion at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

All told, hundreds of people lived like this, on this one plantation alone.

"Anywhere between 200 to 500 at different times," said Ed Carter, the property manager. "The older the plantation got, they kept adding on more cabins. [Some] cabins are 1847.

"There was some on the other street that were about probably 1820s. And when they added on, got a bit more wealthy, they just kept adding on more slaves, more cabins."

The shacks probably weren't much refuge from the vicious clouds of mosquitoes, chiggers, fire ants, and other pests that still impinge on a person's every move on the plantation. Then, consider the dangers of the alligators and snakes.

There was also the oppressive heat and humidity of South Carolina. And on the day CNN visited, the skies opened up in a violent rainstorm.

Add up all of these factors and you begin to get a picture of what life probably was, and was not, for the slaves on Friendfield Plantation. Workers on the rice plantation -- and Friendfield was one of the largest in these parts -- faced all these elements, plus the threat of disease, including malaria and yellow fever. And unlike the CNN crew, the slaves were not free to leave.

Even in death, the slaves stayed. Three cemeteries are on the Friendfield grounds. The one slave cemetery CNN visited had mostly unmarked graves, but Jim Robinson -- who was born into slavery and died a free man -- is believed to be buried there somewhere.

The cemetery clearly has been segregated from the rest of the property. Slave cemeteries were typically situated on land unsuitable for any other use.

Surrounded by trees, it might have been a beautiful place. Now, it is hard to tell that you are standing in a cemetery -- except for half a dozen grave markers, some made of wood, bearing no names.

All that's known about Jim Robinson's life comes from the few remaining records that mention him. Slaves weren't documented as individuals in the census, nor in life and death certificates. They were property, not people.

But Michelle Obama's great-great grandfather was a teenager when slavery was abolished, so as a free man, he started to leave a paper trail.

The 1880 census shows he was born about 1850, in South Carolina, and that his parents were born in South Carolina as well. He married a woman named Louiser, and in 1880 they already had three children, two boys and a girl, ages 1, 2, and 3.

The son that would become Michelle Obama's great grandfather was not born yet. The census lists Jim's occupation as a farmer, and Louiser's as "keeping house."

They are both recorded as unable to read or write. It's good fortune to uncover even this much information; the original handwritten census got wet, the ink ran and it is nearly illegible. Proof of life, nearly washed away.

There are a lot of unknowns concerning Michelle Obama's ancestry -- how many generations of slaves there were, or what route they took to this hemisphere.

The Obama election campaign commissioned a study of Michelle's genealogy by the research group Lowcountry Africana, but they couldn't make the link back to Africa. As with so many African-Americans' family histories, the paper trail runs dry.

"I don't think that that sort of information is available for anyone from Friendfield Plantation at this point," historian Tori Carrier, of Lowcountry Africana, said. "Very, very few, if any, of the Friendfield records actually survived except in public records: wills and estate inventories. ...

"There's not a real Friendfield Plantation records set, or plantation journals that have been preserved ... and there's certainly not a shred of documentary evidence right now which would even suggest to us what the African origins would be," Carrier said.

Back in Georgetown, South Carolina, Margretta Knox remembers attending the Bethel AME church with the first lady's grandparents -- Jim Robinson's grandson and his wife -- when she was a girl. The couple spent many of their years in Chicago, but returned back South after they retired.

"My father knew that Frasier Robinson's father sold newspapers," she recalled. "He made his kids read them. Mr. Robinson was very, very smart, he could recite poetry. ... Their grandfather could recite poetry and that kind of thing. ... Her grandfather and her grandmother, they were both very smart people."

But the family ties to the old plantation just got lost. "We let our parents die before we really thought about asking them questions," Knox said.

"We didn't think about it until much later, and then it was too late. They were already gone. So there was no history after that. ...

"Because we live here, we don't think about it. It's just like, you've been around it all of your life, it doesn't cross your mind. You're just living for today."

In that same way, it probably never crossed Jim Robinson's mind, as a slave in a white-washed cabin, that one day his great-great granddaughter would be living in a white house so very, very different from his own.

Reuters - Website publishes sensitive hacked Twitter info

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Website publishes sensitive hacked Twitter info

Wednesday, Jul 15, 2009 10:21PM UTC

By David Lawsky

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Technology news website TechCrunch published on Wednesday sensitive internal documents belonging to Twitter, including financial projections, offering a rare glimpse into the wildly popular microblogging site.

Twitter has a targeted revenue run rate of $140 million by the end of 2010, with the expectation it would record its first revenue -- a modest $400,000 -- in the third quarter of this year, according to a document Techcrunch published that it said was sent by a hacker.

