How BuzzFeed Is Betting on Hollywood, Long-Form Writing to Grow

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Last January, BuzzFeed, then an aggregator of memes and cat videos, secured a $15.5 million round of venture capital to beef up a craft that most traditional media was downsizing: journalism.
It hired dozens of reporters and editors, opened bureaus in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles and became a must-read for political junkies during the 2012 presidential election.
On Thursday, the company took another step.
It added adding a fourth round of capital investment - this time worth $19.3 million. And it plans to expand in two major ways: literary, long-form journalism like the kind practiced by New York magazine and the New Yorker, and - with two former Los Angeles Times staffers newly on board - its Hollywood coverage.
BuzzFeed's been on a roll. According to the privately held company's internal traffic numbers, the 8 million unique monthly visitors it drew in 2008 has swelled to 40 million, and revenue for 2012 may triple that of 2011, a spokeswoman for BuzzFeed told TheWrap.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal on Friday, Tom Gara reported that some analysts place the company's valuation at $200 million and say that revenues may reach $40 million this year.
Most of BuzzFeed's traffic currently comes from its odd mix of news and eccentricity on the homepage. Friday morning, spotlighted stories ranged from J.J. Abrams screening his new "Star Trek" for a dying fan and Sen. Tammy Baldwin talking about breaking the glass ceiling to: "How to Murder Your Friend's Facebook Page" and "Here Are Some Elephants Eating Christmas Trees."
But there's no question things are changing.
The first thing CEO Jonah Peretti did with his 2012 investment cash was hire Ben Smith, a Politico veteran, as the site's first editor-in-chief. Smith then kicked off a hiring spree of reporters and got to work. Already BuzzFeed is beginning to break stories and get quoted by aggregators.
McKay Coppins, the site's political editor, embedded with Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's campaign. John Stanton, a veteran reporter in Washington, was named BuzzFeed's first D.C. bureau chief. Michael Hastings, the dogged journalist whose Rolling Stone exposé of Gen. Stanley McChrystal's private disagreements with President Obama over Afghanistan led to his resignation, joined the team.
Then, less than a year into its political foray, the site hired former Spin magazine chief Steve Kandell to make the push for longform journalism.
It began with an experiment - a 7,118-word post from last October titled "Can You Die From a Nightmare?" that garnered more than 115,000 hits. Another in October titled "Making Mitt: The Myth of George Romney" drew nearly 130,000 views. This convinced Smith and his team that literary journalism had a niche in the viral news market.
Despite the internet school of thought that briefer is better, Kandell said he has no plans to restrict stories' word counts.
"If someone has a story that has to be 10,000 words, I don't know why that couldn't be," Kandell said.
"I don't think people necessarily have a certain fatigue level when it gets to a certain length and people start trailing out."
Kandell says he plans in the coming months to start publishing at least one long-form story a week and may even start packaging and selling the stories as Amazon Kindle singles or as audiobooks.
Kandell assembled a "Best of 2012" post for his nascent section of the site. The stories ranged from the tale of BuzzFeed's own political editor Coppins, a Mormon, watching attitudes toward his and Romney's religion change throughout the campaign to an inside look at the "Dark World of Online Sugar Daddies."
Plans are to cover more foreign policy and national security issues from a Washington-centered perspective - and to add Hollywood into the mix. The only hands-off topic, apparently, will be international news.
"We've played around with ways to make world news more sharable, just like every editor at every publication," he said, noting that readers liked a roundup of Instagram photos of the civil war in Syria. "It's really hard, it's not something we want to jump into without really knowing what we're doing."
As for Hollywood, BuzzFeed hired Richard Rushfield, former entertainment editor of LATimes.com, and ex-Times television editor Kate Aurthur, also a former Daily Beast staffer, to jump-start its bureau.
Smith said he plans to forge a presence in Los Angeles second only to its flagship New York bureau. A Hollywood vertical is expected to launch on January 7.
To that end, the site is entering a crowded space - one dominated by publications like Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, TheWrap, Vulture and the Times - but Rushfield said he plans to cover entertainment through BuzzFeed's social-web lens: If it's irresistibly share-worthy, it's publishable.
"We have a unique position, despite how crowded the beat is," Rushfield told TheWrap, adding that they won't be competing with trades over stories concerning studio executives and casting deals. "One of our advantages is that we are not going to be going after every single story that the trades are - we have more room to take the things that we think can be interesting. What BuzzFeed is about is writing news that will be of interest to the social web."
Now the trick is to make all these editorial investments worthwhile financially.
Revenue growth from its advertising model has been climbing, chief operating officer Jon Steinberg told TheWrap.
Forgoing the usual banners and display ads, BuzzFeed offers its clients "branded content." For example, Scope mouthwash sponsored a "listicle" on the most "courageous" mustaches.
To that end, the advertising team, which is made up of 20 people that report to Steinberg, works with brands from General Electric to Virgin Mobile to devise sharable pieces of content.
The ratio of advertorial to editorial content on the homepage is usually about one to every six or so stories," he said.
Those branded-content headlines garner 10-20 times the click-through rates of blinking banner and display ads, Steinberg told TheWrap.
"You compare those ads in the 1950s to modern advertising, you realize how broken modern advertising is," Steinberg said. "Most publishers and media companies say you can't make money on modern advertising."
But - though he declined to reveal exact numbers, as BuzzFeed is a private company - the model helped to increase revenue last year and has allowed the publication to focus solely on its advertising stream.
He said the company has no immediate plans to enter the conference business popular with online publications including the Business Insider, AllThingsD and TheWrap.
"This is our Google ad words," Steinberg said of the innovative advertising tool that Google pioneered in the mid-2000s. "If we were Apple, this would be our manufacturing of great hardware products.

