The Bitt On Media

Clay Shirky On The Future Of Journalism

James Lewin — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 07:37:27 PDT

Cato Unbound has published an interesting article by Clay Shirky that looks at the future of journalism.

It looks at the chaos in the world of journalism created by new media, and how maintaining the status quo is impossible:

Like driving, journalism is not a profession — no degree or certification is required to practice it, and training often comes after hiring — and it is increasingly being transformed into an activity, open to all, sometimes done well, sometimes badly, but at a volume that simply cannot be supported by a small group of full-time workers. The journalistic models that will excel in the next few years will rely on new forms of creation, some of which will be done by professionals, some by amateurs, some by crowds, and some by machines.

This will not replace the older forms journalism, but then nothing else will either; both preservation and simple replacement are off the table. The change we’re living through isn’t an upgrade, it’s a upheaval, and it will be decades before anyone can really sort out the value of what’s been lost versus what’s been gained. In the meantime, the changes in self-assembling publics and new models of subsidy will drive journalistic experimentation in ways that surprise us all.

Shirky takes it as a given that the old models for journalism, especially newspaper journalism, won’t survive as both money and attention move away from old media to blogs, YouTube, Twitter and other new media and social media new sources.

But Shirky points out that we’re not just losing old media publishers, we’re losing a “public” that has a shared perspective on the world because of a shared media experience. In the future, the “public” that shares your perspective on the world is going to be not fixed by geography, but by your interests, the sites that you visit and the way you choose to get your news.

Paid Video to Overtake Free Video on the Web in 2009?

Mark R Robertson — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 09:30:17 PDT

According to a recent Strategy Analytics webinar, paid video will overtake free video online this year. Digital media analyst Martin Olausson believes that it will top it by about $800 million before the year ends.

He states that paid video will reach $3.8B while free video will only reach $3.5B and that growth will continue at an annual rate of 38% into 2012. Martin also said that he believes free video will grow at 37% per year in the same period while paid will grow at 39%.

“The economic downturn and diminishing advertising budgets have increased the focus on consumer paid content on the web in the last six months,” said Martin Olausson, Director of Digital Media Research at Strategy Analytics. “Increased consumer awareness and uptake of services, such as Netflix WatchNow and Xbox Live Video Store, in combination with new services such as the TV Everywhere initiative announced by Comcast and Time Warner Cable will also help drive the paid online video segment in the coming years.”

What do you think?

Here’s the link to the 21st Century Consumers & the Future of Digital Media webinar.

This is a post from Post from: ReelSEO Video Marketing

Paid Video to Overtake Free Video on the Web in 2009?

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Facebook's Audience Expanding Rapidly; Revenue Growth Trailing By Nearly 2:1 Margin

Joseph Tartakoff — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 18:00:32 PDT

Facebook now claims a quarter of a billion users, including an astounding 50 million new users since April 8. But the company’s challenge has never been so much to build up its ranks as to make money from them. If the social network continues to add visitors at the rate of roughly 50 million every three months, it should have nearly 350 million members by year’s end—a 133 percent jump from the 150 million it heralded at the start of January. What about revenue? Facebook says it expects sales to increase 70 percent this year.

So how’s Facebook trying to make up the difference? One way is by introducing increasingly sophisticated targeting tools for advertisers. Inside Facebook reports that Facebook added several new ways for advertisers to target members this week. Advertisers will now be able to specifically reach users who are already connected with them in some way (For instance, if they are fans of their pages or a user of their apps). Other new features: Advertisers will now be able to target people on their birthdays and, in a nod to the site’s international growth, reach people in multiple countries with one campaign.

Twitter Expects $140 Million In Revenue By 2010

Joseph Tartakoff — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:58:39 PDT

Twitter may give the impression that it’s in no rush to make money, but the company certainly seems confident that it will start bringing in money soon. Earlier this year, Twitter expected revenue to reach $140 million by the end of 2010 and $1.54 billion in 2013, according to documents leaked to TechCrunch. (We won’t get into the ethical/legal debate about the documents hack, although Twitter says it is talking with its lawyers about the implications on the parties involved. Read more below). The documents also show that the social networking site projected it would bring in $400,000 in revenue this quarter—and $4 million during the fourth quarter. So far, Twitter’s only confirmed revenue stream has been its relationship with ExecTweets, which it promotes.

The leaked documents also show that Twitter has some heady projections for its membership. The site expects one billion users by 2013 (It had about 23 million uniques in June, according to Compete.com). A caveat: Via TechCrunch, Twitter says that while the document is authentic, it “was never an official document and it certainly is no longer accurate.” Considering that the documents show that Twitter only expected 25 million users by the end of the year, perhaps its projections are now even greater.

Here’s more from the statement Twitter posted on its blog: “We are in touch with our legal counsel about what this theft means for Twitter, the hacker, and anyone who accepts and subsequently shares or publishes these stolen documents. We’re not sure yet exactly what the implications are for folks who choose to get involved at this point but when we learn more and are able to share more, we will.”

Star Wars Uncut: A New Hope For Groupsourced Moviemaking?

James Lewin — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 07:30:20 PDT

Click here to view the embedded video.

Star Wars Uncut is a fun example of groupsourced moviemaking.

