Whether its users like it or not, advertising and sponsorships are starting to change YouTube. The online video site, which is the host of official video from CBS Corp., has let the media giant move the comments that appear at the bottom of the page for each clip to another page. "We just want to make sure the front page is a little bit cleaner," Quincy Smith, the president of CBS Interactive says, adding that it wanted to remove "profane, unconstructive criticism" and the off-topic ramblings of YouTube members from its videos' pages. Critical comments aren't deleted, but …

The long tail keeps dragging out, pulled by user-generated content. Mass media is no longer about getting millions of people to read something written by a few people, but getting a few people to read millions of items written by millions of people. It's also about making millions of people volunteer experts. The people provide the content; this is happening at MySpace, Facebook and YouTube, but not at Yahoo, a company that has come under fire for slowing revenue growth and a lack of direction. Once upon a time, social media was an area that could have …

In its latest study about how teens use media and technology, teen research specialist the Harrison Group reports that Americans 13 to 18 more than 72 hours per week using electronic media, which includes the Internet, cell phones, television, music and video games. Aside from sleeping, that doesn't leave too many free hours, but teens are also big multitaskers, sometimes using as many as three or four devices at once. "This generation is unique," says Jim Taylor, the research group's vice president. For the study, the Harrison Group surveyed 1,000 Americans between 13 and 18 on their daily …

Large corporate marketers are finding that their Web sites generate more traffic than the Web sites they buy ads on to drive traffic to their Web pages. As a result, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, primarily a retailer on the Web, is shifting its Web strategy to a free portal supported by advertising. According to research firm comScore Media Metrix, the combined monthly traffic to Proctor & Gamble and Unilever's personal hygiene and cosmetics brand sites is a staggering 9 million, almost one-third of YouTube's total monthly uniques, and much higher than many other news and video outlets. Yet consumer …

Want to freshen up a promotional contest? Ask your users to create videos. Chipotle, Converse, General Motors and MasterCard are all enlisting users to create TV spots or promotional shorts for them. So far, more than 1,000 entries have been submitted to Frito-Lay for a contest to create a Super Bowl commercial for Doritos. The winning spot will make an appearance during the big game on Feb. 4. But it's not just advertisers who are getting consumers to create TV spots--the networks are, too. The CW recently teamed up with Cadbury Schweppes to get users to create ads …

TiVo is being linked to just about every major technology company these days. Steve Jobs' Apple Computer is the most recent. TechCrunch thinks the match would be ideal for both companies, as Apple tries to expand its media offerings. While iTunes sells a bunch of videos for Disney, the hardware maker has almost no leverage in the TV market. The DVR maker struggled to grow after cable providers learned how to make and distribute DVRs cheaply. But Google may be an even better match for TiVo, since it organizes the world's TV experience. It helps consumers get the …

A day after News Corp. said it was testing a new automated program that would weed out sex offenders on MySpace, U.S. Senators Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) John McCain (R-AZ) announced that they plan to introduce a bill requiring sex offenders to submit their email addresses to law enforcement. A database of registered sex offenders' email addresses would make it easy for MySpace to keep them away from their site. Under the proposed legislation, perpetrators would submit their email address to their probation officer. Any offender caught giving an unregistered email address would be found in violation of their …

In the first such deal since its acquisition of YouTube, Google is lecensing out its video, email, search and targeting tools for British TV company BSkyB to offer its broadband users. The companies plan to use the broadband subscriber data to determine which TV ads to show them. They actually plan to replace revolving 30-second spots with targeted commercials stored on the hard drives of BskyB set-top boxes. "This is a really, really big deal for us," said Eric Schmidt, Google's chairman and chief executive "If it works, it will become our most lucrative deal from the get-go." …

AOL may eventually be on its way out of Time Warner. The overhaul of AOL's senior management and business strategy means that Time Warner could be primping the Web giant for a spinoff. Jeff Bewkes, the company's president and COO, said the repositioning of its senior management sets the Internet unit up to be "a standalone company." Bewkes said the strategy shift to an ad-supported model is bringing in enough revenue that by the middle of next year, the company would be able to project future earnings, which have been in decline for years. "AOL might …

At the annual Credit Suisse media summit, Time Warner Chairman Dick Parsons said AOL is on the hunt for new Web partnerships that would help make the company's content stick better with Web users. The partnerships could be "almost anything you could think of other than the really big established portals." Parsons expressed his satisfaction with AOL's development since this summer's business model overhaul. In August, the company left behind its hefty but declining business as an Internet Service Provider in order to focus on developing ad-supported content. Rather than look for new acquisitions, Parsons said AOL is …