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Cricket-Herath alive and bowling despite death rumours

SYDNEY, Jan 5 (Reuters) - As Mark Twain might have said, rumours of the death of Sri Lankan spinner Rangana Herath which spread like wildfire across social media late on Friday proved to be greatly exaggerated.
Far from lying in a Sydney morgue alongside former test bowler Chaminda Vaas after perishing in a car crash as the reports had suggested, Herath was very much alive when he pitched up for work at the Sydney Cricket Ground on Saturday.
The most prolific wicket-taker in test cricket last year, the 34-year-old leg spinner claimed two Australian wickets to seal a haul of four for 95 and then contributed nine runs with the bat.
Team mate Dimuth Karunaratne told reporters at the conclusion of the day's play that the team had been dumbfounded by the rumours.
"I heard about it when we having breakfast but I had no idea where that came from," he said with a laugh.
"Guys from Sri Lanka were calling us asking 'when is the funeral?' and stuff like that.
"Rangana is alive," he added, somewhat unneccessarily.
Herath's efforts were not enough to prevent Australia taking an iron grip on the third test match on Saturday and move to the brink of a 3-0 series sweep.
That could all change, however, if he and Dinesh Chandimal, who finished the third day unbeaten on 22, are able to dig in on Sunday, inflate their lead beyond the current 87 and give Sri Lanka a decent target to bowl at.
The Sydney track has traditionally offered a lot of turn for spinners in the last couple of days of a test and, as Herath's 60 wickets last year showed, there are few better spinners operating in test cricket at the moment.
"The wicket is turning a lot now and the Aussie guys are playing the fourth innings, so I think Rangana... can do something," said Karunaratne.
Vaas has no position with the test team and remains, also unharmed, in Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan reporters said.

