Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Google continues to come up short in its attempts to monetize YouTube’s billions of video views, points out The WSJ, with ad revenues expected to yield only $200 million worldwide this year. Google is fast at work at an initiative to update antiquated ad systems called “Project Spaghetti” (nothing to do with Quentin Tarantino’s new Spaghetti Western.) YouTube is even considering introducing dreaded pre-roll and post-roll ads. (Cynopsis 7/10)

Last.fm announced the official launch of its Artist Royalty Program allowing unsigned bands to register their uploaded music on the site, so they can get paid royalties when their tracks are listened to by Last.fm users. Since offering the option in January over 450,000 independently-produced tracks have been registered on the site. (Cynopsis 7/10)

CBS’ reality warhorse Big Brother is back for a 10th season on multiple platforms this Sunday including a newly redesigned website featuring enhanced social networking capabilities. The layout is a lot cleaner, making it easier to browse through clips and catch up on missed events through summaries of past episodes. The CBS Audience Network will again lend support distributing nightly clips through embeddable widgets. And RealNetworks will resume its 24/7 live video streams from 4 cameras placed in the Big Brother House, available to SuperPass subscribers. (Cynopsis 7/10)

Playboy has published profiles of nine women bloggers (loosely defined) – Xeni Jardin, Violet Blue, Julie Alexandria, Veronica Belmont, Amanda Congdon, Brigitte Dale, Sarah Lacy, Sarah Austin and Natali Del Conte – and asked readers to vote on which one is “sexiest.” The winner will be asked to pose for Playboy. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/09/one-step-backward-playboy-asks-which-female-blogger-youd-like-to-see-sans-clothing 7/9)

Despite competing for customers in the VoIP space, Comcast and Vonage announced they will work together in the future to ensure that Vonage’s Internet phone service operates smoothly over the cable company’s broadband network. As part of the deal, the companies’ network operations centers will cooperate to resolve customer problems. (vnunet.com 7/10, The Wall Street Journal 7/10)

By 2013, around 1 billion people worldwide will consume video content delivered over broadband lines, according to ABI Research. The study goes on to say that this growth in “over-the-top” video will be propelled by the confluence of a number of forces, including traditional content providers, Internet portals and online TV purveyors. (Telecommunications 7/9)