Sunday, December 28, 2008

Weekly Review: Links from 12/21/08 - 12/26/08

2009 is just around the corner and while it was a holiday week it was still a busy news week in online video, advertising and social media. 2008 reviews and 2009 predictions abound on the web and I've listed some of them in this installment of the weekly review.

December 26, 2008

louisgray.com: Quantcast Shows Which Services Rely Most on Their "Addicts"
If you're like me, you have a list of sites you visit just about every day, without fail, and some may even be visited multiple times a day. Whether you're a frequent visitor of Google News, CNN.com, Facebook or Twitter, site and service owners know they can count on some consistent traffic from their regular visitors, in addition to natural traffic from external links or search engines. Web traffic measurement company Quantcast tracks much of this data, and has even gone so far as to categorize the most frequent visitors to some sites as "addicts", defined as those who visit a site more than 30 times in a single month - the "hardcore segment of a site's audience". As it turns out, some popular Web services rely on these so-called "addicts" for more than a third of their total traffic, and at major social networks, that number is as high as two-thirds of all visits.




Voicetag Brings Voicemail To Facebook
For those of you who don’t think voicemail is counterproductive, there is a new app on Facebook called Voicetag that lets you send voicemail messages to individuals or groups. This is not the first such app on Facebook (see Voicemail or TringMe), but it works with regular phones and incorporates SMS messages.


Snackfeed: A Newsfeed For The Web’s Hottest Video Clips
Snackfeed, a video recommendation site that tries to aggregate the web’s hottest videos, has made impressive progress since its launch last fall. We were first introduced to the site at the DreamIt Ventures(a startup incubator similar to Y Combinator and TechStars) first funding day, and it held its private launch three weeks later. Since then the site has seen impressive growth, with a reported 150,000 unique visitors in November. Snackfeed is currently in private “b’alpha” but TechCrunch readers can grab one of 1000 invites by visiting this site and entering the code “snacktastic”.

VatorNews - Interview with Power.com CEO Steve Vachany






December 25, 2008

Mediabistro, the New York-based publisher of ten media-related publications including TVNewser and Agency Spy, as well as job boards and training programs, will launch a new publication to cover the digital media business. The publication, called WebNewser, is live but will have its official launch in early January.

What Google’s Matt Cutts Sees In 2009 | WebProNews By Mike Sachoff - Sun, 12/07/2008 - 5:53pm.
Nintendo Adding Video To Wii: No Threat Yet To Apple, Cable, Netflix

Some of the companies best positioned to connect your living room to the Internet are those that already have a box hooked up to your TV -- like the gaming industry. So it's no surprise that Nintendo (NTDOY) is teaming up with Japan's largest ad agency to add video to its Wii videogame consoles.

This makes sense: The Wii is already wildly popular, and its main rivals both offer video -- Microsoft (MSFT) via its own digital distribution platform and Netflix (NFLX) movie streaming, and Sony (SNE) via its own digital distribution platform and Blu-ray movies.


Sony Vaio Pocket leaked — hope you have cargo pants » VentureBeat

Guest Column: Tips for Your Web Series Pitch « NewTeeVee

Jake Zim is Chief Operating Officer of Safran Digital Group (SDG), a digital media entertainment company that finances, develops and distributes entertainment programming and technologies for digital platforms.

Everyone has a story they’d like to tell. As COO for digital media entertainment company Safran Digital, one of the best parts of my job is being pitched those stories, in the form of new web show ideas. The first step in getting your project off the ground is a successful pitch, so if you’re an artist looking to tell stories online and you need financing, here are a few suggestions on how to best construct — and deliver — one.



Some Online Ads Thrive in a Miserable Economy - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Most retailers, online and offline, appear to be feeling the pain from the rotten economy. But, of course, even in bad times, some businesses manage to do well. Take Raymond Galeotti, the owner and president of Evesaddiction.com, a five-year-old online seller of sterling silver jewelry. Mr. Galeotti said his business, whose annual sales are approximately $10 million, is up about 25 percent this holiday season.The secret to his success: more aggressive online advertising, especially on Google.



Web Video Report How-To Articles - The Ad Age Web Video Report

BlogTV CEO Leaves Company « NewTeeVee
Just two weeks after we profiled his live video startup, BlogTV CEO Guy Eliav has left for greener pastures. Eliav, who had worked for more than nine years at BlogTV parent company the Tapuz Group, took a new gig as CEO of Israeli TV web portal nana10.

Five Festivus Grievances for Online Video « NewTeeVee

OMG, We're Not BFFs Anymore? Getting 'Unfriended' Online Stings - WSJ.com

The Meaning Of Friendship

Is Time Warner Having Second Thoughts About Bebo?
Most would agree that Time Warner overpaid when it bought social network Bebo back in March. Given the challenges faced by the company’s online businesses since then, among them declining ad sales and the difficulty of monetizing social networks, the $850 million price tag for Bebo has come to look even more expensive. And now it appears that Time Warner is having second thoughts. CEO Jeff Bewkes told The Wall Street Journal that:

“I don’t want to rule [acquisitions] out, but they have been the cause of most of the value destruction in media companies, and that certainly has been the cause for a lot of value destruction at our company.”



