Innertube launches original series

The CBS broadband channel has debuted its web-only original series, Hook Me Up. An interactive game, users determine who four singles will end up dating. The first episode ran just over 5 minutes, and it’s sponsored by Dentyne. Enticing screen grab…

6 comments October 2nd, 2006

Forrester: YouTube ‘will get sued and it will lose’

The piling on YouTube continues. First, Mark Cuban. Now it’s Forrester Research, with two analysts predicting a lawsuit that will beat YouTube and force it to take down all copyrighted material. While I agree that’s possible, I disagree with the conclusion that such a suit would cripple YT. The videos that really take off from YT are the homemade ones: think lonelygirl15, diet coke & mentos, Japanese Backstreet Boys, Evolution of Dance. Don’t take my word for it - just visit the “Most Viewed Ever” page. The other power of YT is in the Long Tail - the millions of vids that get a few plays each. The copyrighted video argument is a red herring. The first reaction to any new media is to fear it.

15 comments October 2nd, 2006

Mashup map tracks community ‘teardowns’

I love it. Amy Gahran at Poynter has found Baristanet’s Teardown Map, a Google Map mashup that tracks “teardown” homes in Montclair, NJ. The information is simple and compelling: a picture of the house, what it sold for, and what it resold for. It’s a valuable aggregation of local information, presented compellingly, and it’s exactly the kind of information a local site should be providing. Real estate information is more than just what’s for sale. And so help me, I don’t even know why, but I think it may be a combination of news and performance art…

7 comments October 2nd, 2006

Internet about to move into #5 spot for global ad buying

The web is about to surpass “outdoor” for ad buying, moving it into the number five most-purchased global medium. It’s moving in on radio, and for the first time has double-digit market share in two countries (UK and Sweden). The forecast is from Publicis Groupe’s ZenithOmnimedia. (Via hear2.0)

4 comments October 2nd, 2006

For big events, most still trust traditional sources

Americans still trust traditional media more than emerging media in times of breaking news and for most other news-related information. That’s according to a study from LexisNexis. In a big breaking event, 94% of those surveyed would turn to a traditional media channel, radio station or website. Only 6% would go to a blog or other emerging media. The trend is not all roses for trad media: “more than a third (35%) expect they will trust and rely on both emerging news and traditional news in the future, and more than one in ten (13%) anticipate they will trust and rely mostly on emerging media.”

2 comments October 2nd, 2006

Senior Online Producer, MTV Networks

New York, NY

Read the full post October 2nd, 2006

Web’s next wave is small advertisers

A new report form Zenith Optimedia predicts that US internet ad spending will jump 84 percent from 2005 to 2008 in part because of a surge in spending with smaller clients. Zenith also predicts that segment of ad spending won’t come at the expense of TV because the clients can’t afford television in the first place. All the more reason for stations to dedicate a healthy number of web-only account executives to pursue new business outside of the traditional television pool.

11 comments October 2nd, 2006

Study: Ad engagement lower on small screens

The Cable Television Ad Bureau released a study today that found that mobile users would tolerate a 9 second ad, compared to 42 seconds on TV. And more than half of respondents said they didn’t want advertising on mobile devices. Gee, translating TV on a mobile device isn’t received the same way? Duh.

Newspaper strategy focuses on diverse offerings

The American Press Institute and Innosight are out with a report that’s a sort of “self-help survival guide” for newspapers. There are plenty of good suggestions and discoveries in here - too many to detail. The main argument (no surprise to LR readers): newspapers need to have diverse offerings online, make it easy and affordable for local business to advertise, offer self-serve ad sales, and serve niche audiences through vertical content. The good news is that local news can once again cover local news. Cory adds: One of the key points in the report is the importance of local data, “The land rush to meet local information needs has barely begun,” it reads. Mashing local databases with mapping, for example, has tremendous upside.

6 comments October 2nd, 2006

The death of the obits

My first job in journalism was writing obituaries. Summarizing a person’s life into a few paragraphs is a humbling experience. It’s also a great way to learn how to take an enormous amount of information and distill it into a story - the essence of writing. And, of course, obituaries are getting the shaft at the papers. Putting them online makes the most sense, of course - obits compose a large database, searchable, long-term information. But Poynter’s Peter Zollman found huge frustrations when he went to find the obit of an Orlando Sentinel business writer at the website of - that’s right - the Orlando Sentinel.

12 comments October 2nd, 2006

Netflix offers $1 million for a better review system

Part of the Netflix experience is its automated recommendations of other movies based upon movies you’ve already rented. It’s an OK system, but not great. So Netflix is opening up its database of 100 million customer ratings in a contest to see if someone can come up with a program that’s at least 10 percent more accurate than the one in place. The anonymity of those ratings has been preserved, so you needn’t worry about that rental of “Hot Dog: The Movie.” Winner gets $1 million.

8 comments October 2nd, 2006