It seems February’s nervousness is subsiding when it comes to viewing videos online.

Hulu becomes third most trafficed video site

After a 12 percent decline in video traffic during the month, video use rebounded in March, returning to more normal growth trends. Traffic rose 11 in March v. February, according to comScore.

Hulu, the television site started by Fox and NBC, led the way. For the first time, Hulu cracked the top three video sites, passing Yahoo and following just Google (read: You Tube) and Fox Interactive (read: MySpace).

Google accounted for 41 percent of videos viewed on line – by far the leader. Fox’s market share is 3 percent. But it may not remain in second place for long.

Hulu’s share is 2.6 percent and it is closing fast.

Watch out MySpace, your days may be numbered.

The U.S. Internet users viewed 13.1 billion online videos during the month of February, representing a decline of 12% versus January. However, the number of Hulu video viewers went up 42% in February. YouTube still leads with 41% of online videos viewed and just under 100 million unique viewers. The findings come from researcher comScore. 

In February, Google Sites continue to rank as the top U.S. video property with 5.3 billion videos viewed (41% online video market share), with YouTube.com accounting for more than 99% of all videos viewed at the property. 

Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 463 million videos (3.5%), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 353 million (2.7%), Hulu with 333 million (2.5%) and Microsoft Sites with 259 million (2.0%). Hulu climbed two positions in the ranking to #4, after experiencing a 33% jump in video views on the heels of its Super Bowl commercial at the outset of the month.

More than 145 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 90 videos per viewer in February. Google Sites maintained its lead with nearly 100 million viewers during the month, representing 69% of those who watched video. 

Fox Interactive ranked second with 53.8 million viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites (41.8 million), and Hulu (34.7 million). Of the top ten video properties, Hulu experienced the largest increase in unique viewers compared to January, growing 42% to 34.7 million viewers.

Other major findings:

•    75.5% of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
•    The average online video viewer watched 312 minutes of video (more than 5 hours)
•    98.8 million viewers watched 5.3 billion videos on YouTube.com (53.8 videos per viewer).
•    41.2 million viewers watched 384 million videos on MySpace.com (8.5 videos per viewer).
•    The duration of the average online video was 3.5 minutes.

The data was released by comScore Tuesday (March 24).

Click here for the Top 10 list.

Ad:tech started in Sydney today. It’s a 2 day expo, with similar events held in San Francisco, Paris, London, Chicago, New York, Singapore. It’s basically for online marketing companies, for those involved in advertising technology. The official line is:

“ad:tech is an interactive advertising and technology conference and exhibition. Worldwide shows blend keynote speakers, topic driven panels and workshops to provide attendees with the tools and techniques they need to compete in a changing world”

I arrived there around lunch time.  I had my express check in pass (thanks ad:tech!), so got buzzed in pretty quick. The first stand lo and behold was Next Digital/Commquest! Which is my company – more on this later.

I was in a rush because I was supposed to go to the Yahoo search masterclass. In the corner of my eye, I saw a guy from my media buying class who’s a dedicated search guy. However, when I got there, the seminar was over. Disappointed, I trudged back and went to the Yahoo search stand and asked them what it was about. I also asked them for notes of the presentation and hopefully they can email it to me. Hit me up if you would like a copy of the notes.

Overall, ad:tech didn’t actually look that full. Maybe its because I expected it be at full capacity. Or perhaps, there were seminars going on. There’s paid seminars, with 3 different tracks but to go to them you need to have a conference pass which costs $1k. I’m just going to the free stuff =) You can check out the different stands, talk to people, and listen to the free seminars. It reminds me of a big careers fair!

Next Digital has got prime position, near the front door and we’ve decked it out in a hospital theme with hospital bed, flasks of weird liquids, IV drip, and doctors walking around with stethoscopes. The theme its “Digital Health Check”, and we’re offering free audits of digital marketing strategy, websites, etc.. We are taking appointments and doing followups. Kate Kendall, editor of marketing mag called it  best stand at expo. Have a look here:

Next Digital was giving a talk after the Yahoo one, so I briefly saw my director Mark Edwards, speaking about digital strategy.  Its a small seated area with about 30 seats and people were standing in the back, 3 rows deep! He had some really good content, however the sound quality was quite poor.The mic and the speakers weren’t loud enough. For the guys standing in the back like me, you couldn’t hear him clearly. As the stands are right next to auditorium area,  there’s so much background noise. It’s a shame and it something the organiser’s will have to look at for next year. Perhaps move the speaking stage a little bit further into a quieter area and turn up the mics!!!!!!!!

