Cynopsis: DIGITAL

09/15/09

Good morning, it’s Tuesday, September 15, 2009, and this is your first early morning digital briefing.

Well-funded online video start-up Veoh Networks won a summary judgment in a Los Angeles federal court on Friday after a judge threw out a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by Universal Music two years ago. The court found that Veoh’s video sharing activities met the safe harbor requirements under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The start-up maintains that it takes active steps to limit incidents of infringement, including taking down unauthorized clips upon request. The decision, which Universal Music will appeal of course, could have ramifications on Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube as the two companies’ content policies are very similar. This issue if far from settled, but the ruling should make those in the ad supported online video space breath a little easier.

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM CYNOPSIS MEDIA EVENTS

 
ESPNBoston.com launched as the network’s second hyperlocal site on Monday featuring content from some of the most respected names in Beantown sports, including ESPN analyst and former Boston Globe columnist Peter Gammons, former Globe football writer Mike Reiss and recently retired Pats linebacker Tedy Bruschi. In addition to featuring a locally-produced mini SportCenter, ESPNBoston.com also aggregates Boston-themed video news from across ESPN’s properties. The site will be managed by Peter Lawrence-Riddell, a native of Amherst, Mass. and graduate of Bates College in Maine, and David Lefort, a Whitinsville, Mass. native and the former online sports editor for the Globe.
 
Congrats to the 2009 Primetime Emmy Award winners for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media, the first year the category has been granted “primetime” status.

• ABC Entertainment Marketing/Hoodlum‘s Lost spin-off The Dharma Initiative-Dharma Wants You won in the Fiction category
• NBC.com‘s The Late Night with Jimmy Fallon Digital Experience won for Non-Fiction
• The Outstanding Special Class – Short-format Live-Action Entertainment Programs award went to Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog by Mutant Enemy, Inc., produced by Joss Whedon and Michael Boretz.

 
TVLand.com gets is celebrating the 40th anniversary of The Brady Bunch with an new microsite which includes photo galleries, games, trivia and classic video clips.
 

 
Online entertainment portal MyDamnChannel officially announced its “new fall season” line-up premiering Oct. 8, featuring the return of some well-received shows along with a some newbie’s. (MyDamn has got a real connection going to Sweden these days.)

• In a clear nod to Spinal Tap, Keanu Reeves & Illeana Douglas star in Sparhusen, documenting the making of what should have been the Swedish band’s breakthrough single in ’72
• Douglas’ Easy to Assemble also returns for a second year with more guest bits from Kevin Pollak, Tom Arnold and Ed Begley, Jr. as Illeana vies for Ikea co-worker of the year award against Justine Bateman 
• Also look for the new animated series KnightShift, daily email music show Ramp, a new comedy series called Gate Crashers and more stuff from Harry Shearer and Don Was

 
For internet video with a film noir feel check out The Fall of Kaden, a new series from Matt Doubler and Adam Leiphart at Tape 6. Paranoid loan shark Kaden (Adam Leiphart) commits his last $10k to gambler Burke (Bryan Troyan) and almost immediately regrets the decision. The ten-episode show premiered Sunday night across multiple portals including AOL, blip.tv, DailyMotion, Facebook, Yahoo Video, YouTube as well as at KoldCast TV as part of a broader licensing agreement reached between CJP Digital and the Web TV Network.
 
Douglas Stone, the whiskey drinker who brought us ForScotchLovers.com, has launched a new social network ForTequilaLovers. The site encourages contributions and booze sales by giving out “flovers” to participants, community currency that can be redeemed for Scotch and Tequila.
 

 
The Weather Channel is spicing up the sauce with some unique creative across the network and on weather.com around Sony‘s new animated feature Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. Customizations include four 30-second, on-air segments featuring meteorologist Adam Berg presenting “Chewandswallow” forecasts. Out-of-banner ads on weather.com will be triggered during rainy forecasts to show meatballs falling on the local forecast pages four days leading up to the premiere.
 
WEtv is promoting the launch of season 2 of the wedding makeover series My Fair Wedding with David Tutera by sponsoring the first homepage redesign of celebrity gossip blog PerezHilton.com. WEtv is also staging mall tour with retailer GGP, sponsored by Kodak with participating retailers – Godiva Chocolatier, Pottery Barn, Swarovski and Williams-Sonoma.
 

 
Quicken and Quickbooks maker Intuit has agreed to acquire personal finance site Mint.com for $170 million in cash. The start-up, which had raised some $32 million in funding, has attracted over 1.5 million users by offering many of the services Quicken Online had charged a monthly fee for. (Quicken Online recently dropped its $3/month fee.)
 
Yahoo is looking to sell up to $150 million or 1% of in its shared of Chinese B-to-B trading site Alibaba.com, per the WSJ, citing a term sheet. Yahoo currently owns 39% of the site’s parent company, the Alibaba Group.
 
Photo sharing site Shutterfly acquired San Francisco-based video sharing application start-up Tiny Pictures, creator of the popular Radar app.
 
Seattle-based white label video management firm thePlatform signed on to manage video for Travel Channel Media, handling publishing, distribution and playback of clips across the web and mobile destinations.
 

