Jim walton, President of CNN Worldwide, kicked off the presentation by talking about how the last time he had taken the stage, it was during CNN’s annual all-hands meeting in January, when he kept receiving questions about layoffs. He recounted that he had said “if we have significant layoffs, I will sit on this stage, and allow all of you to throw tomatoes at me.” going on to say that today, “nobody is going to be throwing tomatoes. He said that CNN had increased its profits year over year, and that it would be ending the year with more journalists than it started with.

The presentation then launched into a slideshow of past CNN designs, beginning with the site’s original launch in 1995. Then Kenneth “KC” Estenson, Senior Vice President and General Manager of CNN.com took the stage to talk about the site’s traffic: CNN.com has 38 million unique visitors every month, 1.7 billion page views, and 100 million video views. 121 Billion total page views all time.

Estenson says there are two reasons to change CNN.com: the site wants to constantly move forward, and it wants to help expose the wealth of content that exists beyond what sits on the homepage. The site wants to emphasize breaking news, and more video, as well as perspective and analysis, and keep it easy to use.

The new site will go live on Monday.

There will be a new Entertainment portal, which will include a new partnership from Entertainment Weekly and People Magazine.

Article pages have been redesigned:

The site also has a more prominent opinion portal, including pieces by David Frum who is a new contributor:

CNN.com is also partnering with TED, and will now feature TED’s talks, which include presentations from some of the world’s most notable scientists, artists, and more.

iReport will now be more deeply integrated into CNN’s homepage.

New product called NewsPulse “very early, launching in Beta”. “An iTunes for news” — a listing of all the articles inside of CNN, and you can go in and sort them by popularity, sort my content and categories. Watch video inline.

Launching new quiz called CNN Challenge. Flash-based interactive quiz show every week to test your knowledge of recent news/events.

Earlier this year the site did a collaboration with Facebook to do live feed with Facebook stream. Did it again for the Michael Jackson memorial. During inauguration, had 27 million video views (largest live video event ever). Next month they’re doing it again — on Nov. 9th, CNN and Facebook are adding Oprah. At 9 PM that night Oprah will be hosting a book club on CNN.com, with Facebook chat to bring these three brands together. Oprah will be announcing this tomorrow at 9AM on her show.

CNN’s last major redesign was back in 2007, when the site integrated a much broader selection of multimedia content (streamed through a more friendly Flash media player) as well as more ‘Web 2.0′ social features. For more of CNN’s past designs, check out its archive at the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Check out this article about the most dangerous celebrities to search for on the web. The opening line: “Be cautious if you plan to Bing Jessica Biel or Google Brad Pitt. A new report says you might get a virus.” Um, “Bing Jessica Biel”? Aside from it sounding oddly sexual (insert badda-bing joke here), it’s a little odd to see that on CNN.com before it has really entered the tech lexicon. Sure, Microsoft wants everyone to use it as a verb to be like Google, but there’s obviously a big difference between a company wanting something to happen for branding, and it actually happening.

CNN.com’s search is marked as very clearly powered by Google, so it would seem there is no real ulterior motive for CNN to hype Bing, maybe they’re just trying to get ahead of the curve. The problem is that when you’re a mainstream media publication, you have to stay in touch with your audience — which is a nice way of saying that sometimes you have to “dumb it down” a bit, or fall back to things people will understand. For example, if my mom is reading that article right now, I guarantee you she has no idea what Bing is and is quite confused about what CNN is implying there.

If you Bing Jessica Biel, you’ll get a virus? Now just imagine you had no idea what Bing is and tell me how you read that.

[photo: FHM]

[thanks Andrew]

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

In case you haven’t gotten enough of the non-stop coverage of Michael Jackson since his death last week, grab some lunch and watch his funeral, which is already under way, but the public memorial at the Staples Center in Los Angeles is scheduled to start at around 10:30 AM PT/ 1:30 PM ET. You can watch it on TV, or on pretty much any video or gossip site on the Web.

