As Seen on TV -- in Japan

on Wall Street Journal
by Aaron Rutkoff, June 13, 2006

As YouTube and Google Video upload clips at a blistering rate, navigating these online repositories can be a challenge. For one television producer, the ocean of clips screams out for self-appointed curators willing to scour massive video clearinghouses and pluck out hidden gems.

His mission: Share the often-bizarre world of Japanese TV with the rest of us.

The Gimmick

"TV in Japan1," launched in April, operates under the assumption that there is something intrinsically fascinating about Japanese pop culture. It's not a stretch -- Godzilla, poorly dubbed martial arts movies, anime cartoons and contemporary TV imports like "Iron Chef2" and "Most Extreme Elimination Challenge3" have been entertaining fans for decades.

This segment, from an unidentified game show, is typical "TV in Japan" fare. In the half-minute clip, serious-looking men in white uniforms tickle the bare feet of two female contestants, who are judged on their ability to not laugh. More amusing are the questions left unanswered: Who are the men in insect costumes watching the action? Is that commentator wearing a fake goatee? Why are the contestants dressed in matching orange frocks and furry caps?

Even if subjected to an expert translation, it is unlikely that this ecstatic rap about Prime Minster Junichero Koizumi5, delivered by a shirtless man in black spandex pants, could ever be placed into reasonable context.

The video blog plays off the same American-in-Tokyo dislocation as the hit film "Lost in Translation," in which two unlikely ex-pats seek familiarity in Japan's media-saturated, high-tech culture. (Fans of the film may be surprised to discover, via "TV in Japan," that the hyperkinetic talk-show host who conducts a surreal interview with Bill Murray's character is an actual talk-show host in Japan6.)

To Gavin Purcell, a 31-year-old TV producer from Los Angeles, the point isn't to explain away the perceived strangeness. Most posts offer little in the way of context, and the majority of clips lack subtitles. "The greatest thing about these clips is that they sort of live on their own," he says. "If you try to explain what's happening, you take away from the mystique."
['Zuiikin English,' an aerobics-based method of learning English, became an obsession on 'TV in Japan.']
'Zuiikin English,' an aerobics-based method of learning English, became an obsession on the 'TV in Japan' blog.

He sometimes gives in to his curiosity. "Zuiikin' English7," an educational program that purports to teach English by combining situational drama and highly repetitive aerobics, demanded investigation. "As far as I can tell, it's real," Mr. Purcell explains. "It could be a big joke there, but it looks real." (Click here8 to see the show's explanatory segment, as well as the Zuiikin aerobic dance trio stepping to the phrase "I was robbed by two men;" more on Mr. Purcell's effort to understand the show here9.)

A typical blog post includes a wry headline above an embedded video clip and a purposefully naïve summary: "This is how you make bread10," reads one post describing a segment from a variety show. "By delivering unto it shots of furious anger. With mallets [and] a strong hand. On TV. In Japan."

Those four words -- on TV, in Japan -- end each entry with wide-eyed minimalism. "I wanted to message it differently and not have a 'ha ha' attitude about everything," Mr. Purcell explains.
The Idea

"TV in Japan" is decidedly frivolous, but as Mr. Purcell sees it, also practical. "This is a really weird time on the Internet, where technology is allowing people to post stuff they've had in their video collections forever," he says.

The explosive growth of online video-hosting services like YouTube, which adds an astonishing 50,000 video clips a day11, is changing how people access entertainment. Videos can be uploaded anywhere, anytime. And they can unexpectedly blow up into hits, as did the Saturday Night Live sketch "Lazy Sunday12" or the impromptu "Bus Uncle13" argument about feeling pressure.
'ON TV. IN JAPAN.'

"TV in Japan" blogger Gavin Purcell provides links to his favorite Japanese television clips.

• Spider-Man + Japanese = Awesome14

• Otaku From the U.S.A.15

• Hypnotic Caterpillars Ice Tea Ad16

• The God Tongue17

• The Penalty for Laughing18


One drawback of the boundless realm of videos is that clip seekers are often at the mercy of search algorithms. "There aren't a lot of sites that are good at aggregating video clips," Mr. Purcell says. "There is no Digg19 for clips."

The most well known online video curators, he observes, are the raunchy humorists behind popular frat-boy humor Web sites like GorillaMask.net, Break.com and CollegeHumor.com. Thanks to these sites, bikini-clad models, practical jokes, skateboarding stunts gone awry and other "not safe for work" clips are at surfers' fingertips.

Mr. Purcell's clip hunting is straightforward, if laborious: He spends an hour or two each day searching the major video-hosting sites for new additions tagged "Japan" or "Japanese," and often traces good hits back to the source. He uses Google's translation software to navigate Japanese blogs. "I do see a lot more clips than appear on the blog," Mr. Purcell says. "I like to think I'm very discerning." He estimates he cans 20 clips for each one he posts.

Even with hours logged in the virtual Pacific culture, "I probably understand 30 words of Japanese," he says.
The Creator

Mr. Purcell traces his love of Japanese TV back to a videocassette he found when he was 12 years old at his local rental store. It was of the Japanese game show "Za Gaman20," in which contestants are subjected to what appears (by U.S. standards, at least) to be abject torture. In one segment, players hiked up a mountain, submerged themselves in ice water and consumed large quantities of cold soup and beer. The winner: the last man to use a nearby outhouse.
[An ecstatic rap about Prime Minster Junichero Koizumi.]
An ecstatic rap about Prime Minster Junichero Koizumi.

After college, Mr. Purcell spent a year in Seoul teaching English, experiencing cultural dislocation firsthand. "It was alienating and off-putting -- in a good way," he recalls.

Only after working as a producer for a pop-culture program called "Attack of the Show21" on the G4 cable network did his fascination with Japanese TV return. While in Tokyo covering a videogame convention, Mr. Purcell spent his free time holed up in his hotel room watching local TV. "All the shows were just like what I remembered from when I was 12," he says. "It was amazing."

As a TV producer, Mr. Purcell is aware of the marginal legality of his blog. Clips posted on "TV in Japan" would be pulled down in the face of a copyright complaint, he insists, though he hasn't faced such a challenge. Without his blog, few in America would access such videos, he argues. "I am not trying to ive myself a pass, but I do feel that it's important." He hopes one day to be part of a "network of blogs that gathered stuff like this from around the world."
The Tipping Point

After his blog launched in April, Mr. Purcell set out to build an audience. He wrote about his efforts to popularize "TV in Japan" on yet another blog22, as he recounts in a post entitled "TV in Japan -- The Marketing Sidestory23." After gathering a few dozen clips and hyping his new blog to friends and co-workers, his daily page views topped off at a rather paltry 136. He then introduced his blog, via email, to the bigger players in the blogosphere.

Screenhead, an offbeat video blog in Nick Denton's Gawker Media empire, took the bait24 but did little to augment Mr. Purcell's traffic stats. An approving link25 from BoingBoing, one of the largest tech-culture blogs, briefly knocked his daily page views into four-figure territory. Now, Mr. Purcell reports, "TV in Japan" brings in about 5,000 page views a day from some 4,000 unique viewers. The blog carries Google ads but generates little revenue.

He is a firm believer in the marketing prowess of MySpace, where the profile of his oddball blog26 has already won over hundreds of "friends." Those friends, in turn, help widen his exposure within their own online social spheres, he says, "especially those not in that first circle of nerd-dom that my blog attracts."

Clicks from MySpace now account for 10% of "TV in Japan" traffic, and Mr. Purcell expects that number to grow. The blog has devotees: "A lot of British people, a lot of Spanish people, people from all over Europe," he says. "I think it goes to show you that Japanese weirdness really resonates around the globe."

And what do actual Japanese people make of "TV in Japan"? So far, they are "very cool" about it, helping to translate and explain the more befuddling videos. Some even tip off Mr. Purcell to new clips.

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Evolution of YouTube could mark beginning of age of personal media

on USA Today
by Kevin Maney, June 13, 2006


SAN MATEO, Calif. — This place can't be the nexus of a global entertainment experiment. Can't be home to the entity that unleashed a couple of paradigm-bending phenomena, namely Bus Uncle and The Evolution of Dance.

