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Sequoia investment BlueCollarOrDie dies
Investors — including top Valley VC firm Sequoia Capital — plan to kill FunnyOrDie spinoff BlueCollarOrDie, recently relaunched as Kung Fu Todd. Veteran TV producer and investor Larry Lyttle blamed the Internet for not attracting enough of the right kind of audience — people who like jokes that begin with the phrase "You might be a redneck." Lyttle told The Hollywood Reporter the site draws only 20,000 unique visitors per month. Our theory as to why is less complex even than Lyttle's: It's just not very funny. Check out "Hot Teacher," the site's "most buzzed" video and see for yourself.
Chad and Steve
What Viacom really wants to know about YouTube videos
What is Viacom really after in its $1 billion lawsuit against Google over YouTube? Despite a lengthy invite list, Viacom PR was only to drum up "a small press gathering" to listen to CEO Philippe Dauman at a screening for Tropic Thunder last night, according to Greg Sandoval's report on News.com. Dauman called YouTube a "rogue company" — and expressed disappointment that Google did nothing to rein it in. Viacom's now being painted as a rogue itself, seeking to violate YouTube users' privacy in requesting viewing logs from the site. More »
online video
Has Avril Lavigne made $2 million from YouTube? Highly unlikely
The "Girlfriend" video from tweenybopper pop diva Avril Lavigne has taken the all-time views title away from Judson Laipply's Evolution of Dance, though it's still stuck in the second spot on YouTube's leaderboard. Besides being manually kept out of the top spot, what have all those views garnered the young guitarista? According to her label's CEO Terry McBride of Nettwerk Management, $2 million in revenue-sharing income from YouTube. But a longtime reader who's represented other popular YouTube partners with eight-figure view counts called shenanigans: More »
Microsoft now being sued for patent infringement over Silverlight
Silverlight, Microsoft's buggy effort to tackle Adobe's Flash video technology, has another hiccup on the road to mass acceptance. Gotuit, a video-technology startup, has filed suit against Microsoft for patent infringement. Gotuit will be represented by Spencer Hosie, a law firm which has tangled with Team Redmond before and managed to squeeze out a $60 million settlement for Burst.com. Don't even know what Silverlight is? Read the primer so you can bluff your way out of a gaggle of Google employees. [News.com]
Silverlight, Microsoft's buggy effort to tackle Adobe's Flash video technology, has another hiccup on the road to mass acceptance. Gotuit, a video-technology startup, has filed suit against Microsoft for patent infringement. Gotuit will be represented by Spencer Hosie, a law firm which has tangled with Team Redmond before and managed to squeeze out a $60 million settlement for Burst.com. Don't even know what Silverlight is? Read the primer so you can bluff your way out of a gaggle of Google employees. [News.com]
online video
Vogue's new reality show hopes to bedazzle the Internet
Every print publisher, and especially the glossies, want in on the online-video game. Unlike the text-and-photos Web, where there are more pageviews than media buyers know what to do with, there's not enough slickly packaged content that big brands deem safe enough to advertise themselves on. Condé Nast's Vogue has a new reality show for the Web, Model.Live, which "tracks three models as they navigate casting calls, catwalks and airports for fashion weeks in New York, London, Milan and Paris." It debuts August 19. What you won't see? Drinking and smoking. What you will see? Eating disorders confronted "head-on." That's because this an attempt to reach out to a younger demographic on behalf of the sponsor, aspirational mall brand Express — which sells American women the sequined, screen-printed jeans they love. What's all this going to cost Express? More »
YouTube blowing away competition as distribution platform
TubeMogul, a startup which allows content creators to post video clips to multiple sites at once and track aggregate views for the clip across sites, did a survey of over 200,000 clips and how much traffic they garnered after 90 days. The results? The average clip got more views on YouTube in three months (3,092) than on the next eight video sites combined (2,092). [NewTeeVee]
sex trade
Pay-per-view online video comes to Stickam, camgirls be damned
After bringing viewers more streaming Leo Laporte and tween-scene queens than they care to admit watching, live video service Stickam is opening a pay-per-view platform, PayPerLive. Where there's video feeds and PayPal buttons — that's who's covering the money side — there's naked ladies, right? More »
online video
Alex Albrecht and friends play World of Warcraft for fun and profit
