Fortune's Richard Siklos profiles the digital exploits of Jonathan Miller and Ross Levinsohn, "two big-media refugees" who now think they can do what has thus far proven impossible for those of their kind: find or create legitimate online stars. "Here's the thing: we make the bets we make, because we know what people need," Miller says. "In a way, we provide outsourced R&D for the media industry." As Siklos points out, both Levinsohn (Fox Interactive Media) and Miller (AOL) are deposed former digital chiefs from traditional media giants; in fact, they were both fired from their jobs within two …

Fox News Channel has decided to join Facebook instead of MySpace, the social network owned by its parent company, News Corporation. Why would Fox News do such a thing? The New York Times suggests that it might have to do with MySpace's recent partnership with MSNBC, but Fox says it has more to do with audience. Indeed, Facebook recently surpassed MySpace as the world's leading social network. "They also have a user that's a little older and a little more sophisticated," said Joel Cheatwood, the senior vice president for development at Fox News. As part of its push, Fox designed …

The impending death of the preroll ad has been vastly overstated, Advertising Age says, citing a report from Jupiter research director Nate Elliott that says audience loss as a result of preroll video ads could be as low as 5% -- in Europe, at least. Jupiter found that Europeans are watching double the amount of online TV than they were a year ago, and that the sector is expected to account for 20% of Europe's online display ad spend, or nearly $1.4 billion by 2012, up from 6% or $224 million in 2007. "When I was doing the research for …

Google is trying to rally grassroots support for its plan to use broadband spectrum "white spaces" to provide high-speed wireless Internet access to consumers. "White spaces" refer to unused frequencies in the radio waves portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. The move has been widely opposed by broadcasters and several lawmakers, who fear the plan would interfere with existing signals. On Monday, Google unveiled a public advocacy campaign to release the white spaces, which includes a Web site, FreeTheAirwaves.com, where users can learn about the issues and get involved. The idea is to rally grassroots support to put pressure on the …

Twitter is starting to show signs of a business model, BusinessWeek reports. In April, the microblogging service added a big banner ad to its Japanese home page. On Aug. 7, Twitter initiated another change, limiting the number of people its users could follow to about 2,000. Seven days later, Twitter pulled the plug on outbound message delivery to mobile phones via SMS in all countries except the U.S., Canada and India. While these may be signs that Twitter is trying to squeeze out a business model, the BusinessWeek article basically says, "don't hold your breath." Metcalfe's Law, for example, doesn't …

One of Internet radio's most successful services is on the verge of pulling the plug, Ars Technica reports. Thanks to the hefty Internet royalty rate hike pushed through by SoundExchange last July, Pandora founder Tim Westergren says the music subscription service won't last beyond the first round of payments. As Ars points out, SoundExchange heaped massive royalty hikes on Internet-only radio stations, imposing per-user fees for each song. Worse, these royalties are set to double for big stations by 2010 to an estimated 2.91 cents per hour per listener. Satellite stations, meanwhile, pay just 1.6 cents, and radio stations have …

Even before it hits mobile phones, Google is exploring the possibility of putting Android on cable set-top boxes. According to VentureBeat Google wants Android to become a "universal operating system that will span set-top boxes for televisions, mp3 players and other communication and media devices and services." Silicon Alley Insider says it hears similar news from inside Google, but writer Dan Frommer doesn't seem to think that Android-powered TVs are such a good idea "because there aren't really many mainstream applications that would draw huge demand on both your cell phone and your television." YouTube might, so too …