I spoke to a couple of interesting people /companies at the stands. Vincent and I walked around and spoke to the following stands. I’ve provided a short commentary on each one:

Fox Interactive 

Websites : Myspace.com, Rottentomatoes.com (movie review site), ign.com (similar to gamespot.com), Askmen.com.

We were talking to Sharon May-Tanous, Group Sales Manager, and she showed us a new feature on myspace.com. There’s this function called “Myspace recharge” where u can recharge your phone by buying credits / topups. Very cool. I’ve always advocated that social networks should do more in the transactional & ecommerce space, given that we spend so much time on there. According to Nielsen research, time spent on social networking has overtaken personal email. Myspace are also releasing a new visa credit card as well, targeted towards younger people. Its going to work like a prepaid debit card. It will be an interesting move for them.

They had a very cool stand with lots of monitors. If you look at the above sites I’ve listed in the heading and click through, you’ll realise that their are Australian versions with localised content. That’s something that they are trying to push, localisation. Rottentomatoes.com is mostly made up of American movies and reviews, so its good a move to have some Aussie content in there too. 

I told her I didn’t use Myspace anymore and she got a bit grouchy LOL. I’ll stick with Facebook, but I’ll check Myspace.com for music related stuff. FYI, I’m name dropping here, but I met Brett Brewer, one of the co-founders of Myspace at the Digital Tipping Point a few weeks ago. He’s sold off myspace to Rupert Murdoch and is now CEO of a social networking advertising company called AdKnowledge. He’s a very cool guy, down to earth, and I guess I’ll have to hit him up on myspace?  

Netpartners – Content network advertising / traffic broking

This area is new to me. I’m still new to search marketing and online advertising, but I understand the basics like clicks, CPM, CPA, conversions and al that jargon. But there’s this whole new area regarding content network / affiliate marketing, etc.. It’s to do with advertising on 3rd party sites, publishers, etc… I spoke to Alan Wan, Affiliate Manager, he explained to me what it was about and I think I got the gist of it. Netpartners is a Hong Kong outfit, mainly targetting US and UK markets. I have to do a bit more research in to this area regarding affiliate marketing. At ad:tech, there were a number of stands, I would say 1/3 selling these services. It was pretty funny, because he was talking English to us and as we were winding down our conversation he asked if we spoke Chinese! Vincent and him started talking, and then I joined in, but I don’t think he understood me very well since my Cantonese is pretty bad and heavily accented. 

Post Click - affiliate marketing

We spoke to the BD manager there. I’ve actually heard of them. Post click specialises in niche affiliate marketing. I’m still getting the hang of this term – its advertising on a network of sites. e.g. you would like to advertise to websites in Indonesia targeting students coming to Australia. They would go represent you and negotiate, and source sites for you to advertise on. They must have relationships with traffic brokers (a new term I learnt) and work out how much you have to pay for CPA, cost per action which is for lead or conversion generation if someone clicks on an ad. Post Click most likely takes a set up fee and a slice of the action e.g. CPC of 1 cent (cost per click of $0.01). 

Girls.com.au / Femail.com.au

I’m not sure why but we wondered over to this stand. We were just curious, and it was right next to ours. They’ve got 2 websites which are online magazines targeted towards females. Girls.com.au has a demo of 18 – 35, skewed towards younger females. Femail.com.au has a demo of 25+. These mags have been running for about 10 years online and has similar content to Vogue, Cleo, etc.. The opportunities are for advertising towards a very specific demographic. 

They also own female.com.au and redirect all the traffic to femail.com.au. however, they are not going to switch over to female.com.au because of the search engine rankings – its already been optimised (SEO baby!!).

