I’m back in the Bay Area after a nightmarish experience at Dulles airport last night that almost had me sleeping there (thank you United Airlines). I also love (NOT) their Indian call center (“I’m sorry that’s all I can tell you”).
I’m too exhausted to be very coherent today about much of anything. But here are some bits that caught my eye (the one that was open):
Content aggregator/personalized homepage Netvibes is about to launch a mobile version.
The Financial Times reports that Viacom says its traffic to various websites (MTV, Comedy Central) has grown dramatically in the past month, seemingly “validating” its decision to pull content from YouTube. Here are Compete, Alexa and Google Trends rankings (not totally accurate but indicative of trending). While not affording up-to-the-minute data, these sources don’t seem to “validate” the Viacom statement.
Just like Hillary Clinton before him, John McCain taps Yahoo! Answers for the vox populi on stopping wasteful government spending. “You Choose” on YouTube will feature channels and videos for all the candidates. This is a great thing if it enables candidates to offer more complicated discussions of their positions (than in 30 second spots) and helps generate more interest among the “YouTube generation” in participating.
Verizon wireless launches eight 24-hour mobile TV channels (via LostRemote). Even though MobiTV reported it hit two million subscribers, there’s reason to be skeptical about the near-term viability of other than short clips on mobile phones — even then . . .
The Leichtman Research Group reports findings that online video, while growing, is not diminishing the TV audience — yet. I’m not entirely convinced by the research that TV isn’t suffering defections.
Spotted via the Future of Real Estate Marketing, Trulia announced a deal with Realogy, which is “the largest real estate franchisor and owner and operator of residential real estate brokers in the U.S.” Joel Burselm speculates on the future of the MLS in the wake of increasing numbers of deals such as this.
In a harbinger of things to come for larger advertisers, MSFT is moving most of its $1 billion ad budget to digital media (via MediaPost). While print and traditional will still be in the mix that mix is being flipped. But the “Special K” campaign (fully integrated with traditional and online) I saw at Yahoo! Searchlight was an example of the best of both worlds and how they can work very effectively together.
Screenwerk 