MEDIABLITZ

From the Washington Post -- Small niche sites like A Small World for the international elite geeks (they're looking for a computer programmer in Dubai!) are getting ad sponsorships because of they're ultra-targeting. Read the article

MTV is calling 2007 the year the music business broke. The only aspect of the music business that's down are traditional album sales in a box and sold in stores. Everything else is up -- downloads, ring tones, ring backs, concerts, music & licensing, Chris Anderson (Wired, The Long Tail) We can make money on a release that only sells 2,000 copies, we don't have to sell 2 million. Liz Hart Head of A&R for XL Recordings Save Net Radio -- is a coalition of online net radio stations set up to lobby for lower royalty fees. iMeem, iLike, Pandora, LastFM, Snocap, Myspace Record Lbl, Peter Rojas Legal downloads. Music News Web sites: Paste The Daily Swarm

Michael Cera, 18, and his friend Clark Duke have inked a deal with CBS' new broadband channel, . The duo will write, produce, direct, and act in their own short-form comedy series called, succinctly, Clark and Michael . To speed up our interview, we've deleted the questions. WIRED:...? DUKE: It's about two guys who think they have this great idea for a TV show. But they're so wrapped up in acting like Hollywood hotshots that they're sort of oblivious to the fact that their project is going down the tubes. WIRED:...? CERA: We sort of modeled it after the stuff we enjoy on Adult Swim - especially shows like Tom Goes to the Mayor , which are really great at getting in a lot of jokes in a relatively small amount of time. WIRED:...? DUKE: Since we're producing for the Web, where you can't always expect people to stick around for an hour or even half an hour, 11-minute episodes seemed to make a lot of sense. Our budget is obviously a lot ...

Innertube

Jeffrey Veen is an author ("The Art & Science of Web Design", "HotWired Style") and a speaker who believes PPT presentations don't have to be bad to be good. He put together 7 steps to better presentations. 7 Steps to better presentations by Jeffrey Veen The List: (be sure to visit his page to get the full story behind each step) Tell stories: Summarize key findings in easy to digest ways Show pictures: Illustrate your metaphors with colorful, fun pictures. Don't apologize: Commisserating is okay. Start strong: Introduce yourself, thank audience for coming and tell them what you're going to talk about. End strong too: Wrap up "and that's why I think social media is a powerful business tool", thank the audience for their attention. Stand away from the podium Pause after key points

Jason Calacanis wrote this detailed diagram of how to make him happy via a link to his blog. They include quotes, references, descriptions, and/or inclusions of the varied places he's got content throughout the web. These principles will probably work for most people as long as they're keeping track. Calacanis link-baiting rules I've developed some deep relationships over the past couple of years blogging and I realize that those relationships manifest themselves in the links I find when I do my 28x a daily ego search over at Technorati. The quickest way to develop a relationship with me isn't to twitter me, call me, email me, or skype me. Heck, even posting a comment here--the second best way to develop a relationship with me--is weak when compared to the power of the link. The Rules (from April 27, 2007) Feedback on The Rules* *PLEASE NOTE: This does not refer to the single woman's guide to getting married which was popular in the late 1990's.

Tom Johnson, the blogger behind the cool blog, I'd Rather Be Writing (great name!). Johnson researched dozens of blogs and came up with a list of the top 20 tips for bloggers. Be sure to read his original column with specific software suggestions and illustrations of each tip. In summation they are: Pick a topic for your blog Encourage comments Make it easy to subscribe Include an About page Present your ideas visually Keep posts short and to the point Use subheadings for long posts Link abundantly Make headlines descriptive. Archive by topic Include a list of related posts under each post Allow users to contact you offline Present your real viewpoint Write for your future employer Include a top posts section Provide an index Get your own URL and match it to your blog's title Include a recent posts section in your sidebar Reward commenters for commenting Post often

The above video is an example of a tasty media snack done by the aptly named MediaSnackers , it illustrates the fragmentation and segmentation of how web friendly folk consume their entertainment and information. The video stresses that 'the young' are media snackers but I'd qualify that and say 'young thinkers'. Jeremiah Owyang started this conversation with his blog entry "Do you respect media snackers? Tell me why." He then tagged five people to respond, they in turn tagged others, and I was tagged by Jane Quigley who has an impressive online presence and is a 12 year veteran of online advertising / marketing. She used Utterz to answer the question in audio. MY ANSWER Of course I respect them, why wouldn't I? I post to twitter, and I blog. I love the 140 character limit because it seems that many writers are so enamored with their own words that they write long. Good writers get their point across quickly. The old model is that writers get pa...