For crying out loud, it's an unmarked glass door between Ni-Mo Japanese Cuisine and Amici's cafe.

But, yep, this is YouTube. And there's co-founder Steve Chen, sitting on a ledge outside with a large coffee and his cellphone — looking, with his always-spiky hair, like a wayward clerk from a skateboard shop.

Go inside and up the stairs and the place feels like a cross between a fraternity and your great aunt's living room. Red floor-to-ceiling curtains from Ikea act as room dividers. The break area is an exposed sink next to shelves stocked with chips and Doritos. The 30 employees work at desks scattered around an open floor, with toys and musical instruments propped in between.

These are confusing times in the media, and YouTube is making it more so. In a charming but frustrating way, the company doesn't even pretend to know how it's going to change the concept of media in coming years.

There is a sense that YouTube accidentally built a rocket and is willing to hang on to see where it goes. Co-founders Chen and Chad Hurley can be like the main characters in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, who go for joy rides in a time-traveling phone booth and marvel at where they land with a "Whoa, duuuude!"

"There are so many things we can do," says Chen. "We'll wait and see what happens in the market."

"We're in a position where, if we think about something (for the site), we can just do it," says Hurley.

In the meantime, as 35,000 videos are uploaded to YouTube each day, the site has become the primordial ooze out of which rise new forms of video entertainment. Case in point: Bus Uncle.

Back in May, YouTube turned on technology that makes it easier to send video from cellphones directly to the site. "It will be interesting to see what content will be like when everyone who has a cellphone with them can take video of anything," Chen said then.

About the same time, YouTube enabled something it calls "spinoff and response video." It's a way to alter or respond to video on the site, posting it like comments in a blog, so there's a threaded series of videos.

All of that came together when, on a public bus one night in Hong Kong, passenger Elvis Ho tapped the shoulder of the man sitting in front of him, Roger Chan. Ho asked Chan to talk more quietly on his cellphone.

Chan snapped, turned around and berated Ho for six minutes with raunchy language and a line that's becoming a catchphrase: "I've got pressure!" Across the aisle, Jon Fong quietly captured the harangue on video using his cellphone and posted the clip on YouTube.

It turned into a sensation — first in Hong Kong, then around the world. People quickly added subtitles, set the video to music and shot spoof versions. The different versions of Bus Uncle— so named because Ho began by addressing Chan as "uncle," which is polite in China — have been viewed at least 3 million times.

The Evolution of Dance is simpler but bigger. It is a six-minute routine by comedian Judson Laipply — just him doing different dances of the past 50 years. Posted a couple of weeks ago, it's been viewed more than 23 million times.

These videos follow in the grand tradition of other Internet phenomena such as the dancing baby, or JibJab's This Land is Your Land. YouTube, though, takes what had been random and gives it order — some semblance of a system. And because of that, Web-based video is flourishing. As Hurley says, "We've built a short-form entertainment experience."

In his essay Farewell Information, It's a Media Age, futurist Paul Saffo called this the beginning of the age of personal media. Instead of monolithic media entities firing news and entertainment one way, personal media means that it flows in lots of directions. Consumers can make and post videos that get seen by millions. This rise of the creator-consumer is the same trend that fueled blogs and amateur music sites such as GarageBand.com.

And, Saffo adds, "The shift from mass to personal inevitably translates into big changes in market structures."

Advertisers want in

Again, that's only beginning. On YouTube, the average user watches 30 minutes of videos a day, though the average length of each video viewed is about 2 minutes. The site just began accepting limited advertising, validating its concept with money.

When I ask Hurley if advertisers are seeking out YouTube, he replies, "More than we can deal with. Potential partners — that's another wave of e-mails. We're having discussions with all the major studios, (record) labels and networks."

The owners of mass media content want to seed YouTube with movie clips, promos and music videos — which are, in a Twilight Zone-ish twist, designed to pull consumers back into mass media from the personal media that's about to eat into the mass media's audience and income.

Then again, YouTube brings up the question of what constitutes mass media. If 23 million people around the world see The Evolution of Dance— that's pretty mass. Yet it's still niche and personal and user-created. It's all those things, which is what makes this moment so confounding, and so ripe with possibilities.

What does all this mean to the media business? There isn't a soul who really knows — except to know it means that a tiny company above a Japanese restaurant can alter the balance of the entire industry.

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Social networks — future portal or fad?

on ZD Net
by Stefanie Olsen, June 14, 2006

Analysis: Investors can't decide if social communities companies are next-generation portals, or merely flash-in-the-pan communities that will fade from popularity like other one-time high-fliers

Social networks like MySpace and Facebook are the zeitgeist for online executives and investors, just as they are for millions of young people.

But attendees at the Piper Jaffray Global Internet Summit in Laguna Beach, California still can't decide if these companies are next-generation portals, or merely flash-in-the-pan communities that will eventually fade from popularity like one-time high-fliers Geocities or AOL.

Telling evidence stacks up on both sides.

On the one hand, MySpace's scope of services and member traffic rivals that of many major portals. Since launching three years ago, MySpace, now owned by News Corp., has added email, instant messaging and blog services, as well as jobs, video, book and music stores. According to founding MySpace member Colin Digiaro, who spoke on Tuesday, the company is talking to "all the usual suspects and unusual suspects" about licensing Web search technology to accommodate a growing demand among its 50 million members for that functionality. (It currently uses Yahoo search for internal site search and displays Overture ads for Web search results.)

"We're trying to find the best-of-breed search functionality," Digiaro said.

What's more, MySpace's monthly traffic figures have trumped those of MSN and AOL, according to ComScore Media, and they comprise about 75 percent of Yahoo's, the No. 1 site on the Web. Anecdotally, the time teens and college kids spend on MySpace is stealing time they would otherwise spend watching TV, according to an informal focus group of young and older teens interviewed at the conference.

MySpace's "goal was to become a next-generation portal", Digiaro said. "I think we're there."

Trouble ahead for MySpace?
On the other hand, these social communities could turn out to be fads among capricious Web surfers, sceptics say. After all, rudimentary social networks have always been around in communities like AOL and Geocities. And if comments made during the same focus group of young and older teens are any indication, MySpace could be headed into trouble with a thriving portion of its members. The aging kids talked about tiring of MySpace and moving on to other social networks or activities, much the way some kids have left AOL's instant-messaging service.

"I'm starting to get over it," said Juliana, a 21-year-old living in Orange County, who said she's now into Faceclick, another, newer social network for college kids.

Monica, an 18-year-old who's enrolled at UCLA in the fall, said she's further along with MySpace, opting to spend her more than eight hours a day online at sites like photo-sharing service Photobucket.com and Acidplanet.com, a music-hosting site. "I used to be into MySpace and now I'm getting over it."

Still, younger teens interviewed said that they were big users of MySpace, spending hours honing their member profiles. And 80 percent of MySpace's demographic skews over 18 years old.

Safa Rashtchy, a senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray, compared the social networks to the walled garden environments of AOL and eBay, two companies that have lost favour among investors. He asked whether people ultimately like to stay within these online walled gardens.

Also, it's unclear whether advertisers are spending enough with social networks to make their free services profitable. During a panel discussion of advertisers, ad executives said that many marketers don't want to associate their brands with the sometimes risque or inappropriate material that can surface on the social networks from their members.

When pressed by industry observers, executives at MySpace and Facebook declined to say whether they are profitable. As part of Newscorp., MySpace is not required to report its finances. Owen Van Natta, chief operating officer of college-focused social directory Facebook, which is privately held, joked that it's a "definite maybe".

Some panelists still took this as a sign that these companies, despite hosting user-generated content that generally doesn't cost as much to support as staff editorial, were not profitable. The cost of advertising rates at these sites aren't typically at a premium, either, making it unclear how much MySpace and Facebook are benefiting from growing online ad sales.

