Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Remember when Twitter was just a little pipsqueek, with less than 10 million monthly unique visitors to its site worldwide? That was back in February, 2009. Fast-forward to April, and Twitter’s U.S. visitors alone reached 17 million. Now comScore has released its worldwide numbers and it estimates Twitter’s global unique visitors in April, 2009 was a whopping 32 million, up from 19 million in March, 2009. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/20/twitter-surges-past-digg-linkedin-and-nytimescom-with-32-million-global-visitors/ 5/20)

YouTube, a site that was once notorious for pirated content and user-generated videos that were practically useless to brands, has made great strides in the last few years as it looks to appeal to its growing number of advertisers and content partners. Today the site is adding a new feature that makes the platform even more useful, adding Google’s powerful (and very popular) Analytics reporting to YouTube brand channels, adding some credence to YouTube’s claim that it’s the “world’s largest focus group”. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/20/start-tracking-youtube-brings-google-analytics-to-brand-channels/ 5/20)

Video sites Hulu and YouTube are said to be preparing an expansion in Britain. Hulu, backed by News Corp., NBC Universal and Disney, could launch in the U.K. by this September, while Google’s YouTube is reportedly close to making deals over full-length U.K. television shows. (Iwantmedia 5/21, http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/05/20/reports-hulu-youtube-set-to-make-headway-in-the-uk 5/20)

The future of the weekly city paper is the daily blog. Hints of this future can already be seen at Village Voice Media, which owns and operates 15 of the top weeklies in the country, including the Village Voice, SF Weekly, and LA Weekly. Bill Jensen, the director of new media who oversees all the Village Voice Media sites tells me that 40 percent of pageviews comes from the blogs on the sites, up from 20 percent a year ago. Some of the more popular ones include columnist Michael Musto’s blog, Nikki Finke’s Deadline Holywood Daily, and Topless Robot. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/20/village-voice-media-sites-now-get-40-percent-of-traffic-from-blogs-planning-local-ad-network/ 5/20)

Google has considered buying a newspaper or using its charitable arm to support news businesses seeking non-profit status, but is now unlikely to pursue either option. Instead, says CEO Eric Schmidt, Google will work with publishers to make their Web sites “work better.” (Iwantmedia 5/21, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2252e92c-4569-11de-b6c8-00144feabdc0.html 5/20)

Microsoft is planning to introduce a brand new search engine next week at the D: All Things Digital conference as it scrambles to try and regain market share in search advertising from Google, per the WSJ. Code-named “Kumo” (“cloud” or “spider” in Japanese,) the search engine is designed to streamline searches for products or subjects by grouping them into categories. (Cynopsis 5/21)

E!, the entertainment news channel, plans to run tweets from celebrities’ Twitter feeds in the news crawl at the bottom of the screen during its programming. In addition, the Comcast-owned network will feature a “Celebri-Tweet” widget on the home page of its Web site. (Iwantmedia 5/21, http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/233167-E_Seeking_Celebrity_Tweeters.php 5/20)

Several media companies are appealing the April 17 verdict in the trial of The Pirate Bay movie and music piracy site — even though they won the case. Instead of $3.5 million, the companies want $13 million. They claim the lower fine doesn’t fully cover the scope of the damages. (Iwantmedia 5/21, http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/05/big-content-appeals-pirate-bay-casedamages-were-too-low.ars 5/20)

Yahoo is looking to buy companies that will allow it to become a bigger player in social networking, according to CTO Ari Balogh. “It’s a good time to be buying now,” he says, declining to give specific names. “I can guarantee you there will be some acquisitions.” (Iwantmedia 5/21, http://www.reuters.com/article/GlobalTechnology09/idUSTRE54J68D20090520 5/20)

Overall Usage Number of Users 2+ (in 000′s) – Monthly Reach
1Q09       4Q08        1Q08     % Diff Yr to Yr
Watching TV in the home        284,574   285,313   281,106       1.2%
Watching Timeshifted TV          79,533    73,934     57,934      37.3%
Using the Internet                 163,110   161,525  158,002        3.2%
Watching Video on Internet     131,102   123,195  115,970      13.0%
Using a Mobile Phone              230,436   228,920  219,619       4.9%
Mobile Subscribers Watching
Video on a Mobile Phone            13,419   11,198     8,817      52.2%
Source: The Nielsen Company

Monthly Time Spent in Hours: Minutes Per User 2+
1Q09    4Q08   1Q08   % Diff Yr to Yr  Absolute Diff Yr to Yr
(1Q09 to 1Q08)   (1Q09 to 1Q08)
Watching TV in the home          153:27  151:03  150:38        1.9%                 2:49
Watching Timeshifted TV              8:13     7:11     5:52       40.1%                 2:21
Using the Internet                     29:15    27:04   27:57        4.6%                 1:17
Watching Video on Internet          3:00      2:53     1:57       53.2%                 1:02
Mobile Subscribers Watching
Video on a Mobile Phone               3:37    3:42      n/a          n/a                    n/a
Source: The Nielsen Company

Video Audience Composition – Age  1Q 2009
K2-11 T12-17 A18-24 A25-34 A35-44 A45-54 A55-64 A65+
On TV                 10%     6%       7%     13%     14%     17%    15%   18%
On the Internet     8%      8%       7%     15%     18%     22%   15%     7%
On Mobile Phones  n/a    18%      10%     34%     20%     11%     6%     1%
Source: The Nielsen Company