The two forms of online video Professor Alex Juhasz (who taught a course on YouTube at Pizer College last semester) has been writing at length about the aesthetic and experience of YouTube.
TMZ to launch branded channel on MySpaceTV Says sites share demographics, but will only show two to three new clips per week, and those clips will have already aired on TMZ.com. Ummm...fail.
Background on DivX Stage6 shutdown
Arrington gives good info on boardroom infighting, but pumps drama over
the fact that the site still wasn't profitable. IOW, despite its
success and relatively rosy future, Stage6 couldn't attract enough
users to offset streaming costs (they had to download a plugin!), and
its main source of revenue (a Yahoo toolbar) wasn't even part of the
site's value prop. Ummm...fail.
Rocketboom's Know Your Meme series [via Waxy] In which they analyze themes within memes. I stopped watching Rocketboom literally a year ago, and it's good to see they've actually gotten better.
Economist: Hollywood and the Internet The best, concise psychological reason why Hollywood is averse to technological change: "Hollywood's value system is not necessarily about growth," says Dan
Jansen, who runs the Boston Consulting Group's media practice. "It's
about recognition for films." So true. Whenever I have a conversation with a producer or creator, they are woefully uniformed about even the basics of Internet distribution.
SurveillanceSaver Screensaver app displays live images from surveillance cams around the world. Released last year, recently updated.
Hot Belgrade thieves on YouTube 1M views, via CNET: A persistent amateur cameraman followed the women as they loaded up
with chocolates at a corner shop, came out giggling, then went after
designer bags, shoes, and clothes at Belgrade's swankiest stores in its
vandalized main shopping street.
Tay Zonday speaks on fame, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and the objectivity precept Best interview ever: "You look at the video ratings, and it’s rated four-and-a-half stars,
but all the comments are full of as much vitriol as you can think of. I
think that’s just the nature of the beast of the Internet. And it’s how
all of us are, too. You get 15 products, and they work perfectly well,
and you don’t think about them. But you buy a rice cooker, and it
sucks, and you go to epinions.com, and you post a review. So you must
feel motivated to post a review of something you have an issue with,
and if you just kind of like it, you’re like, 'Hey, I use it.'"
Adobe to add DRM to Flash Flash is the de facto standard for Web video. If Adobe's intent is to reduce piracy, DRM will have little effect. The EFF makes excellent points here about how DRM will effectively lock users into Flash. Another idea: Hollywood's pressuring Adobe to give them some way to protect their content. If so, Hollywood's shooting itself in the foot, as DRM (in whatever form it takes) will probably only make Flash less user-friendly. That'll open a market for DRM-less streaming tech, and we'll see new sites pop up using that technology. Hi there, square one.
American Idol on iTunes
Performances by "Idol" semifinalists go on sale on iTunes this week for 99 cents per song
Interview with Quarterlife creator Herskovitz
"Because this is an online show we’re delivering episodes to NBC without
ever showing them the script. That has literally never happened on TV."
LA Times: Why filesharing isn't stealing Echoing an argument often made by our friend Mike over at Techdirt, i.e., something in unlimited supply (digital files) can't be stolen.
Larry Lessig considering run for Congress Stanford professor and copyright expert has argued several copyright cases before the Supreme Court. Also wrote some kick ass books ("Code" being my fave), and would be the only congressman who knows the Intarnets are neither a series of tubes, nor a big truck.
DailyMotion Offers HD Meh. I don't see HD vids drawing traffic away from YouTube. It's about critical mass, and the adoption curve for vid content on TVs. One more year at least before online vids are consumed in large quantities on sets. Speaking to that point...
LiveUniverse Buys Revver for ~$5M Good site, good community, but failed because it could never attract a mainstream audience. The victim of YouTube's superior accessibility and looming shadow.
Writers vote to end strike "This now gives us a foothold in the digital age." Mixed metaphors aside, spoken in 2008, this somehow this reminds me of that Roseanne episode where the Conner family buys a VCR and Darlene says "Congratulations! We've just leaped into the '90s!"
Strike end in sight New WGA terms are here. The proposed contract says content made for online vids should cost at least
$15,000 per minute, $300,000 per program, or $500,000 per series.
Netflix CEO: Consumers love buying set-top boxes In a WSJ interview, Hastings says consumers will buy set-tops if the content is compelling. As proof he cites the Wii, but that console offers a completely different value proposition. Smart man, bad analogy.
The New Yorker's Naked Campaign Caricatures of caricatures. Illustrator Steve Brodner draws the presidential candidates and discusses the race for the White House.
Aimee Mann's Christmas Trilogy Months-old mockumentary-style vids, recently reposted online, featuring Weird Al, Will Ferrell and Jon Krasinski looking quizzically into the lens (apparently searching for another talent beyond looking quizzically into the lens?). [via]
Top Gun Sweded The most non-crappy film uploaded to Filmmaking Frenzy's sweded film contest. Worth your time. Seriously.
