WJS: New Media Moguls

The WJS ran a great article this weekend about the personalities behind new media ventures. Its is a great article and a great excuse to post another picture of Christine Dolce.

From the article:

"As videos, blogs and Web pages created by amateurs remake the entertainment landscape, unknown directors, writers and producers are being catapulted into positions of enormous influence.

Some of the people who have emerged as digital stars online are true amateurs, people who have simply videotaped themselves in their living rooms and posted the results online. Others are quasi-professionals with some experience in the entertainment industry: writers of a TV pilot that didn't get picked up; first-time filmmakers who were praised on the film-festival circuit but never found distribution or stand-up comedians who couldn't graduate from coffee houses and small clubs.

The greatest hope of most Web amateurs is to cross over into "old media" outlets like TV networks and Hollywood. The flagship crossover star in digital entertainment is known by one name: Brookers.

Type the word "Brookers" into the search field of YouTube.com, and a list of some 1,240 videos will appear. Thirty-one of them are videos made by 20-year-old Brooke Brodack of Holden, Mass., who has posted a range of videos starring herself under the screen name "Brookers." In large part, the other 1,200 or so are Brookers tributes, critiques and imitations, posted by Ms. Brodack's fans and detractors in response to the clips she's made."

ForBiddeN

The Economist has an article up about Unilever using MySpace as a promotional tool. They hired a popular MySpace user named ForBiddeN.

From the article:

"Earlier this year, for example, Unilever, a consumer-goods giant, hooked up with Christine Dolce to promote Axe, a deodorant. Ms Dolce, who goes by the alias ForBiddeN, boasts around 900,000 “friends” who link to her MySpace page.

That made her perfect, Unilever concluded, to draw in the 18- to 24-year-old lustful lads to whom Axe is shamelessly marketed. So Ms Dolce hosted an interactive game, called “Gamekillers”, based around dating tips and designed subtly to promote Axe. Some 75,000 MySpacers signed up for it.

“We need to be engaging with them, not banging them over the head with brandalism that pollutes their space,” says Kevin George of Unilever. But, he says, “when you deliver 18- to 24-year-old guys content they want to engage with, they don't mind if it comes from a brand.”

Project Serpo Update

It looks like the buzz has died down on the Project Serpo website. Overall I thought it was a success. With very little marketing the site generated almost 1,000 impressions, bringing in a whooping 17 cents in adword revenue!

Most of the traffic was generated from forums including Above Top Secret and Open Minds. UFO Digest also ran a story with a picture from the "Lost Film" as a lead graphic.

The videos on Youtube had a total of 5118 views.

SL Business Magazine to launch August 1st

3pointD is covering the impending launch of a business magazine for Second Life.

From Post One:

SL Business is billed, as mentioned, as a branding mag, not necessarily your more mainstream business publication. What I’d really like to see is a publication that really collects and analyzes the data and hard news that’s out there in a fashion akin to the Wall Street Journal or Barron’s. Keep an eye on SL Business, though, because if the team can make it happen, it should be a good start.

From Post Two:

"Hunter, an American defense contractor based in Afghanistan, is acting as publisher for the venture, while Dalian, a creative director and photographer based in Manchuria, China, is the brains behind the scenes. The pair have hired Chloe Stanwell as director of ad sales, Faiyth Newell as Managing Editor and Charisma Toricellli as copy editor. While they declined to name early contributors, the first issue will weigh in at a whopping 30 pages or more, according to Dalian. Layout for the first issue is still being worked out.

The mag will be available for free in-world, distrubuted over the InfoNet system with weekly notecard supplements, and as a downloadable PDF on the Web. “There will even be a print version for sale in RL,” Dalian said, “but at the cost it is easier to download the PDF and print yourself.” Why no presence that’s readable on the Web itself? “We are not a blog, but a hybrid RL/SL publication,” Dalian explains. Hunter agrees: “It fits the needs of the average user.”

In Game Ads: Exploring the Future

Daily Wireless points to a great article/interview on Adotas.

