"Quarterlife", the highly touted original Web series that runs on several Web 2.0 sites, apparently isn't doing very well. According to The New York Times, some episodes of the show, which average eight minutes, have yet to attract 100,000 views on MySpace and YouTube. Its numbers are terrible compared to what television advertisers are used to. However, "Quarterlife" online is just a warm-up for the series' network television debut on NBC in February. That's where the real litmus test is: can the Web serve as a springboard for a new television series? "Quarterlife" will be the guinea pig. That said, …

If Web video--still in the nascent stages of development--is "rapidly becoming the most popular thing we do online," but Web capacity is filling up at the same time, then the Internet is going to become clogged someday soon, says the Boston Globe's Elaine C. Kamarck. If we don't invest in unclogging it, that is. Imagine: "It could take forever for your photos or video to download or for your e-mail to arrive." Whereas text doesn't take up very much bandwidth, music, video and voice over Internet technologies--which are only beginning to catch on with mainstream consumers--do. As The Wall Street …

Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II of England, has launched a Royal Channel on Google's video site YouTube. The channel's first posting will be the Queen's annual Christmas Day message. The Palace said it hopes to reach younger people and those in other countries by posting the annual address on the Web. The site will also contain recent and historical footage of members of the Royal Family. The channel bears the official title, "The Royal Channel-The Official Channel of the British Monarchy", and displays a photo of Buckingham Palace and the Queen's Guards. It went live shortly after midnight, …

MySpace is sitting pretty at the top of the social-networking pile. It has more than twice the traffic of rival Facebook and has improved revenue by 10 times since News Corp. purchased it for $650 million in 2005. In fact, MySpace will do nearly that much in ad revenue this year, expecting $525 million worth of sales, which represents about 58% of the social-networking industry's total, according to eMarketer. Facebook, meanwhile, is expected to make $30 million on revenue of $140 million, according to Bear Stearns analyst Robert Peck. MySpace, with more than 120 million users worldwide, …

Accoona, a search company, has halted its quest to go public. In a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the New Jersey-based company, which tried but largely failed to find a niche for itself in business-to-business search/listings, cited "unfavorable market conditions" as the reason for withdrawing its IPO registration. Accoona had filed to go public in August. The company's own underwriter had bailed out a month after the initial S-1 filing, and no one else wanted to go near it. The fact that this thing never got off the ground reminds us that for all the …

Thanks to a massive round of funding from a variety of investors, online travel site Kayak acquired rival SideStep for $200 million. The two-part deal sees Kayak raising an additional $196 million from existing investors Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst Partners and Accel Partners, new investors Oak Investments and Lehman Brothers Venture Partners, and debt lenders Silicon Valley Bank and Gold Hill Capital. Kayak will then use the money to purchase SideStep. The companies have swiftly become the leaders in the discount travel search market. Kayak reportedly does around $50 million a year in revenues, while SideStep brings in …

Apple, Inc. has forced the close of tech rumor site Think Secret, after the parties agreed to settle out of court. Blog publisher Nick Ciarelli said he was "very satisfied" with the settlement, although he wouldn't elaborate as to whether the agreement would keep him from reporting on Apple again. Think Secret was one of the most successful Apple rumor sites, often breaking news on the company's new products. However, as blogs are prone to, the site also published erroneous tips, and information about products that were never released. In January 2005 Apple sued Think Secret for …

Social networking sites are inciting more teens to create content online. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, nearly two-thirds of online teens have created something, from personal Web pages to online videos. The study credits social networks like MySpace and Facebook with furthering the trend. More than half of the survey's respondents said they have a social networking profile. Other results: 39 percent of online teens said they've shared content, up from 33 in 2004. Almost 30 percent have their own online journal or blog, up from 19 percent in 2004, and a whopping …

Reuters looks back at the year in digital music. The most visible failure of 2007 was MTV's Urge, which was replaced with a new entity called Rhapsody America, a partnership with RealNetworks' popular online music service. Sony Corp. was the other big name to throw in the towel, announcing in August that it would gradually shut down its Connect music service, after laying off 20 employees and moving the rest to a new division. The biggest name not to throw in the towel was Microsoft's Zune. The software giant upgraded its music service this year by adding social media …

Talks are off until January, but former Writers Guild of America attorney Jonathan Handel on Thursday revealed an interesting (albeit complicated) scenario that he believes could put an end to the union's six-week deadlock with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Meanwhile, L.A.'s economy is losing $220 million a month to the strike. Handel says the Directors Guild of America, set to begin negotiations with the Alliance in the new year, should do a deal on new media residuals (directors don't currently make much from them) mirroring what the WGA wants. Then, he says both …