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The Tweet Life: Members of Congress Can Now Use Twitter, YouTube and Other Sites
Posted by J. Scott Orr October 17, 2008
Sure, they're as dull as kindergarten scissors, but at least the videos, Facebook updates and other online postings from members of Congress are no longer against Capitol Hill rules.
Long-ignored House and Senate regulations prohibited lawmakers from taking advantage of many social media resources -- like the video-sharing site YouTube and the micro-blogging platform Twitter -- because on those sites, the members' content would be accompanied by advertisements.
But now the House, following the Senate's lead, has said members are free to use the sites. Lawmakers, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), have been posting videos and other content for years.
The House Administration Committee rejected a proposal that would have allowed members to post their content only on sites that met unspecified conditions. The old rules prohibited members from posting content on any site outside the domains house.gov and senate.gov.
"The new rules reflect a greater recognition of the need to provide flexible solutions to the opportunities and challenges presented by new and emerging technologies," said Rep. Robert Brady (D-Pa.), the panel's chairman.
House Republican leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) called the change "a step in the right direction for a Congress that has been behind the technological curve for too long." The rule change, he said, will allow lawmakers to "speak to citizens, and receive feedback, in the most open and accessible manner."
Even so, some wonder how adept lawmakers will be at providing engaging and informative content for their constituents.
Julie Barko Germany, who heads the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet at George Washington University, said members of Congress need to do a better job of leading interested audiences to their online content.
"It's not so much that they need to attract vast audiences, they need to attract the right audience," Germany said, adding that it is more a problem of outreach than of content.
"The old adage `If you build it, they will come' does not work on the internet. You can have the coolest thing in the world online, but unless politicians lead people to it, their constituents are not going to come."
So what kind of content are members of Congress spreading via these Web 2.0 applications?
Well, you can watch a YouTube video of New Jersey's Rush Holt (D-12th Dist.) on the House floor, talking about George Washington's Delaware crossing and Patriot Week in Trenton. That video drew 249 viewers and zero comments.
Or maybe you'd prefer Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa) talking at a committee hearing about how House efforts to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were met with "a one-finger salute" from the White House. By this week, 68 people had viewed that one.
Lawmakers' tweets, those 140-character microblogs posted on Twitter, are even less enthralling.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), for example, let 248 followers know one day last month that he was: "back in iowa with no votes in the senate today. Will be back in dc tuesday. Have a good wknd everybody."
"The Senate will convene at 10:00am EST," tweeted Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.). "I'm heading to the floor to manage the US-India Nuclear Debate."
Even as they allow members to post their content, the sites also provide a forum for discussion, which is not always pretty.
"I can't wait till she dies," one viewer commented on a Pelosi YouTube video.
It's Goliath vs. Goliath: EBay and Big Box Stores in Fight Over Stolen Goods
Posted by J. Scott Orr October 07, 2008
Internet auction colossus eBay is trying to pull back the covers
on a bid by major retailers to convince Congress that new restrictions should be placed on the relationship between online
auction sites and their users.
The big-box retail chains say they are concerned eBay and similar online sales sites
offer professional shoplifters a largely anonymous venue for e-fencing their stolen goods. But eBay says brick-and-mortar
retailers are using the argument as a ploy to try to stifle competition from online sellers.
Coming as it does at the threshold of the holiday shopping season, there is a lot at stake for both sides in this Goliath vs. Goliath battle for the hearts and wallets of American consumers.
A pair of bills pending on Capitol Hill would require eBay and its ilk to maintain watch lists of their best sellers -- those who do more than $12,000 in sales per year -- including such identifiers as names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses.
They also would give retailers the power to force auction sites to investigate when they suspect stolen goods are being offered for sale. Online marketplaces that do not comply could face criminal or civil penalties.
"The internet seems to be contributing to the creation of a brand new type of retail thief -- people who have never stolen before, but are lured in by the convenience and anonymity of the internet," said Joseph L. LaRocca, vice president of the National Retail Federation.
LaRocca said sellers, "hooked" by the "addictive qualities" of online selling, report turning to crime when they run out of legally obtained inventory. And eBay, he said, has made billions of dollars on the sale of both legally and illegally obtained goods.
"Companies like eBay should also no longer be able to hide behind the assertion that they are `merely a platform' with little responsibility to supervise sellers on their site," he said.
LaRocca said protections like those contained in the pending legislation, are "a no-brainer."