Organizers cut the original movie into 15-second clips. 473 fan moviemakers are recreating the scenes, low-budget style. Once all the clips are done, they will be stitched together to great a new version of the movie, Star Wars Uncut.

Think it will be awful? I find your lack of faith disturbing.

Star Wars Uncut promises to be both intentionally and unintentionally hilarious.

You can follow the projects progress here.

Online Video Industry News Resources I Follow

Mark R Robertson — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 12:00:29 PDT

With the online video industry in what seems to be a continual rapid growth mode, it is difficult to keep up with all that is going on with regard to news and information about online video platforms, online video marketing, video advertising, mobile video and everything else (see my recent tweet). Who knows what will happen tomorrow. It seems that everyday there is more and more news about the space.

I sincerely hope that you rely in part on ReelSEO to get our in-depth news, tips, and observations about the happenings within the industry. We try our best to provide objective news, research, tips, and do our best to assist in evangelizing and covering this exciting, and rapidly growing space. That being said, there are many other great sources out there that I suggest you take a look at. Consider adding the following sources to your daily RSS feed for keeping up on all that is going on with the online video industry. Additionally, I have provided a few good resources below these which I follow to keep up on all that is happening with regard to social media, digital media, and search engines.

I’ve listed these in no particular order. You can also grab this as an OPML here. I realize that there are tons more that are probably worthy of listing.. Feel free to add sources that you think are worthy in the comments below, and Ill take a look. Thanks to all those who provide these excellent publications.

My Favorite Sources for Video Industry News

The Business of Online Video – Dan Rayburn’s the business of online video
http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheBusinessOfOnlineVideo | @danrayburn

Online Video Watch – by Ben Homer & Corey Kronengold
http://feeds.feedburner.com/OnlineVideoWatch

KlessBlog - by Larry Kless, our good friend and Streaming Media All-star
http://feeds.feedburner.com/klessblog | @klessblog

Fierce Online Video – Covering the world of online video
http://www.fierceonlinevideo.com/feed

VideoNuze – Online video industry news analysis by Will Richmond
http://www.videonuze.com/atom/analysis/ | @videonuze

WebTVWire – All about the business of internet TV
http://feeds.feedburner.com/WebTvWire

Media Post Video Insider – From MediaPost, publishers of OMMA magazine.
http://www.mediapost.com/videoinsiderrss.xml

TV Over – IPTV, Internet TV, and online video news
http://feeds.feedburner.com/TVovernet | @TVoverdotnet

Web Video Report – From AdAge
http://feeds.feedburner.com/WebVideoReport | @adage

Beet.Tv – Focused on transformation of media (primarily about online video) – by Andy Plesser
http://feeds.feedburner.com/BeetTV | @beettv

1TimStreet – Written by Tim Street about observations on web video and social media
http://1timstreet.com/blog/feed/ | @1timstreet

iMedia Video News
Sorry, looks like their feed is broken, still a great source

Digital Media News Resources

Contentinople – Digital media industry news
http://www.contentinople.com/rss_simple.asp | @contentinople

TVWeek – Television industry news
http://feeds.feedburner.com/tvweek/News

Digital Media Wire Video
http://www.dmwmedia.com/taxonomy/term/617/all/feed | @dmwnews

Dedicated to Covering Web TV

NewTeeVee – Online video, primarily about web TV, by the GigaOM network
http://feeds.feedburner.com/newteevee | @newteevee

Tube Filter – All about web television news.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/tubefilterNews/ | @tubefilter

Tilzy.TV – Source for serialized content and news about online video.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/TilzytvNewsUpdates | @TilzyTV

Viral Video, Video Blogging, IPTV, Misc…

UnRuly Media Blog
http://www.unrulymedia.com/blog/rss.xml | @unrulymedia

Hot Air – VideoBlogging and Internet Broadcasting by Michelle Malkin.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/hotair/main | @hotairblog

WillVideoForFood – Authored by Kevin Nalts, the “Viral Video Genius”
http://feeds2.feedburner.com/willvideoforfood/NJWH | @nalts

Film Linker – Dedicated to creation and production for independent filmmakers
http://feedproxy.google.com/filmlinker | @filmlinker

IZZY Video – Digital video tutorials from Israel Hyman
http://feeds.feedburner.com/hyman | @izzyvideo

Ronamok, Online video and social media strategies, by Ron Ploof
http://feeds2.feedburner.com/ronamok | @RonPloof

News Videographer – Written by Angela Grant for journalists looking to leverage online video.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/newsvideographer

LostRemote – Future of TV and journalism, written by Cory Bergman
http://feeds.feedburner.com/LostRemote | @lostremote

CinemaTech – Scott Kirsner
http://feeds.feedburner.com/cinematech

IPTV Evangelist – Covering IPTV and IPTV technology
http://feeds.feedburner.com/IPTVEvangelist

IPTV Watch - News about IPTV
http://www.iptv-watch.co.uk/feed/

paidContent.org – Video
http://paidcontent.org/feeds/topic/video/

Video Company Blogs

Youtube Blog
http://www.youtube.com/rss/global/our_blog.rss

Permission TV Blog
http://feeds2.feedburner.com/permissiontv | @permissiontv

Miro Blog
http://feeds.getmiro.com/miroblog | @TheMiroFolks

Blip.tv Blog
http://theblog.blip.tv/rss | @bliptv

There are soo many here but these were just a few that I found particularily useful