CABO Networks – Pay for performance marketing

I spoke to Jurgen Cautreels, who’s over here from Miami. These guys have offices in Miami and Sydney, that’s TWO awesome beach places. They do stuff related to traffic marketing, lists, and email marketing. 

iAD & Pureprofile

I’ve lumped them together even though they are two very distinct companies. Only because they have both presented at our offices. I like iAD, but I feel that their technology is way ahead of its time. When they came into our office and explained their product, they left a lot of us dumbfounded, including me. If you can’t explain to a bunch of people that are pretty technology savvy, your going to struggle with other people as well. Even their blurb in ad:tech is hard to understand – something about a multi-function device, etc…

Ad:Tech on Twitter & Blog

If you are keen to follow with the latest adtech updates, check out twitter. People are twittering using the following hashtags:

#adtechsyd

#atsyd

For the 3 different seminar tracks, there’s also:

#atsyd1 

#atsyd2 

#atsyd3

There’s heaps of ad:tech tweeting going on, and I’ve been following the conversations via twitter and tweetdeck (i’ve got my search groups on for each hashtag!).

You can also check out ad:tech brain blog, I’ve been reading and commenting on it over the past month or so. 

See you there

If you are going to be there, look for me at the Next Digital /Commquest stand in the late afternoon. I’m going to be there in a white coat, and also checking some of the other stands and seminars. 

I’m out like day 1 of ad:tech, 

Matthew Ho aka inspiredworlds

MySpace, after offering its hyper-targeting platform to large advertisers, today launched MyAds, a self-service platform that would open its social network to smaller advertisers. It is a page out of Google’s (s GOOG) playbook. The search giant had used smaller advertisers to build up a groundswell for its advertising service. MySpace is betting that, by giving advertisers the ability to target users with banner ads based on age, gender, location and specific interests, it can build a sizable business. “We think the sky’s the limit on this,” Jeff Berman, president of sales and marketing at MySpace, told Adweek. He seems to think that this will “significantly grow our base of advertisers.”

The company said that the entire network inventory is open for grabs. More than 3,500 advertisers, including small businesses, are testing the system and the ads cost at least 25 cents per click. Given the patchy click-through performance of banner ads, MySpace’s experiment can have long-term implications for banner-type advertising. That said, MySpace’s announcement comes at a time when the advertising market — both online and off — is looking a little shaky because of widespread economic uncertainty.

comScore has released its August 2008 qSearch analysis of the the U.S. search marketplace.

According to comScore, Google core search sites continued to lead the U.S. core search market in August with 63% of the searches conducted, up from 61.9% in July.

Yahoo core search sites had the second largest amount of search traffic with 19.6%, followed by Microsoft with 8.3%, the Ask Network with 4.8% and AOL LLC with 4.3% of searches conducted.

At the top web properties where search is observed, Google web properties led with 10.2 billion searches followed by Yahoo web properties with 2.4 billion searches, Microsoft web properties with 1 billion searches and AOL LLC and it search sites with 839 million search queries.

What I found most interesting in the comScore top web properties search data was Fox Interactive’s web sites – including MySpace.com – conducted 593 millions searches compared to Ask Network’s properties 572 million searches.

July August 2008 comScore Site Search Shar

Also, according to comScore data and to my surprise, MySpace.com has even surpassed AOL’s Search Network – not including MapQuest – fielding 117 million more search queries per month than AOL search.

Even with MySpace network’s growth slowing, at some point won’t its user base and growth cause it to generate an equal and then ever increasing number of search queries per month?

At its present size and barring any significant search market disruptions, will MySpace.com eventually generate more searches per month than AOL?

Ultimately, will MySpace.com generate more search queries per month than even Microsoft’s web properties?