Rep. Brad Ellsworth (D-Ind.), sponsor of one of the bills, said his legislation "will not place an undue burden on users who play by the rules. The obligation is on the online marketplace to keep transparent records and assist with law enforcement when criminal activity is suspected," he said.
Still, with 84 million active users and 112 million items for sale at any given time, maintaining databases on sellers and investigating complaints from retailers would be no small task for eBay.
Steve DelBianco, executive director of NetChoice, a coalition funded by eBay and other online sellers, told Congress last week that enhanced penalties and better enforcement are the best ways to thwart professional shoplifters.
"These bills go much further, handing competing retailers a blunt instrument to harass online marketplaces they compete with," he said, predicting retailers would flood online market places with demands that they investigate their customers on the mere suspicion that items listed for sale are stolen.
The bills, DelBianco said, "would give retailers the power to force online marketplaces to interrogate sellers about where and how they obtained an item they're listing for sale. This would have the effect of presuming that sellers are listing stolen items -- unless they can prove their ownership."
Edward Torpoco, a senior eBay attorney, said eBay already has in place a series of initiatives aimed at preventing stolen goods from being sold on its site; it cooperates fully with law enforcement; and eBay is "the riskiest place for a criminal to try to sell stolen products."
Now, eBay wants its users to join the fight. It'll even write up a letter that can be sent automatically to your representatives in Washington.
The form letter says the bills would "place onerous new burdens on internet marketplaces, reduce competition from small internet sellers, and hurt consumers who benefit from lower prices. Do not allow the big retail industry to threaten small competitors in the name of fighting retail theft."
Obama vs McCain, the Money's on Obama
Posted by By J. Scott Orr October 06, 2008
In advance of the 2004 presidential election, we took a look at the online prediction market intrade.com. Here's
an updated version of that story, focusing on this year's election.
While traditional polls show this year's
race for the White House to be close, speculators willing to back up their predictions with cash give Democatic Sen. Barack
Obama a 67 percent chance of beating Republican Sen. John McCain. (The screen shot above shows an earlier tally when Obama
was up 62 percent to 36 percent)
That's the trend line on Intrade.com, an Internet political futures market that thousands of traders are logging on to every day to bet real money on the outcome of the presidential race, the vice presidential sweepstakes and wide range of other future events.
The wagering may seem to belong to the world of bookies and gamblers, but economists and other experts are not so fast to dismiss the value of intrade of similar markets. They say futures markets are more reliable than polls at predicting the future by drawing together the intelligence, information and intuition of thousands of people willing to place a value on the outcome of any event.
"The thing about these prediction markets is that they develop a price to tell us about the future," said Justin Wolfers, an economics professor at Stanford University. "Ultimately, the price reflects your information about the candidates as much as it aggregates all of the other traders' information. It produces numbers that can be more accurate than any poll."
The betting is not restricted to politics, in fact, you can bet on just about anything. In the latest O.J. Simpson trial, for example, betters gave him an 80 percent chance of being convicted meaning those who choose that outcome gained 20-cents for each 80-cents they wagered. More on how it works below.
The Irish-based market opened for business 2001 and says it has 82,000 traders from around the world. More than 400 million wagers have been made over that period.
Mike Knesevitch, a partner in Intrade.com and former hedge fund manager and trader, said futures trading takes the passion and partisanship out of the calculus. Traders are not asked who they want to win or who they'll vote for, but who they think will win the election. They're required to back up their predictions with cash.
"Our data have been much more valuable in predicting outcomes of events like this than any poll in which people are simply asked their opinions on the telephone," he said.
"The major difference between us and a bookie is the fact that we allow individuals to make markets in these
events in the same way they make markets in a stock," Knesevitch said.
Cliff Zukin, a professor of political scientist
at Rutgers University, said using futures markets to predict election outcomes can be legitimate, thanks to the polls.
"Remember, a market is driven in large measure by public opinion data, so polling is certainly a big part of what moves a market like that," Zukin said.
On Intrade.com, traders buy contracts valued in points on the outcome of a future event that will have a definitive result. Each point is worth 10 cents; each contract is worth 100 points. The company charges a commission of 4 cents per contract.
Here's how it works: Say you believe Obama will win the election and his re-election contract is trading at 67. The price means traders are giving him a 67 percent chance of winning again. If he does, the contract will close at the maximum value of 100, for a profit of 33 points, or $3.30. If he loses, the contract would close at 0, for a loss of 67 points, or $6.70.