YouTube decimates competition. Again. December was the highest vid-share traffic month ever, but at 33% share, Google's pretty much wrapped up the high-volume game.
Below, because I'm in the mood, the opening and closing credit sequence for old school detective show Mannix. Score by Lalo Schifrin, who also wrote the scores for Mission: Impossible, Bullitt and Dirty Harry, among other classic shows and movies.
Return of the video resume? Aleksey Vayner, what hath you wrought? Bonus points to anyone whose video CV spoofs Debbie's dating tape from the movie Singles.
NBA signs video deal with YouTube Paidcontent: During the discussion on this deal on CNBC today, the idea came up
repeatedly that was the league’s way of making sure YouTube keeps
unapproved copyrighted materials off the site. I agree with Darren
Rovell, though: the proof of the value for fans will be in the quality
of the NBA’s own uploads.
See babe, toldja I don't need those little blue Viacom pills
YouTube traffic up without Viacom And getting more traffic than the major three TV networks' sites, not counting American Idol and sports. (quite a lacuna you ask me)
The BitTorrent store opens today 3,000 new and classic movies and more TV shows from Fox, Paramount and Warner Brothers. But you can't buy movies, only rent them.
New York Times profiles Blinkx video search engine Blinkx is better than Google for finding videos, but Google bought YouTube for the same reason it bought Blogger back in 2003 -- to find and drive traffic to amateurs making content. Today every blogger loves Google for them amount of traffic it refers through search. Expect Google to do the same for video producers.
Newspapers beating TV stations at the Web video game "This is video-journalism-on-demand years ahead of digital television:
Because I elect to watch a story, then see it on a computer screen
eighteen inches from my face, I focus in a way TV doesn’t require."
Web sports license content to TV networks World Championship Sports Network focuses on Olympic-style sports, signs deal to provide sports programming in eight markets.
To catch a predator...on YouTube Also, those confrontations make really awesome, awesome television,
right, Chris? Not to mention the stilted voice-over re-enactments of
the predator/decoy chats. Or when you come around the corner, and
you're like, "Ha! Gotcha, predator! You're on TV! Sucker!"
Below, Sean Hannity chats up Fox's new "1/2 Hour News Hour" and shows another laugh-free clip. The show apparently aired on Sunday. I didn't catch it, but here's a review from Alessandra Stanley at the New York Times.
88Slide signs with Endeavor "My goal is to make this the biggest little game show in the world. I
want to go from giving away $10 gift certificates to a car."
idolcritic.com Created by Jeff Jarvis, starring Persky from 39secondSingle. I guess there's a demo that will watch this, but it's too slow and not snarky enough for me.
Daily Links: Video on radio web sites? What are you, some kind of media whore?
Radio stations embracing video content
More than 90 percent of Americans still listen to traditional radio.
But the amount of time they tune in over the course of a week has
fallen by 14 percent over the last decade.
Daily Links: The Boy Scouts offer a merit badge for anti-piracy activities? Doesn't that interfere with the whole gay troop leader motif?
Vanity Fair profiles the Pirate Bay Aristocracy 2.0: "After my fact-finding safari in Sweden, I returned to Paris, where I
was temporarily domiciled, and where my personal piracy habit was
expanding quite impressively."
Lycos Mix does not impress (via) "Why create a MIX for people to share skateboard videos when with a
targeted search phrase on YouTube - “winnipeg skateboard”, for example
- I get about 130 results, easily browsable, easily played, easily
embedded onto my own blog."
Daily Links: That's mass with an M, your honor. "Mass" media pirates.
Media firms say Google benefited from piracy Allege Google employees suggested keywords and sold ads directly to two sites -- EasyDownloadCenter.com and TheDownloadPlace.com -- that paid Google $809,000 in ad dollars.
And now, a video of little superstar giving dance lessons. I believe in God only because it should be impossible to pack so much kitsch into such a tiny man.
Video: AskaNinja on Ninja award shows "It starts with the nominations, which are delivered by Killgaroos. They look like Kangaroos, but they have the temperament of a child actor and the strength of morning breath."
Daily Links: And the best part, Senator Stevens, is your Wal-Mart DVDs arrive through a series of tubes. Yes sir, big tubes. No trucks.
Wal-Mart to sell online movies
Partners with all six major studios. Price pressure on other retailers a possibility, but Wal-Mart has failed at digital initiatives before.
Below Amy Poehler as Dakota Fanning on SNL. Dakota: "In my defense, when I read the Cat in the Hat script I saw it as a metaphor for ethnic violence in Central Africa."
Speaking of video editing sites, check out Cuts Cuts lets you pull in and cut apart videos from sites like YouTube and
Myspace. To edit a video, you just need
the URL of your favorite video or click a bookmarklet.
Disney sells 1.3M videos on iTunes Iger: "If we don’t put our content on these platforms, which the consumer has
obviously embraced, other entities will create content and fill that
void."