Video Industry Magazines

Streaming Media Magazine
http://feeds.infotoday.com/StreamingMediaMagazine-FeaturedArticles | Print Subscription

Video Business Magazine
http://feeds.feedburner.com/VideoBusiness-News | Print Subscription

Digital Video Magazine
http://www.dv.com/rss| Print Subscription

Videography Magazine
http://www.videography.com/Rss | Print Subscription

Other Great Resources for Related Industry News

Master New Media – Robin Good’s news, tools and resources for web publishers
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Robin-Good-Latest-News | @RobinGood

last100 – Written by Steve O’Hear
http://feeds.feedburner.com/last100 | @last100

Mashable
http://feeds2.feedburner.com/Mashable | @mashable

Techcrunch
http://feedproxy.google.com/TechCrunch | @TechCrunch

Wired News Tech Biz
http://feeds.wired.com/wired/index

Download Squad
http://www.downloadsquad.com/category/video/rss.xml | @DownloadSquad

ScribeMedia (media feed)
http://www.scribemedia.org/category/media/feed/

Scobleizer.com - by Robert Scoble
http://scobleizer.com/feed/ | @scobleizer (PS, he follows back)

WebProNews
http://feeds.feedburner.com/webpronews/all | @webpronews

Search Engine Industry News & SEO/SEM

SEOBook - SEO guru and virtual friend – Aaron Wall – great tools, news, etc…
http://www.seobook.com/rss.xml | @seobook

Search Engine Land
http://feeds.searchengineland.com/searchengineland

SEOMoz
http://feeds.feedburner.com/seomoz | @SEOMoz

Bruce Clay SEO
http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/atom.xml | @bruceclayinc

Search Engine Roundtable
http://feeds.feedburner.com/SearchEngineRoundtable

Search Engine Watch
http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/sewblog

Shameless Plug

ReelSEO - Please dont forget us – I know, sounds like just SEO, and we certainly love SEO, but much, much more.
http://www.reelseo.com/feed/ | @reelseo | @markrrobertson

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Online Video Industry News Resources I Follow

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Hi5 Adds Another Revenue Stream—Downloadable Games From RealNetworks

Tameka Kee — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:01:43 PDT

Struggling social network Hi5 has launched a downloadable games portal in conjunction with RealNetworks, adding over 1,500 new titles to the games section it built out earlier this year. These aren’t just casual games; the roster includes best-sellers like GTA: IV and Gears of War, the majority of which will be for purchase only.

This fits right in line with Hi5’s recent push to bulk up its virtual goods platform through a deal with Mochi Media—as the social network is trying to generate a greater proportion of its revenue from members, as opposed to advertisers. Two months ago it brought in Bill Gossman—formerly executive in residence at its biggest investor, Mohr Davidow Ventures—to help lead the shift in business models as CEO. Release.

Justin.tv Redesigns To Make Broadcasting Easier And Chat More Obvious

MG Siegler — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:59:58 PDT

There’s a lot of live video streaming competition out there right now, but Justin.tv remains the biggest (though Ustream says that’s up for debate). And it’s looking to hold that lead with a redesign launching today, along with some new features.

The new site has an overall cleaner and simplified look. And simplification is the key to another big change: The addition of big front page broadcaster. When you first load up the site you will see front and center a large video player with the phrase “Live broadcasting in one click.” If you click on the big red button below it, you’ll load up your camera options screen, where you pick a camera to record from. From there you can log-in or create an account to start broadcasting.

Previously, you had to log-in or set up an account first and could then start recording on a different page. This new way makes it much more obvious how to get recording right away.

Another change is the addition of a Meebo IM chat bar to each page on the site. Previously, chat only existed in channel chat rooms, but now the Meebo bar will allow you to continually chat no matter where you are on the site. Justin.tv says it’s the first live video site to use the Meebo bar, and has already seen 10% of its chat messages coming through as IMs, rather than in the chat areas on channels. That’s about 600,000 IMs out of 6 millon messages a day, we’re told. Expect that number to go up now that it’s sitewide.

As I said, Justin.tv remains the top live streaming site, but its competitors have all been making moves recently to try and spur usage. One big move was Mogulus recently rebranding to Livestream. Traffic to all of these sites across the board seems to be slipping. But when Ustream launched a redesign a year ago, it helped kick start growth.

Justin.tv just launched its Camtweet, live video on Twitter service, last week at our Real-Time Stream CrunchUp. This new simplified Justin.tv main experience, seems like an extension of the idea of simplicity, which I like. Justin.tv also launched a DVR feature last month.

CrunchBase Information

Justin.TV

Information provided by CrunchBase

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Want to Get Your Web Series Sponsored? 10 Things to Think About

Chris Albrecht — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 21:00:47 PDT

If the notion that all you had to do was create a web series and advertisers would come ever truly existed, it’s all but dead now. Getting a sponsorship deal for your series takes almost as much work as creating the series itself. During a panel at the recent LA TV Fest, a gathering of advertisers and marketers came together to discuss what online video creators need to keep in mind if they ever want to get some of that sweet sponsorship money.