Yes, some blogs are profitable - very profitable about the success of TechCrunch ...

I've been generating quite a collection of bookmarks and I currently have 15 tabs open. I'm just going to write about what I've been doing while cruising the web and what I'm thinking about. I primarily get my information from Twitter and click to links that the people I follow suggest. From Miss Rogue aka Tara Hunt, I found this over the top incredible tool called Slide Share in a very open-source, Web 2.0 style this site encourages people to upload Power Point presentations on virtually (ha!) every subject. There is a whole group of the presentations from the Web 2.0 conference which took place in San Francisco last week. There are presentations on the obvious but also about topics outside of the bubble like nutrition, travel, and television. It is free to download the presentations. The ones I looked at seemed to be of high quality. Just so you know there are 323 presentation on SlideShare with Twitter in the name. On Twitter this week there has been a lot ...

UPDATE: Please note these numbers are sketchy because apparently the Compete software is easily manipulated. I felt comfortable using it because Om Malik used it in his piece about Facebooks diminishing page views (see post below). I've learned that Quantcast numbers are actually much more accurate, the caveat being that one needs to "Quantify" which means they need to put a pixel on their site so that Quantcast can measure. Many of the blogs above are not followed by Quantcast but for the blogs that do, the numbers are usually larger, for example: GigaOm: Global Uniques/Reach: 456,772, US, 279,336, Monthly Page Views: 840,342 Calacanis: Global Uniques/Reach: 137,981, US: 96,896, Monthly Page Views: 217,801 ** Missing from the list: Chris Brogan: 33K Uniques (Compete), and Stowe Boyd: 13K Uniques (Compete) /UPDATE ------------------------- This chart was made by me. I was trying to find if there was a correlation between Techmeme, Technorati, and traffi...

Om Malik is very concerned because page views and unique users declined in the last month. He thinks they should have gone up because kids went back to school but a) the explosive growth in the Facebook audience comes from folks who don't go to school and b) hopefully most people use Facebook in their leisure time which they probably had more of in August. I think there is also a burn out period, when people first get into something they spend a lot of time setting up their profile and adding friends and then ease into a maintenance period where they spend less time at the site and primarily go there when they get a notice that someone wrote them a message, wrote on their wall, super poked them, blah, blah, blah. When you're talking about such big numbers of unique users (rounding) the Compete data says 34 Million in August and 31 Million in September, it's not such a big variance. And to be fair Om calls it a small dip, but his headline says "Traffic Tanks". ...

TWITTER Robert Scoble posted a picture of Twitter's door. Part of his day was spent visiting their offices. Biz sent out an email announcing new hires, the tracker function , and promoting the new PBS Show Wired Science who you can follow @ http://twitter.com/wiredscience . Here's a link to Anita Hamilton's Time article ' Why Everyone's Talking About Twitter ' (from March '06, after SXSW). I love Twitter, I'm addicted to it and I am completely voyeuristic when it comes to some people whom I've never met. It supplies a real time snapshot of developments in the Web 2.0, social media arena. It's just a place to post random thoughts that you think are worth sharing in less than 140 characters. The tired argument against Twitter is than everyone just posts "I'm eating a burrito". Which isn't true. Twitter is an easy way to discuss events, ideas, news stories, new photos. The problem is that unless you have a blog or a web si...

