Google (NSDQ: GOOG), which shook up the e-mail industry when it integrated chat with e-mail, is now trying to catch up to its rivals by letting Gmail users share status updates. The WSJ reports that Google will soon add a “new module that will allow Gmail users to view a stream of status updates from people they choose to connect with.” If it catches on, that could potentially add a new force to the Twitter-dominated microblogging world, considering that Gmail had 132 million unique users worldwide as of last March (the last figures I could quickly get my hands on).

Unlike with chat, however, Google is actually following its two biggest e-mail rivals—Windows Live Hotmail and Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO)—in letting users share and track status updates. (Big caveat here: We don’t actually know all of what the feature involves or what it will look like; we’ve asked and will update if we hear back).

But Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) added social networking-like features—which let users share activities around the web, along with status updates, called ‘notes’—to Windows Live way back in November 2008. And Yahoo announced in August that users of Yahoo Mail would be able to share status updates.

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Ustream, the popular online live broadcasting service, just announced it has raised $75 million in a second round of funding led by Softbank. Updated: The actual funding is only $20 million, for now, with an option for Softbank to purchase more of Ustream by July 2011, by putting in another $55 million.

The company says it will use the cash in part to pursue opportunities in Japan, China, Korea and India, where it says there is an untapped market for live streaming video. There are lots of other players in the live broadcasting space, but Ustream is the biggest player, with about 50 million unique users a month (By contrast, Justin.tv says it has about 41 million unique users, while Livestream says it has about 17 million).

With the new funding, Ustream will also now have a big funding lead over its competitors. In total, it will have now raised more than $86 million, including $11.1 million in a first round from Doll Capital Management and Band of Angels in April 2008. Even more cash could be coming, since the company says “additional funding commitments are pending.”

USTREAM SECURES $75 MILLION SERIES B FUNDING FROM SOFTBANK

New Funding to Fuel Ustream Growth in the U.S. and Asia Pacific

Mountain View, Calif. – February 1, 2010 – Ustream, the leader in live streaming to Internet and mobile devices, today announced a $75 million Series B funding round lead by SOFTBANK of Japan, one of Asia’s largest internet and telecom companies with a large mobile presence.  Additional funding commitments are pending from other investors in the U.S. and Asia. The funding will help fuel Ustream’s growth in the U.S. and Asia Pacific, specifically to pursue opportunities in Asia in Japan, China, Korea and India.

“Asia offers a significant, untapped market opportunity for streaming video,” said John Ham, Ustream founder and CEO. “SOFTBANK will enable us to develop this opportunity and deliver on our vision of live streaming video everywhere. We look forward to deploying these resources to accelerate our growth in the United States and Asia Pacific.”

The live streaming market is rapidly growing. More than 3.4 million viewers watched the live red carpet pre-show of the American Music Awards in 2009 and more than 3.8 million watched the inauguration of President Barack Obama via Ustream in January 2009.

Ustream delivers some of the most popular live streaming video programming, delivering premium and celebrity-powered events in partnership with leading media companies.  The company had the first live streaming application for the iPhone available in Apple’s App Store.  Its iPhone applications have been downloaded more than 1.5 million times.

Ustream’s one-to-many live streaming encourages broadcast-to-viewer and viewer-to-viewer interaction, empowering a much more engaging experience for everyone involved. Users can interact during events using Ustream’s Social Stream, which enables real-time dialogue through Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and AIM integrations.

“Since DCM’s lead investment in the Series A, we’ve worked closely with Ustream’s founders to execute upon its vision to build the company into a truly global media company,” said Gen Isayama, DCM general partner and member of the Ustream board of directors.  “SOFTBANK’s involvement and financial support will be instrumental in enabling the company to connect live venues and viewers anywhere in the world through any internet-connected device.”

Asia presents a very unique environment to foster a live streaming platform service like Ustream, specifically because of advancements in infrastructure, better mobile 3G penetration versus the U.S., and a rapidly growing base of internet users.

About Ustream
Ustream is the live interactive video broadcast platform that enables anyone with a camera and an Internet connection to quickly and easily broadcast to a global audience of unlimited size.  In less than two minutes, anyone can become a broadcaster by creating their own channel on Ustream or by broadcasting through their own site, empowering them to engage with their audience and further build their brand. Visit Ustream.com to start a broadcast now or learn more about broadcasting.  Ustream’s Shiba Inu Puppy Cam, seen by more than 15 million viewers worldwide, was listed as one of 2008’s top 10 Web videos (Source: Associated Press).  Ustream powered more than 3.8 million streams during the 2009 Presidential Inauguration.

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It was a surprising weekend for those of us who had naively imagined that after crossing the River iPad, we might actually get some Elysian rest. But, alas, the fates conspired against us and handed us the curious case of Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) vs. Macmillan. Or Macmillan vs. Amazon?

For those who actually took the weekend off, let me summarize what happened. John Sargeant, the CEO of Macmillan Books, gave Amazon a wee-bit of an ultimatum: switch from a wholesale sell-through model, where Amazon buys digital books at a fixed wholesale rate and then can choose to sell those books at whatever price it deems appropriate (even at a loss, as it does with $9.99 bestsellers), to an agency model, where Amazon agrees to sell at a price set by the publisher in exchange for a 30% agency fee.