One way futures trading differs from making a bet with a casino or bookie is that traders can sell their positions at any time as if they were stocks.
There already have been plenty of winners and losers on
the 2008 election.
As an Irish company, Intrade is not subject to U.S. law. The federal government has no regulation
against such markets.
Is it gambling? Well, yes, Knesevitch said, just as speculators in any commodities or stock market are gambling.
As a commodities trader, he said, "not one day
went by when I didn't know I was betting, that I was gambling. This is no different."
Obama vs McCain, the Money's on Obama
Posted by By J. Scott Orr October 06, 2008 2:16PM
While traditional polls show this year's race for the White House to be close, speculators willing to back up their predictions with cash give Democatic Sen. Barack Obama a 67 percent chance of beating Republican Sen. John McCain. (The screen shot above shows an earlier tally when Obama was up 62 percent to 36 percent)
That's the trend line on Intrade.com, an Internet political futures market that thousands
of traders are logging on to every day to bet real money on the outcome of the presidential race, the vice presidential sweepstakes
and wide range of other future events.
The wagering may seem to belong to the world of bookies and gamblers, but
economists and other experts are not so fast to dismiss the value of intrade of similar markets. They say futures markets
are more reliable than polls at predicting the future by drawing together the intelligence, information and intuition of thousands
of people willing to place a value on the outcome of any event.
"The thing about these prediction markets is that they develop a price to tell us about the future," said Justin Wolfers, an economics professor at Stanford University. "Ultimately, the price reflects your information about the candidates as much as it aggregates all of the other traders' information. It produces numbers that can be more accurate than any poll."
The betting is not restricted to politics, in fact, you can bet on just about anything. In the latest O.J. Simpson trial, for example, betters gave him an 80 percent chance of being convicted meaning those who choose that outcome gained 20-cents for each 80-cents they wagered. More on how it works below.
The Irish-based market opened for business 2001 and says it has 82,000 traders from around
the world. More than 400 million wagers have been made over that period.
Mike Knesevitch, a partner in Intrade.com
and former hedge fund manager and trader, said futures trading takes the passion and partisanship out of the calculus. Traders
are not asked who they want to win or who they'll vote for, but who they think will win the election. They're required
to back up their predictions with cash.
"Our data have been much more valuable in predicting outcomes of events
like this than any poll in which people are simply asked their opinions on the telephone," he said.
"The major
difference between us and a bookie is the fact that we allow individuals to make markets in these events in the same way they
make markets in a stock," Knesevitch said.
Cliff Zukin, a professor of political scientist at Rutgers University,
said using futures markets to predict election outcomes can be legitimate, thanks to the polls.
"Remember,
a market is driven in large measure by public opinion data, so polling is certainly a big part of what moves a market like
that," Zukin said.
On Intrade.com, traders buy contracts valued in points on the outcome of a future event that will have a definitive result. Each point is worth 10 cents; each contract is worth 100 points. The company charges a commission of 4 cents per contract.
Here's how it works: Say you believe Obama will win the election and his re-election contract is trading at 67. The price means traders are giving him a 67 percent chance of winning again. If he does, the contract will close at the maximum value of 100, for a profit of 33 points, or $3.30. If he loses, the contract would close at 0, for a loss of 67 points, or $6.70.
One way futures trading differs from making a bet with a casino or bookie is that traders
can sell their positions at any time as if they were stocks.
There already have been plenty of winners and losers
on the 2008 election.
As an Irish company, Intrade is not subject to U.S. law. The federal government has no regulation
against such markets.
Is it gambling? Well, yes, Knesevitch said, just as speculators in any commodities or stock
market are gambling.
As a commodities trader, he said, "not one day went by when I didn't know I was betting,
that I was gambling. This is no different."
If Web Traffic Were Votes, Obama Would Beat McCain Easily, Chicago Marketing Firm Says
Posted by J. Scott Orr September 26, 2008 11:10AM
This graphic shows how traffic to Obama related sites far outpaces traffic to sites focuding on McCain,
according to online marketing firm AdGooRoo.com.So says a new report from the Chicago-based online marketing firm AdGooroo , which found five times more online of traffic headed to Obama sites than to those focusing on McCain.
The report, entitled "Searching for the Next President: the Internet's impact on McCain vs. Obama," looked at web site activity, Internet reach and search engine marketing keyword selection of both camps, based on data collected between September 1 and September 22.