In its defence, Digiaro, MySpace senior vice president of sales and business development, said that the company works with all major advertisers in various vertical markets, including the Cokes and Ford Motors of the world. MySpace also commands ad premiums for such areas within its music and video stores, he said.

He said to retain teen surfers, which comprise about 20 percent of its total audience, MySpace has introduced new features faster than rivals and has developed a lasting social connection with members that increases as their history of blog posts and email amasses. The company also plans to expand internationally, starting with the UK and Ireland, and get on mobile handsets across the United States.

He also suggested that MySpace could eventually introduce a transportable persona that members could take with them to other services.

"Social networks will continue to evolve," he said.

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News Corp targets online ad technology

on Financial Times
by Aline van Duyn, June 14, 2006

In an effort to increase its ability to selladvertising against the growing audience of MySpace.com and other internet properties, News Corp is considering acquiring companies with technology that could help place ads online.

Peter Chernin, president and chief operating officer of News Corp, said at a conference that the company was focused on various ad-serving technologies because it needs to find a way to monetise its traffic.

Following News Corp's acquisition of MySpace last year for $580m, the social networking site's audience has grown sharply, and it is now the second most popular internet site in terms of page views after Yahoo.

Display advertising, which is only a small part of the rapidly growing internet advertising business, could grow to be worth $600m to
$800m within a few years, Mr Chernin said.

The vast majority of online advertising budgets is spent on search advertising, dominated by Google.

Mr Chernin said there were a number of steps News Corp planned to take to gain a share of the money spent on search advertising. As well as highlighting search links on MySpace and other internet pages, Mr Chernin said a search contract might be auctioned off to one of the big three players: Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN.

The Financial Times recently reported that discussions had taken place about a search deal with MySpace and the three biggest search engines.

However, people familiar with the talks said that the most interest was from Google and MSN.

MySpace is one of the few big sites with a significant internet audience that is not yet aligned with one or other of the search groups.

Last year, AOL extended a deal with Google, with MSN losing its effort to gain AOL as a search partner.

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Not So Neutral: The Debate Over 'Net Neutrality' Is Roiling the World Wide Web; Moby vs. Welfare for Billionaires

on Wall Street Journal
by Dionne Searcery and Amy Schatz, June 14, 2006

When it comes to the brewing debate over "Net neutrality," there's nothing neutral about it -- especially on the Net.

In one corner of the World Wide Web, a group of singers dubbing itself The Broadband croons "God Save the Internet," while in another, a video warns of the dangers of a "socialized Internet."

People on both sides of the issue -- but mostly those who favor Net neutrality, or treating all Internet traffic the same -- have turned to the Web to get out their messages in a complicated debate before Congress now. More than a dozen online videos sound off on whether Congress should let cable and phone companies create a two-tiered Internet that could end up with content providers, such as Google Inc., paying to ensure speedier delivery of their services.

Should the Net be neutral? Craiglist founder Craig Newmark, a net neutrality proponent, and former White House spokesman Mike McCurry, who heads a phone industry group, debate the issue in Reply All2.

Much of the Web debate is financed by an alliance of liberal interest groups, such as MoveOn.org, and high-tech companies, such as Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc., on one side, and by the telecom industry, which is relying more heavily on traditional lobbying, on the other. Both sides are flying pro-Internet flags with themes like "defenders of the Internet" (for many of the Democrats and high-tech firms) and "hands off the Internet" (for many of the Republicans and phone and cable companies that sell Internet connections).

One of the video clips, which was produced by MoveOn.org, features the musician Moby trying to convince confused pedestrians outside of the U.S. Capitol to support laws that would force phone and cable companies to treat all Internet traffic equally as it flows over their networks. Over on telecom-backed NetCompetition.org, the video warning of "a socialized Internet," decries "corporate welfare for dot-com billionaires."

Then there is "Ask a Ninja." In "Net Neutrality Ninja," a man in a black Ninja outfit offers a comic rant about the dangers of giving Internet providers too much control over content. If that happens he warns that some of the more off-beat offerings could disappear. "That's what the Internet is all about, people in funny hats making things that people like," says the Ninja.

Filmed in the Los Angeles apartment of Kent Nichols, a comedian, the video has been seen more than 290,000 times on YouTube.com and was referenced last week during debate on the House floor over a Net neutrality law. Mr. Nichols, 30 years old, came up with the video while struggling to explain the issue to his business partner. He says he wasn't paid to do the video.

As their networks become increasingly clogged with high-capacity services, phone and cable companies want to be able to strike deals with content companies that will offer speedy delivery for music and videos, for example. But smaller content companies worry they'll be priced out of the market, and consumer groups fear it would give cable and phone companies too much power over content.

Adding urgency to the debate is an upcoming fight in the Senate. Prospects don't look good for the Net-neutrality fans, who lost in the House, where lawmakers killed a Democratic amendment to toughen Net-neutrality rules.

"We know we're not going to win this fight inside the Beltway," says Alan Davidson, Google's top lobbyist, who guided co-founder Sergey Brin around Congress last week to personally appeal to key senators.

While the underlying themes of "equality of access" and "stifling regulation" are relatively simple, everyone on both sides is struggling to explain the issue.

"I'm trying to figure out a way to shorten 'proscriptive government controls over products and services delivered over the Internet' into one or two words. It ain't easy!" a Hill aide groused recently. Republican Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska told a group of cable executives last week, "The more I seek to find what the problem is, the harder job I have of trying to define it."

Enter the vocal blogger community and online crowd, who are taking a stab at mustering support for their views.

To that end, The Broadband -- three female vocalists who formed the band solely to promote Net neutrality -- sing, "Some of the folks in our Congress want to send us back to the days of the Pony Express and slow our speediness....Jesus wouldn't mess with our Internet." They are aligned with savetheinternet.com, a coalition of mostly left-leaning groups including MoveOn.org, but also the Christian Coalition of America.

While several economists and telecom wonks have blogged in favor of the side of the phone and cable companies, they're in the minority online. In early May, Verizon Communications Inc. emailed an invitation for a blogger-only conference call, since "those pushing Net neutrality, egged on by MoveOn.org, have had this debate mostly to themselves," according to the email. On the call were some bloggers who already had their mind made up about the issue, and they weren't on Verizon's side.

To help get their message out online, the phone companies hired former Clinton press secretary Mike McCurry to lead their PR effort. Mr. McCurry has waded into the debate on popular blogs, such as the Huffington Post. They also enlisted the help of Scott Cleland, a former independent telecom analyst who's now being paid as advocate for the Internet providers.

"It comes down to intelligent arguments, not just frenzy," said David Fish, a spokesman for Verizon, which, along with other phone and cable companies, insists it has no plans to block Internet sites.

Outspent and out-manned by phone and cable companies in Washington, high-tech firms in particular are counting on activists on the Web. EBay Inc.'s Meg Whitman recently emailed a personal appeal to more than a million of the online auction site's members telling them that the phone and cable companies want to create a "pay-to-play, high-speed toll road" system that only the largest companies could afford to access. MoveOn.org has enlisted help from more than 10,000 users of MySpace.com to sign up as friends of the campaign.

Because of all the rhetoric, Net neutrality has become such a hot-button issue that some companies have found themselves the target of advocates who are quick to jump on any kink in Internet service as a new battlefield in the debate. Recently, bloggers sent out fiery missives against Cox Communications Inc. because some subscribers had trouble accessing online classifieds Web site Craigslist. Turns out it was an incompatibility problem between Craigslist and Cox's security software that is being remedied.

"We don't block or otherwise impede access to any legal Web site," said David Grabert, a spokesman for Cox. "Unfortunately, a few customers who experienced this difficulty drew the wrong conclusions about what was happening."

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Surge in Online Video Challenges Music Industry

on Wall Street Journal
by Kevin J. Delaney and Ethan Smith, June 10, 2006

The music industry is grappling again with how to protect its copyrights on the Internet, as amateur videos featuring commercial songs flood the Web.

Some of the most popular videos on sites such as YouTube and Google Video show amateurs lip synching to music by the Backstreet Boys, *Nsync and other pop artists. Many home-videos posted on such sites include songs as soundtracks, as well as snippets of concerts captured by music fans with their cellphone cameras. Virtually all this material is put online without securing permission from the owner of the rights.

