Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Comedy Central‘s digital properties benefited greatly this week from Jon Stewart‘s 8+ minute rant against CNBC after network reporter Rick Santelli “bailed out” on his scheduled appearance on The Daily Show. (Jon took issue with some of Jim Cramer‘s infamous stock misses, among other things.) Traffic to TheDailyShow.com had its best week ever with a 65% spike in weekly uniques, total video streams for comedy central video were 18% higher than average and embedded video views increased more than 3 times from the first week of March. (Cynopsis 3/12)

Movie trailers continue to drive huge web traffic. The new trailer for J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek, featured on Heroes on Monday night, had more than 1.8 million downloads during its first 24 hours as an exclusive on Apple.com. It has gone on to be the most popular HD download ever on the site with more than five million downloads in its first five days. (Cynopsis 3/12)

Major media companies may no longer need to operate separate digital divisions. Digital revenues at Disney, Viacom, NBC, and News Corp. are now spread across many different businesses. Digital operations are said to be “transitioning to the business-building mode.” (Iwantmedia 3/12, http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/11/the-digital-divisions-are-dead-at-big-media 3/11)

CBS Corp. said it expects a 30% increase in revenue from online advertising for March Madness On Demand this year, per Bloomberg. Online ad revenue will be about $30 million, up from $23 million a year ago, as internet ad inventory is almost sold out according to Jason Kint, SVP/GM for CBSSports.com. GM, AT&T and Coca-Cola are among the sponsors. (Cynopsis 3/12)

Time Warner is replacing AOL CEO Randy Falco with Google senior VP Tim Armstrong, who will move the Internet company “into the next phase,” says CEO Jeff Bewkes. Falco had joined AOL in 2006 with the mandate of transforming the company into an online advertising business. (Iwantmedia 3/12, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/12/AR2009031203090.html 3/13)

Google is eyeing telephony with its introduction of Google Voice, a free IP-based management tool that routes home, office and mobile calls through a single number, retrieves voice mail and allows users to make free domestic calls, according to published reports. Google will roll Voice out today to users of its GrandCentral service and in the coming weeks to the rest of the market. The New York Times (3/12) , Reuters (3/12)

Much is being written today about the value of a large following on Twitter. Jason Calacanis wants to pay $125,000 a year to have Twitter recommend him to other users, for example. He thinks that over time accounts with massive followings will somehow be able to pull in $1 million a year or more in incremental revenue, assuming they then have millions of followers. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/12/the-amount-and-value-of-twitter-traffic 3/12)

Today Facebook is rolling out the update to user homepages that brings a new look, enhanced filter system, and most importantly, realtime updating. Real-time updates are Facebook’s response to Twitter, which has been able to thrive on offering users immediate updates from their friends and favorite celebrities (Facebook’s original News Feed took hours to update). (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/11/facebooks-real-time-homepage-goes-live-today 3/11)

Over the last few weeks MySpace Music has quietly rolled out a number of new features that should make the service significantly more appealing to consumers. While MySpace Music kicked off to an fairly impressive start when it launched last September, seeing a huge amount of traffic and streamed songs, even its President Courtney Holt has conceded that it wasn’t very user-friendly and didn’t bring many new features to the table. The initial launch of MySpace Music was mostly about laying the groundwork to build a sustainable business. Now, the site is shifting focus to deliver what its consumers want. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/11/a-look-at-the-improved-myspace-music 3/11)

Widgets integrated into Verizon’s FiOS service in the U.S. will allow viewers to update their Facebook status to reflect what they’re watching and check out Twitter feeds keyed to programming as well as popular Twitter topics. Also on tap are the ability to use a DVR to record clips from YouTube and other video sites, and the inclusion of this Web content on Verizon’s on-screen guide. ReadWriteWeb (3/11)

VERY impressed with this.  Would love to see it in action.  Any live event should take Twitter/Facebook very seriously if they intend to keep appointment viewing appointment viewing.

At least one of eBay‘s big acquisitions is making money. At its annual investors conference the online auction house says its PayPal online payment business continues to grow at an impressive clip and that the division will eventually become bigger than its core auction product. PayPal currently handles about 5% of online payments globally, and its share will more than double by 2011 according to eBay. (Cynopsis 3/12)

CBS Interactive’s TheInsider.com launched Celebrity Agent, a social fantasy game app on Facebook allowing fans to play the role of a celebrity agent by managing and recruiting celebrities. Invite friends to play along so you can chat or steal their talent. (Cynopsis 3/12)

Video entertainment site Metacafe launched a cool mashing app powered by Kaltura – The Last House on the Left Horror Remixer. It features video clips, audio tracks and special effects that enable Metacafe viewers to create their own trailer for the Rogue Pictures’ redux of the Wes Craven horror classic. (Cynopsis 3/12)

Internet users are entering longer search terms, Hitwise data show. Terms of at least four words are up 3% to 20% compared with the year before. Said the CEO of search agency Didit: “Longer queries are a sign of the searchers becoming more educated and savvy and essentially being trained by the fact that results for shorter queries tend to return less relevant results than longer searches.” DMNews (3/10)

The global IPTV subscriber base grew 3.2 million subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2008, to 23 million, according to a report by The Dell’Oro Group. The top regions for IPTV set-top boxes continued to be Europe, the Middle East and Africa while Motorola and Cisco remained the top vendors. Cable360 (3/11)