My social media toolkit

For the sake of summary, let’s list out what’s in my toolkit, and then we’ll go into detail AFTER that:

• Listening Tool – Google Reader
• Search Tools – Technorati and Google Blogsearch
• Home Base Blog – WordPress.com or WordPress.org to host your own).
• Better Reach – FeedBurner
• Social Conversation – Twitter
• Social Profile – Facebook
• Business Profile – LinkedIN
• Social Bookmarking – Del.icio.us
• Shared Documents – Google Docs
• Instant Messaging-Web Based – Meebo
• Photo Sharing – Flickr
• Video Hosting – googlevideohost.com (also YouTube)

Google Reader and the two search tools make it easy for you to set up a quick network of searches on topics, brands, company names, and whatever else you want to follow in your space. (If you didn’t get my Five Starter Moves free PDF document, drop a note in the comments, and it describes HOW). The “Shared Items” feature and the email to others feature makes this a great way to share interesting articles with others, by the way.

When I say “home base” blog, I feel that in MOST cases, making your main website a blog is preferable to something static. Why? Because it hints at recurring content. It fills search engines with things to think about.

FeedBurner can be used to improve the quality of RSS feeds, to give people more options to subscribe to your posts, and for some extra functionality.

Twitter allows for one-to-many messaging from multiple points (web, IM, 3rd party app, or mobile device). It’s also good for presence, and sharing quick status information.

Facebook actually does lots of things and is a full-featured social network, but at the baseline, fill out a personal profile with lots of information about you, and links back to your main site and/or your blog, and it will do a great job of helping people find you. Other features exist, including groups and several 3rd party applications. There’s lots to explore there.

LinkedIN is a popular site for posting a summary of your current job role and responsibilities, as well as a work history. There is now a group feature there as well, and you can use this tool extensively to reach out and meet new colleagues in your field, prospective employees, and there are all sorts of other uses for such information, if you give it some thought.

I like del.icio.us (pronounced “delicious”) for social bookmarking because it means my bookmarks are out on the web, so I can access them from anywhere. It also means that I can add tags and other metadata to the bookmarks to improve the ways I search for them.

Google Docs works as a great replacement for sharing word processing and spreadsheet functions. It’s free, secure, and makes for less file clutter, as you’re sharing a link to a shared, common document instead of sending around various versions. They also have a presentation software, though I haven’t had much experience with it just yet.

Instant messaging isn’t dead. There are still plenty of great business uses for quick one-to-one conversations. Meebo is a great tool because it lets you bridge several services at once (Desktop apps that do the same thing are Adium for the Mac and Trillian for PC) and chat with people about quick hit items.

Photo sharing and video hosting can be used in lots of ways. They make for richer interactions, add some dimension to the media you’re making with your company, and give you an opportunity to express your story in different ways than straight text.

YouTube available in Russian now

The company Google has launched the Russian-language version of the most popular video hosting YouTube. Now the portal is presented in Russian including the search engine. Domestic market participants are not afraid of competition on the part of the project. Although some experts state YouTube has no competitors in Runet, and they are unlikely to appear in the near future.

Google has launched YouTube localized version. So now all pages and the search engine of the most popular video portal are available to Russian users in Russian. The sections ‘Recommend to watch’ and ‘In the spotlight’ have been localized, so now they are filled with movies and comments in Russian.

Before launching its localized interface YouTube concluded partnership agreements with such Russian content suppliers as 1TV, TNT, STS, 2×2, Luxe.tv, Euronews and others. STS is sure the launch of YouTube localized version might help Russia become ‘an active participant of the world video content market’. Chad Hurley, YouTube Director General and founder, hopes the service localized version to be actively used by the Russian-language audience.

In addition to concluding agreements with partners to provide the Russian-language users with ‘interesting and relevant content’ Google hopes the consumer electronics market to further develop, so that users are able to copy, watch and exchange the video content, CNews corresponded was told in Google. Google gives no details regarding its plans to develop YouTube in Russia. The company says it is not interested in simple translation of the site and its options, which might be done through localization and contextualization of the service and its options.

Representative of domestic video hostings are not concerned with YouTube localization. Askar Tuganbaev, RuTube video hosting producer, believes localization of the complicated interface might result in the Russian-language audience to increase. However, according to Mr. Tuganbaev, there are too many movies on YouTube, which are inappropriate to Russian users and might deter them. Albert Popkov, the founder of the project Odnoklassniki, which launched the video hosting Videogaga.ru, believes YouTube main competitor is the company Mail.ru. He says the recently launched project Videogaga.ru is focused on amateur video unlike YouTube, which is a search engine through the favorite types of video content.