Time Warner Warns That AOL May Miss Revenue Targets Due To Ad Slowdown; MySpace Ahead of Target — AOL’s Platform-A, plagued by slowing ad growth, might miss its revenue targets, Bloomberg reports Time Warner CFO John Martin as saying at Merrill Lynch’s investor conference. Up until recently, Martin said, ad revenues were growing like “a weed.” But lately, marketers have been pulling back. He told attendees at the Marina del Rey, Ca., conference: “It gives us pause in terms of our confidence to ramp advertising in the back half of the year.’’ In August, Platform-A forecast that ad revenues would continue to rise through the end of the year. But now the ad slowdown has added to pressures on AOL, which has been dealing with the process of integrating the various ad firms it bought over the past year under Platform-A (NYSE: TWX). As a whole, AOL posted a weak Q2, reporting a 15 percent decline in revenue to $1.05 billion and operating income dropping to $230 million from $350 million, due to a 29 percent decrease related to the the loss of subscription revenue. As for the portal side of AOL, which just unveiled a revamped homepage, it is seen as one way to bring ad growth back.

Google Continues Search Onslaught — Google’s still on top of the search heap, as the giant accounted for just over 70% of all searches in the U.S. in August, according to Hitwise. Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com each received 18%, 5% and 3% of search market share, respectively. Hitwise also found that Google was increasingly driving traffic to social networking and online video sites. For example, social networking sites received almost 11% of their traffic from Google in August, up 44% from a year ago.

Google, Fox Interactive Rank Highest In Video Views — In July, U.S. consumers viewed over 11.4 billion videos for a total duration of 558 million hours, according to new data from comScore Video Metrix. That month, Google sites once again ranked as the top U.S. video property with more than 5 billion videos viewed–representing a 44% share of the online video market–with YouTube accounting for more than 98% of all videos viewed at the property. Fox Interactive Media ranked second, with 446 million videos (representing 3.9%) followed by Microsoft sites with 282 million or 2.5% and Yahoo sites with 269 million (2.4%).

Facebook Braces For Change — Ready or not, Facebook is undergoing a massive redesign. By the end of the week, the social network’s 100 million-plus users will be forced to adapt to a new-look Facebook. For the last seven weeks, the company allowed its users to switch back and forth from the old to the new format. That option is now being taken away. In an interview with The Associated Press, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledges the risks behind the makeover, which include alienating some of its audience. This, in turn, could help drive traffic to rivals like MySpace and Bebo. “Any change can be a big deal to our users because this is how they connect with their family and friends,” Zuckerberg said. “So when you move things around, it can be perceived as being not a positive thing even when it’s a positive change.”

Yahoo Expands Mobile Push — Yahoo on Wednesday launched two new mobile features: a new social communications service for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch, and an expanded development platform for developers. The first feature, through Yahoo oneConnect, allows users to marry their cell phone contacts lists to friend and follower lists on social networks like MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and Twitter. The application, now available in the Apple App Store, integrates these lists and their functionality, enabling users to communicate via instant messaging, email, SMS or phone. “We want to create and enable a mobile ecosystem for billions of users,” said Marco Boerries, executive vice president of Yahoo’s Connected Life division. “We’re turning everyone that uses voice today into a mobile data user.”

Waterfront Media, Revolution Health Talking Possible Merger With Everyday Health — The Washington Post is out with a story we’ve also been working on—the possibility of an acquisition by Waterfront Media, owner of Everyday Health, of Steve Case’s Revolution Health in the form of a merger the two are the second and third largest health sites respectively. (I’m thinking of coining a new term for deals like this—acqui-merger.) In the past, when I have approached Revolution about the possibility of a sale, I’ve been told the company was not in sales talks. Since the last denial, word surfaced that Revolution’s banker Morgan Stanley was switching to sales or merger mode from raising capital. No response at all from Revolution to my request this time. As for Waterfront, CEO Ben Wolin tells me the company doesn’t comment on speculation but also said there is no deal to discuss and that he wouldn’t talk “for” Revolution.

Microsoft May Buy Back $20 Billion — A top-rated software analyst says that Microsoft is poised to buy back as much as $20 billion worth of company stock to make up for the 20% dip shares have taken since the software giant announced its intention to buy Yahoo. UBS AG analyst Heather Bellini said she expects Microsoft to complete the repurchase over the next three months. In other words, if you believe her, buy now. “They won’t announce it until it’s done,’ Bellini said, adding that a buyback of between $15 billion and $20 billion would lift earnings per share by as much as 10 cents annually. Bellini pegs Microsoft shares at $40 in the next year; shares are currently trading at around $26.

