Archive for January 23rd, 2008
Adrian Holovaty’s much-anticipated hyperlocal site Everyblock just launched for Chicago, New York and San Francisco. At it’s core, it’s a powerful aggregator of news, user-generated content and data — all geotagged and mapped. News stories, blog posts, Flick photos, building permits, crime data, restaurant reviews, Craigslist postings… etc… you can map it all around your house, in your neighborhood. “We’re a geographic filter — a ‘news feed’ for your neighborhood, or, yes, even your block,” explains the Everyblock team. And it looks like just about everything is automated.
I’ve always believed that the hyperlocal nut will be cracked with a technology solution, not a content solution. Why try to convince people to submit content when there’s already a ton of it out there that just needs organizing? I’ll be posting a full review of the site soon, but my first impression is Everyblock has more potential to succeed than any hyperlocal effort before it.
January 23rd, 2008
The CBS college sports site will provide stats and video to USAToday.com.
January 23rd, 2008
No, there’s not much money out there for independent web video publishers. In fact, Perez Hilton said he only made $5,000 on 25 million video views on YouTube (that works out to a lousy .20 CPM, if my math is correct.) So video producers are starting to look for product placement opportunities, explains this TV Week story.
This is a logical next step for online video, which is still in its infancy. If you ask me, online video will continue to niche down until you can “subscribe” to just about everything under the sun, either to your TV, mobile device or PC. The majority of this video will originate from family and friends — baby’s first steps, etc. — but let’s focus on the other stuff. The most successful “shows,” for lack of a better term, will be passionately loyal to their niche and deliver useful information in unique and entertaining ways. (For example, I’d love a “show” about mountain biking in Seattle that combines crazy hijinks with useful trail information. And shows like these would have serious long-tail benefits). They’ll also be produced on a budget, and many of them, like blogging, will be labor of loves. Now, what’s missing here is two things: 1) an easy way for consumers to discover this content and seamlessly “subscribe” to it on their TVs, mobile devices and PCs and 2) an easy way for advertisers to discover shows that match their needs, and then scale enough advertising and product placement across them, with full back-end accountability. For example, K2 Snowboards should be able to quickly find and traffic video ads/placements across every snowboarding show in the country that meets minimum audience parameters and general standards.
But one thing should be very clear here: like blogging, there won’t be much money in it for video producers. Some will become hits and score some cash, especially if like-minded shows are networked together. But this isn’t Hollywood, by any stretch of the imagination. Thoughts on all this? Please let me know in comments…
January 23rd, 2008
Since we’ve switched to JobThread to power our digital media jobs board, we’ve seen a big increase in the number of job postings. It also has this nifty interface that lets me look at how many people are applying for certain jobs (assuming the email address isn’t listed in the job copy.) And some jobs are getting a dozen applications or more. So here’s your friendly reminder to get your HR departments plugged into Lost Remote — as always, it’s free, and a great way to find web media talent.
January 23rd, 2008
In today’s much-anticipated announcement, CBS president and CEO Leslie Moonves revealed plans to make the company’s music acquisition, Last.fm, completely free for streaming music. CBS has done deals with all the major labels to make songs — and entire albums — available to stream for free. And you won’t even have to register. Alongside the stream will be a “tiny” targeted video/rich media ad with its audio defaulted off. You can listen to the same song three times before you’re asked to purchase it through affiliates iTunes, Amazon, or 7Digital. As part of the deal, the artist gets paid for each stream with a revenue share of the advertising. I think they’ll build quite a large audience very quickly, especially if/when they promote this new free service on CBS. As you know, there’s something very powerful about “free.”
January 23rd, 2008
The company behind ClipSyndicate, the video syndication service used by quite a few TV stations, has launched a new service called Syndicaster.tv. Basically, it translates all the video that’s aired into text. Then you can select clips using the transcript and publish them directly into ClipSyndicate or iTunes (see screen grab here). “Bloomberg has been using it for four months, making 60 to 90 clips a day,” says Critical Media CEO Sean Morgan. Explains TechCrunch, “Since all the video gets translated into text, the broadcasts from each station can be delivered as an RSS feed.” Interesting. The new service will be free for ClipSyndicate content providers.
January 23rd, 2008
Yep. The commercial arm of the free blogging platform Wordpress — my favorite blogging software and the content management system powering Lost Remote — just got a second round of funding that includes an investment from the New York Times Company.
January 23rd, 2008
NBCU chief Jeff Zucker followed through on his promise to stop the time-honored but ridiculously expensive tradition of ordering a bunch of pilot episodes every season, only to pick up a handful of shows. “So you’re spending money on programs you’re not going to get,” said Zucker, who explained the network may still order one or two a season. “It’s clear we are in a recession in the United States, and we’re going to have to manage our business accordingly,” he said. But truth be told, I wouldn’t blame the strength of the U.S. economy but the rapidly-changing economic model surrounding the television industry, as evidenced by the writers strike.
January 23rd, 2008
