Archive for January 9th, 2008
To correspond with the relaunch of Nightly.msnbc.com, MSNBC.com’s Newsvine has built a discussion club around the newscast.
You can watch NBC Nightly News clips and then comment on them, Newsvine style. You can also send Brian Williams a question, and he’ll pick a couple to answer every week. The discussion page lists all the users in the club, and you can drill down on their profiles to see what they’re writing. This is one of the first new features to come out of MSNBC.com’s acquisition of Newsvine, and I’m sure there are many more to come.
January 9th, 2008
I’ve written before about how brand consistency is one of the most damaging maxims for media companies trying to succeed online. And I just read this interview with Nancy Bruner, who heads up online development for Fisher Interactive (which owns KOMOtv.com here in Seattle, a competitor of mine). She says her biggest advice to broadcast companies “is not to do what most newspaper companies have done — use the web as an extension of the core brand. The web should be embraced on its own merits as a unique medium.” Exactly. Now, think of this from a broader perspective than whether your core site should continue to carry the same brand as your station (because it probably should at this stage of the game). Branding is such a powerful force at most TV stations that it carries considerable sway over new product ideas and development. Consciously or unconsciously, people think of new product ideas in terms of brand — how will it support the brand, extend the brand, reinforce the brand — but the brand is an embodiment of who you are and who you’ve been as a TV station. Yet as Lost Remote readers know, the web is not TV. Not by a long shot.
If you ask me my opinion of why most TV stations have done a poor job succeeding online, I’ll give you these four reasons: 1) lack of investment in people and technology 2) unwillingness to take necessary risks 3) TV-driven power structure which results in the inability for web management to quickly allocate resources as they see fit and 4) a bizarre addiction to brand consistency, which limits creative ideas up and down the organization.
January 9th, 2008
This is sweet. A company called Eye-Fi has managed to embed WiFi functionality into a camera memory card. So as you snap photos, it will automatically upload them to any one of 17 different photo and social networking sites (Flickr, Facebook, etc.) that you designate (assuming you’re connected to a WiFi service, like your home network.) The Eye-Fi cards cost $99.99, and it won Yahoo’s “Last Gadget Standing” award at CES.
And CNET’s annual CES “Best in Show” award goes to… the Philip’s Eco TV. The 42-inch 1080i LCD not only saves power, but it can dynamically dim the backlight to correspond to material on the screen — which according to Philip’s, improves the image. Green is in, folks.
January 9th, 2008
In a content partnership, CBSNews.com’s politics pages will soon feature headline feeds of the most popular political stories on Digg. Also, users will be able to Digg CBSNews.com stories (which is already an available feature, but perhaps they’ll make it more visible?) “This is part of our strategic plan to open CBSNews.com to diverse news, analysis and voices from across the Web,” Michael Sims, CBSNews.com’s VP of editorial content, said in a statement from the company. “We are simultaneously exposing our content to the greater Digg community to help encourage more discovery and sharing.”
January 9th, 2008
With Hillary Clinton taking - and keeping - an early lead last night in the New Hampshire primary, talk on MSNBC turned to how wrong the media swarm was in predicting the race for Barack Obama. I was watching when Tom Brokaw joined Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, and the elder statesman of TV news had some wise words (via TV Decoder):
MATTHEWS: We’re going to have to go back and figure out the methodology, I think, on some of these.
BROKAW: You know what I think we’re going to have to go back and do? Wait for the voters to make their judgment.
MATTHEWS: What do we do then in the days before balloting–
BROKAW: What a novel idea–
MATTHEWS: –We must stay home then I guess.
BROKAW: No, no, we don’t stay home. There are reasons to analyze what they’re saying. We know from how the people voted today what moved them to vote. We can take a look at that. There are a lot of issues that had not been fully explored in all this.
But we don’t have to get in the business of making judgments before the polls have closed and trying to stampede and affect the process.
January 9th, 2008
Thirteen Belo TV sites have become the exclusive video provider to Yahoo News in their respective markets (see an example here). Belo joins with the CBS O&Os, bringing Yahoo’s total to 18 of the top 25 markets with local TV video partners. Press release follows below. (Full disclosure: I work for a Belo station that is part of this deal.)
Read the full post January 9th, 2008
Both Robert Scoble and Sarah Meyers have been “eventcasting” live from CES. Scoble is reporting live via his cell phone on Qik. (Watch a live interview he did with the YouTube founders here.) And self-described “lifecaster” and internet cutie Sarah Meyers is packing around a high-def camera, microphone and laptop with an EVDO card to webcast live via both PopSnap and Mogulus (she started on Justin.tv). You can see how she does it in this ZDNet video clip. Thanks to Lost Remote reader Dave for tipping us on the story. He writes, “My key takeaway with this years’ 2008 CES is the year which live mobile video has come of age.” Amazing stuff, especially when you realize that everyone with a smart phone is able to webcast live from just about anywhere.
ZDNet interviewing Sarah while she videotapes herself interviewing the ZDNet reporter, and it’s all live. How strangely meta.
January 9th, 2008
Time Warner has invested up to $12 million in GaiaOnline.com, a virtual world for teens. Gaia says it reaches 3 million teens and grosses $1 million a month in the sale of virtual goods.
January 9th, 2008
