In August we reported that a large number of Fortune 100 companies have embraced Twitter, but how well are they actually using it? A study released today (PDF) by Weber Shandwick says the answer is not very well, and that the majority of Fortune 100 companies don’t really get Twitter. Though 73 of 100 companies had at least one registered Twitter account (up from 54 reported in an unrelated study released in August), the majority of them weren’t using Twitter effectively to engage their followers, weren’t tweeting often, and didn’t display any personality in their tweets, according to the study.

• Marc Ilagan's blog

Any news organization’s web site can get a story picked up by popular sites such as Drudge Report, Huffington Post, Digg, or even Fark, resulting in a bump in page views. But that’s a traffic anomaly. A key metric media companies want to grow is their local audience, because local traffic is where the money is.

“Local advertising pays the bills in most cases and local advertisers want to reach people who can actually come to their stores,” said Serra Media CEO Mark Briggs, author of “Journalism 2.0,” and the upcoming book “Journalism Next,” in an e-mail interview. “And, as national news has become a commodity, local news is the differentiating factor most local news operations are emphasizing these days. Or, at least they should be.”

• Marc Ilagan's blog

For the last few months, we’ve been watching the progress Epix, a joint venture between Paramount, Lionsgate, and MGM studios to create a new web destination and sister TV channel for all of their movies. The project has been compared to Hulu, the web television joint venture between News Corp (FOX), General Electric (NBC), and Disney (ABC).

The Epix project, while similar to Hulu in many ways, is different in one big way: only those with access to the Epix TV channel can access EpixHD.com. Instead of being ad-supported, it is carrier-supported. Now finally, after months of testing, Epix and EpixHD.com are launching to Verizon FiOS customers. But even if you’re not a Verizon customer, Epix is making sure that everyone can get access, at least for a short while.

• Marc Ilagan's blog