Report from February '07: 'The User Revolution' 12 Main Points Global online advertising revenue to reach $81.1 billion by 2011. Communitainment = Community + communication + entertainment This new type of activity is taking time away from traditional types of content consumption. Usites -- The increasing popular category of user generated sites take traffic away from other content destinations, a challenge to advertisers and publishers. The Internet is a mainstream medium: It is the leading medium at work and only second to television at home. Usage patterns changing: favoring Usites, communitainment sites, and search . Away from traditional portals. User Generated Brands. The consumers are taking control of content consumption and branding. Media Fragmentation: Advertisers increasingly will need to buy more inventory, from nearly all types of media, especially the Internet, to have the desired impact. 8. The Golden Search: search has become the new portal. 9. G...

From January 8th 2007, Piper Jaffray study via Businessweek Blog A new report from Wall Street analyst Safa Rashtchy at Piper Jaffray outlines the rapid adoption of online video and the subsequent decline of TV viewing among online users. One of the interesting points is that TV network sites are increasingly popular and are the second most popular destinations, after YouTube. But YouTube draws a younger crowd. 60% of 25-34 year olds use YouTube, 43% use TV network sites, and 32% use Google Video. Among 45-54 year olds, 47% use TV network sites, 22% use YouTube, 25% use Google Video, 26% use Yahoo! Video, and 28% use MSN video. Safa says 2007 is the year for video, the year when companies have to make a place for themselves in online video distribution or bow out. And it’s important this year for traditional media to get a piece of the pie too: 40% of the people surveyed by Piper Jaffrey said they watch less TV now than two years ago. News, Movie Previews, and Amateur Videos are the M...

ComScore Press Release

Overall ad spends are down .5% for first half '07 vs a year ago according to Nielsen. Local & national newspapers, B2B magazines, local magazines, Sunday supplements, spot TV, and network TV were all hit hard. Cable TV loss the least amount of ad money. Outdoor, national magazines, and product placement all grew along with interactive.

In this Mediapost article , Alan Schulman, Executive Creative Director of imc 2 suggests that YouTube's decision to use overlay advertising instead of pre-roll or mid-roll video was short sighted. YouTube said that the "roll" ads made viewer numbers decline. Schulman says, maybe the ads weren't any good and maybe they're too long. He advocates a :10 video spot and notes the creative options that can be exploited when the "roll" ads are timely, entertaining, and targeted to the viewer. Personally, I welcome a shorter length but my biggest problem with the "roll" ads is that usually they keep playing the same one over and over again. Many times on high bandwidth sites the content gets stalled and you need to start over, or pause and press play to make it continue. I was watching "Anchorwoman" on the Fox demand site and I saw the same ad for a movie with Dane Cook and Jessica Alba over and over again. I've always believed tha...

Doubleclick did this study in February, 2007 The top-line results are that, yes, a whopping 8% of viewers interact with video ads. Users repeatedly watch the video ad much more than they click through on traditional banner ads. On average video ads are watched 2/3 of the way through. Play-through rates do not vary between traditional video ads and expandable formats. Video click rates are much, much higher than traditional image banner ads. The primary measurement for video ads = Interaction Rate . "It includes the sum total of all interactions people have with the video ad units, including expansions, interactions with the video control button, and custom interactions and clicks – divided by the total impressions served. In the Doubleclick study the smallest ads (120 x 90) had a huge Interaction Rate = 28.8%. They say that this isn't because of the size but because this size of video advertising appears in chat windows. It makes sense that while chatting people are mor...

On August 28, 2007 Advertising.com released the results of a study based on a questionnaire results and video advertising performance data from it's online video network. The results are from the first six months of '07. 62% of participants watched video online and 69% of these were adults over age 35 who primarily watched news stories. As for video advertisements, consumers accept them as part of the video experience – with 94 percent of respondents preferring ads to subscription fees. However, according to 63 percent of survey respondents, shorter ads would make the experience more pleasurable. Shorter spots also deliver higher percent-viewed rates, according to data from the Advertising.com network. 51 percent of survey respondents would watch a television episode online if they missed it on TV; but 80 percent of consumers say that online video usage does not cut into their TV time. WHAT ARE THEY WATCHING: 62% News clips 38% Movie trailers 36% Music videos (down 11% from se...

