Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
HBO this week will serve up a preview of its season-opening episode of “Flight of the Conchords” on the Web site FunnyorDie.com before its TV premiere. It will be the first full-length TV episode for the site, in which HBO owns a stake. TVWeek.com (12/14)

MTV Networks’ Nickelodeon Kids and Family Group proclaimed its dominance in the kids and family digital space claiming a monthly average of 131 million visits and an aggregate 2.4 billion minutes spent at the close of 2008, sourcing comScore numbers. Several of the group’s sites set traffic records this year including Nick.com, Neopets, NickJr.com, iCarly.com, Addicting Games, Shockwave and The-N sites (The-N.com and Quizilla.) (Cynopsis 12/17)

The race is on between sites like Hulu and Joost to bring video content to the web, but as this content becomes more ubiquitous it will be the sites that go beyond basic video streaming that will ultimately be able to differentiate themselves. Watercooler, a development house behind several hundred community-based social network applications, is one company that is positioning itself well for this upcoming face-off. The startup has built up a community of 16 million registered users spanning its TV-centric applications on MySpace, Facebook, and other popular social networks, and has now signed deals with Hulu and Joost that make it one of the first sites on the web to offer content from every major TV network. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/17/watercooler-brings-content-from-every-major-television-network-to-its-16mm-tv-fans 12/17)

Intel is developing a new way to meld content from the Internet and the TV by using so-called widgets, or tiny content-bearing Web sites, to enhance the living-room viewing experience. The system, a co-venture between Yahoo! and Intel, is called The Widget Channel and is expected to be introduced at the CES. PCWorld/IDG News Service (12/15)

When it comes to stats for Facebook apps, there aren’t that many places to go. You can click around Facebook itself, but it almost seems like they are trying to hide the stats and make it hard to compare different apps. Adonomics was the first to offer rankings and even made-up valuations for each app. They were followed by Developer Analytics, which covers apps across all social networks and gives monetization estimates (but charges for its best data). And now the AllFacebook blog is getting into the game with a pretty decent set of free stats for Facebook apps. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/17/allfacebook-is-giving-adonomics-a-run-for-its-money 12/17)

Vudu will begin offering free Web video through its set-top boxes as it focuses on providing more movies and HD titles. The new Vudu RIA software will let users select the free Web material with their remote controls. Broadcasting & Cable (12/16)

Yahoo is definitely on a cutting spree: after shutting down both Y!Live and Jumpcut, as well as selling off Kelkoo, it’s now time for Yahoo Kickstart to pay a visit to the deadpool.  Kickstart was launched in April this year and aimed to connect students and alumni at specific colleges and universities and also help them connect on a professional level. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/17/another-one-bites-the-dust-yahoo-kickstart-shutters 12/17)

CBS College Sports Network, MaxPreps and CBS Sports will team to offer multiplatform coverage of the T-Mobile Invitational High School Basketball Tournament to be held at Ball State Univ. Dec. 29-30. CBS Interactive’s high school sports site Max Preps will offer replays of the full broadcast of all tournament games, available on-demand 48 hours after the conclusion of each contest. CBS Interactive is reporting significant traffic gains across many of its sites, citing Nielsen Online and comScore census data for November. CBS says CBS.com and CBSSports.com both led competitors in engagement, for instance, registering 11.9 minutes/user and 62.8/user respectively for the month. (Cynopsis 12/17)

Action sports lifestyle network Fuel TV launched a new full episode HD-quality streaming video player on Fuel.tv, powered by Move Networks. (Brightcove continues to manage the standard def video on the site.)

(Cynopsis 12/17)

Online video sharing site Dailymotion says it audience has doubled this year, citing metrics from comScore. Dailymotion is averaged 7.3 million U.S. uniques as of Oct. and 36 monthly unique visitors worldwide – each of whom average 10.8 minutes per session. (Cynopsis 12/17)

Google remained the top internet parent company and brand for November, according to Nielsen online attracting an overall unique audience of 135.2 million. AOL remained tops in terms of time spent per person, averaging 3 hours and 43 min. per user for the month. (Cynopsis 12/17)

Top 10 Parent Companies/Divisions for November 2008
Parent      Unique Audience (000)    Time Per Person (hh:mm:ss)
1. Google             135,267                       2:02:03
2. Microsoft          126,027                       2:25:02
3. Yahoo!             119,142                       3:16:44
4. AOL LLC             86,308                       3:43:45
5  News Corp.        82,388                       1:36:50
6. InterActiveCorp  66,767                       0:16:26
7. Amazon             65,550                       0:27:33
8. eBay                 65,302                        1:42:14
9. Wikimedia         58,917                        0:18:37
10. NY Times Co.   55,021                        0:19:47
Source: Nielsen Online

Top 10 Web Brands for November 2008 (U.S., Home and Work)
Brand         Unique Audience (000)   Time Per Person (hh:mm:ss)
1.  Google                   127,656                 1:23:40
2.  Yahoo!                   117,656                 3:17:36
3.  MSN/Windows Live  104,090                 2:13:19
4.  Microsoft                  95,543                 0:45:44
5.  AOL Media Network   86,308                 3:43:45
6.  YouTube                   81,882                 1:01:33
7. Fox Interactive Media 69,838                  1:39:31
8. Wikipedia                  58,335                  0:18:39
9. Amazon                     57,682                 0:25:33
10. eBay                       55,438                  1:43:41
Source: Nielsen Online