Feeling more confident about next year? Well don’t. Incisive Media’s CEO Tim Weller told paidContent:UK this week his B2B publisher is now in good financial shape following a debt-for-equity swap - but his wider take toward optimists like WPP’s Sir Martin Sorrell is, well, pessimism... View wellertimothy’s tweet Related Interview: Incisive Media Global CEO Tim Weller Plans More Pay Walls Incisive Media Management To Stage Debt-for-Equity Swap

In its spartan Wednesday event, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) boasted it’s sold 225 million iPods to date. So when we saw Forrester VP and music analyst Mark Mulligan suggest, on Guardian.co.uk, that customers upgrading to a new model every two years means an actual installed base of half that, we thought - so what… ? iPod and its siblings revolutionised the music business and gave labels a lifeline just when they needed one. On Apple’s own stats, shown Wednesday, it still has 73.8 percent of the mobile music player market, with “other” manufacturers languishing on 18 percent, SanDisk (NSDQ: SNDK) 7.2 percent and Microsoft’s Zune 1.1 percent. So the number of people who own at least one iPod is smaller than Apple’s headline stats because some people own more than one? Big deal. A company that successfully forces customers to shell out again after 18 to 24 months is a company that’s doing well; a tactic seen in other sectors like white goods. But Mulligan, whom we followed up with, has a darker warning for the companies that rely on iPod: “I don’t think there is anything that reflects particularly badly on Apple; this is what device sales are all about,” he says. “But it ...

BBC Worldwide’s digital sales and business development head Peter Mercier is leaving to be Microsoft’s content acquisitions and strategy senior director - the latest in the revolving HR door between the two companies. Mercier will be responsible for developing partnerships across Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division, including Xbox, Windows Media Centre and mobile. BBCWW hired Mercier from MobiTV as head of mobile in 2007 before he got a wider digital role in ‘08. Ashley Highfield left as CEO of BBCWW’s Kangaroo JV last year. Microsoft’s UK online services group VP Chris Dobson went the other way to be BBCWW’s WVP and GM of global ad sales, leading BBC.com ad sales in particular; he later took two BBCWWers with him. Via ATV.

In June, the Newspaper Association of America went on a “paid content” info hunt, reminiscent of those fact-finding missions that Congress likes so much. In the end, 11 companies, among them Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)  and IBM, took part in the in-depth look at various ways to literally make content pay—some at their own request, some picked by an industry task force. (The Wall Street Journal was willing to chat but not to share details.) The group includes five startups developing options: CircLabs, Journalism Online, Mather Economics, NewsNav and ViewPass. But, as the NAA says in the preface to its report (pdf), it’s not a comprehensive review of “monetization solutions” and, as we might expect from an org trying to avoid antitrust implications, the results are as vanilla as it gets. Very Dragnet but without a solution. The NAA has posted the report and the responses to the Request for Information (some more informative than others.) I’ll have more after I get through it all but here’s a look at the answers from Google, the company that has become a symbol for everything publishers want and all that they fear. Left unwritten: this is really a Google-plus concept, ...

By Owen Gibson: The World Boxing Association (WBA) light welterweight champion Amir Khan and his promoter, Frank Warren, are squaring up to the social networking site Facebook in a legal battle that could have far-reaching consequences. The pair have engaged lawyers to threaten the US internet company with action over the use of images and names alongside material they consider to be defamatory and racist. Stephen Taylor Heath, head of sports and media at Lupton Fawcett, said that a cursory search of Facebook quickly led to “bogus” pages that used the images and names of the pair to link to material that would be “highly defamatory” if published in a newspaper or magazine. Warren, who has fought several high-profile legal battles, is understood to be determined to force Facebook to change its policy and take responsibility for the more unsavoury opinions of its registered users. Taylor Heath has called on other sports stars and celebrities to come forward. There is a legal grey area about the extent to which the operator of a website, or the provider of community tools, can be held liable for comments posted. “The problem is when you search for a celebrity on the site you also come across pages ...