Sargeant explained to Amazon that if it did not agree to the switch, Macmillan Books would make its e-books subject to significant “windowing” wherein new books are held back from the digital store for some period, say six months, while hardback books are sold in stores and possibly, digital copies are sold through the iPad at $14.99.

This is more detail than we usually know about a negotiation like this because of what happened next. Sargeant got off of a plane on Friday only to discover that Amazon had responded by pulling all Macmillan books from the Kindle store as well as from Amazon.com. He then decided to make it clear to the industry (and his authors) that this drastic action was Amazon’s fault, in a paid advertisement in a special Saturday edition of Publishers Lunch.

That was enough of a surprise, but was quickly followed the next day when Amazon reversed itself and posted a slightly snippy explanation of its actions that can best be summarized as a way for Amazon to blame Macmillan for making it raise its prices. While I believe Amazon is sincere in its belief that $9.99 is a good price for books (especially for people who have spent $259 or more on a Kindle), Amazon is secretly pinching itself right now, because:

1.    Amazon will now make money selling Macmillan e-books. Currently, Amazon eats a few dollars on most of the e-books it sells at $9.99. By capitulating to Macmillan (and any others that might jump on this bandwagon), Amazon will now make more money than before on each of these books, because they’ll get a whopping 30% of $14.99, or nearly $5 a book.

2.    Publishers will ultimately be compelled to bring e-book prices down. If Macmillan is the only publisher to move to an agency model, its e-books will be at a disadvantage compared to other publishers in the Kindle store, which is a bad place to be when you’re trying to sell to the more than 5 million people who will own a Kindle by year-end 2010. But even if the other publishers move to the same model, they’ll suddenly realize that with great (pricing) power, comes great (pricing) responsibility, and some will start to lower prices, promotionally at first and then on a more lasting basis. Because there is always a publisher who is hungrier than the rest. 

3.    In that future, Amazon will make more money than it does now. At that point, even if prices come back down to $9.99, Amazon will be making $3.30 from each book sold. Amazon wins in the short run and the long run. And publishers will make less money than before on each book sold.

There are many variables being bandied about that are actually irrelevant: iPad, ePub, or piracy, to name just a few. None of these are really in a position to change the basics of the 1-2-3 punch I describe above. The iPad is not a particularly good e-reader, at least not in its current version, and Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) will never have the power to shut off the sale of physical books to make a point the way Amazon just did.

Some are saying this whole fight would go away if people just adopted a common e-book format, like ePub. But most are unaware that DRM is still possible in ePub format, and that most ePub DRM schemes are not interoperable, at least not yet. So you can’t buy a cheaper e-book from one store and use it on the device of your choice. Just like you can’t buy Halo for the Xbox 360 and play it on the PS3. And piracy is not going to change (up or down) just because a few books on Amazon.com go up in price. Instead, people will use near-term substitution, favoring cheaper books (readers always have a list of five books they want to read, they’ll just go down the list until they find one that is available at a reasonable price). 

In fact, the pricing mess is only going to get messier. Our surveys have found that people are willing to pay as much as $17.81 for a new e-book, but only if the hardback costs $25. That’s the rub. People expect to pay less for digital books, compared to the price of the physical book in the market. But books don’t cost that much. Today I can buy a hardback copy of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Committed on Amazon for $12, a discount of $14.95 from the list price. And the book was just published four weeks ago. So spending $14.99 for the digital version is a bit silly. 

One result of this riff: If publishers make less off of e-books (and Amazon makes more), even at $14.99, then publishers have less to give to authors, who are increasingly reconsidering their contracts (especially authors with big followings like Steven R. Covey and Paul Coelho) in light of new promises from Amazon to offer dramatically higher royalties for authors who work directly with Amazon. Hmm, smells like round two of this fight may also go to Amazon as well.

James McQuivey is an analyst at Forrester Research, where he serves, and contributes to the Forrester blog for, Consumer Product Strategy professionals.

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• How Do E-Readers Stack Up With iPad In The Mix? Use Our Chart As A Guide
• Amazon's 'Millions' of Kindles Are Drop In $9.5 Billion Sales Bucket; App Will Be On iPad
• Amazon Unveils New Kindle Royalty Option; Incentive To Keep E-Book Prices Down
• Memo To Book Industry: Here's A Better Way To 'Window' Your E-Books
• Virtual ATM for Amazon: Piles On Kindle Fees, Increases Book Costs Outside U.S.

Geoff Cook is the CEO of myYearbook, a social network built around meeting new people. He also founded EssayEdge and ResumeEdge and sold them to The Thomson Corporation.

You can’t go an entire day without encountering Facebook and Twitter – even if you don’t have an account. Whether you ride the subway or take the bus, you’ll see people young and old updating their status or talking about the latest social-networking drama. If you watch the television or listen to the radio, you’ll be driven to the Twitter or Facebook accounts of celebrities, brands and non-profits. If you do come across the rare people who are not on Facebook, they sound like cavemen – and they know it; they are talking about signing up soon. In such an environment, it is easy to conclude that this dominance will last forever.

But it won’t. 

