the Web Chef's e-Bytes

Web Tidbits - Online Music and Video, Widgets

The Wall Street Journal reported today "Web Tools to find Your Inner DJ" on some of the developments in the online music space.  Among the trends and sites that they referenced were the following:

• Music Streaming Sites - Jango, Pandora (I've been using this one for awhile and love it. )
• Music Search Engines - seeqpod, songza, SkreemR
• Music Social Networking Sites - imeem, last.fm, iLike, MyStrands

Widgets
iMedia Connection has a video clip introducing widgets and the role that they can play as part of your marketing strategies.  You can see the video at: Widget Marketing 101. Also see their article "Do Widgets Spell Doom for Portals?"

For more on widgets see my article "Widgets: Web Components for Plug and Play" at Wisconsin Technology Network.

Online Video
CoolzOr has a posting on a new service called Hey!Spread that allows you to upload your promotional videos to 17 sites saving you the hassle of individual uploads. 

Web Tidbits - Keys to Success Online, Etsy, Jellyfish

Business Week has put together an online exclusive called "The Keys to Online Success".   The series of articles includes everything from case studies on small business use of Web 2.0 tools to coverage of Podcasting to an online video on best practices for online businesses.

Catching up on my reading, I found an article in Business Week reviewing Etsy, an online marketplace for arts and crafts.  According to the article, the site doesn't use an auction model, but collects a .20 listing fee and 3.5% commission.

Madison-based Jellyfish, a comparison shopping site with a twist has been acquired by Microsoft according to the Capital Times.  The deal was apparently worth $50 million and for those of us that live in and love Madison, Microsoft will reportedly keep the company in town.  ZDNet's blogger Mary Jo Foley on Microsoft reports that it fits nicely with their focus on shopping results.

Web Tidbits - Video, Music

It has been a big week in the web content world with announcements all week about new services and agreements impacting video, music, mobile content and other web areas.

Video - French YouTube competitor, Dailymotion has received $34 million in venture capital funding according to PC World. The Wall Street Journal reports that they have 37 million visitors a month.

Meanwhile YouTube has reached an agreement to license 10 million pieces of music for a flat fee from the UK-based MCPS-PRS Alliance according to Forbes.

Fox and NBC Universal announced the name for their new video sharing service - Hulu according to Digital Trends.  The site is scheduled to go into private Beta in October.

Music & Beyond - Not to be left behind, Nokia has launched a new web brand, Ovi (or door in Finnish) that will provide music downloading and other services in direct competition with Apple's iTune and other web service providers according to VNUNet.  The service is expected to go live in the fourth quarter of 2007 with music, games and maps according to the Nokia Press Release (PDF).

Big Brother Internet Surveillance to Increase?

In yet another example of Government run amuck, the Justice Department is investigating instituting requirements that video and photo sharing sites maintain records about who has uploaded content to their sites for a two year period.  This requirement is being pursued according to CNET because the government feels it would be valuable in investigating terrorism, child pornography and other crimes.

This "data retention" concept has been pursued by the Bush Justice Department for a number of months.  According to CNET "Internet service providers typically discard any log file that's no longer required for business reasons such as network monitoring, fraud prevention or billing disputes".

Privacy experts are alarmed that this government intrusion is yet another step in government access to a full range of private information that could be used in a politically and personally harmful manner.

You'd think with the heat that the Justice Department has been under for their many unpopular positions and recent mass firings of a number of Federal Attorneys, that these types of initiatives would be put on the back burner.

Photo Sharing Sites with a Twist - Fliptrack

A new photo sharing site called Fliptrack has been launched.  The site has an interesting spin for this space in that it allows users to upload photographs and link them to one of over 100 licensed musical soundtracks (from holiday to golden oldies to contemporary) and have them displayed as a Flash slide show. 

As the press release I received from the company states "To create a mash-up at Fliptrack simply select a song, and then drag-and-drop digital photos onto the timeline.  A selection of quick start templates with pre-selected images makes it easy to get started, and built-in privacy controls place guidelines on who can view the final product.  Once complete, Fliptrack converts the creation into a flash-video for viewing as a musical photo montage or slide show."

Much like the video sharing site and Slideshare, the technology is set-up to allow for an embedded flash presentation like this one below.

Top Video Sites Ranked and Compared

B2Blog has a posting on the top video sites as ranked by comScore Media Metrix.  YouTube continues to move up the rankings taking on the big players like Google and Yahoo!

In looking over the list I found that there were 3 that I had never heard of - #6 - Heavy with 8.3 million unique visitors, #8 Ebaums World with 5.4 million unique visitors and #15 vSsocial with .09 milllion viewers.

I've embedded a vSocial clip on emoticons for your viewing pleasure.

Comparisons
Michael Arrington at Techcrunch had a posting last November comparing the features of various video services that includes quite a few additional companies that could be coming on strong.  In April, he rated Motionbox as the best video sharing site.  Digital Video Guru took another look at comparisons with a review of 10 sites in April of this year.  Although some of these overlap with Techcrunch's review, there are some different ones posted as well.  Mustsee developed a nice chart looking at 40 different video sharing services analyzing content, features, usability, reach and overall.

