Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

HBO, which couldn’t make its own comedy site work, is taking a small stake in Will Ferrell’s comedy company FunnyorDie.com. The terms were not disclosed, but the Variety story says the stake is less than 10 percent. As part of the deal, the cable company owned by Time Warner has commissioned 10 half-hours of programming from the site. Also, the two will work on partnerships, from the live comedy tours that FunnyorDie is developing to a possible FunnyorDie-branded programming block on one of HBO’s offshoot channels. (http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-hbo-buying-small-stake-in-funnyordie-less-than-10-percent 6/10)

In the first quarter of 2008, the growth in spending on Internet display advertising slowed to 8.5 percent from 16.7 percent growth last year, according to estimates put out today by TNS Media Intelligence. Even with the slowdown Internet ad spending still grew faster than that for TV (1.7 percent), magazines (0.8 percent), newspapers (-5.2 percent), radio (-4.5 percent), and outdoor (2.5 percent). The overall growth of all advertising spending that TNS measures was flat at 0.6 percent growth over the first quarter of 2007. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/11/internet-display-advertising-slowed-in-first-quarter 6/11)

By 2013, U.S. consumers will spend as much time consuming video as they do sleeping, driven by more PC viewing over the next five years, says a study from Solutions Research Group. Web and mobile video consumption will rise, while TV likely will shrink in market share. (Iwantmedia 6/11, http://www.tvweek.com/news/2008/06/web_video_consumption_seen_hit.php 6/10)

One of the big announcements yesterday from Apple was that it is replacing its .Mac service with MobileMe, a new service that will sync your email, contacts, calendar, photos, and files between your iPhone, Mac desktop, and a Windows PC. It will cost $99 per year. But if you want most of the functionality of MobileMe without the cost, you will be able to download an app from Funambol at the official iPhone App Store on July 11 that does many of the same things. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/10/funambol-to-offer-an-open-source-competitor-to-mobileme-as-an-iphone-app 6/10)

Facebook use in Britain is soaring, and will soon be the nation’s most popular Web site, according to Nielsen Online. The social-networking site is currently the second most-used site in Britain, behind instant-messaging service Windows Live Messenger, which is falling dramatically. (Iwantmedia 6/11, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/digitallife/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2008/06/10/dlface110.xml 6/10)

MySpace is collaborating with best-selling Brazilian author Paulo Coelho to make a user-generated movie of his book “The Witch of Portobello.” Users can submit videos focusing on one of the book’s characters. Up to 15 winning submissions will be molded into a video “mash-up.” (Iwantmedia 6/11, http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/technology/news/e3i3a46d63363347f039db1ecadc03cb99e 6/10)

Jesse Draper, one of the stars of the Nickelodeon show “The Naked Brothers Band,” is about to star in “Valley Girl,” a new online series that aims to “celebritize” Silicon Valley figures. Guests will include Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Craigslist founder Craig Newmark. (Iwantmedia 6/11, http://www.beet.tv/2008/06/google-ceo-eric.html 6/11)

Could be really annoying or really fun.  Can’t tell from the teaser (See below).

The idea behind Glassdoor is simple: You tell me your salary, and I’ll tell you mine. The stealth startup, which raised $3 million from Benchmark Capital last March, just went live. The site collects company reviews and real salaries from employees of large companies and displays them anonymously for all members to see. (The startup plans to make money from ads targeted at job seekers, premium services, and aggregated compensation data it wants to sell to HR professionals).  (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/10/at-glassdoor-find-out-how-much-people-really-make-at-google-microsoft-yahoo-and-everywhere-else 6/10)

The site is down as of this posting but I think this concept is so interesting.  The philosophy: put power into the hands of employees by informing them of salaries, CEO approval ratings, etc. in companies across their industry.  Interesting to note in the image below, Apple’s software engineer’s have lower average salaries than their colleagues at other companies.  It usually seems that employees are happy receiving a lower salary if working on things they love for a company they feel passionate about.  Seems that this strategy is working for Apple and just speaks to the power of the brand.

In the world of broadcasting, PBS shuns commercials. On the Internet, things are different.  The publicly supported, not-for-profit television network just announced a deal for several programs to be streamed on the Hulu Web site. These include “Nova,” “Wired Science,” “Carrier” and “Scientific American Frontiers.” (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/pbs-goes-commercial-on-hulu 6/10)

Disney sports chief George Bodenheimer says he is bullish on growth prospects for ESPN. “Ratings are up,” he says, adding that he also sees growth in fantasy sports and Web video. Also, a new high-school publication, ESPN Rise, hopes to capture a new generation of fans. (Iwantmedia 6/11, http://www.reuters.com/article/industryNews/idUSN1037024320080610 6/10)

LA-based Virtual Greats announced it is launching an online virtual goods business. Its proximity to Hollywood should help with the launch of its first product line – a celebrity themed avatar product giving users a chance to take on the likeness of their favorite singer, actor or superhero in virtual environments such as Gaia, Second Life and Habbo. (Cynopsis 6/11)

HotPads, which brought us the foreclose heat map, now offers a handy rent ratio heat map. The rent ratio is a home’s sale price divided by the annual rent of a comparable home in the same neighborhood. Looking at the rent ratio gives you a quick sense of whether it makes more sense to rent or buy in a particular neighborhood. If the ratio is high (red on the map), it is usually a good indication that you are better off renting. If it is low (blue on the map), you are better off buying. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/10/not-sure-whether-to-rent-or-buy-check-the-heat-map 6/10)

This site is hella cool.  You can find out everything you ever needed to know about a city from median age to population density.  Click the image below for a heat map of New York City. On the tool bar on the left, click ‘Heat Maps’ to toggle qualifications.

ABC News is close to scrapping the current format of its daily “World News” Webcast, an online version of the evening news anchored by Charles Gibson. The “World News” page got only about 145,000 hits on Monday. The evening-news audience is aging and “doesn’t tend to Web surf.” (Iwantmedia 6/11, http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB121314182502862555.html 6/11)

Google says it would support the creation of a U.S. Internet privacy law, in response to government concerns about its privacy practices since it acquired competitor DoubleClick. The search giant wants to “put penalties in place to punish and dissuade bad actors.” (Iwantmedia 6/11, http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN1038231320080610 6/10)

Web-savvy comedian Tom Green is utilizing the Live Broadcast solution of CDN provider BitGravity to distribute his sporadically-scheduled live web show to broadcast outlets. BitGravity utilizes proprietary network improvement tools affordable to amateur producers to optimize live streaming to the point that it is ready for primetime, according to CEO and co-founder Perry Wu. (Cynopsis 6/11)

NextNewNetworks signed a deal with video search engine blinkx to help monetize its online video channels. blinkx will place contextually relevant advertising against NextNewNetwork content and will share resulting ad revenue with the popular platform. (Cynopsis 6/11)