I concluded in a post in August that “maybe Twitter isn’t for everyone.” Twitter peaked in total reach that month, at least in terms of U.S. unique visitors, according to analytics services Compete and comScore (NSDQ: SCOR). Facebook, on the other hand, is for everyone – everyone who has friends or family, which happens to be everyone on the planet.

But it can’t be everything to everyone.

In particular, we should not conflate the fact of Facebook’s and Twitter’s dominance of social media with the reason for their dominance: the emergence of the stream as a media form. The stream as a media form is what is often lost in the narrative of the rise of Facebook and Twitter and the focus on the personalities that drove the success. As a media form, the stream will evolve away from the monolith it is today, into something differentiated, varied and dynamic.

Facebook is the broadcast television network of stream communication. It pioneered the stream as a media form and popularized it for a mass audience by connecting friends, classmates and family. Like NBC’s fuzzy black-and-white 1947 World Series, the stream of 10 years from now will look nothing like the stream of today.

Over the coming decade, at least two types of winners will emerge from the stream wars. The first set of winners will be the creators of proprietary, differentiated streams. Some of those companies will create their own programming, while others will rely on the second set of winners – production houses, the social-media equivalents of Sony (NYSE: SNE) Pictures and Warner Brothers – to create it for them. Companies like Zynga and Playfish are the modern-day production houses, churning out applications for the social networks.

Pessimists will say: “What is there to differentiate around? One-hundred-and-forty characters is 140 characters, a photo is a photo, a video is a video …” That may be true, but if you believe that the stream is an ongoing conversation, it follows that the conversations I’m willing to start with my friends and family differ dramatically from the conversations I’ll start in an effort to pick someone up in a bar, or trying to network at an industry conference, or chatting with my fellow sports fans. To put it simply, I don’t want my mom on Facebook reading my pickup lines, commenting on my status posts intended for colleagues, or liking my sports chatter – so I’ll do those things elsewhere.

The bottom line is that despite the privacy settings Facebook users may now have, they still mostly intend their communication for friends and family, not for everyone, and even if Facebook could somehow cross that chasm, the resulting user experience may well be impaired compared with a dedicated network powered by a thematic stream—one with affinity for something other than school, friends and family.

Twitter itself is proof that the stream is not a one-company affair. While it may well never rise to the level of dominance of Facebook, there is no reason to think it will not be a highly successful media company for a long time to come. It has differentiated around celebrity, simplicity, breaking news and openness. For me at least, it is the morning paper. Twitter, despite lacking the mass appeal of Facebook, continues to aggregate a tremendously valuable audience while having an important enough role to shape geopolitics.

We recently conducted a survey to poll users of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and myYearbook on why they used the various services. We provided 12 options and asked the user to pick the three that mattered most to them. You can see in the charts below why Twitter has been able to differentiate from Facebook, while Myspace, which shares three of the four main reasons for using Facebook—including the main reason—has not.

So there are at least two ways forward for social media in a stream world – even in a stream world dominated today by Facebook and Twitter. You can dedicate yourself to creating applications that play well in the stream, or you can try to come up with a new way to shape the stream itself.

myYearbook pursues both. It differentiates its own stream, myYearbook Chatter, in a number of ways. Most of all, the people posting into Chatter have a different purpose for sharing than people posting into Facebook – they want to meet new people, to flirt and to connect with people both near them and half-a-world away. This context renders the user’s real-life social graph, and Facebook’s main advantage, irrelevant. Chatter is now a geostream with 700,000 posts per day and double-digit monthly growth rates.  It has become so important to the site that we are currently in the midst of a major site redesign to put Chatter at the core of the experience.

But to support the purpose of meeting new people, the stream needs to function differently than the standard Facebook stream. Our Chatter stream differs in two critical ways: 

—First, users view the chatter of people near them, filtered by age and gender, making Chatter, at its core, a geostream, and one well-suited to meeting new people.
—Second, unlike other popular streams, Chatter permits users to comment on other users’ posts with photos as well as text, opening the door to interactions like the one depicted below.

If we look just a couple of years down the road, there is no question that Facebook’s U.S. uniques will have peaked. Not for any flaw in the company’s model, but for the success of it – everyone will have signed up – so their growth rates will be checked by the population. At that point, churn will grow, as users discover other niche social networks, just as the broadcast television audience fragmented across so many different cable stations.

Meanwhile, Facebook revenues will spike as the dramatic increases in inventory fueled by growth start to slow and CPMs start to rise, putting intense pressure on the social-gaming companies that, in the face of increasingly restricted viral channels, have benefited from cheap advertising to make their high-churn businesses work. The winners will be those companies who grow virally—or, put another way, the companies that play well in the stream.

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SMS GupShup has raised $12 million to help build out its texting-based mobile-phone communities in India. The company, which has operations in both Santa Clara, Calif. and Mumbai, India, claims to serve 26 million users in roughly two million topics, ranging from religious groups to sports teams.

The fourth round of capital was led by Globespan Capital Partners; existing investors Charles River Ventures and Helion Venture Partners also participated. To date, the company has raised $37 million. SMS GupShup will rely on advertising from brands such as Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), Puma, Cadbury and others, to bring the company to profitability this year. The money will be used to expand into the Philippines and Indonesia, and to grow the organization to 150 employees by adding another 20 positions in marketing, engineering and sales.

