Filed under: ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA | Tags: Adam McKay, EBay, Janus Friis, Private equity firm, Rob Corddry, Silver Lake Partners, Skype, YouTube
ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
Thumbs up, thumbs down comedy site Funny or Die has launched a channel on YouTube showcasing some of its most popular star-studded videos and Co-Founders Will Ferrell and Adam McKay have agreed to curate its initial selections. For instance, check out The Daily Show‘s Rob Corddry exploration of homophobia, “Rob Corddry Has A Broner.” (Cynopsis 11/6)
Here’s my question to you: does this help drive traffic to Funny or Die where they make the lion share of their revenue OR hurt the site by driving eyeballs elsewhere? Comment below and weigh in.
eBay has just announced that it has reached a settlement with the founders of Skype, clearing the way for the sale of the Internet communication company to a consortium formed by private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. (Techcrunch11/6)
Newser, the news aggregator founded by Michael Wolff and Patrick Spain, is for “people who can’t get what they want from their newspaper,” says a newly posted “6 Myths About Newser” page on the site. “If newspapers want to stay alive, they have to adapt to the Web.” (Iwantmedia11/6, Newser)
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Filed under: ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA | Tags: EBay, Facebook, FriendFeed, Google, Google Labs, Skype, Social network, Twitter
ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
Disney is close to unveiling technology, code-named Keychest, which will allow consumers to pay a single price for permanent access to a movie or television show across multiple platforms and devices — from the Web, to mobile gadgets and cable services. (WSJ 10/21)
What do I think? Clearly, being able to watch a movie on your iPhone and computer while not having to buy it in both places is a very good thing.
After months of negotiations and holding both off at bay, Twitter now has agreements with both Bing and Googleto give them access to its full feed of public Tweets. Both search engines have been yearning to drink directly from Twitter’s the realtime firehose of micro-messages and all that they carry. A rudimentary version of Bing’s Twitter search
is already live, and it will soon add public Facebook updates to its search results as well. (Techcrunch10/21)
Yesterday, eBay’s third-quarter results were bitter sweet, with profits declining 29 percent from the same quarter last year. But year-over-year revenue increased for the first time in the past year, thanks in part of strong results posted by PayPal (and Skype). (Techcrunch10/22)
There’s a new Google product called “Social Search” that is launching soon in Google Labs. This is a new feature that allows you to see results for queries from people in your social network. This works by using your Google Profile. If you fill it out with the other social networks you’re a member of, such as FriendFeed, Google will scan who you are connected to and give your results from those people. (Techcrunch10/21)
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Filed under: ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA | Tags: AOL, Ashton Kutcher, CNN, Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, Skype, Time Warner, Twitter
ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is said to have rejected a fresh round of funding that would have valued the company at $4 billion. Another source says that one potential investor submitted a term sheet for a valuation of around $2 billion. Facebook is declining to comment. (Iwantmedia 4/17, http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10220845-36.html 4/16)
Time Warner’s bondholders have agreed to change the terms of their debt contracts, removing restrictions on a sale or spin-off of its beleaguered Internet unit AOL. Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes has said he is examining options for the future structure of AOL. (Iwantmedia 4/17, http://www.reuters.com/article/industryNews/idUSTRE53F73S20090416 4/16)
While eBay prepares to unload Skype via a sale or IPO next year, it is busy looking for new ways to make money off its 405 million global users. They already account for an estimated 8 percent
class=”snap_preview_icon”> of international calls, and many of them are increasingly paying for SkypeOut calls to regular phones. Its revenues last year were $551 million, but it wants to get to $1 billion by 2011. To get there, it might have to start thinking local. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/17/a-new-business-model-for-skype-turning-phone-numbers-on-the-web-into-paid-ads/ 4/17)
Ashton Kutcher has surpassed CNN to become the first person with a million followers on Twitter. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/16/kutcher-plays-his-pied-piper-flute-and-gets-a-million-twitter-followers/ 4/16)
Not sure who else to add to that group email? Gmail Labs now has a useful “suggest more recipients” <!—->class=”snap_preview_icon”> feature that suggests contacts that you might want to include in a group email based on the people you’ve grouped together as email recipients in the past. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/17/gmail-now-suggests-extra-recipients-for-group-emails/ 4/17)
SUPER helpful. Maybe now I won’t get yelled at for accidentally not inviting that person for cocktails.
