NEWS: YouTube's Doppelganger

News/Social Networks/YouTube/Videos/Andy Greenberg
Found on: forbes.com

It's getting tougher and tougher to break copyright law on YouTube these days. The site now performs frequent purges of television shows and other proprietary content uploaded by users. But those forbidden files can still be had. They've largely migrated to DailyMotion.com, another video-uploading site that replicates YouTube's model of user-provided videos. DailyMotion, by contrast, seems to do little if any regulation of copyrighted material, nor does it limit the lengths of clips.

At any given time, DailyMotion hosts hundreds of copyrighted television episodes, allowing users to watch the shows free of charge and without commercials. And try as they might, television networks have had little success in plugging the streaming-video leaks in their intellectual property dam.

NEWS: Wal-Mart Plans to Test Online Films

News/Web Culture/Tech/Videos/Brad Stone
Found on: nytimes.com

The decade-old DVD moved two small steps closer yesterday to technology’s endangered-species list.

Wal-Mart, the country’s largest seller of movies, announced that next year it will begin testing a video download service on its Web site. Wal-Mart did not reveal its partners, but media executives involved in the deal said that all the major studios are either on board or in active talks with the retailer, and that Hewlett-Packard is providing the technology for the download site.

In another sign that the race to put video content online is accelerating, the Internet firm BitTorrent, once a pariah for enabling vast unauthorized video file-sharing, plans to announce today that it has struck distribution deals with eight media partners, including 20th Century Fox, Paramount and MTV Networks.

Beginning in February, the companies will begin selling TV shows and movies through BitTorrent’s Web site, bittorrent.com.

It is a strange juxtaposition: BitTorrent, with 35 employees, and the company whose dominance in video sales is so threatened by online file trading, 1.8-million-employee Wal-Mart.

NEWS: YouTube Goes Mobile On Verizon V Cast

News/Social Networks/Web Culture/Mobile/Videos
Found on: infoworld.com

Online video-sharing service YouTube is extending its reach beyond PCs to mobile phones through a deal with Verizon Wireless.

Under the deal announced Tuesday, YouTube will offer a sampling of the most popular videos available through its service, which allows users to watch and share videos on the Web.

Unlike the YouTube Web site service, which is free, the company's mobile phone offering will require a $15-a-month subscription to a Verizon Wireless service called V Cast. Users don't have to pay airtime charges to stream or watch V Cast content but they must have a V Cast-enabled handset.

NEWS: Upward Mobility

News/Social Networks/Web Culture/Mobile
Found on: businessweek.com

Ultrafast networks and whizzy features are about to turn your cellphone into—well, your right arm.

Park Hyun-A is someone you might want to watch. A 21-year-old student at Korea University in Seoul, she'd like to be a marketing executive for a telecom or fashion company someday and enjoys playing matchmaker for friends looking for the perfect mate.

But what's really intriguing is the way Park uses her Samsung mobile phone. Each day she waves it over a reader at a turnstile in the train station to pay her fare. Then, during the long ride to school, she flips open the screen and rotates it 90 degrees to watch satellite TV. On the same screen, Park pages through an e-book version of Joachim de Posada's Don't Eat the Marshmallow...Yet!: The Secret to Sweet Success in Work and Life. She sends an average of 66 text messages a day, snaps pictures of cute guys and sends them to friends, and plays an online game in which she runs a virtual fruit store. "I can hardly think of my life without my handset," Park says.

PIGMENT INTO THE SKIN

Web Culture/Social Networks/Myspace/Artist
Found on: Popyourit.com

With a style uniquely her own, tattoo artist and goddess of cool, Kat Von D rocks the cable airwaves on TLC's hit reality TV show, "Miami Ink."

Kat's blurbs:

Growing up in the Inland Empire, a collision of influences led Kat into tattoing much earlier than most, her first tattoo came at age 14, an old english "J" on her ankle, a memento of a love gone-by. Shortly thereafter, realizing her natural art ability, in early 1996 her friends asked her to pick up the machine and get to work on them (her first effort was a Misfits skull with a homemade rig), the tattooing wasn't easy but she knew it felt right and she knew she wanted to pursue it. In 1998, she began working in her first professional shop, Sin City Tattoo, a local place in her neighborhood.

NEWS: Social Web sites also could lure shoppers

News/Social Networks/Web Culture/Bruce Horovitz
Found on: statesmanjournal.com

Many who go to MySpace or Facebook to network with friends also would go there to buy stuff. But for the most part, they can't.

That means there might be billions of dollars being left on the table by the major social-networking Web sites, according to a survey to be released today by the American Marketing Association.