December 23, 2008

Conversational Media Marketing: Social media marketing predictions for 2009
If you've yet to read Joe Pulizzi's 42+ Social Media and Content Marketing Predictions for 2009 you should because it contains some eye-opening predictions from leading marketing professionals. While, as you might expect, there is a wide range and divergence of opinion, some themes emerge.
  1. Advertising will gradually be replaced by information.
  2. Content and conversational marketing strategies will converge.
  3. Social media marketing will continue to gain acceptance

Disqus Blog » Facebook Connect now available on Disqus
We began our Facebook Connect integration with our announcement last week. Tonight, all websites using Disqus now have the option to enable Facebook Connect. — If you've already added your Facebook API Key to Disqus, note that you will also need

Beet.TV: Predictions for 2009 from Ad Age's Michael Learmonth: Most Media Companies Will Do Deals with YouTube

Most media companies will do deals with YouTube in 2009, ending what has been a confrontational relationship for many, expects Michael Learmonth, staff reporter at Advertising Age and veteran reporter of digital media having worked for the Industry Standard, Reuters and Variety. Michael recently blogged for the Silicon Alley Insider.

Michael thinks that the ownership of exclusive, unique content is key to monetization, not aggregation or syndication schemes. We agree.

I sat down with Michael at the Mogulus studio in downtown Manhattan where we taped several segments last month. This is good overview of the business. Check it out.

Read out Michael's story about Hulu published yesterday.

-- Andy Plesser, Executive Producer



Commentary: Long tail isn't wagging Hulu just yet
t wasn't supposed to be this way. When NBC Universal and News Corp. announced in 2007 that they were getting in business together to launch an online home for their TV and movie offerings, it became a laughingstock. Two media companies collaborating successfully? And online no less?

Well, look who's laughing now. Hulu has emerged as an unexpected triumph, home to thousands of top-shelf episodes and movies from more than 100 premium content partners. Although the proud parents of Hulu initially downplayed notions that the venture would be a "YouTube killer," there are already estimates indicating that Hulu is pulling in just as much ad revenue with a fraction of the video tonnage. But in what might be an act of contrition on the part of the blogosphere that so clearly underestimated Hulu, there is now a countervailing hype enveloping the site.

The Associated Press named Hulu its Web site of the year. Mark Cuban declared "Hulu Kicks YouTube's Ass." Influential blog TechCrunch issued a mea culpa. And if that guy Barack Obama hadn't arrived on the scene, surely Hulu CEO Jason Kilar would be Time's Person of the Year, right?


Music Ally | Blog Archive » Ditch the CD by Christmas 2009, Gartner tells music industry
Could this Christmas really be the swansong of the CD? Analyst Gartner certainly hopes so, having issued a challenge to the music industry to move to a ‘digital first’ strategy by the end of next year, in order to stop being held back by its reliance on CD revenues. Or, as Gartner’s research VP Mike McGuire puts it:

“By propping up the CD business, rather than fully investing in online distribution alternatives, the major labels and the larger music industry have neither succeeded in stamping out piracy nor done much to recreate the business models of the old ‘record business,’. Music labels should instead emphasize ‘digital first,’ making all new releases and catalog issues via digital services and moving CDs to an on-demand publishing mode.”

Gartner backs up its claim by saying that physical music revenues went from 91% of overall sales in 2005 to 77% in 2007, while pointing out that by 2012, 77% of US households are expected to have broadband internet. The analyst appears to be suggesting that the remaining 23% will either get their CD’s burned on-demand, or will buy their music through Wi-Fi laptops and 3G mobile phones.

Gartner - Christmas 2008: The Last Year of the Retail CD

TheFutonCritic.com - The Web's Best Television Resource

NewTeeVee’s Top Posts of 2008 « NewTeeVee

12seconds.tv Interview | TheAppleBlog
is a boot-strapped startup that has been a labor of love for the three founders, Sol Lipman, Jacob Knobel, and David Beach. A host of other characters have helped along the way, influenced by promises of burritos, but the small group hasn’t taken any outside money. The project was conceived in January, launched in July, and now has an iPhone app ready just in time for the holidays. They got some attention from a write-up on TechCrunch in July and have built a loyal and passionate community of over 10,000 users.

iplayer-air
BBC Rolls Out AIR iPlayer, Ditches Kontiki P2P, Proposes Tiered Broadband Services « NewTeeVee
The BBC has just rolled out a new desktop version of its popular iPlayer service based on Adobe’s AIR platform. The new client is available for UK residents as part of the BBC iPlayer Labs beta test, and it will be released to the public some time next year. BBC’s iPlayer client previously only offered downloadable content for Windows PCs. The new client will also be available for Mac and Linux users.

Animoto On The iPhone: Trust Me, You Want It

Video Plugin For Wordpress - All in One Video Plugin for Wordpress

Streamingmedia.com: NewTek TriCaster Selected by SportsLink to Produce and Live Stream Coverage of U.S. Army All-American Bowl Week Events - Students to produce and live stream first Football University Youth All-American Bowl showcasing nation’s top seventh and eighth-graders

Download YouTube Videos and Convert for Your iPod and iPhone - Wired How-To Wiki
Jump to: navigation, search

Want to quickly download YouTube videos and/or convert YouTube videos in order to watch them on the device of your choice? With Movavi Flash Converter (YouTube downloader and YouTube converter) and this tutorial, you can download YouTube videos and convert them into any video format in just a few clicks.

Things you need:
- Computer with stable internet connection
- Tool: Movavi Flash Converter


Lessig: It's Time to Demolish the FCC | Newsweek Technology | Newsweek.com

We'll stifle the Skypes and YouTubes of the future if we don't demolish the regulators that oversee our digital pipelines.

Note: Links updated 4:00 PM 12/28/08