Visits and page views to Valleywag were about 50 percent of a normal weekday both yesterday and today, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. As the guy at Tully’s Coffee said, “Any day that half your clientele shows up at the door is a business day.” With half the Net still going at it (see chart: Most of our traffic comes from people clicking links), it’s kind of weird to see the go-go business blogs — TechCrunch, GigaOm, VentureBeat — shuttered for the day. Couldn’t you guys have queued something up? The old-media dinosaurs at the NYT managed to print an issue, even if it’s padded with heartwarming holiday filler. I’m starting to think the Objectivists are right: The problem with Christmas is it’s not commercialized enough. Whoops, update: Duncan at TechCrunch just posted some actual news, but it’s already late Wednesday morning for him in Australia.

Microsoft wants to buy Musiwave, a company specializing in mobile music services. The deal, among other things, would lay the foundation for a Zune wireless store, matching Apple’s iTunes Store for Wi-Fi that lets iPhone and iPod Touch users download songs over the air. This copycat move is just one more sign of what’s wrong with Microsoft’s Zune strategy. It can’t settle on one — so it just winds up latching onto whatever is the hot topic of the day. Here’s what Microsoft should be doing instead of copying Apple.

Microsoft’s Facebook-inspired Zune Social interface wasn’t a bad idea — it was just poorly implemented. (Honestly, limiting users to three plays from a wirelessly shared song? That may be enough to know if you hate something, but not if you actually want to buy an album.) Microsoft should beef up the Zune with some serious music-recommending algorithms. It could create some form of lending library so those without subscriptions can borrow tracks or albums from friends for an extended period of time. That could gain it some converts. Copying Apple? All that gets Microsoft is users who want the iPod, but lamer, later, and costlier.

Source:Valleywag

Phony press releases have become the grist for the newest Internet profit mills. If you’re like Chris Anderson and us, you don’t read press releases. But several tech blogs were taken in by a dubious press release issued by a nonexistent company allegedly backed by real investors who may or may not have invested in several fake companies. Huh? Exactly. How the scam was uncovered, how it works, and how to avoid falling victim after the jump.

Although there’s evidence of many fake press releases floating around the Internet, the scam first came to the attention of Silicon Alley Insider because one particular release mentioned Internet television, a must-cover topic on its beat. But “the world’s first broadcast-quality Internet television service” raising an alleged $45 million, profitable and yet no one’s heard of it? SAI managing editor Peter Kafka’s eyebrows were raised.

Alas, no eyebrow raisings took place at VentureBeat or PEHub, which were suckered despite PaidContent’s observation that the HD AmeriTV announcement was a ripoff of a Joost release.

The confusion was exacerbated when these bloggers contacted First Mutual Credit, the only real company listed as an investor for confirmation. Two separate sources initially confirmed First Mutual’s investment, but the New Zealand company has since denied any involvement. (Maybe it was that strong Kiwi accent.)

Several other fake companies and fake press releases have been identified. But what is the scam in advertising a nonexistent company? Peter Kafka, who has been closely tracking the story for Silicon Alley Insider, is stumped, but we think he’s already stumbled upon the answer: Fake press releases get picked up by a host of PR-aggregating sites that profit off of Google AdSense ads.

Fake blogs already remix existing blog posts to generate nonsensical pages that nonetheless turn up in Google search results and display Google-sold ads targeted to relevant keywords. Press releases filled with buzzwords make even more lucrative fodder for AdSense.

So who makes money here? Press release aggregators like PR Leap would never admit it, but their cash register rings whether or not their press releases are accurate. And the perpetrators of the HD AmeriTV press release? There’s no proof, but we smell a search-engine optimization scam, where they get paid by clients to try to improve the ranking of websites by seeding the Web with fake pages.

There’s a simple solution, of course: don’t read press releases … real or fake.