From the article:

"Last week I had the opportunity to speak with representatives from three in-game ad players: Epstein, CEO of Double Fusion (DF), Justin Townsend, CEO of IGA Worldwide (IGA), and Nicholas Longano, President of New Media from Massive (M).

Question Index:

1. Has the industry grown large enough that you could consider other in-game advertising companies as serious competition, or is it still a wide open market?
2. In what direction is the in-game ad formats heading: display ads like on billboards, or in-game product placement?
3. Is there an industry standard for measuring in-game ads?
4. How useful do you think in-game metrics are, since games can be played both on and off-line on a whole bunch of different platforms?
5. What sort of games are more easily combined with advertising? What do you do for games that aren’t sports or set in a present-day location? What about fantasy, sci fi games, or even puzzle, arcade, and casual titles?
6. Do you think it’s possible in the future that some high-profile games could be entirely ad-supported?"

In Game Advertising: Massive

A recent press release by Massive talks about a Toyota campaign running in Anarchy Online.

From the press release:

"For the Toyota Yaris campaign, gamers are encouraged to engage with the ads to unveil an image of the new Yaris. The campaign is running in multiple games on the Massive Network and utilizes Massive’s dynamic 2-D elements and full-motion video and audio ads, in addition to the new interactive units, to reach the coveted gaming audience. The new in-video game ads were developed in collaboration with Toyota’s advertising agency of record, Saatchi & Saatchi in L.A.

“Our business has been built by constantly expanding our technological capabilities and by driving innovation in video game advertising,” said Nicholas Longano, president of New Media at Massive. “This new ad unit allows gamers to interact with the game environment in new ways and provides our advertisers with a powerful means of delivering a compelling brand experience to the gaming audience.”

Blogcation

Took a little blogcation, back now. Hope you are all having a good summer.

Top Mobile Games

M:Metrics new numbers are out: (via MocoNews)

Top Ten US Mobile Games

• 1)Tetris — EA Mobile — 7.9%
• 2)Bejeweled — EA Mobile — 5.9%
• 3)World Poker Tour - Texas Hold ‘Em — Hands-On Mobile — 3.6%
• 4)Frogger — Konami — 2.7%
• 5)Texas Hold ‘Em by Phil Hellmuth — Oasys Mobile, Inc. — 2.3%
• 6)Ms. PAC-MAN — Namco — 2.1%
• 7)Tetris Deluxe — EA Mobile — 2.0%
• 8)Monopoly — Glu Mobile — 2.0%
• 9)PAC-MAN — Namco — 1.9%
• 10)UNO Challenge — Oasys Mobile, Inc. — 1.7%

Top Ten US Mobile Game Publishers

• 1)EA Mobile — 32.2%
• 2)Gameloft — 8.9%
• 3)Glu Mobile — 7.8%
• 4)Hands-On — 7.2%
• 5)Namco — 6.3%
• 6)Oasys Mobile, Inc. — 4.3%
• 7)I-play — 4.0%
• 8)Konami — 2.8%
• 9)GOSUB 60 — 2.3%
• 10)SkyZone Entertainment — 1.6%

State of the Geek

I like reading chartreuse (BETA). Today's post is really good.

Post:

"Geeks will get regulated to the social networks they built for those other people who didn’t get it or understand what this stuff was all about.

But while the future may be bleak for the Geeks the new era is really gonna rock.

Because the creatives are really gonna have some fun with this shit."

JP Morgan on Digital Media

Paid Content finds a few slides from a recent JP Morgan Digital Media team presentation.

From the post:

"We live in an area and participate in an industry that is highly prone to technology and market gyrations. The opportunity created by the digitization of media dwarfs any other we have seen for some time and therefore is going to be prone to enthusiasm.

While there are strong arguments on both sides here, we are certainly more disciplined/humble than we were in the last bubble. However, the nature of this Valley is to be well ahead of the curve, and given the wholesale changes the media and entertainment industry will go through over the next decade, the winners will be the ones that are patient and smart about when they enter/exit the market."

