Hola Sofia Vergara!

In an interesting brand extension, the popular celebrity and entertainment site Wonderwall has launched a version aimed at the U.S. Hispanic market called Wonderwall Latino.

The main Wonderwall site, which is a partnership between Hollywood production company BermanBraun and Microsoft’s MSN portal that launched in early 2009, now has 11.3 million unique users and 337 million page views a month.

That site is getting a design overhaul, with new features including voting buttons, a dedicated video page and a buzz stream with breaking news and tweets, as well as apps for the Apple iPhone and IPod Touch.

According to an MSN blog on the Wonderwall extension, “BermanBraun will spearhead the design, programming, and operations of the digital brand. MSN will provide unique content and lead the advertising efforts in partnership with Microsoft and BermanBraun.”

BermanBraun also recently debuted a political site called BLTWY with MSNBC.com.

Awesome! So says Tina Brown, in an “interview” her site is running with her today, to mark the Beast’s two-year anniversary: five million uniques, “ahead of projections” on advertising, etc. “A romping, vibrant, 2-year-old animal bursting with rude health.” (No mention of Howard Kurtz, though.)

In fact, it’s doing so great, Brown says, that Diller may end up pawning the thing off to Newsweek and new owner Sidney Harman.

Well, she doesn’t say that exactly. But she does acknowledge, out loud, for the first time, that the two sides are chatting:

We hear something is going on with Newsweek.

How clever of you to notice! Yes, there have been some interesting discussions going on, as we have with potential partners large and small all the time.

Cheeky!

Here’s a more fleshed-out version of that discussion, via the NYT:

Mr. Harman and Ms. Brown met as recently as last week and are keen on working together. But whether The Daily Beast, which is financed by the billionaire investor Barry Diller, and Mr. Harman can reach a deal that is agreeable to all parties is still unknown, this person said, speaking anonymously to reveal privileged information.

Ms. Brown has gone as far as submitting a memorandum to Mr. Harman outlining how she would run Newsweek, but Mr. Harman was also interviewing other people for the job, this person added.

A few things:

• It’s astonishing, and also true, that Harman bought Newsweek from the Washington Post (WPO) without knowing who he would hire to run the operation.
• This also means that no one is really running things there now.
• Brown would be a pretty good choice, all things considered.
• And picking up the Beast wouldn’t be a terrible idea for Harman, assuming Diller can do it at the right price: Newsweek’s Web operations are okay, but not nearly as good as they look on paper. That’s because the site is largely dependent on MSNBC.com for its traffic, and that’s not a healthy affair. Say what you will about Brown’s start-up, but it hasn’t had the crutch of a big distribution partner.

While it seems to be a stealth launch, the new online political site for MSNBC.com, created by Hollywood production firm BermanBraun, is now up and running.

Called BLTWY–as in “Beltway,” presumably for the road that rings the nation’s capital–the striking rich-media content site is now live. (You can see it above.)

BLTWY seems to follow along the sweeping horizontal wall and extensive use of larger photos and videos that characterize BermanBraun’s popular Wonderwall celebrity site.

In May, BermanBraun and MSNBC announced the collaboration in a blog post, noting:

“Politicians have now become part of popular culture, and de-facto celebrities, attracting considerable media attention. BermanBraun and the Msnbc Digital Network announced a partnership to create an original destination site which will go beyond policy and polls to explore the celebrity side of politics…It will take you inside the beltway to explore the lives of politicians as celebrities, giving politics the Wonderwall treatment.”

BLTWY is definitely aimed at meshing celebrity and politics and has a lot of interactive elements, such as polls and Facebook Connect.

In fact, the main feature at the moment is a diva depiction of the Supreme Court.

The slick site also appears to be developed in HTML5, rather than using Adobe (ADBE) Flash technology and fits to the entire screen with the homepage remaining in a persistent manner.

BermanBraun has already created several sites for Microsoft (MSFT) and its online properties. Wonderwall debuted in 2009 on its MSN portal, where its women-focused Glo also resides.

