• Ross Fadner, May 24, 2006, 10:15 AM
  • Web Video Consumption Up 20 Percent in 6 Months ClickZ Broadband video consumption surged 18 percent in the six months between October 2005 and March 2006, according to comScore's new Video Metrix service. In March, U.S. Internet users streamed 3.7 billion pieces of video content watching an average of 100 minutes of content throughout the month, compared with 85 minutes in October. Males between 18 and 34 were most engaged with broadband video, averaging 140 minutes in March, while men overall consumed just above two hours. Other data showed that 42 percent watched video on an entertainment site, and 33 percent on a Web portal; 16 percent consumed video during prime time hours, and 22 percent on weekends. ComScore execs, surprised by the results, noted that despite certain skews by age, all age groups were consuming video. Bosses will be unhappy to know that the workplace is the favored environment for watching video; people spent about an hour watching video from work in March. Read the whole story...
  • Web 2.0 Continues its March on TV Washington Post Just in case you've missed the news recently, the Washington Post compiled a list of the latest examples of television's crumbling dominion over advertising: Google and AOL this week both announced bold new moves into video advertising, powerful advertisers like Wal-Mart have reiterated their interest in appropriating their spending away from television, and eBay was chosen by several of the most prominent ad agencies to develop an advertising stock market of sorts that would determine how much advertisers pay for TV spots, sapping the networks' control over prices in turn. Google would begin selling video ads up to two minutes in length across its AdSense network, while AOL purchased Lightningcast, a company that will enable it to insert ads into its live, streaming and downloadable Web content. While these moves may not have network execs shaking in their boots just yet, analysts said they should worry longer-term. When cable TV burst onto the scene to threaten network revenues, the bigger fish turned around to scoop up the little cable TV companies. Unfortunately, the market cap of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft is such that these days, the reverse is more likely--many times over. Read the whole story...
  • MySpace Courts Google and Microsoft Financial Times You love to hear Eric Schmidt and Steve Ballmer say that Google and Microsoft aren't competing with each other. Sure. The Financial Times reported Tuesday that MySpace is actively in talks with both companies to forge a search alliance that would gain the victor access to MySpace's user base of nearly 80 billion. Think of it like a good old Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras battle: if you thought last year's 5 setter over AOL's traffic was a big deal, winning the MySpace Open would be akin to taking home all four majors. This is the second most populated site on the Web folks, and while the lion's share of the revenue usually goes to the publisher in such deals, the incremental revenue would be a veritable bonanza. The front-runner? Probably Google since Rupert Murdoch has publicly stressed the need to capitalize on search revenue, but News Corp.'s social network has much, much more to offer than search traffic to someone like Microsoft, with its fancy new AdCenter, which many advertisers have responded to favorably. Read the whole story...
  • Nine Out of Ten Web Firms Find Spyware on Their Networks New York Times You hear a lot about improvements to computer security from software companies like Symantec and Microsoft, but the scary thing is spammers and spyware purveyors are also getting better at what they do, which means the Internet is probably not becoming a safer place. In fact, it's quite the contrary, according to a new survey. In the last year, 92 percent of companies reported finding spyware on their networks, a Harris Interactive report said--a 50 percent hike over the prior year's Web@Work survey. Websense, the security firm that commissioned the Harris survey, said more dangerous varieties of spyware are on the rise, and IT managers are increasingly finding keylogging software on their systems. This type of spyware detects every keystroke made on a computer, enabling it to pick up passwords and credit card information. Not surprisingly, pornography sites are the worst places to contract viruses and spyware, but some search results aren't even completely safe. Read the whole story...
  • What Makes Vonage Hotter than MasterCard? Business Week Business Week finds it odd that Vonage, the Internet telephony-only company that has yet to make a dime, is poised to make more money from its debut on the stock market today than MasterCard, which actually made $319 million last year. A poll from IPOHome.com, a site that watches public stock offerings, shows that investors think Vonage's IPO is a hotter prospect than MasterCard--or any other IPO currently being priced, for that matter. Whereas the other companies listed on the poll actually make money, Vonage lost $261.3 million last year, despite a subscriber base of over 1 million. Meanwhile, Skype, one of its VoIP rivals, has plans to offer free calling to U.S. and Canadian landlines, as well as new services for cell phones. This should render Vonage's unlimited $25 a month calling plan obsolete, shouldn't it? Yet last night the company raised $531 million, selling 31.3 million shares for $17 a share, making it the biggest Internet IPO since Google two years ago. Read the whole story...