Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
Sling Media, the company behind the popular Slingbox TV-streaming hardware devices, has opened the gates to its video portal Sling.com. The site pits Sling directly against Joost and Hulu (though Hulu is a Sling partner), allowing users to stream a variety of television shows and movies for free through an intuitive Flash player. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/25/sling-opens-up-its-hulu-competitor-to-the-public 11/25)

About three weeks ago, Facebook and Twitter ended several weeks of serious talks, in which Facebook was offering to acquire Twitter for $500 million of its stock, which also included a cash component. (http://kara.allthingsd.com/20081124/when-twitter-met-facebook-the-acquisition-deal-that-fail-whaled 11/24)

Hulu began adding full-length, high-definition movies, TV shows and other content to its gallery this week in its “Hulu for The Holidays” campaign. Episodes of “30 Rock,” “The Office” and “Heroes” are among the first programs Hulu has put up. Broadcasting & Cable (11/25)

ffwd (pronounced “fast forward”) released an application allowing microbloggers to post videos found on any website directly to Twitter using a bookmarklet. Posted videos are also now available as passive recommendations in a Twitter-like stream on the user’s ffwd channel page. Once a user adds their Twitter account to their ffwd profile, they can then post to Twitter – essentially creating a virtual television channel based on videos they’ve shared, saved, and tweeted, as well as any ffwd channels they’ve subscribed to. (Cynopsis 11/26)

Universal Music Group entered into an agreement to provide music videos from bands such as The Killers and Ludacris to social communication company’s Meebo‘s MediaBar ad platform.  Meebo users will be able to view videos from the artists to promote their new albums. To augment the promotions, UMG will embed Meebo Rooms on official artist pages to enable real-time social interactions among fans. (Cynopsis 11/26)

Mad Men it ‘aint, but it is full of hilarious Madison Avenue flavor. MyDamn Channel launched its newest series Agency of Record from You Suck at Photoshop’s Matt Bledsoe and Troy Hitch. Matt and Troy play Dave and Rick, associate creative directors of WTF Worldwide. (Cynopsis 11/26)

The consumer electronics and entertainment media businesses may suffer a setback in sales this Christmas as 6 out of 10 consumers say they will cut back spending on both categories, according to a new survey from management consulting firm Oliver Wyman. The reasons for not buying vary depending on the item. Consumers prefer to delay purchasing many gadgets that have upgrades planned rather than buy cheaper versions now. Subscriptions including broadband Internet access, mobile phone plans, pay-TV and content subscriptions such as Netflix are the most insulated from the economic downturn. 63% of respondents expect their spending to be about the same next year as it was this past year, and 9% plan to spend even more. (Cynopsis 11/26)