Dated February, the document was labeled a Financial Forecast and outlined how Twitter expected to take in $4 million in revenue by the fourth quarter and maintain $45 million of cash in the bank.

By the end of 2013, Twitter hoped to sign up 1 billion users, post $1.54 billion in revenue, employ 5,200 people and make $111 million in net earnings, according to TechCrunch.

Techcrunch, which said it negotiated the publication with Twitter itself, added in the report that the document was unofficial and "certainly no longer accurate."

Twitter was not immediately available to comment on the projections. The document published by TechCrunch did not provide details about how Twitter planned to get the revenue.

"We are in touch with our legal counsel about what this theft means for Twitter, the hacker, and anyone who accepts and subsequently shares or publishes these stolen documents," Twitter said in an official blog post.

TechCrunch said earlier on Wednesday that an anonymous hacker had gained "easy access" to hundreds of pieces of internal Twitter information -- from pass codes to meeting minutes -- and then forwarded the data to the news website.

TechCrunch initially posted a single document, a discussion about a proposed reality television show. Within hours of its posting, hundreds of readers condemned the site for the move.

Michael Arrington, founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, defended its right to make the material public, saying it would exercise restraint on material such as personnel records.

"We've spent most of the evening reading these documents. The vast majority of them are somewhat embarrassing to various individuals, but not otherwise interesting," Arrington wrote.

"But a few of the documents have so much news value that we think it's appropriate to publish them."

Twitter, which permits users to post "Tweets" of up to 140 characters, has won a loyal fan following of millions and catapulted to prominence after it was used by protesters in Iran following a disputed election there.

The company is trying to parlay the popularity of its free service, into a money-making business. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone told Reuters earlier this year the company had decided to generate revenue in 2009, a year earlier than planned.

Stone also said Twitter was more interested in generating revenue from premium add-on features, such as analytic tools, than from traditional online advertising.

Twitter's surge in popularity, and its real-time search feature, have captured the attention of Web giants such as Google Inc, which has had unspecified discussions with the company, according to Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

"Obviously Twitter is a very attractive target for hackers or attackers, because of its high profile as a very popular media website," said Joris Evers, a spokesman and security expert at McAfee, which protects against Internet threats.

(Additional reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; editing by Richard Chang and Andre Grenon)

Reuters - Microsoft takes on Google as Office moves to Web

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Microsoft takes on Google as Office moves to Web

Monday, Jul 13, 2009 5:6PM UTC

By Jim Finkle

BOSTON (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp will release three versions of its dominant Office software that users can access over the Web, catching up with products that rival Google Inc launched three years ago.

The news helped send shares in the world's largest software maker up 2.7 percent by midday, more than double the gain in the Nasdaq Composite Index.

It is the latest salvo in an intensifying war between Microsoft and Google. Google announced plans last week to challenge Windows with a free operating system. Microsoft introduced a new search engine, Bing, last month.

"Microsoft is finally making the conversion through the Web-based world. First, we saw that through Bing. Now we are seeing that through Office," said Jefferies & Co analyst Katherine Egbert.

Microsoft will offer for free to consumers Web-based versions of its Office suite of programs, including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software and a note-taking program.

Microsoft will also host one Internet business version of Office at its own data centers, charging companies a yet-to- be-announced fee. Companies with premium service contracts will have the choice of running a second Web-based version from their own data centers at no extra cost.

The company hopes to make money by using the free software to lead users to its ad-supported websites, including Bing. Analysts have said that Bing's early signs of success suggest Microsoft may be rounding the corner in efforts to turn around its money-losing Internet division.

Still, a free version of Office could hurt sales of Microsoft's top-selling and most profitable unit. One of Office's most popular titles is a home version that sells for $150. It includes the four programs that Microsoft will give away.

"Microsoft is in a tough spot. Their competition isn't just undercutting them. They are giving away the competitive product," said Sheri McLeish, an analyst with Forrester Research.

The Office division rang up operating profit of $9.3 billion on sales of $14.3 billion in the first three quarters of the software maker's current fiscal year.

McLeish expects Microsoft to overtake Google in the market as the hundreds of millions of people who use Office flock to try out the Internet version.

Microsoft will release the web offerings when it starts selling Office 2010, it next major release of the product, sometime in the first half of next year. Its current version came out in January 2007.

The software maker unveiled an early release on Monday at a conference for business partners in New Orleans. It will be distributed to tens of thousands of testers.

Company spokeswoman Janice Kapner said the free Web version will provide "a very rich experience" and probably have more functionality than Google.

Office 2010 is among a wave of upgrades to Microsoft programs planned over the next year. A new version of its ubiquitous Windows operating system is coming out in October and a new version of its widely used email server is also in the works.

