Archive for June, 2007
MySpaceTV challenges for the title
June 28th, 2007
MySpace has relaunched its video service as MySpaceTV, complete with its own URL – www.myspacetv.com and individual versions tailored for 15 different countries.
The site will be totally independent so that people can visit to share and watch video, even if they’re not signed up for MySpace.
MySpace currently attracts 110 million users a month and this new, or revamped, service will also offer ways for members to easily integrate the videos that they create into their personal profiles.
However, MySpaceTV is also set to move away from user generated content (UGC) and place more emphasis on professionally produced material, including programming from News Corporation’s NBC Universal and Fox channels.
To date UGC has not been a big money spinner in terms of attracting advertisers to video, and if your focus is monetising video, well of course it is, then the safest bet is professional clips.
Furthermore, MySpace has the advantage here, as although it will need to invest in content deals in the same way that YouTube has, it already has access to content from the News Corp family, see above.
So how far away is MySpaceTV from YouTube? Well, according to a Hitwise survey measuring US visits to video sharing sites in May, YouTube is still very much the leader with a 60 per cent market share. MySpace came second with 16 per cent, and Google Video third with 8 per cent.
Pretty far then. But expect that gap to fall dramatically.
The NY Times has the full story.
Internet TV battle hots up…with Apple sidelined
June 27th, 2007
The BBC’s development of its on-demand internet TV catch-up service has been plagued with delays…until now. This morning the broadcaster announced that it was bringing forward the launch of its iPlayer, to 27 July.
The service will give broadband users free access to TV and radio programmes that the BBC has broadcast over the previous seven days. Uers will also be able to download programmes and save them on their computers for up to 30 days.
The phrase ‘content is king’ is still very true for the UK’s evolution of internet TV, but at the moment the market looks very fragmented. The BBC is apparently talking to potential distribution partners including MSN, Telegraph.co.uk, AOL, Tiscali, Yahoo, Myspace, Bebo and Blinkx. Interestingly, the iPlayer service will not be available on Apple computers at launch.
The plot thickens. I’m feeling a bit sorry for my computer at the moment, having to handle video content from a range of different players and services. I was thinking about going all Apple until I heard this!
What’s that? Contextual online video advertising you say…
June 25th, 2007
A considerable leap in online video advertising has taken place today, and it may have come from a source that you were not expecting.
blinkx, the video search engine, has introduced AdHoc, a video advertising platform that reviews video content and places relevant advertising against it.
According to blinkx’s press release: “AdHoc leverages blinkx’s patented speech-to-text transcription and visual analysis technology to understand video content more thoroughly and effectively.” Got it?
AdHoc also offers options that include pre-, post- and mid-roll placement, (Ad placement at the start, middle or end of the video), and works with a range of ad systems including Google’s AdWords, which is a smart move to make the platform more universally accepted.
blinkx claims that the AdHoc platform will revolutionise video advertising in the same way that Google’s AdSense transformed advertising on the Web.
AdHoc certainly seems to be breaking new ground in contextual online video, and whilst I’m sure other providers have been working on similar advertising packages, blinkx has beaten the likes of Google, MySpace and Yahoo! by introducing the first contextual online video advertising platform. Hats off!
However, there does seem to be a slight draw back. According to a piece on the Register; “The video hosters, who allow the search engine to index their content, won’t necessarily get a say on what product their users are being associated with, which could see some interesting conflicts emerge.”
If this is true, comparisons will surely be drawn with blind networks where advertisers place adverts on a network, but do not have control over where the final ads will be served.
Interesting times are ahead in the online video advertising space, and as with all aspects of the online world, monetisation remains the focus.
June 22nd, 2007
Hot on the heels of The Times’ best 50 business blogs, last week, Technobabble 2.0 has published its top 50 analyst bloggers league table.
Well, to be honest, Technobabble 2.0 has since republished an updated version, I’ve been a bit slow on the uptake.
The top three positions are taken by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff at Forrester, Stowe Boyd at /Message and James Governor at Redmonk, who also take three of the top 10 spaces.
Congratulations to Heather Hopkins who is in at number eight and is also the highest ranked Hitwise analyst, closely followed by Bill Tancer and LeeAnn Prescott.
As Technobabble 2.0 points out, this table not only highlights the experts, but also asks questions of those analysts that aren’t on the list, specifically - ’how reliable is their advice in this area if they haven’t mastered it themselves?’
The league table was developed by ranking analyst blogs based on values from Google (measuring pagerank), Bloglines (measuring subscribers), Technorati (measuring links) and Technobabble 2.0′s own subjective measure looking at frequent, relevant, creative and high-quality content and comments.
User backlash against Facebook applications
June 21st, 2007
A storm is brewing in the blogosphere today over the number of new applications – both commercial and user-generated – being touted on online community Facebook.
The Facebook application platform is open to all developers, and so as you’d expect, a mixture of good and not so good applications are springing up.
The fight back surprises me, as it is a complete u-turn on the open source debate that has typically been a part of social networks and communities such as Facebook and MySpace. The trend in opening-up application platforms to developers can only help to speed-up the progress of Web 2.0 as we know it. Why else would Apple be opening-up it’s iPhone platform to outside developers?
