Cool features when doing coverage of the Presidential race

WashingtonPost.com did a live streaming coverage of Super Tuesday results. Analysts say that is was not an engaging TV coverage: no live shots from the field, except candidate speeches; just lots of analysis.

It was a poor coverage by TV standards, although a great alternative for their users. WashingtonPost.com explained that its goal was to “put breaking news in perspective.”

A cool feature used by WashingtonPost was the live chat. Other media as ABC News integrated video questions and comments submitted by users via “Talk Back” site.

More interesting functionalities implemented during the race:

- Twitter teamed with Google for a map mashup with the latest updates across the country. New Twitters appear in real-time (Google explains the process ), and when the polls close, Google will add election results to the mix.
- YouTube has its own Google Maps mashup , which combines video submissions from YouTubers.

- MSBNC.com offered for bloggers.

- Clear Channel teamed with NBC News and MSNBC.com to display real-time results on electronic billboards located in Los Angeles, Chicago, Las Vegas, Memphis and Albuquerque.

- CNN brought out the “Magic Wall”. This is a touch-screen that allows anchors to interactively display and animate data as if they were manipulating the images on an iPhone It was invented by a 32 years-old New York computer scientist who runs 10-person company Perceptive Pixel.

Armed forces, national security agencies, large businesses and other TV networks have bought this $100,000 device called Multi-Touch Collaboration Wall. It can display much data simultaneously like photos, videos, Google Earth maps, live streams of Web sites, charts. It reminds “Minority Report” film.



Newsclipper.com disrupts content publishers video ad policy

See this extraordinary site, Newsclipper.org . It collects publicly available content and allows you to playlist it.

Newsclipper.org benefits from RSS (Really Simple Syndication), one of the best techniques for distributing one-to-one media experiences and syndicate web content. Video distributors use it to enable their content to be embedded in, or linked to, other people websites.

Newsclipper.org has created a custom viewing environment. They have arranged a bunch of feeds in easy to understand groups. It’s just a linking site. They don’t store video, nor do they ask for anyone’s permission to do this. They get the major content publishers’ RSS feeds, and strip out any of the code that points to advertising, and bring you the programming.

(The only way to prevent this would be for content publishers to bake commercial messaging into their videos. But that would not let them properly traffic advertising on their own sites. And it would also allow content to expire, which is not a good idea.)

You choose from a pulldown menu a subject, a network, or a special interest feeds, among others. Then you can add to your personal playlist or just view them by clicking.

This is what Shelly Palmer, author of the book Television Disrupted> The Transition from Network to Networked TV writes:

“Unlike QuickSilverScreen.com and other linking sites that feature pirated content, newsclipper.org points you to publicly available feeds featuring video hosted and served from the legal rightsholder’s servers. The site is remarkable in that it fulfills its marketing promise perfectly. “Come to newsclipper.org and get video clips from major news sources in a clean, easy to use online environment.”

Here’s the scary part. If you take the playlist you create on newsclipper.org and add your own advertising via RSS and put the whole shebang on your own website or blog, you will (in effect) become a customized, targeted video site with network quality news clips, selling your own advertising with no way for anyone to know that what you are doing is illegal. The content publisher will know, but only if they see your site. Consumers won’t have any idea that the advertising they are seeing is not the advertising that they were intended to see.

Absurdly, all of the content publishers who are featured on newsclipper.org gleefully feed their video content via RSS. By definition, anyone can read the feed and see the videos. Of course, the idea was for consumers to see the whole feed with advertising intact. Oops!”



Yahoo Live allows to stream live

Yahoo has launched a new live service which allows anyone with a webcam to stream live. It is called Live Yahoo . For now the service is very unstable and keeps going down. One cool feature is that you can track Yahoo Live’s Twitter account to see what’s streaming right now. This is similar to Ustream.tv and LiveNewsCameras.com. And by the way, we should say something about LiveNewsCameras.com , which is a fascinating concept.

LiveNewsCameras.com is a compilation of Fox affiliate feeds across the country. A moderator explains what’s happening and what’s coming up. Affiliates are sending out text alerts of upcoming events via Twitter, which is integrated into the right column. Fox thinks of this an experiment.

