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July 2006
Viral video: Who owns it?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s a logical question to ask after the earlier post about video sites and whether they can make enough money to survive. What about the budding number of amateur — and professional — videographers whose works are getting massive exposure on You Tube and other viral video sites? Sure, they get a lot of attention, but where’s the money for them?
Since the previous post, the blogosphere has been abuzz with articles and discussion on the subject. Heather Green of Business Week gets to the crux of the issue, which moved front and center when Robert Tur, an independent photographer famous for filming the 1992 Los Angeles riots, recently sued YouTube for alleged copyright infringement. Writes Green:
“The dustup spotlights the role the Internet increasingly is playing in letting artists and other individuals reach out and control media. But more to the point, it shows how YouTube is evolving into a sort of eBay for video: the first place you go to find a clip, but also a place where more folks are itching to get rewarded for supplying it. A growing group of creative types is furiously producing clips, video blogs, and animated shorts with the hopes of making money through advertising or selling DVDs.”
Some of those creative types are avoiding YouTube because there is no share of the ad dollars. “The exposure is great, but with all the copyright issues and the lack of potential ad revenues, it seems like something that we’re not going to get into right now,” one popular animator told Green.
Millions of video creators will be watching what happens with the Tur case.
Meanwhile, this won’t make anyone rich, but it sure is cool. Grouper, another user-submitted video site, has added some great features. Don’t like a video clip? Users can post video comments on a clip using their Webcams. There’s also sharing functionality at the bottom of their embedded video player which seamlessly allows users to download to their desktop, iPod or PSP. Or they can add it to their page or blog with one click.
When sharing video becomes this simple, who knows what this ultimately will mean for copyright law and how content gets distributed.
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Viral video: Where’s the money?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We’re back after a family-enforced absence from the blogosphere for more than a week. Despite all the attention focused in the past few days on the prospects of a battle between Apple’s iPod and Microsott’s Zune this fall, video remains at the forefront of the online wars, especially any discussion on how to make money off of it. Consider these reports:
— Amazon plans an ad-free digital-video-download service set for a mid-August launch, with a subscription service and a la carte movies and TV shows. According to Advertising Age, the service, known as Amazon Digital Video, will be like a digital version of Netflix’s rental model.
— YouTube attracted 19.6 million visitors in June, a 297 percent increase from January, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. Page views jumped 515 percent. Average time spent at the site rose from 17 minutes to 28 minutes.
No one can doubt that video is really taking off. But does anyone really think that YouTube is worth a billion dollars? That was the figure quoted by The New York Post after a Sun Valley conference in which YouTube executives were reportedly fawned over by big media companies. The Associated Press reported that CBS honcho Les Moonves spent considerable time with YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley. To put it in perspective, Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. spent $580 million for MySpace.
Skeptical press reports continue on YouTube and how it can generate revenue. The headline in The San Jose Mercury News: “How will YouTube make money?”
The obvious challenge for the glut of video sites: How do you attract advertisers without alienating an audience looking for a social networking experience?
Meanwhile, a new video aggregator has emerged. Dabble, which accesses more than 240 video hosting sites, including YouTube, Revver, Bilp.tv, Google Video and others., launched this week.
Stay tuned.
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MySpace growth explosive
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
OK, class, today’s quiz: What well-known U.S. Internet companies had triple-digit growth in unique visitors from May 2005-2006? And how did the search engines do?
John Battelle’s Searchblog points out research prepared by ComScore Networks and FactSet, and presented by analyst PiperJaffray:
Top Year over Year Growth by Unique Visitors
- Wikipedia sites: 302%
- MySpace.com: 230%
- Adobe sites: 118%
- Apple Computer: 80%
- United Online: 70%
Among industry giants:
Google sites: 28%; Ask Network: 26%; eBay: 21%; Yahoo sites: 9%; MSN-Microsoft sites: 8%
Today, Hitwise also reported that MySpace surpassed Yahoo! Mail last week as the most-visited domain on the Internet for U.S. users. To be clear, Hitwise does not provide figures for the number of unique visitors to a site.
