Digital publishing startup Glam Media has reportedly filed documents for an initial public offering, according to a BusinessInsider article that cites anonymous sources familiar with the company.

But don’t bother trying to find any evidence from publicly filed documents with the SEC. The report indicates that Glam filed confidential documents as part of a new secret IPO process that was initially created under the 2012 Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act). The act specifies that companies with under $1 billion in revenue can begin discussions with the SEC about an IPO before announcing such news publicly.

VentureBeat has reached out to its own sources for more information about Glam Media going public, and we will update this post accordingly if we find out any new information.

Glam is perhaps best known as an advertising/media company primarily focused on women’s interests, but it has since expanded into several other genres, including men’s lifestyle/interests, entertainment, and food. The site claims to bring in over 356 million unique visitors per month across all its properties (including those under the Ning umbrella), and it has a greater audience reach than aging web portal AOL, as VentureBeat reported back in July 2012.

News of Glam filing an IPO have been rumored several times over the last few year. Initially, it was planning to go public in 2012, but the new procedures created in the JOBS Act may have had something to do with the delay.

Founded in 2002, the Brisbane, Calif.-based startup has previously raised $155 million in funding to date from Aeris Capital, Hubert Burda Media, Accel Partners, DAG Ventures, and others.

It may have taken a while, but the age of web portal dominance is finally starting to show visible signs of erosion.

For the first time, media and advertising startup Glam Media now has a higher global audience reach than old-school web portal AOL, according to the latest comScore report on the top 100 media properties worldwide (PDF). I also think it’s worth pointing out that VentureBeat editor-in-chief Matt Marshall accurately predicted when Glam would overtake AOL back in 2010.

“To be bigger than the last of the top three (web) portals is actually a very big deal,” Glam Media Chairman and CEO Samir Arora said in an interview with VentureBeat yesterday.

For anyone who wasn’t paying attention to Internet trends during the ’90s, web portals like AOL, Yahoo, and MSN were among the largest media properties on the web, responsible for attracting millions of unique monthly visitors. But as people slowly upgraded their slowpoke dial-up Internet connections to faster alternatives, those web portals lost their usefulness.

Fast forwarding to the present day, AOL is attempting to convert itself from a web portal that offers content distribution and web services (email, instant messenger, etc.), to a company that primarily relies on producing original content to generate audience interest. But AOL’s strategy is unlikely to keep pace with the steady growth that Glam Media is experiencing.

According to the comScore report, Glam had a total of 244,243,000 unique visitors in May 2012 to become the 14th top global web property. During the same month, AOL saw 215,645,000 unique visitors,which placed it as the 18th top media property worldwide.

The report also shows that AOL remained virtually flat on unique visitor growth when compared with the previous month (215,274,000 visitors in April). The company also showed a 9.7 percent drop in unique visitors year-over-year. Glam, on the other hand, saw a significant jump of over 20,000,000 unique visitors from April to May 2012, and a 14.4 percent boost in unique visitors year-over-year.

“Glam actually exceeded AOL in content reach long ago,” Glam’s Arora said. “But because of the way comScore determines its measurement, we’re only recently showing up as being bigger.”

Arora explained that roughly a third of AOL’s monthly unique visitors can be attributed to its email, dialup, and communication services, with the rest coming through its content business. Glam’s unique visitors are entirely derived from its content, he said.

If you need more evidence that AOL won’t be able to keep up with Glam Media’s rise to the top, look no further than its valuable content properties. AOL publications such as The Huffington Post are generally perceived as having higher quality content when compared to Glam’s content properties and affiliates. But Glam is winning when it comes to audience reach, due in part to integration with its Ning social media platform. Meanwhile, most of AOL’s unique visitor gains came after purchasing popular web publications.

Obviously, AOL can’t just keep dropping tens of millions of dollars on new web publications to keep its unique visitor numbers steady. Rather than branch out into social network monetization (like Glam is doing through Ning), AOL is building a strong stable of original web video channels to grow its audience. Whether this strategy will prove successful remains to be seen.

