Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart launches “Operation Silent Thunder” this week, broadcasting special reports filed directly from Iraq. The segments will be available on ComedyCentral.com for viewing with URL and embeddable links the day after they air on the network. (http://www.zap2it.com/tv/news/zap-dailyshowiniraq,0,2870000.story 8/17)

Daily Show From Last Night

Love Rob Riggle.

Google’s share of queries is up to 55.2% from 46.2% a year ago, according to ComScore. Yahoo’s share is down to 23.5% from 29.8% last year, the biggest decline among the top five search engines. Nielsen//NetRatings also says that Yahoo’s share of the search market is declining. (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=afL4WWLjF8fU 8/20)

AMC and music/movie retailer f.y.e. announced a new multiplatform campaign to identify viewers’ favorite movies, genres, actors and scenes. The campaign includes an online poll on amctv.com and an online sweepstakes that will award f.y.e. gift cards. AMC will air sweeps bumpers starting August 27 to promote the poll.

Something is wrong with the world: Citizen Kane is not on this list.  No Rosebud?!  Seriously?!?  While doing some further research on this ‘situation’, I checked out the top movies for the 1940’s (Citizen Kane was released in 1941) and Citizen Kane didn’t even make it to the top of THAT list.  Casablanca madness all over the place.  To illuminate my point, please watch the clip below from The Kids in the Hall.  Please vote and remedy this horrible mistake.

Kids in the Hall

In a TV interview with Charlie Rose, Microsoft’s chief Steve Ballmer wouldn’t answer whether the company is continuing to mull an acquisition of Yahoo, following widespread speculation of a possible deal earlier this year. Says Ballmer: “If we were I wouldn’t tell you, if I weren’t I wouldn’t tell you.” (http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,136175-c,companynews/article.html 8/20)

Viacom’s MTV Networks plans to merge its online digital music offerings into a joint venture with RealNetworks, which runs the subscription digital-music service Rhapsody, in a bid to rival Apple’s iTunes music store. The pact likely means the end of MTV’s Urge, a service with Microsoft. (http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB118765486577703445.html 8/21)

Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, is now selling digital music downloads on its Web site without copy-protection software, known as digital rights management. The new format lets customers play music on almost any device, including Apple’s iPod and Microsoft’s Zune. (http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSN2133423020070821 8/21)

Vogue magazine is launching a broadband Internet television channel in August. ShopVogue.TV, like the 3-year-old ShopVogue.com, will let users buy products from the site. Plus, says publishing director Tom Florio, the site is driving “100 incremental [ad] pages into the magazine.” (http://www.minonline.com/topstory2.htm 8/17, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/business/media/21adco.html?_r=1&oref=slogin 8/21)

An entry on the Skype Blog explained what went wrong last week. Apparently a new Windows software update that required users to reboot their software overtaxed Skype’s servers and peer-to-peer network resources.

This would be cool if there were other user generated videos available to view once you arrive at the site.  Don’t they know?  I the user first criticize others’ sorry excuses for video and then post my own in retaliation.

Wishlist and gifting start-up gBox was selected by Universal Music Group as a venue for its DRM-free MP3 sales trial. Universal will purchase ad space on Google that will appear when a user searches for specific artists. The banner ads will direct customers to gBox to buy individual tracks. DRM-free songs will go for 99 cents, 30 cents cheaper than on iTunes. The site launched today.

Walt Disney-owned ESPN has purchased Scrum.com, a rugby news Web site. The network is trying to move beyond American sports and attract a worldwide audience. It also recently acquired Cricinfo.com, the largest specialist cricket Web site. (Yahoo!/Reuters 8/21) Although some doubt the Web will ever completely supplant TV’s primacy, top marketers increasingly are creating interactive Web video ads to combat users’ avoidance of the traditional TV spot. “The Web site is replacing the 30 as the central expression of a brand,” according to former aQuantive CEO Brian McAndrews, now an executive at Microsoft Corp. (Advertising Age 8/20)

Startup firm Building B has raised $17.5 million in funding to market a new television and Internet video service, which could rival existing pay-TV services. The company’s HDTV programming platform would combine programming from existing basic and premium cable networks with Internet content and would be delivered through hardware installed inside homes. The company has yet to detail which broadband technologies it plans to use. (Multichannel News 8/20)

comScore launched a new search measurement tool to try and better define searches conducted across multiple sites in and outside of the U.S. The company will add the qSearch 2.0 report to aggregate partner and cross-channel searches in the total for each property. Here are the new aggregated results for the month of July, showing Google sites increasing their market share to 55%:
comScore Core Search Share Report – July 2007
Total US Home/Work/University Locations
Core Search Entity           Jul-06         Jun-07         Jul-07          points changed
Google Sites                    46.2%         54.9%         55.2%                 .3
Yahoo! Sites                    29.8%         23.8%         23.5%               -.3
Microsoft Site                  12.4%         12.2%         12.3%                 .1
Ask Network                      5.0%          4.6%           4.7%                .1
Time Warner Network         6.6%           4.5%           4.4%               -.1
Total Core Search             100%          100%           100%               N/A