02:53
OVGuide, Fast-Growing Online Video Directory, Expands Search Tools
http://www.beet.tv/2008/09/online-video-di.html OVGuide, the fast-growing and well-funded Los Angeles-based online video guide, has extended search capabilities on the site, it announced today. Unlike a site like Truveo or Google Video which casts a global net, the OVGuide discovers, tracks and organizes online video sites which its editors find valuable. The site is backed by David Bohnett, founder of GeoCities. We are pleased that Beet.TV is followed by OV; it has driven substantial traffic to our site. OV has 10 million unique visitors, the company says. Last week in New York, I interviewed the OVGuide's Chad Cooper. He explains the new capabilities. Here is my June interview with Chad in the company's Beverly Hills office. -- Andy Plesser, Executive Producer
03:04
Video Search Engine Blinkx Registers Big Jump in Revenue
http://www.beet.tv/2008/11/video-search-en.html Blinkx, the San Francisco-based video search engine, whose shares are traded on the London Stock Exchange, today reported $6.4 million in revenue for the first six months of the fiscal year ending September 30. Although revenue is up 115 percent, the company still has a sizable burn rate. Unlike most video search engines, which are based on analyzing text metadata or recommendation engines, Blinkx employs voice-to-text technology, where spiders "listen" to the audio track of videos and categorize them. The technology has evolved from U.S. national security eavesdropping technology. Creepy, yes, but it works. Blinkx CEO Suranga Chandratillake was a panelist at the Beet.TV Online Video Roundtable on October 28 here in New York. After the session, Kelsey spoke with him about the value of video search and the utility his company provides. Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch has an analysis of today's earnings announcement. Here's a report from ...
http://www.beet.tv/2009/06/mozilla-ready-to-grab-video-market-share-from-adobe-with-firefox-35.html News reports today indicate that Mozilla's Firefox 3.5 will be publicly available next week. One of the most significant elements in the new release is the ability to play web video without a plug-in. The browser comes with an open source video codec called Ogg Theora. Andy Plesser, Executive Producer
Wednesday, August 06, 2008 Veveo Has 170 Video Searches on FiOS Television Veveo, the Boston-area start-up video search company, which has been getting noticed for providing video search for mobile devices, is getting some traction as the video search engine in FiOS TV. The the company announced that Veveo has powered 170 million searches for FiOS television customers. I've reposted my interview with CEO Murali Aravamudan. --- Andy Plesser, Executive Producer http://www.beet.tv/2008/08/veveo-has-170-v.html
04:24
Kosmix Search Raises $20 Million in Funding in Tough Economy
http://www.beet.tv/2008/12/kosmix-search-r.html The search solution Kosmix has raised $20 million in a funding round led by TimeWarner, the company announced today--an impressive feat in today's economic climate. Andy interviewed Kosmix Co-founder Anand Rajaraman in New York earlier this year, and I republished the interview here. It seems impossible for any search start-up to raise that kind of money when there's already a Google, but Kosmix isn't a direct competitor with the search giant. Instead of producing results for a highly specific search, Kosmix organizes videos (powered by Truveo), audio, and articles on a magazine-style page for users with a more general topic in mind. "If you know exactly what you're looking for, if you're looking to find some information, you should go to a search engine. If you kind of want to explore more broadly, you should go to Kosmix," Rajaraman says in the segment. Kosmix also introduced the beta version of its site today. Here's the take on this development ...
02:46
OVGuide.com Drives 100 Million Video Views a Month for Publishers
http://www.beet.tv/2009/03/ov-guide-drives-video-views-for-publishers-second-biggest-source-of-traffic-to-beettv-.html The OVGuide.com is an extremely well organized and informative listing of thousands of online video sources. More that just another aggregator, the site is managed by human editors who discover, review and index an extraordinary range of Web videos and sources. For publishers, the OVGuide.com is driving 100 million video views per month, Chad Cooper told me earlier this month at the Beet.TV Online Video Roundtable. Based in Los Angeles, the site has been extremely helpful to Beet.TV After Google, the OVGuide.com is our second biggest traffic referrer. Love this site! Below is the index page of videoblogs on the site. Ov.vlogs -- Andy Plesser, Executive Producer
02:56
Media Columnist Rachel Sklar To Leave The Huffington Post, Report
http://www.beet.tv/2008/10/rachel-sklar-to.html Eat the Press editor Rachel Sklar will be leaving The Huffington Post after the election to work on her book, according to a report on Gawker today. Andy interviewed Sklar at the TimeWarner Politics 08 summit earlier this week about online video at The Huffington Post and expansions underway at the site. Andy asked Sklar if the site's current soaring traffic will be sustainable after the election, and she responded that the site's many verticals give it a broader appeal than just politics. "Obviously politics has been a huge driver in that, but we're very diversified. That's what they say in a market like this, you need to diversify your portfolio. So we're diversified," she says. --Kelsey Blodget, Associate Producer
02:36
Truth in Tagging Works: Hot OVGuide.com Hits 16 Million Uniques
From http://www.beet.tv/2009/05/ovguide-surges-past-15-million-uniques-relies-on-editorial-tagging.html: Tagging a video properly is an art form and itâs also one that can be abused by creators to generate search hits. Thatâs why online video search site OVGuide.com doesnât put too much weight on the tags in videos, the siteâs VP of Sales and Marketing Chad Cooper told Beet.TV in an interview at the National Association of Broadcasterâs Convention in Las Vegas last month. Video creators can game the system by tagging their videos with words and topics that have nothing to do with the content, he explained. The OVGuide.com search engine places more weight on the human editorial team at the company that reviews the videos and tags them on its site. âIt doesnât help any user experience when they click on something expecting one thing and then they get something totally different,â he told Beet.TV. The strategy seems to be working because OVGuide.com turned a profit earlier this year, has b...