Google has confirmed yesterday’s reports - YouTube has inked rights from the big-money Indian Premier League’s (IPL) licensing partner Global Cricket Ventures to live-stream all 60 matches of the 45-day tournament, starting March 12.

It’s YouTube’s first deal to live-stream a big global sport - no mere domestic competition, IPL is the largest cricket tournament in the world, forecast to generate $1.6 billion over 10 years. But the deal will include a US blackout because “re-broadcast options will be available” will be available there, the announcement says.

Indeed, just as the International Olympic Committee hosted Beijing 2008 highlights on YouTube for countries which had no television deal, this looks like a gap-plugging, market-building deal, rather than a win of top-tier rights for Google (NSDQ: GOOG). DirecTV (NYSE: DTV) aired last year’s IPL in the U.S. on its $149-a-year Cricket Ticket, and Setanta Sports had shown IPL in the UK but has now collapsed…

That last point means YouTube will be the only network (not even Sky Sports or ESPN) showing IPL to the UK, from where many IPL players are lured by big-money salaries. That’s a significant watershed for both it and the web as a medium, but one which - like September’s first-ever online-only England soccer game - has arisen only because TV rightsholder Setanta left the market.

It’s therefore unclear what Google will have paid for these rights - or, indeed, whether the IPL views it mostly as welcome global promotion. The deal works by Google and the IPL sharing sponsorship revenue…

Already, Google India is clearly hoping to make a killing on ad sales. From the announcement: “The advertising options on YouTube will be available only for a limited number of sponsors over the course of the season. Companies will have the opportunity to sponsor live streamed matches, match re-broadcasts, and ongoing viewership of clips and highlights. Advertisers will be able to advertise on the YouTube homepage, the live stream page, video ads during the match itself amongst several other innovative formats.”

There will be 20 different user-selectable camera feeds, like stumpcam and a view from behind the bowler. Google says it will also add non-live videos including highlights, interviews, pitch-side reports - “an alternative view of the match not available on television or any other media”. And it will use its social network Orkut to host an IPL-branded community supporting live chats with players and team owners, plus competitions and match polls.

IPL chair Lalit Modi, in Telegraph.co.uk, suggests the deal is bigger than that: “This changes the world of sports broadcasting. The internet has changed the lives of everyone and this will do the same for sport.

“We are now taking our event truly global for the first time. Google gives us access to 500 million pairs of eyes every single moment of the day ...  It doesn’t matter if you live in Australia and the games are shown during the middle of the night. Now you will be able to get up in the morning and, if you have an internet connection, watch the action at a time of your choosing and not have to wait for a broadcaster to repeat it.”

If Modi’s being honest, then he seems to be bucking the news business’ current trend of valuing bankable paying audiences more than an audience of advertiser eyeballs: “We are in talks with all broadcasters in the UK but we would rather give it away free (on YouTube) than let some of them make money out of us and the consumer.”

YouTube chief Chad Hurley is also planning to run Formula One social video content on his video site following his personal investment in the U.S. F1 team.

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Is the super-rich Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket competition about to go global in a deal with YouTube? Several reports from Indian media say Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and the Bord of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) will on Wednesday announce a live streaming deal.

YouTube had already hosted match highlights for last year’s second IPL season on an existing channel. YouTube has already been testing large-scale live events like a U2 concert and was on Tuesday due to stream the IPL’s pre-season “auction”, in which some 51 players will swap teams.

India’s Sony (NYSE: SNE) Entertainment Television and Singaporean World Sport Group jointly hold domestic and global IPL broadcast rights respectively in a $1.2 billion, 10-year deal, and have re-sold to a patchwork of global players. Willow TV holds North America internet rights.

Now reports say the 59-match, 45-day day competition, which starts March 12, will be broadcast live through YouTube. Though in which territories and on what basis is not clear. It could be a deal to bring the tournament to countries where there is a gap in TV coverage - the UK lost IPL coverage with last year’s collapse of secondary rightsholder Setanta. The International Olympic Committee hosted Beijing 2008 highlights on YouTube for countries which had no television deal. DirecTV (NYSE: DTV) aired last year’s IPL in the US on its $149-a-year Cricket Ticket.

Asked to confirm reports, IPL chair Lalit Kumar Modi tweeted: “Wait and watch for breaking news soon.” YouTube UK told paidContent:UK: “We can’t comment on rumour and speculation.” But Bruce Daisley, the lead for display ads and YouTube at Google in London, is quoted by Marketing mag as saying: “We’re keen to see how the community will take to live sport. There’s a real interest in live events, so we’re excited.”

An event like the IPL could be an important shot in the arm to YouTube’s ad sales. The IPL is not just a domestic Indian cricket tournament but numbers players from around the world and is touring various countries as match hosts, and plans to pay out six percent of an expected $1.6 billion, 10-year income as prize money.

Marketing mag: “YouTube wants to sign a global sponsor and multiple local backers as part of its strategy to make money from the coverage.” Telegraph.co.uk: “Modi told India’s Economic Times at the weekend that he hopes to hold matches in the United States within 18 months.” The paper says “Google will split advertising revenue”, though there’s no confirmation of that.