Will video watermarking work? The movie industry also believes that watermarks—unique digital stamps embedded into each file—would enable content producers to fend off movie pirates without having to rely on digital rights management software provided by groups such as Apple and Microsoft.
McDonald's launches YouTube talent search
The chosen director's video will be shown on YouTube's home page as the
largest video in the Participatory Video Unit spot on Feb. 19, a space
usually reserved for advertising.
YouTube star "Lisa Nova" joins MadTV
Lisa Nova currently ranks at No. 39 among YouTube's most viewed
posters, with 28 posted videos to her credit, and at No. 11 among most
subscribed directors. Her YouTube popularity attracted the attention of
a "MADtv" casting director and earned her a second shot.
Google TV advertising may include set-top boxes "Set-top boxes can help you target to end users and the set-top boxes
are now IP addressable. So there's a lot of evidence that as we link
our systems into the systems of people who are operators, we can get
another leg up on targeting and ultimately provide both a more useful
advertising experience for the end user and also a better advertising
experience for the advertiser themselves in terms of conversion.
NYTimes' Lorne Manly on Anheuser-Busch's Bud.tv One of the first shows that will appear on Bud.TV is called “Finish Our
Film,” a mash-up of reality show and making-of-a-film documentary that
will be produced by LivePlanet, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s production
company, best known for “Project Greenlight.”
Via 3quarksdaily, this Bookforum article on fiction master and Park Slope pooba Paul Auster: "Paul Auster should not exist...Simply put, neither American writers nor American readers tend to go in
for the kind of fiction that Auster has made his specialty, and it's
unsurprising that Auster enjoys not just wide readership but also
prestige internationally, particularly in France, that well exceeds his
critical reputation in the United States."
I disagree. Auster's self-referential fiction, which is like Virginia Woolf's "caves of experience" on acid, has much in common with the ego-centric trajectory of modern media. Reality programming, The Truman Show, Lost, and behavioral advertising are just four examples of how contemporary entertainment/art/whatever flatters the self. Readers are attracted to these media forms because they want to believe everything is connected. Paul Auster -- and much of the work of his buddy Don DeLilo -- is the literary equivalent.
Berman-Braun Productions looking for a studio home Former head of Paramount and ousted Yahoo exec to focus on TV and Web production. Will model business after such former independent boutiques as Carsey-Werner and
Brillstein-Grey Entertainment, which maintained financial interests in
the shows they produced.
Daily Links: On the bright side, senator, the proles can't actually vote through YouTube yet
Attack ads go viral "The explosion of video-sharing on the Web poses major risks for
presidential candidates: Gaffes and inconsistent statements witnessed
by dozens can be e-mailed instantly to millions."
Today's video: Most folks remember jingles from local commercials. And now, god bless YouTube, you can remember jingles from other peoples' hometowns. Like this one, from Montgomery, Alabama. Where they have a furniture store. But it's really more of a mini-mall. Do the dance.
Revver now surfacing more popular recent videos "We’ve moved from showing the videos with the most views of all time to
the videos with the most views which have been published in the past 30
days."
Today's video: On the 6th day, around close of business, the deity decided which evils to visit upon the world. Off limits: Harming people with your thoughts; Allowed: Hard winters, childhood cancer, and baby torture.
AOL adds Shopping Live QVC video channel
IAC's Barry Diller has mentioned before how HSN should be part of an
online media play. I mean, what a great way to sell ads. Some folks
have mentioned the possibility that Google would get into the
television market by either advertising on or purchasing QVC outright.
Wired: Why Joost is Good for TV "We are going to be the single most legal platform on the Net," says
David Clark, the New York-based advertising director, formerly with MTV
Networks. "The entire ecosystem falls apart when people don't get paid."
Dead Media Beat: Film In the
same way that half the world's 6,000+ spoken languages are being discarded
for World English, Spanish, French and Mandarin Chinese (half the world's
languages will likely disappear by 2050), cellulose-based film art and
video art's forty-year history of experimentation and innovation are
currently being threatened by 'filmmakers' who don't seem to realize they
are working in "video."
YouTube to have guest editors for home page content Brilliant. Tightens bonds between site and users, distances YouTube from questions of editorial nepotism, allows more user control of a site that has been synonymous with populism.
Is live sex on demand coming to Hotel TVs? Hotels are live sex on-demand, duh. P.S., that headline was made for search engines. The only way it could be better is if you strategically placed the words "midget" and "take a free tour."
YouTube's Suzie Reider on marketing and tagging "It is very powerful to have ‘brand channels’ on YouTube, where a brand marketer is housing content and then to use the massive Google network to ignite interest in that content.
That is one of the really powerful ways that the YouTube sales
organization and the Google sales organization can work together."
And now, because it's making the rounds and looks so godawful cheesy, the original Star Wars trailer:
CBS to launch Fall season online first Research chief Poltrack: "Partly because so many shows these days are serialized, it is more important than ever to get them in there early."