03:22
Video Consumption is "Social," MySpace and YouTube Execs Say: AOL's Truveo Gets Most Views via "Related" Video Recommendations
http://www.beet.tv/2008/10/video-consumpti.html At MySpaceTV, some two thirds of videos are consumed on user profile pages, according to Cristian Cussen, speaking yesterday at the Beet.TV online Video Roundtable. Fellow panelist Laura Lee from YouTube said that social referrel is a big driver along with search on Google and YouTube. For Truveo, the giant AOL-owned search engine, the big driver of video consumption is the presentation of related videos, which drives two thirds of the search results, said president Peter Kocks. Finishing up this segment on search and discoverability was Suranga Chandratillake, CEO of Blinkx, the San Francisco-based search engine company which uses speech-to-text technology to understand what is being said in millions of videos. It's not surprising that the most successful video sharing sites are about, well, sharing. But for video publishers seeking to get broad viewership and create "viral" video, understanding search and discoverability is essential. This section ...
02:53
Adobe Flash Player 10 Has 3D Transformation, Dynamic Streaming
http://www.beet.tv/2008/10/adobe-launches.html Adobe Flash Player 10 is now available for free download, the company announced today. Andy interviewed Jim Guerard, VP of Adobe Dynamic Media, in Palo Alto this summer about the second beta version of the player; I republished the interview above. The player will offer native 3D transformation and animation and advanced audio processing, among other improvements. Liz Gannes at NewTeeVee notes in her piece about the player that the dynamic streaming will be the most significant improvement for online video viewers. The player is available for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux at www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer. --Kelsey Blodget, Associate Producer
01:49
Campaign Shocker: Obama Girl Flirts with Ralph Nader!
http://www.beet.tv/2008/10/campaign-shocke.html Third party presidential candidate Ralph Nader isn't getting much television exposure, but he has 2 percent support of likley voters according to yesterday's Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll. Could it be that alternative media, including online video shows, might be helping his cause? Wouldn't it be ironic if the Obama Girl herself is helping him? Recently Barely Political, an online political humor site, produced two videos featuring the Obama Girl, Amber Lee Ettinger, and the 74-year old consumer advocate turned inveterate candidate. Ben Relles, the show's producer, tells Beet.TV that the two segment have gotten 400,000 views to date. Her first video, "I Got a Crush on Obama" has had 10 million views on YouTube. We asked Ben if the Obama Girl is endorsing Nader. He told us no, Amber is supporting Barack Obama, but the show enjoyed spending time with Nader. If Nader's popularity becomes an issue in closely contested battleground states, some might ...
03:44
Break Media Runs Branded Webisodes for Dos Equis, Twix
http://www.beet.tv/2008/09/break-media-has.html Break Media has partnered with a number of top brands geared toward 18-34-year-old males, according to SVP of Sales & Partnerships Andrew Budkofsky. Its recently launched web series sponsored by Twix and Dos Equis, and has upcoming campaigns for Doritos and Denny's. The Dos Equis six-episode web series "Behind Interesting" features "The Most Interesting Man in the World" from the brand's TV spots, and the four-episode Twix series, "World Office Sports", focuses on office workers who "Need a Moment" during their day. Budkofsky says branded content is more effective for their audience than ads, which can turn viewers off. "If you can create a good quality, funny piece, they love it, and whether it's produced in partnership with a brand or on its own, either way they're happy to keep getting that quality content," he says. The Break Media network includes 75 properties and reaches over 50 million viewers worldwide. --Kelsey Blodget, Associate ...
http://www.beet.tv/2008/10/cnn-promotes-li.html CNN has stepped up advertising of its live coverage this year, and is promoting CNN.com Live's election night coverage on The New York Times homepage today as part of that effort. "We have been advertising CNN.com Live's video content more significantly this year than ever before," CNN Vice President of Interactive Marketing Andy Mitchell told Beet.TV via e-mail. "Politics has been the primary focus, but we have also done targeted outreach for other live news events." The prominent display advertisements today appeared alongside the NYT masthead; I posted an image of them below. CNN.com Live, which broadcasts 24/7, is attracting sizable traffic, CNN.com General Manager KC Estenson told me in an interview at the Beet.TV Online Video Roundtable yesterday, where he was a panelist. The live channel served 1.8 million streams on a single day--September 1--and CNN.com as a whole serves as many as 180 million streams a month, he says. In the segment, he also ...