AOL also seems to have given up on its communication services as a way to drive audience growth. Not only did the company lay off over 200 employees in its email and AIM divisions, but it also sold valuable communication patents to completely wash its hands from ever becoming a web portal again. The other two old-school web portal giants — Microsoft and Yahoo — seem to have gone the opposite route by revamping their communication services. And while comScore ranks Microsoft and Yahoo as the second and fourth top media properties worldwide, both companies’ portals are experiencing flat or declining unique visitor growth.

The bottom line? It’s no longer useful to gauge Glam Media’s success by comparing it to AOL’s audience reach. But overtaking the tired old web portal could help create a healthy buzz for Glam as it prepares for an inevitable initial public offering.

Data table via comScore (Click image to enlarge)

Startup Qwiki wants to change the way we experience information, and today it’s releasing a news reporting tool that brings its technology to publishers.

Qwiki Creator, launched today in partnership with ABC News, merges web video and content for interactive presentations that offer audiences something between a broadcast and print experience. To mark the launch, ABC News is releasing 25 of its own custom Qwikis, which are embedded in on-site news stories and also running on Qwiki.com.

“Since launch, thousands of content creators — amateurs, professionals, even many large media companies like ABC — have contacted Qwiki and asked to turn their content into our format. The Qwiki Creator is the culmination of that desire,” Qwiki co-founder and CEO Doug Imbruce told VentureBeat.

Qwiki is a New York-based startup that weaves together web data sources in near real-time to create interactive, animated presentations on reference topics. The company first launched its web product in January 2011, and followed up with an iPad application a few months later. Qwiki has received $10.5 million in funding from investors (including Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin), but has also been criticized for doing little more than creating a talking version of Wikipedia.

Qwiki’s new goal is to help media companies create more engaging news stories. With Qwiki Creator, reporters can self-narrate interactive stories and pull in web content in the form of URLs, Flickr images, YouTube and Vimeo videos, Google maps, tweets, and the like. Qwiki plans to add mobile and tablet playback by the summer, and the Creator tool will support additional animations and content sources in future updates.

“The Creator is designed to let content creators produce multimedia, interactive content quickly — without the aid of a video production unit or rich media programmers,” Imbruce said.

Wednesday’s Creator release is the start of a private testing phase, but additional launch partners include StyleCaster, Cheyenne Meets Chanel, and Beauty Sweet Spot. The new tool even brings with it the promise of revenue.

“From a business strategy perspective, the partnership with ABC News — and more media companies in the future — is an exciting next step, especially where monetization is concerned,” Imbruce said. “We’re able to help democratize content creation inside organizations, and make it more efficient to create higher quality content, and thus higher quality advertising inventory, which we will participate in via a revenue share.”

The publisher tool, as I see it, represents a shift in direction for Qwiki and suggests the startup’s original consumer web and mobile reference play was about as stimulating as a forced trip to the library. But Imbruce insists otherwise. There’s no strategy overhaul here, he said. “It is the culmination of our strategy. The vision for the company has always been to create a human method for information consumption.”

So why haven’t we heard from Qwiki in a year? “We prefer to show our products, not just talk about them,” Imbruce said. “Creating a robust yet easy-to-use publishing platform was always our highest priority.”

Next up, Qwiki plans to release an API so that large scale content producers can mass produce Qwikis, Imbruce said.

Photo credit: Shutterstock

Brands interested in doing market research and publishers trying to make money on content have a new friend in Google, as the search giant is acting as go-between with a new tool that gives both audiences exactly what they want.

On Thursday, Google launched Google Consumer Surveys, a new product businesses can use to survey online audiences and publishers can host in place of paywalls or ads to generate revenue from site visitors.

The quid-pro-quo system works as follows: Brands, small businesses, and marketers use Google consumer surveys to conduct online market research. Google then places the questions in front of targeted web denizens when they land on a premium content page in Google’s publisher network. The brand pays per response ($0.10 to $0.50 each, depending on targeting preferences), and Google and participating publishers pocket the money made from each response. Even the would-be content viewer benefits, as she doesn’t have to pay or sign in to access news articles or videos that might otherwise be locked behind a paywall.

