The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) recently released a white paper detailing best practices for running a U.S. cross-carrier mobile content program, including mobile couponing. Sending coupon offers to your list of readers and prospects has its own set of opportunities—Ping Mobile's holiday couponing campaign for clothing brand Ed Hardy achieved a double opt-in rate of more than 73 percent—but the limitations are worth noting, as well.

Sometimes, publishers must ship a product first and ask questions later. However, skimping on your user registration system could cost money down the road.

Luckily there are a couple of services that allow publishers to easily collect audience data without setting up complicated back-end systems. Each is supported by companies that offer millions of user accounts right out of the box, and each has detailed documentation to help your development staff roll out the system in days, not months.

The news that Microsoft is offering to pay News Corp. and possibly other publishers to remove their content from Google’s search engine in favor of Microsoft’s Bing (first reported by FT.com) shows more than anything that Microsoft is happy to assist Rupert Murdoch in his holy war against free content and Google.