The concerns have taken root as the popularity of video sites -- which allow users to post their own and view others' videos -- has exploded, thanks in part to the spread of high-speed Internet connections and the rapidly expanding amount of amateur and commercial content online.

One of the most popular video sites, YouTube Inc. of San Mateo, Calif., was founded only in February 2005, but has seen its traffic increase dramatically. Each day, YouTube says, consumers upload more than 50,000 videos to its site, and watch its online videos more than 50 million times. Companies including Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and CNET Networks Inc., have gotten into the act too.

But with the videos attracting millions of users -- and a rising amount of advertising revenue -- some in the music industry are debating whether to attempt a crackdown. At a May meeting of the Recording Industry Association of America, the industry's main trade group, the world's largest music company, Universal Music Group, pushed for an aggressive stance against amateur videos using commercial songs.

For now, the strongest option on the table appears to be sending legal notices to video-sharing sites advising them to remove copyrighted songs, according to people familiar with the discussions. Lawsuits have not yet been raised as a serious prospect. Some executives say they remain more concerned about issues like pirated professional music-video content and the online sharing of music files that remains rampant.

But concerns about music in amateur videos could come to a head as Internet companies begin generating significant revenue from the ads displayed alongside them. The music industry's considerable legal and commercial firepower, if wielded, could make it harder for those companies to raise financing, attract advertisers or cut business deals. Among other things, record companies also have commercial relationships around the distribution of music videos with many of the Internet players. The music industry could try to leverage those relationships to get the video sites to crack down.

Some predict that the industry will sharpen its focus on the issue as ad revenue grows. "When it gets big enough, they will go after it," says Gerd Leonhard, CEO of Sonific LLC, an Alameda, Calif., digital music licensing startup.

The National Music Publishers' Association said in a written statement that it is "concerned about sites that are deriving profit from unlicensed use of music." The trade group added that it would "monitor the situation."

The video sites say they're on firm legal ground, and very different from the file-sharing companies, such as the original incarnation of Napster, that music labels have targeted previously. YouTube and others remove any infringing content when formally requested to do so, under a recognized procedure that some legal experts say protects them from liability. Some sites also post warnings that uploading videos containing commercial music without permission can violate copyrights, and say they plan to offer libraries of licensed music that consumers can legally use in their videos to discourage infringement.

Generally Protected
Some legal experts say the video sites likely are generally protected as long as they comply with any so-called take-down notices sent by music companies asking them to remove videos containing their songs. That approach, outlined in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, is how the sites generally handle copyrighted video. "As long as the sites are complying with letters being sent it's going be hard for a court, under existing law, to shut down the services," says Daniel Harris, an attorney and global head of the intellectual property group at Clifford Chance in Menlo Park, Calif.

Still, the tension underscores the sometimes unexpected consequences as the Web blurs the line between private and public content, allowing consumers to post home videos to audiences of millions with a click or two. It also raises questions for the music, TV and film companies, which want to keep tight control on their products while capitalizing on any sales-boosting buzz they can get.

"There are a lot of questions about whether a quality remix of background music with good video imagery is positive publicity" for the music companies, says Jason Zajac, Yahoo general manager of social media. "It definitely has not been nailed down and I think even the music industry's views will evolve over time."

In the battle against file sharing, music companies have taken a strict approach, suing individuals and Web sites linked to copyright infringement. But such legal campaigns are costly and can negatively affect public opinion.

This time around, in a philosophical shift, some in the industry are seeking instead to reach business arrangements before issuing legal threats. Both Warner Music Group Corp. and Universal Music, a division of Vivendi Universal SA, are exploring a variety of possibilities with YouTube and others, including sharing any revenue from ads displayed when their songs are playing.

"They're definitely concerned about their rights. We are too," says Chad Hurley, chief executive of YouTube. "But the discussions are revolving around the opportunities."

Recording-industry executives say they were encouraged to see YouTube and other video sites recently enter negotiations with Broadcast Music Inc. and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, which collect royalties on behalf of songwriters when their music is played in public or broadcast. Both Ascap and BMI say they are working toward setting rates for use of their members' compositions on video services. Both organizations base royalty rates either on a licensee's revenue or on the number of times listeners hear a licensed piece of music.

But even those looking to forge ties with video sites remain wary as the phenomenon spreads. "I'm not going to embrace these guys and try to figure out a legitimate business model for two years," says Alex Zubillaga, Warner Music's executive vice president for digital strategy.

Others say they want to make video sites prove to be more than flashes in the pan before they invest time and energy in reaching licensing accords. "We draw a distinction between what is a phenomenon versus what is a new business model," says Adam Klein, EMI Music's executive vice president for strategy. EMI Music is part of EMI Group PLC.

Meanwhile, some companies are pushing ahead. The CEO of video site Grouper Networks Inc., Josh Felser, says his company is in discussions with music companies about promotional relationships that will allow Grouper users to legally use tunes as soundtracks in their videos. Grouper's software includes a video-editing application that will provide one way for users to access cleared music. Mr. Felser expects the first songs to be available by next month. Pump Audio LLC, which licenses independent artists' music for uses such as TV shows and commercials, says it is in talks with Internet companies to let users tap most of its catalog of 65,000 tracks for their videos.

Technological Solutions
There also are some technological solutions being examined. YouTube is one of several companies that says it is exploring technology that can automatically spot commercial tunes in order to remove them or share related ad revenue. Gracenote Inc. has created digital fingerprints of roughly nine million songs, and says it can identify tracks from excerpts as short as four seconds. The Emeryville, Calif., company says its technology could be used to pinpoint specific commercial songs in the video sites' databases, but declines to say whether it's discussing that with any of the sites.

Still, many of the most popular songs likely won't be cleared for inclusion in amateur videos. And for now it remains easy for consumers to slap commercial music tracks into their videos without permission, using home-editing software such as Apple's iMovie, and upload the result to the Web. It also is tough for video sites to sift through the tens of millions of videos available online in search of music excerpts.

One day this past week, the most-watched video on YouTube showed a young woman lip-synching to "United States of Whatever," a novelty song by a singer named Liam Lynch.

Other popular clips in recent months have included no fewer than two juggling routines choreographed to the Beatles' "Golden Slumbers," "Carry That Weight" and "The End," and at least two others that show comedians offering a "history of dance" set to medleys of songs by Elvis Presley, the Bee Gees, Michael Jackson and others. And more than one million viewers have viewed a clip of two Chinese students cartoonishly grimacing as they lip synch to the Backstreet Boys' hit "I Want It That Way."

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The 100 best products of the year

on PC World
by Alan Stafford, July 1, 2006

YOU KNOW HOW many new-product pitches we get every year? Thousands, each declaring that the item is the best in its category. Though many of the companies making these claims are clearly delusional, some creations do stand as superbly designed top performers in their field--and you'll find all of them right here in our roster of the 100 best products of the year.

We rated each candidate on its design, performance, and specifications. We generally did not consider price in our evaluations; instead, we looked for products that represent the cream of the crop. But in compiling our list, some products were such great bargains that we couldn't ignore them. Of course, ranking laptops and Linux distributions in one place is tricky, but we used the same scoring system for each candidate and assessed them as consistently as we could. This year we have also assigned each candidate an "impact" score, to recognize significant products that changed the technology landscape. And last, we ranked every World Class award winner by its final score, creating our list of the year's top 100 products.

We've also identified a few of the year's most noteworthy companies, including our pick for the loser of the year. And we've named the 25 worst products of all time. For more information on our list of World Class products.