Read it here
"In the most heated and important competition of the year, applying the right technology offers us a tremendous amount of insight into the candidates' presence on the Web and the relative boost each receives from their efforts to connect with voters online," said AdGooroo Founder and Chief Gooroo Rich Stokes.
The report also took aim at both candidates' search engine marketing programs. Seventeen negative paid search engine ads from Obama's campaign were identified, for example, compared to only three negative search ads from John McCain were uncovered.
AdGooroo also found 226 keywords being targeted by the McCain campaign and 174 keywords by the Obama campaign. While Obama's keyword list heavily targets variations of candidates' names, the McCain campaign targets keywords associated with a wide variety of issues, including abortion and affordable housing.
Other highlights from the report:
· Including campaign-owned
sites, the Obama camp drives nearly 20 million visitors per month to partisan Web sites; the McCain camp drives fewer than
four million
· Excluding sites owned by the campaigns, there are more than 3.5 times as many Pro-Obama Web sites
as Pro-McCain Web sites
· Of the 170 sites identified as neutral, containing both positive and negative articles,
143 of these sites focused primarily on Obama; 27 focused primarily on McCain
· Despite having a smaller internet
presence, the McCain campaign is driving nearly 11% more traffic from independent websites than the Obama campaign.
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Wikipedia. And It's on Paper.
Posted by J. Scott Orr September 18, 2008 11:33AM
Okay, so you've been editing Wikipedia for a while now, but with all that content and all those participants,
do you understand how the information behemoth really works?
A new book "How Wikipedia Works," could be the ultimate road map to a higher Wikipedia consciousness for the dead tree set that feels more comfortable when
their online enterprises are backed by words written on paper.
More a user's manual than the latest in the "for
dummies" series, the 499-page book looks under the hood of the online encyclopedia with the ultimate goal of making Wikipedia
better and growing its already Google-sized authority.
The book has chapters that explain how to get started as a Wikipedian,
how to use the Wikimedia software, the difference between major and minor edits, how to write Wikipedia articles and make
sure they last, and how to handle disputes and edit wars.
Here's a list from the book:
What Not to Write
There are some article topics that are pretty much always bad ideas. For
instance, you can safely assume an article
about or described by any of the
following is among the category of unnecessary articles:
You or the organization
you work for
Your band, which has only sold 47 copies of its one album (even if you
think it will sell 48--or maybe
49!)
The religion or language that you made up with your friends in school
one day
The street you live on (unless
it is on a Monopoly board)
Any one of the 56 distinct regions in the Pokemon videogame series
Your apartment building
A stunt or trick only you have ever attempted, probably unsuccessfully
Any movie you made yourself that has never been
seen by more people at one time than can fit in your basement
By Phoebe Ayers, Charles Matthews and
Ben Yates, a trio of long-time Wikipedia editors, the book was unveiled this week by publisher No Starch Press.
While we haven't seen a review copy yet, it certainly comes well recommend: "I have never read a better summary
of how Wikipedia works," said Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's creator and open content guru.
It traces the history
of encyclopedias from ancient Greece to Wikipedia's launch in 2001 and chronicles its exponential growth to its current
status as "one of the largest collaborations in human history" with over two million articles.
More importantly,
perhaps, the book takes a behind the scenes look at how Wikipedia really works, examines the Wikipedia community and explains
how to become part of the Wiki world.
Ayers is a science and engineering reference librarian at UC Davis, Matthews is
a mathematician who has taught at Cambridge and Harvard and Yates is a technical writer who blogs about Wikipedia. The three
have been Wikipedians since 2003.
Palin's the Fastest Growing Name Online: McCain, Obama, Biden Pale In Comparison
Posted by J. Scott Orr September 17, 2008 12:09PM
These Sarah Palin action figures, sold at herobuilders.com, are just one example of the GOP VP candidate's suddenly ubiquitous online profile.When she was named the Republican vice presidential candidate late last month, Sarah Palin was certainly the least known of the four major-party candidates in the campaign for the White House.
But in terms of the growth of popularity on the internet, the others would soon, well, pale in comparison.
Palin's name took up three of the top six spots on Hitwise's list of the fastest-growing search terms in the days after Republican nominee John McCain named his running mate.
She quickly shot to No. 1 among search terms on the search engine Lycos -- far outpacing McCain, Democratic nominee Barack Obama and Obama's second, Joseph Biden.