http://www.beet.tv/2009/07/dramafever-.html DramaFever is a new destination site for Korean dramas for audiences in the US and Canada. Many Korean dramas are popular throughout much of Asia and are a part of the "Korea wave" of the 21st century. DramaFever hopes to tap into fans of Korean dramas and offer a legal option to view the popular shows, complete with English subtitles. For the uninitiated, Bak recommends "Boys Over Flowers." Soh Won Cha, Guest Blogger
http://www.beet.tv/2008/10/new-boxee-patch.html Open-source social media center Boxee released a patch yesterday that essentially jailbreaks AppleTV, Brian Chen at Wired's Gadget Lab reports. The patch makes it possible for users to play any DRM-free multimedia file on AppleTV. Boxee_logo_125 The patch adds a Boxee button to the main AppleTV menu, and clicking it brings the user to Boxee's sleek interface, which CEO Avner Ronen showed me in the Beet offices after the company launched this summer. I re-posted the interview above. Ronen told me that he views Apple as a potential partner rather than competitor, and we hope Apple agrees: Making the Boxee button on their menu official would make the set-top box a lot more appealing. Unfortunately, as Chen points out, if users can freely stream content through Boxee they might be less inclined to purchase multimedia through iTunes. Boxee is currently in private Alpha testing, which you can apply to enter here. To read more about Boxee's features, ...
http://www.beet.tv/2009/01/google-continues-to-update-chrome.html Google's web browser Chrome left beta last month, but Google isn't done improving it yet. Jonathan Skillings at CNET News.com reports today that it has introduced the following new features: • New version of WebKit. • Form autocomplete. • Import bookmarks from Google Bookmarks. • New network code. • New window frames on Windows XP and Vista. I interviewed VP of Search Product and User Experience Marissa Mayer about Chrome at TechCrunch50 in September and republished the interview today. --Kelsey Blodget, Associate Producer
http://www.beet.tv/2008/11/google-announce.html Google has introduced technology to track Flash content, the company announced at the Adobe Max conference today. The new tool, Google Analytics Tracking for Adobe Flash, will allow publishers to see how many times an embedded video has been viewed or how often a distributed widget, like an online game, has been used. The offering is a significant move toward the standardization of formats that has long been an obstacle to increased online ad spending and has huge implications for publishers. In June, Andy interviewed Google Search Evangelist Adam Lasnik about the collaboration between Google, Yahoo and Adobe to index Flash files. I republished the interview above. --Kelsey Blodget, Associate Producer
Sunday, May 31, 2009 http://www.beet.tv/2009/05/verizon-intros-mifi-personal-hot-spot.html Earlier this month, Verizon introduced the Mi-Fi service, which allows for up to five Wi-Fi connections from pretty much anywhere the carrier has 3G coverage. The speeds average between 700 Kbps and 1.4 MBps, divided by the number of devices connected at any given time. New York Times technology columnist David Pogue called the service âamazingâ in a recent review. Brooke Crothers wrote on CNET that device is "one kick-ass router." Earlier this week at D: All Things Digital, the tech conference sponsored by the Wall Street Journal, Andy caught up with Verizon spokesperson John H. Johnson for a chat about the new product. Daisy Whitney, Senior Producer
http://www.beet.tv/2009/06/cnns-ireport-had-1-million-page-views-on-monday-iran-crisis-is-enormous-moment-in-citizen-journalism.html CNN's iReport popularity as a destination has surged with the Iran crisis. A CNN spokeswoman citing internal numbers told me that page views for the iReport reached 1 million on Monday. Nielsen put the monthly unique visitors to iReport at 1.8 million. Yesterday I interviewed Lila King, senior producer at CNN.com, who oversees iReport. I interviewed her in the CNN newsroom in Atlanta via a Skype Video hook-up from our New York studio. Andy Plesser
03:42
Campbell Brown: Calling out Candidates for Falsehoods Isn't Partisan
http://www.beet.tv/2008/10/campbell-brown.html When a candidate says something that is incorrect, pointing it out to the viewers isn't partisan, according to Campbell Brown, anchor of CNN's Campbell Brown: Election Center. "If I don't [point it out to my viewers], I'm insulting their intelligence, and I'm not comfortable with myself, because I'm ignoring something that is clearly factual and is staring me in the face," she says. Brown moderated a conference at the Time Warner Politics 08 Summit yesterday about the changing face of news and the presidential election. The other panel members--Vanity Fair Editor Graydon Carter, Time Managing Editor Richard Stengel, and CNN President Jonathan Klein--discussed topics like the future of new media and the role of opinion in journalism. Andy interviewed Brown after the session. In the segment, she talks about how political reporting has changed since 2004. Check out TVNewser's coverage of the conference here. --Kelsey Blodget, Associate Producer
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