According to Mr. Tuganbaev, RuTube and YouTube compete not in service provision and interface, but in content: RuTube users are more interested in the educational than in the entertainment content, unlike YouTube users. The finance Google is going to invest into YouTube promotion might help the Russian users to understand the project is not interesting to them, Mr. Tuganbaev concludes. Albert Popkov believes the given video service might encourage RuTube to develop more actively. Anna Artamonova, Mail.ru Vice President and Marketing Director, states YouTube is a serious competitor, ‘which should not be underestimated by local players’. However, it is unlikely to provide the Russian users with something unusual, they have not seen yet, Mrs. Artamonova concludes.

Some experts believe YouTuve has no one to compete in Runet. Anton Nosik, Director of blog service at the company Sup, states YouTube is already the leader in the Russian video hosting market, so there is no one to pretend to its place, as all Russian projects presented in the market copy YouTube interface, services and, sometimes, even its brand. Under such conditions, localization does not matter, Mr. Nosik says. The expert believes the projects existing in the Russian market will not be able to compete with YouTube even in the future, as they do nothing to develop and not to copy YouTube.

The company Google stated it was going to buy YouTube late in 2006. The portal was bought for $1.65 bln. According to unofficial data, YouTube revenue in 2006 came to $15 mln.

Azooca Capture Allows Easy Video Sharing Through Social Media

From business wire : Azooca, Inc., a leading online video communications company, announced today the launch of Azooca Capture, a web-based video capture, upload, and hosting service. Azooca Capture allows users to upload video files and mobile phone footage, as well as record webcam video for sharing through email and across a number of social networking sites such as MySpace, Blogger and Facebook. Azooca Capture also empowers users with the ability to link video to Craigslist ads.Azooca Capture sets itself apart from other online video applications through its added privacy features that allow users to control not only who, but how often each video is viewed. Users have the option to set a video expiration based on days or number of views. With video expiration setting, users can schedule a video to delete, for example, after five views. After the fifth view, Azooca blocks access to the video to everyone but the video creator.

Although video sharing sites today provide public and private video sharing options, once private videos are uploaded to these sites, search results bring up thumbnails and video descriptions of all videos, even if the video is not viewable. With Azooca, if uploaded videos have privacy settings in place only specified users can access the video or view information about it.

“Our goal with Azooca Capture is to provide an intuitive tool that allows individuals unfamiliar with converting digital video files to an online format the ability to grasp it in minutes while offering users the power to control who, where, when and how often their videos are watched,” said Phil Hale, Chief Marketing Officer for Azooca. “Internet privacy is an important issue, and while Azooca Capture can be used to share video to the community and create a viral effect, we also make sure the videos are truly private and our video expiration feature empowers users to do this.”

No software downloads or registration is required to view or send video through Azooca Capture. However for users wishing to store converted video, Azooca Capture offers two different levels of accounts. A free account offers 250 MB of storage with video hosting for 60 days; upgraded service provides 1 gigabyte of storage space and the ability to set video expirations.

Azooca unveiled its video communications technology with the launch of the company and its signature product, Azooca Mail in June, 2007. Last month, the company launched a private label enterprise application, Azooca API, for companies and organizations, providing a painless integration of video on to their websites.

About Azooca, Inc.

Azooca, Inc. is an Internet video content service provider. With consumer-oriented video communication websites and back-end white-labeled developer applications, Azooca is forging new frontiers in video messaging technologies. Azooca, Inc. is a privately-held company headquartered in City of Industry, California.

Google Canada now own YouTube

YouTube is setting up shop in Canada.The world’s most popular video-sharing website has launched a new Canadian version – http://youtube.ca – which went live Monday night. At a press conference yesterday morning, company officials said the new site is designed to promote Canadian-generated content. Videos posted by Canadians will appear in the “featured videos” and “promoted videos” sections of the site.

Reg Wydeven column: Sometimes copyright infringement claims can go too far

 A few weeks ago I wrote about a lawsuit filed by several record companies against Jammie Thomas, a 30-year-old mother of two in Minnesota who was found to have illegally shared 1,702 songs for free on the file-sharing network Kazaa. Thomas was found liable for copyright infringement and was fined $222,000.

Well, it looks as though the recording industry is making a habit of cracking down on housewives for copyright infringement.

Stephanie Lenz posted a 29-second home video of her 18-month-old son Holden on the popular video hosting site YouTube. Lenz wanted her friends and family to be able to check out her son dancing in his PJs to Prince’s ’80s hit “Let’s Go Crazy.”

A whopping 28 people had viewed the video between February and June when Lenz received an e-mail from YouTube informing her that the video had been removed from the site at the request of Universal Publishing Group, and that if she infringed on any copyrights in the future, her account would be cancelled.