Do these figures surprise you at all? Does anyone now question Rupert Murdoch and News Corp.’s decision to purchase the site?
Elsewhere:
— Mozilla’s Firefox browser continues to grow market share, although not enough to make Bill Gates lose any sleep. According to Web analytics firm OneStat.com, Firefox now holds 12.93 percent of the worldwide market, with 15.82 percent usage in the U.S. Coincidentally, Mozilla today unveiled a beta 2.0 version of its open-source Firefox browser. Internet Explorer has fallen more than 2 percent since May, but still holds 83.05 of the global market and 79.78 percent in the U.S., OneState reports. Apple Safari is third with 1.84% globally, 3.28 % nationally, followed by Opera and Netscape. What do users think of Firefox as a browser? Has anyone taken the beta version for a test drive?
— Media Daily News first reported today that a new study of consumers and portable video platforms reveals a lot more hype than reality. The study, conducted by Knowledge Networks, finds that portable video devices — from video cellphones to iPods, PSPs and Slingboxes, still have relatively low usage levels among consumers. The study found that half of those who subscribe to video cellphones never view video on them. Video iPods? The study reported 30 percent of those owning one never use it for viewing video. Are the media and Madison Avenue ahead of consumer tastes, with video interest still on the rise? Or has the video phenomenon been overly hyped?
As the Web turns
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The blogosphere has been electrified for the past day over an online clash mildly reminiscent of the recent Star Jones Reynolds-Barbara Walters brouhana.
Amanda Congdon, star of the video blog Rocketboom, is gone.
For the unfamiliar — and that’s probably most of you — Rocketboom started in New York in 2004. Andrew Baron, a video producer, hired Congdon to produce a daily Internet show. The Web site featured a daily three-minute video combining tech and pop culture news. Congdon became a phenomenon as she attracted a reported 300,000 viewers daily. Some say it was her quirky delivery. Some say it was the offbeat content. (And Sara Kehaulani Goo wrote today in The Washington Post that Congdon’s attractiveness didn’t hurt, either, in drawing audience.) The Post article reported that Rocketboom asked for ad bids on eBay and brought in $40,000 to $85,000 a week at times. Under the original agreement, Baron owned 51 percent and Congdon 49 percent of Rocketboom.
A lot of industry bloggers were cheering for Rocketboom because they hoped a video blog could prove to be financially successful.
What happens now to Rocketboom — and Congdon — remains unclear. “I’m not on vacation — not by a long shot,” Congdon said on her own video blog, Amanda UnBoomed. “Here I am, unboomed. My partner, Andrew Baron, is no longer interested in being my partner.” She later wrote that she was staying with her parents in Connecticut until she “can get back on her feet.”
The blogosphere erupted in reports that Congdon had been fired. Baron told The Post and countless media sources that he didn’t know Congdon was leaving Rocketboom until he saw her video blog. According to Baron, Congdon wanted to move to Los Angeles, but he and the rest of Rocketboom wanted her to wait until they figured out how to make the move financially. “Amanda decided she was not able to stay in NYC any longer ….” Baron wrote in one e-mail.
Bloggers lamented the loss of Congdon. It’s quite clear she has her legion of fans. Jason Calacanis of Weblogs, Inc,, now part of AOL, offered Amanda a job at Netscape. Baron even made a very public appeal to Congdon on her blog, to which she added extensive comments, maintaining she was fired and reminding Baron that she still owned 49 percent of Rocketboom.
Calacanis chided both in a later post — Baron for how he treated her and Congdon for how she reacted. “The whole thing is a mess and everyone winds up losing.”
Rocketboom reports that it will have an interim host Monday. We’ll see how that goes. But the intriguing news at the moment is going on in the blogosphere. What will happen to Amanda Cogdon? What will happen to Rocketboom? And what does this mean for those wanting to turn video blogging into a profitable industry?
