The Twitter-verse continues to get interesting. I've always felt that the returns are to be found around Twitter rather than with Twitter itself, and the venture capital community seems to be acting from the same position. Twitter interaction platform HootSuite just announced a new round of venture capital funding, with $1.9 million in fresh money coming in the door to support its growth efforts.

HootSuite, which was started by Invoke Media in November 2008, has evolved into a brand monitoring, file-sharing and social media integration utility. Only a year later, it has attracted more than 300,000 users, from Time (TWX) to Martha Stewart to the White House to Aol (AOL).BloggingStocks is among the Aol blogs using HootSuite.

Five of the largest companies in the print business are testing the digital waters together. Rather than yield their content to alien formats, Time Inc. (TWX), News Corp. (NWS), Conde Nast, Hearst and Meredith Corp. have announced plans to develop a digital content format of their own. This new product would compete with the newly released Nook from Barnes & Noble (BKS), as well as one from Sony (SNE) and the industry-leading Kindle from Amazon (AMZN). The new e-reader content will come in color and in a format that would work across several devices.

The five media companies are equal partners in this joint venture, which will allow publishers to set their own prices for their content -- an obvious response to what they see as unfavorable revenue share deals offered by Amazon earlier this year. Rupert Murdoch has been particularly vocal on this issue, particularly about the fact that News Corp. only receives a little more than a third of the $14.99 a month it costs to subscribe to the Wall Street Journal on a Kindle. He says of the device that it's "a fantastic invention for reading books. It is not much of an experience for newspapers."

The broader economy is showing signs that we can at least interpret as positive, but this doesn't extend to the media industry, it seems. Condé Nast's ad page results are out for its 2009 issues, now that the last issue of the year has been sold for each of them ... and the situation is grim.

Condé Nast lost 8,359 ad pages this year, according to a report released on Wednesday. Ad pages have plunged 30% this year. Cost cutting has been used to offset the revenue declines, with more than 450 positions removed this year and several magazines shuttered, including Gourmet and Modern Bride.

For retailers, the crucial season is on its way. Blow the Christmas rush, and next year starts off on a miserable foot. Success, of course, also delivers a healthy dose of momentum -- and a little bit of wiggle room, important in what will continue to be a tough economy through at least the first half of next year. For booksellers, now contending with a new variable in the form of digital readers, e-readers will play a major role in defining the winners and losers. So far, it looks like Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) is off to a great start, and it will take some genuine innovation for the competition to chip away at its market share.

Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS), once the leading names in literary retail, is expected to release its own e-reader this week. It will look a bit like Amazon's Kindle, according to Reuters, but with a touch screen intended to make the reader's experience easier. The price hasn't been disclosed yet, but rumor has it that it'll be higher than the Kindle's $259. BKS is staying mum on its plans in this space. There are others in the space, as well, including IREX Technologies, which is a spinoff of Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG), Asutek (tk: tk) and a project called FirstPaper that has Hearst behind it.

Printers of the world unite! Feeling the squeeze from the likes of Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), a group of magazine publishers is forming an industrywide joint venture ... for protection.

Led by Time Inc., a division of Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), participating companies would create a digital storefront for their content. In this way, they could peddle their goods without the hefty carve-outs that come with Amazon and Apple deals.

MOST NOTEWORTHY: dELiA's Inc. (DLIA), Hearst-Argyle TV (HTV) and Safeway (SWY) were today's noteworthy downgrades:

• Friedman Billings downgraded dELiA's Inc (NASDAQ: DLIA) to Market Perform from Outperform citing the difficult near-term environment.

• Deutsche Bank would use Hearst-Argyle TV's (NYSE: HTV) tender offer for the remaining shares of HTV at $23.50 as an opportunity to sell shares and cut the stock to Hold from Buy.

• Merrill cut Safeway (NYSE: SWY) shares to Sell from Neutral citing the slowing California economy and the potential threat from Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) entering the California market with its new Tesco (OTC: TSCDY) format...

OTHER DOWNGRADES:

• Vimicro (NASDAQ: VIMC) was cut to Underweight from Equal Weight at Morgan Stanley.

• BB&T downgraded Green Bankshares (NASDAQ: GRNB) to Hold from Buy.

• Citigroup downgraded Samsung to Hold and Hynix Semiconductor to Sell.

Analyst summaries provided by TheFlyOnTheWall.com (subscription required).

Hearst Magazines Digital Media, as the name implies, is the dot-com division of the old-line publisher. Basically, the unit helps create synergy with assets like CosmoGIRL!, Seventeen, and Teen.

Well, today the company announced the purchase of eCRUSH.com, which is a community site for teens and young adults (the price was not disclosed). Founded in 1999 on Valentine's Day, the site is essentially a dating enabler. In fact, there have been more than 900,000 matches.

Yes, eCRUSH has implemented a variety of features for safety – such as content filtering, screening, and so on. Of course, in terms of scale, it comes nowhere near MySpace (but who does?). Then again, this is probably an inexpensive way for Hearst to get traction.

Actually, Hearst is already spinning interesting ideas to monetize things. The next spin-off site: MyPromShopper.com.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.