Joost is hiring talent scouts Creative Artists Agency to get Hollywood programming onto its service. Along with well known programming and a clutch of top advertisers Joost wants to offer shows from independent professional video makers rather than “wild” UGC/social media. Joost has $45 million from five backers and signed Viacom and sister company CBS for content recently.
Mobile handsets capable of displaying TV will hit 244 million by 2011, according to the Multimedia Research Group in the US. That’s double the number previously forecast for the uptake rate expected in 55 countries. Big leaps are expected in 2009 when 53 million broadcast TV enabled handsets are expected to ship. The bulk of the 80 mobile TV trials all over the world will become genuine services. Most will
Mobile handsets capable of displaying TV will hit 244 million by 2011, according to the Multimedia Research Group in the US. That’s double the number previously forecast for the uptake rate expected in 55 countries. Big leaps are expected in 2009 when 53 million broadcast TV enabled handsets are expected to ship. The bulk of the 80 mobile TV trials all over the world will become genuine services. Most will
The online personalised music streaming service Pandora has signed a deal with US carrier Sprint to be pre-installed or downloaded to handsets. Pandora and other web broadcasters have been heavily hit by recent increases in the licensing fees for web broadcasters in the US. Pandora has also had to stop streaming outside the US. The new Sprint venture means a badly needed extra revenue stream on top of advertising. Pandora
Watch out TIOTI.com? As Mashable reports, Denmark-based Tribler (note the .org domain) has created a BitTorrent client which works like Last.fm to find new media based on your downloading history. The non-profit group, a joint research project from Delft University of Technology and the VU University Amsterdam, already has $8 million in government funding. It's also about to be tested with video on-demand services for the Netherlands Public Broadcasting organisation:
Justin Kirby over at dmc.co.uk has created a new site around how the theory and methodology of “Connected Marketing” is evolving and also being put into practice. He’s published a series of new podcast interviews for the site including ones on “Open Innovation, Trends and Engagement” marketing. Check it out.
Pluck, which re-packages social media content for publishers, broadcasters and major brands, is expanding beyond the US and is now on the hunt for a UK MD, according to a highly placed source. Last year the Austin, Texas-based RSS and publisher services company, raised $7 million from Reuters, Austin Ventures and Mayfield and re-focused away from consumer-facing RSS services towards B2B products. Their SiteLife Social Media suite generates user content
There doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason why there are more Germans in Second Life than Americans even though there are more American firms advertising inside the virtual world. Could it be down to better broadband in Germany? For now we'll have to ponder the results of a new Comscore study which finds that Second Life has a rapidly growing and global base of active residents. The report
The English Premier League will sue YouTube in the US for alleged copyright infringement and claims the site "knowingly misappropriated" its intellectual property by encouraging videos of matches to be viewed on its site. YouTube already faces a $1bn (£501m) lawsuit from Viacom over similar issues. US music publisher Bourne joins the League in the legal action launched in New York. Doe the League "get it"? It sounds like they
Breaking news: Yahoo! Photos will officially be axed today in favour of the Yahoo-owned Flickr, according to several news sites today. The closure will occur over the next few months, after Yahoo found that Flickr, with its social tools, is growing much faster than Yahoo! Photos and recently past it in traffic terms, according to Comscore. Users will be given the option of choosing one of a number of the