Mark Marvel, who runs video sales for MSNBC.com, won’t identify which show the app will feature/promote or when it will be ready. But Marvel says it will offer up complete episodes, as well as features that allow users to “engage with the host of that show,” among other options. So go ahead and make your own guess about which show that might be. (My hunch: Rachel Maddow would be more popular than Dylan Ratigan.)

“Company X introduces iPad app” wouldn’t really qualify as news at this point except that the TV business is the one industry that hasn’t rushed onto Apple’s (AAPL) new platform.

The Flash/HTML5 imbroglio is (a relatively small) part of the reason. But the real issue here is that programmers haven’t figured out what the iPad means for them: Is it a place to put up free ad-supported video, as they’ve tried to do on the Web? Or can they get away with charging money for their stuff (see: ABC’s free iPad app and Hulu’s nonexistent one)?

In MSNBC’s case, moving to the iPad is even trickier, since cable providers pay the GE (GE) unit a fee to carry its programming. Some programmers, like Viacom (VIA) and MSNBC itself have been able to put that same stuff up for free on their own sites and sell ads against it. But it is a practice that provokes grumbling from the likes of Comcast (CMCSA), which is why you don’t see that much of it.

Marvel, who discussed the company’s plan on a Web video panel hosted by Beet.TV last night, says MSNBC may hear more grumbling when it launches the app. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we hear some pushback from them,” he said. “[But] the fact is that this is going to be testing a new market.”

MSN has struck yet another local deal, this time with NBC Universal and Hearst, to provide local news and information to the Microsoft consumer portal.

The deal encompasses 36 markets in the U.S. and will provide 3,000 video clips per week, which will be integrated into MSN’s Local Edition early next year.

Hearst, which is privately held, and NBC Universal, which GE (GE) just sold a major chunk of to Comcast (CMCSA), both have significant local print and television assets.

The deal follows a number of local efforts by MSN, part of a larger trend by big Internet players to integrate a lot more local and community content and data into their offerings.

These include a big local module on MSN’s newly designed homepage as well as the acquisition of hyperlocal information site EveryBlock by Microsoft partner MSNBC.com this summer.

Here is MSN’s blog post on the deals:

MSN Local Edition Announces Partnerships with NBC Local Media and Hearst Television
MSN announces local partnerships

Posted by lisablogs on Wednesday, December 9, 2009 3:52 PM

With our recent launch of the preview of the new MSN homepage, we discussed several trends that influenced the design of our new MSN homepage. The growth of online video and local information were two key trends that influenced our design and both video and local information are extensively integrated into our new homepage. We also unveiled our new MSN Local Edition, a new site focused on providing comprehensive local information at http://local.msn.com.

Local information is booming–with 72% of people regularly consuming local news, 76% of people checking weather, and 86% of people searching for a map or driving directions. Video usage online is also skyrocketing in popularity, with 62% of online adults watching a video online and 35% have viewed a television show or movie online.* Both local and video also present a tremendous growth opportunity for advertisers, with local online advertising projected to grow to $10 billion by 2013.**

Today, we’re happy to announce two partnerships that will allow us to combine the power of both video and local information, and increase the amount of local information we can offer our customers. Through partnerships with NBC Local Media and Hearst Television, we will receive around 3,000 news video clips a week across 36 local media markets. While anyone in the US can receive comprehensive local information from MSN Local Edition, we’re pleased to partner with these industry leaders to offer more compelling and relevant local video clips to customers in 35 markets. The new video content will be available in January 2010.

NBC Local Media will offer local video clips from their “Locals Only” websites in Los Angeles, CA; San Francisco/Bay Area, CA; Dallas-Fort Worth, TX; Philadelphia, PA; Chicago, IL; New York, NY; Washington, DC; Connecticut, and Miami, FL.

Hearst Television will offer local video clips in Albuquerque, NM; Baltimore, MD; Boston, MA; Burlington, VT / Plattsburgh, NY; Cincinnati, OH; Des Moines, IA; Ft. Smith, AR; Greensboro / Winston-Salem, NC; Greenville, SC; Honolulu, HI; Jackson, MS; Kansas City, MO; Lancaster / Harrisburg, PA; Louisville, KY; Manchester, NH; Milwaukee, WI; Monterey, CA; New Orleans, LA; Oklahoma City, OK; Omaha, NE; Orlando, FLA; Pittsburgh, PA; Portland, ME; Sacramento, CA; and
West Palm Beach, FLA.