Julie Barko Germany, director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University, said the initial interest in Palin was predictable, because she was a new face. However, the Alaska governor's popularity continues at peak levels, like the interest in other top online names.
"Look at what happens with Britney Spears or Paris Hilton: Days and weeks after a new scandal, or when they do something funny, people are still searching for them. It's the same for Palin. Her popularity won't likely wear off anytime soon," Germany said.
Palin has been making a splash not just with search engines but in the blogosphere, on social networking sites like Facebook, the micro-blogging platform Twitter, news-aggregation sites like Digg and Fark, and even on eBay.
"The Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 44 percent of Americans go online for information about politics, so people are turning to the internet when they are curious about politicians. This kind of growth for a new candidate doesn't necessarily translate into electoral support, but it does show people are interested in her whether they like her or not," Germany said.
Still, it was in the days after Palin's unveiling that her online profile blossomed and the McCain ticket passed Obama's ticket in the Gallup Organization's daily tracking polls. At about the same time, McCain's favorability ratings shot up past Obama's.
On Lycos, Palin quickly became not just the fastest-growing search term, but the No. 1 term overall, one spot ahead of Hilton. Her pregnant daughter, Bristol Palin, came in at No. 6, one spot above Spears.
On Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone, Palin was a virtual unknown in July, when her entry was edited a mere 22 times. That number soared to nearly 2,700 in August, and to 3,800 so far this month.
On Facebook, Palin had more than 211,000 supporters after less than three weeks in the spotlight, compared with 53,000 backers for Biden, the senator from Delaware. Sen. Obama (D-Ill.) leads the pack by a long shot with 1.8 million Facebook backers, while Sen. McCain (R-Ariz.) has 336,000.
Discussion and stories about Palin on news sites also are running at a startling pace. On the snarky news site Fark, for example, some are hailing her as the lipstick on the GOP ticket, while others are not so kind.
On the online auction house eBay, Palin items -- mostly buttons, T-shirts, caps and bumper stickers -- were outpacing Biden items 3,279 to 949, though they lagged behind Obama merchandise (nearly 7,800) and McCain (just over 4,200).
At herobuilders.com, which sells quirky action figures, three separate Sarah Palin models are available, in business clothes, a superhero costume and, improbably, a schoolgirl outfit. No sales figures were available.
Obama and McCain each has one action figure, and Biden hasn't yet made the cut.
Cutting the Cord: Wireless Charging For Electronic Devices on the Way
Posted by J. Scott Orr September 15, 2008 3:53PM
Researchers are working to cut the final cord.
Hoping to usher in a new era of communications freedom, researchers at MIT, Intel and elsewhere believe they can do for charging your cell phone or laptop what WiFi did for information delivery -- that is, get rid of those annoying wires.
Marin Soljacic, a professor at MIT, sees a day not far off when cords connecting electronic devices to wall outlets will seem as outdated as those curly cables that used to connect telephone handsets to their bases.
"Once, when my son was about 3 years old, we visited his grandparents' house. They had a 20-year-old phone and my son picked up the handset, asking, `Dad, why is this phone attached with a cord to the wall?' My best response was, `It is strange and awkward, isn't it?' Hopefully, we will be getting rid of some more wires, and also batteries, soon," Soljacic said.
Soljacic and his colleagues at MIT are working on a technology that uses magnetic fields to transmit power wirelessly from a source, like a wall outlet, to an electricity-hungry device. They call their idea "WiTricity."
"Basically, we'd like to enable wireless powering of devices and a wide variety of them," said Andre Kurs, a member of the MIT team. Still, he said, the days of WiTricity hot spots at Starbucks are a ways off.
"To install something like this at a Starbucks would require that we overcome a number of technological challenges. That might not be the very first application. I would think it would be in a more niche environment like powering artificial organ implants," he said.
The biggest challenge is distance. There are currently devices that might be called semi-wireless chargers that require the device to be in contact with, but not tethered to, power sources. These include devices that frequently get wet, like toothbrushes and shavers, that must be placed in a charging station, but do not have any exposed metal contacts.
"Ideally, we'd like to be able to have a source over in a corner powering every device that comes within a number of feet of it," Kurs said. So far, wireless power transmissions have been limited to only a foot or so.
The idea is based on "resonant induction," in which objects of the same resonant frequency can exchange energy efficiently. Simply put, if one object is emitting power through an electromagnetic field another can grab some of it by coming in contact with that field.
