Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Call it the Facebook World Tour. Even though Facebook is now the largest social network in the world,—with 132 million unique visitors in June—it is also still the fastest growing.
(At least among the major social networks). According to figures compiled by comScore, Facebook’s visitor growth is up 153 percent on an annual basis. This compares to anemic 3 percent growth for MySpace. Other social networks showing strong global growth include Hi5 (100 percent) and Friendster (50 percent), despite each of those being less than half the size of Facebook. Orkut and Bebo fall in at 41 percent and 32 percent growth, respectively.  (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/12/facebook-is-not-only-the-worlds-largest-social-network-it-is-also-the-fastest-growing 8/12)

NBC continues to break records with its exhaustive digital coverage of the Olympics. NBCOlympics.com delivered 1 million + streams of Sunday night’s 4 x 100 swimming relay, making it the most watched video ever from the site. NBCOlympics.com’s total video streams to date are 11.1 million, five times more than the total for the entire Athens Games (2.2 million). (Cynopsis 8/12)

Comcast’s G4 network is making its X-Play Weekly video game review show available for download at the Xbox Live Video store beginning Thursday. G4′s Code Monkeys, The Block and Attack of the Show are also available on the platform. (Cynopsis 8/12)

John Malone says he is open to discussing a deal to swap Liberty Media’s stake in Time Warner for the media conglomerate’s AOL dial-up Internet business. “Clearly an exit from the Time Warner equity state into a cash-generating asset would be attractive.” (Iwantmedia 8/12, http://www.reuters.com/article/industryNews/idUSN1135103320080811 8/11)

Picking up on the Flickr craze web-based photo sharing service Shutterfly is expanding its social networking capabilities. Shutter Fly Share Sites allow users to set up their own URLs and provide tools to enhance their ability to tell stories with their pictures. Calendars, weather information, polls and events can be added to the shareable multimedia photo books. (Cynopsis 8/12)

Revision3 is launching an incubator project to help discover and develop budding web talent, per TV Week. Revision3 Beta will launch with about a half-dozen host-driven nonfiction shows including one centering around money and finance. (Cynopsis 8/12)

Mog, a platform for music blogs with backing from Universal and Sony BMG, is launching an ad network dubbed MOG Music Network. In conjunction with the announcement, MOG is also adding experienced record producer Rick Rubin to its Board of Directors.  MOG Music Network will allow partner blogs to embed widgets that display content from other blogs, and will also allow bloggers to have their own posts syndicated to Mog.com. The network will also allow bloggers to customize the ads that appear on their sites, and to generate revenues greater than what they’d get from a typical ad network like Google AdSense. Partners will be able to participate in a 50/50 rev share agreement on a CPM basis. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/11/mog-launches-ad-network-columbia-records-exec-joins-board 8/11)

Digital distribution specialist New Video Digital announced it has acquired the rights to more than 5,000 hours of indie content from over 85 different content owners. New Video acts as a middleman for filmmakers, working with distributors like Apple to help producers maximize sales by improving their placement on the iTunes portal. (Cynopsis 8/12)

Several Internet companies are acknowledging using targeted-advertising technology without informing customers, according to letters released by the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee. Google states that it has begun using tracking technology to follow Web surfers. (Iwantmedia 8/12, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/11/AR2008081102270.html 8/12)

Broadband internet subscriber growth fell to its lowest level in 7 years according to Leichtman Research Group. The top 20 MSOs and telco providers added just 887,000 net high-speed subscribers during the quarter ending June 30, half of their growth rate in Q2 of 2007. Top cable companies added some 670,000 new subs, representing 76% of the growth. (Cynopsis 8/12)

NBC Olympics.com and Yahoo.com are proving to be the go-to places to view Olympics content online so far, according to a new custom Netview report from Nielsen Online. On the video side, NBCOlympics.com saw a steady increase of visitors to its video portal, increasing from just 36,000 on Aug. 7 to 436,000 on the 8^th then 858,000 on Aug. 9. (Cynopsis 8/12)

Unique Audience (in 000′s) to Olympics-related Sites, ranked by UA on August 9, 2008
Name                     August 6                August 7            August 8         August 9
NBC Olympics           841                       1,392                2,664             4,008
Yahoo Olympics      1,505                      1,430                1,477             3,324
AOL Olympics            511                         718                   395             1,010
Beijing2008.cn            39                         114                   429                780
NYTimes Olympics     432                         369                   341                466
ESPN Olympics          196                           80                  273                 343
USA Today Olympics    34                           55                  280                 184
Olympics.org              NA*                         10                    16                  153
BBC Olympics             33                           27                    97                  128
SI Olympics               NA*                         15                     45                 112
Source: Nielsen Online, NetView Custom Analysis
*Not reportable for daily data