 
As strong as Google’s foothold is here in the U.S. in search, web video and online tools, the company is even more dominant is foreign territories such as India and Brazil ­- the #7 and #9 internet markets in terms of usage, according to ComScore data sourced by the NYTimes. U.S. users spend about 9% of their online time on Google services; in Brazil, that number jumps to 30%, and in India it’s nearly 29%. Google captures 90% of all searches, 71% of time spent on maps and 43% time spent on blogs in Brazil.
 
Google also continues to gain market share of U.S. searches despite impressive gains from Microsoft’s Bing search engine, according to Nielsen. Yahoo, on the other hand, continues to lose ground. Total searches on MSN/Windows Live/Bing Search increased 22.1% month-over-month in August, making it the fastest growing search provider among the top 10 but Google managed to eke out a 2.6% month-to-month gain to capture 64.6% of total U.S. searches.
 
Top 10 Search Providers for August 2009, Ranked by Searches (U.S.)
Provider                       Searches    M-O-M %    Share of 
                                     (000)      Growth        Searches 
Total                           10,812,734    2.9%        100.0%  
Google Search               6,986,580    2.6%          64.6%   
Yahoo! Search               1,726,060   -4.2%          16.0%   
MSN/Windows Live/Bing 1,156,415    22.1%         10.7%   
AOL Search                      333,231     1.8%           3.1%   
Ask.com Search                186,270     2.9%           1.7%   
My Web Search                 128,432     0.5%           1.2%   
Comcast Search                 50,328    -21.6%          0.5%   
Yellow Pages Search           37,923       2.7%          0.4%   
NexTag Search                   31,830       0.4%          0.3%   
Local.com Search               16,314        2.9%          0.2%   
Source: Nielsen MegaView Search
 

 
Apple lowered the price of the 160GB Apple TV media center set-top to $229 and discontinued the 40GB version, per MacRumors.com. Right now there are no Apple TV’s up on the Apple Store refurbished or clearance sections but it might be worth checking there from time to time for blowout prices on 40GB models.
 
AT&T‘s U-verse IPTV service is rolling out several new enhancements in time for the new Fall TV season. The Multiview app allows you to watch multiple channels at one time; the TV Awards and New Shows app details cast info and Primetime Emmy, Teen Choice Award and TCA Award nominees; and a new Media Share feature enables streaming of personal photos and music files from your PC.

 
Online publishing technology firm Digitalsmiths made of trio of new hires, all of whom will report to Robert Bryson, Digitalsmiths’ SVP/Sales and Business Development and will be based in the company’s Los Angeles office:

• Former Ascent Media executive Josh Wiggins joins as VP/Business Development, West Coast
• MySpace veteran Greg Gambina comes aboard as Senior Account Manager
• Former Move Networks technician Mike DeBrincat joins as Senior Solutions Architect, responsible for developing content distribution and revenue generation systems

 
In-game advertising network Double Fusion hired Derek J. Rudd as SVP/Advertising Sales for North American and European markets, to be based out of the company’s New York headquarters. Derek comes over after spending 7 years in sales with FIM’s IGN.
 
SmartJog hired Sandra Colucci as Sales Executive within its Television/VOD business unit. She will be responsible for marketing SmartJog services to broadcasters, VOD and digital content platforms in Latin America, United States, Canada, and Asia.
 
Virtual world company IMVU has brought on Danny Wright as Head of Sales, based out of the company’s Palo Alto, CA-office. Danny will be responsible for managing sales and IMVU’s sponsorship group.
 
Miles Dennison has joined online advertising verification firm DoubleVerify as SVP of Sales, a newly created position based in the company’s New York headquarters.
 
Kara Manning has joined the team behind WFUV’s The Alternate Side website as Web Editor, Writer and On-Air Interviewer.  Kara was formerly a reporter for MTV News and a staff writer for Rolling Stone magazine.
 

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM IAB MIXX 2009

 
We’ve complimented Microsoft’s new Bing search engine here before for its ease of use and visual flair. Bing’s video search engine is quickly becoming the go to option for savvy surfers looking for television content music videos, news clips and, well, less savory kids of content across the leading portals. (From what we hear, anyway.) Bing continues to climb in the search charts (see above,) helping Microsoft crack a 10% market share in the U.S. just 3 months after its launch. It’s nice to see that Redmond is not just resting on its laurels here. Check out Bing’s new Visual Search engine, in which a picture tells a thousand words. Conduct searches across categories such as Cell phones, Popular Books or Popular TV Shows, then sift through the results by thumbnail image. (I’m dating myself here, but it’s like flipping through the album racks at your favorite vinyl record store.) Wave your mouse over the image and the title of the show comes up, along with the CBS Interactive “Metacritic” ratings and user ratings. Click on the photo to access the full search results, and the official site is always at the top of the list. Effective media search is all about connecting the viewer to the actual entertainment property and this is an elegant way to do it.
 
Correction: SI.com’s new National Digital Director Rob Kligman’s name was misspelled in yesterday’s edition – we regret the error.
 

Later — Wayne
 Wayne Karrfalt for Cynopsis: Digital
09.15.09

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