Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Planning to expand upon past successes NBC.com announced a new digital line-up of programming built around the fall television season. Here’s a sampling of what’s to come:

• Heroes will feature more micro-sites delving into secrets revealed on air, more graphic novels, more cast commentaries and more webisodes beginning in December. A special heroes vs. villains social network launches in October
• Knight Rider fans will be able to investigate the back stories of some of their favorite characters, play an all-new KITT game and interact in Attack KITT and the KITT cave
• The Dunder Mifflin Infinity social network built around The Office will feature new branches, new tasks and new prizes. New features include Meredith’s blog, Angela and Andy’s wedding planning microsite, a Serenity by Jan microsite and a second installment of webisodes slated for November

Twitter recorded 2.3 million unique U.S. visitors in August, an increase of 422% from the same period last year. Visitors to the microblogging service spent 55% more time on the site on average. The new numbers point to rather robust growth for the site. (Iwantmedia 9/17, http://mashable.com/2008/09/16/twitter-traffic-growth 9/16)

Time Inc. launched Maghound, a new web-based magazine subscription service hoping to do for magazine consumption what Netflix did for DVD rentals. Maghound’s 3 tiers of service are priced as such: $4.95 gets you 3 titles per month, $7.95 for 5 titles, $9.95 for 7 titles and every title beyond that costs an extra $1 per month. The best thing about the service is that you can switch titles at anytime. There are 240 magazines to choose from initially from the vaults of Time, Conde Nast, Rodale and other publishers, but don’t look for any Hearst books such as Cosmo or Esquire. (Cynopsis 9/17)

As the Web becomes more sophisticated and audio and video becomes a more important part of our online lives, we need something that will help us sift through the junk and find what we’re looking for in all that content. To address that, Google announced Wednesday that it has launched audio indexing in Google Labs.  Dubbed GAudi, the new service is designed to work with YouTube, and will catalog all the words uttered during an audio or video clip. Once collected, the transcript will be added to a searchable database that can be accessed in much the same way you search for text-based websites. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/17/google-launches-audio-indexing 9/17)

I’m guessing this indexing feature has the same challenges as others especially when it comes to background music or noise.  Therefore, in terms of accuracy, news clips should be more accurately indexed than series.  But that, is indeed a guess.  That said, the current selection of videos indexed on the site would tend to support this assumption.

Seattle based iLike just expanded their recent streaming music deal with Rhapsody to allow any website or web application to add streaming music to their sites. Integration is dead simple (I’ve done it below). A long list of partners launches with them, including Google, Evite, TypePad, SGN, Flixster, Watercooler, Connected Weddings, Slide and Mesmo TV. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/16/ilike-music-platform-launches-music-streaming-anywhere 9/16)

Jaman.com struck a distribution deal with Starz Media’s Manga Entertainment, making a number of feature-length and episodic anime titles available to viewers for download rental. Genre classics such as Ghost in the Shell, Robotech, Astro Boy, Street Fighter II-V, Noein, Karas and Tactics are available for $2.99 for feature length and $1.99 for episodic length. (Cynopsis 9/17)

Web show studio For Your Imagination unveiled its own comedic video portal Axis of Comedy at the New York Television Festival’s Digital Day yesterday per tubefilter, bringing together 8 popular shows under one roof. Anchoring the lineup is Hayden Black’s Abigails X-Rated Teen Diary and Goodnight Burbank, rounded out by FYI’s Break a Leg, The Patrice Oneal Show and Kyle Piccolo. (Cynopsis 9/17)

CBS stayed atop of Hitwise‘s website broadcast network rankings last week and The CW increased its market share by 4 percentage point but NBC’s America’s Got Talent grabbed the top spot among the broadcast network show sites. Political commentary (both faux and “real”) proved to be the biggest draw on cable sites as The Daily Show site ranked #1 among cable network sites, The O’Reilly Factor came in at #2 and MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann Show moved into the top 10 for non-children’s programming. (Cynopsis 9/17)

Top Visited US Top Visited US Broadcast Network TV Sites (Week ending Sept. 13 2008)
Rank                Network Website    Market Share of Visits
1  CBS             www.cbs.com                      30.20%
2  NBC           www.nbc.com                        24.01%
3  ABC             www.abc.com                       19.97%
4  FOX*            www.fox.com 16.59%
5 The CW      www.cwtv.com 8.40%
6 MNTV   www.mynetworktv.com .83%
Source: Custom report from Hitwise, *includes traffic aggregated from stand alone websites americanidol.com, amw.com, familyguy.com, thelot.com and thesimpsons.com.

Top Visited US Broadcast Network TV Show Sites (Week ending Sept. 13, 2008)
Rank   Network       Website                      Market Share of Visits
1          NBC          American’s Got Talent         15.70%
2          CBS          Big Brother                         14.81%
3          NBC          Deal or No Deal                    6.19%
4          ABC          Dancing With The Stars         5.41%
5          FOX          America’s Most Wanted          4.37%
6          FOX          Fringe                                   3.84%
7          FOX          American Idol                        3.11%
8         The CW      One Tree Hill                         2.62%
9          CBS          NCIS                                     2.02%
10         NBC          Heroes                                  1.83%
Source: Custom report from Hitwise

Top Visited US Cable Network TV Show Sites -Excluding Children’s Programming (Week ending Sept. 13, 2008)
Rank   Network                   Website                   Market Share of Visits
1    Comedy Central       The Daily Show                 6.30%
2    Fox News                O’Reilly Factor                   4.30%
3    Food Network          Paula’s Home Cooking        4.07%
4    Comedy Central       South Park                        3.73%
5    MTV                        The Hills                           3.60%
6    BET                        106 & Park                        3.10%
7    CNN                        Lou Dobbs Tonight            2.49%
8    Food Network          Everyday Italian                2.34%
9    Bravo                      Project Runway                 2.24%
10  MSNBC                    Countdown w/Keith O.       2.20%
Source: Custom report from Hitwise