Police are working with Craigslist to help track down the killer of masseuse Julissa Brisman, who was shot to death Tuesday in the Marriott Copley Place in Boston. Police believe that a gunman may be targeting escorts and masseuses who advertise on the classifieds site. (http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1165974 4/16)
Despite some early fumbling by the prosecution, a judge in Sweden handed down a guilty verdict class=”snap_preview_icon”> today in the case against The Pirate Bay class=”snap_preview_icon”>, the popular BitTorrent search site. The four founders, who still seem to think this is a big joke, each face one year of jail time and a $3.6 million fine. The site will continue to function for now as they appeal the decision. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/17/as-court-prepares-shackles-for-the-pirate-bay-other-torrent-sites-are-ready-to-replace-it/ 4/17)
The latest layer to be turned on in Google Maps is one for webcams. Just click on the “More” button on the top right of each map right next to the “Traffic” button. When you do that, it shows you thumbnails from different public Webcams around the world as tracked by Webcams.travel. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/16/google-maps-now-shows-views-from-webcams 4/16)
What if there was a Billboard Charts for the music people really listened to and talked about on the Web. We Are Hunted wants to be that definitive online music chart. The service monitors the most popular songs on iLike, BitTorrent, Last.fm, MySpace Music, and other Web music services, as well as discussions on Twitter, blogs, and press sites. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/16/forget-billboard-we-are-hunted-charts-the-music-people-are-listening-to-on-the-web/ 4/16)
About 34% of U.S. e-commerce can be attributed to Amazon, an analyst says. The value of all e-commerce activity on its platform is about $12.5 billion in the U.S., or a little more than a third of the $37 billion the Commerce Department reported in the last quarter of 2008. StorefrontBacktalk (4/16)
ESPN is set to kick off ESPNDB.com (the DB stands for database), a site it hopes will serve as a sports encyclopedia-archive-statistical compendium. Like Wikipedia, ESPNDB will feature some user-generated aspects. The site will be free and supported by advertising. (Iwantmedia 4/17, http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=104294 4/17)
NBC.com reached a milestone – its NBC Rewind streaming video player has delivered over one billion full episode streams, just 18 months since the launch of the player in October 2006. NBC also says its mobile website served 2.4 million video streams in Q1 2000 – more than the total number of streams served in all of 2008. (Cynopsis 4/17)
Continuing with its price cutting maneuvers, Yahoo announced it is shuttering video sharing service Jumpcut as of June 15, a company it acquired back in 2006 for its best-in-class photo editing tools. The company is also gearing up for another round of job cuts, according to a report in the NYTimes. Yahoo shed some 2,400 employees last year, beginning 2009 with some 13,600 staffers. (Cynopsis 4/17)
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Filed under: ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA | Tags: Ashton Kutcher, EBay, iPhone, Live Search, Live Search Cashback, Microsoft, Skype, Twitter
ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
If it seems like Twitter is growing faster and faster each day, that is because it is. ComScore has released its March numbers for the U.S., and it estimates that unique visitors to Twitter.com grew 131 percent between February and March to 9.3 million visitors. No wonder Twitter is more popular than Britney. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/15/boom-twitter-more-than-doubles-unique-visitors-to-93-million-in-march 4/15)
After shopping the fast growing unit, eBay announced Tuesday it would spin off its Skype internet-based calling service via an initial public offering during the first half of next year. eBay purchased Skype back in 2005 for $2.6 billion, but never delivered on its promise to integrate the calling software with its international auction sites. Yet the calling service has continued to grow in leaps and bounds in terms of its user base, with over 400 million registered users to date. Skype added nearly a half a million new users since launching its controversial iPhone app, downloaded by 2 million users in its first week of release. (Cynopsis 4/15)
The days of offering free live video coverage of major sporting events to everyone online may be coming to end. NBC will offer cable MSOs, telcos and satellite providers exclusive access to live streaming of the 2010 Winter Olympic games in Vancouver, reports Sports Business Journal. The broadcaster plans to introduce an authentication system to limit live broadband viewing of the games only to paying subscribers of the providers who agree to license the service. (Cynopsis 4/15)
Microsoft says that Live Search Products
and Live Search Cashback have now been unified into a single experience. You can now access Cashback on Live Search Products page, which is Microsoft’s comparison shopping vertical site. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/15/microsoft-tries-to-re-energize-cashback-by-plugging-it-into-its-products-engine 4/15)