eMarketer recently predicted that online advertising will grow by 28.6% in 2007. Other ad forecasters, such as PricewaterhouseCoopers and Universal McCann's Robert Coen, have internet ad revenue growing in the mid 20% range. Search is the largest part of internet spending at 40%. Radio is growing by less than 1% and eMarketer expects that this year internet spending at $21.7 billion will overtake radio at $20.4 billion. Radio is seeking to market itself as a complement to internet advertising rather than a competitor. For instance Clear Channel found a way to sell search terms on it's local radio web sites to community advertisers. According to ZenithOptimedia, internet ad spending in China, growing at 70% a year. from AdAge

Microsoft Corp., Disney's Buena Vista International, France Telecom's Orange, plus Procter & Gamble (Gillette, Pantene, & Tampax), Hewlett-Packard and Paramount are all sponsorship partners for " KateModern" . (this episode features placements by MSN, Orange Broadband, and Tampax. Plenty of room for a pizza delivery company, and a current movie title. Microsoft has expanded it's partnership with Bebo (also mentioned). The producers are the same team that did LonelyGirl15, at that time they thought people would be turned off by commercialism but actually the audience wanted to know where she bought her clothes and what brands she consumed. (?!) The series launched on July 24th and is available on YouTube, Bebo, MSN in the UK, and the LonelyGirl15 site. In the first three weeks the has registered 3 million views and is building an audience quickly -- the first episode was seen by just 23,000 people. The most popular episode so far is one that features...

Bob Pittman's Pilot Ware, which owns DailyCandy.com , Thrillist.com , and the "light green" Ideal Brite, is sticking with it's core email strategy. Apparently Daily Candy gets a $250 CPM for it's Dedicated eMail product. Here is an example of one for Nike . Daily Candy and it's various city-specific offshoots has a subscription base of 2 million and cost Pittman $35 million in 2003. Thrillist, a Daily Candy for men was purchased for $250,000 in 2005 and currently has 110,000 subscribers. Last year Pittman tried to sell Daily Candy for $100 million but had no takers and the product is currently not for sale. While Pilot Ware focuses it's investments on affiliate TV stations it is also investing in some other online products such as music blog Stereogum and Facebook's popular social-music application iLike . from Adage

Online video has become the fastest-growing category of Internet ad spending in the past year, according to research firm eMarketer -- so much so that advertisers now frequently complain about the shortage of video content worthy of sponsorship. Marketers are finding it hard to buy enough space on traditional TV networks' Web sites, which stream some network prime-time programs. Ad space is available alongside the user-generated videos that draw millions of visitors to video-sharing sites like YouTube, but advertisers are wary about sponsoring videos that might be embarrassing or risqué. YouTube's new ad format, unveiled last week to intense advertiser interest, limits ads to videos from selected partners. While their audiences are tiny -- Geek Entertainment TV says it averages 10,000 to 20,000 viewers a show, though its most popular shows attract as many as 100,000 viewers -- their viewers are loyal. Such programs also provide content of a consistent quality, in advertisers...

Looking on YouTube though I noticed that if you go into the community section , many of the featured Groups are advertisers. I wonder if they pay for that. Today they have Rocawear " I Will Not Lose " campaign. Vids with celebrities like Ciarra, Three Six Mafia, and other's "A" list Hip Hop / R&B artists talking about not losing and perservering without obstacles. Which is cool, do gooder advertising. They also have Listerine FreshBurst man on the street interviews which are not very entertaining and unabashedly self-serving. YouTube offers deep opportunities for testing advertising production. These days it seems like online is partnering more and more with direct street teams, a mesh of the international and local.

Blip.tv's Learning Center offers instructions on how to produce a video show from concept through ad sales. Blip.tv defines a show as a "series of online videos that are tied together by consistent branding, style, and release schedule." Many of the most popular online programming is offered by Blip.tv including Galacticast (Sci-fi Satire) and Geek Entertainment TV (recently featured in Wall Street Journal ).