Alok Kejriwal is CEO and co-founder of the online gaming company games2win.com. He blogs at rodinhood.com.

In October of last year alone, Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) attracted 605 million unique Internet users (50% of the global Internet population), got them to return another 18 times, stick around for 9.5 minutes during their visit and generate over 100 billion page views.  Which traditional media brand do you know that achieved this?

We all have experienced Yahoo – it’s all about seeing and interacting (vs. Google (NSDQ: GOOG) that’s all about searching and clicking). If Google taught the world all about “performance advertising,” Yahoo can create even a bigger impact in display advertising by deeply integrating with the world’s leading brands. It has the heft to create a new paradigm of how display ads are bought, priced and really made profitable for the spenders.

Yahoo could begin this journey by acquiring WPP – the custodian and best friend of the world’s leading brands:

Why this works for Yahoo: Yahoo needs a partner that really understands how brands spend big money, and WPP knows that business the best. WPP’s mega portfolio of companies, which include advertising agencies such as Ogilvy & Mather, and media-planning companies such as Mindshare, work closely with global Fortune 1000 brands that spend over $600 billion in advertising. Yahoo’s billing is in the $6 billion range, or just 1% of the global market. WPP understands brands’ needs intimately. Yahoo needs to go deep into brand-spend psychology and orient itself to what they want and get beyond the 1% of global media spending. It needs to have an “interested” partner that quickly influences the gray-haired marketing directors of the power brands into buying the internet (even though they get their secretaries to print out e-mails to read). Buying WPP accelerates that learning and influence. Today, Martin Sorrell is the marketing oracle brand owners listen to. Yahoo needs to partner with him.

Yahoo knows how to create audiences. That’s its core business. It lost out on search (first to Google and then by allowing Bing in) primarily because it’s an audience media company – not a technologist. WPP and team can lead Yahoo’s evolution on the media-sale side and help scale it to the next level. Getting the best media sales partner on your side can be a big win for Yahoo.

Why this works for WPP: Sorrell thinks of Google as a “frenemy,” thanks to its disruptive business that eliminates the need for WPP-type companies. Yahoo could turn out to be his “solome” (soulmate). The medieval media models that made WPP successful are crumbling. Advertising is no longer about making slick ad films that cost millions of dollars and then spraying them across expensive media and praying that they work. Consumers zap ads on TV; the younger set rarely spends time in front of the idiot box, and word-of-mouth marketing is actually what influences consumers the most today.

WPP needs a Yahoo to resurrect itself before it becomes a business that ran out of fashion. Fundamentally, WPP is an “intermediary” – it acts as a go-between between media and brands owners. However, intermediaries are headed the way of the dinosaurs. Technology is making everything transparent and going the DIY way. Brands are getting consumers to make ads for them. Media companies allow their media to be bought at the stroke of a button rather than relying on an army of planners. This deal can help WPP transform itself by becoming a complete solution provider to brands in the world - by not just creating ads but also playing those ads for brands.

Why this works for both Yahoo and WPP: Display advertising in its current traditional avatar is broken. The famous adage in traditional advertising that went “half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, and the trouble is I don’t know which half” needs resolution. Google dealt with it by going the non-advertising route and creating text links around content. That works well for local brands that need leads and e-commerce brands that thrive on visitors; not necessarily for Coca-Cola, which needs to show itself to the world and remain top of mind.

Yahoo and WPP can actually create the new business model of impacting consumers using their vast interactive media assets and actually show how its display ads not just make consumers fond of brand but also measure their responsiveness and commitment. Today, Coca-Cola gets its ads made by a creative agency and then gets its media agency to buy media for that ad on traditional and internet media. It gets yet another agency to monitor and measure the impact of those ads. All all these agencies charge Coke upfront without really guaranteeing that the campaign will work.

Imagine if the creative geniuses of WPP pair up with the media power of Yahoo and create campaigns that charge Coke only on the measured success of its brand lift. Pay per performance in the display world! If Yahoo and WPP become one entity, they can afford to take these risks (risking some test campaign creation costs and media spends) and take the display-business model to a higher level.  If successful, Yahoo can become a monopoly in the display-advertising space.

Google billed $22 billion in top line last year. My bet is that if Yahoo bills $6 billion today and combines with WPP, which trawls the $600 billion global advertising markets for its clients, the results could be market changing and also a win-win for brands, consumers and the media business.

Related

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As you may have noticed recently on our pages, we’ve launched a new video section, with help from Vodpod. The section pulls together interesting daily videos from third-party sources, our own video interviews, and video from our conference and events. We hope you’ll take a look around and let us know what you think. Recently added videos include the full array of footage of Google’s new Nexus One phone, long interviews with Gerald Levin and Steve Case on the 10th anniversary of the ill-fated AOL-Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) deal, and a PBS report on the Google (NSDQ: GOOG) books controversy.

Advertisers: If you’re interested in video sponsorships on our video page or elsewhere on our sites, please email our advertising team at advertising AT contentnext.com.

