Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Hulu, the online television service, yanked most of the episodes of FX’s "It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia" per the network’s request, after users made the show one of the site’s most popular programs. One Hulu user commented in a forum: "Well, off to the torrent sites …" (Iwantmedia 5/12, http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/05/hulu-victim-success/  5/12)

ComScore released its U.S. numbers for April, 2009 today and it shows Twitter reaching 17 million unique visitors in the U.S. during the month, an 83 percent increase from March when Twitter had 9.3 million domestic visitors. While Twitter nearly doubled its audience in April, its monthly growth rate did temper down from the 131 percent growth in March. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/12/twitter-still-headed-to-the-moon-with-17-million-us-visitors-in-april/  5/12)

There was a lot of buzz last week upon the announcement that Twitter would soon expand its search offering to crawl links tweeted out on top of the tweets themselves. The ramifications of such a move are potentially large, as it would seem to be a way for Twitter to serve up a tailored, real-time view of what’s hot around the web. Who knows how long it will take Twitter to actually do that, but you don’t have to wait — another company, OneRiot, is launching the same functionality today. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/12/twitter-is-talking-real-time-link-search-but-oneriot-is-launching-it-today/  5/12)

Google has just launched a new “search options” feature on its main search page. When you click on “Search options” you can filter your search by different types of results (videos, forums, and reviews), by time (recent, past 24 hours, past week, past year), as well as seeing related searches, a “wonder wheel” view, or a timeline view.

(http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/12/google-launches-search-options-declares-real-time-search-biggest-challenge/  5/12)

MySpace is teaming up with production studio Endemol to produce the Web reality series "Married on MySpace," kicking off this week. The show, which will end with one lucky couple tying the knot live online, is sponsored by Touchstone Pictures, the studio behind the movie "The Proposal." (Iwantmedia 5/12, http://www.tvweek.com/news/2009/05/video_getting_married_on_myspa.php  5/12)

Just when it appeared that Web 2.0 may be abandoning the UGC ship for premium content, Break.com, a social video site for guys, is upping its budget to add more user generated content to the site. Through Break’s “stimulus package,” the site is increasing its investment in content purchased from its users and other amateur filmmakers by 50%. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/12/calling-all-dudes-breakcom-wants-your-fratastic-videos/  5/12)