PaidContent's interview with Jean-Philippe Maheu, Chief Digital Officer at Ogilvy, has lots of interesting stuff in it - such as the fact that Ogilvy no longer has a "digital" department, but instead adds digital to "everything we do". But I was particularly taken by this:

Marrying search with storytelling: Digital advertising has largely been focused on search, while traditional advertising has been about condensing a narrative about a product into a 30-second TV commercial, a page in a magazine or newspaper, or a billboard. Among Maheu's goals when he took the job at Ogilvy last year was to bring the art of storytelling to interactive advertising: "One of the key things we're working on is how to engage with Yahoo, Google and MSN in a way that is creative, unique and that is a bit more strategic than just buying media."

The notion of "telling stories" through advertising seems to me to be fundamental to the business of selling stuff to people. And it seems it must be particularly hard to do through search advertising (so why are Ogilvy only talking to GYM about it?). Advertising through "social media" seems to be all about telling stories. Which is maybe why Bebo went for as much as it did.

Max Beesley has won his libel case against Popbitch:

Hotel Babylon star Max Beesley today accepted a formal apology and "substantial" damages from gossip website Popbitch at London's High Court.

The actor sued after Popbitch Ltd claimed in its weekly celebrity gossip e-mail to members that he had lined up three women for sex at a TV industry party in Cannes.

In the 11 October issue of the e-mail, which is sent to roughly 360,000 people, it was also claimed that Beesley told one woman who had turned him down to go away so he could find someone else.

Is this the first time an online-only publication has paid out "substantial" damages - without bankrupting itself?

One workable definition of media is the collection of properties capable of mobilising large audiences, and if Techcrunch's article on Yahoo Buzz's first two weeks is anything to go by, Yahoo! can still mobilise massive audiences through the presentation of news on its page. It seems extraordinary that an organisation that can shove these kinds of numbers through its pipeline should be struggling to find a future. But there you go.