MySpace Could Lift Ban on Commerce MySpace bans commerce between its members, because it doesn't want to jeopardize the corporate advertising that accounts for the vast majority of its profit. Allowing its members to promote their wares would only clutter up the place. But behind the scenes, the issue is being hotly discussed as Chris DeWolfe, MySpace's chief executive, and his team of top executives at the biggest property within News Corp. 's Beverly Hills-based Fox Interactive Media grapple with the imperative of squeezing more money out of MySpace. The Los Angeles Times reports. more »

Slate stepped into the video space in a big way by launching SlateV , a robust collection of videos created by Slate. The front page offers the newest of these videos like "Video Bushisms", "Grading Hillary's First Spot", and "Dear Prudence" an animation of their advice column. The animation and special effects on the videos is incredible, creative and original. Unfortunately the editors themselves are boring, probably in comparison to the lively visuals. Understandably most of these editors are more comfortable in a text based context. "Editor's Choice", has some great, interesting vids such as examples of advertisements for soap made by Igmar Bergman when he was short on cash. Unfortunately, the tone of the narrative makes it feel like a classroom lecture. A blog page "Did You See This" is there roundup of the best in web video, pulling vids from YouTube, LiveLeak, CollegeHumor, etc. Hopefully they'll figure out how...

Jeremiah Owyang is the Director of Corporate Media Strategy (serves as a Social Media Resource for Fortune 1000 clients) @ Podtech.net. He notes that Web Strategy must take into account the goals, needs, and roadblocks of the three spheres, Community, Business, and Technology. In his blog entry he provides a description and the skills needed to represent each of the three groups.

VH-1 Scott Baio is 45 & Single It's not that uncommon for 40 somethings to be single. For some reason when men are single it's a big issue while when woman are single it's not, it's understood. E! Sunset Tan Simple Life CBS Big Brother USA Psych Burn Notice Mediaweek 8/21/07 USA also continued to bring the noise with its original series, snaring 4.54 million viewers Friday night at 9 p.m. with a new episode of Monk, while holding on to much of that audience in the 10 p.m. slot with Psych (3.81 million). On the previous night, USA’s summer hit Burn Notice delivered 4.23 million viewers. Prime time’s silver medalist was TNT, which averaged 2.2 million viewers, thanks to The Closer and Saving Grace. With 4.68 million viewers, the Holly Hunter drama retained 64 percent of its Closer lead-in. TNT also took second among adults 25-54 (945,000), while placing fourth among 18-49s (810,000). MTV: averaging 3.69 million viewers on August 13 with a special one-hour seaso...

Facebook isn't a news source, it is a social networking tool and it is debatable on how differentiated advertisements need to be from the user generated content. Facebook is a multimedia tool with video and music but the majority of its content is text. If the company employed journalistic Editors there would be a big wall separating the business side from the editorial side. The business side would push for anything that made the ad more effective and the editorial side would push back to insure editorial integrity by completely differentiating advertising from content. Most Editors take this very seriously and don't want there to be a hint of conflict of interest. Above is a screen shot of the news feed I receive from my friends on my Facebook account. The Army ad I circled is troublesome. It does not look different at all from the messages that I get from my friends which is accented by the fact that its from a very controversial advertiser. Should social web sites be...

PlayboyU announced the launch of a college only community on Ning . Owen Thomas of Valleywag told CNBC doesn't think the bunny has any bounce, but I disagree. Basically because there is a need for "gated communities" online especially among students as everyone essentially invades their Myspaces and Facebooks. The front page successfully conveys the sense of an exclusive club and Mashable has screenshots of inside pages which look very robust and uniquely designed. The front page also stresses that the visitor is "not allowed" and you have to apply with an ".edu" email address to get in. People respond well to being told that they can't have something, it makes them want it. And the fact that you have to be in college (or at least have an .edu email) makes it prone to socially desirables. Myspace and the dating sites have gotten so big that it's essentially impossible to trust the people you meet there and Facebook is being invaded by o...

The TV biz is on a crazy rollercoaster. Fox cancelled 'Anchorwoman' after one airing. It was a cheesy premise: former swimsuit model becomes anchorwoman at a Texas TV station. Mmmm, let me think, kind of like the TV Guide show. Apparently only 2.5 million people tuned in (so-so cable numbers) which was a dramatic decrease from 'So You Think You Can Dance' numbers of the prior week. The unaired episodes will be available at Fox's nifty new Myspace page which called 'Fox On Demand.' Brownie points for synergizing. Fox On Demand has a healthy selection of full episodes of Fox's programs on and off air. The promo page for the show hosted on the fox.com server although it looks like a Myspace page is full of glitz and cheescake. This show was described as a "scripted reality show" which means the characters didn't have enough entertaining things to say so someone else wrote the lines for them, which is sad and always looks fake. Kiss of d...