The recording industry’s largest label, Universal, claims it was simply acting at the behest of one of its top artists. The artist currently known as Prince purportedly scours the Internet looking for unauthorized use of his music. Extremely protective of his intellectual property, Prince once wrote the word “Slave” on his cheek until he won back the rights to his music from another publishing company. Upon his request, Universal has asked YouTube to remove thousands of videos over the last few months that use Prince’s music without his permission.

After her video was taken down, Lenz contacted the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a cyber rights legal organization, and filed a civil lawsuit against Universal for unspecified damages. Lenz and EFF accuse the company of abusing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by firing off countless “take down notices” to video hosting sites like YouTube that claim the company’s artists’ copyrights have been infringed upon.

Lenz also filed a “counter notice” with YouTube, and the site put her video back up about six weeks later. Unfortunately caught in the middle, video hosting Web sites like YouTube are required under the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to take both the original take down notices and the counter notices at face-value, and to honor them.

If a person files a take down notice, that is a statement made under penalty of law that the person is the owner of a copyright that is being infringed upon. Anyone filing a false take down notice can be sued.

Likewise, if a counter notice is filed, that is a statement indicating that the counter filer disputes the assertion of the filer of the take down notice that she is the owner of the copyright.

The video hosting site is not responsible for determining who owns the copyright — it simply must honor the take down and counter notices and let the filers fight it out for themselves.

Many legal experts feel that Lenz has not infringed upon Prince’s copyright. However, those same experts believe that Universal files the take down notices to police every single use of their copyrighted work, for if they fail to do so, it will open the floodgates to massive piracy.

For many reasons, I’m thankful that the home video of me lip-synching to Billy Idol in sixth grade has been destroyed.

Reg Wydeven is a partner with the Appleton-based law firm of McCarty Law LLP. He can be reached at pcbusiness@postcrescent.com.

Source: Postcrescent

AOL adds new language portals

Bangalore: Six months after it launched an India-specific English language portal, global Web services giant, AOL (formerly America On Line) has added two new language portals — in Hindi and Tamil.

The www.aol.in/Hindi page offers four main sections: Samachar (news), Bollywood, Gossip and Kala-Sanskrithi (culture). It headlines the news that the Hindi remake of Sholay is soon to be followed with Gujarati and Sindhi versions. It even sneakily suggests the possible new dialogue: “Ketla manas hatha?,” Gujarati rendering of Gabbar Singh’s menacing “Kitne aadmi thhey?,” How many men were there?

With a canny eye for regional appeal, the Tamil portal www.aol.in/Tamil has localised the movie pages to Tamil cinema and added a section on astrology and religion. On Saturday, visitors learnt that the next vehicle of actress Tanya of Thirudi fame is a suspense thriller, Thatak, thatak while devotees are reminded that the Skanda Sashti festival begins at Palani on Sunday.

Both the language portals are linked to AOL’s main India site www.aol.in in English.

Also launched last week were eight country-specific editions of AOL’s new video search engine Truveo, for the U.S., France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Spain, Taiwan — and India. The India site (http://in.truveo.com/) offers desi-interest video clips in categories such as news, sports, entertainment, music, movies and viewers’ choice.

AOL seems to have wisely chosen not to compete with video hosting services such as Google’s ‘You Tube’ or ‘Yahoo Video’ — but instead aggregates and searches for videos based on the user’s request, trawling all such sites.

This includes the just-launched Hulu video service from the U.S.-based NBC and NewsCorp.

Top ranked at the Indian edition of Truveo are videos of the weekend premieres of the two big Diwali Hindi movie releases, Saawariya and Om Shanti Om; the successful surgery of the multi-limbed child in Bangalore and Yuvraj’s always-in-demand ‘six sixes.’

source: Hindu

Wikipedia’s Annual Fund Drive Reaches 10,000 Donations

It’s time for the Wikimedia Foundation’s annual fund drive. Wikimedia is the nonprofit organization that runs Wikipedia. According to a press release emailed to me, the drive reached its 10,000 donor after only 9 days, with the 10,000th donation being from a user in Finland, who donated 10 Euros at 8:58 UTC (4.58 ET) on November 1st.

The fund drive, much like drives for public TV or public radio stations … but without interruptions of “programming” Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket … runs from October 22nd to December 22nd. At the time of this writing, there have been 12,703 donations.

While many (including yours truly) frequently use Wikipedia as a primary source of information, founder Jimmy Wales has discouraged academic use of it.

Still, if you refresh the home page of Wikipedia when you select a language, at the top it’ll have a running tab of donations, as well as comments from users who donated. Many of them credit Wikipedia for help in school.