The panelists were Sara Morton, Group Director of Strategy, Nissan and Infiniti, OMD; Douglas Scott, President, OgilvyEntertainment; Sarah Baehr, VP and National Media Lead, Razorfish; Steven Amato, Partner, Omelet; Michael Hayes, EVP, Managing Director, Digital – North America at Initiative. The good news is that, when it comes content creation, brands have more freedom than ever. The less-than-good news is that there is more competition than ever and if creators want a leg up, they have to start thinking about brand integration before footage is shot. Here are 10 takeaways from that discussion:

Think like a marketer. If you want your content to be used as a vehicle for marketing departments (and to accept those marketing dollars), you need to start understanding the fundamentals of how marketing works. Get to know the terms and basic principles.
Think “in” and not “around.” Brands don’t just want to buy useless display ads around your video content, they want to collaborate with you and be worked into your content.
Think socially. Digital content is more compelling to advertisers and brands when you open up the interactive possibilities of being online and leverage a viewer’s social graph. Get Facebook-y and Twitter-y with your content.
Think about distribution. Before you pitch to potential sponsors, you need to have a distribution plan for your content that goes beyond putting it up on YouTube. How many episodes? How often will they roll out? Where will they roll out? How are you promoting them?
Think deeper about brands. The makers of Dove believe it’s doing more than just selling soap — it’s about female empowerment. Truly understand what those behind a brand believes it stands for, research where it advertises and figure out why and how your content could fit in.
Think about the specific industry. Sectors like pharma and kids will have specific laws around what and how things can be sold; if you’re going after a certain business, learn about it beforehand.
Think about brands early on. Don’t take something already in the can and try to shoehorn a brand in there. The integration should be as natural as possible.
Think celebs. Casting a web celeb who already has a fan base that can be leveraged is appealing to advertisers.
Think about the RFP. No one will hand you a request for a proposal until you’ve earned it. Get to know, as best you can, the agencies and companies that issue them. Show them your work and get to a level where brand creators will tell you what their business problem is.
Think about the ROI. At the end of the day, that’s the goal: sales. The more you can help to realize that goal, the better your chances of getting brand dollars will be.

This article also appeared on BusinessWeek.com.

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Why The Story That Bloggers Are A Few Hours Behind Mainstream Press Is Wrong

Michael Masnick — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 07:03:00 PDT

I have to admit that the most amusing part about this following story is how the players all act out their exact roles in proving the point. It starts with a NY Times article over the weekend, which opens with the provocative claim that "the traditional news outlets lead and the blogs follow, typically by 2.5 hours." That certainly plays right into the claims of some old school news journalists who want to insist that "bloggers are parasites" on the news. The only problem? It's not true. First of all, the whole idea that there's a real distinction between "blogs" and "mainstream media" is a bit misleading. Most mainstream publications have their own blogs, and certainly some "blogs" have built up followings bigger than some major newspapers. Blogs are just a platform. What people do with that platform is a totally separate question. It can be journalism. It might be commentary. It might be conversation. It could be something else altogether. To lump them all in as one homogeneous group because they all use a similar underlying technology doesn't really make much sense.

But the problems with the NY Times description of the report goes much deeper than that. First, Zachary Seward, at the Nieman Journalism Lab, digs into the actual report rather than the summary of it at the NY Times, and finds that the conclusions put forth by the Times leave out a few of the important details, which suggest not so much that the mainstream media beats less mainstream media, but that the two have created a neat symbiotic relationship, where they often feed off of each other -- and it's not so much that a mainstream publication "leads" with the story, but that a story bounces back and forth between sources before rising to a peak.

Even more important to understand is Scott Rosenberg's deconstruction of the methodology of the study. Jon Kleinberg, the professor who led the study, is one of the sharpest folks out there, so I tend to trust his work more whenever I come across it, but this particular effort seems to have some gaps in methodology. For example, the method for choosing what is a "blog" and what is a "mainstream" publication is whether or not the publication is included in Google News. Except that plenty of blogs are included in Google News, so it's not quite a fair breakdown, and basically hands over many of the true journalists who use blogs as their platform to the "mainstream press" side of things.

More importantly, it doesn't actually track the path of news stories, but the path of specific quotes by politicians during an election season. Can you spot the problem with extrapolating from that? The "mainstream press" are the folks following these politicians around, scribbling down their every word -- so it's no surprise that they would get those quotes out first. They're also given more access to those politicians, allowing them to get quotes first. But, the real issue is that the "quote" often isn't the real story. And, as Rosenberg notes, tracking just the quote doesn't follow the real story or see who's provided more analysis, originality and value -- things that the non-mainstream publications often value over immediacy.

In fact, the trajectory of this particular story does a beautiful job highlighting the point. Kleinberg and some grad students publish the report -- and the NY Times reports on it, summarizing it (incorrectly) as saying that newspapers "beat" bloggers by 2.5 hours on stories, lending credence to the idea that bloggers are somehow "parasites." But then folks like Seward and Rosenberg actually dig into the details of the study to point out why it's flawed and why the NY Times' summary is incorrect. Who actually added more value? Did Seward and Rosenberg parasite the story? Or were they any worse off for having it "later" than the NY Times? I'd argue not at all, and they actually provided a lot more value than the original news piece. Yet, as Rosenberg worries: "I fully expect to see it taken as conventional wisdom from this point forward that 'news starts with the traditional media and then moves into the blogosphere.'" Hopefully not..