In the past few days there has been a bunch of buzz surrounding online video advertising because Google's mega-mammoth brand in the space, YouTube, (which they bought 10 months ago for $1.65 billion) initiated "semi-transparent overlay ads". With room for variation it's a banner that appears at the bottom of the video screen and offers the option of linking to the advertiser's web site. YouTube calls them "In Video" Above is a screenshot of an ad for the movie "Hairspray" on a Ford Models TV video. Hairspray, hairdresser, young women, that's targeting. Unfortunately the screenshot is one that appeared in the New York Times because I couldn't find an example of an ad on the YouTube site. Personally I think the web site for Hairspray the movie a much bigger brand than Ford Models TV but that's beside the point. FordModels.tv is one of about 1,000 large and small media partners that have licensed their videos to YouTube and w...

Katy Bachman AUGUST 08, 2007 - For the first time in a decade, consumers spent less time with media in 2006 than they did the prior year according to a study released Tuesday by Veronis Suhler Stevenson. Media usage per person declined 0.5 percent to 3,530 hours driven by “the continued migration of consumers to digital alternatives for news, information, and entertainment,” the study concluded. (So digital isn't media?) “We are in the midst of a major shift in the media landscape that is being fueled by changes in technology, end-user behaviors and the response by brand marketers and communications companies,” said James Rutherfurd, executive vp and managing director at VSS. “We expect these shifts to continue over the next five years, as time and place shifting accelerate while consumers and businesses utilize more digital media alternatives, strengthening the new media pull model at the expense of the traditional media push model.” As a result, spending on alternative advertisi...

Matthew Roche's 'THE SITE IS DEAD'

eBiz MBA : Cool site, apparently in Beta. Divided into 4 main topic areas, Administration, Marketing, Products & Sales. Front page has relevant top tier articles (Wired, NYT, etc.) about social marketing, advertising, etc.

Onalytica Blog: Measuring Influence – PR Blogs – Part II

As regular readers know (as if!) i have been struggling to come up with a focus for my blog but how about this? What are the most popular bloggers blogging about? Who are the most popular bloggers. Why should you care or not as the case might be. First of all, what do I as a normal webizen end up reading? #1) Yahoo News. Why? Because headlines show up on my mail. Personally I have Entertainment headlines selected because I'm such a shallow and apathetic individual. #2) Links that I receive via Twitter. These include, not in any particular order. #a) Robert Scoble's Scobelizer : Today he reported on his own reading habits (wow!) he reads (judges) 772 feeds through his google reader, which represents thousands of bloggers because some feeds have multiple bloggers. He posted a list of his top 35 . #b) Techmeme #c) New York Times #4) Chris Brogan : A Conversation with a Community Regarding Digital Relationships #5) Mashable 2 B continued.....

I love the web. Web 1.0, web 2.0, web 33 and a 3rd, it don't matter to me. The problem is I love to get lost and jump from site to site, person to person, blog to blog, picture to picture, video to video, publication to publication and back again. I love (and i'm sorry for using that word too much) getting lost in research, learning and reading and I often forget what my original reason is for being on the Internet. Usually my original reason is to accomplish something productive. Write in my blog for instance. Not that anyone is going to read it or that I have anything particularly important to say but because it is required that I actually write something down, complete a thought, voice an opinion, or simply point someone to a cool site, to justify my hours of random wandering. Currently I'm primarily on Twitter and Facebook and I have memberships on Ning, Bebo, Pownce, and about a dozen other social applications. I have 2 myspace pages which originally were sup...