I have been impressed with the creativity in commercial Facebook applications in particular. I would far rather have the option to install a Tripadvisor ‘where I’ve travelled’ interactive map on my profile for example, than have my page bombarded with banner advertising.
While the industry continues to debate the to advertise/not to advertise issue in relation to social networks, surely the way forward is to investigate the creative alternatives more deeply.
Is Facebook a flash in the pan? Well we’ll have to wait and see. But the opportunities now for it to lead the online advertising industry in monetising online communities are endless. It will be interesting to see how this argument develops.
June 19th, 2007
of two of the world’s most dominant Internet forces. As you’ve probably heard, Yahoo! chief executive Terry Semel stepped down on Monday after six years, and passed the job of leading the company to co-founder Jerry Yang.
The news wasn’t a shock, Semel has come in for some serious criticism over the last few years, coming to a head at the shareholder’s meeting last week, in which not only his performance, but also his high earnings were attacked.
This was the latest in a long line of doom mongering coming out of the company, with the only positive news linked to the launch of the Panama platform.
So, what about the other side of the coin?
While Semel was leaving and the vultures circling, Google went about its business of innovation sprinkled with lashings of PR.
Google-owned YouTube announced an international expansion, rolling out nine localised services for countries including the UK and Ireland, making it an even more accessible service.
Google also announced plans to be carbon neutral by 2008, and handled the potentially damaging and very public argument with eBay expertly.
So where’s my point I hear you cry?
Well, on any given day, the Google PR machine never stops turning, the news keeps coming, and although it isn’t always well received, you’ll generally find something to admire.
Yahoo! on the other hand seems to have dramatically reduced its communications, and what is distributed seems to confuse rather than convince. It seems Yahoo! isn’t standing up to the might of Google too well, but I’m sure if a clear strategy was communicated consistently our impressions would be more positive and the share price may even improve.
In fact the only news that has made Yahoo!’s shares rise recently, by nearly 3%, is the news their leader is stepping down.
Rare success for Britain’s CEOP unit
June 18th, 2007
Police in 35 countries have swooped on a paedophile ring of more than 700 suspects, which was co-ordinated through a UK-based website.
Reports breaking this evening suggest it is the most successful operation to date, indicating that CEOP’s (Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre) recent efforts to partner with internet firms is finally showing results.
31 children have been saved as result of the investigation – half of the children were found in Britain.
The ring-leader, Timothy Cox, 28, has admitted to nine offences and has been handed a sentence which could keep him in jail until he dies. More than 75,000 indecent and explicit images were found on his computer.
The evidence is harrowing, and reports seem to suggest that horrible new twists are taking place in the age of online video.
For years UK police have shown limited successes in deadling with these crimes – let’s hope this is an indication of better results to come.
50 best business blogs according to The Times
June 13th, 2007
As you may have seen, The Times has published a double page spread on the 50 best business blogs today.
The list, which is divided by industry and compiled by Rhys Blakely, is classified as a work in progress, and we’ve been invited to make further suggestions.
A quick look down the list shows some familiar PR bloggers, such as Colin Byrne of Weber Shandwick (Byrne Baby Byrne) and Richard Edelman’s blog.
The list also includes some heavy hitters in the form of Jonathan Schwartz, chief exec at Sun Microsystems (Jonathan’s blog) and Charles Dunstone’s blog, as well as a host of tech blogging gurus; Robert Scoble (Scobleizer), Jeff Jarvis (Buzzmachine) and Boing Boing.
TechCrunch also makes it onto the list, even though the promised June 1st re-launch for TechCrunch UK has long since passed with no sign of movement.
Apple launches Windows browser
June 12th, 2007
Apple has today launched a version of its Safari web browser for Windows users, placing it in direct competition with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox.
Safari currently accounts for 4.9% of the browser market, and is ready to steal further market share. But with its concurrent plans to move into mobile with the European launch of the iPhone imminent, could the true motive be mobile?
In a u-turn move, Chief executive Steve Jobs has said that developers will be able to build new web applications for the iPhone, that “extend the capabilities of iPhone… but keep the iPhone secure”.
The applications will run inside the device’s Safari web browser which were built on existing web standards.
Certainly a space to be watching over the next few months. If Apple applies the same logic to its mobile user experience as it has to the iPod, there is no doubt it will succeed.
Coke gets mobile with social networking
June 8th, 2007
Coca Cola has announced it will launch a new mobile social network in the US, which will be aimed at teens and called Sprite Yard.
The new service will operate under Coke’s ‘Sprite’ brand, hence the name, and will allow members to set up profiles, post pictures and meet new friends, similar to Facebook or MySpace.
It remains to be seen if Coke, or Sprite for that matter, still has the brand loyalty or credibility in this market to attract a loyal and long term following. It will also be interesting to see how much content Coke will be giving away to pull people onto the service.
The other challenge is to make such a site work via mobile, and it will be interesting to see if Coke has come up with a mobile-specific platform, rather than one hacked down to fit mobile.
Silicon has the full story and confirms that Coke has worked with ‘top US wireless providers’ on the service and is in touch with other social networks such as Facebook about expanding its experience.
There is no information about a UK site, but a similar version was launched in China last week.