CNN.com is covering it live with the same Facebook chat integration it used for Obama’s Inauguration. You can see everyone’s comments on the side, or just your friends. I wonder which one will generate more Facebook status updates (the Obama CNN-Facebook Inauguration generated 1.5 million).

Right now five of the top ten top trending topics on Twitter search have to do with MJ (“MJ’s,” “MJ Memorial,” “Staples Center,” “RIP MJ,” and “#michaeljackson”).

Where are you watching MJ’s funeral today? (Come on, admit it, you have nothing better to do). I’m following 1938Media’s Twitter stream, he’s at the funeral (or at least is pretending to be) and even dressed up for the occasion.

UPDATE: Facebook reports that as of 10:30 a.m. PDT 300,000 users are logged in to the Facebook/CNN platform. There have been more than 500,000 status updates, with 6,000 status updates posted per minute. And the Michael Jackson Facebook page now has 7 million fans, more than any other fan page, including Barack Obama’s. And the MJ virtual glove has been given away 800,000 times, making it the most popular virtual gift ever on Facebook.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Look at the CNN Breaking News Twitter account right now. 8 of its last 10 tweets contain a broken link. This is a Twitter account with nearly 2 million followers, that CNN is promoting like no other on its shows, and it’s 404-ing millions of people.

Why this matters is of course because so many people are using this account as their main means of getting news about Iran. When CNN tweets out things like “Daughter of former president Rafsanjani arrested #iranelection,” and then has a link that doesn’t work, a lot of people are obviously very upset.

If you’re going to insist on basing most of your coverage around Twitter CNN, please figure out how to use it.

Update: It looks like CNN has figured it out after an hour with broken links. Whoever runs their account started using TweetDeck instead of the web, and so now all of the links are using the Bit.ly URL shortening service. But that’s interesting too. Why does CNN, which has a natural URL that is already very short, not just make its own short URLs? That way it could also guarantee they will work if a service like Bit.ly goes down.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

FOX News and MySpace are partnering to launch Fox’s citizen journalism social media platform on MySpace, called uReport. MySpace members can share citizen produced content with the MySpace community, as well as have the chance to be featured on FOX News. FOX News and MySpace are both owned by News Corp.

FOX News uReport, which is nearly identical to CNN’s citizen journalism initiative iReport, is a platform through which users can upload photos and videos to FOX News from a computer or mobile device. Members of the MySpace-uReport community can become “uReporters” by uploading video and photos tagged by specific news categories, including entertainment and politics. FOX says that this content could be featured in programming on FOX News Channel and foxnews.com, with FOX News maintaining editorial control of the MySpace page.

CNN’s iReport has a Facebook page where iReporters can upload footage, photos and content to the platform but it’s unclear if this footage is used on CNN.com or on the CNN news channel. CNN’s iReport famously caused Apple’s stock to drop after someone posted a false rumor about Steve Jobs having a heart attack. Fox may have missed its chance, since the most activity on CNN’s iReport was leading up to the presidential election and inauguration. CNN partnered with Facebook to cover the inauguration events in January.

uReport on MySpace

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Yesterday was supposed to be the day that live Web video streaming took on TV broadcasting.  CNN.com alone served a record 21.3 million streams, with a peak of 1.3 million simultaneous streams. And Akamai reported a peak of 5.4 million simultaneous visitors per minute to the various news sites for which it hosts video, and more than 7 million simultaneous streams.

With millions tuning in from their PCs to watch President Obama’s Inauguration speech, it was one of the biggest tests yet for live video streaming.  But live streaming failed. CNN.com kept bumping viewers into virtual waiting rooms. This happened to me in the middle of Obama’s speech. I had to keep hitting refresh, but missed half the speech. The stream on Hulu was even worse, with the video frozen and the audio coming in and out. And forget about Ustream. I couldn’t even get any audio. This seemed to be the general experience out there, based on other reports.