If 2009 in the digital-media world needed a title, you could argue it would likely be something to the effect of: “Social media goes mainstream.” Indeed, it’s no secret that social media is a huge force these days, but big questions remain about how companies – even the biggest, buzziest players – are going to make money. ContentNext, Media Industry Newsletter and The Jordan, Edmiston Group have co-produced a new report that helps shed light on that debate. The report, six months in the making, not only chronicles all the deal activity in social media over the last 18 months, but also includes:

* Profiles of a select group of digital brands, including how they’re faring and their strategies and likely challenges moving ahead

* A points-of-view section featuring contributions from thought leaders like Samir Arora (Glam Media), and Mitchell Berman (ZillionTV) and Domenic Venuto (Razorfish)

* Deep analysis of traffic metrics

The 200-plus-page book, available in either print or digital versions, is the second annual “State of Digital Media” report.

Visit our reports page to read the full report.

Better late than never? Amazon today has started to sell the Kindle DX, the larger of its e-readers, outside the U.S. The launch comes three months after the smaller device went on sale internationally, and nearly two years after the first of the devices hit the U.S. market.

Like the smaller-sized Kindle, Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) has opted to run the DX on mobile networks from AT&T’s roaming partners, rather than cut deals with operators country-by-country. Not yet clear which UK networks are AT&T (NYSE: T) roaming partners or what those deals look like. “We’re not providing additional details beyond our relationship with AT&T, since it’s seamless to our customers – no annual contract, no monthly fees, no hunting for a hotspot,” is how one Amazon.co.uk spokesperson put it to us.

It will use 3G where available to give access to some 320,000 books and more than 100 newspapers.

But while it has worked to get some non-English content into the Kindle store, Amazon has not gone very local in its sales pitch: it is still redirecting international buyers through to its U.S. portal, listing prices for the two e-readers in U.S. dollars and promoting them in English. (Amazon has not returned calls for comment on this. We will update this if they do.) “Kindle is currently offered on Amazon.com only; and not sold through Amazon.co.uk,” is all the spokesperson for Amazon.co.uk will say on this.

As with U.S. Kindlers, international users are shielded from network costs for downloading books but it still costs several dollars more to download books and other publications outside the U.S., and other network usage, for example for web browsing, incurs charges. The company has remained silent on actual sales figures for the devices.

It’s worth watching how the Kindle plays against the many other e-readers launching in the year ahead. Given the heavy emphasis on English-language content, Amazon will be looking to the UK market for strong uptake.

But in the UK, operators are not strangers to subsidies for devices, offering free mobile handsets, netbooks, gaming devices and set-top boxes, as a way of luring users to their networks. It wouldn’t be far-fetched, then, to expect eReaders to come into the free game, too. Will Kindle be able to keep up?

The DX will retail for $489 (£305) and is now on sale in over 100 countries, to start shipping on January 19.

Related

• Virtual ATM for Amazon: Piles On Kindle Fees, Increases Book Costs Outside U.S.
• Amazon Goes Global With Kindle; Cuts U.S. Price
• Ten Predictions For The E-Reader/E-Book Market In 2010

We wish the father of the internet had said that!

But there’s no Santa Claus behind that white beard - his proclamation comes courtesy of Cassette Boy’s naughty re-edit of Digital Revolution, a four-part BBC Two documentary coming in 2010.

Digital Revolution has been in production since July, and has been posting raw video rushes along the way. Hence Cassette Boy taking the lead in a competition open to budding mashup artists and budding filmmakers.

By the way - you get points for correctly naming all the tech culture luminaries featured therein.

Deogun is among the highest ranking journalists of Indian origin in American journalism and will be a rare Indian top editor on American television. Mumbai-born Hari Sreenivasan was recently in the news for his move to PBS.

Deogun was born in Assam, grew up in Calcutta and holds a B.A. from Muskingum College, Ohio, and a masters in journalism from the University of Missouri (via SAJA Forum).

With this, two senior editorial staffers have stepped down at the Mumbai-headquartered daily in as many months. Editor-at-large Ayaz Memon had resigned last month. The daily is widely believed to be going through a shakeup, but CEO K.U. Rao denied anything was unusual. “This is all part of normal attrition,” he said.

Bhatia has worked as a journalist for 33 years, starting as a reporter at the Free Press Journal in 1976. He has worked in senior roles at The Independent, The Observer and on the India Business Week show on Star TV. He also helped launch French daily Le Matinal in Mauritius.

Related

• Subhash Chandra Assumes An Active Role In DNA's Operations; Delhi Edition Soon?
• Well Known Sports Journalist Ayaz Memon Quits DNA As Editor At Large

Rediff.com (NSDQ: REDF) has done away with its ‘iLand’ branded blogging platform and has launched an improved service that it simply calls Rediff Blogs. The new service has added some social features and is more customizable than the previous edition. There’s also the hook that blog posts might be featured alongside related Rediff content such as news. 

The service, in its intro, says it supports nine Indian languages, but we couldn’t find Punjabi as an option in the drop down menu. iLand used to support eight Indian languages.

To support Indian languages, Rediff uses the proprietary transliteration technology developed by Tachyon Technologies, which is also available independently under the brand Quillpad. Rediff in an investor in Tachyon.

The company plans to raise Rs381.85 crore from this issue, according to Moneycontrol.com. The company has received commitment worth Rs69.35 crore from anchor investors on Thursday, the financial portal reported. Nine anchor investors have subscribed to 32,71,500 equity shares at Rs212 per equity share. The total issue is of 18,175,000 equity shares.

