AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

Wall Street Journal - Portals Column by Lee Gomes

Had PowerPoint been around 150 years ago, Thoreau might have warned us to beware not only of enterprises that require new clothes, but also of those that require new paradigms.

A book from 2006, “The Long Tail,” was one of those that appear periodically and demand that we rethink everything we presume to know about how society works. In this case, the Web and its nearly unlimited choices were said to be remaking the economy and culture. Now, a new Harvard Business Review article pushes back, and says any change occurring may be of an entirely different sort.

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LA Times “Web Scout” blog

Enter a cineplex this summer and you’re basically wandering into a giant circus. Each tent pole — the biz term for a colossally expensive movie — is sure to include at least one outlandish, or even freakish, main character. Step right up. On your left, watch an old man — incredibly! — age in reverse. On your right, a demon in a raincoat wields a revolver as big as a car. And up ahead, a man in a bat suit faces off with a murderous, cackling clown.

No room for nuance in these parts. Nuance has too much to do with reality and is therefore not awesome! Hippie-bohemians seeking boring reality-based “films” will have to look in the phone book for sour-smelling old movie houses with bad sound. Or you could try the Internet.….more….

Current.org

ITVS and Independent Lens announced that Kylee Darcy, a 19-year-old attending UC Berkeley, is the grand prize winner of their first annual Filmocracy mashup contest. She wins $1000 for her short film King Corn Takes Over the World, which incorporates clips of the Independent Lens film King Corn. Her film will also play in various cities as part of Community Cinema, ITVS’s free monthly screening series. Based on response from site visitors, the mashup “And So It Is” by Ananta was the most popular Filmocracy video and “The Politics of Food,” by Brandon Savoie, was the highest rated.

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Lost Remote

NBC will offer up a ton of live video during the Olympics: 2,200 hours. “We think it will generate a tremendous amount of engagement. We think it will generate more television viewership,” said Gary Zenkel, president of NBC Olympics. But there is one limitation: events that will be televised on NBC will not appear online until after they air (not everyone is happy about that). Meanwhile, as Webware points out, a big winner in all this is Microsoft’s Silverlight, which will power the live video on NBCOlympics.com. (Full disclosure: I work for msnbc.com, a joint venture between NBC and Microsoft.)

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Red Herring

Facebook on Monday announced a new friend: Marc Andreessen, who has joined the company’s board.

“Marc is an industry leader, and we’re fortunate to have him join our board,” Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement.

The Ning chairman and co-founder was added to tap his experience with social sites and in growing companies. He co-founded Internet browser pioneer Netscape and later Loudcloud, which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard.

But his involvement with startup Ning could raise questions about conflicts of interest. Ning is a web-based site that allows people to build social-networking destinations.

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Silicon Alley Insider

Since Hulu launched three months ago, it has become a consumer success, joining Nielsen’s top-10 video sites, and serving more video in May than ABC.com.

What does that mean in terms of gross ad sales for the NBC U - News Corp. JV? Not much. And net revenue? Even less.

We estimate Hulu will sell between $45 million and $90 million of advertising during its first 12 months — April 2008 through March 2009. By the time it pays off its content partners, it will book between $12.5 million and $25 million in net revenue. (Which isn’t bad for a start-up, actually.)

How do we get there? Assuming Hulu grows a fairly conservative 10% month-to-month in its first year — it grew 20% from April to May, its first two full months of availability — Hulu will have served 1.8 billon TV and movie streams by next March. We’re assuming each stream results in at least one ad exposure, on average, but we’ll allow for the possibility each stream results in two . One exposure at $25 CPM, or cost per 1,000 impressions, is $45 million in ad sales; two exposures would double that to $90 million.

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Google

We’ve received numerous requests to improve our indexing of Adobe Flash files. Today, Ron Adler and Janis Stipins—software engineers on our indexing team—will provide us with more in-depth information about our recent announcement that we’ve greatly improved our ability to index Flash.