Here’s why this strikes us as a crafty idea: Google isn’t selling a full-service market research service, but instead a hybrid of the cheap, do-it-yourself online survey products and the expensive, hands-on approach offered by a traditional firm.

On the do-it-yourself side of things, the brand or marketer is responsible for creating the microsurvey questionnaire, determining the type of audience (U.S. only) it wants to target, and identifying the total number of responses it’s seeking. Then, the customer takes a backseat as Google drives the sampling, weighting, and analysis pieces of the process.

In so doing, Google is offering the best of both worlds — convenience, affordability, sample balancing, and analysis — and monetizing publisher content in a way that doesn’t discourage readership and traffic.

Of course, one has to wonder if Google’s controversial new privacy policies are allowing the company to pull from cross-product data to better identify folks to complete microsurveys. Google said this is not the case. The product allows for specific targeting by gender, age group, and geographic regions based on inferred demographics, and custom audience targeting through screening questions. All responses are anonymous, Google said, so they’re not tied to a user’s identity or used for future ad targeting.

At launch, publisher partners include Pandora, the Christian Science Monitor, and the New York Daily News. Initial brand testers include Lucky Brand Jeans, Tumbk2, and King Arthur (baking products). A Google spokesperson told VentureBeat that it’s too soon to speculate on the long-term status of the product. “Right now, our focus is on rolling this out and seeing how it can help companies and publishers meet their business objectives,” the spokesperson said.

StyleCaster’s main web site, Stylecaster.com, and its social channels offer news and features related to style, fashion and celebrities, and the company focuses intently on fostering conversations around those topics. Stylecaster.com and sister site Beautyhigh.com, attract more than 2 million uniques visitors per month, and the company sells ads through other blogs as well.

“It’s not all about the Anna Wintours of the world,” StyleCaster CEO and co-founder Ari Goldberg told VentureBeat. “Anyone who wants to have a voice in fashion can do so through StyleCaster.”

StyleCaster will likely become profitable this year, Goldberg said. The next step for the main site will be a strong re-design that will go live early in 2012. It will also “unveil a proprietary and exclusive take on commerce.”

The addition of Van Natta and Ko to StyleCaster’s list of investors will almost certainly draw more attention to the company. Former MySpace head Van Natta stepped down as chief business officer from Zynga earlier this month and reportedly gave up millions of pre-IPO shares in the social games company. Ko has been helping Zynga transform mobile gaming with popular games like Words With Friends, CityVille, FarmVille and Zynga Poker.

The new funding round was led by previous investor Dan Gilbert, founder of Quicken Loans and owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers. Other participants in the bridge round include Mike Keriakos, President of Everyday Health; Abbey Doneger, President of Doneger Group; Jamie Driver, Managing Director of Morpheus Media; Joel Perlman, President of Copal Partners; and Josh Linkner, CEO of Detroit Venture Partners.

“We’re honored and humbled that we were able to get such high-quality investors involved in our business,” Goldberg said.

StyleCaster has now raised a total of $5.5 million, including the new round.

Real-time reactions are proving to be an invaluable source of information television networks, which is why Twitter’s latest partnerships with two Twitter data firms is a big deal. In turn, the move is also a big deal for Twitter because the additional visibility on these major TV programs is helping to drive growth for the social network.

Over the past year, several TV shows have started integrating Twitter into its live programming as a way to interact with viewers. For instance, Fox’s high-school musical show Glee and PBS documentary-style Nova have both started directing viewers to use Twitter while watching. Others, like NBC’s The Voice have even started airing Tweets during the program. Think of it as the next evolution in people calling into radio stations to hear their voices on air.

The Twitter data firms will work with media companies to determine new means of connecting and gathering information about a particular show’s audience. Crimson Hexagon, for example, previously worked with CNN during the 2010 U.S. mid-term elections to determine the reasons Twitter users were voting for their particular candidates.

Mass Relevance, on the other hand, will work with media companies that are interested in displaying relevant tweets on websites, on air broadcast or even in a real-world venue. The firm is the first of several partners officially licensed to re-syndicate Twitter content for display in this way, according to Twitter.