PRODUCT OF THE YEAR

1. INTEL CORE DUO Notebook/Desktop CPU ($450 and up) Intel's Core Duo provides multitasking power never before possible on a portable PC, and yet it supports astounding battery life for mobile devices. The Core Duo processor is so good that it's the CPU of choice not only for Windows laptops but also for Apple's Windows-capable laptop and for desktop Macs.
In today's mobile world, Core Duo gives Intel a leg up. AMD's Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core (#2) is astoundingly good, but AMD hasn't yet captured that power in a mobile version; and its notebook processors aren't nearly as potent or as battery-efficient as Intel's.
2. AMD ATHLON 64 X2 DUAL-CORE Desktop CPU ($300 and up) The most powerful desktop CPU ever made had a dual-core design first. If you need full power for increasingly demanding applications and you're tied to a desk, X2 is for you.
3. CRAIGSLIST.ORG Web Classifieds (mostly free) Now established in over 200 cities around the globe, this community classified-ad service puts the hurt on newspapers' overpriced classifieds. Sell a used piano or find a soul mate--gratis.
4. APPLE IPOD NANO Digital Audio Player ($149 to $249) You get up to 4GB of capacity in a tiny device that nevertheless has room for a crisp color display. It's scratch-prone, but it's still cool.
5. SEAGATE 160GB PORTABLE HARD DRIVE Portable Hard Drive ($380) This hard drive was one of the first to use perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology to pack more data into the same space. Another PMR-based Seagate hard drive, the Barracuda 7200.10, is the first desktop model to reach 750GB.
6. GOOGLE EARTH Satellite Imagery (free) News channels use Google Earth to zoom in on Iraq; you can use it to focus on neighboring houses, or to explore the rest of the world from your desktop.
7. ADOBE PREMIERE ELEMENTS 2 Video Editor ($100) This strong, stable video editing application costs about one-eighth as much as Premiere Pro, Adobe's professional video editor. And it's so good you may not notice the difference.
8. CANON EOS 30D Digital SLR Camera ($1499) An 8.2-megapixel shooter, the EOS 30D makes many of the pro-level features from Canon's EOS 5D available at a friendlier price. It also earned extremely high marks in our image-quality tests.
9. YOUTUBE.COM Video-Sharinq Site (free) Enjoy watching videos of every kind at this massive community of amateur videographers, and upload your own productions--at no cost.
10. APPLE BOOT CAMP Mac DualBooter (free) Astonishingly, Apple has finally given its blessing to running Windows on a Mac, with this utility. Next up: running the Mac OS on a Windows box--or pigs flying through the sky.

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Mixing Diet Coke and Mentos Makes a Gusher of Publicity

on Wall Street Journal
by Suzanne Vranica and Chad Terhune, June 12, 2006


What do you get if you mix Mentos mint candies and Diet Coke?

A. a science experiment

B. a liquid mess

C. a marketing coup

For Mentos, at least, the answer is a resounding C.

Hundreds of amateur videos have flooded the Internet in recent months showing an oddball experiment: people dropping the quarter-size Mentos candies into bottles of Diet Coke. The combination results in a geyser of soda that shoots as high as 20 feet into the air.

"It's a funny thing to do," says Sidney Shapiro, a 26-year-old student in Israel, who posted his film on Google Video last month.

The popularity of the videos -- Mentos says it has found some 800 online -- is producing a gusher of free publicity for the candy maker, a unit of Italian confectioner Perfetti Van Melle. "We are tickled pink by it," says Pete Healy, vice president of marketing for the company's U.S. division. The company spends less than $20 million on U.S. advertising annually. He estimates the value of online buzz to be "over $10 million." The company is considering striking a marketing deal with the two men responsible for one of the more elaborate videos -- using 101 two-liter bottles of Diet Coke and 523 Mentos to create a dancing fountain like the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas -- posted on EepyBird.com, Mr. Healy says.

Coca-Cola Co. is much more blasé. "It's an entertaining phenomenon," said Coke spokeswoman Susan McDermott. "We would hope people want to drink [Diet Coke] more than try experiments with it." Coke could use some extra buzz right now. Sales volume of Diet Coke in the U.S. was essentially flat last year, as consumers switch from diet sodas to bottled water and other noncarbonated drinks. But Ms. McDermott says that the "craziness with Mentos ... doesn't fit with the brand personality" of Diet Coke.

Despite Coke's "Who needs it?" attitude, the phenomenon shows how brands can take on a life of their own, particularly on the Internet. Mentos' Mr. Healy points out that Coke-Mentos experiments have been around for years, but they have been given a new jolt by the newfound fascination among young people to create video content and share it online.

Many companies that have spent years and millions of dollars nurturing a brand aggressively try to retain control of how it is portrayed in public. Last year, FedEx sent a Tempe, Ariz., man a cease-and-desist letter demanding he take down his Web site that showed furniture -- such as a desk and chairs -- made out of FedEx boxes. "The FedEx brand is one of our most valuable assets," says Howard Clabo, a FedEx spokesman. "In this particular instance, we simply asked that the violator stop using our brand for their personal benefit." The site was down for a brief period but reappeared earlier this year.

For Mentos, however, the video buzz offers an opportunity too good to pass up. The candy maker is considering hiring the Eepybird.com duo to do demonstrations of their fountain trick -- perhaps even as the opening act for a music-concert tour, says Mr. Healy.

The men, Fritz Grobe, a 37-year-old professional juggler, and Stephen Voltz, 48-year-old lawyer, from Buckfield, Me., belong to a local theater company called Oddfellow theater. They got the idea after seeing a less sophisticated version online, and "We wanted to make it bigger and better and turn it into something theatrical," says Mr. Grobe.

After experimenting with different combinations of sodas and candies -- establishing that Mentos and Diet Coke produced the most spectacular effect -- they posted their film on EepyBird.com, a site they operate, on June 3. By last Friday, more than 800,000 people had watched the video on Revver.com, a broadband-video site. The pair say they have also had calls from several late-night talk shows, including CBS's "Late Show with David Letterman."

"It's all very exciting, it's been a whirlwind of attention," says Mr. Grobe. "We would be happy to help Mentos," adds Mr. Voltz.

What's the chemistry behind the geyser? San Diego chemist Neal Langerman suggests the answer lies in the higher level of carbon dioxide in diet sodas than other sodas and the porous surface area of a Mentos. Mr. Langerman, the past chairman of the division of chemical health and safety at the American Chemical Society, said similar results wouldn't be achieved with an M&M, for instance, "which is really solid." Diet Coke has more carbon dioxide than Diet Pepsi, he says. Coke wouldn't comment on the comparison.

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The IM Generation in Charge - Part 2

on Always On, June 13, 2006

Taking a look at IMers and brands, big media, and user-generated content.

Online presence and social networking
IMers are increasingly using the Internet and other communication technologies to create social networks and cultivate their relationships. MySpace and Facebook are the two most popular social networks taking advantage of this new market opportunity. They let kids create profile pages, make connections, and post and share multimedia content. Most teens' networks still include substantial numbers of relatives, neighbors, and friends they met at school or at other real-world social events. Yet U.S. teens are now meeting up to 30% of their new friends online, according to Pew—although most of these new acquaintances are friends-of-friends.

One clear positive effect of the social networking phenomenon is simply that kids are communicating more, and they're constantly drawing on their network capital when they need help. While their immediate family communications still take place in-person, most kids keep up with their friends via the Web and other communications devices. Kids engage in the same kind of conversations online as in the real world; passing a note in class has just been replaced by text-messaging several friends at once.

MySpace ended up outflanking all the early social networks—including Kleiner Perkins-backed Friendster (which became dominated by Philippino and Singaporean kids) and Google's Orkut (overrun by Brazilians)—by promoting music and photo-sharing among its members. This underscores our earlier point that the primary characteristic differentiating the IM Generation from the more geeky PC Generation is the IMers' passion for posting and sharing content on the Web.

Remixers, bloggers, and creators of original content
According to the Pew researchers, more than 57% of U.S. teens have created content for the Internet. This includes creating blogs, personal webpages, and sharing original artwork, photos, stories, or videos. Remixing existing online content into new "mashup" creations is also very popular. Content remixing is equally prevalent across genders, ages, and socioeconomic groups. And surprisingly enough, Pew researchers found that teens with dial-up and teens with broadband remix at comparable levels.