Q: Which Flash files can Google better index now?
We’ve improved our ability to index textual content in SWF files of all kinds. This includes Flash “gadgets” such as buttons or menus, self-contained Flash websites, and everything in between.

Q: What content can Google better index from these Flash files?
All of the text that users can see as they interact with your Flash file. If your website contains Flash, the textual content in your Flash files can be used when Google generates a snippet for your website. Also, the words that appear in your Flash files can be used to match query terms in Google searches.

In addition to finding and indexing the textual content in Flash files, we’re also discovering URLs that appear in Flash files, and feeding them into our crawling pipeline—just like we do with URLs that appear in non-Flash webpages. For example, if your Flash application contains links to pages inside your website, Google may now be better able to discover and crawl more of your website.

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paidContent.org

Starz, the cable TV network owned by Liberty Media (NSDQ: LINTA), has quietly reorg-ed its management operations, reports THR. Starz Entertainment, which oversees the brand’s linear and VOD channels, and Starz Media, the umbrella group for such third-party programming providers as Anchor Bay Entertainment and Film Roman, will be consolidated under Bill Myers, president and COO of Starz Entertainment…also consolidating under him is Starz’s digital content operations.

The changes were made a month ago, but not announced to avoid confusion as parent LIberty Media splits into two tracking stocks: Starz Media is part of the Liberty Capital tracking stock, while Starz Entertainment remains under Liberty Entertainment.

Staci adds: Starz spokesman Tom Southwick explains that the changes were made to organize around product lines and are “really aimed at the creative community” and to avoid internal competition and confusion over projects. In simple terms, Steve Shelanski handles acquisitions, while Bill Hamm has original programming. At the same time, the center of production and development moves to Burbank from Denver.

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BusinessWeek

Moving past the Yahoo saga, the software giant is buying semantic search engine Powerset as a way of closing the gap with Google

Still smarting from a failed attempt to buy Yahoo! (YHOO), Microsoft (MSFT) is trying another tactic to gain on Google (GOOG) in Web search.

Microsoft is buying Powerset, developer of what it hopes is a smarter way to search the Web. Powerset uses so-called “semantic Web” technology that brings up results based on an understanding of a word’s meaning and the context of its use. That’s in contrast to the method used by the major search engines, which work primarily by matching words in queries to those on Web pages. Microsoft announced the acquisition July 1 on a blog, saying it shares Powerset’s vision “to take search to the next level by adding understanding on the intent and meaning behind the words in searches and webpages.” News of Microsoft’s interest in Powerset was reported June 26 by industry blog VentureBeat. According to the article, Microsoft has offered more than $100 million to acquire the company. The purchase price was not disclosed.

The purchase could give Microsoft a big leg up in efforts to catch Google. Powerset and other semantic search engines outperform Google in some cases (BusinessWeek.com, 9/17/07). They respond particularly well when users want detailed answers to questions in specific subject categories for which there are a lot of Web pages with similar keywords, such as health or law. “Semantic search takes it to the third level,” says Eric Tilenius, an early investor in Powerset and Kango, which applies semantic search technology to travel.

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The Hollywood Reporter

Quincy Smith tapped as CEO

CBS Corp. on Monday elevated Quincy Smith from president to CEO of its CBS Interactive division as it completed its acquisition of CNET Networks.

The company also named former CNET CEO Neil Ashe president of the digital group.

Under the reorganization, CBS’ online brands and CNET will act as one business unit with five vertical categories. These include technology, which is CNET’s main focus; entertainment, which will pair the CBS Audience Network, CBS.com and Last.fm with CNET’s TV.com and GameSpot.com; news, which will combine CBSNews.com and CNET’s tech-focused News.com; sports, which includes CBSSports.com and CBSCollegeSports.com; and business, with CNET’s BNET.com as the cornerstone of the category, which also includes ZDNet and TechRepublic.

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