One example was “”University would not be the same without Wikipedia.” — Anon.” and another was “”college would be impossible without wikipedia!” — katy tull.” Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

We Say: If you use Wikipedia, think about donating. They accept Paypal and other methods.

source: RealTechNews

Best Buy, Amazon Pushing Video Sharing

 Creating what amounts to a private version of video-sharing site YouTube, Best Buy is launching a video sharing service the week of Nov. 5. It differs from YouTube in that customers have a much smaller audience and that they have to pay.

In the reversal of age-old television advertising pricing models, Best Buy wants more money for delivering a much smaller audience. There’s logic to it. Instead of consumers sharing their private videos with the world, they’ll pay a few extra dollars—Best Buy wants $7 for 100 minutes of video hosting—to exclude anyone who is not on their list.

Read the rest of this eWEEK story: “Best Buy, Amazon Pushing Video Sharing”

AOL (TWX): Why Truveo Is A Good Video Model

As loyal SAI readers know, we’ve been down on much of the online video business for a while (the countless me-too upload-your-videos-here sites, for example.*)  This said, we remain enormously optimistic about the growth of online video consumption, and we think many leaders, niche players, and ancillary businesses will thrive. 

For example, we like the positioning of AOL’s Truveo.  Truveo is not a video hosting/streaming site.  It is a video search/aggregator.  Truveo has two advantages…

1. It avoids the enormous bandwidth and storage costs of hosting/streaming, and
2. it aggregates videos from multiple third-party sites, thus (theoretically) enabling it to have a selection far larger than any individual site.

The former advantage should allow Truveo to have high gross margins at scale, similar to those of a regular search site.  The second advantage should give Truveo a shot at becoming a start-page for many folks who are either looking for a particular video or just want to watch some video.  Because Truveo doesn’t have to worry about hosting, transcoding, and streaming (headaches for many video storage sites), it can focus on the search and presentation experience–which, in general, has a long way to go.  And because the video world is likely to be disaggregated for many years to come, especially with the entry of Hulu, Truveo should be able to maintain a selection advantage.

Truveo does have vast and supremely powerful competition–namely YouTube, Yahoo Video, and some of the other video behemoths.  These sites are so large that they are already start pages.  Also, given how well Google understands the search-and-aggregation business, we expect that it will soon begin to convert YouTube into more of a hosting AND search site, with links to third-party video hosted elsewhere.  With only about 250,000 monthly users (per Compete), Truveo needs to skedaddle, or it, too, will be roadkill.  But video search is still a lousy experience, and there should be room for a few dedicated search/start sites to be built.

taken from alley insider

Best Buy offers video sharing service

Electronics retailers Best Buy Inc. on Tuesday launched an online-based video sharing service, which allows customers to store and share home movies and videos online.

The subscription-based service will allow users to upload personal videos for sharing on Web sites and blogs or send in an e-mail.

The service was created in partnership with Mydeo, which provides streaming video hosting for home and business users. Best Buy will take a minority stake in Mydeo, but terms were undisclosed.

Plans start at $6.97 for 100 minutes of video hosting and video lengths up to 30 minutes each.
taken from businessweek

Media alliance seeks online copyright pact

A group of media and internet heavyweights have teamed up to establish guidelines to protect copyrighted material online.

The alliance of Viacom, Walt Disney, Microsoft, Fox, CBS and MySpace hopes to use technology to halt the growth of pirated material and prevent the uploading of content that infringes copyright rules.

“These principles offer a road map for unlocking the enormous potential of online video and user-generated content,” Disney chief executive Bob Iger said in a jointly-issued statement.

The growing popularity of online video is pitting media content owners against video-hosting websites that feature copyrighted material uploaded by users without permission.

Viacom, for example, has filed a $1bn copyright infringement case against Google-owned YouTube, explaining Google’s absence from the alliance.

However, industry analysts have pointed out that Google will have little choice but to toe the line if the guidelines become established industry procedure.

“Once an industry initiative is formed, Google will be forced to accept the common model rather than use its own solution as a competitive differentiator,” said Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey.

“The pressure on Google to go along with this initiative will be intense, as the fate of existing lawsuits are likely to hinge on Google’s acceptance of the common solution.”

excerpt taken from http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2201640/media-alliance-seeks-online

YouTube snubs online copyright pact

A set of copyright principles for user-generated content has been published by internet and media giants including Microsoft, MySpace, Viacom, CBS and Disney. YouTube has rejected the project, though, describing such mandates as “generally a bad idea.”

The set of principles, published yesterday, aim “to enable the continued growth and development of user-generated content online and respect the intellectual property of content owners,” according to a statement from the backers. 

They state that sites hosting user-generated content (UGC) must have use effective filtering technology. The principles cite “the elimination of infringing content on UGC Services” as the first of their objectives. They provide that infringing uploads must be blocked before they are made available to the public.