Source magnetic fields would interact only with objects that share their frequencies and certainly not with people, which is important since you don't want all that juice just floating around in the air.
"The fact that magnetic fields interact so weakly with biological organisms is also important for safety considerations," Kurs said.
Last month, during a presentation at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, Intel's chief technology officer Justin Rattner said researchers at the chip-making giant are trying to build on the MIT work.
Intel's Wireless Resonant Energy Link is now capable of powering a 60-watt light bulb wirelessly from several feet away. That's more power than a typical laptop or cell phone would require.
"The industry has taken much greater strides than anyone ever imagined 40 years ago," Rattner said in a wide-ranging review of Intel's future technologies. "There is speculation that we may be approaching an inflection point where the rate of technology advancements is accelerating at an exponential rate," he said.
"Imagine being able to walk into an airport or room with your laptop and instead of consuming battery, it is recharged," Intel said in a press release. The company acknowledged that "many engineering challenges remain."
Intel is certainly not the first company to chase the dream of wireless charging. Apple, for one, is thought to be working on it, as are the makers of cellular phones and other consumer electronics.
Internet Fiasco Puts United Airlines Into Free Fall
Posted by J. Scott Orr September 09, 2008 4:56AM
Reports of United Airlines' demise, it turns out, were greatly exaggerated.
A bizarre mix-up yesterday had multiple organizations trying to deflect blame for a 2002 story about UAL's pending bankruptcy that reappeared as fresh news and fed frantic dumping of company shares.
Before the confusion was untangled, trading in UAL, the corporate parent of United, had to be halted, shares lost 76 percent of their value and the company saw $1.13 billion in market value disappear faster than a bag of free peanuts in coach.
The episode rattled the already-fragile airline industry and temporarily stalled yesterday's broad rally in the financial markets. It also points up the risks involved when news items continue to lurk about the internet, long after their currency has evaporated. In fact, it is the second time in a month Bloomberg News Service has been involved in a bogus post: In August the news service mistakenly sent out, then removed, an incomplete obituary of Apple CEO Steve Jobs who is still very much alive.
"It's definitely a commentary on the times we live in," said Jeff Kagan, an Atlanta-based communications analyst. "We count too much on the immediacy of the internet, and we were never able to react this quickly. And when we react this quickly, we have to make sure we have current information."
Everything was fine yesterday morning for UAL. Shares were at just over $12 and markets were humming along happily to news the U.S. government was throwing a lifeline to mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Then, a little bit before 11, things started to get crazy with United shares, which trade on the Nasdaq exchange. Within 15 minutes, the stock was below $4.
Here's how it happened:
The story that triggered the sell-off originally was published by the Chicago Tribune in December 2002, and was perfectly accurate then. Like most airlines, United was struggling after 9/11, and speculation was intense it would file for bankruptcy.
How it reappeared or was discovered on the South Florida Sun-Sentinel's website remains something of a mystery.
Regardless, an employee of a Miami investment analysis firm, Income Securities Advisor, posted it to Bloomberg's network. In the financial world, traders react instinctively to Bloomberg headlines, so it was no surprise UAL's stock went into a near-immediate free-fall.
Other media organizations linked to the report, circulating it globally in a matter of minutes.
"We have been informed that a 2002 Chicago Tribune news report about United Airlines' financial condition was picked up and circulated on the internet Monday morning," a Tribune statement said. "The story is not current."
The Sun-Sentinel, which like the Chicago paper is owned by the Tribune Company, quickly denied culpability. Editors said an investigation proved no one at the paper had accessed the story since 2003 and it was not published yesterday.
"We never posted the story," Sun-Sentinel editor Earl Maucker told the media website Poynter.org. "We never did anything."
Richard Lehmann, president of Income Securities, told Reuters one of his reporters posted the story to Bloomberg after the Sun-Sentinel version popped up during a Google search for "2008" and "bankruptcy filings."
"It's very suspicious," Lehmann was quoted as saying. He added the company had no economic interest in United Airlines.
For their part, United officials were understandably upset. They went on to blast the reports as "completely untrue" and said they "were caused by the irresponsible posting of a 6-year-old Chicago Tribune article."
United officials also demanded a retraction. The story was deleted from the Bloomberg site by Income Securities shortly after it was posted.
By the end of the day, UAL shares had recovered somewhat, but still finished down $1.38, or 11.2 percent, to $10.92.
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