When it comes to big live events with millions of people watching at the same time, traditional TV broadcasters have nothing to worry about. Right now, the Internet breaks at about one million simultaneous streams. That is nothing when it comes to the audience size for historic events, or even a big football game. The Internet simply does not shine when it is used as a broadcast medium. And yesterday proved it.

Will it get better? Yes. Akamai and others can always put up more proxy streaming servers at the edge of the network to meet demand. But that is an expensive proposition for infrequent events. Perhaps a better solution for live streaming is a peer-to-peer model where streaming quality improves as more people watch. (Check out RayV, which does this). That would require everyone to download extra add-on software for their browsers. I’d do it in a second if that would solve the live stream stuttering problem.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

There are plenty of places to watch the inauguration today online (see our guide). I’ve been clicking around, and many of the streams are jittery, as you would expect, but I find myself coming back to CNN’s live stream. The video keeps skipping on me, but at least the audio is consistent. Maybe that’s because CNN.com is serving a record number of live video streams (13.9 million live streams between 6 AM and 11:45 AM ET, versus 5.3 million on Election Day, the previous record. See update below). The big draw, however, is that CNN partnered with Facebook, and I can watch the proceedings along with comments from all my Facebook friends in the sidebar.

My friend Dimitry Leger noted that “Obama looks like a heavyweight boxer waiting to enter the ring for the big fight.” When Bush appeared Kevin Werbach, who is on the Obama transition team, commented, “crowd is singing the nanana goodbye song now.” (Scott Beale also noticed this). Loic Le Meur doesn’t like all the praying. Kevin Rose “is hoping this stream starts working…”

Watching events like these with people you know is always better than watching alone, but since most of us are at work today, Facebook serves as a proxy for a virtual living room that can hold hundreds of people. I find these comments much more interesting than random Twitters from people I don’t know. So I am going to stick with Facebook and CNN for the rest of the inauguration ceremony. (Uh-oh the stream just went completely kaput for me—at least I can still read everyone’s commentary. I’m switching to Hulu for the live video).

Update: During Obama’s speech, the comment stream was filled with everyone’s favorite quotes in real-time. (His flubbing the oath was also noticed). After the speech, some typical reactions from Netvibes founder Tariq Krim: “greatness is never given, it is earned;” and from ex-Googler Chris Sacca describing the moment as experienced in D.C., “Yes! Everyone is crying and hugging. Everyone.”

Update 2: As of 10:15 AM PST/1:15 EST today, Facebook reports:

-600,000 status updates have been posted so far through the CNN.com Live Facebook feed
-There were an average of 4,000 status updates every minute during the broadcast
-There were 8,500 status updates the minute Obama began his speech
-Obama’s page on Facebook has more than 4 million fans and more than 500,000 wall posts
-Millions of people logged into Facebook during the broadcast

And CNN served more than 18.8 million live streams between 6 AM and 1 PM EST, with a peak of 1.3 million streams just before Obama began his speech.

Update 3: Make that 21.3 million streams on CNN.com as of 3:30 PM EST and 136 million pageviews.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Whether you are headed to Washington for the Obama Inauguration or simply want to follow along online, there is no shortage of sites and applications dedicated to the national party on Tuesday, January 20. Of course, every major news site (ABC.com, CBS.com, MSNBC.com, Fox.com, CNN.com, NYTimes.com, WashingtonPost.com, etc) will have videos, photos, and reporting from the event. But the people lining the parade route will also be Twittering, uploading photos, and capturing video moments with their cell phones and video cameras. General information about the inauguration can be found at the sites for the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies and Presidential Inaugural Committee.

Below is the TechCrunch Guide to the Inauguration, a collection of links and apps that will help you make the most out of the inauguration.