Teens also tend to blog and read blogs more than adults. Approximately four million kids between 12 and 17 years old, or 19%, have created their own blog, compared to 9% of 30-somethings. Nearly 40% of IMers report regularly visiting blogs, compared to just 27% of those aged 29 to 40. As a result, the IMers are more in the habit of relying on and trusting non-traditional (that is, non-Big Media, non-Big Entertainment) sources. About 62% of blog-reading teens say they only read blogs written by people they know.

IMers are more conditioned to tap into their network of friends for knowledge, insight, and opinion on products and entertainment and major life decisions. Peer-network influence is now the dominant factor in the lives of these young folks, which makes it challenging to market to this demographic.

Smart brands will create their own open networks, where people can see each other and interact. "Brands that are closed and one-way will lose trust over time," says Steve Rubel, well-known PR blogger and senior vice president of PR agency Edelman.


More brand-conscious than not
According to the Energy BBDO's report GenWorld: The new Generation of Global Teens today's wired teens are resistant to traditional advertising messages, and more likely to be influenced by the people in their online networks.

The report does identify ways to speak to them without alienating them, but advises that marketers' potential strategies should include contacting these teens on their terms, in ways that let them communicate with each other and personalize what they receive. Open communication empowers this group and encourages optimism. This is why Rupert Murdoch's move to target 21-year-olds by building MySpace into a major portal seems viable.

Over time, it's likely that any brand that does not allow IMers to be openly interactive simply won't be trusted. Yet the consensus among marketing professionals is that popular brands are staying extremely relevant. If executed well, fashionable brands like Adidas and iPod can have the same connecting power with teens as a social network.

Interestingly enough, this study confirms a report by Michael Rogol of Hong Kong-based brokerage and investment banking firm CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets that AlwaysOn published last year. That report surveyed young adults in Japan and China, and noted that despite their penchant for saving, Chinese youth are highly aware of (particularly foreign) brands of automobiles, electronics, and clothing. Ditto for Japanese youth, who represent the most brand-conscious youth culture of all.


Media on the run
Kids not only taught us how to instant-message and how to program our mobile phones (and VCRs), but they're demonstrating that the "mobile PC" is the new client/server model. Of the teens Pew surveyed, 45% have mobile phones. A third of them have text-message access and use their mobile phones to access websites and services. They also use their mobile phones to take and send photos, record and send messages complemented by graphics and video clips, and serve up other multimedia content.

The mobile entertainment light bulb has gone off in the traditional entertainment industry as the result of the new mobile fixation. ABC, NBC, and the cable networks are now actively cutting deals to offer up TV shows for $1.99 a pop via Apple's iTunes, for playback on the new video iPod. Steve Jobs bragged that since he cut the deal with Disney last October and kicked off the new service to sell popular hits like Desperate Housewives and Lost, Apple sold more than eight million videos and TV shows in the service's first three months.

"This is the future as far as we are concerned," said Disney CEO Robert Iger. After years of denying that he was interested in the video distribution business (because it was technically too difficult and consumers weren't interested), Jobs was as effusive as his new partner on launch day: "This is the start of something really big," he predicted.

Marketers are responding by bringing TV-style advertising to the mobile phone and the iPod. Verizon and Sprint recently started testing short video ads on their phones to test consumer tolerance. To date, video advertising on mobile devices has largely consisted of repurposing traditional TV advertising campaigns—but media buyers know they have to move away from the 30-second ad format to be successful with the attention-deprived IM Generation. GM's Hummer division, for example, has come up with 15-second commercials, and a new Bud Light campaign blends into mini-documentaries for video iPods.

A number of the companies on our OnHollywood 100 list are capitalizing on the mobile-content trend. MobiTV, Blue Frog, Digital Chocolate, Ampd Mobile, MForma, and VoiceIndigo are just a few of the startups committed to creating, distributing, or marketing mobile content. Some of their content is user-generated, but a lot of it is professionally created, either specifically for mobile devices, or reformatted from major broadcasters, studios, and game publishers.


read also Part One: Bye-bye standalone PC, hello social networking and mobile content.

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Social networks poised to shape Net's future

on ZDNet
by Stefanie Olsen, June 13, 2006

Social networks, mobile video and "Googlism" will continue to transform the Net in years ahead, Piper Jaffray analysts said Monday at the opening of its annual Global Internet Summit.

"The Google revolution is not over yet," said Safa Rashtchy, managing director and senior analyst at investment firm Piper Jaffray, referring to fictional term, Googlism. The search giant "has been inspiration for many new companies," as well as changing how many companies are formed today, he said.

Rashtchy opened the three-day conference here by highlighting current Internet trends, the above included. The conference, in its second year, will focus on several topics, including online entertainment and advertising, international markets and social networks.

"Social networks, for example, are poised to shape the Internet's future," Rashtchy said, "despite some skepticism about how they will make money. Social networks like MySpace.com are already challenging traditional portals. MySpace, for example, has surpassed MSN and AOL by measure of monthly page views," Rashtchy said, "and its traffic equals roughly 75 percent of Yahoo's, the No. 1 site on the Web."

James Lamberti, a research analyst at ComScore who spoke at an opening panel, marveled at the rise of MySpace, which attracted 50 million visitors in March. "Google did not grow this way--it was much slower over time," he said.

Yet other panelists openly questioned how and if these companies make money, comparing the frothiness around social networks and video sites like YouTube.com to the height of the Internet bubble.

Growth opportunities within the market would be for niche communities targeted at middle-age or young Web surfers, Rashtchy said. For example, a host of family social networking sites have cropped up already. Rashtchy suggested that Yahoo and other portals may have to team with MySpace and others to attempt to direct their mounting influence among Web surfers.

The overarching thesis, Rashtchy said, is that online advertising dollars continue to lag behind Internet usage in the United States. Roughly 172 million Americans visit the Web in a month, according to ComScore, but online ad sales, expected at $16 billion in 2006, are still a small fraction of the hundreds of billions of ad dollars spent annually. In the next 10 years, this gap will close, but it will likely never be equivalent, Rashtchy said.

For that reason, content and communities are corners for investment and growth, Raschtchy said. The advertising gap will not likely be closed by blogs or social networks, however, researchers said. That's because blogs can contain some unsavory material that marketers often don't want their products to be associated with, they said.

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Marketing Movies, the Web 2.0 Way

on iMedia Connection
by Erik Flannigan, June 13, 2006

AOL's entertainment programming VP explores the advances that entertainment is making toward realizing the full marketing potential of Web 2.0.

It's hard to believe that less than ten years ago, movie studios considered online marketing to be little more than a glorified billboard pasted into a web address. Enter "The Blair Witch Project" and studio executives saw firsthand how the power of the internet could translate into serious box office. We've come a long way since then, as the web now represents an ever-increasing slice of a studio's marketing pie. Now, as the advent of Web 2.0 ushers in a new era for film promotion, how can marketers take full advantage of what the web has to offer amid a drastically changing movie landscape?

Two degrees of Kevin Bacon
Social networking sites represent the next generation of word-of-mouth marketing. In less than 12 months, we've witnessed News Corp.'s purchase of MySpace, the Weinstein brothers' investment in ASmallworld.net and the launch of AIM Pages by AOL-all evidence that some of the web's and Hollywood's biggest players are confident that the social networking phenomenon isn't going away anytime soon.

Unlike previous online scenarios, these interactive community sites enable entertainment fans to get even closer to the original source material. In just a few clicks, fans can forge a meaningful connection to their favorite actors, characters and filmmakers, and at the same time, spread news, rumors and opinions faster than ever before. The notion of "six degrees of 'Kevin Bacon' " has truly become a mere two steps away.

The impact of this changing landscape is significant. If harnessed correctly, the closer connection to consumers will allow marketers the opportunity to build significant worldwide fan bases long before a film hits the big screen. This is especially valuable for sequels, where an audience that may have first discovered a franchise on DVD (e.g., X-Men) will turn immediately to the web to extend their enthusiasm and seek ways to make a deeper connection to what's coming next. It will also give non-endemic advertisers new ways to reach consumers, allowing them to target specific demographics and interests unlike ever before.