Cyrus Krohn
Director, MSN Local Edition

*Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2009

**Jupiter Research, 2008

The investment, whose size the Time Warner Inc. Web site declined to disclose, comes as news organizations seek more local information about high school sports, eateries and social events, in which they see an untapped market. Outside.In and a growing cadre of start-ups either hire people to write neighborhood news, or collect and organize dispatches from local citizens, news outlets or bloggers.

MSNBC.com, a joint venture of NBC Universal and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), this summer acquired EveryBlock, which feeds crime reports, restaurant health inspections and other data to news organizations’ Web sites. AOL Inc. recently acquired the local-news network Patch.

CNN.com, which is part of Time Warner’s (TWX) Turner Broadcasting, plans to carry the Outside.In dispatches on its own Web site—the biggest push into local news so far by one of the most popular national news outlets in the country.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

It looks like the local market is heating up even more, with MSNBC.com announcing the acquisition of Chicago-based EveryBlock.

MSNBC.com–a joint venture of Microsoft (MSFT) and GE (GE) unit NBC Universal–paid several million dollars for the “hyper-local” information site, which is up and running in 15 cities, including New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago and Boston, sources said.

In June, Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL paid about $10 million to buy Patch Media.

The New York-based start-up is a platform that does deeply localized coverage of communities on a range of topics, from announcements to news to events to obituaries. It is aimed at competing with local newspapers and other media.

EveryBlock takes a slightly different approach, scouring a mass of publicly available data in a variety of U.S. cities from a variety of public records–such as crime stats, building permits and restaurant inspections–and reassembling them into more comprehensible and geographically relevant news feeds, depending on what a user asks for.

It also pulls up related Flickr photos and information from Web sites like Yelp and Daily Candy and can get very granular, down to keeping track of what is happening on your block or neighborhood.

Maps are also deeply integrated into EveryBlock, as it was on an earlier effort–ChicagoCrime.org–of founder Adrian Holovaty.

The innovative little start-up has a tiny staff of a half-dozen, still calls itself a “project” on its Web site and was started with $1.1 million in grant money won from the Knight News Challenge, an annual contest held by the Knight Foundation.

MSNBC.com is the news channel for Microsoft’s MSN portal, whose execs are very interested in weaving more local results into the site, as well as into the software giant’s new search offering, Bing.

The aim of having EveryBlock data integrated, for example, would be to create a local information dashboard on MSN.

Here’s a screen grab of EveryBlock’s take on my zip code in San Francisco, below (click on the image to make it larger)–and a video interview with Holovaty on YoChicago in early 2008:

In an unusual homecoming and odd job switcheroo between two Internet execs, former Yahoo media head Scott Moore is returning to Microsoft to lead its U.S. content efforts, according to many sources both inside and outside the company.

Moore (pictured here) will become U.S. executive producer, responsible for leading the content and programming strategy for the MSN online service. He will return to Microsoft’s Seattle area HQ in mid-March and report to Greg Nelson, GM of the MSN Global Media Group.

Microsoft (MSFT) declined comment about Moore’s new job, but sources said news of the appointment will be officially announced Monday.

But a memo about Moore’s new gig went out internally to some of the MSN staff earlier today, sources said. In fact, the return of Moore had been widely rumored inside Microsoft, even though there were several other internal and external candidates considered–including another former Yahoo, one source said–for the job.

Moore left Yahoo (YHOO), which was first reported here, last November due to unhappiness over the turmoil at the company and also to pursue a start-up idea he had about a local news site.

Moore even talked about the idea on the record with BoomTown (see video below), just as he was leaving Yahoo’s Santa Monica-based Media Group. Since he left Yahoo for good in December, Moore has been working on his start-up plans and took time off to go on a safari trip to Africa.