Operators must also identify and remove links to “sites that are clearly dedicated to, and predominantly used for, the dissemination of infringing content or the facilitation of such dissemination.”

On fair use, the principles state: “When sending notices and making claims of infringement, Copyright Owners should accommodate fair use.”

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said: “The cross-industry dialogue that resulted in these principles is an important step forward in establishing the internet as a great platform for video content –  a platform that allows services to innovate and preserves incentives for all creators, big and small, by respecting copyright.”

However, the market-leading video-sharing site has decided not to support the plan.

YouTube Director of Engineering Jeremy Doig said: “We appreciate ideas from the various media companies on effective content identification technologies. We’re glad that they recognise the need to cooperate on these issues, and we’ll keep working with them to refine our industry-leading tools.”

A YouTube spokesman told OUT-LAW that YouTube talked with Disney “and ultimately decided to keep leading by example, rather than detail practices for the entire industry.”

“We support the goal of collaboration between UGC video hosting services and rights owners to reduce infringing content posted by users,” he said. “But industry-wide technology mandates are generally a bad idea. This industry is still young and we believe that marketplace innovation can lead to creative solutions we can’t even begin to imagine today.”

excerpt taken from http://www.out-law.com/page-8565

Vimeo is going hi-def soon

The New York Post‘s Peter Lauria connects the new push for making high-definition technology available on user-generated video sites to the ongoing price drop in consumer-grade HD cameras–an inarguably hot item this holiday season.

But back to Vimeo–it’s an interesting site. Originally a side project for CollegeHumor exec Jakob Lodwick, the site’s close-knit community, emphasis on user-created videos that are actually created by the users who uploaded them (rather than mass-distributed viral clips or ripped TV shows), and quirky attitude would have you think that it’s an indie operation. It’s not hard to see the site as a sort of Etsy of video-sharing. But don’t let that fool you; the aesthetically pleasing video site actually has the oversight and financial support of the massive new-media conglomerate InterActiveCorp, CollegeHumor’s parent company–something that could give it a major advantage in the clogged market niche of video-sharing services.

The Silicon Alley Insider points out that going high-def could be a prohibitively expensive move for an independent start-up. But clearly, Vimeo’s not in that position. And CenterNetworks’ Allen Stern wonders if this might actually be a way for the site to pull in more revenue.

excerpt taken from http://www.news.com/8301-13577_3-9798003-36.html

Downloading video clips can hurt you

The next time you download a video clip from YouTube or any other video-hosting website, you could possibly be downloading a malicious code along with the clip that could infect your computer, take unauthorised control, and steal financial or other information from it.

”Users have got accustomed to not clicking on messages from banks and erstwhile e-card companies, but everybody wants to see videos from YouTube and similar sites,” explains Kartik Shahani,sales director, McAfee India. As the popularity of flash media file formats continues to increase, hackers can now corrupt computers once the user has downloaded a media file onto the machine, or through video files when played on a media player.

A recent Georgia Tech Information Security Centre report reasons that as the Web 2.0 phenomenon makes Web applications more interactive and improves user experience, “it also pushes more code execution onto the client browser. ”Attackers will continue to post malicious links as part of the user’s everyday online activity — at the end of an instant messaging (IM) string, hidden in a YouTube video or embedded in an Excel spreadsheet,” noted Paul Judge, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Secure Computing, in the report.

When browsing a Web 2.0 site, “the user’s browser silently makes requests and communicates with the Web application in the background. This scenario gives hackers the opportunity to embed malicious code on an otherwise legitimate website, which the user’s browser will automatically execute”, explains the report.

Over the past few years, hackers have moved from sending their spam in text-based messages to more devious means, embedding them in images or disguised as Portable Document Format (PDF) files. ”The next logical direction was videos and user generated multimedia content that is quite popular,” says Lumension Security’s regional director (India and SAARC), Shamshad Ahmed.

”In some cases, the web-enabled phones are used to view videos and that could either damage the mobile data or allow the hacker to access the handset data,” notes Ahmed.

Lumension is quick to point out, that IT administrators must add video data to corporate security policies. ”Businesses can no longer assume the position that video data is benign.”

Blocking the virus programmes to download themselves automatically, the corrupted video files can be prevented from doing any harm to the user machine. McAfee prescribes that all media players should be included in security patching policy and execution.