We’re looking for a sharp, energetic reporter/editor to lead our editorial operations at ContentSutra, the premier digital-media site in India with readership spread across the country, U.S., Europe and other parts of Asia. Founded in 2005, ContentSutra is part of ContentNext Media, a rapidly growing news-and-information media company covering the business of digital media and content, and a wholly owned subsidiary of Guardian News & Media.

The job: We’re looking for someone with strong reporting skills, who can break news and provide thoughtful analysis of media news and trends, and who knows how to do smart aggregation.

ContentSutra will be your top priority but you will also be contributing to other ContentNext Media sites as the news warrants. You will be working from a home office, and must have broadband access.

Experience/Requirements:
—Location: preferably Delhi or Mumbai, though other metro areas in India also will be considered.
—2-5 years of business-news reporting experience, some or all online.
—Background writing about media, internet, mobile and technology, with clips/blog posts, etc., to prove it.
—Comfort with the fast pace of ContentSutra and ContentNext.
—General knowledge of world media and internet trends.
—Basic working knowledge of HTML. Some experience with recording/uploading digital audio and images is also helpful.
—Willingness to travel within major metros in India for industry-related conferences, news.

Compensation: This is a contract full-time position. Salary will depend on experience, and will be generous. 

To Apply: Send resumes, with links to recent work, to jobs AT contentnext.com.

ContentNext Media: Our four sites—flagship paidContent.org, as well as MocoNews.net, paidContent.co.uk and ContentSutra.com—cover the transformation of the media, entertainment and information industries worldwide.

Last night, Tim Armstrong and team celebrated independence from Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange with P. Diddy and this morning they’ll make it official by ringing the bell in the same location. AOL (NYSE: AOL) is back as a ticker symbol and from here out, the excuses are gone for both companies. Gone, too, is the look of the old AOL—at least, some of it. While Armstrong and some others ended a long day with a group dinner, AOL Media President Bill Wilson went back to the office to work with his team on the transformation of AOL.com into a brighter, fresher space complete with the new branding campaign Armstrong previewed for us last month. (Slide show.)

The symbols, like the goldfish we’ve been featuring, are cues for themes (the favors for last night’s party were t-shirts with one of the new icons but no goldfish). Pick the vivid blue butterfly from the scroll bar across the top of the new front page and the nav bar text color and other elements change to match. Pick the goldfish, and the text changes to a different blue (the gold would be too hard to read) but the “purple paint” theme turns the nav text and other elements purple. I’m still not sure about the branding campaign itself but the isolated images and animation snippets we saw last month make more sense as themes and personalization choices and the look signifies a clear change.

That may be the most obvious change at first but the new look also comes with new content. Wilson tells me they’ve added original AOL video on AOL.com for the first time, with updates every few hours, and more original stories starting early this morning. More changes are coming over the next 10 days. Other sites in the AOL network are also getting “updated experiences,” according to Wilson, “including greater AOL attribution presence and consistency.”

The long and colorful saga of an independent Friendster is over, for now. As expected, it has been acquired, by the Malaysian company MOL Global Pte, which is an affiliate of MOL AccessPortal Berhad, a company that operates and develops payment systems in Asia. The principal shareholder of MOL is Tan Sri Vincent Tan, the CEO of Berjaya Corporation Berhad, a Malaysian conglomerate that has annual revenues over $1.8 billion. No word on how much MOL paid, although previous reports pegged the sale price at over $100 million. The combined entity will have annual revenue of about $110 million, the companies said.

Full release:

MOL Global to Acquire Friendster
MOL Retail and Payment Channels and Leading Online Social Network Combine to Form Massive Content Distribution and E-commerce Platform in Asia for Over 100 Million Users

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Dec. 9 /PRNewswire/—MOL Global Pte. Ltd. (“MOL Global”), an affiliate of leading online payment solutions provider MOL AccessPortal Berhad (“MOL”), and Friendster, Inc. (“Friendster”), the operator of a top global web site based on traffic and a leading social network in Asia, announced today they have entered into a definitive agreement under which MOL Global will acquire 100% of Friendster. The principal shareholder of MOL is Tan Sri Vincent Tan, the Chairman and CEO of Berjaya Corporation Berhad, a leading, diversified Malaysian conglomerate that has annual revenues in excess of US$1.8 billion. Following the acquisition, the operations of MOL and Friendster will be combined to create Asia’s largest end-to-end content, distribution and commerce network, pairing MOL’s offline retail channel partners and payment platform with Friendster’s large online footprint, social network and user community in Asia.

“The merger with Friendster will continue to transform the social networking industry, combining a highly intuitive and successful social media site and online marketing channel with an integrated payment platform and content network which includes games, goods, gifts, music and video. We are creating a unique company that will be well positioned to provide content to a huge, regional user base, here in Southeast Asia,” said Ganesh Kumar Bangah, president and chief executive officer of MOL.

MOL uses the leverage of a network of over 500,000 physical and virtual payment channels across 75 countries worldwide to collect payments for content and services. Its core markets are Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and India. MOL has relationships with over 70 online game publishers that have a suite of over 200 online game titles. It also has partnerships with music, movie and video content owners and distributors across the region.