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Whole Foods on Twitter Tops One Million Followers

(author unknown) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 04:50:35 PDT

Sometime in the last few days Whole Foods stores added its one millionth Twitter follower. In the process they became the first consumer brand (e.g. non-tech, celebrity or media) to go seven-digits on Twitter. To give you a sense of scale, Google has 1.1 million followers. Others, like Dell, are further back with 857,000.

Whole foods has been running a promotion tied to attracting more followers. Still, the fact that they did so in less than a year is remarkable. You can find a full list of their Twitter accounts here, including local stores.

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Morgan Stanley Report Shows That Teens Don’t Use Twitter, Don’t Buy Music (But Still Go To The Movies)

Nicholas Deleon — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 12:07:02 PDT

There's a fantastic report coming out of Morgan Stanley that analyzes the way teens consume media in this day and age. The source was a 15-year-old boy; he interns at the company. The results will the music industry, make Hollywood very happy indeed, and put to bed the notion that everyone is head over heels in love with Twitter. So the boy, one Matthew Robson, says the following: • Teens don't want to pay for music, and certainly not CDs. They'll either download it illegally or going on streaming sites to listen to what they want, when they want. • Radio is dead to teenagers, as we've said in the past. • Teens hate intrusive advertising.

Before MySpace Can Be an “Entertainment Portal,” It Needs to Rehaul Video

Liz Gannes — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 12:30:46 PDT

News Corp head Rupert Murdoch has, via an aside to the Wall Street Journal, let it be known that his new agenda for MySpace is for it to be an “entertainment portal,” rather than “a place for friends.” But while the site has put significant resources into some forms of entertainment — for instance, through its MySpace Music subsidiary — it has let video fall by the wayside.

MySpace Video, which for a time was called MySpace TV and featured lots of original windowed programming like Prom Queen, lonelygirl15 and quarterlife as well as premium content from partners like Hulu, has reverted to its prior name. It only has one original program running at the moment: Married on MySpace. The wedding reality show seems to be doing OK, though recent views are down from over a million per episode to around 100,000. (Show creators like Marshall Herskovitz have noted the immense power of being featured on MySpace and the letdown when you are not.) And MySpace only worked out a deal to give Married social viewing capabilities partway through the season.

Murdoch still has a significant asset to work with (though personally I can only get videos to load and play properly on MySpace if I click my heels together fast enough). comScore lists MySpace as the second-most popular U.S. video site by streams (to YouTube, of course), while Nielsen ranks it fourth below YouTube, Hulu and Yahoo.

Compared with other social-networking sites, MySpace maintains an advantage in terms of number of videos viewed per month — though Facebook at this point has more total people viewing video. That’s because MySpace focuses on entertainment video while Facebook emphasizes personal sharing.

Though we thought MySpace had the best-quality stream of Michael Jackson’s memorial out there, a representative for the site declined to give viewership numbers for it — something it has readily offered for past events. It’s not clear if that’s because the numbers were bad, if the streaming itself was poorly promoted, or if things are just disorganized given recent layoffs and reshuffling.

The last two MySpace Video/TV PR contacts we’ve worked with are no longer with the company. A rep declined to comment on Murdoch’s WSJ-delivered missive.

GigaOM Pro: Smart insights at the pace of the digital media market. Get the latest research on trends and tech shaping the future of entertainment. Learn more »

Amazon and Netflix to Create Web Video Behemoth?

Liz Gannes — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:04:31 PDT

Shares of Netflix have risen as much as 7.6 percent today on rumors that Amazon might buy the DVD — and increasingly web — rental giant. At last check, shares were changing hands for $42.17 after $40. We haven’t seen any detail as to where these rumors actually originated, but at this point they’re a full-blown stock-pushing phenomenon, with more than double the normal trading volume during an overall market rally.

The combination of the two companies could offer the best of both (currently available) worlds to premium online video watchers — subscription archive content via Netflix plus newer content for purchase from Amazon. Netflix has in many ways been a lone bright spot among tech companies during the downturn.

Baron’s Eric Savitz notes this is not the first time rumors about the two companies joining forces have surfaced — but in the past any acquisition would have been more based on their offline businesses. TechCrunch has the best headline: Rumor: Amazon Wants to Rent Netflix and Never Return It.

GigaOM Pro: Smart insights at the pace of the digital media market. Get the latest research on trends and tech shaping the future of entertainment. Learn more »

The Gap Grows Wider: MySpace Eats Facebook’s Dust In The U.S.

Leena Rao — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:37:57 PDT

The gap between Facebook and MySpace is growing wider in the U.S. In May, Facebook finally caught up to MySpace in unique U.S. visitors and surpassed its rival social network by a smidgeon. Last month, Facebook left MySpace in the dust, according to June data from comScore. Facebook reached 77 million unique visitors for the month of June, rising from 70.28 million unique visitors in May. MySpace had 68.4 million unique visitors in June, dropping from 70.25 million unique visitors in May.

Facebook is steadily growing in the U.S.; the network gained just under 7 million unique visitors in June compared to a gain of 2.8 million U.S. unique visitors in May. In comparison, MySpace lost nearly 4 million unique visitors in June, compared to 700,000 unique visitors lost in May. While Facebook is growing both in the U.S. and internationally, MySpace appears to be stagnating.