Cablevision Confirms It Will Explore Spin Offs To Lift Stock Price — Thwarted in its attempt to acquire the company outright, Cablevision management is getting serious about finding ways to lift the company’s sagging share price. CEO Jim Dolan indicated on last week’s conference call that it would explore stock buybacks and dividends as possible means of getting a lift. The company now says its board has officially authorized the company to explore a spin-off of one or more of its businesses. Although the core cable business continues to perform well, investors have punished the company for sticking its fingers into too many pies (Sundance Channel, Newsday). Similar to the longtime knock on Comcast, management is perceived as being spendthrift with shareholder cash (Comcast eventually instituted a dividend to help combat this perception).

News Corp. In Line; FIM Income Down On Higher Costs; TV Crushed — News Corp. has reported revenue of $8.59 billion for the quarter ended June 30, for 16.5 percent growth over the prior year’s quarter. Op income grew 21 percent to $1.48 billion. The company provides a net income figure of $1.12 billion ($.43 per share), well above last year’s net income of $890 million ($.25 per share), though the numbers aren’t comparable, as this quarter includes gains on the sale of Fox Sports Bay Area and Gemstar-TV Guide International. Like last quarter, the company isn’t providing an adjusted or non-GAAP figure, so the op income growth looks like the best bet for the moment. On a divisional breakdown, TV op income was hit hard, falling 28 percent to $279 million. Broadcast TV has been getting crushed across the board this quarter, as the company chalked up the decline to lower ratings and lower revenue. Things were much brighter on the cable side of the business, with op income up about 10 percent to $313 million.

Dow Jones’ Scarce Numbers; WSJ.com’s Subs Pass 1.1 MIllion; Integration With Other Brands — Now that Dow Jones is one small part of the News Corp empire, its reported numbers are also, well, tiny. In News Corp’s Q208 earnings today, little mention of DJ’s number, though some more details were given in the earnings call. DJ contributed operating income of $24 million in Q208 (down from $37.9 million in the year-ago quarter when DJ was independent) and $45 million for News Corp’s full fiscal year, net of $24 million and $47 million in acquisition related amortization, respectively.

United Online Revs Fall 7 Percent; But People Keep Joining Pay Social Net Classmates — Classmates, the subscription-based social net that United Online failed to take public continues to add subscribers… Paying accounts at the unit were up 41 percent from last year. Company-wide revenue still fell by 7 percent to $122.3 million, dragged down by the ISP business, which saw a 22 percent decline in revenue. Still, analysts had been looking for about $120 million. Unlike EarthLink, which has managed to grow ISP income despite the revenue fall (by slashing costs), op income on the ISP side fell to $21.1 million from $27.0 million. Back to Classmates—which the company would still love to take public one day—revenue grew by 19 percent to $57 million. The company added 288,000 paying subscribers in just this quarter. Op income grew by 29 percent in this unit to $6.1 million.

DoubleClick To Serve Ads In Microsoft’s Silverlight Player — Microsoft and Google have learned how to play nice–at least in the realm of online video advertising–as the companies announced a partnership to enable DoubleClick to serve ads in Silverlight 2, the second version of Microsoft’s streaming video player. Advertisers can tap into available Silverlight 2 inventory through DoubleClick’s In-Stream video advertising platform, which includes detailed analytics and forecasting tools. Silverlight 2 joins a host of online video players that DoubleClick can serve ads into, including FlashIn-Stream ads, including Real Media, Windows Media, and Adobe’s market leader, Flash.

The month saw increases to the retail – sports/outdoor, home, job search, health care and education – information categories. As a result of its new partnership with Bravo Sport youth magazine, traffic to SPOX.com grew 143 percent to nearly 2 million visitors. Google Sites remained the most visited German Web property with 25.8 million visitors.

Top Gaining Site Categories for April 2008

* Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.

Top Gaining Properties for April 2008

*Ranking based on the top 100 German properties in April 2008.

** Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.

Top 25 Properties for April 2008

*Ranking based on the top 100 German properties in April 2008.

** Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.

Today at the D6:Conference, the corporate doyens and business leaders were out in full force, both on and off stage. Those who were grilled on stage showed were true to their form – Amazon’s Jeff Bezos charmed everyone with optimism for Kindle, Yahoo’s Jerry Yang was all emotion and patience, and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook showed that he is still a young fella brimming with big dreams.

But it was the wily old Fox, News Corp founder Rupert Murdoch who proved to the most charming, candid, amusing, honest and informative at the same time. Candid enough to admit that there isn’t anyone to really compete with him. Honest enough to point out what a mess both Microsoft and Yahoo made out of their deal, and Google is still a great partner. About Yahoo and Microsoft he said: I’m mystified. I can’t understand the whole thing? Neither can we Mr. Murdoch. He talked at length about the future of media, both on and offline. His responses to a barrage of questions was lucid and refreshingly without corporate speak. He talked about online video, Hulu and future of movie distribution.

Murdoch told the audience he didn’t sue YouTube because it provided promotion for shows like the Simpsons. And Hulu, said Murdoch, was a way for News Corp to control its copyrights. Murdoch expressed interested in online alternatives to broadcast television and traditional film releases, but said he still expects television to be “central.” Releasing movies only online? — he said that’s possible, but hasn’t been tried yet (well, not by Murdoch’s crowd). He’d like to see movies released on all screens at the same time but vested interests in the distribution chain oppose it.

When the conversation turned to politics things got really interesting. Mr. Murdoch can hardly be acused of being a democrat or a liberal, but he viewed Barack Obama positively and wanted to meet Obama. “I want to know if he’s going to walk the walk,” comparing him to rock star. He didn’t quite endorse Barack, but he said Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate for US president has problems and challenges.

Read full transcript on All Things D, and watch the video. Photo and video courtesy of the D6 conference. Photo by Asa Mathat.

GAMING

News Corp. is said to be interested in acquiring Newsgrounds.com, an online video game company, through its IGN division. The Glenside, Penn.-based Newgrounds, founded in 1995, receives 500,000 unique visitors per day and describes itself as “the largest Flash portal on the Web.” (Iwantmedia 5/22, http://pulse2.com/2008/05/21/rumor-news-corp-wants-to-acquire-newgrounds 5/21)

According to a source, Fox Interactive Media is in preliminary discussions to purchase Price Grabber from Experian.  Fox Interactive, which owns a number of web properties including MySpace, has been mentioned in a number of buy out speculations over the past 6 months.

Bloomberg released and article that seems to suggest that there is other in interest in PriceGrabber as well.

From the article: “I see no reason why they would get less than what they paid” for PriceGrabber, Christian Koefoed-Nielsen, an analyst at Panmure Gordon & Co. in London, said by telephone today. The unit “is more profitable than when they bought it.”

2007 was supposed to be the Year of the Widget, according to Newsweek, and Jon Swartz of USA Today apparently agrees that the promise has been fulfilled. He says:

[Widgets] are all the rage on the Web. Marketers are thinking of ways to use them to sell ads, and venture capitalists are mulling investments in the hottest widget makers. The stampede reached a roar this month, when market leader MySpace and Facebook expanded their services for targeted ads, including widgets designed by marketers.

But look at the numbers for investments in widget distribution platforms and widget suppliers, and it becomes clear that this not a stampede but more like a Sunday stroll through the widget park.

A widget is just an embeddable bit of web or desktop content wrapped up in a nice user interface. You can put widgets on blogs, social networking profile pages, or on an Ajax start page, though not all widgets can be embedded on all kinds of pages.

Though many companies might use widgets to promote and distribute their content or features, there are two categories of startups that, to me, represent relatively pure bets on widgetization. The first is widget development, distribution, and packaging platforms like Clearspring or Widgetbox; the second, widget suppliers like RockYou or Slide.

I’m leaving out many other kinds of widgets and widget startups, of course. You can have desktop dashboard widgets, widgets to be embedded on blogs like Blogburst or MyBlogLog or Lijit, Ajax start pages that support widgets, video syndication widgets, and more.

But taking a look at widget platforms and social networking widget purveyors, we can get an idea of whether 2007 has seen a stampede towards widgets or perhaps something more genteel. I’ve gathered funding data for widget distribution platforms and widget distributors in the table below.