Entourage on Cingular

MocoNews points to a press release by Cingular about a new video offering in its HBO media package.

From the press release:

"Cingular and HBO have launched mini-episodes of the popular "Entourage" series available only to Cingular Video customers who subscribe to HBO Mobile. In an industry first, the Entourage made-for-mobile episodes are true extensions of the program fans enjoy on HBO. They are written by the same writers and producers, and have the same characters and actors.

The premise of the made-for-mobile "Entourage" story is (appropriately): Johnny Drama makes a "cellivision" show. Customers can view a series of short vignettes based on this premise as they continue to enjoy the adventures of the friends from Queens on the Hollywood road to fame and fortune. "The episodes are short and funny -- just the kind of entertainment mobile customers want," says Burbank."

From MocoNews:

"The episodes will last 4 minutes each, and Cingular will also show full-length episodes from the first season of Entourage. It will be part of the HBO package on Cingular, which costs $4.99 plus the $14.99 for Cingular’s montly media plan."

MySpace Predators Overblown

dana boyd points to a recent study on predators on MySpace.

From the post:

"Prof. Larry Rosen, a psych prof over at Cal State, has just released data on MySpace and predators showing that the fear is completely overblown (duh). The press release is here. A longer report is here. Some of the findings are:

• Only 7% of those teens interviewed were ever approached by anyone with a sexual intent and nearly all of them simply ignored the person and blocked him from their page.
• Two-thirds of the parents were sure that there were many sexual predators on MySpace, while only one-third of the teenagers shared this concern.
• When asked about media coverage, 66% of the parents felt that it was either understated or close to the truth.
• Conversely, 58% of the teens felt it was vastly overblown."

Current TV Mobile

Current TV launches its mobile offereing.

From the site:

"Current is looking for exciting, bizarre, beautiful and captivating "mobile moments" caught with your cell phone's video camera. Going to a summer festival? Always spotting funky street fashion? Chatting up the hipsters at a cool nightspot? Whip out your cell and start shooting.

String a few of your shots together and let Current’s viewing audience experience the world through your eyes. Submit your pod and you’re automatically eligible for our Mobile Vision promotion: every Thursday through August, the owner of the pod with the most greenlights wins $500 and the chance to be broadcast into 29 million homes! "

Edward W. Felten: Nuts and Bolts of Network Neutrality

Edward W Felton of Princeton provides a great overview of the complexities of Network Neutrality. He breaks it down in 7 section and provides a take away for each one.

From the paper: (PDF)

1. "This is partly a fight to control innovation on the Internet.
2. Discrimination has harsher and milder forms. Blocking a packet is harsher than just lowering its priority.
3. Discrimination hurts some applications more than others. VoIP services are especially vulnerable to discrimination.
4. Anti-discrimination rules can be hard to write and hard to enforce.
5. Network discrimination will have unpredictable effects.
6. Technical countermeasures, such as encryption, cannot fully shield users from discrimination.
7. Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees are less important than you might think."

Of course if you want to get an idea of why all of this might be hard to regulate, think back several days to the brilliant explanation Senator Ted Stevens gave of the Internet.

Sen. Ted Stevens:

"There's one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.

But this service isn't going to go through the interent and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.

Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially."

Social Integration

Robert Young continues to provide great insight in another post at GigaOM.

From the post:

"Just as the name implies, social integration targets the ownership of critical assets in the social media supply chain (e.g. social networks like MySpace or People Aggregator, socially-programmed video services like YouTube or VideoEgg, social photo services like Photobucket or Flickr, socially-curated news sites like Digg or Newsvine, etc.). But in a radical departure from the old vertical and horizontal integration strategies of traditional media, social integration recognizes the fact that social media, by definition, shifts much of the media supply functions directly into the hands of the audience itself.