The widening of the gap between the rival social networks network comes at a time when MySpace is under new management and recently terminated two-thirds of its international staff, laying off staff in countries where MySpace is being trounced by Facebook. MySpace’s international numbers were startling. For example, in India, where social networking is growing fast, Facebook had 6.4 million unique visitors in May, compared to 848,000 unique visitors to MySpace. In our most recent model of the true value of social networks, MySpace fell below Facebook, dropping from the top spot last year.

MySpace still generates more page views than Facebook. In June, MySpace had 32.4 billion page views in the U.S., but that number dropped 10 percent in a single month, from May (gulp). Facebook is catching up there as well, with 21.3 billion page views in June, a 12 percent increase from May. And worldwide, Facebook is already ahead. As we reported a few months ago, worldwide monthly page views for MySpace declined from 47.4 billion a year ago to 38 billion in April, a 20% drop. In that same period Facebook grew from 44 billion to 87 billion, a roughly 100% increase. MySpace’s user number growth has stalled out also, and developers are reporting that activity on MySpace is decreasing at a dramatic rate, as high as “half a percent a week.”

A decline in user numbers isn’t the only predicament that MySpace is in—there is speculation that the social network could lose one of its major revenue streams in the near future. In 2010, MySpace will be receiving its last “welfare payment” from Google (stemming from an advertising deal between News Corp. and Google struck in 2006), after which it looks like it will be cut off. Under the terms of the agreement, MySpace will receive $300 million over the next year if the network hits certain search pageview requirements, which considering the recent data on page views, may not happen.

Meanwhile, Facebook shows no signs of slowing down. The network successfully launched its “vanity URLs,” in June, with millions of users signing up for the new feature within days. The network also got some notice around its use during the Iran elections and protests, and around the new privacy settings surrounding its “Everyone” button.

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5 Ideas Online Video Makers Should Steal From Trent Reznor

Janko Roettgers — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 09:08:56 PDT

Nine Inch Nails mastermind Trent Reznor this week published a list of essential guidelines on how to be successful online. Reznor knows a thing or two about Internet success. He became the best-selling artist on Amazon’s MP3 store despite giving his music and videos away for free, engaged his fans in a breath-taking Alternate Reality Game and recently became the Webby Artist of the year.

Critics have always argued that Reznor’s position is unique, and note that his band’s millions of fans around the world are thanks in no small part to promotion through his former major label. Reznor countered this kind of criticism by focusing his advice on the needs of aspiring newcomers. And while some of these suggestions may be specific to musicians, most of them actually make a lot of sense for up-and-coming online video makers as well. So since we here at NewTeeVee continue to get countless questions as to how to establish and promote new web shows, we’re stealing some of his best ideas and passing them on to you.

Here are five essential guidelines to establish yourself online:

“Forget thinking you are going to make any real money from record sales.“ The same is true for video: Don’t expect to make tons of money with any of the existing video download stores, even if they offer you awesome revenue share agreements. Instead, opt for free and try to monetize other things down the road, once you have established an online fan base. The team at Ask A Ninja, for example, used DVD and t-shirt sales to finance their work before the big ad dollars started to roll in. Reznor suggests collecting email addresses in exchange for free downloads and using these contacts to both advertise upcoming releases as well as merchandise sales. That’s a little harder if people watch your show on YouTube, but you could still promote your newsletter with t-shirt raffles and higher-quality downloads.

“[G]et your music everywhere.“ The same is true for video; don’t rely on just one site. Sign up with TubeMogul and let them put your video on YouTube, blip, MySpace and any other site possible.

“Have your MySpace page, but get a site outside MySpace.” Replace MySpace with YouTube, and you know what we’re talking about. There’s a good chance most people will see your show on the major video sites, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t at least have a blog somewhere else. Something that you can update even if you don’t have any new episodes, where people can leave comments. Having a place where you can gather a dedicated and friendly community can also be a great morale-booster, and you’re gonna need one of those when the inevitable bad-spirited commenters start to appear on your YouTube channel. Or, as one online video maker at the recent NewTeeVee LA meetup put it: “People on YouTube are mean!”

“Remove all Flash from your website. Remove all stupid intros and load-times…Constantly update your site with content – pictures, blogs, whatever. Give people a reason to return to your site all the time.“ Amen to that. Except for the inevitable embedded Flash video players, of course.

“Make cheap videos.“ Uhm, yeah. No, we don’t want you to spend less on lighting when you shoot your show’s episodes. But there’s inevitably gonna be a time when you have no new episode to publish. That’s when low lights and rough cuts are OK. Publish outtakes (if they’re funny), director’s commentary (if you have something to say) or faux celebrity sex tapes (if you’re into that kind of thing). OK, maybe you shouldn’t go with the last suggestion, but the point is to constantly put out something to remind people you’re still alive.

Have any other suggestions to share? Feel free to add them in the comments.

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Amazing Groupsourced Music Video

James Lewin — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 07:06:52 PDT

Click here to view the embedded video.

The music video was shot for Sour’s Hibi no Neiro (Tone of everyday) is a very clever example of groupsourced music videos.

Fans from around the world worked together to create synchronized patterns and lo fi effects for the video. The cast were selected from the Sour fan base, from many countries around the world. Each person and scene was filmed purely via webcam.

Pretty amazing, isn’t it?