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Cricketer Herath alive and bowling despite death rumors

SYDNEY (Reuters) - As Mark Twain might have said, rumors of the death of Sri Lankan spinner Rangana Herath which spread like wildfire across social media late on Friday proved to be greatly exaggerated.
Far from lying in a Sydney morgue alongside former test bowler Chaminda Vaas after perishing in a car crash as the reports had suggested, Herath was very much alive when he pitched up for work at the Sydney Cricket Ground on Saturday.
The most prolific wicket-taker in test cricket last year, the 34-year-old leg spinner claimed two Australian wickets to seal a haul of four for 95 and then contributed nine runs with the bat.
Team mate Dimuth Karunaratne told reporters at the conclusion of the day's play that the team had been dumbfounded by the rumors.
"I heard about it when we having breakfast but I had no idea where that came from," he said with a laugh.
"Guys from Sri Lanka were calling us asking ‘when is the funeral?' and stuff like that.
"Rangana is alive," he added, somewhat unnecessarily.
Herath's efforts were not enough to prevent Australia taking an iron grip on the third test match on Saturday and move to the brink of a 3-0 series sweep.
That could all change, however, if he and Dinesh Chandimal, who finished the third day unbeaten on 22, are able to dig in on Sunday, inflate their lead beyond the current 87 and give Sri Lanka a decent target to bowl at.
The Sydney track has traditionally offered a lot of turn for spinners in the last couple of days of a test and, as Herath's 60 wickets last year showed, there are few better spinners operating in test cricket at the moment.
"The wicket is turning a lot now and the Aussie guys are playing the fourth innings, so I think Rangana... can do something," said Karunaratne.
Vaas has no position with the test team and remains, also unharmed, in Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan reporters said.

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How Not 'Awesome' Was Lisa Jackson at the EPA?

After almost four years of guiding controversial decisions on fracking, the Keystone XL pipeline, and coal, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is stepping down. Now, the hunt is on for a new director who won't be able to please anyone.
RELATED: EPA Passes New Fracking Rules
Jackson—the EPA's first African American chief and a chemical engineer by training—wrote in a statement, "I will leave the EPA confident the ship is sailing in the right direction, and ready in my own life for new challenges, time with my family and new opportunities to make a difference." President Obama said in a separate statement:
Under her leadership, the EPA has taken sensible and important steps to protect the air we breathe and the water we drink, including implementing the first national standard for harmful mercury pollution, taking important action to combat climate change under the Clean Air Act and playing a key role in establishing historic fuel economy standards that will save the average American family thousands of dollars at the pump, while also slashing carbon pollution.
Congressional Republicans, however, won't be sad to see her go. Caught between their hostility toward regulation and the Obama administration's lack of emphasis on climate change, Jackson was unable to nix the Keystone XL oil pipeline, a planned route for bringing tar sand oil from Canada down to Texas. When confronted on the issue, Jackson simply said that holding conversations about the project is "awesome." She also wasn't able to get the EPA to take meaningful action on hydraulic fracturing, even after the agency found evidence that the practice contributes to groundwater pollution.
RELATED: EPA Proposes First Fracking-Related Pollution Rules
Among her successes, Jackson can count a rule limiting mercury emissions in coal-fired plants and the doubling of fuel efficiency standards. It remains to be seen whether the EPA's deputy administrator Robert Perciasepe—who looks prepped to take the reigns in the interim and potentially as full-time Administrator later on—can do any better.

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Website helps Dutch Catholics "de-baptize" over gay marriage

 Thousands of Dutch Catholics are researching how they can leave the church in protest at its opposition to gay marriage, according to the creator of a website aimed at helping them find the information.
Tom Roes, whose website allows people to download the documents needed to leave the church, said traffic on ontdopen.nl - "de-baptise.nl" - had soared from about 10 visits a day to more than 10,000 after Pope Benedict's latest denunciation of gay marriage this month.
"Of course it's not possible to be 'de-baptized' because a baptism is an event, but this way people can unsubscribe or de-register themselves as Catholics," Roes told Reuters.
He said he did not know how many visitors to the site actually go ahead and leave the church.
About 28 percent of the population in the Netherlands is Catholic and 18 percent is Protestant, while a much larger proportion - roughly 44 percent - is not religious, according to official statistics.
The country is famous for its liberal attitudes, for example to drugs and prostitution, and in April 2001 it was the first in the world to legalize same-sex marriages.
In a Christmas address to Vatican officials, the pope signaled the he was ready to forge alliances with other religions against gay marriage, saying the family was threatened "to its foundations" by attempts to change its "true structure".
Roes, a television director, said he left the church and set up his website partly because he was angry about the way the church downplayed or covered-up sexual abuse in Catholic orphanages, boarding schools and seminaries.
A report by an independent commission published a year ago said there had been tens of thousands of victims of child sexual abuse in the Netherlands since 1945 and criticized the church's culture of silence.

