CBS Interactive

In her CBSNews.com show @katiecouric, Katie Couric talks with the leaders of the Tea Party movement, Kellen Guida and Michael Johns, about their goals, frustrations and vision for American government. In this clip, Johns gives some background about the movement and some of the basic tenets.

CBS' Bob Schieffer learned how to send a text message on Friday's edition of Washington Unplugged, as Jared Cohen of the State Department, who was behind the $8 million raised via SMS thus far for the relief efforts in Haiti, appeared on the show.


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Depending on your views on marijuana, offering someone a joint is either a good thing or a bad thing, but offering someone a joint on camera doesn't rank up there with the greatest ideas.

Yet that's just what comedian Tommy Chong did when he and his partner in crime, Cheech Marin, appeared on CBS News' Washington Unplugged to promote their new comedy tour, Get It Legal.

Chong offered a joint to chief White House correspondent Bill Plante, who politely declined.

CBS News and The Wall Street Journal's WSJ.com became the latest news organizations to integrate the Digg This widget with all of their blogs.

Digg vice president of business development Bob Buch added on the Digg Blog:

We're very pleased to see publishers of all sizes continue to adopt Digg as a standard for ranking their content. We've heard from some publishers that the Digg widgets get 3-5 times as many clicks as their own Most Viewed widgets (even when the Digg widget is at the bottom of the page and theirs is at the top). We've also heard from these publishers that they are seeing a lot more Digging activity on their stories when they put Digg buttons and widgets on their sites, with Digg often ranking as one of their top referrers of traffic.

Fans of Katie Couric who can't bear to be apart from the CBS Evening News anchor: Rejoice and fire up your iPhones. CBS News and CBS Mobile launched the CBS News Katie Couric application on the Apple iTunes App Store.

The free app will offer breaking news from CBS Evening News and CBSNews.com; highlights of Couric's work for CBS Evening News, 60 Minutes and other CBS News programs; full-length interviews and on-demand excerpts from the @KatieCouric Webcast; and content from video blog Katie Couric Notebook.

Mobile-Web and applications platform company July Systems worked with CBS Mobile to develop the CBS News Katie Couric app.

CBSNews.com vice president Mark Larkin said:

Katie has an innate ability to connect with her audience across a variety of mediums. Over the past year, we have seen how her Web coverage has attracted new viewers and sustained a high level of audience engagement. The new CBS News Katie Couric mobile application offers Katie fans an additional opportunity to discover and experience the depth of CBS News coverage through her eyes—all through the convenience of their iPhone.

And Couric added:

The CBS News Katie Couric app is another way we can keep the CBS News audience constantly updated about what is happening in their world. From online to social networking, we've always had a commitment to broadening our audience reach beyond the traditional newscast, and this is one more tool to help us do just that.

He didn't flick the switch on Web 2.0 Suicide Machine, nor did he disappear via Seppukoo, but CBS science and technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg quit Facebook, Twitter and MySpace cold-turkey, and has survived well enough thus far to blog about it for CBS News' Tech Talk.

Any blog post that starts with, "When did I become the kind of person online who annoys the hell out of me?" promises to be a fun read, and Sieberg delivers. Some highlights follow:

You know their behavior—self-centered, overly promotional and, yes, devoutly narcissistic. There, I said it. It's like my computer monitor had become the mirror from Snow White and I wanted to be the fairest one of all. I'm not sure I can pinpoint exactly when it all started but I can tell you when I started to change it—New Year's Day, 2010. Kind of a resolution. That's the day I quit social-networking sites cold turkey for at least a year and maybe for good. No Facebook, no Twitter, no MySpace. No, really. I'm ready to leave the "me" decade behind. (My wife asked me to throw in video games for good measure, but that seemed a bit excessive.) I had become a satellite streaming read-only data back to Earth. It was time for a reboot.