Another day, another blog. I seem to start blog after blog and they end up going nowhere because I turn them into a list of other people's stories that I want to read and save. Currently I'm keeping on top of my membership on Twitter and Facebook which seems to be a full time busy making avocation without much accumulation of content / knowledge. Right now I'm monitoring Stephanie Booth's real time blogs about Word Camp. Conferences in the Web 2.0 milieu all seem to be called "camps" which makes them seem than they're a lot more fun than they actually are. Another development is applying the word "porn" to describe non traditional porn type items. Such as Stephanie does about stickers and chips they're offering abundantly at "camp" as seen in these pictures she uploaded to Flickr.

Social Networking Leaves Confines of the Computer (key quotes) Daniel Graf, a founder of Kyte, the mobile social networking service, sees cellphones as personal TV studios. The social networking phenomenon is leaving the confines of the personal computer. New online services, with names like Twitter, Radar and Jaiku, hope people will use their ever-present gadget to share (or, inevitably, to overshare) the details of their lives in the same way they have become accustomed to doing on Web sites like MySpace. Mr. Graf said he was considering several approaches to making money from the service. They include charging companies that want to contribute promotional programming, or advertisements in or alongside the most popular channels. He said he would share that revenue with the channels’ creators. Another company proving the potency of the sharing impulse is Twitter ( www.twitter.com ), which is also based in San Francisco and has lately captured the enthusiasm of bloggers and tech in...

Variety.com - Trump's 'Lady' comes to Fox Trump's 'Lady' comes to Fox Party girls to get reality check By STEVEN ZEITCHIK Trump Fox and Donald Trump are developing "Lady or a Tramp," a reality-competition series in which girls in love with the party life will be sent to a charm school where they will receive a stern course on debutante manners. Trump will exec produce the show and possibly come on air to evaluate contestants' progress, insiders said. RDF USA will produce the show, with chief exec Chris Coelen and exec veep of development Greg Goldman, Bruce Toms ("Nanny 911") and Trump Prods. prexy Andy Litinsky joining Trump as exec producers. If the show gets greenlit, it could be on the air as early as midseason. Series, which will combine the competition and self-improvement aspects of reality television with the sizzle of the tabloids, is an adaptation of the British series "Ladette to Lady." On th...

Not. I'm spending more time building profiles than I am being social on these sites. Ken at KenRadio.com provides these snazzy IQ media reports daily. A couple of days ago he distributed " Social Network Marketing, the Sky is the Limit" (Note: You may have to login to view it, Ken is building his own social network complete with yet another profile to fill out, his numbers say he has 15,000 folks). He did an amazingly comprehensive chart of 90 social networking sites with a brief description of their type and their user number. I don't know where he got these numbers you will have to ask him. I sorted them by user number and excluded the "unknowns" and networking sites exclusively for specific geographic or demographic users. I took off any sites with less than 1,000,000 members since that seems to be the magic number for advertising viability. That seems to be his focus, not membership premiums which I'd just like to give a shout out to Flic...

Forget TV shows, commercials are ruling the day By Paul Thomasch Fri May 18, 3:35 PM ET NEW YORK (Reuters) - In the U.S. television business these days, it's not about how many people watch a drama or comedy -- it's about how many watch the commercials.

This year’s television upfront presentations, where the networks open giant briefcases and introduce samples from their fall lineups to advertisers, came and went with whimpers. But the entrance whimper and the exit whimper were different. The first, at NBC’s presentation Monday, was one of pain. It came through on the projection screen behind Kevin Reilly, the network’s entertainment president. “Big fat disappointment,” the screen read, the acknowledgment saving Mr. Reilly from prolonged public penance by subtitling his subconscious. It had indeed been a horrible year for NBC, which, having long ago lost its first-place status, needed a brilliant one. How the mighty have fallen. And how the unmighty have risen: Fox, which after all these years is still not counted among the “big three” networks by some old-timers, now attracts the audiences advertisers desire more.

Why do Video Platforms Fail? In online video, there is big interest in the entry point, the place where people go to discover and watch video and ultimately where payment is made, one way or another, for the watching. For some incredible reason that I can not fathom, an extraordinarily large number of people believe they can create the entry point in which the rest of the world will come to discover video. The competition is fierce and the success rate over the years has been a series of clockwork dead on arrivals. This entry point offline used to be TV-Guide for TV content along with local newspapers for Movie listings, both "dead sources", so to speak. In music, a company called Sound Warehouse once dominated America as the entry point for musical recording sales, physically, and now it's completely gone. Meanwhile, musicians only needed a cheap and clear signal-to-noise ratio to record sound with while the audience only needed dial-up to d/l the music with, to bri...