Allowing other companies to access the backlog of Tweet messages is a smart move on Twitter’s part. It allows the microblogging service to concentrate on development and growth while letting other firms drive the value in new ways, (like providing audience feedback for media companies).

AOL is in the midst of pumping its resources into popular blogs like The Huffington Post and local news organization Patch. The company has been trying to innovate to keep up with other media companies, and it just launched its “Editions” iPad magazine. The company also plans to launch a subscription-based music service later this summer.

The company reported a net Q2 loss of $11.8 million, which was certainly better than its $1.06 billion the year before. Total revenues for the quarter came in at $542.2 million, down 8 percent compared to the second quarter of 2010.

AOL’s biggest culprit for its losses was weaker-than-expected advertising growth. Ad revenues grew just 5 percent to $319 million, but the company tried to keep that portion of the news upbeat.

“AOL’s return to global advertising growth for the first time since 2008 reflects the hard work of our team and another meaningful step forward in the comeback of the AOL brand,” said Tim Armstrong, Chairman and CEO, in a statement.

The company also had a 23 percent loss in subscription revenues for the quarter with $201.3 million earned compared to $260.2 in Q2 2010. But these numbers aren’t surprising as fewer people use AOL to connect to the Internet each year.

AOL’s share price fell to a 52-week low of $13.40 per share after news of its weak second quarter was released. However, it should be noted that this movement follows an extremely volatile day on the stock market due to the downgrade of U.S. debt by Standard & Poor’s.

Do you think AOL will figure out how to make enough money on advertising to account for its high operating costs?

Access to the streaming video library is just one perk for Amazon Prime members. Membership, which costs $79 per year, also gives customers free or discounted shipping rates on all items purchased through the company’s website.

The NBCUniversal content licensing deal is the second Amazon has made this month. Last week, the company reached an agreement with CBS to add over 2,000 television shows to its library of content, which has close to doubled from 5,000 to over 9,000 programs since its debut in February. Financial terms of the deals were not disclosed.

Prime members can now watch Universal films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Elizabeth, Babe, Flipper, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and several others.

Amazon is on its way to becoming the (albeit distant) third most popular streaming video service behind major competitors Netflix and Hulu — especially if it continues forging content licensing deals with media companies like Fox, ABC and Viacom.

Right now, Netflix is able to maintain its dominance because of the vast number of licensing agreements it has with media companies. The much younger Hulu is slowly catching up, having recently reached deals to add films from Miramax and The Criterion Collection to its streaming library.

However, if Amazon attains a comparable library of content, its streaming service could become the most attractive of the bunch. Unlike competitors, Amazon Prime membership has a low annual cost, offers additional incentives beyond the streaming service (shipping perks) and has no pre-roll advertising.

But, Amazon Prime doesn’t need to become the most popular in order to succeed.

The company’s strategy toward its streaming video business is similar to that of Walmart, which recently started selling streaming video rentals on its website. As a retailer, it can use the streaming service as a promotional spring-board to sell merchandise and digital media downloads.

Pictured is actor Johnny Depp in the 1998 film Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas.

Unnamed sources quoted in the Journal story said Hulu’s board is weighing its options, which include “soliciting other potential interest in the company from larger companies and private-equity firms.” Hulu had been focusing on building out its library, a project that would likely demand new funding, as well as expanding its subscription business.

The report is launching a guessing game over who’s the bidder. Sources indicate it’s not Google. Microsoft, Apple and Netflix might have reasons to acquire an established video site with a robust library. Several media companies have a stake in Hulu, including Comcast, News Corp., and Disney as well as private-equity firm Providence Equity Partners.

The various owners are rarely on the same page when it comes to decision-making for Hulu’s future business practices. A buyout could consolidate control of Hulu under a single entity, which could help it focus its strategy better and allow the various media investors to pursue their own streaming strategies.

Rumors circulated last summer that Hulu was showing interest in going public  — with in an initial public offering that valued the company at more than $2 billion — but in December the company appeared to back away from those plans.