Second Life...the street finds its own use for things

TechCrunch hasn't been that excited about Second Life, until now.

From TechCrunch:

"Last Saturday night I noticed that Australia’s answer to Robert Scoble (in a good way) Microsoft’s Nick Hodge was in Second Life chatting to The Podcast Network’s Cameron Reilly via Twitter. I jumped into Second Life to join the conversation, making it the three of us. I Twittered my presence and provided a link. Within 30 minutes three had blown out to around 15 people, or 20 different people over 3 hours. With voice in Second Life we discussed a variety of topics, from Second Life itself, to Web 2.0, politics and the environment."

AT&T buys Aloha's 700MHz

Tired of waiting for the auction, AT&T buys Aloha's spectrum.

From The Street:

"AT&T got a jump on next year's radio wave auction with a $2.5 billion bid for Aloha Partners' 700-megahertz spectrum licenses. In the deal, AT&T would take ownership of former UHF channels 54 and 59, the so-called C block of wireless spectrum Aloha had acquired in the past few years. Aloha owned the largest swath of licenses covering about 80% of the population in the top 100 cities.

From the press release:

"Customer demand for mobile services, including voice, data and video, is continually increasing," said Forrest Miller, group president-corporate strategy and development. "Aloha's spectrum will enable AT&T to efficiently meet this growing demand and help our customers stay connected to their worlds."

From Unstrung:

"AT&T's experience on deploying UMTS at 850 MHz makes 700 MHz a great fit with its existing network," says Gabriel Brown. "In particular, the carrier should be able to source attractive 3G handsets that work at both frequencies."

Brown says the price AT&T has paid for this spectrum is "full but fair." He calculates that, at a price of $2.5 billion for 12 MHz of spectrum covering 196 million people, AT&T has paid roughly $1 per MHz per head."

How to beat (compete) with Google locally

Terry Heaton takes a look at how local media can try and compete with Google for local media dollars.

From the post:

"So in order to compete with Google at the local level, we also must become an advertising system. There are a variety of ways to go about this, but here are five things that are required for making it happen:

1. Define and identify the Local Web.
2. Organize the Local Web.
3. Provide tools to help it grow.
4. Serve it by enabling commerce across the network.
5. Sell the concept to the community."

I think Terry forgot number 6: Give up.

Turner signs deal with Kaneva (updated)

I don't see any press releases about this but here is the word from Paid Content:

"Now the Time Warner division will try for a relationship with a little more depth, signing a one-year deal with Kaneva to build and test virtual worlds for its entertainment networks. Turner gets access to Kaneva’s technology and tools to create and use Web communities and “virtual spaces” on Kaneva’s site and in the virtual world of Kaneva .

One of the Turner spaces will act as a virtual portal for the rest. One intriguing twist: each Turner virtual community and “Virtual World” space will include an embedded video player streaming related Turner content. Earlier this year, Kaneva integrated synchronized viewing of YouTube videos, which sounds like a precursor for this."

The full release from 3pointD:

“Our exploration with Kaneva of virtual worlds is yet another example of Turner staying at the forefront of consumer technology trends,” said Blake Lewin, vice president for TBS, Inc.’s New Products Group. “Through this opportunity, we hope to leverage the Kaneva platform to explore how users interact with our brands in a virtual world."

Christopher Klaus, founder and CEO of Kaneva added, “Turner is an ideal flagship media partner for Kaneva. Turner’s high quality programming and credibility is synergistic with our unique focus on delivering entertainment to the masses inside a virtual world. As a result of this partnership, we will provide entirely new ways for audiences to watch, participate and interact around their favorite TV programming.”

Terry's 10 local TV assumptions

If you read this blog you know that I am a big fan of Terry Heaton. He's not pulling any punches with this post:

1. "The TV audience for local media isn’t coming back.
2. News — and especially local news — is being increasingly commodified.
3. The local weather franchise is moving to The Weather Channel, Weather Underground, and a host of outside providers who’ve made their applications easy to find and easy to use.
4. Advertisers themselves will put a halt to the blue smoke and mirrors of mass marketing.
5. We will never, NEVER overcome revenue losses to our legacy platforms through portal websites alone.
6. The people formerly known as the audience are entertaining themselves and each other. The best we can do in this scenario is to support it — let people show off. Teach them to know what we know.
7. The network-affiliate system isn’t just changing; it’s history.
8. A successful internet sale is AGAINST television and all mass media. This is why the lack of dedicated web sales people is beyond problematic.
9. The local advertising community needs to be taught about internet advertising, and we have to do it.
10. Local media MUST move forward along two separate paths of profitability, one maturing as rapidly as the other is growing."

Bud.tv - not dead yet

Bud.tv gets another year of life.

From The Hollywood Reporter:

"Following a keynote speech Tuesday at the Online Media, Marketing & Advertising Conference & Expo, Tony Ponturo, vp global media and sports/entertainment marketing, also said that Anheuser-Busch decided to end its 25-year title sponsorship of NASCAR's Busch series and its role as the official beer sponsor of NASCAR so it could invest more in entertainment and the digital space.

"We wanted to get through the step of, 'OK, should we continue into '08 as we build our marketing plans?' and that was the decision," he said. "I think it (Bud.TV) is something that could have an ending someday, but I think if we keep learning from it and if we keep seeing assets from it ... then it makes sense to continue the site."