Podcast growing in traffic and ad revenue

A study by eMarketer projects exponential growth in the podcasting audience: from 18.5 million in the U.S. in 2007 to 65 million in 2012. Along with it, it will be a steady growth in advertising revenue. In 2007 hit $165 million and is expected to grow to $435 million in 2012.

Active listeners (defined as people who download more than one podcast) were 6.5 million in 2007 and expected to be 25 million in 2012.

The podcasting has been passed by as video became the hot vertical, particularly with new iPod video devices. The mainstream media is playing a big role promoting the growth of podcasts –so is taking a big slice of the pie.

Traffic skyrocketing for video-sharing sites

Unique users to video-sharing sites (dominated by YouTube) have doubled over the last year. The same study of Pew Internet Project highlights a more long-term growth of video sharing sites. The spread of broadband connection, the widespread use of video by a variety of websites, and the increasing of amateur video makers are factors for the longer term.

Nearly half (48 %) of U.S. users visited a video sharing site during 2007. On a typical day, some 15 % were either watching or posting video.

In addition, video sharing sites are getting more involved in political and social issues. In the summer YouTube co-hosted a presidential debate with CNN, and this fall Facebook partnered with ABC News.


High traffic on YouTube, few profits on YouTube

Perez Hilton complains that he only made $5,000 on 25 million video views on YouTube (that works out to a lousy .20 CPM). As a result some analysts say that there is not much money out there for independent web video publishers. This is a wrong conclusion in our view.

Perez Hilton is hosting their clips on a free service. He does not have control over pre-roll tied with banner ads. Even at a modest $20 CPM (and it could be $30 - $40) he could be bringing in $500,000 a month in preroll ads. He is missing out on $6 million in inventory. As another analysts say, “there is no money in giving away your video and hoping someone else will sell it and make you rich.”


Pre-Rolls video ads scare viewers away

Consider pre-rolls as a transitional video ad unit. They are not going away anytime soon. Advertisers need to understand better what audiences think.

A study by Burst Media reveals that more than half of all Internet users bail out of a clip before the pre-roll stops playing, and a significant percentage leave the site entirely. It is not so difficult to find compelling video ads.


TV Stations look to their Websites for new sources of revenue

Local TV Stations in the U.S. are buying syndicated program to show on their Web sites, as a way to sell advertisements with those programs to local businesses. Some stations are crating original programming for the Web, but it is far easier for them to purchase the online rights to syndicated shows.

So far a majority of local TV stations sell video advertising on their Websites, but for that they use one of these three vendors: WorldNow, Internet Broadcasting Systems or Broadcast Interactive Media. Another company is TitanTV, a technology vendor turned media company, which has introduced a platform to attach local commercials to online video clips. This company is also producing short-form series and has the online rights to two shows: “Jury Duty” and “Animal Rescue”.

The New York Times reports about this phenomenon, and raises a conclusion: “The success or failure of online ventures will ultimately rest on their promotional abilities. Viewers of local TV are often reminded to go online for weather and traffic updates, but often they go to the site of their local newspaper instead. And when they want to see television shows online, they gravitate toward the networks’ Web sites.”


Eyes on Google, Microsoft bids to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion

Microsoft said this week it would pay $44.6 billion to buy Yahoo –if the search engine takes the deal. The unsolicited bid would be worth $31 per share -62 % more than the company’s Thursday 31 closing price.

Microsoft made a similar attempt a year ago, but Yahoo rebuffed them because they thought their company was going in the right direction. Now, in a letter to Yahoo, Microsoft execs say “A year has gone, and the competitive situation has not improved.” Yahoo has promised to “evaluate this proposal carefully and promptly.”

Microsoft may see Yahoo as its last best chance to catch up Google in the Internet search and online advertising arena. It would be its largest acquisition.


Yahoo to acquire Maven for $150 million

At the same time, Yahoo is in the final stages of deal to acquire Maven Networks, for $150 million. The company, founded in 2002, headquartered in Cambridge, has raised more than $30 million in private funding. Maven provides IP video hosting and distribution services for media outlets and private enterprises.