Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Yahoo released its fourth quarter 2008 earnings today. Its non-GAAP EPS came in at $0.17 a share, above the $0.13 consensus. (Yahoo lost $0.22 a share on a GAAP basis due to restructuring and impairment charges). Total revenues came in at $1.8 billion, with net revenues (after what Yahoo pays to network partners) coming in at $1.375 billion. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/27/yahoo-ceo-bartz-i-did-not-come-to-yahoo-to-sell-the-company 1/27)

Facebook will feature a live worldwide performance of Lil’ Wayne’s new single “Prom Queen,” on two AT&T pages tonight at 9:30PM PST, streamed live on both AT&T’s Freedom of Choice page as well as its Mobile Music page. Fans will be able to purchase ringtones or mp3s of the full track following the performance. Lil Wayne is the logic choice for the experiment; he sold more ringtones than any other artists last year on the AT&T network and attracted more visitors to his Facebook page than any other artist. (Cynopsis 1/27)

Time corrected from Cynopsis.

eBay has signaled its intent to sell its Skype internet telephone division after reporting weak Q4 profit, reports The Times (UK.) The auction site acquired Skype 4 years ago for a princely sum of $2.6 billion but has struggled to effectively monetize its massive subscriber base. (Cynopsis 1/27)

The troubled economy doesn’t seem to be hampering Netflix, which just announced fourth-quarter profit was up 45%, to $22.7 million, on revenue of $360 million, a 19% bump from the comparable period in 2007. The company reported 9.39 million subscribers by the end of the quarter, which exceeded the high end of its previous range forecast. The Wall Street Journal/Dow Jones Newswires (subscription required) (1/27)

If you want to track the most popular fan pages on Facebook, AllFacebook pushed out a new Facebook Pages Tracker last night that keeps stats on 611,213 fan pages on the social network. Only about 57,000 of those pages have more than 1,000 fans. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/27/facebook-users-are-becoming-big-fans-of-masturbation-and-other-fan-page-stats 1/27)

Both sales volume and online CPMs are down significantly in the display ad market according to an informal survey of publishers and advertisers conducted by Ad Age. The low end of the ad market – the kind of products aggregated by remnant ad networks – continue to drag down the rest of the market as the average CPM on ad networks has dropped from $1.10 to only 60 cents/thousand impressions. (Cynopsis 1/27)

Hulu, the joint video venture between NBC Universal and News Corp., will be running a commercial during this Sunday’s Super Bowl. The big game airs on NBC, one of Hulu’s corporate parents. Hulu’s announcement of the spot promises that the ad will “reveal the secret behind Hulu.” (Iwantmedia 1/27, http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10150197-36.html 1/26)

MTV Networks has signed on to be the exclusive ad sales rep for comedy Web site JibJab.com, a deal that also includes brand integrations and custom sponsorships on JibJab. The site had about 105 million visitors last year and maintains more than 6 million registered users. ClickZ (1/27) , The New York Times/Gigaom (1/26)

Fox Interactive Media is eliminating more than just free lunches. News Corp’s digital arm is trimming nearly 100 jobs across several business units, including Photobucket, MySpace, Scout Media, Rotten Tomatoes, and corporate. The total comes to a little under 5 percent of FIM’s domestic U.S. workforce, and about 3 percent of its global workforce of 2,900. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/26/fim-trims-about-100-jobs-mostly-at-photobucket-and-corporate 1/26)

YouTube uploads for the week ending 2009-01-24
1. CNN (205)
2. Fox News (196)
3. MSNBC (132)
4. ABC (125)
5. CBS (54)
6. CNBC (39)

YouTube views for the week ending 2009-01-24
1. ABC (780,302)
2. CNN (602,095)
3. MSNBC (544,343)
4. Fox News (470,993)
5. CNBC (106,257)
6. CBS (65,208)
7. AP (1,063)
Source: Affine Systems