Revver Non-Payments Have Video Makers Crying Foul (Streamingmedia):
Video-sharing site Revver made a name for itself with its revenue-sharing model, which promises to split advertising revenue with creators of popular videos. For years, enterprising independent creators gravitated to Revver rather than YouTube, and some even quit their jobs to make a career out of it. According to some of those creator contributors, things took a downward turn starting last year, when payments slowed and then stalled. Revver currently owes many creators thousands of dollars, and, according to reports, has offered no communication telling when payment will be made. Revver did not respond to email requests for comments and other attempts to contact the firm about this matter.
Q&A: Steve Patrizi, LinkedIn Head Of Ad Sales (Mediapost):
As LinkedIn approaches its sixth anniversary in May, Online Media Daily spoke with Steve Patrizi, the company’s director of advertising sales, about LinkedIn’s ad initiatives, the impact of the recession, and whether it has anything to fear from Facebook. LinkedIn currently has more than 38 million mostly professional members, whose average age is 41 and household income is $110,000. The business social networking site has raised more than $100 million to date from investors including Sequoia Capital and Greylock Partners. Questions Asked: Can you describe LinkedIn’s business model? How much does advertising contribute to overall revenue? What types of advertising does LinkedIn offer? What about trying to integrate advertising more directly into communications among LinkedIn members, as Facebook does? It’s been reported that the recession has actually helped accelerate LinkedIn’s member growth. Has that growth translated into increased ad revenue? How much did ad sales grow in 2008 and what’s the outlook for this year? With Facebook’s user base getting older — the majority of U.S. users are now over 25 — does LinkedIn face a growing threat from the world’s largest social network?
Twitter backs first UK ad partner (NMA):
Universal Pictures, Virgin Media and Gorillaz are among the first brands to launch commercial services on Twitter through a new company backed by the blogging site to manage demand from brands. Twitter Partners has signed up a range of European media clients to develop a marketing strategy on Twitter and is in conversations with a number of major brands that are keen to tap into the phenomenal growth of the service. The company, set up by angel investor and entrepreneur Peter Read, has attracted a high-profile board of advisors including Lastminute.com founders Brent Hoberman and Martha Lane Fox, Last.fm founder Stefan Glaenzer, Lovefilm co-founder Saul Klein, former Sky online marketing director Scott Gallacher and former Yahoo VP Toby Coppel. It has been endorsed by Twitter itself, which is understood to be taking an equity stake in the firm. Virtual band Gorillaz is the first Twitter Partners client to launch activity, promoting the documentary film Bananaz ahead of its theatrical release. This month the company will also launch campaigns for Paramount, Universal Pictures, Lionsgate and Warner Music. While Twitter has more than 6m users and has become an overnight media success story, the company is still without a proper commercial infrastructure. “It has only 30 employees, most of whom are engineers and has been bombarded by approaches. It’s only just starting to hire business people,” said Read. “The company is excited about the likes of P&G and record labels approaching it but doesn’t have the people to handle this interest, so it’s happy to send them our way.”
Sorry, Britannica, Wikipedia’s Not Only Bigger But Better (BusinessInsider):
Former Wall Street Journal publisher (and current SAI investor) Gordon Crovitz makes the case: In 1993, Microsoft launched an innovative multimedia encyclopedia, Encarta, delivered through CD-ROM. It nearly put the Encyclopaedia Britannica out of business. Last week, Microsoft announced that it will close Encarta down. Encarta could not compete with Wikipedia, which plays by different rules, using the online medium to beat earlier encyclopedias at their own mission. Created and maintained by anonymous people around the world, Wikipedia is by far the biggest and most popular encyclopedia ever. Despite being created by amateurs, it has the potential to become the most professional. This may be a startling claim. There are infamous inaccuracies… But Wikipedia is quietly transforming itself into a hybrid of amateurs and professionals. Anyone can create entries — it has 10 million articles in 253 languages — but the ultimate editing is increasingly done by well-trained researchers. This trend is important because by some measures Wikipedia is in the top five Web sites, it is often the top result on Google searches, and it gets 97% of traffic to online encyclopedias. There are many possible definitions of “better,” and Britannica will presumably cling to one of them for a while. But in one sense, Gordon’s already right. Britannica is irrelevant.
7digtal powers MP3 downloads on AOL’s Winamp, following similar Spotify and Songbird partnerships (Last100):
7digital has announced a partnership with AOL to integrate its music download store with AOL’s popular Windows-based music player Winamp, following similar deals with Spotify and Songbird. Built using 7digital’s publicly available API, European users of Winamp can purchase tracks from 7digital’s six million strong MP3 catalogue through the application’s ‘Now Playing’ menu, as well as access additional artist, track and album information.
Brightcove: Newspapers rapidly growing online video offerings (FierceOnlineVideo):
Brightcove, which counts top newspaper chains such as Cox Newspapers, New York Times Co. and The Washington Post as clients, released data Wednesday showing major adoption and monetization of online video by newspapers. Brightcove said that its 30 newspaper group clients streamed 42,777,231 online videos in Q1 2009, a 179 percent increase from the 15,311,542 videos streamed in Q1 2008. Brightcove also said that its newspaper clients are uploading about 3.5 times more videos per day presently than they did a year ago. Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire said newspapers are recognizing the value of online video news content and modifying production workflows to generate more content and integrate it into their total news offering.
Canal+ Reports 10m VOD viewings (RapidTVnews):
French premium channel Canal+ announced that its VOD service Canal+ à la Demande has scored 10 million streams during its first year of launch. 60% of the programs viewed were seen on TV, and 40% on a PC. Canal + à la Demande now offers 80% of the broadcaster’s programming. With 32.6% of all viewings, movies are the most requested by subscribers, followed by TV series (23.3%) and entertainment.
Honda plans to centralise all online content (NMA):
Honda UK has completed a major redevelopment of its website as it looks to centralise all online content. The move is part of a wider digital strategy from the car manufacturer as it looks to pull its online sales and branding into one portal. Honda claims it will cut the cost of campaign content by 50%. Jonny Freeman, digital marketing manager at Honda, said, “With this platform we no longer have to replicate content for each campaign.
New Bravo Series to Highlight NYC’s Teenage Elite (WorldScreen):
Bravo has picked up the new docuseries NYC Prep, which follows six affluent teenagers who are part of Manhattan’s social circle. The series will premiere on June 16 at 11 p.m., moving to its regular Tuesday, 10 p.m. time slot on June 23. NYC Prep spotlights privileged teens who are part of an upscale social scene in Manhattan. The six teenagers’ lives intertwine as they network, shop, party, study and look toward college. “Bravo continues to intrigue audiences with real-life depictions of relatable characters who live in exclusive worlds,” said Frances Berwick, the executive VP and general manager of Bravo Media. “We’ll watch as these teenagers manage the ups and downs of not only being in high school, but what comes along with growing up as part of New York’s elite.”
In belated Easter related blogs, see Techcrunch’s “Some Of Our Favorite Easter Eggs” with a countdown of virtual easter eggs and applications. It includes the first ever software Easter Egg by Atari, see below YouTube clip:
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