Boxee

For those who haven’t yet had the pleasure, Boxee is a media browser for PC, Mac, and Ubuntu computers optimized for the 10-foot viewing experience.  Whether your computer is connected to your TV or just your desktop display, you can

• Watch full episodes of The Colbert Report on the Comedy Central app,
• Learn the etymology of the word Lollipop on the HotforWords app, or
• Browse your friends’ pictures on the Facebook Photos app.

Yeah, but why is using Boxee for this stuff better than using a web browser like Firefox?

1. Remote Controlled - Yes, you can use a wireless keyboard and mouse, but why would you – when you could use your iPhone and the Boxee Remote App, or the Apple remote?  Boxee is all about consuming web content from across the room, in the supine position – my personal fav.
2. Slick Interface - Part of the reason Boxee is navigable with a remote is because of its clean interface.  Want to watch Chappelle’s Show on Boxee?  Comedy Central App -> Chappelle’s Show Stream -> Choose your clip.  Try doing the same thing on ComedyCentral.com, and you’ll be waiting for banners to load and sifting through hundreds of links to find Dave’s impression of Howard Dean (byah!).
3. It’s Social – See what your friends watched recently, and recommend content to them.
4. Innovative Apps – Something cool happened a few weeks ago.  Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures suggested an app that would allow you to tag your favorite videos to Watch Later.  Just a few days later, Daryn Nakhuda launched L8R, which allows you to tag your videos in Delicious, then watch them on Boxee – supinated, of course.  Several other apps, such as BoxQueue, are rocking this space as well.
5. They Made Their Alpha Version Public – Not everyone has the juevos to release an alpha version for public consumption (and criticism).  But Boxee is launching early and iterating often.  Love it.

So make your way over to Boxee.TV and download it.  We guarantee you’ll have fun.

Via Ad Age.

Dorm Life cracks Hulu Top Ten!

As far as we know, this is the first time Dorm Life has cracked Hulu’s Top Ten. Must be the enormous promotional budget we put behind it…Not! It’s the audience – you guys are amazing. Thank you!

D7 shaped up to be quite the event.  The lineup (as always) was fantastic, and the discussions have been thought-provoking.

The idea that most stood out to us came from Kara’s sit-down with NBC CEO Jeff Zucker.  As Peter Kafka relates, the network chief said,

“[We] need better ads online. Hulu itself could become an ad agency, and that’s something we’ve talked about.”

People got excited at the prospect of seeing more ads like the cool  “Alien” Super Bowl spots with Alec Baldwin that Crispin, Porter & Bogusky did for Hulu. We’re guessing Zucker wasn’t actually proposing to make Hulu into a creative agency. Much more likely he was talking about Hulu handling the media planning and buying functions that media agencies perform. Here’s why a move by Hulu in that direction would be a great development for the digital video industry.

As we noted previously, US video views surpassed US search queries in November of 2008, yet marketers are spending just $7 on digital video per every $100 spent on search.  Digital video is under-monetized partly because the importance and metrics of engagement aren’t very well understood by the vast majority of media planners and buyers.

Hulu’s insight into viewers’ habits and tastes makes it a natural fit for advising brands’ media spending on digital video. Plus, Hulu has consistently delivered the highest rates from brands of any of the video distribution sites ASM deals with, showing that Hulu’s sales team actually knows how to make a compelling case for video content online. Okay, it’s not quite fair, since Hulu is serving up mostly video produced for TV, but that may be what advertisers need to part with their dollars – an agency that is making the transition from TV to interactive media right alongside them.

To put a finer point on what we hope Zucker was proposing, Hulu would make for a great digital media agency. We think Hulu’s expansion into this area would create more informed brands, and grow the digital video pie for everybody.

However, I noticed last week that traffic from Wikipedia disproportionately comprised of New Visits – about 33% higher than the site average.

On closer inspection, visitors from Wikipedia seemed to highly engage with Dorm Life content, on several levels:

• Pages / Visit – 63% higher than site average
• Time spent on the site – 4% higher than site average
• Bounce Rate – 31% lower (better) than site average

Linking your site and Wikipedia is a well worn play in the SEO handbook, but it didn’t occur to us that Wikipedia could constitute a material stream of leads.  We are pleasantly surprised.

Have you noticed Wikipedia contributing to your pipeline of leads in a meaningful way?  If so, do you have any tricks for expanding that pipeline?

Kirkpatrick quotes James Governor: “The truth about Bit.ly is that it’s not a URL shortener, it’s a trend management and metrics platform.”  Too right you are, Mr. Governor.

Around the time last wrote about Bit.ly – beginning of April – its links attracted 15 million clicks per week.  Five weeks later, Bit.ly is seeing 50 million clicks per week.  Becoming the incumbent URL compressor for Twitter is only going to accelerate that growth – a trend we’re looking forward to.  As Bit.ly links – and attendant analytical capabilities – proliferate, how content is distributed throughout the ecosystem will become increasingly measurable and targetable, a prospect that makes our mouths water.

We only hope that the Libyan government (which owns the .ly country code Top-Level Domain) does not impede Bit.ly’s growth.  Libyan regulations currently stipulate that,

Domain names must not contain obscene, scandalous, indecent, or contrary to Libyan law or Islamic morality words, phrases nor abbreviations.

While the Bit.ly domain seems to adhere to the current regulations, we hope that the country’s regulators do not decide to extend these prohibitions to the links that bit.ly compresses.

NY Mag May 11 09

According to this matrix, Dorm Life is more highbrow than barbecues, and almost as brilliant as Ken Jennings in a Jeopardy face-off against a supercomputer.  Nice.

On the subject of Dorm Life shout-outs, the show has been getting some great press since Semester 2 launched.  Be sure to check it out at ASM in the Press.  A big thank you to all the writers who have featured Dorm Life!!!

Hearing what titans of industry have to say about the future of traditional and digital media is always worth it – this is no exception, and we love what he has to say about the importance of engagement.

On March 1, a day into the MySpace exclusive period, we noticed that traffic was barely trickling into the MySpace channel. So we sent out a tweet on the @dormlife channel, containing a link to the first episode of the season on MySpace.
We used Bit.ly to compress the link. An hour later, we could see that 20% of those who had received the tweet had clicked through to the video. 48 hours later, 90% had clicked through. 3 days after the tweet went out, clickthroughs on the link had all but died out, but the final result was that 94% of the Dorm Life fans who got the tweet clicked through.

Cheers to the folks who went long on these innovators.

Update: Joshua Schachter digs into this topic over on All Things D…