Google Versus Facebook

Pedram Keyani, who the Google System blog reported to have left Orkut in favor of Facebok (along with, as of recent times, Justin Rosenstein and Benjamin Ling) says, “I have the same kind of excitement about work that I had early on at Google. I can get lots and lots done and the only thing slowing me down is how quickly I can go.”I was wondering, what exactly is slowing down some people at Google, and are those factors more than just the price to pay for managing that many employees? Some stuff like Google Presentations was in a bit of an announce-early-release-late kind of mode we are more used to from Microsoft. And at times, internal product evolutions are changed or halted, and another outside service is bought instead (think Google Video, which was replaced by YouTube as Google’s community video hosting site of choice, perhaps being part of the reason why Google Video director Jennifer Feikin left the company in May). Then again, judging from what Google China released just this year, movement is still very fast in at least some departments around the globe. There’s even some downright pirate hacker spirit going over in Beijing HQ, it seems.

Now Valleywag’s Paul Boutin follows up with a quote from Jason McCabe Calacanis at a discussion in front of a crowd interested in Facebook issues. Paul says Jason, the guy who sold blog network Weblogs Inc. to AOL, went into a “Pacino-esque monologue.” Here’s what he said (with some emphasis):

Social networking is second only to chat rooms as being the lowest CPM, the worst place to advertise… that’s not gonna change. And the reason for that – and this has nothing to do with Facebook, MySpace has the same problems – the reason is the content of your friends and family is more compelling than any advertisement will be.This is why the comments in the last panel were so foolish about it being so competitive to Google, because Google has the greatest advertising in the history of media ever created… which is search advertising. When you type a word into the box, we know what you’re looking for.

When you’re on Facebook, we know you’re looking to meet a girl or a guy, or talk to your friends or your family. It’s a terrible platform to advertise, it always will be. It will always be low CPM, but high page views that make it up in volume. It’s a terrible, terrible way to make money.

Faced with arguments from another panel member that on social networks, you would buy something because someone else said they bought it and that it’s cool, Jason replies, “The holy grail of ecommerce, people have been talking about this forever… and it has not arrived.” Jason adds that the kind of advertising going on at Facebook is also a very low-margin business “nowhere near search inventory.”

Then again, back in 1999, even Google didn’t have the best business plan in the world – in fact, they didn’t have any at all, according to statements made by the Google founders back in the days. Here’s ZDNet news in June 1999 (my emphasis):

When asked how the company plans to make money, Google CEO and co-founder Larry Page would only say what they won’t do. They don’t want to become a portal. No content. And they want to avoid competing with other search engines to be the browser of choice for existing portals. In fact, Page said Google doesn’t have any real competitors at all, which may be why they don’t intend to do much marketing.But even Internet companies, which are almost expected to lose gobs of money, need at least a revenue stream, don’t they?

“We have other ways of making money,” said Page. “You’ll see.”

excerpt taken from http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2007/10/12/google-versus-facebook

Web hosting firm, Subaye.com, Inc., has executed a Letter of Intent to acquire Media Group International Limited, a Hong Kong company founded in 2000.

News: Subaye.com, Web Hosting Solutions Firm, to Acquire Media Group International
 
Subaye agreed to acquire MGI for approximately $1 million in cash and stock. The deal combines two leading providers of corporate video online/offline and product placement advertising in movies. Subaye said the acquisition broadens its product portfolio and addressable market. MGI’s product line includes converged TV/movie DVD distributions, corporate video presentations, a TV programming agency, video-on-demand media systems (VOD), digital advertising systems, product placement in movies, sponsorship management for TV programming, and service assurance. The Company is a leading provider of product placement in movies, which provides filmmakers and advertisers with a cost-effective solution to increase forward capacity and enable future flexibility on existing cinema lines, DVD sales networks, and VOD online. MGI was founded in 2000 and its corporate headquarters are in Hong Kong.

Recently, the company also acquired 3251 New Corporate Members at the China Int’l SME Fair. Subaye.com, Inc. exhibited and sampled a full version of its online corporate video and product video of e-commerce strategy at the 4th China International Small and Medium Enterprises Fair, at the Guangdong International Convention and Exhibition Center, China. About 5000 visitors visited our booth, most of them were impressed by Subaye.com’ s online corporate video and product video of e-commerce strategy and registered for instant membership at the fair. In the meantime, our 100 staff in 30 teams did video productions for 3251 exhibitors, which was 76% of total exhibitors at the fair, and those 3251 companies become Subaye.com’s new corporate video and e-commerce members.

MyStarU.com, Inc. (MYST) is a Total Solutions Provider that offers Integrated Communications Network Solutions and Internet Content Service in universal voice, video, data web and mobile communications for interactive media applications, technology and content leaders in interactive multimedia communications. It develops, markets and sells a universal media software solution for enterprise-wide deployment of integrated voice, video, data web and mobile communications and media applications. Mystaru.com, Inc. does business in Asia via its wholly-owned subsidiaries, Mystaru Ltd. (formerly known as IC Star MMS, Ltd. www.mystaru.com, www.skyestar.com, www.goongreen.org, www.icurls.com, Guangzhou TCOM Computer Technology Limited and majority-owned subsidiary Subaye.com, Inc.