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Apple still said to account for 87% of North American tablet traffic as Kindle Fire, Nexus 7 gain

Apple’s (AAPL) share of the global tablet market is in decline now that low-cost Android slates are proliferating, but the iPad still appears to be the most used tablet by a huge margin. Ad firm Chitika regularly monitors tablet traffic in the United States and Canada and in its latest report, Apple’s iPad was responsible for almost 90% of all tablet traffic across the company’s massive network.
[More from BGR: Samsung looks to address its biggest weakness in 2013]
Using a sample of tens of millions of impressions served to tablets between December 8th and December 14th this year, Chitika determined that various iPad models collectively accounted for 87% of tablet traffic in North America. That figure is down a point from the prior month but still represents a commanding lead in the space.
[More from BGR: New purported BlackBerry Z10 specs emerge: 1.5GHz processor, 2GB RAM, 8MP camera]
The next closest device line, Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle Fire tablet family, had a 4.25% share of tablet traffic during that period, up from 3.57% in November. Samsung’s (005930) Galaxy tablets made up 2.65% of traffic, up from 2.36%, and Google’s (GOOG) Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 tablets combined to account for 1.06% of tablet traffic in early December.
“Despite these gains by some of the bigger players in the tablet marketplace, there has been a negligible impact to Apple’s dominant usage share,” Chitika wrote in a post on its blog.

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Apple CEO gets modest 2012 pay after big 2011

 Apple CEO Tim Cook got $4.2 million in pay for the latest fiscal year, a modest sum compared with last year, when the company's board set him up with stock now worth $510 million for taking the reins in 2011.
Cook's pay for fiscal 2012, which ended in September, consisted of $1.4 million in salary, a bonus of $2.8 million, and $17,000 in company contributions to his 401(k) account and life insurance premiums, according to a filing.
Apple Inc.'s board saw no need to give Cook additional shares in 2012 after the sign-on grant of 1 million shares in 2011. Half of those shares vest in 2016 and the other half in 2021. A lot could happen to the value of the shares before Cook can cash them out, but the sign-on grant made him —at least on paper— the highest-paid U.S. CEO in 2011.
Cook did vest into shares worth $140 million in 2012. Those shares were granted earlier, when he was chief operating officer. He had been acting CEO for a while before the death of company co-founder Steve Jobs in October of 2011.
Apple tends to grant shares to executives every other year. Cook's closest cohorts got big grants in 2012, including top hardware engineer Robert Mansfield, who got shares worth $83 million. Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer and general counsel Bruce Sewell both got stock grants worth just over $66 million, more than double the value of the grants they got two years ago, reflecting the zooming value of Apple's stock.
The Cupertino, Calif.-based company's compensation policies are relatively simple. Missing are many of the perks that other CEOs command, like country club fees and private use of company aircraft.

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Toshiba’s new Lytro-like mobile image sensor could revolutionize smartphone photography

Cramming more megapixels into a smartphone with the thickness of a pencil is not the future of mobile picture-taking. Smartphones have hit a threshold where 8-megapixels is more than enough for taking crisp still shots and 1080p HD video. Many smartphones even perform decent under low-light conditions. But according to the Asahi Shimbun, Toshiba (TOSBF) has a new camera module that could change the way we take photos on smartphones anda tablets, forever.
[More from BGR: Samsung looks to address its biggest weakness in 2013]
Toshiba is reportedly shopping around an image sensor with Lytro-like capabilities, where the point of focus can be adjusted after the picture has been taken. To boil it down: the camera takes 500,000 small images, each with a different area in focus, and then combines them into a large photo where the focus can be changed later. The module is also capable of doing the same for videos.
[More from BGR: Google names 12 best Android apps of 2012]
The company is reportedly planning to sell the camera module “by the end of fiscal 2013″ and is looking to gather interest from other mobile device makers to implement it into smartphones and tablets.