Startups to watch I can't find a date on this article from Biz 2.0 on the CNN/Money "channel". I'm assuming it was in late, late '06 or early, early '07 since the descriptions says "ones to watch in '07". They have a nifty little thumbnail description of pertinent facts about each one like date founded, funding, employees, why it exists and what it does, etc. The 25 are: Stumbleupon Slide Bebo Meebo Wikia Joost dabble Metacafe Revision 3 Blip TV Fon Loopt Mobio Tiny Pictures Soonr Turn Adify AdMob SpotRunner Vitrue Success Factors JanRain LogoWorks Rearden Commerce Simulscribe

The other reason the networks need viewers to keep watching ads is that Nielsen Media Research, the ratings arbiter, intends soon to begin measuring viewership of commercials as well as programs. One way that many networks hope to engage viewers during commercial breaks is by wedging original content into the blocks of advertising time, so that viewers will anticipate seeing something fun if they sit through a few ads. Fox Broadcasting, for instance, tried out a series of clips for two weeks last month about an animated character named Oleg, a New York cab driver, who popped up in eight-second vignettes during commercial breaks in series like “24.” CW has been running “content wraps,” which mix sponsor products into program snippets. Some experiments involve the cast of the shows in which the commercials appear, serving as hosts for the breaks. That is a throwback to an era when “cast commercials” proliferated with the stars of series like “I Love Lucy,” “The Beverly Hillbillies” and e...

Interviews John Fugelsang: 'All the Wrong Reasons' April 28, 2007 · The son of a former priest and a one-time nun, John Fugelsang says he wasn't sure if he should have been born. He's turned funny stories from his life into a one-man show, All the Wrong Reasons . It's at the New York Theater Workshop until May 6.

Tilting at a Digital Future By RICHARD SIKLOS Published: May 13, 2007 IN Rupert Murdoch ’s world, two things are certain: the sun never sets on the kingdom, and a TV is always on in the background. Rupert Murdoch, from his office in Manhattan, oversees holdings that include television, film, satellite TV and newspapers. On the evening of April 26, several large television monitors adorned the terrace of Mr. Murdoch’s Beverly Hills mansion for a dinner celebrating a special edition of “American Idol” that raised more than $70 million to fight poverty. An Asian noodle station was set out by the pool; nearby, sushi chefs busily sliced tuna for “Idol” co-hosts Simon Cowell and Ryan Seacrest, and seven, hyperactive “Idol” finalists who, when they weren’t clamoring around megastar Tom Cruise, dreamily watched themselves on the big screens. Wendi Deng, Mr. Murdoch’s wife, wore a billowy, green dress and introduced their 5-year-old daughter, ...

Digital Culture Exploring TV's Takeoff on the Internet GoodNight Burbank , an award-winning comedy program about life behind the scenes of a local news show, airs exclusively on the Internet. GoodnightBurbank.com All Things Considered , May 9, 2007 · People are already calling 2007 the year of Internet television, and within the past few months, TV networks have officially jumped into the business. The founders of the popular web sites Kazaa and Skype are launching their latest project, an Internet TV venture called Joost. At the same time, indie web TV shows and programs with big backers are trying to make money. Jeremy Allaire, founder and CEO of Brightcove, a company that has built thousands of Internet "channels" for its clients as well as runs its own, talks to Robert Siegel about the growing industry. We also hear from Dan Rayburn, executive vice presiden...

Interviews 'Charm School' Teaches TV Manners News & Notes , May 9, 2007 · Cable TV channel VH1's Flavor of Love girls are headed for Charm School , a new spin-off reality show that tries to teach manners to an unlikely group of young women. Mikki Taylor is Charm School's dean of students, in addition to being the cover editor and beauty director for Essence . Taylor speaks with Farai Chideya about the show.