Daily Marauder

WIRELESS

Video search startup EveryZing just landed its biggest fish yet: NBC Universal. Boston-based EveryZing signed a master service agreement with NBC to provide video search and search-optimization technologies across all of its online properties, which include NBC.com, iVillage, CNBC.com, and the websites for Bravo, Sci-Fi, and Telemundo. (The deal does not cover Hulu, which is a joint venture between NBC and Fox). (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/11/nbc-invests-in-video-search-startup-everyzing-and-signs-up-as-its-biggest-customer/  5/11)

Almost immediately following Twitter coming back from a planned downtime this afternoon, co-founder and current Chairman Jack Dorsey sent out a tweet letting his followers know that he was, “Getting ready to embark on something new and entirely different. Excited!” Dorsey is getting ready to launch his next startup, he’s confirmed to us. As the guy who actually invented Twitter, this is notable. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/08/nuts-twitter-inventor-about-to-launch-his-next-project-code-named-squirrel/  5/8)

In an age when anyone with a video-capable cell phone can have their own TV channel on the Web, it is still the celebrities and rock stars who are getting all the views (just as on Twitter they get the most followers). Kyte CEO Daniel Graf knows this fact all too well. Of the 215,000 video channels on Kyte, nearly all are created by consumers, but only about 1,000 account for more than 90 percent of the mobile videos streamed via the service. And those 1,000 channels are invariably the work of professionals or the cell-phone videos of famous people such as musicians Lady Gaga (iTunes link) and Soulja Boy (iTunes link) (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/11/kyte-streams-50-million-videos-a-month-rolls-out-iphone-apps-for-mtv-nba-and-others/  5/11)

The CDC’s report on wireless substitution – aka canceling your land line for a cellphone – is out and we discover that one in five U.S. households have cut the cable, an increase of 2.7 percent over six months ago. Another tidbit: one in every seven American homes (14.5%) took all their calls on cellphones despite having a landline. (http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/05/11/center-for-disease-control-releases-report-on-wireless-families-one-in-five-fams-are-cellphone-only/  5/11)