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Analysis: Apple's swoon exposes risk lurking in mutual funds

The nearly 28 percent decline in shares of Apple Inc since mid-September isn't just painful to individual shareholders. It's also being felt by investors who chased hot mutual funds that loaded up on Apple as the stock raced to a record $705 per share. Apple makes up 10 percent or more of assets in 117 out of the 1,119 funds that own its shares, according to data from Lipper, a Thomson Reuters company. Those big stakes have contributed positively to each fund's annual performance to date, with Apple still up about 32 percent for the year. It was trading at $527.73 soon after the opening on Friday. But that year-to-date outcome may not accurately reflect the performance of the funds for individual investors. All told, approximately $4.5 billion has been added to funds with overweight stakes in Apple this year, according to Morningstar data. The majority of these dollars were invested after March and after Apple first exceeded $600 per share - meaning many investors have been riding down with the decline. The $302 million Matthew 25 fund, for instance, holds 17.4 percent of its assets in Apple, according to Lipper. The fund's 31.9 percent gain through Thursday makes it one of the top performing funds for the year. Most of its Apple shares were bought years ago at a bargain basement price of about $125 per share. But $158.9 million of the fund's assets - or 53 percent - were invested after the end of March, when Apple was trading near $615 per share, according to Morningstar data. For those investors that bought after March, all that concentration in Apple hasn't led to a stellar gain but rather a drag on the portfolio. Someone who invested in Matthew 25 in early April has seen the value of the fund's Apple stake fall about 19 percent, while someone who invested at the beginning of September has watched that outsized Apple stake drop 27.2 percent. In turn, the majority of the fund's investors have reaped a much more modest performance than its year-end numbers suggest. Since the end of March, the fund has gained 6.7 percent, according to Morningstar data, far less than its 31 percent year-to-date gain and about two percentage points more than the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 index. Since, September the fund is down nearly 3 percent through Thursday's close, compared with a 1.1 percent decline in the S&P 500 in that period. The impact of Apple's falling stock price shows some of the drawbacks of portfolio concentration, experts say. These stakes can leave the funds overexposed to the ups and downs of one company - counter to what most mutual funds are supposed to do for investors. "Any time you get over 10 percent of the portfolio in one company it's a red flag," said Michel Herbst, director of active fund research at Morningstar. Many fund managers do have risk management rules that prevent them from devoting more than 5 percent to 6 percent of their portfolio to any one stock, he said. Then again, some funds purposely invest in just a few stocks. Mark Mulholland, the portfolio manager of the Matthew 25 fund, said that taking concentrated positions in companies is the only way to beat an index over longer periods of time. 'RIGHT-SIZING' PORTFOLIOS Along with concerns about iPhone sales in China and tax-motivated selling among people who want to avoid potentially higher capital gains taxes in 2013, the wide fund ownership of Apple may be a factor in the size of the stock's recent declines, fund managers said. In addition, with so many funds already heavily invested in the high-priced stock, there may be fewer marginal buyers available to push prices up again when shares begin to dip. "The stock didn't go from $700 to $520 because people didn't like the new iPad. It's become a favorite short of hedge funds because they know they can get in on this," said Mark Spellman, a portfolio manager of the $300 million Value Line Income and Growth fund with a small position in Apple. Short interest in the stock rose to 20.6 million shares at the end of November from 15.1 million shares at the end of September, according to Nasdaq. "Some of my competitors have 12 percent of their assets in Apple, which I think is ludicrous", said Spellman, who said the company is no longer trading on its fundamentals. Sandy Villere, who has a 2.5 percent weighting of Apple in his $276 million Villere Balanced fund, said that some mutual fund managers are selling shares because of the over-weighting. "Right now many people who did take huge overweight positions are right-sizing their portfolios to get it in line with their regular weightings," he said. Still, some bullish investors see the stock's recent declines as a buying opportunity. Mulholland, the Matthew 25 portfolio manager, continues to say that shares should be priced at over $1,000 per share based on his valuation of the company at 10 times enterprise value divided by earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA). Apple trades at about 7 times that figure now. Wall Street analysts' average price target as of Thursday is $742.56, according to Thomson Reuters data. But Mulholland is happy to be more bullish than his peers. "I'm glad that I'm able to get it at these prices," he said.

