News in the world of video sites

Firstly YouTube are planning some changes. I guess it had to come at some point if they were going to make any money ever. The changes essentially centre around separating premium and user content in the future and changing the navigation to a tab scheme.

http://www.clickz.com/3633218

Interestingly they will re-design their player to be more like Hulu's. Which leads us to them also touching on the story of where Disney will be doing putting media online. It looks like Hulu is the place. Obviously this only affects the US at the moment, as most Hulu content is not licensed elsewhere.

Read more below:

http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090330/disneys-decision-hulu-youtube-or-something-else/

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cotown-hulu28-2009mar28,0,7839088.story

Watch-wall-e-men

Check out this brilliant movie mash-up.

http://www.fuckofffilm.com/movie-and-film-news/2009/3/24/watchmenwall-e-mashup.html

Global ad spend predicted to fall in 2009

Carat have predicted a 5.8% fall in global ad spending in 2009, with China being the only market to have a spending increase. It's not all doom and gloom though, as they predict a rise again in 2010.

http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssTechMediaTelecomNews/idUSLP39506420090325

Jollywise Media Rock the Boat

We recently put together this competition site for the Universal film The Boat That Rocked and Spotify. It's a combination that we think works incredibly well, with playlists for each of the film's main characters on Spotify. Just find out which playlist the mentioned song is on and enter the competition
http://www.thecompetitionthatrocked.com/

Music :) Ally have written about it too:
http://musically.com/blog/2009/03/26/the-boat-that-rocked-gets-spotify-promo-site/

Check out the New Media Age article as well. Although you'll need a login to read the full story.

Searching Twitter

I was reading about how Twitter has started adding text ads:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/mar/24/twitter-startups

Then I read this line:
Given the buzz around real-time search of late, that's very interesting. (There's a Greasemonkey script that will combine real-time Twitter results with Google search results, and it's fascinating...)

Which is exactly what I've was talking about. Fascinating what Twitter comes up with when you search it alongside Google and compare and see how useful Twitter is. Have a look at the links below for some more information.


Twitter Search Results on Google
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/43451

20+ Great Greasemonkey Scripts for Improving Your Twitter Experience
http://mashable.com/2008/12/17/twitter-greasemonkey-scripts/

Local Global News

An interesting approach to local news, getting it globally. It doesn't quite work yet, as not much news is geo-tagged. However - tag everything up properly on the web, a step towards the semantic web, then this could become a really useful site / idea.
And it follows on my theme of giving the web meaning and then mining that data to produce useful information.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/mar/23/netbytes-topix-local-news

Megadrop-downs are good

I agree with Jakob Nielson mega drop-down menus are good. I find they work well in many situations. I would just always suggest that the site indicates that they are dropdowns. Sometimes you can't find the navigation around the site, and only when you happen to put the mouse over the top links do you find it.

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mega-dropdown-menus.html

The reality of social media marketing

I wish all our clients, in fact everyone, had read the following article. Basically saying that social marketing is a skill and costs money. It's not just something you can get some kid at school to knock out and that budgets start at around $50,000!

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2009/tc20090218_335887.htm

Twitter and Music

Following on from my posts about Tweets being a goldmine of information to be mined, I decided to blog about how people are using Twitter for their musical needs. Finished however with an online app that doesn't actually use Twitter, but is Twitter for music.


Twisten.fm is a nice simple list of tracks that are being twittered about with links to the tracks mentioned. It's like Hype Machine for Twitter. It comes from GrooveShark, which is another interesting music app. But more on that another day!
http://twisten.fm/


Tweetj is some proper musical Twitter data mining. The homepage lists artists / songs that have been twittered about recently. There is also a top 100 songs being twittered about, great for seeing if you've got your finger on the pulse.
http://tweetj.com/


If you use FoxyTunes, then this is a nice app so you can twitter tracks easily. A nice extension to this might be an app that keeps a play list of what you listen to and then maybe once an hour, or every few hours, it posts a playlist online and twitters the URL.
http://blog.foxytunes.net/2007/04/20/twitter-foxytunes-twittytunes/


twt.fm is all about formalising the way music is posted on Twitter. Which is a great idea. You normally can't tell what short URLs contain in tweets, so this is useful. It will also find a version of your chosen track online to play.
http://twt.fm/


blip is great. It is twitter for music. It is your own radio station. Is it sharing music. Is it finding new music. It is great.
Others agree:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/12/twitter-for-music/
http://theartofservice.com/a/a/Twitter-Music:-Advanced-Through-Blip.html
http://www.somewhatfrank.com/2008/10/blipfm-twitter.html
http://zedomax.net/zedomax-network-news/fuzz-launches-blip-twitter-for-music/
http://blog.go2web20.net/2008/05/some-thoughts-about-blip-twitter-for.html

