New York - The Nasdaq announced on Monday the launch of a new service that will place free, real-time quotes on the websites of CNBC, Google and The Wall Street Journal Digital Network. Previously, Nasdaq quotes were only available under a 15-minute delay on the Web. The Nasdaq partnered with Xignite to provide the real-time quote service to its distribution partners.

San Francisco - Loomia announced on Wednesday the launch of SeenThis?, an application that lets social network members see what their friends and group affiliations are reading and viewing on the sites of Loomia launch partners The Wall Street Journal (NYSE: NWS), NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) and CNET Networks (NASD: CNET). The application will allow Facebook members, for instance, to see which WSJ.com articles or streaming NBC TV episodes are currently popular among their Facebook friends, as well as among members of the various groups they belong to on Facebook, such as their university's.

Redmond, Wash. - Microsoft (NASD: MSFT) announced on Tuesday that it has signed a deal with News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) Wall Street Journal Digital Network, to become the exclusive provider of contextual and paid search ads on sites including The Wall Street Journal Online, Barrons.com, MarketWatch.com and AllThingsD.com.

Davos, Switzerland - News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) chairman Rupert Murdoch said on Friday that he plans to keep a large portion of the content on the website of his newly acquired Wall Street Journal behind a subscription firewall, and indicated that subscription prices are likely to rise, The Journal reported. The remarks, made at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, countered earlier hints that Murdoch was contemplating making the entire site free to access.

New York - News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) Wall Street Journal on Thursday made its editorial page content free to read online, in the first move on a possible path towards making the entire paper available for free online. The newly free offering includes WSJ's editorial page content, columnists, and both original video and clips from its weekly TV program on Fox News Channel. The paper described the move as, "as close as we'll get to conceding there is such a thing as a free lunch."

New York - Dow Jones & Company (NYSE: DJ), publisher of The Wall Street Journal, announced on Thursday that its shareholders have approved a $5.6 billion sale of the company to News Corporation (NYSE: NWS), with 60.27% of shares voting in favor of the deal. The Journal reported that about 78% of outstanding common shares voted in favor of the deal, compared with 54% of supervoting shares -- most of which is held by the Bancroft family, which has long controlled Dow Jones.

Adelaide, Australia - News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) chairman Rupert Murdoch, whose company is acquiring Dow Jones & Co. (NYSE: DJ), publisher of The Wall Street Journal, said on Tuesday that he intends to abandon the subscription model on the paper's website -- which recently hit a million subscribers -- in favor of a free, advertising-supported model, the Associated Press reported.

New York - Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation looks to have overcome dissent within the Bancroft family, which controls voting interest in Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co., and will be successful in its $5 billion bid for the company, according to reports in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and elsewhere.

New York - A branch of the Bancroft family, the controlling shareholders of Dow Jones & Co., plan to vote against accepting News Corp.'s buyout offer of $60 per share for the company, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a person familiar with the situation.

New York - News Corp.'s $5 billion takeover of Dow Jones & Co. is one step closer to fruition after Dow Jones' 16-member board voted in favor of the deal Tuesday night, The Wall Street Journal reported.

New York - Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. has reached a tentative deal to acquired Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones for $5 billion, but must still gain approval from the Bancroft family, which owns 64% of Dow Jones voting power and has expressed reservations about the deal, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

In a dramatic turnabout, the Bancroft family, which controls Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal, agreed to discuss a sale of the company to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp after initially refusing to do so. There are a number of hints that the turnabout was driven by concern over the future of Dow Jones in a digital media world:

Linking to other media companies’ content used to be unthinkable for traditional media brands, but attitudes have changed after Google made $10 billion in advertising by doing nothing but link to other media companies’ content (and run ads on other companies’ content).