Microsoft shares rose 2.7 percent to $23, while the Nasdaq was up 1.2 percent at 1777.50

(Reporting by Jim Finkle; editing by Richard Chang and Andre Grenon)

Reuters - North Korea leader Kim has pancreatic cancer: report

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North Korea leader Kim has pancreatic cancer: report

Monday, Jul 13, 2009 2:18AM UTC

By Jack Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, 67, has life-threatening pancreatic cancer, South Korean broadcaster YTN said on Monday, citing information gathered from Chinese and South Korean intelligence sources.

The report raises questions about leadership in Asia's only community dynasty and who will make decisions concerning its nuclear programs.

Kim's health is one of the most closely guarded secrets in the reclusive state but he is widely thought to have suffered a stroke a year ago, although there has never been official confirmation.

YTN said the diagnoses of the cancer came around the same time as the stroke.

A gaunt Kim with thinning hair made a rare public appearance last Wednesday at a memorial for his father and state founder Kim Il-sung. The stark figure he cast furthered speculation he was still ill.

South Korea's National Intelligence Service could not immediately comment on the report, nor could U.S. officials.

South Korean financial markets took the YTN report with caution, saying it cast a shadow over sentiment.

"Such news highlights South Korea's geopolitical uncertainty and risks and one thing that investors hate is any uncertainty," said Lee Kyoung-su, a market analyst at Taurus Investment & Securities.

North Korea has been raising tension in Asia through missile launches and a nuclear test on May 25 which was met by U.N. sanctions aimed at cutting off it arms trade, one of its few sources of hard cash.

South Korean officials said this military grandstanding was aimed at helping Kim build internal support as he prepares for succession, with his youngest son seen as the likely heir.

SURVIVAL RATE LOW

The U.S. National Cancer Institute puts the five-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer at 5.5 percent. The pancreas makes insulin and other hormones which help the body use or store energy from food.

Pancreatic cancer occurs more often in people who have diabetes than in those who do not, it said, and Kim has been long thought to suffer from diabetes.

Kim Jong-il took power in 1994 when his father died at the age of 82. He assumed the title of general secretary of the ruling Workers' Party and chairman of the National Defense Commission, but has never taken the title of president.

His youngest son Kim Jong-un, born in late 1983 or early 1984 and educated in Switzerland, is regarded as the most capable of Kim's three known sons with striking resemblance to his father.

If Jong-un were to take over soon, he is likely to remain weak, vulnerable and at the mercy of the North's old guard for years, experts said.

North Korea places great emphasis on seniority and the ruling elite around Kim Jong-il, mostly men beyond 70, are not about to take orders from the son, an intelligence source said.

Separately, Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei of China was holding talks in Seoul on Monday to try to resume six-way talks his country hosts aimed at ending Pyongyang's nuclear arms program in return for massive aid and diplomatic rewards.

(Additional reporting by Jungyoun Park; Editing by David Fox)

Reuters - News Corp won't buy Twitter, won't sell MySpace

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News Corp won't buy Twitter, won't sell MySpace

Thursday, Jul 09, 2009 3:44AM UTC

SUN VALLEY, Idaho (Reuters) - News Corp is not interested in buying popular microblogging site Twitter and will not sell its struggling social network MySpace, said the media conglomerate's chief executive, Rupert Murdoch.

Murdoch, who arrived on Wednesday at the Allen & Co investment bank's Sun Valley media and technology conference, said Twitter would be a tough investment to justify because it has not yet come up with a sustainable way to make money.

"Be careful of investing here," he said of Twitter.

Speculation is running rampant at the 27th Sun Valley conference over which company might want to buy Twitter. The service, which lets people post to Web what they are thinking or doing in 140 characters or less, is growing in popularity.

Twitter co-founder Evan Williams is widely considered one of the darlings of this year's conference. Sun Valley often features hot Internet start-ups that older media conglomerates would like to buy to enhance their own businesses.

Asked if he was considering buying Twitter, Murdoch said, "No." Asked about selling MySpace, he said, "Hell no."

News Corp bought MySpace in 2005 for $580 million when the social networking service was nearing the height of its popularity, particularly among younger Internet users.

Since then, it has ceded ground to rival Facebook as well as Twitter. News Corp recently ousted MySpace co-founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe and installed its own management team.

In a bid to cut costs, MySpace also has laid off more than 400 workers, or 30 percent of its staff, in the United States. It also has laid off more abroad.

Murdoch expressed confidence in MySpace and criticized Facebook.

"Facebook is like a directory," he said. "How they make money is another matter."

(Reporting by Robert MacMillan, editing by Tiffany Wu, Matt Daily and Steve Orlofsky)