Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Hulu is unlikely to ever replace the lost advertising revenue from traditional television as more viewers watch shows online, says NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker. The challenge of replacing the lost analog dollars of traditional TV with digital pennies is “at digital dimes now.” (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c2e87eb0-13f0-11de-9e32-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1 3/18)

To clarify: He didn’t actually point to Hulu alone in his comment.  His point was that the digital revenues from Hulu, NBC.com, electronic sell thru, etc aren’t making up what is being lost through the traditional revenue generators such as DVD sales.

In more Hulu news, the site has launched a dedicated documentaries section for all you doc buffs out there filled with over 100 films.  Selections include Confessions of a Superhero, Before the Music Dies and Kicking It, just to name a few.  To kick things off, Hulu has invited Academy Award nominated documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock from Super Size Me to share his thoughts on the film and his experiences as a filmmaker. You can find Morgan’s Q&A within the discussion boards

A Facebook application is polling users on the the new site layout . So far, just over 5% of the nearly 800,000 respondents give it a thumbs up. The rest go the other way. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/19/facebook-polls-users-on-redesign-94-hate-it/ 3/19)

Facebook could displace Google in number of unique users by late 2011, given a annual growth rate of 85% for the social network and just 20% for the Internet search giant, says RBC Capital analyst Ross Sandler. Facebook is becoming a “starting point” for Internet users. (http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2009/03/18/rbc-facebook-users-could-eclipse-google-in-2011/ 3/18)

Joost, the Internet television site that shows TV programs made by Time Warner and Viacom, aims to have 10 million visitors per month by the end of 2009, says CEO Mike Volpi. “Our profitability depends on how aggressively we pursue growth, and right now our priority is growth.” (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aflSZHCRo55c 3/18)

Buying a media company such as NBC or the New York Times wouldn’t make sense for Google, says Kevin Yen, an exec with the Internet giant’s YouTube. “Those are very different businesses from what Google is. We’re not good at content. … We create platforms.” (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/finance/news/e3ie7894883273eb628e9a309c2f4fb58ba 3/18)

Web series Hometown Baghdad, which chronicles the daily experiences and testimonies of three Baghdad university students, is premiering on Sundance Channel at 11:30p. It’s part of a trio of programs to commemorate the 6th anniversary of the war. (Cynopsis 3/19)

Philippe Dauman, Viacom’s president and chief executive officer, said that his company remained committed to developing a model to charge consumers for the online viewing of cable TV content but that, at this point, it would be difficult to authenticate whether viewers already were pay-TV subscribers. “It wouldn’t be very effective if you have to type a pin number in, it has to be seamless to the consumer,” he said. Broadcasting & Cable (3/18) , Multichannel News (3/18)

MySpace is launching an application on the test version of Yahoo’s new home page, which lets users access the social networking site through the Internet portal. MySpace is also unveiling new features for MySpace ID, a service that lets users link personal profiles to any Web site. (http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/090318/myspace_yahoo.html 3/18)

TMZ, the celebrity gossip site and television show, now sees politicians as targets for its roving videographers, who usually chase the likes of Jessica Simpson. Politics is fertile ground, says founder Harvey Levin. “How many stories can you do about Lindsay Lohan?” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/18/AR2009031803001.html 3/19)

NBC Universal will once again partner with Microsoft to support its online delivery of the upcoming Winter Olympics in 2010. As it did during NBCU’s much-ballyhooed Web coverage of the 2008 Summer Olympics, Microsoft will provide the video-streaming technology for the games. (http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/content_display/news/digital-downloads/broadband/e3i43b2ec4937929a5032717ae032b4b494 3/18)

History.com experienced the luck of the Irish yesterday, attracting the second-highest number of visits ever to its St. Patrick’s Day minisite – up 25% year-on-year, (second only to last year’s Valentine’s Day site.) (Cynopsis 3/19)

Time Inc.’s stable of sites including Time.com, SI.com, CNN Money.com and EW.com will begin adopting the Wall Street Journal strategy of mixing free and paid content, per Alley Insider. Time has had its share of hits online – the SoBe-sponsored SI Swimsuit video montage generated more than 22 million views this year – but depressed banner ad sales across the industry is putting pressure on large publishers to makeup for the shortfall in revenue. (Cynopsis 3/19)

Self-publishing site Bookrix introduced a new Print-On-Demand program allowing top users to have their works published for free. From now until May 17, Bookrix.com will provide free printing to any user who collects 75 user reviews. The Bookrix Print-On-Demand winners will have their work published, be given an official ISBN number and will receive 5 personal copies of their printed book for free. Bookrix has partnered with the Worldwide Alliance of Writers to publish all books for the program. (Cynopsis 3/19)

You’ll be able to download Microsoft’s newest web browser, Internet Explorer 8, today (link here). Microsoft promises that IE8 “is one of the fastest browsers on the market today” (uh-huh) and features new goodies like Web Slices, Instant search, and Accelerators – basically right-clicking on highlighted text to bring up a list of routine tasks like mapping, e-mailing, definitions, translation, and more. (http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/03/19/internet-explorer-8-available-today/ 3/19)

Microsoft unveiled the beta version of its Silverlight 3.0. The update, a final version of which will be available later this year, enables users to work offline outside the browser and contains several videos, graphics and data-related enhancements … all in a smaller download package than previous versions. InformationWeek (3/18)