Specialized Services
In addition we are starting to see specialized video sharing sites catering to specific audiences that will be an interesting addition to the mix.  Among these are PornoTube and PetVideo, each with an obvious target audience.

UPDATE 1 - Site comparisons
PaidContent.org, reports on a comparative ranking that has been put together by LightReading that compares video sites on 3 criteria - ease of use, file storage limits and other stuff. 

Video Rankings
ResearchBuzz reported on a new service - the World Internet TV chart that is comparing the most popular videos on YouTube, Digg, VideoSift and Google.

UPDATE 2 - Video Mash-up
Magg is a site that you can use to track videos from multiple sites - YouTube, Google Video, Veoh, Myspace, Metacafe and Jumpcut.

UPDATE 3 - Online Comparisons
Dave Taylor at Fabric of Folly has a ranking of their top 20 video sites.  To complete the rankings they uploaded the same video at each of the 20 sites.   Dave Taylor, the reviewer looked at features like cost, tagging, comments, killer features, etc. then ranked them on an aggregate score of ease of use, appearance and features.  This comparative information joins that of my earlier links to other video comparison sites.

Hat tip to: Will Video for Food

Integrated Campaign - Specialized Bikes

AdFreak has an interesting post about how Specialized Bikes has created an integrated campaign that uses a microsite with video and a podcast to promote their bikes.  In addition to the microsite showing videos and podcasts, Specialized has posted the videos including the one below - "Happy Entrails" on YouTube for general viewing.

Podcasting Legal Guide & Update

iPod iPod
Originally uploaded by jakerome.

Creative Commons has published a comprehensive legal guide for Podcasting.  It looks like a pretty complete review of the topic.

For other Podcasting information see my earlier post on the state of podcasting.  Also take a look at the Podcasting resources that I've put together on my web site.

Joining the iPod Generation
I'm happy to report that beyond listening or viewing podcasts on my desk or laptop, I've joined the younger generation with the acquisition of a 30 GB 5G iPod.  In addition to using my iPod for Podcasts, Videocasts and music I intend to use it as a storage device for uploading photographs while out on the road.  This will reduce the need for a large inventory of memory sticks for my Sony Cybershot when I'm remote from a PC. 

Thanks to John Brzezinski, my friend and the publisher of the OKO blog for convincing me to take this step.

Podcast Update

Podcast Wallpaper
Originally uploaded by OllyHart.

Business Week reported today that Arbitron has conducted research indicating that 11% of Americans have listened to a podcast.

They also reported that 12% of Americans are regular listeners of Internet radio.  As a periodic listener of Jazz station WBGO 88.3 in Newark, New Jersey, I'm one of these regular radio listeners. 

State of Podcasting - Infancy with a Bright Future?

Charlene Li in her blog reports that Forrester’s new brief, “Podcasting Hits the Charts” indicates that only 1% of online households or 700,000 regularly use podcasts. The real benefit that consumers see is "time shifting" or being able to listen to content when they want. The Forrester report indicates that the majority of people listening to podcasts are not listening to new audio streams but rather those they already were interested in. While this utilization data isn’t very promising, Charlene suggests that companies utilize podcasting to re-purpose existing audio content (training programs, earnings reports, executive presentations, press briefings).  CNET had some discussion of this story as well along with Business Week in their Blogspotting Blog.

We are seeing more discussion of podcasting as a marketing medium with recent stories by Entrepreneur Magazine on “Using Podcasting to Promote Your Site”, a good example of this trend. Brian Carroll's B2B Generation Blog also talks about using podcasts to generate leads.  I’ll be interviewed on the radio on Madison’s WIBA 1310AM on April 23rd on the In Business with Jody and Joan Show and have requested a digital recording so that I can add a single “podcast” on my site.

Podcast Alley, a podcast directory meanwhile lists 17,388 podcasts in their index with many of these having multiple episodes.  Some business usages for podcasts include examples like Disney using one to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Disneyland and Jupiter Research's recent podcast on Web 2.0.  An interesting implication of Podcasting is the negative impact it has had on NPR fundraising as listeners avoid hearing the fundraising pitch and elect to listen to the podcast instead according to a recent Wired article.

My read on podcasts is that consumers are showing greater interest in video streams then audio alone. Business people in turn enjoy the on demand or participative nature of webcasts.  For consumers we've seen the phenomenal growth of YouTube supported by the data on the number of videos that are being viewed as reported by the Online Publishers Association (see my earlier nibblet).  Both of these support that there is a preference for audio-visual media. Video blogs or vlogs like Rocketboom can be more engaging then audio tracks alone.

I’ve had the pleasure of listening to and demonstrating several educational or informational podcasts with talking heads and have found many of them to be somewhat boring given their lack of visual cues or more dynamic audio presentation styles.

Need help on understanding podcasts?  See Podcast 101 and follow the links from the resources on podcasts that I have at the ConnectingDots website.