Netflix's secret weapon: Kids' flicks

Its latest deal means that Netflix now has the two biggest animation studios on board, strengthening its position in kids' programming.

FORTUNE -- Ask any parent who is a Netflix subscriber, and there's a good chance they'll tell you that the video-streamer is much stronger on kids' programming than on adult fare. The difference grows a bit starker with Netflix's new deal to run 300 hours of original animated programming from MORE

CD Baby president in the midst of Istanbul mayhem

For Brian Felsen, the "Turkish Spring" represents the ideals of his indie-music company.

FORTUNE -- Brian Felsen, president of the indie-music service CD Baby, is in the middle of the mayhem in Istanbul, where he's been tweeting his observations for several days as clashes between police and protestors turned more violent. "Direct gas hit. Incredibly debilitating & disorienting," he tweeted on Tuesday. "Guy next to me shot w canister, bloody mess. Thousands MORE

When patent trolls were simply sharks

There are parallels between today's trolls and the so-called sharks of the 19th century.

FORTUNE -- Complaints about patent trolls have reached such a level that the White House is now pushing for reform. Some people might believe the problem to be relatively new. And it is, in a way. But there were patent trolls in the 19th century, and they behaved in much the same way as modern ones, causing MORE

WSJ Profile isn't a LinkedIn competitor

The social-media-like products being planned by Dow Jones and Bloomberg are not attempts to take on the social media giants.

FORTUNE -- What do the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg have in mind for the business-oriented social networks they are each reportedly launching? Probably something less ambitious than "taking on LinkedIn," as several accounts would have it.

Lex Fenwick, the Wall Street Journal's publisher and the CEO of Dow Jones (NWSA), didn't MORE

Chicago Sun-Times fires its entire photo staff

The Sun-Times explains that jettisoning its professional photographers and having reporters take pictures with their iPhones will help the newspaper appeal to its "digitally savvy customers."

FORTUNE -- The decision by Sun-Times Newspaper Group to eliminate its entire photography staff, with its 500 or so collective years of professional experience, has everyone wondering what could possibly justify such a move. Is it union-busting? A way to squeeze profits out of a MORE

Mary Meeker's conventional wisdom

There is still lots of room to grow in mobile, says one of the world's top Internet analysts in her annual report.

FORTUNE -- Mary Meeker's annual Internet Trends report is a little like Cokie Roberts's Monday morning appearances on NPR -- a litany of points of unsurprising conventional wisdom.

That doesn't make it valueless: Like Roberts's weekly reports, Meeker's annual presentations put a lot of disparate information in context and offer MORE

Web-like analytics are coming to brick-and-mortar stores

A company called Placed is applying some of the methods used online to the real world.

FORTUNE -- Foot traffic at bookstores rose by 27% in the first quarter of this year, according to a report issued this week by Placed, a Seattle-based company that aims to bring Internet-like marketing analytics to the offline world.

That seems like a surprising number. It's hard to know for sure how accurate it is, or MORE

Why Mayer chose Tumblr

The reaction to Yahoo's acquisition of Tumblr is way out of proportion to its importance. It could be a relatively small mistake or a marginal gain.

FORTUNE -- It is only recently that Tumblr started asking itself, "So, how should we make money from this thing?" As of today, that's a question that Yahoo and its still-new CEO, Marissa Mayer, will have to address. And yet it's not necessarily the most MORE

Harsh anti-Abercrombie & Fitch video goes viral

Abercrombie brands itself as "exclusionary." And that means trouble.

FORTUNE -- A video depicting a hipster giving homeless people clothes from Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) reached critical viral mass this week. It was a protest against Abercrombie's practice of only hiring "good-looking" people for its stores, not stocking women's clothes in large sizes, and marketing itself only to "cool kids."

"Abercrombie & Fitch is a terrible company," says filmmaker Greg Karber. Which MORE

Newspapers' only hope? Quality.

Newspaper owners will have to accept lower margins in return for the privilege of serving the public interest. And given the sad rates at which online ads are selling, it's premature to give up on print.

FORTUNE -- The New Orleans Times-Picayune's decision to return to daily publication, reversing (sort of, in a way) its disastrous move a year ago to print a paper only three days a week, is being MORE