Articles of the Day
Surrge Offers Incentive - Based Social Distribution Network - Surrge.com, a new referral model and social distribution network, has the noble goal of reshaping the digital music scene. The network was launched Saturday at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. The site aims to foster a community that encourages fans to get involved in an artist’s success, and offers monetary rewards for doing so. By creating a fan-driven, word-of-mouth distribution channel, Surrge enables artists to recognize the fans who contribute to their success. Those fans are then compensated through Surrge for their promotional efforts. Through its repeatable distribution and referral models, Surrge helps artists build their distribution network and fan base by rewarding existing fans for spreading the music. Surrge’s online community fosters relationships between artists, fans and music labels.
Video Sites Challenge HDTV’s Quest To Keep Viewers - High-definition TV was expected, in part, to slow the exodus of viewers online. But, a growing number of digital content and ad providers are challenging TV’s hold on visual quality with better technology and services. Vimeo, a video-sharing site owned by Barry Diller’s IAC, began distributing user-generated videos in HD late last year. The peer-to-peer-powered Web TV startup Joost also offers high-resolution content. Now, video ad network BrightRoll today is launching a proprietary HD ad unit for branded advertisers to deliver campaigns in high-definition across its network of publishers, including CNN, MTV, and CBS News.
AOL’s Ad Network Moves: A Lesson In Being Ahead Of The Curve - While Time Warner may have put AOL on the buyer’s block, with its stable of ad networks–including ThirdScreenMedia for mobile, Lightningcast for video, and Tacoda for behavioral and the original Advertising.com–AOL seems well-equipped to battle giants like Microsoft, Google and Yahoo for a major share of the online advertising pie. AOL’s third-party ad networks brought in about $650 million in revenues in 2007, or about 27% of the Web giant’s advertising and content revenues, according to the new “Online Ad Networks: Monetizing the Long Tail” report from DeSilva + Phillips.
Analyst: Bebo Won’t Fix AOL - In a research note, UBS analyst Michael Morris warns that Time Warner’s acquisition of Bebo won’t necessarily fix AOL, which paid $850 million for the social network last Thursday. Morris pointed to the challenging climate for social networks, which face mounting competition, slowing growth, user defection, less time spent per user and an uncertain (and thus far, underwhelming) advertising strategy. He added that because of AOL’s corporate management structure, Bebo could find it hard to innovate and acquire new talent.
Facebook To Launch Instant Messaging Service - Facebook has been testing a new instant messaging service and will be launching it to the public soon, perhaps in the next week.Our understanding is that the service will be built into user’s Facebook pages and allow them to web chat with their Facebook friends. We’ve also heard that, like Gtalk, it will be built on the Jabber open source platform, allowing users to add the service to many popular Instant messaging clients like Trillian (Windows) and Adium (Mac). I’d also expect web chat services like Meebo and eBuddy to add support for the service.
Gates: TV Will Be Based on Internet - Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates said Thursday he expects the next decade to bring even greater technological leaps than the past 10 years. In a speech to the Northern Virginia Technology Council, Gates speculated that some of the most important advances will come in the ways people interact with computers: speech-recognition technology, tablets that will recognize handwriting and touch-screen surfaces that will integrate a wide variety of information. “I don’t see anything that will stop the rapid advance,” Gates said, noting that technological change driven by academia and corporate researchers continued even after the Internet stock bubble burst in 2000.