Where To Watch

There will be plenty of livestreams of the Inauguration at all the media sites mentioned above. Some of the sites offering livestreams include:

—Hulu: Will be streaming live, Fox.com will also be using Hulu’s stream.
—C-Span: Washington D.C.’s video standby will have four live feeds to choose from.
—CNN.com: Partnering with Facebook so you can see your friends’ status updates while watching.
—Current TV : Will add a Twitterstream to its coverage.
—Ustream.tv: This stream will also be available on your iPhone, great for those along the parade route too far away to see the main stage.
—Starbucks and movie theaters: For those who cannot make it to Washington, MSNBC is hosting screenings of the inauguration in movie theaters and Starbucks across the country (although it looks as though these are already sold out).
— Joost is also broadcasting the inauguration live.
—Obama Girl is streaming her coverage on Stickam.
— Kyte.tv has a special inauguration channel as well

Where To Stay

—CrashTheInauguration: If you are going to Washington, D.C. and still don’t have a room, you might find a couch to sleep on at CrashTheInauguration. And if you are lucky they might even serve you Obama O’s for breakfast.

Where To Share

—Twitter: Just search for “inauguration” or “Obama”. The chatter has already started.

— Check out Obama’s Inauguration blog on Tumblr at http://inauguration.tumblr.com/

—Flickr pool for Inauguration 2009.

—Users can get Twitter, Flickr, Change.gov, and YouTube updates to follow only the most interesting pictures, video, posts, and tweets about the election through Dipity.

—NPR Inauguration Report: Run by NPR’s social media desk, it will be collecting dispatches from spectators via Twitter, Flicr, YouTube, and text message. All Tweets or text messages that start with “#inaug09″ or “#dctrip09″ will be included in NPR’s feed, as well as Flickr photos and YouTube videos tagged “inaug09″ or “dctrip09.” There are also an accompanying iPhone and Android apps called IR09, Inauguration Report 2009 (more details here).

—CNN/Microsoft 3D Photosynth: People at the inauguration can upload their photos and Microosft will combine them into a 3D panoramic Photosynth (more details here).

—Citizen’s Briefing Book: Got a policy suggestion for the transition team? Submit one or vote for the best ones at Change.gov

—Where Were You?: A video contest sponsored by Memelabs that will let people share where they were on this historic day.

iPhone Apps and Follow-up

—Ustream.tv: Stream the inauguration to your iPhone (see above).

—Inauguration Report 2009: Submit your own report to NPR with text, photos, or audio. Reports post straight to NPR’s Inauguration feed (see above).

—PointAbout 2009 Presidential Inauguration Guide: Free app with a countdown to the inauguration, distance to the inauguration steps, and lets you navigate Washington, D.C. with maps of public transport, parking, free WiFi zones, and a Zagat’s restaurant guide for the city.

—CrashTheInauguration (same as above, but on your iPhone).

—Change (U.S.) Politics (iTunes link). Cast your approval rating of the Obama administration across 14 issues

—PolitFact’s Obameter: Obama made more than 500 promises during the election campaign. Track how many he keeps with the Obameter.

Know of more resources? Add them in comments.
(Photo by Anna Levinzon).

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

CNN’s Jessica Yellin is the guinea pig, appearing virtually with Blitzer.

I have no idea why Yellin doesn’t just go to the studio instead of being wherever she is, or why they don’t just point a camera at her and bring her into the story in the normal way, and I don’t care. They have a hologram, and if I wasn’t getting on a plane in twenty minutes I’d be watching CNN the rest of the evening.

Update: (Robin Wauters) since Michael’s on a plane, here’s a bit more information about the technology side of all this:

The network has created green-screen virtual-set environments that will be set up in mobile trailers outside the Obama and McCain headquarters and will use a mix of mechanical and infrared camera-tracking technology to create a realistic holographic image of the correspondent on the floor of the “Situation Room” set in New York. The field correspondents will have a 37” plasma monitor showing a return feed of the “Situation Room” set with Blitzer to give them a frame of reference.