The immediacy of the web
Beyond the recent onset of social networks, movie studios are leveraging the web more tactically. As theatrical windows shrink, and films live or die by their opening weekend grosses, online campaigns are starting earlier than ever before. A studio needs to ensure that moviegoers are very much aware of the new Will Ferrell comedy well before it hits their local multiplex, as Thursday night television buys just can't reach the ever-younger demo that occupies those opening-weekend theater seats.

Another impact of the web's power is the simultaneous global release of tent-pole films. The opening of movies like the Matrix sequels and M:I:3 not only curtails online piracy -- which could directly impact box office -- but also creates a press-friendly worldwide media event, showering even more attention on the film. And it probably doesn't hurt to tell a global opening-weekend box office story with certain films, not just a domestic one.

Programming is marketing
Studios are also creating more entertainment assets beyond trailers to help generate early buzz and awareness of new films. Websites like Moviefone.com and Google are taking advantage by creating original programs like the "Da Vinci Code Google Challenge" or Moviefone.com's "Unscripted" series, in which two principals from a film interview each other about the making of the movie. This creates more excitement for consumers, forges new promotional opportunities for the studios and allows non-endemic marketers to associate their brands with marquee talent. Across the board, this new focus on building online campaigns is a winning combination.

Big studio films aren't the only ones making the most of the internet. The makers of independent and short films are also using the web as a platform to showcase their work. Moviefone.com's Short Film Festival is just one example. As more film-related content arrives online, brand marketers have an opportunity to become more innovative in associating campaigns.

Case study: American Express, the Tribeca Film Festival and Moviefone
A great example of a non-endemic brand aligning itself with an entertainment property both online and off is American Express. As a founding sponsor of the Tribeca Film Festival since its inception five years ago, American Express has been dedicated to growing the Festival by attracting audiences and building community spirit in compelling ways.

This year, the company launched "My Life. My Card," a competition inviting consumers to submit their story online via a 15-second clip for a chance to win a cash prize and be honored during the Festival. At the same time, American Express partnered with Moviefone.com to promote the competition and align itself with a special series of "Unscripted" interviews shot onsite at the Festival. Additional offline marketing and advertising tactics enhanced the overall American Express campaign, though the online component was the core of the program.

American Express successfully created their own entertainment initiative by tapping into the power of the web and the online community to help generate content. They harnessed the power of social networks by allowing individuals to create and share their own clips, and they understood the importance of joining forces with respected brands, the Tribeca Film Festival and Moviefone.com, to successfully reach their target audience.

Overall, the American Express/Tribeca Film Festival initiative was a huge success and a great example to all marketers looking to capitalize on the web's ability to reach a wide moviegoing audience.

Whether studios tap into the full reach of the web or brand marketers align with web sites in producing original online content, the emergence of Web 2.0 will forever change the media landscape, which is good news for consumers, advertisers and content developers.

As vice president of programming, Erik Flannigan oversees four distinct but interrelated entertainment sites on AOL and AOL.com including Moviefone.com, AOL Music, AOL Radio and AOL Television. Flannigan is responsible for the overall development of innovative and original programming within each of these categories.

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Microsoft's Scobleizer blogs out

on Financial Times
by Kevin Allison, June 12, 2006

The internet was buzzing on Monday as bloggers digested news that Robert Scoble, the Microsoft "technical evangelist" whose Scobleizer weblog made him one of the foremost ambassadors for the world's biggest software group, is to leave the company to join a Silicon Valley start-up.

The move, reported at the weekend, raises fresh questions about the importance of high-profile bloggers to companies that encourage employees to talk about work in their online journals.

"There is no HR metric for figuring the worth of a worker like Scoble," wrote Doc Searls, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, an influential book on the internet's impact on marketing, on his personal weblog.

Mr Scoble's frank and disarming writing about Microsoft garnered an audience in the millions and put a human face on a company many had come to see as an impenetrable monolith.

Yet many of the benefits of Mr Scoble's work – including his Scobleizer blog – are to go with him as he departs for PodTech.net, a Silicon Valley start-up focused on podcasting and other user-generated content.

The move illustrates the challenge facing companies as they try to get to grips with a world in which the reputation of individual bloggers can come to be closely associated with – or have a big impact on – the reputation of a company's own brand.

It also highlights the opportunities that employees can create for themselves by using the insights they gain at work to become part of the growing conversation unfolding in the blogosphere.

"What matters most in the long run is who you are. Not who you work for," wrote Mr Searls.

Some observers are sceptical that Mr Scoble's departure will be a big blow for Microsoft. "[Mr Scoble] is well known and undoubtedly has influenced perceptions of Microsoft [but] leaving Microsoft doesn't mean a sudden perception gap," said Neville Hobson, co-author of The Hobson & Holtz Report, a podcast on business and online communication.

Thanks in no small part to Mr Scoble's influence, an increasing number of companies have begun to embrace employee blogging as a business tool.

But while bloggers have proven their ability to change the way customers feel about the companies they work for and blog about, their personal brands remain portable – and highly desirable to competitors willing to offer the right incentives for an employee to make the switch.

Mr Scoble, who will be responsible for media initiatives around blogging and podcasting at PodTech, seems optimistic that another Microsoft employee will rise to take his place.

"I'm not the only blogger at Microsoft," he writes. "There are about 3,000 of them here. They are not having the plug pulled on them. They changed the world. I just was the cheerleader."

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Music: Bolt Media Forms Gorillaz Style Band With Web Auditions

on Rubber Magazine, June 13, 2006

Each week Bolt will hold auditions for a new member to join the band. The best and most original compilation will be added to the mix and the new track will then be used for the next round's instrument. By the end of the competition there will be an original song by band members from around the world ­ including, drums, bass vocals and guitar - created entirely through online auditions.

"Forming a virtual band online is a natural progression in the user-generated content movement," said Aaron Cohen, CEO of Bolt Media. "Today's Internet users are creating, collecting and consuming content, and online collaboration in music, video and photography will be a big trend in the next year."

Musicians are encouraged to submit as many entries for as many different instruments as they like. At the end of each week, Bolt's music gurus as well as the band "Three Days of Grace" will judge each round picking a member for each slot in the band.

To date, many of the auditions are linking from Bolt to MySpace.com and YouTube.com. Bolt members create and proliferate content throughout the Internet in order to expose their work to large audiences for feedback.

Bolt members will vote on the name of the band once all of the members have been assembled. The contest runs during the entire month of June and is exclusively sponsored by Wendy's.

"This partnership illustrates Wendy's commitment to reaching 16-34-year-olds on the web. Bolt amplifies the creative energy that has become a defining characteristic of this generation. Wendy's partners with companies that integrate our brand with dynamic programs that foster community and collaboration," said Robyn Simburger, Director of Media, Wendy's.

To enter, musicians simply visit www.bolt.com/contest/boltband/ and record their best drum, guitar, or vocal solo over the track using a multi-track recording program. For those looking for a new way to record, Bolt recommends checking out Audacity - a simple audio recording and editing freeware for both Mac and PC.

Founded in 1996, Bolt has evolved into a creative network focused on helping 16-34 year old find an audience.

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Mr. Pulver Has Just Two Words For You: Internet Video

on Wall Street Journal
by Amol Sharma, June 13, 2006

Unhappy investors in Vonage Holdings Corp., the Internet phone company that had a disappointing initial public offering last month, might feel like picking up pitchforks and torches and marching on the castles of the people who brought it to life.

But chances are, Jeff Pulver, the self-described futurist and entrepreneur who started the company that was Vonage's predecessor, wouldn't be on that list. That is because Mr. Pulver -- well known in the telecom world for his evangelism on behalf of Internet calling, but somewhat anonymous outside of it -- left Vonage before the company started to sizzle.

"I blew it," Mr. Pulver says bluntly. "I had the juice. I could have done something."

Now, he is on to the next big thing: Internet video. And he is trying to ensure he doesn't get left out again.