Earlier today The Business Insider reported that CNN may have acquired the massively popular CNNbrk Twitter account, which is currently in a heated race with Ashton Kutcher to attain 1 million followers. Thing is, up until recently CNN didn’t actually own that account, which made the story’s coverage on the cable network over the last few days all the more bizarre. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/15/confirmed-cnn-acquires-cnnbrk-twitter-account 4/15)
The 13th Annual Webby Award nominees were announced yesterday across a range of categories with familiar names such as the NYTimes.com (13 nominations), NBC.com (12), The Onion (8) Guardian.co.uk (6), PBS (5), NPR (5), The Sundance Channel (5) garnering multiple nominations. (Cynopsis 4/15)
Officials from 38 states have sent a letter to the Obama administration saying, in effect, that they want to be in the driver’s seat when it comes time to allot more than $7 billion in funding from the economic-stimulus package that has been set aside for broadband expansion. But that isn’t sitting so well with some national consumer groups, which are fretting that an unfair share of the money could go to firms with strong ties to local officials. The Wall Street Journal (4/14)
Kosmix, the universal search engine that dynamically generates guides to search queries using dozens of different content sources, is quickly gaining momentum. According to today’s latest comScore numbers, the site has jumped up to 3.2 million monthly uniques in March – a 419% growth since February. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/15/universal-search-takes-off-kosmix-posts-419-growth-in-march 4/15)
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Filed under: WIRELESS | Tags: Apple, Handhelds, iPhone, ITunes Store, Mobile device, Skype, Smartphones, Yelp
The official Skype iPhone application, announced earlier this week, hit the iTunes Store last Tuesday and since then it’s seen an astonishing one million downloads to the popular Apple devices, which is nothing short of amazing. That translates to approximately 6 downloads per second. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/02/skype-iphone-app-downloaded-one-million-times-in-first-two-days/ 4/2)
Local review sites like Yelp have irrevocably changed the way consumers find businesses in a particular area, and truly given power to the consumer in finding the best place to eat a meal, grab a drink, etc. And the potential of putting local reviews and listings on mobile devices is immense. Yelp’s existing iPhone app is less than a year old and it already accounts for 5% of Yelp’s overall traffic, which adds up to be around roughly 1 million monthly visitors. In the next few days, Yelp will be launching a new version of its popular iPhone app. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/02/yelp-focuses-on-mobile-new-and-improved-iphone-app-coming-soon/ 4/2)
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Filed under: ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA | Tags: Facebook, Hulu, Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah Winfrey, Skype, Social network, TV.com, Twitter
ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
CBS Interactive is also testing a 1080p- quality video gallery on the TV.com portal for folks with a fat pipe (3 Mbps or higher) and a fast processor. Currently there are only 4 video clips but they look amazing. Competitor Hulu upgraded its HD gallery last year to stream videos in 720p. (Cynopsis 3/13)
The video stumbled a bit on my end but indeed, AMAZING. Hulu’s strategy on most things is that they won’t deliver a product until they can perfect it. Who knows which strategy will win but this new online video battle between Hulu and tv.com is an interesting one. But to be fair, and keepin’ it real, whose at #2 in the online video ranking wars? It sure isn’t tv.com.
Conde Nast is entering a partnership to distribute video from sites such as Epicurious and Vogue.TV via Hulu, the online video hub. Hulu is selling advertising to accompany the Conde Nast content, while the partners agree to share the ad revenue. (Iwantmedia 3/13, http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=102059 3/13)
Maybe it is all the TV news mentions, but Twitter is seeing the growth in U.S visitors to its site accelerating. In February, 4 million people in the U.S. visited the site, up from 2.6 million the month before, according to the latest data from comScore. That represents a 55 percent month-over-month growth rate, compared to 33 percent growth in each of the two months prior. (ComScore has yet to release February figures for worldwide visitors, but for January that number is 6 million). (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/13/whoa-twitter-mania 3/13)
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg will take to Oprah Winfrey‘s couch on Friday. Winfrey is expected to interview Zuckerberg and show a demo of her TV show’s new page on the social network. A “celebrity Facebook addict” might Skype in to talk up the service as well. (Iwantmedia 3/13, http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/03/12/oprah-to-interview-facebook-founder 3/12)
If Oprah is doing it, Facebook has achieved mainstream status officially.
