Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Indie music web competition site OurStage.com announced a new partnership with AOL Music to provide content to the portal, including new music, interviews, streaming audio and videos for distribution. In addition, AOL’s Platform A will become the exclusive ad-serving network for OurStage.com, working to help monetize the site through ad creation and placement.

Yahoo officially extended the deadline for nominating directors to its board from March 14 to 10 days after the date of the annual stockholders’ meeting is announced (which could be pushed back as far as July. The move should buy the company more time to engineer an alternative to Microsoft’s $31/share offer. Time Warner is the latest potential suitor, which would merge its AOL unit with Yahoo. 

Time Warner shareholders and analysts say the media giant might benefit from merging AOL with Yahoo because it would increase advertising revenue and free management to focus on film and television businesses. The union “would make some sense,” says one large shareholder. (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601204&sid=aYnf_B1DUzFg  3/5)

Time Warner’s AOL Internet unit is taking down another wall. The company is launching Open AIM 2.0, a product that allows developers to access the AIM instant messaging network faster and integrate AIM into their sites and applications in customizable ways. (http://www.adotas.com/2008/03/aol-unveils-open-aim-20  3/5)

Mark Zuckerberg, the 23-year-old CEO of Facebook, is the youngest self-made billionaire to crack Forbes magazine’s annual list of the world’s richest people, at No. 785. Investor Warren Buffett comes in at No. 1 this year, passing last year’s richest man, Microsoft boss Bill Gates. (http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_8472580?nclick_check=1  3/6)

Advertising in programs streamed online is better liked and more recalled than advertising in programs on conventional television, according to a survey by NBC. Viewers say that ads streamed online are “less disruptive.” Viewers also have a “strong desire” to interact with them. ( http://www.tvweek.com/news/2008/03/nbc_says_online_ads_are_recall.php  3/5)

Microsoft signed a deal with full episode online content delivery specialist Move Networks to put new video steaming solution Silverlight to work delivering interactive, rich media navigation and integrating advertising within online TV content. Move Networks currently delivers HD video online for ABC, FOX, ESPN, the CW, Warner Bros, Televisa and others.   (Broadcasting & Cable  3/5)

Finally, Microsoft unveiled new beta releases of Internet Explorer 8, Silverlight 2 and Expression Studio 2 at its MIX08 developer’s conference. The new IE comes with “Activities,” contextual services enabling quick access from any web page and “WebSlices,” helping web sites connect to their users by subscribing to content directly within a page. 

Microsoft Research announced the new Microsoft Blews news aggregator today.  It’s a news aggregator (see Techmeme and about 45 others, including this gem), but it goes beyond mere clustering of stories to show what’s important right now based on who’s linking to what in near real time. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/06/microsoft-blews-brings-back-memories-of-rocket-pops-at-the-beach/ 3/6)

Yahoo released an update to Yahoo Maps with more data at the neighborhood level. The Yahoo Maps team added 12,000 new neighborhoods in 300 cities. The maps now denote neighborhood boundaries with subtle changes in the background color. And points of interest such as schools and subway stops are marked. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/06/yahoo-maps-get-more-local/ 3/6)

European regulators are set to clear Google’s acquisition of online advertising firm DoubleClick, setting the stage for the search giant’s push into the broader online advertising market. The proposed $3.1 billion deal was approved by U.S. antitrust regulators late last year. (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4dce55ee-eafe-11dc-a5f4-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1 3/5)

NBC Digital Entertainment released a new survey querying 5,000 NBC Rewind users suggesting most who sampled the video player watched full-length episodes through until the end and retained higher brand recall for ad content created specifically for the net. 77% of users streamed video as a compliment to TV viewing. Over 25% said they used the service to sample new shows and a majority said they continued watching what they sampled both on air and online.

Bebo will begin showcasing the rushes today from a documentary about extreme snowboarding, currently in the works from Italian filmmaker Carlo Mancini. Bebo users will be able view footage from Conquering Demons as its shot each day, send email to the snowboarders and the filmmakers and interact with other fans during the filming process.

Liz Smith, Lesley Stahl, Peggy Noonan, Mary Wells and Joni Evans are spending $1 million of their own money to launch Wowowow.com, a Web site aimed at women 40 and older. The site, launching Saturday, is described as a “smarter” iVillage, offering original content and blogs.  (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/fashion/06WOW.html?_r=1&oref=slogin 3/6)

More than 500,000 viewers attempted to watch a Webcast of Oprah Winfrey interviewing author Eckhart Tolle, but after the first few minutes many of the servers powering the site crashed. Winfrey’s Harpo Productions notes that Internet broadcasting “is still an emerging medium.”  ( http://www.informationweek.com/internet/showArticle.jhtml;?articleID=206901847 3/5)

Craigslist traffic just keeps climbing. Year on year last week, share of U.S. visits to Craigslist.org were up 93%. The growth of traffic to the mostly free classifieds site is said to be “steady and fairly constant,” fueled by an “increasing popularity” in newer markets. (http://weblogs.hitwise.com/us-heather-hopkins/2008/03/craigslist_traffic_nearly_doub.html  3/5)

Smaller, niche Web sites are seen as one of the fastest growing categories for generating advertising revenue. “We are increasingly supporting these sites,” says David Friedman, with online marketer Avenue A/Razorfish. The Web portals, on the other hand, could be vulnerable to a slowdown. (http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-thu-online-advertisingmar06,0,7617587.story 3/6)

Most Americans with high-speed broadband service in their homes will use it to stream high-definition video and other services, according to a research report. The report, from Parks Associates, predicts that nearly 33 million U.S. homes will have broadband connections with speeds of 10 Mbps or more by 2012, compared with 5.7 million in 2007. TheRetailBRIDGE.com (3/5)

Nielsen Online released its second month of VideoCensus numbers, ranking top online video destinations by total streams and unique visitors. A total of 116.7 million visitors viewed a total of almost 6 billion streams in January, with each user averaging 51.3 streams and 124.4 minutes viewing online video. Daypart viewing varied by brand; Yahoo video viewing spiked during the morning hours, for instance, while Nickelodeon viewers watched most often from 5-8pm.

Top Brands by Video Streams for January 2008 (U.S., Home and Work)
Brand                                   Total Streams (000)  Unique Viewers (000)
YouTube                                  2,570,182                  66,167
Fox Interactive Media                 376,859                    18,955
Yahoo!                                     299,044                    22,119
Nickelodeon Kids & Family sites     172,567                     7,014
MSN/Windows Live                     132,769                     7,659
Disney Online                            102,914                     8,977
Turner Ent. New Media Network     98,162                     5,056
ESPN                                         90,212                    4,709
Google                                       79,395                  12,949
Veoh                                         72,832                    2,385
Source: Nielsen Online VideoCensus