Mr. Pulver is creating his own Internet TV show, which he is modeling on Rocketboom, a popular Internet video-blog that broadcasts a three-minute news show daily. He is considering launching a broader Internet TV subsidiary and is weighing whether to invest in several emerging Internet video companies, though he won't name them. Someday he wants to start an Internet reality TV show.

"The same DNA that disrupted the telecom industry is well on its way to totally revolutionizing the way the TV, film, and broadcast industry is going to be," Mr. Pulver says, adding that he's now looking for "the Vonage of Internet video."

Investors might be skeptical of such predictions after watching Vonage, which billed itself as a major threat to giant telecom providers, stumble so badly in its debut as a public company. Even so, Mr. Pulver is hardly to blame. For one thing, he was right that Internet calling would have a seismic impact on the telecom industry. The unexpected development was that large cable and phone companies would adapt quickly and offer the technology to consumers themselves.

Mr. Pulver didn't really capitalize on his vision financially. In 1998 he founded a company called Min-X, which was originally intended to be a commodity exchange for telecom networks, where different companies could trade unused broadband capacity in blocks of minutes. That company morphed into Vonage after Mr. Pulver sought out Jeffrey Citron, who led a $12 million round of funding and took over as chief executive officer. Mr. Pulver remained on the board.

"He had the foresight to see what the industry could become," says Ravi Sakaria, president of VoicePulse, a small New Jersey-based Internet phone provider. "He brought the technology to the forefront in the minds of investors and the media. He did a lot to validate the industry early on."

Mr. Pulver stepped down from Vonage's board in 2002 and sold out most of his interest in the company before it made its splash, retaining what he describes as a "watered-down stake."

Shortly after he left the board, Mr. Pulver turned his attention to his own Internet calling business, Free World Dialup, which now has about 550,000 subscribers but has never made much money. Meanwhile, similar ventures have done much better. Despite Vonage's shaky public offering, it still has a market capitalization of $1.8 billion. And Internet calling provider Skype was acquired by eBay in a $2.6 billion deal.

Mr. Pulver isn't the only technology entrepreneur to drop the ball after coming up with a big idea, of course. The first companies to try a novel business model aren't always the ones that make it work: Singapore-based firm Creative Technology Ltd. for example, invented a hard drive MP3 player in 2000, but failed to market the device effectively before Apple Computer Inc. released the iPod.

"The skills that are required to create these kinds of things are often very different from the skills required to commercialize them," says Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School and author of several books on entrepreneurship, including "The Innovator's Dilemma."

Mr. Pulver, 43, is anything but an ordinary businessman. He eschews standard corporate attire in favor of Hawaiian shirts and sandals. A stroll through his Melville, N.Y., office -- which is the antithesis of all things corporate -- leaves the impression he is a music magnate or poker champion rather than an IT administrator-turned-telecom whiz.

The walls are lined with paintings of The Beatles and Marilyn Monroe. On his desk sits a ham radio -- he has been an avid practitioner since he was 12 -- and there is musical memorabilia in all directions, such as a photo of rocker Liz Phair to a cartoon-like statue of the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia. He started a record label called Rev-Up -- which is Pulver spelled backwards without the "L" -- but the only artist he has landed is a country singer from Brooklyn. "At the time I signed him, I thought he was going to do alt-rock," Mr. Pulver says. He also operates and Internet radio station, pulverradio.com.

For all his other passions and hobbies, and his playful approach to work, Mr. Pulver is deadly serious when it comes to the future of communications. He sees himself as an agent of change. Mr. Pulver says while he'd like to cash in on his ideas, he isn't out to run a big corporation. His real mission, he says, is to identify the next big things in technology, show they have potential, and encourage other entrepreneurs and investors to take them seriously.

These days, though, he is most interested in companies that are allowing consumers to get the TV and video they want without turning to broadcast or cable providers.

The revolution this time, he says, isn't coming from small upstarts, as was the case with Internet calling, but primarily from established media and tech giants. He points to a variety of developments, ranging from Google Inc.'s video service, which provides easy online access to content from a range of providers, to Walt Disney Co.'s decision to offer Internet downloads of some of its most popular shows.

Even the annual conference that Mr. Pulver hosts -- which normally brings together the Internet phone industry's players, and generates most of the $15 million for his small company -- will have a major video focus this year. He was hoping for headliners such as News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch and Barry Diller, chief executive of IAC/Interactive Corp., the parent of Ask.com.

"You know any media moguls?" Mr. Pulver quipped to a colleague at a recent planning session for this fall's conference.

Mr. Diller declined, and Mr. Murdoch hasn't yet responded. So far Mr. Pulver says he has landed several speakers from the world of digital media, including Bram Cohen, chief executive and co-founder of BitTorrent Inc., a popular Internet video service that assembles large files by downloading them in pieces from different users. (Telecom executives routinely blame BitTorrent for hogging network bandwidth.)

With all his focus on Internet video, Mr. Pulver says he still hasn't given up on the Internet phone industry. He says companies like Vonage can still be wildly successful if they expand into global markets, rather than just trying to compete with large cable and phone companies in the U.S. market. He is still vocal on the industry's behalf in Washington, where he pushes for the lightest possible regulations on Internet phone providers. His blog, which covers a wide range of telecom policy issues and is posted on pulver.com, is widely read at the Federal Communications Commission and by some staffers on Capitol Hill.

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Online Media Ready for Some Futbol

on ClickZ
by Pamela Parker, June 8, 2006

With the 2006 World Cup kick-off only one day away, online media players and their sponsors have unveiled their bids to attract U.S. soccer fans. Online and mobile media are especially important for the World Cup, because most matches will take place during business hours, when most fans will be at work.

One of the most prominent online players is Yahoo, which is an official sponsor of the World Cup and also host of the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA)'s official Web site. The U.S.-focused version of the site features the standard fare: news, photo galleries and team descriptions. When the tournament begins, users will be able to access video highlights from the matches themselves.

Many of the World Cup's official sponsors get prominent placement on the site. Footwear sponsor adidas presents a countdown clock to the beginning of the tournament, while Budweiser gets a button highlighting its "Man of the Match" sponsorship. Yahoo, for its part, is linking to World Cup-related content on its new Yahoo Answers property. Small rotating banners link to other official FIFA sponsors.

Content-wise, the most innovative of Yahoo's offerings is its array of mobile services. The company is offering a mobile portal, live mobile commentary on games, and SMS alerts along with phone personalization content like ringtones, wallpapers, games and video content. The mobile capabilities are highlighted prominently on the Web property.

The second-biggest player in the online World Cup game is probably ESPN, which will be airing the tournament on its cable network. On its site, the company is leveraging its roots in television via its ESPN Motion video feature, which currently offers World Cup related commentary and an interview with U.S. coach Bruce Arena. It's also offering a full version of its site in Spanish, presumably to attract a U.S. Hispanic audience.

The network's dedicated World Cup site is anchored by sponsor adidas, which gets "presented by" placement as part of the site banner, which runs on every page. The athletic shoe maker also sponsors team pages for various countries: England, Germany and Mexico.

Fox Soccer Channel, the media property that's made the biggest bet on the growth of the U.S. audience for soccer, has beefed up its online presence, which is hosted by MSN, for the occasion. Its most stand-out feature is a series of blogs on the tournament, all of which are emblazoned prominently with Cingular branding. The site's other most prominent advertisers are Nike and Hyundai, which is sponsoring the U.S. team page.

The New York Times has aggregated its World Cup-related content and is cooperating with sister publication the International Herald Tribune for coverage. Roger Cohen, editor at large of the IHT, will have a blog, as will other writers and columnists; enthusiasts will also be able to post to a fan blog. Matches involving the U.S. team will be covered live via commentators who will incorporate reader reaction. A fourth blog, featuring observations by fans in Angola, Argentina, England, Iran, Japan and Mexico, will be a part of the Times' premium TimesSelect tier.

Despite media properties' efforts, advertisers haven't hesitated to go directly to soccer fans at World Cup events. Nike, with its Joga.com site and JogaTV video effort, is one of the most notable marketers. Coca-Cola is sponsoring a gathering of bloggers to cover the World Cup at weallspeakfootball.com.

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