CNN Senior VP and Washington Bureau Chief David Bohrman, who has been evaluating the technology at NAB shows for years, has indicated that introducing discreet virtual set elements into a real-world set is something they hope to do more of in the future, e.g. for live interviews.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Apple’s stock took a temporary 10-point hit this morning after a false report surfaced on CNN’s iReport that Steve Jobs had a heart attack. The report has been removed, but only after Silicon Alley Insider and others confirmed with Apple that Jobs did not have a heart attack. And the stock jumped right back up to its opening levels. SIA captured the original report:

Steve Jobs was rushed to the ER just a few hours ago after suffering a major heart attack. I have an insider who tells me that paramedics were called after Steve claimed to be suffering from severe chest pains and shortness of breath. My source has opted to remain anonymous, but he is quite reliable. I haven’t seen anything about this anywhere else yet, and as of right now, I have no further information, so I thought this would be a good place to start. If anyone else has more information, please share it.

Was this just a short seller trying to make a quick buck, or someone trying to see how fast and far they could spread a false rumor? And what does it say about the value of citizen journalists?

Rather than fight the rise of citizen journalism, CNN decided to try to co-opt it by launching iReport. CNN’s iReport site lets anyone put up posts and videos about the news. Its tagline is “Unedited. Unfiltered. News.” Sometimes these reports get on CNN proper (presumably, after being vetted).

But as this incident shows even the an unvetted report carries more weight than if it had appeared on Twitter or a random blog because it is on a CNN site. And that may be purely because it gets distributed more broadly. It could also be because people tend to believe what they read on CNN-branded sites.

Let’s not let one bad apple ruin the whole experiment, though. Obviously, there are a lot of smart people out there who can contribute to general news gathering. There needs to be a better truth filter on iReport and other sites that allow the anonymous reporting of news. A better reputation system for contributors would help. They shouldbe encouraged to use their real names. And maybe a bigger disclaimer needs to be placed up top saying: “Read At Your Own Risk.”

Apple can also learn a lesson from this. The stock would not have dropped so much if there wasn’t already a deep level of concern for Steve Jobs’ health and if the market knew who might take over in case of an emergency.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Here are some select scores, with the comparable 2007 numbers in parentheses:

American Customer Satisfaction Index Scores (2nd Quarter, 2008)

Google:                86 (78)
Yahoo:                 77 (79)
MSNBC.com:        76 (74)
ABCNews.com:     75 (74)
MSN:                   75 (75)
NYTimes.com:      75 (73)
Ask:                    74 (75
CNN.com:            73 (73)
USAToday.com:    73 (72)
AOL:                   69 (67)

The only surprise here is Google’s massive jump. Is it really doing that much of a better job than last year, or is it just that its halo effect keeps growing?

(Photo by Bing Ramos).

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Digg competitor Mixx landed another big distribution deal. CNN.com will be adding a “Mixx It” button after every article on the site. This will be right next to the “e-mail” and “share” buttons. Last March, the Mixx bookmark button was adopted by the New York Times, but only as one of many options. Similarly, when CNN.com readers click on the “share” button, they have the option to send the story to Digg, Facebook, del.icio.us, Reddit, and StumbleUpon. But Mixx will be highlighted as a separate button, apart from the regular share options.

The deal with CNN could give a huge boost to Mixx’s small-but-growing membership base of 500,000 registered users (and between 70,000 and 180,000 monthly unique visitors, depending on which measurement service you look at). CNN.com has 22 million monthly uniques in the U.S., according to comScore (and 30 million worldwide). CNN.com readers who decide to Mixx their stories will be able to bypass Mixx’s registration process when they get taken to the site so that they can browse immediately. They will still have to register, however, to save a story or set up a personal Mixx page.

For CNN, the appeal of Mixx might have something to do with the fact that Mixx really lets readers get extremely granular in their interests. Categories are based on tags, with already 300,000 different tags on Mixx. So if you are interested in Alzheimer’s, for instance, you can add that tag to your personalized Mixx page or search for stories explicitly categorized with that tag. On Digg and other social news sites, you can search for stories about Alzheimer’s also, but there is no Alzheimer’s category. Notes Mixx CEO Chris McGill:

When you are looking at Yahoo Buzz or Redditt or Digg, they are really playing a one-size fits all game. All the stories are just shooting for the popular board.