To learn more, please visit: www.subaye.com.

Birthday boy’s father and brother battered by YouTube party gatecrashers

A mob of young thugs took gatecrashing to a sickening new level when they battered the father and brother of a boy holding his 16th birthday party.

Details of Christopher Worthy’s celebration were apparently posted on the YouTube video sharing website without his knowledge.

As a result more than 100 uninvited teenagers descended on his family’s £250,000 detached home in Chippenham, Wiltshire.

Scroll down for more…

David and Susan Worthy outside their home in Chippenham, Wiltshire. The house was seriously damaged after their son’s 16th birthday party was gatecrashed by almost 150 youngsters

By the time they eventually left, Christopher’s 53-year-old father David and 18-year- old brother Stephen had been hospitalised and the house had been trashed.

The incident is an extreme example of a so- called ‘Skins party’, named after the Channel Four series featuring appallinglybehaved teenagers.

Increasingly often, word of the parties is spread not by word of mouth but via internet networking sites. Christopher’s mother Susan, a 52-year-old nurse, said he was given permission to invite 40 friends last Saturday while she and her husband went for a pub meal with their youngest son Richard, 14.

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The scene of the crime: yobs smashed the living room, dining room and front door windows

They had left their eldest son Stephen, a graphics student at Bath Spa University, at home to make sure things did not get out of control. They left at 7pm and had planned to return at 9pm and watch a DVD upstairs while Christopher and his friends celebrated downstairs.

excerpt taken from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=487045&in_page_id=1770

Breast Implants 411 Introduces Videos to Women Seeking Plastic Surgery For Breast Augmentation and Breast Implants

The advent of online video hosting makes it easier for women considering plastic surgery for breast augmentation and breast implants to better understand the procedures, and to develop a sense of comfort about their surgeons. Breast Implants 411, a leader in online breast augmentation information for over eight years, is now home to its own video content.”We are highly excited,” says David Dean, Breast implants 411′s CEO. “We are thrilled to be moving into the 21st Century with such a dynamic product offering that simultaneously helps our member plastic surgeons and our site visitors.”

The marriage of timely information about breast surgery, including breast reduction surgery, and Board certified surgeons is the premise on which Breastimplants411.com was launched in 1999. In the videos, women share their positive experiences about breast enhancement surgery in language other women can understand and easily relate to. Other women share their success stories in writing. In addition, Bi411 houses the credentials, contact information and practice philosophies of over 350 plastic surgeons, as well as a library of breast surgery-related articles written by some of the most respected plastic surgeons in the country.

With the addition of video, Bi411 has the opportunity to add a dynamic aspect to one of its most visited pages — Before and After Photos. While the gallery of breast enhancement surgery pictures is highly useful, videos further highlighting procedures, both pre- and post-surgery, give patients even more information so they can make an informed decision. Other video topics range from introductions to specific plastic surgeons and their offices, informational videos about breast augmentation procedures, and clips from some of Bi411′s member doctors who have appeared on national or syndicated television shows.

“Our doctors will drive the content,” Dean explains. “The inclusion of videos from plastic surgeons featured on Breast Implants 411 aligns well with our tremendous growth, our goal of providing the most current information about breast augmentation, and our ambitious plans for future development.”

excerpt taken from http://www.prweb.com/releases/2007/10/prweb559659.htm

Main Events Goes Viral for Holyfield-Ibragimov

Instead of just buying the usual banner ads on the various boxing websites, they have gone a step further by producing their own commercials and vignettes and put them on youtube for the world to see.

“The feeling is that we were doing these fights on pay-per-view, and unfortunately, you can’t always do them with the support of HBO and Showtime, and this worked out the way it did,” explained Kathy Duva, CEO of Main Events. “So we’re on our own and it kinda gave us an opportunity to do things our way for a change because normally we have to put all our ideas through television networks and other promoters and things. Fortunately, Leon Margules at Warriors Boxing was very open to our ideas and basically gave us his blessing to go forward with them the way they were proposed.”

They may not be going 24/7 with Holyfield and Ibragimov, but they did think outside the box, using 21st century technology.

Duva has always been on the cutting edge of detecting trends and utilizing them. In other words, she isn’t promoting boxing as if it’s still 1987.

“We all know the internet has been changing the paradigm since it came into being and anyone who doesn’t believe that is going to ignore it at their own peril,” Duva warns. “We are all trying to figure out how the internet has changed things and how we can use the ‘net to market our product. Everybody talks about why the young people don’t watch boxing, why the young people watch UFC – with all respect to the UFC, it’s not because it’s a better product. It’s marketed better. It was marketed for the younger generation. It took into account their viewing habits and what they love.