(Here’s a link to Moore’s Africa photos, in fact, which are quite good.)

But with the economic downturn making it harder for new start-ups to get funded on good terms, a desire to be back in the Seattle area, where his children live, and a new effort by MSN to compete better in the content business with top-ranked Yahoo, sources said Moore felt the powerful job at Microsoft would be a terrific challenge.

In what is a case of Web exec musical chairs, Moore had previously been replaced at Yahoo–in a rushed appointment–by Jeff Dossett. Dossett came to Yahoo from, wait for it, Microsoft, where he had held the job Moore is now taking.

In that move, also first reported here, Dossett was given a different title at Yahoo than Moore, as SVP of the U.S. Audience Group (Moore was SVP of the Media Group at Yahoo).

When he first started talking to Yahoo, Dossett (pictured here) was actually up for a job to run business development for Yahoo. But Moore’s sudden decision to leave had his boss, Yahoo’s EVP of U.S., Hilary Schneider, scrambling to fill the post. Dossett’s experience at MSN made him the obvious choice.

Now Moore’s appointment puts the pair in head-to-head competitive positions in the online content business, a clash that has been consistently won by Moore, when he had Dossett’s job at Yahoo and Dossett had Moore’s job at MSN.

Moore should also be comfortable at Microsoft and move into his job more easily. Previous to coming to Yahoo in mid-2005, he was president of MSNBC.com and publisher of Slate.com. He had worked at Microsoft for a decade.

Moore will oversee Microsoft’s involvement in the MSNBC.com joint venture again, along with all of Microsoft’s domestic content programming, which makes up a bulk of its efforts in the area.

And with Moore back on board, how MSN will better compete with the content juggernaut Yahoo is–due to Moore’s efforts, in part, and one of the troubled company’s stronger units–will be interesting.

That’s because Yahoo’s news, finance, sports and other properties typically rank as No. 1 online by far.

Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL has also tried recently to improve its content offerings and has gotten some traction. It recently upped the ante with its new MediaGlow online studio effort of niche blog sites.

At the very back of this pack, Microsoft has made innumerable efforts in the content space over the years, mostly unsuccessful–Underwire!, Mungo Park!–and has settled more into the aggregation model.

But it still has a lot of interesting original content efforts under way, such as an unnamed celebrity-focused site property it is reportedly launching within the next week with former Yahoo media exec–and Moore’s former boss–Lloyd Braun.

Ironically, Moore launched a Yahoo celebrity site, omg!, initially pushed by Braun when he was at Yahoo, which has been successful.

Here is the video interview I did with Moore at his Yahoo going-away party about his future plans. Below that is another one I did when he was czar of Yahoo content, in which he talked extensively about the future of content on the Web.

While earlier reports suggested that the Web video audience might have rivaled that of television’s, the Web tracking service says the numbers were more modest. It figures that 13 million people watched video coverage of the inauguration between 12 p.m. and 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Jan. 20. Nielsen numbers indicated that 38 million people watched the event on TV between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Click on table below to enlarge:

Those numbers still aren’t apples to apples, but they’re closer than the earlier numbers we had, which compared TV viewers to video streams–at least 70 million throughout that day. Last week, I theorized that the video stream numbers we’d seen were inflated because many people had to reload their browsers or switch from site to site when they ran into tech trouble. Looks like that may have been the case.

Still, comScore’s numbers show that the event was indeed a big day for Web video, and in particular for the cable networks that streamed coverage on their own sites: 30 percent of online viewers watched the events on a cable news site comScore says. That goosed numbers for Time Warner’s (TWX) CNN.com, News Corp.’s (NWS) Foxnews.com, and MSNBC.com, which is co-owned by GE (GE) and Microsoft (MSFT). (News Corp. is the owner of Dow Jones, which owns this Web site.)

Can you blame them? That lion is pretty cool. And, it turns out, MSNBC.com viewers like watching that story almost as much as YouTube viewers do: NBC’s site has generated 2.4 million views by talking about the clip, while the original YouTube clip has generated 3.2 million views, says Beet.TV. Happy holidays!