Facebook has introduced new brand pages that more closely resemble the 'timelines' that have already been available to individuals for some time. An introductory video from the social network's marketing team says "We will be giving you new ways to tell your story and express your page's identity" and promises "better tools to manage the activity on your page and to have conversations with your audience."

One key change is the introduction of a 'cover photo' - a large picture across the top of the page - in addition to the profile picture. Facebook advises that the cover photo should be a unique photo that expresses your page, and forbids placing advertisements or promotions here. It recommends pictures of your product, or of people using your services. The profile picture will continue to be used around Facebook, and the company therefore suggests using a logo.

The new layout also allows brands to highlight content more effectively. They can now 'pin' a post to the top of the timeline stream for up to a week, or 'star' a post to make it wider. 'Milestones' are larger, dated posts that can be used to emphasise important moments in the history of a brand or company, and to create a more thorough timeline, you can change the post date of content so you can go back and fill in gaps. The New York Times has used this to highlight 'select moments' from its 160+ year history such as the 1928 presidential election or the 1977 blackout.

Just be yourself. Good advice for people, but maybe good advice for news organizations too?

Kerry Lauerman, editor in chief of Salon.com recently published a blog post, revealing that at the end of 2011 Salon had a record of over 7 million unique visitors, a figure that increased to 7.23 million by the end of last month. This number is up from 5.5 million uniques last August - a significant jump.

The secret? Focusing on original content rather than aggregation. "We've tried to work longer on stories for greater impact, and publish fewer quick-takes that we know you can consume elsewhere," writes Lauerman. As a result, Salon is actually publishing about one third fewer posts than it was one year ago, but generating about 40% more traffic.

For more on this story please see our sister publication www.sfnblog.com

British tabloid The Daily Mail is broadening its online presence with the introduction of Mail Online India, reports Roy Greenslade in The Guardian today.

The new page is integrated into Mail's UK website, but contains content from Mail Today, a publication launched by the Daily Mail's parent company Daily Mail & General Trust together with the India Today Group in November 2007.

Mail Online India features Mail Today's logo on its banner, but it also reproduces large amounts of content from its British counterpart; the 'Femail' section, for example, is identical on both sites' home pages.

For more on this story please see our sister publication www.sfnblog.com

A new Nielsen report reveals the online habits of Americans - and unfortunately, reading the news does not come as high up on the list of online priorities as most editors would like: 2.6 % of the tile the average American spends online is spent learning about current affairs. You can read a break down of the results on Poynter.

Surprise, surprise, social networks were the most frequent method of spending time online, with Facebook being the number one social network for Americans - the network reaches 70% of all active internet users in America.

It is interesting to note that the gap between the amount of time spent on social networks and the amount of time spent reading and sending emails is so large. Only 7.6% of users' time is devoted to email while 22.5% is spent on social networks.