“Friendster and MOL are both industry pioneers and are close partners. This combination is a natural progression of our relationship and will be an industry-changing event,” said Richard Kimber, chief executive officer at Friendster. “The new combined entity gives Friendster the kind of financial backing, retail distribution, and e-commerce infrastructure that will enable us to accelerate our strategy and create a locally relevant, fun experience for our users in Asia, both on and offline.”

In 2003, Friendster pioneered social networking, and today is a leading web site in Asia, with over 75 million registered users and over 90 percent of daily traffic coming from the region. Asian youths have embraced Friendster and use it as their primary means of connecting to and keeping in touch with friends, self-expression, sharing content and news with friends, and as a source of entertainment. Friendster users also enjoy local music, gifting, photo sharing, online games, and using Friendster on their mobile devices. All of these are incorporated in Friendster’s product suite and will be further developed over time with MOL, specifically with Asian youths in mind.

Friendster and MOL entered a global partnership in October of this year where MOL was appointed to provide an integrated payments platform, as a foundation for The Friendster Wallet and The Friendster Gift Shop, for Friendster’s users. The new combined entity will now build upon that initial set of products to deliver a content distribution network and e-commerce platform, enabling a wide array of content to be distributed to Friendster’s community and monetize via micro-transactions using MOL’s payment platform. MOL will use the leverage of its physical distribution networks to localize and extend the online reach of social networking in Southeast Asia to the physical world through Tan Sri Vincent Tan’s substantial assets across Malaysia and the region, including retail franchises in Malaysia and across Southeast Asia such as Starbucks, 7-Eleven, Borders, Krispy Kreme, Wendy’s and Papa John’s Pizza, just to name a few.

Friendster recently launched a new brand and web site packed with new features representing a significant milestone in the company’s history and further signifying the company’s evolution to focus on the Asian youth market. The notable changes include a new fun-centric brand, and a redesigned web site with a focus on local relevance, fun and simplicity.

The combined entity will maintain offices in various locations, around the world, including Mountain View, CA (USA), the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore. Ganesh Kumar Bangah will become the Group Chief Executive Officer of the combined entity while Richard Kimber will become the Non-Executive Chairman.

About MOL

MOL is a MSC Malaysia Status Company that operates and develops payment systems. MOL handles over 60,000,000 payment transactions a year with an annual payment volume of over US$200 million. It leverages on a network of over 500,000 physical and virtual payment channels across more than 75 countries and linked to 65 banks in 15 countries worldwide to operate its key payment products, namely MOLePoints, an online micropayment system for content and services; MOLeTopUp, an electronic prepaid distribution infrastructure; MOL Freedom, a multi-application prepaid payment card; GamesHive, an online game payment aggregator; MOL Wings, a payment aggregator for wired and wireless internet service providers; MOL Zone, a multi-application mobile payment service; and MOL SafePay, an escrow-based payment system for micro-merchants.
MOL was recognized as one of Asia Pacific’s fastest growing technology companies in the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Asia Pacific Awards in 2005 and 2006 and has won a Merit Award for the Best of E-Commerce Applications in the MSC Asia Pacific ICT Awards.

About Friendster

With more than 115 million members worldwide, Friendster is a leading global online social network. Friendster is focused on helping people stay in touch with friends and discover new people and things that are important to them. Friendster is one of the best sites that allow people to meaningfully participate with others in exciting and fun ways. Friendster prides itself in delivering an easy-to-use, friendly and interactive environment where users can easily connect with anyone around the world via http://www.friendster.com or m.friendster.com from any Internet-ready mobile device. Friendster has a growing portfolio of patents granted to the company on social networking, with more expected over the next several months. For more information, visit: http://www.friendster.com.

Related

• Friendster's Sale Could Come Very Soon, CEO Says
• Friendster Puts Itself Up For Sale

Scripps Networks Interactive (NYSE: SNI) CEO Ken Lowe is betting heavily on international growth over the next year. In a presentation at the UBS Media Week conference, Lowe ticked off some recent deals: last month, the company took a 69 percent stake Indian broadcaster NDTV; it struck a JV with London-based international broadcaster Chello Zone to bring the Food Network to Europe; and the Fine Living channel is being introduced to Europe, Middle East and Africa. Lowe was particularly enthused about the India business. “NDTV’s Good Times is India’s number one English-language lifestyle channel and we see a lot of potential for us there,” he said. All told, the company has invested $65 million in capital for international development so far. And over the next 12 months, Scripps Networks will spend will be just under $100 million for additional global expansion.

The biggest news for Scripps Networks was its 65 percent stake in the Travel Channel, a deal valued at $975 million. Lowe insisted the deal will quickly pay off for the Travel Channel. The company should gain about $20 million in segment profits by switching to Scripps Networks and allowing the Travel Channel to cancel other distribution agreements with Discovery Communications.

Naturally, the biggest subject of the conference was Comcast’s bid to take a controlling stake in NBC. Lowe weighed in saying, “It’s positive news for the cable network model. It also gives some stabilization to what TV Everywhere will look like. All in all, we’ll have to see what regulatory restrictions are put on it.”