In the survey, 47 percent of consumers said they would visit these sites to seek and discuss holiday gift ideas, and 29 percent said they would buy products there.

The networking sites "provide some of the most powerful word-of-mouth marketing opportunities there have ever been," said Nancy Costopulos, the chief marketing officer at the association. "It's past the fad zone and into the reality zone."

NEWS: IE 7 Less Vulnerable than Firefox 2?

News/Social Networks/Security/Myspace
Found on: techtree.com

According to reports, Mozilla Firefox 2 and Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 (IE) are both vulnerable to a bug that steals the login-id and password of users, with the help of a fake log-in page.

The bug has been dubbed as "Reverse Cross Site Request vulnerability" (RCSR) by Robert Chapin, who first discovered the flaw.

Reportedly, the attack was first carried out from a profile page using a specially crafted HTML that hides the genuine MySpace content from the page, and displays the fake login page instead. The fake page is then sent to another Web site, along with information regarding MySpace users who visited the page using Firefox.

The attacks seen on My Space.com are likely to move on to Firefox as well because the Firefox Password Manager automatically enters any saved passwords and user-id/s into the form, whereas IE is not capable of filling in the saved information automatically.

NEWS: TV Execs View YouTube as Friend, Not Foe

News/Social Networks/YouTube/Videos/Andrew Hampp
Found on: adage.com

Here's one group of people you wouldn't expect to be big fans of YouTube: network TV executives. In a panel discussion at the Future of Television Forum at New York University's Stern School of Business, David Poltrack, CBS's chief research officer, said YouTube has yet to do anything to adversely affect his network's programming.

What consumers want
"We're in a position right now where no one wants to take [content off YouTube]," he said. "When you have something the public really wants, the economic value in that is to come up with a way to satisfy the rights holders and serve the consumers."

While iTunes put a legal spin on music piracy, Mr. Poltrack said TV thrives better online if users can still stream content for free from the networks' ad-supported models.

"If they're [consumers] going to steal it, give it to them anyway," he said. "But also make it easier to access and present it better than YouTube or BitTorrent or anywhere else."

With TV moving into iPods and cellphones with varying levels of features, the mobility vs. quality debate is one that is increasingly shaking up the TV business, said David Del Beccaro, president-CEO and founder of Music Choice.

NEWS: MOG under the hood

Social Networks/Web Culture/MOG/Lucas Carlson
Found on: mog.com

We have been cooking up some great new features for MOG. We are really excited about the new flash sound samples feature, it really changes the landscape of using MOG to be able to listen in real time to people's digital music collection. One of the technical challenges we are working on is to create better coverage for the sound samples so that you can listen to more of the songs.

Our next features are so exciting that they will make these sound samples seem like a tiny feature, so time for me to get back to programming.

-Lucas
http://mog.com/cardmagic

O'Reilly Radar: Second Life Gets a Paper Book

Social Networks/Web Culture/Social Life/Brady Forrest
Found on: newsfactor.com

Second Life has been on Techmeme a lot lately. Most of this has been about the continuing inroads that larger companies like Dell and Reuters have made into the world. Some of it has been about strife within the world due to things like land price increases and copybot (a recently released program that can copy any artifact in world; BoingBoing has a good piece discussing the issues).

The latest splash is a physical book , entitled Second Life: The Official Guide, that is now available on Amazon. As the documentation for the world moves off the web it becomes more accessible and even *more* people will join.

Second Life: The Official Guide is the perfect book for anyone interested in Linden Lab’s fascinating Second Life metaverse. It explores in detail every aspect of Second Life’s rich and multilayered virtual world, explains how it works, and offers a wealth of information and practical advice for all Second Life residents. The first part, “Getting a Second Life,” acquaints potential and new players with the Second Life world. It describes the metaverse’s geography as well as its society, explaining its written and unwritten rules. The second part, “Living a Second Life,” deals with the practical and economic aspects of Second Life: creating and customizing an avatar, building objects, scripting, and making money.

NEWS: Lycos combines film watching, chat

News/Social Networks/Videos/Lycos
Found on: news.com

Lycos, an Internet portal that managed to survive the bursting of the late 1990s dot-com bubble, plans to resurrect itself as a youth-focused broadband video channel with built-in chat rooms.

Having missed the explosive growth of its rivals Google and Yahoo, Lycos--now part of the second largest Korean Internet portal Daum Communications--will launch a high-speed Internet video channel this week and let viewers watch movies simultaneously across the Internet and discuss them.