“When I was a child, you walked in the door, you turned on the television. Nowadays, kids walk home from school, they turn on their computer. And before they get home from school, because they got a PDA, they’re looking at stuff on the way home.”

The UFC website is filled with highlights and complete fights for download. But the key difference is that they are basically a solo operation that doesn’t have to take into account rival promoters and their broadcast rights. But there are too many in the sport that look upon the world wide web as some fad, or in some cases, the enemy, for whatever reason.

“It has frustrated me,” admits Duva, of those who have been slow to change with the times. “But we are talking about the traditional old media that we’re dealing with and it’s understandable why they’re slow to evolve. But I think we have to use every opportunity that we can take to do what we can as promoters and I think the thing that really hit home for me was when Kermit Cintron knocked out Walter Matthysse in July and within a few days – until HBO took it down, I’m told – there were a quarter-of-a-million hits on youtube of his knockout. I thought that was spectacular.”

Problem was, it wasn’t licensed to be on there.

“I don’t have the right to put that on youtube; someone else posted it,” Duva explained. “I have to respect the fact that the rights holder paid a lot of money and it’s really a decision that a rights holder, HBO, has to make. And we also do have the issues of foreign rights holders, who paid a lot of money, and the thing we can’t forget is we can’t put boxing on unless somebody pays for it. People don’t like it when they have to buy pay-per-view, where we do have the rights to make decisions like that. But whether it’s pay cable or a broadcast network, somebody’s paying, and when they buy, they get to make those decisions, at least for the short-term after the fight takes place.”

Various networks and promoters now scan video hosting sites to make sure their fights and broadcasts aren’t being posted illegally. Usually, after one year, promoters like Main Events get the rights to their bouts. So let’s say in one year, when they get the rights to Cintron’s last outing, and it was posted by a third party, would they object?

“No,” answered Duva, “we want people looking at it. And actually we’ve gone out of our way, frankly, to put things on youtube, where we own the rights, in the last few weeks, and that’s in connection with the promotions of the Vargas-Mayorga fights and that’s another place where we saw an amazing response after that press conference.

“Not only do you not want to ignore it, you want to embrace it.”

But within reason, of course.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUOeAlEOe8Y

excerpt taken from http://www.maxboxing.com/Kim/Kim101007.asp

TechSmith Introduces Camtasia Studio 5: Allowing Any Professional to Create and Share Polished Screencasts, Demonstrations and Presentations

OKEMOS, Mich., BUSINESS WIRE — TechSmith Corp., the world’s leading provider of screen capture and recording solutions, today announced the availability of Camtasia Studio 5, which dramatically simplifies the creation and distribution of screencasts. Now business professionals with no programming or multimedia expertise can create engaging demonstrations, rich marketing content, <a href=”http://www.broadcastnewsroom.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=193171#” onmouseout=”setTimeout(‘hideLayer()’,500);” onclick=”window.open(‘http://secure.digitalmediaonlineinc.com/Hotlinks/hotlinkredirect.jsp?hotlinkid=586′)” onmouseover=”popLayer(‘Microsoft PowerPoint Home and Stdnt 2007 Win32 English CD
RoyalDiscount-$126.99
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‘);” class=”hotlink2″>PowerPoint-based video presentations and interactive training in minutes.A one-minute overview screencast of Camtasia Studio 5 can be viewed here: http://www.techsmith.com/cs5overview

“From the concept stage to final <a href=”http://www.broadcastnewsroom.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=193171#” onmouseout=”setTimeout(‘hideLayer()’,500);” onclick=”window.open(‘http://secure.digitalmediaonlineinc.com/Hotlinks/hotlinkredirect.jsp?hotlinkid=209′)” onmouseover=”popLayer(‘Click for the lowest price on dmnobieblankanimation‘);” class=”hotlink2″>animation, Camtasia Studio 5 gives me everything I need to bring my digital drawings to life,” said Jason Ryan, supervising animator at DreamWorks <a href=”http://www.broadcastnewsroom.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=193171#” onmouseout=”setTimeout(‘hideLayer()’,500);” onclick=”window.open(‘http://secure.digitalmediaonlineinc.com/Hotlinks/hotlinkredirect.jsp?hotlinkid=209′)” onmouseover=”popLayer(‘Click for the lowest price on dmnobieblankanimation‘);” class=”hotlink2″>Animation. “Compared to earlier versions, this new release has really been simplified so I can just focus on my presentation and not worry about the technical side. Camtasia gives me everything I need to record, edit and produce professional screencasts.”

excerpt taken from http://www.broadcastnewsroom.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=193171