BBC News interviewed YouTube founder Chad Hurley shortly after the announcement at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland this weekend that the online video provider would begin sharing ad revenue with producers. Hurley said this is one of a number of major announcements YouTube is set to make over the coming months. The other big one--is the "audio fingerprinting" technology that would be used to identify copyrighted material as it's uploaded by users. The advertising industry, meanwhile, has been waiting for the official unveiling of YouTube's video ad system, the revenue-sharing program it will use to compensate …

After speaking with CEO Chad Hurley at the same conference in Switzerland, search luminary John Battelle surmises that the new rev share program would likely present producers with a series of options, as well as middle, after, banner or even button, ads. Battelle also points to revenue generator hints from postings on the Google Blog, the company's public-facing blog. He says Google Video, the advertising system, will become a crucial component to AdSense, its publisher network. Indeed, the posting makes it sound as though Ad Sense will become more of an ad-supported content distribution network for video, …

It's virtual or bust for MTV Networks, the Viacom company that once enjoyed the enviable status of being the de facto temperature gauge of youth culture. The broadcaster, realizing that kids don't pay television the kind of attention they used to, is moving into virtual online worlds, long the domain of tech geeks, mostly 18-34 males. For teens and 20somethings that want be like the kids on the highly successful reality show "Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County," MTV is making that possible (sort of), through a 3-D rendered Southern California world in which avatars piloted by the …

Americans yearning for a turbo-charged mobile Web can have a peek into such a tech utopia in the Far East. As the U.S. moves into a 3G (third-generation mobile network) world, Asia is gearing up for mobile life post-3G. It's called HDSPA, high-speed downlink packet access, soon to be the nationwide network standard in South Korea. Korea's wireless companies have spent $5.4 billion on the technology, which moves data at up to 3.6 megabits per second faster than a DSL connection. Meanwhile, Korean carrier KT is rolling out an even faster wireless network in Seoul, the nation's capital, …

When Microsoft unveils Windows Vista tonight at midnight, it will be a defining moment for the software provider, possibly the end of an era. The software biz is going through an undeniable change, moving more towards a Web-based future. However, Michael Cusumano, an MIT professor, says the likely change is due more to the "trauma" suffered by Microsoft in producing this latest iteration of Microsoft Windows, the company's biggest moneymaker. Indeed, the company's new mantra, as outlined by Bill Gates and Ray Ozzie in late 2005, is software services delivered via the Web, stored on the company's …

Search guru Danny Sullivan writes that search marketers should shift their approach from Google first, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, et al second, to Google first, social media search engines second, and the rest, third.   What are social media search engines? Sites like Digg, StumbleUpon and Reddit. Why do they matter more to publishers than search's entire second-tier? Because the Web 2.0 blog receives most of its traffic from Google organic, followed by direct URL entries, to referrals from Digg.com, Google direct, BBC (randomly), Net Vibes, StumbleUpon and Reddit. Yahoo was 10th, but its referrals came from MyYahoo, not …

Even eBay and Yahoo were able to post nice turnarounds in their Web businesses, and though Microsoft proper also scored better than expected fourth-quarter results (thanks in part to the Xbox 360), its MSN business continues to sputter. The division continues to lose market share in search to Google and was forced to revise its ad sales growth forecast down from 11% to between 3% to 8 %. The company's software chief responded by saying he's simply "not happy."  Even so, Microsoft is hardly alone. Yahoo, MSN and IAC/InterActiveCorp's Ask.com have also seen their market share erode, …

Our search behavior will change is something better comes along. The Web 2.0 movement calls for a better kind of search--or at least, a wider variety of searches. Wikipedia, as a way to search for specific information about something, is one new way. It can give you in-depth information about people, events, countries, anything you desire. Which is why Wikia, the search project of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, makes sense. Why not let the community help write the search engine and decide which answers are most relevant? It seems to work for encyclopedic material, so what …

Are games like Second Life just a fad, or do they represent the future of media consumption? The actual answer will probably be somewhere in the middle, because Second Life takes the user-generated content phenomenon to a level beyond YouTube and MySpace, allowing users to conduct business, make money and simply play in the world they help to create. Blogging from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Fortune writer David Kirkpatrick hypothesizes that Second Life is a better enabler of human communication on the Web than email, instant messaging, chat rooms and even online games. …

Internet brands YouTube and Wikipedia have shot up in the global rankings of the world's most influential brands, both debuting in the top five this year in the annual survey conducted by Brandchannel.com. The Web site has thrown up controversial results in the past, naming Arabic TV station Al Jazeera as the world's fifth-most-influential brand in 2004. The survey asked 3,625 branding professionals and students on the brands that had the most impact on our lives in 2006. Search leader Google was the top brand for the second consecutive year, followed by iPod-maker Apple, online video …