New AOL chief Tim Armstrong: “I am looking forward to taking what I have learned at Google and seeing what I can bring to really help AOL.” He adds: Time Warner wants “the best outcome” for its Internet company. “That could take the form of different paths,” including a spin off. (Iwantmedia 3/13, http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090312/new-aol-chairman-and-ceo-and-about-to-be-ex-googler-tim-armstrong-speaks 3/12)
Twitter is driving much of its traffic to social networking, search, email and entertainment sites, according to an analysis by Hitwise. The data also shows that Twitter has more in common with social networks than search engines. Twitter is “a means of distributing content.” (Iwantmedia 3/13, http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=102076 3/13)
I think the only reason why Twitter isn’t recognized as a search engine for the moment is because their search functionality isn’t prominent enough yet. Furthermore, most folks just haven’t figured out how to use the feature. Once both of these things change, Twitter will become a more functional search engine ESPECIALLY for local news. Hey LA Times, NY Times….integrate Twitter functionality now. The deal will benefit both of you being that Twitter hasn’t figure out how to monetize and all y’all can think about is monetizing. Perfect union.
Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner is developing a television series for rival Viacom’s Nickelodeon cable channel. “Glenn Martin, DDS,” a stop-motion animated series, will debut this summer. The effort will be the first TV series from Eisner’s Tornante company. (Iwantmedia 3/13, http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/content_display/news/cable-tv/e3iffcfe0c0b0255a5a8aecffcc5d1ceea1 3/12)
The WB.com has cast Jessica “LonelyGirl15″ Rose in a new 18-episode web horror series entitled Blood Cell, per THR, about a woman racing against the clock to stop a psycho killer. (Cynopsis 3/13)
Overall online video usage dropped a bit over Feb. according to Nielsen Online as those with jobs went back to work and those without spent more time networking for leads (Cynopsis’ theory). Streams were down by almost 15% during the month (which, to be fair, is a shorter one in terms of total days.) Meanwhile Hulu climbed over Yahoo! to reach the #2 spot in terms of total video streams. (Cynopsis 3/13)
Overall Online Video Usage (U.S.)
Jan-09 Feb-09 Percent Change
Unique Viewers (000) 135,617 127,613 -5.9%
Total Streams (000) 10,457,785 8,897,943 -14.9%
Streams per Viewer 77.1 69.7 -9.6%
Time per Viewer (min) 178.6 169.3 -5.2%
Source: Nielsen Online, VideoCensus, includes progressive downloads and excludes video advertising
Top Online Brands ranked by Video Streams for February 2009 (U.S.)
Video Brand Total Streams (000) Unique Viewers (000)
YouTube 5,158,727 88,136
Hulu 308,806 9,473
Yahoo! 250,425 24,085
Nickelodeon Kids and Family Network 209,465 6,039
Fox Interactive Media 194,255 14,376
ABC.COM 187,128 6,716
MSN/Windows Live 162,900 12,198
Turner Sports and Entertainment Digital Network 125,067 5,961
MTV Networks Music 100,076 4,410
CNN Digital Network 99,846 8,377
Source: Nielsen Online, VideoCensus, includes progressive downloads and excludes video advertising
African Americans are slowly but surely closing the so-called digital divide as internet usage grows among the community, according to an analysis from eMarketer. African American internet usage is expected to increase from 46.4% in 2008 to 56.4% in 2013, thanks in part to swift adoption and lifestyle changes from younger users. (Asian Americans remain the most connected demo, with 70.8% of the population now online, expected to increase to 78.9% in 2013.) (Cynopsis 3/13)
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Filed under: ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA | Tags: AT&T, EBay, Facebook, Lil Wayne, Netflix, Skype, Social network, Yahoo
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
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