Mixx, he thinks, can do a better job to help you find and share stories around your particular interests, no matter how obscure they may be. Of course, to gain all the benefits of such a system, you have to be willing to do a little more work in setting up your preferences. And, ultimately, the quality of the stories you find on Mixx will depend on the quality (and number) of submissions. With 13.3 million monthly visitors adding and voting stories on Digg, that is going to be a very difficult network effect to overcome. But if Mixx can convince enough CNN readers to join its bookmarking club, it could survive become a solid Digg alternative, or at least survive long enough to get bought.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Andy Warhol said in 1968 that “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes,” and iReport.com is offering users at least part of their 15 minutes as submissions may be used on CNN itself. But unfortunately that’s where it ends, because there is no payment for submissions. CNN claims this is a site is “where the community — not CNN — became the most trusted name in news,” but trust doesn’t equal money at a time where more and more sites and startups explore ways of compensating users for their time and effort.

There is some good content on the site, and CNN has selected star reporters in a social networking style popularity contest that encourages decent content, that and users can vote on stories as well. The weakness in the idea is that submissions are not pre-vetted or pre-read (or seemingly post-read), and you get stories like this one that is currently sitting as the fourth most viewed story on the site. I’m sure the weather in New York might be disgusting, but does a story that consists of one line and a picture of snow really make for great reporting? Then there’s stories like this one; Testing testing…… I can see people having proper fun with this in the coming days, until CNN ultimately decides that not moderating the site is a dumb idea.

Bored TechCrunch readers should feel free to add their own stories to CNN iReport and post the links. There’s no prize for the best one, other than your 0.25 seconds of Warhol fame in the TechCrunch comment thread

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

What’s next? Ads for plutonium next to stories about nuclear proliferation?

I don’t see the steroid ads popping up anymore on that CNN page, so maybe someone at CNN (or Google) got wise to the inappropriate mismatch. (Although, if you were in the market for steroids, you would probably be reading such stories). But the same types of ads come up when you do a search for “steroids” on CNN.com:

This is not limited to CNN. Here are sponsored results for a similar search on the LATimes.com, which also shows Google ads:

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

The deal will also open up the extensive inventory on CNN.com to Adwords’ advertisers.

Senior VP and GM of CNN.com David Payne said the deal would help deliver relevant ads to CNN users, “enhancing their overall experience on CNN.com.”

Although the deal might not initially sound all that exciting, CNN.com is a top 100 site online according to Alexa, making it one of the most popular media destinations online. That’s a lot of pages and ad inventory for Google to sell ads on, inventory that should pay handsomely for all involved.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed, including the length of the agreement, which was described only as “multi-year.”

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

In related news the New York Times reported this morning that AOL, where many services will become free on Wednesday, will launch a video service this week. Commercial free downloads-to-own will start at $1.99 and various free offerings will join AOL’s video search for content across the web.

Since CNN and AOL are Time Warner companies one question seems to be whether any cross pollination in video strategy will go on.

Another question worth asking though is: does this mean certain death for the countless video sharing and downloading startups coming online? Probably not. Each will have its own unique feel, likely all with far less editorial control than these two big players.

In the end the dichotomy remains the same: try to get past the corporate editors and into big media in exchange for massive exposure or on the other hand try to create something compelling that will go viral across countless other channels.

CNN is likely to never allow unmediated upload of content on to its site because it’s such an uncomfortable position to be in from a branding perspective for companies born in the media-as-gatekeeper era. It’s hard to imagine CNN letting in enough video to offer site visitors the kind of endless clicking around that YouTube offers. Not to mention that talking dogs aren’t going to make it to CNN. YouTube minus talking dogs (and other copyrighted content) vs. sites like CNN plus user video would be a whole other equation.

I imagine that the glut of video services online is a much bigger barrier to effective entry than is the launch of services by these big players. These will probably always be two very different sorts of sites.