But just as the Internet was not a subset of AOL, social media will not become a subset of traditional media. In fact, social media will increasingly begin to compete directly with traditional media consumption. Yes, it is true that the media output produced and distributed by the audience itself will generally be of lower production value and quality. Even so, they will prove highly competitive to Hollywood products, as the personal engagement factor inherent in personal media outweighs any loss of production value."

More Robert Young:
Social Networks
Future TV

Video Internet - some other players

TechCrunch has a good roundup of some of the companies you don't hear about 100 times a day.

From the post:

"The sites below do offer some form of programming – there are decisions made by someone about what to present on these sites and when to present it. There’s room for both approaches online and while most eyes and venture dollars are flowing to video portals right now, I believe we’ll eventually see a similar interest from the startup community in programming."

Sites reviewed:
ManiaTV
CurrentTV
iBlue
VDC
JumpTV
MobiTV

"And some television producers are reaping enough benefits from the web between broadcasts (e.g. Lost) that I believe the next phase will mean altered programmed content, as TV continues its migration from passive to some level of interactivity. It’s already commonplace in TV advertising, so how long before it’s commonplace in programming?

Check out “In Men We Trust”. If it will work as advertised, then we’ll watch the show while watching a show within it, and we’ll determine the arc of the story. That’s programmed content adapting to its medium. Interactivity and social networking – two things the web does well — will drive it."

Holly Kai Golf Club

Tennis, Baseball, Sail Boat Racing and now golf, I am going to play this one as soon as possible.

From 3pointD:


"Designed by Kanker Greenacre, who also built the groundbreaking sailboats raced by the Second Life Sailing Federation, floG!, as the game is known, works in very similar fashion to PC golf games, and takes good advantage of SL’s heads-up display functionality, as well as making unexpected use of the new one-click-to-sit function that was implemented in a recent patch.

The Holly Kai Golf Club, which runs the course, is run by SL residents MarkTwain White and Nber Medici, and plans monthly tournaments, club championships, and a Second Life Open that any resident can enter, sometime this fall. The Holly Kai Ocean Nine — which is a fun course made mostly of islands — is the first of a number of courses planned for the area. Definitely a great addition to Second Life, one that I imagine will become quite popular."

Youniverse

No its not a product from AT&T, its a "trendwatcher" term describing virtual worlds and games. The article is made up of links and quotes but serves as a fairly good collection of information about all of the different worlds.

From the post:

"Now that so many consumers are discovering the fun of spending time, lounging, residing and even living in their youniverses, innovative brands who want to be where their customers are, had better start working on a coherent YOUNIVERSAL BRANDING strategy.

Now, don't get us wrong, YOUNIVERSAL BRANDING is not about plastering online worlds with advertising. That wouldn't work anyway, as fickle masters of the youniverse would spit you out in a split second. So the opportunity and challenge for brands is to figure out how to add something relevant to virtual worlds: providing players and inhabitants with experiences they actually enjoy, and could even co-create with you."

This is part 1 so maybe there will be more meat in part 2.

Home Run Derby in Second Life

Via 3pointD, Electric Sheep and the Major League Baseball Association launched Home Run Derby today.

From the post:

"Home Run Derby, on Monday, July 10, at 5pm SL time (8pm Eastern). In fact, the virtual derby will not be a separate contest, but will be “a real-time Second Life re-enactment” of the real thing, featuring avatars for each of the eight Derby players — Major Leaguers competing to see who can hit the most home runs over the course of two rounds."

The Sultan's Elephant

This is well over a month old but I am still in awe of the whole production. The Sultan's Elephant came to London May 4th to the 7th, 2006, to celebrate the 100 year anniversary of Jules Verns passing. The production company, Royal de Luxe, put on the show.

I first saw this video taken at the performance. You can also find videos on Youtube and photos on Flickr. The performance is based on Vern's story, "La visite du sultan des Indes sur son éléphant à voyager dans le temps" (literally, "Visit From The Sultan Of The Indies On His Time-Traveling Elephant"). The next show will be in Antwerp, July 6th - 9th.

The elephant is worth the trip but the little giant girl may have stolen the show.