The mysterious project Alex Albrecht, cohost of Kevin Rose's Diggnation podcast, has been working on, Project Lore? It's a show where he and some buddies play World of Warcraft together. It couldn't possibly be more geeky, reveling in WoW-speak like "trash mobs," "pulls," "ninja'd" and the like. Given Warcraft's millions of players, it will likely be as successful as it is incomprehensible to the olds. More »
The Googling
The best Google ad ever
Google has always been weak at marketing, hobbled by a cultishly engineering-centric culture that believes products should promote themselves. It worked for search, but little else. The official list of Google-branded Web services is dizzying in its me-too obscurity. Chipper house-ad videos posted on YouTube have done nothing to change this. Perhaps Google should hire The Vacationeers, makers of "The Googling"? More »
double standards
How Google could humiliate Viacom in YouTube lawsuit
Worried that your obsessive kitten-video viewing records on YouTube would be exposed in Viacom's copyright lawsuit against YouTube? You can relax. Google and Viacom lawyers have reached an agreement to anonymize records of usernames and IP addresses in YouTube's video-viewing logs, which Viacom wants to examine to show patterns of willful copyright infringement on the site. The accounts of employees of both companies, however, aren't included in the deal. And that suggests a negotiating tactic for Google. More »
online advertising
NBC almost sold out of video ads for Olympics
With a little help from brands McDonald’s, Johnson & Johnson, Hilton, Coca-Cola and Anheuser-Busch, NBC Universal is 85 percent sold out of its expected inventory of ads to play at the beginning ofOlympics Web videos. All of the ads will be 15- and 30-second "prerolls" — because that's the only kind the International Olympic Committee currently allows. Hate prerolls? Go ahead and set up your own broadcast, then, bub. (Photo by striatic)
copyfight
Viacom wants to know viewing habits of YouTube employees
As a part of its copyright-infringement lawsuit against Google and YouTube, Viacom lawyers have asked for data that will detail which videos YouTube employees have watched and uploaded. Google has so far refused to provide the information, delaying an already agreed-upon transfer of some 12 terabytes of data detailing what types of videos are most often viewed on the site. Here's why Viacom wants the employee information: More »
patricia handschiegel
Serial entrepreneuse's latest venture: Bossing Hollywood around
The 9 Group is Patricia Handschiegel's latest startup after having sold her fashion site StyleDiary. Her plan is to work as a content and audience development consultant with her partners, and focus on "solving problems media, entertainment and brands are having on the Internet." Basically, she got tired of giving free advice to C-level executives at major talent agencies. Somehow, it's not hard to picture Handschiegel telling other people what to do. More »
online video
Timothy Dalton appears in first look at StrikeTV's programming
Finally, an online video outfit from Hollywood professionals that looks like it might produce more than one hit! Harry Shearer's MyDamnChannel has "You Suck at Photoshop", FunnyOrDie is still resting on the laurel's of "The Landlord", IBeatYou can't beat anyone without Jessica Alba staring into the camera, and IFC's best semi-pro production, "Young American Bodies," just happens to have lots of nudity. Enter StrikeTV, an idea that came together on the picket lines during the writers' strike and has more professional writer-producer-directors (AKA "multihyphenates") on board than the lot of them. Add name-brand draws like former James Bond Timothy Dalton, übercute Mindy Kaling from The Office and none other than Bob Newhart and they may just have something.
online video
Throwing good money after bad: $6 billion in VC for video sites
$6 billion has been invested by venture capital firms into American online video sites since 2005. And that's against only one real payday, Google's $1.65 billion purchase of YouTube, which has only garnered revenue in the low eight figures. True, advertisers spent $17 billion at the television upfronts, as Silicon Alley Insider's Michael Leamonth points out, giving an idea of the potential market that's being chased. More »
spy video
A firsthand view of Apple's iPhone chaos
NEW YORK — Apple Store employees are a little tense today. They got nine hours of training preparing for today's iPhone 3G launch. Then there was all the press and hoopla when the day finally began. (I overheard two of them complaining about it: "I felt like I was going to vomit," one said. The other: "I felt like was as going to vomit too!") Then there was the crowd control. Then the iTunes Store, required to activate phones and thereby complete sales, went down. I snuck a hidden camera into the Fifth Avenue Apple Store and surveyed the chaos. Roll the clip. Meanwhile, here's a reader's account of an experience at an Apple Store in Walnut Creek, California: More »
great moments in pr