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Foreign hackers targeted former military chief Mullen: report

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Foreign hackers targeted the computers of Mike Mullen, ex-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, calling it the latest in a pattern of attacks on computers of former high-ranking U.S. officials. The FBI is pursuing the hackers, the Journal reported. The agency was not immediately available for comment. Mullen's office confirmed that the retired admiral was cooperating with a cyber investigation. "Admiral Mullen, now a private citizen, has responded to very specific requests and is cooperating with an ongoing cyber investigation he has been informed is focused overseas," it said in a statement. The hackers targeted personal computers Mullen used while working on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, after his retirement in 2011, the report said, citing officials and others familiar with the probe. One official said the evidence pointed to China as the origin of the hacking and that it appeared the hackers were able to access a personal email account. A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington told the Journal he was not aware of the investigation and that his government prohibits cyber attacks. China is often cited as a suspect in various hacking attacks in the United States and other nations. Beijing dismisses allegations it is involved. The Journal report said current and former U.S. cyber security officials say the Mullen case is the most recent example of a series of undisclosed hacker attacks on the computer files of former senior U.S. officials. Hackers view their computers as an easier way to get access to sensitive information, said these people, who declined to name the targeted former officials.

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Cyber criminals could increasingly look to attack, hijack smartphones in 2013

TORONTO - Some cyber criminals who disseminate viruses and malware in attempts to hijack computers are beginning to shift their focus. Your smartphone may be their next target. PC users have learned to be constantly vigilant to the threat of viruses, which attack relentlessly, slow down computers and potentially put valuable personal information at risk. Windows computers will continue to be targeted going forward but cyber thieves are casting a wider net in the hunt for digital prey. This past year, hundreds of thousands of Apple computers — which had long been thought to be immune to viruses — were hit with the so-called Flashback or Fakeflash malware. Apple machines had been free from attack for so long that the computer giant brazenly stated on its website that "it doesn't get PC viruses." You won't find that claim online anymore. Now Apple only says its computers are "built to be safe." It's unclear how much Apple computers will continue to be targeted in the near future, but experts say 2013 may be the year that smartphones come under heavier attack. A few months ago, the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a warning to U.S. citizens about growing smartphone threats, named Loozfon and FinFisher, on Android devices. The FBI was alerted to mobile websites that claimed to offer work-at-home job opportunities. A link on the fraudulent websites triggered an attempt to download Loozfon on an Android phone, which steals data from a user's address book. FinFisher is a far more sophisticated threat, which can essentially take over a phone, allowing it to be controlled and monitored remotely. Hackers can capture images of what is displayed on the phone's screen, record what users type in, and listen to phone calls. The program, which was originally designed for government and law enforcement agencies before being co-opted by nefarious groups, can be run on Android devices as well as iPhones, BlackBerrys, Windows and Symbian phones. The good news is that hackers have yet to begin aggressively targeting average consumers in North America, said Seth Hardy of the Citizen Lab, a research group based out of the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. "The risk is still pretty low but that doesn't mean it's always going to be that way, it's just still a relatively new space," Hardy said. "The moment people start to figure out how to take advantage of it for money is when we'll see a lot more of it targeting the average user." The Android platform — which happens to the most popular globally — is the most under attack. According to a recent report by security firm F-Secure, more than 51,000 different threats targeting Android devices were discovered during the third quarter of the year. One major problem has been the ability of scammers to sneak malicious apps into Google's official marketplace. Google launched a feature called Bouncer earlier this year to address the issue and claims it reduced "potentially malicious downloads" by 40 per cent — which suggests viruses can still sneak through without detection. AVG, the maker of free and premium anti-virus software, has had a mobile product for a couple of years already. "We're now starting to see some significant threats and an increase in threats on (Android)," says AVG spokesman Tony Anscombe, who noted the company also has mobile apps for iPhones and Windows phones. Avast!, Lookout and Sophos also have free mobile security apps. Anscombe said there are several ways a hacker can exploit a victim once getting into their phone. "If you think about the traditional methods of scamming somebody, using phishing or viruses on a PC platform, I can start stealing your identity, I can start building a profile on you and then potentially take your details and maybe auction your identity off — and depending on what information it has in it, it might fetch up to $20 for another cyber criminal," he explained, adding that hackers are now hijacking phones and sending text messages or making calls that incur massive charges. "If I can get the right access on your mobile device ... I can monetize directly. It's a much easier way for someone to make money out of the bad stuff they do." Users who decide to seek out pirated content through unofficial app stores face a more significant risk of picking up a mobile bug. "Angry Birds was taken off the legitimate store, modified and then listed in third-party app stores. It gave the app additional privileges (so hackers) could send SMS messages," Anscombe said. "But the user doesn't necessarily look at the privileges when they install an app. Especially with the younger generation, they'll start emailing (their friends bragging), 'Hey, I can get this for free.'" Hardy said looking into a mobile anti-virus app isn't a bad idea but users should never let their guard down. "Having anti-virus as part of a layered solution is always a good thing, but believing that any one security measure is going to completely protect you is generally incorrect and might lead you to more risky behaviour."