Since early 2007, I'd say I was a moderate-to-heavy Facebook user with 1,664 "friends," a minimal Twitter user with 866 "followers" and a rare MySpace user. But combined I spent anywhere from 8-10 hours per week perusing these sites, reading updates and sculpting my own Internet Adonis image. That's about 500 hours per year, or close to 20 days. 20 DAYS. And what had I truly gotten out of all that surfing around? I was at a loss. Sure, I'd reconnected with a few people I knew in high school (regretted it shortly thereafter with some), shared contact info and messages with colleagues and sources and checked out the updates and photos provided by my family and friends. And I don't mean to say that there aren't plenty of positive things to be gleaned from social networking. It's opened up borders, rekindled romances and allowed people to become virtual farmers and mafia hitmen. Heck, Twitter may have even helped to spur political uprisings in Iran. And I realize this decision could be viewed as rather hypocritical since I've done plenty of stories about the benefits of social networking, but I've discovered that it just may not be right for everyone. This break-up might be more like: "It's not you, Facebook, it's me."

continued...

Jack Otter joined CBS MoneyWatch.com as executive editor, where he will be responsible for daily operations and report directly to CBS MoneyWatch.com and BNET editor in chief Eric Schurenberg.

Otter is already making his presence felt, recruiting Gawker founding editor Elizabeth Spiers and comedian and writer Andy Borowitz.

Otter had been deputy editor of Rodale's Best Life. Prior to that, he spent six years at SmartMoney.

Schurenberg said:

Jack looks at personal finance with a critical journalist's eye and has a real gift for understanding what's on readers' minds. As an editor, he has a knack for finding the human and emotional angle behind a seemingly dry story and bringing it to life. And have you ever seen him on TV or Web video? He's pretty good at that, too.

And Otter added:

Despite the information overload online, there's nowhere for people to find straightforward answers to the questions that keep them up at night. What should you do with your 401(k)? How much insurance do you need? How can you save enough money to pay your kids' college tuition? CBS MoneyWatch.com has all the answers to these questions.

CBS Interactive president Neil Ashe spoke with paidContent to shed more light on the company's decision to curtail the use of third-party ad networks and sell its ad inventory on its own.

Highlights of Ashe's conversation with paidContent:

It's safe to say that we were never the biggest proponents of ad networks. However, we've always been testing to make sure we were right on that. Why now? Because we have the confluence of size and the sales force covering all the accounts that matter. Plus, we have the technological capabilities that the market demands. We can do it on our own in a way that almost no one else can. Reason No. 2 was that we wanted to dispel any confusion in the marketplace that our inventory was available in our ad networks. We had seen a number of ad networks implying that they had access to our entire inventory and, of course, they did not. We wanted to be absolutely crystal-clear as to where advertisers could get our content.

When you have very high-quality inventory like ours, it gets mixed in with generic ad-network placements, (which) dilutes our value and increases the value of the network. So what we're saying with this change is, "Skip all of the junk and just come straight to us."

The party is over for third-party ad networks at CBS Interactive, as the company will announce Monday that it will sell its online inventory on its own, AdAge.com reported.

AdAge.com added that CBS Interactive is the largest Web entity to cut off third-party networks, with more than 60 million monthly unique visitors, according to comScore.

The company will launch its own internal ad network to service advertisers seeking demographics or remnant display advertising across its sites, telling AdAge.com its internal ad-serving platform, Madison, can handle those duties.

CBS Interactive CEO Neil Ashe told AdAge.com:

We are prepared to take a step back on revenue if we have to, but over time, we will monetize at a much better rate than ad networks do. What we are careful not to do is to open our inventory to third parties that may have data interests not aligned with our own.

Brand.net CEO Andy Atherton offered his take on the move by CBS Interactive, telling AdAge.com:

If you want to do something cool with a publisher, then buy directly. If you're buying standard media, networks offer a more efficient way to transact, regardless of your objective.

Live on Letterman will return to CBS.com Thursday at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT when John Mayer performs with Paul Shaffer and the CBS Orchestra following the taping of his appearance on CBS' The Late Show with David Letterman.

Mayer will perform songs from his fourth studio album, Battle Studies, which was released Tuesday, as well as some of his greatest hits.

The special concert, exclusive to CBS.com and live from the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York, will be presented by American Express.