Director: Masashi Kawamura + Hal Kirkland + Magico Nakamura + Masayoshi Nakamura

SOUR official site:

2009 Neutral Nine Records

LYRICS —————————————- ——————

Your heart that gently reflects in the puddle
is your tone, as you pass through the maze of everyday

Footsteps of spring
the city starts adding color
The melody flowsLE LU LA LI
Through the colored lenses

ReggaeDubHiphopTechnoLatin
Between the waves of all the different values
JazzRockPops Category no more
Whats the most important thing?

Spinning and turning on the overpass
as we overtake that season
this and that, which color is your melody?
Sometimes you could get confused

ReggaeDubHiphopTechnoLatin
Between the waves of all different values
JazzRockPops Category no more
What are you thinking of now?

If we can embrace all the differences
It will shine the sky in rainbow colors
Your heart that gently reflects in the puddle
is your tone, as you pass through the maze of everyday

You can see it in any color, because of your clear feeling
Dont worry about it, lets just go as we are.
If we can embrace all the differences
The rain will stop, and the sky will shines in rainbow colors

Your heart that gently reflects in the puddle
is your tone, as you pass through the maze of everyday
You can see it in any color, because of your clear feeling
Let your tone shine like the rainbow

Pass through the maze of everyday
And start playing your tone

Breakdown: 4 Ways Brands Are Earning –and Buying– Followers on Twitter

jeremiah_owyang — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 07:39:29 PDT

Update: July 6th, I added a 4th way, as I recently met a developer this weekend who showed me the scripts he created to quickly auto follow thousands of folks.

Companies who don’t have iconic brands with millions of adoring fans, often have to resort to other ways to get the attention of the market. This isn’t evil, nor is it uncommon, it’s just business, and was here before the web, and will be afterwards. Don’t get mad or emotional about it, let’s break it down to understand how it’s going to work, if you’re a concerned user, use this post to figure out how to beat it. If you’re a marketer, figure out what works –and throw away what doesn’t.

Breakdown: How Brands Are Buying –and Earning– Followers on Twitter
As a result, we’re seeing some of the same method applied to the web and email as to the social space. Here’s three examples (again in outline form) that I saw this week.

1) The Sweepstakes Giveaway: Moonfruit becomes a Trending Topic

Summary: This giveaway contest spurs word of mouth –results in opt-in “registration”
How they did it: Moonfruit offers website building services, and is offering a new computer to those that tweet about the contest (see their official contest page), the only way to receive a product is if you follow their account (opt-in). Of course, this means the members are subject to future messages.
This is the same as: Contests, WOM marketing, tell-a-friend.
Benefits: Rapid word of mouth about a brand driving awareness and opt-in as people follow the account, likely a percentage of followers will convert and buy the service.
Risks: This doesn’t build long term engagement with a brand, and it’s likely many will unfollow after the contest is over.
Costs: 10 Macbook Pro (13″) which is $1500 each for a total of $15,000. If the follower count retains at 10k a day (it’s day 3 today) for 10 days resulting in 100,000 followers, that’s about $.66 a follower, not including marketing efforts.
Results: Big wins. Moonfruit is a trending topic 3 days after the contest landed, there are thousands of retweets and tweets about the brand, as well as an increase in followers of about 10,000 a day (graph).Update: It’s now July 6th and the Moonfruit account has stalled out at 43k followers –it didn’t grow 10k as the first 3 days did. It’s also no longer a trending topic. Techcrunch Europe comments.
My take: A natural extension of other marketing forms to Twitter. The giveaway prize matches well with the type of clientele the brand wants, and it’s certainly generating a high degree of discussion for at least 10 days. This really isn’t a new model, and we should expect more brands to offer these types of sweepstakes, however to make it better, the tweets should be more inline with the brand promise, such as asking the followers to tweet about “what website they love, or would build”

2) Buying Customer Matching Lists: uSocial Promises Relevant Followers

Summary: Service called uSocial offers brand cost per action (CPA) advertising resulting in customer match
How they do it: uSocial matches brands with suggest followers that have similar affinities, keywords, or profile information, BBC has the story. It looks like they will find matches, and suggest to twitter users that you follow that brand, (likely through an automated spammy system) till the reserve is met.
This is the same as: What’s new is old again. This is very similar to direct marketers buying email lists of prospects that have similar demographic or affinity information. Martin agrees. Kevin Marks makes a good point that it’s not like email, as you can’t make folks follow them on Twitter. I suggest it’s the same, as you can’t get a user to open a spammy email.
Benefits: They promise lots of followers within a few days, a very low cost.
Risks: Brand damage. If the market finds out (it should be easy) that a brand isn’t earning their followers, they risk backlash and people unfollowing, or even worse, unfollowing.
Costs: The lowest package (there are others) is $87 for 1000 followers–it breaks down to 8 cents a follower. If you buy the 100,000 follower package it drops down to 3 cents a follower.
Results: I’ve not heard if this works, I’m sure someone will report back to me.
My Take: Use as a last resort: If it looks to good to be true, it probaly is. The uSocial site looks like a ‘get rich quick’ site, the design comes across really spammy themselves. It’s likely brands that do buy this will likely act in a similar way, and I wouldn’t expect followers to stick around if they behave in a similar way. It’s likely a brand that goes for the quick hit doesn’t have a long term strategy to interact with their public market, and will use Twitter as a distribution point. However, brands that do have a community strategy, and have developed relationships using Twitter, could certainly benefit from the increased awareness to likely prospects –the only risk is that it may come across as spammy as uSocial makes recommendations.