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Organizers of a U.N. conference on global telecommunications say hackers apparently blocked one of its main websites and caused disruptions in the talks that some critics fear could lead to greater controls over the Internet. The U.N.'s International Telecommunications Union says the website was hit late Wednesday, blocking access to its main page and interfering with a closed-door working group. It says it's still investigating but initial signs point to hackers. Thursday's statement says Internet traffic was diverted to a backup website for two hours before normal operations resumed. The 11-day gathering in Dubai is being closely watched for possible new international pacts on Internet commerce and security. The U.S. is leading efforts to block new Internet regulations, fearing they could open the door to greater monitoring and restrictions.

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Apple Inc's rank in China's smartphone market, which is set to become the world's largest this year, fell to No.6 in the third quarter as it faced tough competition from Chinese brands, research firm IDC said on Thursday. IDC's announcement comes a day after Apple's shares fell more than 6 percent on the Nasdaq, logging its biggest single-day loss in four years and losing $35 billion of its value, on concerns about rivals gaining ground in the mobile devices market. China, already the world's biggest mobile phone market, is seeing competition intensifying in its smartphone sector, with global and homegrown vendors trying to outgun one another in terms of price and features. Underscoring that, Nokia announced on Wednesday it is to partner China Mobile, the country's largest wireless carrier, in a sales deal that will give the Finnish company an opportunity to win back some Chinese market share from Apple's iPhone. Apple saw its third-quarter ranking by market share fall two notches from its position in the second quarter, IDC said. Its market share by shipments was under 10 percent in the third quarter, when China's smartphone shipments hit a record high, at more than 60 million units, the research firm added. However, IDC analysts expect a rebound with the launch of the iPhone 5 in China in December. Apple last week received approval from regulators for the sale of the iPhone 5 in the country. Galaxy-maker Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, the world's No.2 PC maker Lenovo Group Ltd and global No.2 telecom equipment maker Huawei Technologies Co Ltd retained the top two and No.5 spots, respectively, IDC said. Chinese brand Coolpad made a three-spot leap to No.3 in the country, but ZTE Corp dropped one place to No.4 in the July-September period, IDC said. The research firm did not give the market share numbers of any company except Apple. "Chinese vendors Coolpad, Lenovo and ZTE made it to the Asia Pacific ex-Japan top 5 vendors on strong performance in their home market, showing that it is not impossible for Chinese vendors to surpass international vendors," Wong Teck-zhung, a senior market analyst at IDC, said in a statement. GENEROUS SUBSIDIES China now has more than one billion mobile phone subscribers though less than a fifth are 3G subscribers. The country's three mobile carriers, China Mobile, Unicom and Telecom have been doling out generous handset subsidies to try to attract higher-end users keen on online gaming and social networking. Chinese vendors are also offering smartphones in the sub-1,000 yuan ($160) category. "Price continues to be king," Jeff Lorbeck, senior vice president for U.S. mobile chip maker Qualcomm's product management, told reporters in a conference on Thursday.