This story is probably far from over.
Google: Hype or hit?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Google critics and fans in the blogosphere are having their say reacting to a volume of recent articles and posts on the search engine giant.
— Business Week got the ball rolling with an article which essentially questioned why other competitors quake at the release of each new Google beta product. The writer notes “there’s not a market leader among them.”
“The problem is that every time Google branches out, it struggles with the very thing that makes its search engine so successful: simplicity. The minimalist Google home page offers a stark contrast with the cluttered sites of key rivals Yahoo and MSN. People go to Google to find information fast. So Google can’t showcase its plethora of new products without jeopardizing this sleek interface and the popularity that generates a $6 billion geyser of cash from search ads. But the lack of exposure for its new products means only 10% of Google visitors use it for anything other than Web and image searches, says Hitwise.”
— Blogger Scott Karp on Publishing 2.0 thinks it’s unrealistic to suggest that every new Google product be as innovative as their search engine. “So why hasn’t Google launched anything as successful as the original search? Because it’s a pretty darn tough act to follow. Google search was life-changing for everyone on the Web, but life-changing applications don’t come along that often.”
— There have even been dueling posts on where the Web would be today if Google hadn’t come along. One blogger writes “our mail account would still have 2MB or 4MB of storage and we would be happy about that.” Karp counters in a post headlined “If Google Didn’t Exist…The Upside” that “maybe there wouldn’t be such a bubble in Web 2.0 start-ups with so many me-too apps, because developers would be forced to think more about business models and REAL innovation — without the crutch of AdSense cash …”
— Don Dodge of Microsoft takes a long-range view. Yes, GoogleMaps is second in market share to MapQuest and GoogleNews is second to Yahoo. And, yes, there is no revenue there at the moment. However, Dodge cautions: “We underestimate the long-term impact of new developments. While the hype today is way overblown, long term some of these products could turn out to be big winners.”
Meanwhile, The New York Times has a favorable piece today on Google Trends, the product which allows users to check the relative popularity of any search term, to look at how it has changed over the last couple of years and to see the cities where the term is most popular. The Times piece refers to Google Trends as “addictive.”
However, blogger Donna Bogatin on ZDnet is quick to point out that Google Trends is not a “real economic phenomenon” that The Times applauds, but just an “entertaining” service.
I could go on …
We’ve asked your feelings about Google before, but heard back only politically based comments. What do you think about Google’s products and the constant beta releases and public testing? Do you think there is too much hype about Google’s services or has the company earned its press?
Women prefer cell gaming
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Some new surveys and studies relating to mobile phones and media devices.
— Women like electronic gaming on cellphones more than men, according to a study from market research and consulting firm Parks Associates. Why? Not as many shoot-‘em-up games. Also, CosmicTap.com blogger Anthony Citrano tells TechWeb: “Men think a little more compartmentalized about objects, whereas women are more likely to accept that a phone isn’t just a talking device, but rather a music device, entertainment device, gaming device.”
— While we read every day about the ways you can send others photos and video from your cellphone, the concept clearly hasn’t caught on. A Harris Interactive survey found only 18 percent of mobile subscribers have sent pictures and 3 percent video clips. While the numbers were higher for the 18-39 crowd, thery were still in the single digits for video. Almost three-fourths of those surveyed said they didn’t have any need to send pictures or video.
—More men (25 percent) own mp3 players than women do (16 percent), according to a quarterly report from Ipsos, the global market research firm. Not surprisingly, half of U.S. teens own mp3 players while one-third do in the 18-34 age group and 13 percent in the 35-54 bracket.
— Italian researchers reported in a study last week that cellphone emissions excite the part of the brain cortex nearest to the phone, but it is not clear if these effects are harmful. According to Reuters, the researchers stressed that they had not shown that using a cellphone is bad, but people with conditions such as epilepsy, linked with brain cell excitability, could potentially be affected. Earlier studies of cellphone effects on health have been mixed. The Italian researchers say more study is needed.
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