This doesn’t represent all the funding for such companies. Fox Media is building SpringWidgets, so that investment doesn’t appear here. Widgetbox has been rumored to have taken additional funding from Sequoia. And some companies have reported investments but declined to provide specific figures. Still, this gives an idea of the magnitude of interest in the space.

You could also argue that companies like YouTube and PhotoBucket are widget companies — and if you added in their acquisition prices the numbers do start to get really big, really quickly (partly, of course, because acquisition prices represent the entire value of those companies). But I think those two are examples of how embeddable web content can help promote a broader web service. iLike might fit better with those, too.

The total funding for these companies is just under $60 million, a respectable number but by no means a stampede towards widgets. This could reflect the uncertainty around how to make money with widgets and widget platforms. Or perhaps it’s more evidence of investor sobriety.

The Fox Interactive Media group is making some bold moves – both in video content and new activity in ad networks. These moves combined with the continued expansion of MySpace and other activity and rumours within the Murdoch empire, makes the News Corp’s online strategy one of the most innovative of a BIG media group around – IMHO.

It just might be sheer coincidence, but Silicon Valley’s Facebook lovefest has brought a certain feistiness to Fox Interactive and its flagship property, MySpace. The largest social network has been rolling out one feature after another, partnering with others where it lacks the oomph, and keeping the unique visitor-page view count inching higher and higher.

At Reuters Media Summit, the company officials indicated that MySpace will roll out “friend feeds,” a feature that is extremely popular amongst Facebook users. What I found even more interesting was Fox Interactive President Peter Levinsohn outlining plans of FIM Serve, an online advertising network, that will first serve News Corp-owned web properties and will later be available to outside web-publishers.

Hey, since everyone is launching an ad-network, why not Fox Interactive. At least, News Corp. (unlike some of its rudderless peers) realizes that is biggest strength is its sales force and can be used more effectively.

Fox, I am guessing will include technologies acquired as part of Strategic Data deal in this new ad-network, FIM Serve. The company had built its “hyper targeting” advertising technology long before Facebook made it a buzz word, and now the company wants to put it to use. It certainly has the web heft – 46 billion page views in October in US alone. News Corp’s sprawling media properties alone could keep FIM Serve humming, as long as the it can deliver on promises, and build an effective ad network.

After watching one of my favorite NFL coaches lose in his opening game last night, I find myself jonesing for more NFL stuff. So I spent my time perusing The Professional Cheerleaders Blog, which follows the lives of…professional cheerleaders.

I have also decided to give 3 NFL game picks. I suggest you bet your childs tuition on these picks.

I am that good.

Look for the Saints to blow out the Browns.

Dallas will beat Jacksonville.

And Payton to embarress his little brother.

A True Lover’s Knot

Value Creation In A Network

Um, Justin Timberlake is George Micheal, right?

Crony Capitalism and Mickey Mouse

An Interview with the president of Fox Interactive.

The truth about LonelyGirl15.

My favorite analysis of the Facebook noise:

Похоже, что инвестиции, которые были вложены в Simply Hired компанией Fox Interactive, уже начинают приносить дивиденды. Вчера ночью, в 9 pm PST MySpace, которым ныне владеет Fox Interactive, открыл MySpace Careers, новый сайт по поиску работы на портале MySpace, сделанный на технологии и данных, использовавшихся в Simply Hired. Это интересная новость, в основном из за массивного траффика, который генерирует главная страница MySpace – на новый сайт стоит прямая ссылка с главной страницы Myspace. Ни слова не было сказано о деталях сделки, хотя можно предположить, что прибыль будет генерироваться (и делиться между Simpy Hired и MySpace) многочисленными рекламными баннерами, которые MySpace добавляет на сайте.

Сделки, наподобие этой, показывают положительное влияние, которое может оказать корпоративный инвестор на стартапы. Следует заметить, что конкурент Indeed получил инвестиции от New York Times в прошлом году, и они частично поддерживают NYT -овский онлайновый поисковик по поиску работы.

Источник: Techcrunch