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UN telecoms talks in Dubai hit by apparent hackers

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Organizers of a U.N. conference on global telecommunications say hackers apparently blocked one of its main websites and caused disruptions in the talks that some critics fear could lead to greater controls over the Internet. The U.N.'s International Telecommunications Union says the website was hit late Wednesday, blocking access to its main page and interfering with a closed-door working group. It says it's still investigating but initial signs point to hackers. Thursday's statement says Internet traffic was diverted to a backup website for two hours before normal operations resumed. The 11-day gathering in Dubai is being closely watched for possible new international pacts on Internet commerce and security. The U.S. is leading efforts to block new Internet regulations, fearing they could open the door to greater monitoring and restrictions.

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UK student convicted of denial of service attack

LONDON (AP) -- A London jury convicted a 22-year-old student and member of the hacking group Anonymous on Thursday of taking part in cyberattacks on several major companies' computer systems. Self-described "hacktivist" Christopher Weatherhead showed no emotion after being convicted of conspiracy to impair the operation of computers. The attacks hit the sites of MasterCard, Visa, PayPal and several others. Weatherhead, who will be sentenced at a later date, could face up to 10 years in prison. Three co-conspirators of Weatherhead pleaded guilty to the same charge in January and March. Prosecutor Russell Tyner said Weatherhead and the others targeted companies in the music industry involved in combating Internet piracy and firms that had stopped processing online donations to the data-leaking site WikiLeaks. Tyner said the attacks cost these companies more than 3.5 million pounds ($5.6 million). Working under online nicknames including "Nerdo" and "NikonElite," the group hit their targets with denial-of-service attacks — a technique that works by overloading a website with traffic. They also used Facebook and Twitter to recruit followers and publicize their attacks, according to police. The cybercrime spree focused attention on Anonymous, a loose-knit collection of Web-savvy activists and Internet pranksters — many of whom have targeted governments, officials or corporations over a variety of political grievances.

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UK jury convicts member of activist group Anonymous in computer denial-of-service attack

LONDON - A London jury convicted a 22-year-old student and member of the hacking group Anonymous on Thursday of taking part in cyberattacks on several major companies' computer systems. Self-described "hacktivist" Christopher Weatherhead showed no emotion after being convicted of conspiracy to impair the operation of computers. The attacks hit the sites of MasterCard, Visa, PayPal and several others. Weatherhead, who will be sentenced at a later date, could face up to 10 years in prison. Three co-conspirators of Weatherhead pleaded guilty to the same charge in January and March. Prosecutor Russell Tyner said Weatherhead and the others targeted companies in the music industry involved in combating Internet piracy and firms that had stopped processing online donations to the data-leaking site WikiLeaks. Tyner said the attacks cost these companies more than 3.5 million pounds ($5.6 million). Working under online nicknames including "Nerdo" and "NikonElite," the group hit their targets with denial-of-service attacks — a technique that works by overloading a website with traffic. They also used Facebook and Twitter to recruit followers and publicize their attacks, according to police. The cybercrime spree focused attention on Anonymous, a loose-knit collection of Web-savvy activists and Internet pranksters — many of whom have targeted governments, officials or corporations over a variety of political grievances.

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