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."