After trying and failing with an online video strategy requiring users to come to one destination to view content, CBS Corp. is shifting gears. As it was offline, CBS believes that distribution is the name of the game on the Web. Of course, so do broadcast competitors NBC, ABC and Fox. While NBC and Fox, through the NBC-U News Corp-Microsoft-Yahoo-etc. video partnership, may have already achieved the largest distribution (before releasing anything), CBS this week is set to extend its menu of video content to as many as 10 different Web sites, from Time Warner's AOL to the online …

In an effort to keep up with advertisers shifting budgets from traditional to online, Young & Rubicam is creating an as-yet-unnamed interactive division that will operate under the Y&R umbrella. Tarik Sedky has been hired as chief digital officer to build the new unit. He worked at Y&R from 1995 to 2000 as a managing director, and hopes to increase the agency’s interactive revenue from 3% to 15% in three years. Y&R global CEO Hamish McLennan told Adweek that he’d like to see the digital unit functioning like Tribal DDB, the digital arm of DDB that maintains its own …

Social networking Web site Facebook today will introduce Marketplace, a free classified ads service to compete with similar listings on Craiglist -- and, as of this week, Facebook rival Friendster. Facebook members will be able to advertise offerings in four categories: housing; jobs; for sale, for items like concert tickets; and "other," which would include things like solicitations for rides. "The advantage of having classifieds linked to a social network is that you know something about the seller," said Charlene Li, an analyst at Forrester Research, in The New York Times. She added, "You are less likely to buy a …

The search engine behemoth can add its new tagline to the company's informal corporate motto of "don't be evil." The tagline reflects Google's added offerings, updating itself as more than a search engine and advertising provider. Danny Sullivan opines that the new slogan is Google's way of finally acknowledging what the rest of us already know: it's more than just a search engine.

Yahoo Chairman and Chief Executive Terry Semel has the backing of company board members to continue Yahoo's "transformation" into a more competitive rival against Google. The picture painted on Wall Street, however, is that Semel has been one step behind the behemoth, out-Googled on potential acquisitions that would have narrowed the gap between Yahoo and Google. Semel balked at buying Google in 2002 for a price in the single billions, but the company's stock value is now $145 billion -- three times that of Yahoo's. In addition, when Semel took an interest in buying YouTube and DoubleClick, well, we know …

What do you get when you combine social networking, online auctions and would-be investors? Prosper, the latest Internet startup to bring Web 2.0 to "a very old-guard business," as John Witchel, the company's chief technology officer, puts it. Prosper pools together groups of investors who lend money to thousands of U.S. residents for anything from consolidating their credit-card debt to starting a small business. It caters to a potentially huge (although long-tailish) market previously off-limits to investors: consumer debt. This isn't microfinance, by the way, which is often aimed at developing nations. Rather, Prosper's aim is to make money …

The video game industry is in the midst of what you might call re-growing pains, as investors wait for the latest round of next-generation game consoles to take hold with consumers. Knowing this, Wall Street was pleasantly surprised to see that Electronic Arts, the world's largest video game publisher, posted a better-than-expected net loss of 56 percent from the first quarter of 2006. EA posted net income of $613 million, higher than the $586.97 million forecast by analysts from Thomson Financial. As a result, the company's shares closed up 3 percent to $52.94 on the Nasdaq. Just because the …

Forget Google--News Corporation's MySpace is Microsoft's biggest threat, PayPal co-founder Max Levchin said at the Software 2007 Conference in Santa Clara, Calif. on Wednesday. DoubleClick acquisition notwithstanding, Google doesn't have as much data, he said. In fact, the search giant's push toward personalization is all about acquiring more, but MySpace and other social networks already have the leverage. Levchin believes that social networks are becoming more like operating systems in the sense that they serve users precisely through the control of their data. Because of this, he said, social networks will dominate in the years to come--just as …

Lost in the multitudes? That's always a possibility if you're an ad-supported online video startup. And while many of today's Web TV startups may find themselves also-rans one day, Babelgum, the latest in a long line of copycats, has a few things going for it, says Paul R. La Monica of CNNMoney: a billionaire investor and a somewhat unique video platform. Babelgum is 100 percent backed by Fastweb founder Silvio Scaglia, a self-made Italian billionaire who seems committed to seeing the company turn into one of online video's major players. Similar to Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom's Joost, …

YouTube has finally started paying content producers for their work. But only a select few -- whose videos draw enough traffic to make any money at all. Web video comedian Christine Gambito says that while she is happy to participate in YouTube's new compensation program, the video-sharing site is still be more useful to her as a promotional vehicle than a real moneymaker. "You can't sell your DVD on YouTube," she says. And, most likely, you won't earn meaningful ad revenue, either. That doesn't mean that sites like YouTube aren't a great resource for budding content producers wanting to …