In-car Wi-Fi

Bridge Ratings has a report that looks at the coming availability of in-car Wi-Fi.

From the report:

"Of the estimated 30 million users of wireless access technology in the U.S., 75% or 23 million have wireless accessed Internet radio. In fact, 48% of those accessing the Internet via wireless technology seek out Internet radio. The number of Internet radio listeners accessing wirelessly will grow to 77 million by 2010 as wireless technology penetrates the average U.S. lifestyle.

ABI Research forecasts that the total number of Wi-Fi-enabled consumer electronics devices will grow from just 40 mln shipped in 2006 to nearly 249 mln in 2011.

Mobile WiMAX customers will grow at an annual compounded rate of 64% between 2009 and 2012, when telecoms embrace WiMAX as a fixed wireless broadband service, according to Pyramid Research.

By year 5 of in-car Wi-Fi acceptance, traditional radio can expect to see the amount of time spent listening to fall below 19 hours a week and by year 8 when we project that more than 23% of the U.S. public will have adopted wireless Internet technology in-car, weekly time spent listening to traditional radio will fall below 18 hours per week.

The availability of wireless Internet in-car poses a signficant threat to traditional as well as satellite radio. This study projects that the growth of Wi-Fi in-car should reach more than 50% of the U.S. population after nine years of market availability."

Comcast buys BuddyTV

The acquisitions continue.

From PaidContent:

"Seattle-based BuddyTV, a TV community site, is being acquired by Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA), paidContent.org has learned from sources. BuddyTV took a loan of $250K from the Charles River Ventures’ Quick Start Seed Funding program back in May, before taking a $2.8 million investment from Gemstar-TV Guide this summer.

The site competes with a wide range of TV-related blogs and communities, but co-founder Andy Liu told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer this summer that the site was receiving 3 million uniques per month and that it now has 20 employees. It seems likely that BuddyTV will be used in conjunction with Comcast’s Fancast.com site, as well as Fandango, which it acquired in the earlier this year."

Onow.com: free classified ads

Onow.com is a classified ad site from KMTV and its five radio stations.

From Lost Remote:

"It is its own brand and does not have the names/logos of the TV or radio stations on it. For now, users can post everything, including pictures and videos, for free. Eventually the site will charge for the pix and video, but the text ads will remain free."


And there is a blog that highlights listing.

Quincy Smith on Hulu

From Forbes:

"Yes, we're constantly talking to [Hulu]. We'd love the opportunity to do it, assuming that the deals make sense. I don't know Jason [Kilar, Hulu's chief executive], the guy they got from Amazon, though I certainly know a lot of people who know him and respect the heck out of him. If anyone could try and build a next-generation destination, it's probably him, based on his background.

I love everything about the joint venture and the notion of syndicating content with distribution partners that are already proven in the business, both in the video-destination and the widget business. But why--why still hold on to a destination [Web site]? That's a huge amount of infrastructure, that's a huge part of investment and frankly, a huge distraction."

Hulu does something - rumormill

TechCrunch set off a blogstorm of posts over the rumor that Hulu is buying Mojiti.

From TechCrunch:

"It is surprising that Hulu would use a third party platform for their service rather than build it themselves from the ground up. They’ve already missed their promised Summer 2007 launch date, however, and probably think the acquisition will get them to market faster."

Michael in the comments: "remember when they promised a mostly decentralized platform? no mention of that recently, and mojiti isn’t the right tech for that. I sense chaos and disorganization, not a smart strategic decision to buy v. build. And a new strategy to focus on a centralized, youtube-like site. And remember that Adobe already built all the hard parts of this and put it in the Flex platform. For some reason people are giving Hulu a lot of room before judging them. I prefer to judge them now."

From PaidContent:

"The exact role Mojiti will play technologically is unclear. NBBC’s technology was supposed to be the foundation for the distribution network—the distribution player will be skinned to match various destinations—but, in its previous incarnation, it hadn’t operated on the kind of scale Hulu requires. The destination portal will have its own video player, which is where what Feng and his team have been working on may best fit in.

Feng is just part of the shifting staff at Hulu, which started life with a team borrowed from NBCU and News Corp. Many of those involved at the senior level, including some whose managers expected to stay with the new venture, are in the midst of returning to their respective companies. The mantra I’ve heard: Kilar wants his own team."

FOX: Merchants of Cool

Where do you turn to find the hottest local bands? How about FOX Interactive Media's O&Os! Thats right folks, no longer satisfied with highschool sports, Local TV lashes out at local music.

From Lost Remote:

"FOX Interactive Media and a few FOX O&O’s have launched a few local music websites in connection with MySpace. The sites are an experiment to see if there is an audience for content that focuses on local bands, concerts and fans.

The first round of sites include mymusictwincities, mymusicboston and mymusichouston, with MySpace pages for each (example). The sites include streaming audio, video of performances, concert calendars and links to the bands’ MySpace pages. It’s kind of a flashback to what was a key to the success of MySpace."

Actually this is not as big of a deal as it might seem. FIM recently rolled out a much discussed content management application for its affiliate stations. This is just some additional content in the existing entertainment section.

Regardless of your views on FIM hosting local TV sites and taking half of the revenue, I can't get past the horsey graphics on the user interface. For whatever reason, the sites that use the scrolling updater completely freeze my browser.