The service, called Lycos Cinema aims to combine two tenets of new Internet businesses--online video and social networking, embodied by popular sites YouTube and MySpace.com.

The ability to upload your own homegrown videos will come as soon as December or early next year, Lycos Chief Operating Officer Brian Kalinowski said Friday.

NEWS: IBM accelerates push into 3D virtual worlds

News/Social Networks/Second Life/IBM
Found on: reuters.com

IBM is ramping up its push into virtual worlds with an investment of roughly $10 million over the next 12 months, including an expanded presence within the popular 3D online universe Second Life.

Chairman and Chief Executive Sam Palmisano is set to visit Second Life on Tuesday, following a "town hall" meeting with some 7,000 employees in China, and speak with the more than 250 IBM employees on one of the company's virtual islands.

Second Life, where Reuters opened a bureau last month, is one of the best-known virtual worlds, with more than 1 million registered users and a well-established economy and currency. The equivalent of more than half a million U.S. dollars change hands there every day.

News: Xbox Live Brings Video Downloads to Xbox 360

News/Social Networks/Youth Trends/Videos/Xbox
Found on: marketingvox.com

Starting on Nov. 22, Xbox Live will begin making movie and television episodes available for download to Xbox 360 owners.

Making downloads available via the Xbox 360 removes the one restraint - the computer monitor - that has turned most users off to downloading movies, the New York Times explains. With the XBox 360, users can download to the console via Xbox Live, which requires a broadband internet connection, and then watch it on their television. "What makes this big is that there's no PC in the middle," explains Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

NEWS: Google faces legal challenges over video service

News/Web Culture/Videos/Google/Eric Auchard
Found on: reuters.com

Google Inc.'s video service faces at least one copyright infringement lawsuit, the company confirmed on Friday, and the Web search leader faces a separate subpoena tied to the service.

Copyright infringement has become a hot topic as pirated video from TV, films and music videos has proliferated across the Web. Google runs its own service known as Google Video and last month agreed to buy video site YouTube for $1.65 billion.

Investors are concerned that Google could be financially liable for videos appearing on sites it runs, while the company has said it did not face financial recriminations if it acts quickly to take down copyrighted material once alerted to it.

A report on the Online Media Daily site said the lawsuit, which was filed in France, is seeking 150,000 euros ($193,000). It is related to a documentary video that appeared on Google Video, the media industry site said.

NEWS: Yahoo Eyes Sponsors For Social Sites

News/Social Networks/Yahoo/Mark Walsh
Found on: mediapost.com

IN A BID TO AGGRESSIVELY monetize its social-media properties, Yahoo this week will kick off a high-profile initiative for Nissan Motors. The new campaign, set to launch Wednesday, follows another recent milestone for the company. It recently launched the first corporate page on its Yahoo 360 social-networking site for Travelocity.

Yahoo says more sponsorships and marketing will follow, encompassing Yahoo 360, Yahoo Groups, and Yahoo Video.

MySpace has shown that corporate sponsorships tailored to a Web 2.0 audience can pay off. A study by market researcher eMarketer estimated that MySpace will generate $525 million in advertising next year, compared to $95 million on social-network offerings from portals like Yahoo 360, MSN Spaces, and Google's Orkut. By 2010, eMarketer forecasts that social-network ad spending will reach $2.1 billion in the U.S.

Yahoo is ready to cash in. "We have this phenomenal asset we offer to marketers in our huge range of communities," said David Kopp, senior director of product management for community applications at Yahoo.

But while Yahoo is stepping up efforts to draw advertisers to its Web 2.0 sites, the company faces challenges. Yahoo's homegrown social-networking site, the 20-month-old Yahoo 360, drew just 5.7 million unique visitors in September, compared to 55.8 million for MySpace and 13.3 million for Facebook, according to ComScore Media Metrix. Users spent on average 11 minutes per session on Yahoo 360, compared to 30 minutes on MySpace.

Google Talk ready for Google social network

Social Networks/Web Culture/Google/Orkut
Found on: 21talks.net

Google is bridging the gap between two of its services, Orkut, its social network, and Google Talk, its instant messenger with voice. Orkut members will be able to text message and voice chat with other members of the community.

This integration seems a very logical. Other social networks have their IM or partnered VoIP software providers to bring voice calling features. But it’s interesting to note that this isn’t the first time Google Talk is treated as a simple feature to enhance another G-service. The last one was a matchup with GMail, matchup that brought some features like leaving a voicemail into others’ inbox. Google most probably isn’t willing to turn Google ‘VoIP’ Talk as a standalone application.