So get onto blip and start listening to people's music and start broadcasting your own tastes.
http://blip.fm/

Report on Advertising on Facebook

Useful stuff here. All about advertising on Facebook and how best to do it.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/facebook-advertising-an-opportunity-to-reach-powerful-users-at-very-low-cost

Time ask the questions

Who will pay for what on the web? Clever to look at alternatives and what people might be willing to pay for online. We like proactive.

http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090319/time-inc-wonders-what-youll-pay-for-on-the-web/

Google View hits the UK Streets

Google has finally launched the UK version of Street View. You can now virtually walk around streets in certain cities in England. A massive imposition on our privacy, or pretty cool?


http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/mar/19/google-street-view-uk

Nice video on BBC News:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7951873.stm

See for yourself:
http://maps.google.co.uk/streetview

Free music players

An interesting article discussing some Youtube free music players and the surrounding issues.

http://nextlevelideas.com/2009/03/dropplay-v-muziic-is-free-music-here-to-stay/

iPhone OS 3.0

The big update for the iPhone OS. Looks like they are adding loads and making it more powerful.

http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20090317/live-blog-iphone-os-30/

Ooooh copy & paste, which has been sorely missing from the iPhone.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/03/16/late_rumor_has_iphone_3_0_getting_copy_and_paste_multitasking.html

Looking for a job? Use twitter!

This kind of builds upon what I was saying in a previous post about this information being thrown around Twitter being a fully-stocked diamond mine, if you've got the right drill.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/mar/17/digital-media-twitter

WeFollow launched - user generated directory

Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, has just launched a WeFollow.

All this talk of searchable twitters, hashtags, and nicely packaged 140 character messages has led me to think about how all this information is starting to be structured and searching can be really powerful. If people stick to some conventions, or are made to, then we could be let to some kind of "semantic web" of information.

If we can just get the normal web (internet) to follow suit then we're talking real power. However maybe limiting people to 140 characters is a better place for information - it means all the waffle is left out. An intelligent search of twitters could very soon be a better place to find information than a web search.

http://mashable.com/2009/03/15/wefollow/

Getting it wrong

How to get it really wrong in interactive media: The Pepsi Max suicide campaign

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/22362.asp

Hulu news

Hulu is big. Looks good, just a shame you can't get most content in the UK.

Highlights:

...News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox is getting close to a deal to bring Disney’s (DIS) ABC into the fold.

It’s now the biggest video site that isn’t YouTube.

VideoCensus pegs the site’s February traffic at 309 million video views.

It’s not just a video site, it’s a social network

http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090312/hulu-bigger-friendlier-still-missing-two-networks/

Defining viral

Asking some questions about what counts as viral. Were the BBC cheating?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/03/this_is_a_viral_blog.html

Breaking Social Media Rules

Simply an interesting article:

5 People Who Broke the Rules of Social Media and Succeeded
http://mashable.com/2009/03/10/breaking-social-media-rules/

Find the body bits!

Promote a zombie game with body bits? Sounds perfect.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2009/mar/10/gameculture-xbox

Email campaigns on Twitter

Useful article about using Twitter to send out email campaign.

http://returnonsubscriber.com/2009/01/14/send-track-an-email-campaign-through-twitter/

Google behaviour

Google are going to start serving ads that are behaviour based.
These kind of things are always controversial, but I see why they'd want to do it. The more accurate the advertising is, the better for both the advertiser and the user. Still all kinds of privacy issues that will be raised.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7937201.stm

Great Watchmen sites

Both these sites and the banner I clicked on to get to the sites are brilliant. I don’t think they do anything revolutionary, they just look great. The branding is strong and it’s all works well and clearly. There is something bold and simple about them that is very appealing.

The banner was my favourite kind. It plays the trailer with a speaker symbol overlayed, when you click the symbol – you get the sound added to the trailer. Once finished you can: watch trailer again or visit the website. Nothing fancy, but it works.
Widget is a bit dull. They could have done a lot more with that.

http://www.watchmenmovie.co.uk/intl/uk/
http://www.watchmenmoviewidget.com/uk/

New ad banner sizes

Some new ad banner sizes have been suggested through Online Publishers Association. They are not part of the industry's standard specifications set by the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

• The fixed panel, a 336-by-860-pixel banner that is wider than the standard skyscraper and follows users as they scroll down the page.
• The XXL box, a 468-by-648-pixel unit that can expand with video.
• The pushdown, a 970-by-418-pixel placement that takes up over half of the page before rolling up.

More...
http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/digital/e3i77fdd1ea9c8421a4fcf75b32b1ce2ccb?pn=1