3) Product Discounts or Specials: Dell Offers Followers Specials

Summary: Some brands are generating followers by providing special deals to followers.
How they do it: For some time, Dell is offering reduced priced or refurbed products on their Dell Outlets Twitter account.
This is the same as: signing up for emails to receive discounts.
Benefits: A low cost channel to sell products to an opt-in crowd, avoiding excess inventory.
Risks: Can’t think of any, leave a comment if you have one.
Costs: Inexpensive. It appears there is a community manager responding and answering questions, so the cost of this part time employee, or contractor, must be accounted for.
Results: Dell has made the claims they’ve generated over $3 million in revenues from this single account. Of course, that’s a drop in the bucket for this tech giant.
My Take: Replicate. This is a great use of using the medium to obtain more interested followers that are requesting to be customers. The downside is that not every company has products to offer on a discount, nor the brand appeal. Brands should find ways to offer special deals to this highly viral community, offsetting the costs by weighing in the benefits of WOM and press coverage.

4) Auto Following Scripts and Services: Get followed by following

Summary: A variety of services have been released that will find followers for your account to follow, then do an auto-follow script that will add them. The hope is that many of them will auto follow you back, out of courtesy, in order to increase follower amount. The downside? It can look spammy, and many who return the follow are often bots.
How they do it: Similar to the Usocial service, they find followers (sorted by keyword, geo, name, etc) and start to follow. There’s a limit to how many Twitter will let a script auto follow per day. After a few days, the Twitter account will be following thousands of other accounts, and the hope is that many will follow in return.
This is the same as: Cross linking and link farms. Websites a few years ago would share cross links in hoping of increasing their page rank –soon Google caught on to this and started to regulate. A whole industry of ‘link farms’ emerged, however some of the sites involved with this were penalized by Google.
Benefits: Cheap way to get lots of followers.
Risks: Brand damage by being somewhat spammish, and many of the return followers are likely bots just returning the follow. As a result, the returns for this may not be mixed: some new followers may be your target market, although not all will be the ideal individual.
Costs: I’ve heard of package that can add a few thousand followers for around $25-$100, it’s just a simple script to run.
Results: You will get lots of followers if you follow others –although you’ll have to live with the risks
My Take: Easy come, easy go. While many popular twitter users go on a rampage to follow as many people as they can, I find the slow organic way of letting the right folks opt-in is the a better long term strategy. The Twitter founders Biz and Ev told me first hand they frown on people who do mass follows, at some point we should expect Twitter to clamp down on this behavior, just as Google did with link gaming.

Hope this breakdown is helpful, it’s important to look under the covers and analyze. Of course, I’ve not discussed the organic way of brands providing helpful content, interacting, or supporting customers, but that’s been written to death by the many social media bloggers.

10 Useful Tips for Tricking Out FriendFeed

(author unknown) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 04:49:34 PDT

via maketecheasier.com

Great primer for newbies and veterans alike. The email notifications, when coupled with lists and Gmail filters, are outstanding and vastly underutilized by many.

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Prepare Yourself For iPod Video

Michael Arrington — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 01:09:58 PDT

Like most people who’ve had an iPhone 3GS in their hands, we’ve been extremely impressed with the video capabilities of this little device. Not only Does it take near-HD video, it has excellent basic editing software and video can be uploaded to YouTube over Wifi or the cell networks. Among other things, it is the most useful video camera in the world today. No wonder the video camera market is shaking in its collective boots.

Thank God those iPhones are so expensive, and Apple will only sell 20 million or so of them in 2009. If Apple added cameras to its line of iPods, there would be another 3+million of them hitting the market per month, and the low end of the digital video camera market could be crushed.

Uh oh.

That’s exactly what we’re hearing is going to happen. One of our sources in Asia say that Apple has placed an order for a massive number of camera modules of the type that they include in the iPhone. These are inexpensive cameras, in the $10 range. And the size of the order, our source says, means they can only be used for one thing - the iPods.

Update: Macrumors features two images of cases that are supposed to be designed for the upcoming iPod Touch and iPod Nano, and suggest that the next generation of said devices will indeed include a camera.

Putting a camera in the iPod touch, which uses the same operating system as the iPhone, is a logical next step for Apple. But the order size is supposedly so large that some people in Taiwan are speculating that Apple may be planning to put cameras in the lower end of the iPod line, too. “Everything but the Shuffle may have a camera in it soon,” says our source.

We don’t have even close to enough information to speculate that the Nano and Classic iPods could be video-ready anytime soon. But I could easily see these lower end iPods include the camera just for taking pictures. Apple never turned video on in the iPhone 3G, but lots of people were using it via unlaunched apps from Qik, Ustream and others anyway. They could be planning the same thing for the Nano.

But back to video: The iPod touch starts at $229, and if they add the camera module, turning on video is a no-brainer, particularly since the software, already working on the iPhone, is ready to go.

That’s exactly the same price as the high end Flip Mino HD that we gush about so often. The Flip will take marginally better video, but it doesn’t have on-device editing and uploading to YouTube. Nor does it support Internet browsing, email and the thousands of games and other apps available for the iPod Touch. And we haven’t even mentioned the iPod’s primary purpose - music.

Guess which one wins?

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