NEWS: MySpace: A place for gangs

News/Social Networks/Web Culture/Katherine Rosenberg
Found on: vvdailypress.com

Myspace. com calls itself “a place for friends.” But it’s also a place for gangs, and now, a place for detectives trying to tackle those gangs.

Officials from several San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department stations are perusing the Web site that claims to have over 106 million users, with a reported 230,000 people joining each day. There are various motivations for using MySpace, but at the Victorville station, detectives and members of the Gang Unit use it to track and identify gang members.

“I’ve been working with it for the last six months or so, in order to identify gang members,” said Detective Jeremy Martinez, who heads up the Gang Unit. “I started searching because I learned the Below Under Ground gang had a Web page on there that claimed 37 members in ‘Victimville.’ ”

Martinez has submitted materials obtained via the Web site to the District Attorney’s office as evidence for the prosecution of a gang enhancement for members of BUG currently awaiting trial on a Victorville case from 2005. Among the items submitted were two notebooks full of printouts from myspace.com.

Second Life for businesses - do's and don'ts

Social Networks/Web Culture/Second Life/Business
Found on: e-consultancy.com

Businesses are rushing to get involved in web-based 'virtual worlds' such as Second Life, to take advantage of the marketing opportunities they offer.

Catherine Smith of Linden Lab, the creators of the hugely popular Second Life community, spoke to us about the pros and cons of launching these campaigns.

How many users do you now have and how large do you see Second Life becoming?

As of the end of October, there were over 1.2 million registered users in Second Life.

We believe Second Life is poised to grow significantly. Last month alone, in-world residency grew by 35%. Maintaining a virtual presence may become ubiquitous in a few years, as perhaps cell phones and email addresses are today, and we’d like to be there to facilitate that transition.

What are the major challenges you have found yourself dealing with as the community has grown larger?

As with any growing community, there can be the occasional sticking point. When the population began to grow rapidly, we scaled quickly to meet demand.

Scaling remains our most pressing issue. Ultimately, we are here to provide a technically sound, robust, stable and highly functional platform on which our users can create fully autonomous lives.

Are you looking at any other revenue streams other than leasing virtual property?

At this time, the sale and upkeep of virtual property is our primary focus in terms of revenue, though we’re exploring other revenue streams.

NEWS: Gemini: Eyeing Japan’s Mobile Social Networks

News/Social Networks/Web Culture/Mobile
Found on : gigaom.com

More and more companies are looking to get a piece of the mobile social network market that has been growing in Japan, one of the world’s most advanced cellular markets. Mixi, with its mobile-friendly features went public1 earlier this year, and Rupert Murdoch said today2 that he would discuss offering a joint service for cell phones with Japan’s Softbank Corp. That’s why mobile messaging startup Gemini Mobile Technologies3 chose Japan for the launch of its “mobile social network” product called eXplo, which can run the back-end of mobile communities for carriers.

Gemini, which has offices in both Tokyo and San Mateo, says eXplo is powering Softbank’s own 3D mobile community called S! Town that offers chatting, shopping, and other community features via cell phones. Founded in 2001 by Hiroshi Ota, Michael Tso and Scott Driggers, Gemini raised $7.5 million from Ignite Japan/Tokio Marine, Mizuho Bank, and Mitsubishi-UFJ last year, and says it is already profitable from its messaging platform. The company hopes to add even more customers with its new social networking product.

NEWS: Yahoo Dishes Out Food Site

News/Web Culture/Website/Yahoo/Food
Found on: redherring.com



Yahoo has opened a food site aimed at giving foodies and famished alike advice on what to cook up for dinner from celebrities, chefs, and celebrity chefs like Wolfgang Puck, Rachael Ray, Martha Stewart, actor Morgan Freeman, and others.

The Sunnyvale, California-based portal company cut the ribbon on the site Wednesday, which will offer content from partners like Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia; magazines like Everyday with Rachael Ray, Reader’s Digest, Eating Well, Taste of Home, Cook’s Illustrated, and Food & Wine; and the web sites Epicurious and allrecipes.com.

Ms. Stewart has a section on the site called Martha’s Kitchen and it doesn’t look like the prison commissary. Just in time for the holidays, she gives advice on how to make Thanksgiving easy.

NEWS: Microsoft's Ad Service Called Into Question

News/Web Culture/Marketing/Advertising
Found on: pcworld.com

Two consumer advocacy groups have filed a complaint with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, saying Microsoft and other Web-based companies are using "unfair and deceptive" business practices to collect data about their customers.

