December 2010

On October 14, 2010, the Advisory Committee on Diversity for Communications in the Digital Age formally recommended that the Federal Communications Commission undertake a notice of proposed rulemaking to consider how the Commission could design, adopt, and implement an additional new preference program in its competitive bidding process. Under the proposed preference, persons or entities who have overcome substantial disadvantage would be eligible for a bidding credit. The Advisory Committee explains that the new preference "would expand the pool of designated entities to include those qualified applicants who have overcome substantial disadvantage," noting that the proposed program is analogous in some respects to programs used by educational institutions in their admissions processes.

The Advisory Committee's Recommendation acknowledges that a number of issues concerning the design and implementation of its proposal would need to be refined and resolved by the Commission in a future rulemaking proceeding. Accordingly, the Media and Wireless Telecommunications Bureaus seek information that will assist the Commission in considering whether to launch a proceeding to further examine the components of the recommended preference. The Bureaus seek comment on the proposal and are especially interested in comments on the following questions. Interested parties need not address all the questions presented, but are encouraged to respond to those about which they have particular knowledge or information.

In mid-April, Facebook launched a Facebook + Media initiative focused on helping news, television and music partners "drive referral traffic, increase engagement, and deepen user insights on your site," presumably with the intent of closely integrating Facebook with existing media properties and extending the reach of the already monstrous social network. But is Facebook just an accessory for media companies, or a media company in itself?

At Business Insider's IGNITION conference, David Kirkpatrick -- author of The Facebook Effect -- talked with Wendy Harris Millard of MediaLink LLC and Mike Lazerow of Buddy Media about Facebook's odd evolution. The real question at hand is whether Facebook really is a media company -- that is, a company that produces and distributes attention-grabbing nuggets of content and makes money on them. By this definition, the answer is yes. At the same time, Facebook doesn't necessarily produce its own content. Perhaps that's because Facebook is a media company that's not trying to be a media company. It's more of a media infrastructure company; Facebook builds roads, pit stops, forums and other spaces on the Web that have become essential for virtually every business on the planet to reach its desired audience. But with the social network's ubiquity, it's as permanent a destination for content as CNN, Amazon or the iTunes store.

As part of its new roadmap to improve healthcare quality, the Health & Human Services Department has challenged developers to create applications for professionals who are working on national health objectives and with state and community data. HHS detailed the “myHealthyPeople” challenge as a part of its Healthy People 2020, the nation’s next set of 10-year goals and objectives for health promotion and disease prevention, which it unveiled Dec. 2.