The complaint by The Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG), filed today, asks the FTC to investigate Microsoft's use of customer data collection in its Web advertising service, called adCenter. The adCenter service targets customers with contextual advertising based on their Web habits.

But CDD and US PIRG said Microsoft's tracking of Web user habits goes too far. "Microsoft has embarked on a wide-ranging data collection and targeting scheme that is deceptive and unfair to millions of users," the groups said in their complaint to the FTC.

NEWS: Zango, Inc. Settles FTC Charges

News/Web Culture/Marketing/Youth Trends/Adware
Found on: ftc.gov

Will Give Up $3 Million in Ill-Gotten Gains for Unfair and Deceptive Adware Downloads

Zango, Inc., formerly known as 180solutions, Inc., one of the world’s largest distributors of adware, and two principals have agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that they used unfair and deceptive methods to download adware and obstruct consumers from removing it, in violation of federal law. The settlement bars future downloads of Zango’s adware without consumers’ consent, requires Zango to provide a way for consumers to remove the adware, and requires them to give up $3 million in ill-gotten gains.

"Consumers' computers belong to them, and they shouldn't have to accept any content they don’t want," said Lydia Parnes, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. "If consumers choose to receive pop-up ads, so be it. But it violates federal law to secretly install software that forces consumers to get pop-ups that disrupt their computer use."

According to the FTC, Zango often used third parties to install adware on consumers’ computers. The adware, including programs named Zango Search Assistant, 180Search Assistant, Seekmo, and n-CASE, monitors consumers’ Internet use in order to display targeted pop-up ads. It has been installed on U.S. consumers’ computers more than 70 million times and has displayed more than 6.9 billion pop-up ads. The FTC alleges that Zango’s distributors – third-party affiliates who often contracted with numerous sub-affiliates – frequently offered consumers free content and software, such as screensavers, peer-to-peer file sharing software, games, and utilities, without disclosing that downloading them would result in installation of the adware. In other instances, Zango’s third-party distributors exploited security vulnerabilities in Web browsers to install the adware via “drive-by” downloads. As a result, millions of consumers received pop-up ads without knowing why, and had their Internet use monitored without their knowledge.

NEWS: Ad Spend on Social Networks to Reach $2B in 2010

News/Social Networks/Web Culture/Myspace
Found on: mediabuyerplanner.com

Ad spending on U.S. social-networking sites in 2007 is expected to reach $865 million, up from $350 million in 2006, and will surpass $2 billion in 2010, according to eMarketer.

Ad spending on social-networking sites will reach $2.15 billion in 2010, according to a new eMarketer report, “Social Network Marketing: Ad Spending Update,” MarketingVox reports. MySpace will continue to dominate, accounting for 60 percent of total U.S. online social-network ad spend in 2007. MySpace will account for $525 million in 2007 ad spend, up from $180 million in 2006.

Worldwide, social-network ad spending will reach $1.1 billion in 2007, up from $445 million in 2006 - and by 2010 spending is forecast to $2.8 billion worldwide.

Social networks must put adequate ROI measures in place if the flow of ad dollars is to continue, says Debra Williamson, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the report.

“The longer existing social networks take to develop adequate ROI metrics, the bigger the opening for a next generation of networks that are built from the ground up to accommodate advertising,” she says.

Flickr: Random Slideshow 3

Social Networks/Web Culture/Flickr/Photos
Found on: Flickr

Random Flickr Slideshow 3 (photos of total strangers - fun.)

What's new with MOG?

Social Networks/Web Culture/MOG/Music
Found on: mog.com

New Home page
The new homepage has been re-designed to showcase more of what MOG is all about. Check out the featured posts from the MOG-O-SPHERE on the left and Featured Artists on the right. The Search tool has been re-designed so it is easier to see the options, and we still have Artist MOGs, Movers & Shakers and Random MOG Shots in the center.

Artists on MOG
We’ve got all kinds of bad-ass musicians using MOG! Here are just a few:
Frank Black: http://mog.com/frank_black
The Clientele: http://mog.com/the_clientele
Nada Surf: http://mog.com/matthew_caws
The Court & Spark: http://mog.com/Scott_Hirsch
Camper Van Beethoven/Cracker: http://mog.com/David_Lowery
Deerhoof: http://mog.com/deerhoof
Portastatic: http://mog.com/Portastatic
Josh Haden: http://mog.com/Josh_Haden

New Skins
This month we’ve added 3 new skins by the artists Adam Pointer, Rachel Domm and Cassandra Simon. Go to your page and click SKIN to pick out a rockin’ new look for your MOG.