Hulu Passes Yahoo, Takes Aim at MySpace

Interesting change: Hulu is now the third-place video destination, surpassing Yahoo. YouTube and MySpace are #1 and #2. (But there's a huge gap between #1 and #2.)

According to the story:

Viewers watched 5.9 billion videos on YouTube and other Google Inc. sites [in March 2009], and News Corp.'s fully owned sites such as MySpace.com provided 437 million viewings in second place.

Hulu served up 380 million videos in March, and Yahoo 335 million.

Assuming Hulu's growth continues, and MySpace keeps fading, Hulu will soon be in the #2 spot.

Sony Pics on Phones ... Original Content for Xbox ... Yahoo and Microsoft's Video Strategies ... Pocket Projectors

- Sony Pictures Television is developing PIX, the first movie network for mobile phones. It'll be available on the recently-announced AT&T Mobile TV service in May. From the Hollywood Reporter piece:

Sony eventually might convert PIX to an on-demand model and might take the brand online as well. The full-length linear strategy is just one of many different content plays with which the studio is experimenting. "We're not doubling down and saying it's only about longform," [Sony VP Eric] Berger said. "We'll continue to do innovative things in the shortform universe as well."

- Microsoft and the Safran Company are collaborating to create original shows for the Xbox game console, according to the NY Times. From the piece:

In an interview at his office in Los Angeles last week, [producer and talent manager Peter] Safran said his first round of programs would all be scripted, as opposed to reality shows, and would probably run under 10 minutes. He said he planned initially to focus on genres, like comedy and horror, that appeal to the Xbox 360 audience, which is heavily concentrated from the ages of 14 to 34, and tends to be more male than female. The first shows are expected to be available to viewers by the fall.

Microsoft’s previous forays in digital entertainment include a two-year-old initiative, MSN Originals, to provide original shows for the Web, and an ill-fated foray more than 10 years ago in which it poured about $100 million into Internet shows like the comedy “475 Madison,” about an advertising agency, then quickly canceled most of them.

- I wrote a piece for this week's edition of Variety that looks at Yahoo and Microsoft's video strategies. From the piece:

"Video consumption is becoming part of most users' Internet experience," says Karin Gilford, VP of entertainment at Yahoo. "The question is, what do you do to differentiate yourself?"

Yahoo and Microsoft have both been struggling to answer that question since the February 2005 launch of YouTube. Since then, video viewing on the Net has become an addiction for some: The top 20% of diehard downloaders watch an average of 14 hours a month, according to research firms comScore and Media Contacts.

- I've been eagerly following the development of pocket LED projectors for a few years now... looks like 2008 could finally be the year a few of them hit the US market, according to the NY Times.

Metacafe banks $30 million ... YouTube officially intros advertising ... Video search ... EZTakes gets friendly with the iPod ... Panel at Toronto

- Metacafe just raised another $30 million in venture capital. While no video site has really yet figured out a great way to integrate advertising with their videos, clearly that's what the investors are hoping here.

- YouTube will officially start selling ads in some of its videos, according to the Wall Street Journal. YouTube won't use pre-roll ads. Emily Steel writes:

YouTube...plans to sell these ads only on videos from its select content partners, whose original videos include professionally produced clips and user-generated content. The partners will earn a share of the ad revenue. The system is similar to Google's AdSense network, which matches ads to the content of a network of Web sites, and gives those sites a cut of the profits. YouTube, of San Bruno, Calif., has established revenue-sharing deals with more than 50 partners, including Ford Models and Warner Music Group Corp. YouTube declined to say what percentage of videos on its site comes from its content partners.

YouTube started testing its in-video ad format in June and July on more than 200 videos from 20 content providers, and found that 75% of viewers watched the entire ad. The ads had five to 10 times greater click-through rates than standard display ads that appear on Web sites, YouTube said. Other ad models are in the works.

- The Journal looks at four video search sites (Truveo/AOL, Google, Yahoo, and BlinkX) and seems to like Truveo best.

- Jim Flynn, CEO of the Massachusetts movie download site EZTakes, sent a note that his site is about to start selling videos that can play on Apple's iPod. "Consumers, who could already burn EZTakes downloads to playable DVDs, can now also enjoy their purchases on their Apple iPods, and just about any portable media player that they may own in the future," the press release says.

- The panel I'm doing at the Toronto International Film Fest next month, on how filmmakers can use social media, has filled out nicely. It'll include Jason Klein of Special Ops Media, Sandi DuBowski of Films that Change the World, Bill Holsinger-Robinson of Spout, Christine Moore of Myspace, and producer Corey Marr. It's on Saturday, September 8th. See you there?

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to Media Co's: Enough with the copyright warnings

Interesting new front in the copyright wars...

A group of tech and communication companies say that media companies are using copyright warnings to scare consumers, and they've just filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, according to the NY Times. From the piece:

...[T[he group, the Computer and Communications Industry Association, said that the National Football League, Major League Baseball, NBC and Universal Studios, DreamWorks, Harcourt and Penguin Group display copyright warnings that are a “systematic misrepresentation of consumers’ rights to use legally acquired content.”

The complaint alleges that the warnings may intimidate consumers from making legal use of copyrighted material, like photocopying a page from a book to use in class.

“It is an attempt to convince Americans that they don’t have rights that they do in fact have,” said Ed Black, the association’s president and chief executive. “This is part of the larger context of what should be and what are proper rules for copyright in an Internet age.”

Can the Internet duplicate the star-making power of 'Idol'?

My monthly Boston Globe column looks at a few start-ups -- including one that was acquired by Yahoo last year -- trying to create online talent competitions, a la 'American Idol.'

From the piece:

The sites are addressing a problem that the Internet era has created for singers, bands, filmmakers, and other creative types: Given how easy it is to post an MP3 music file or a video clip on the Web, and how much content is now accessible, it's increasingly difficult to stand out.

"You put your stuff on MySpace, and you get lost amidst thousands of bands," says Campbell.

The talent sites hope to leverage votes and ratings from Internet users to help the cream rise to the top. But one big challenge is preventing users from tipping the scales toward their favorite contestants -- and the contestants themselves from gaming the voting system.

Media Biggies Still Scheming Over YouTube ... Remembering Peter Ellenshaw ... Bob's Basement

- Richard Siklos has a piece in today's NY Times about the continuing discussions among the CEOs of NBC Universal, Viacom, and News Corp. about whether they ought to create a competitor to YouTube (or perhaps ally with Yahoo.) The opening:

JEFF ZUCKER, the newly minted chief executive of NBC Universal, ventured to the Times Square headquarters of Viacom two Wednesdays ago with Peter A. Chernin, president of the News Corporation. It was not a social call as much as a social-networking call, to see Philippe P. Dauman, Viacom’s chief executive. After all, Viacom had rather publicly ordered YouTube, the Internet’s most popular video-sharing site, to remove thousands of clips of MTV material.

A few weeks earlier, Viacom had also bowed out of a partnership with NBC and the News Corporation to set up their own alternative to YouTube, which was recently acquired by the search juggernaut Google. Not to be dissuaded, their idea is that a Web start-up featuring the broadcasters’ most Web-friendly fare (comedy clips and even whole episodes of their popular shows) could gather a crowd on its own and also be a powerful consortium for licensing content to other destinations around the Web — including, of course, “GoogTube.”

According to people briefed on the visit, Mr. Zucker and Mr. Chernin ran through a presentation on why they thought Viacom ought to rejoin their group. So far, Viacom has not rejoined the venture, and the project’s fate remains unclear. (No love is lost between Viacom and the News Corporation, since the latter snatched MySpace.com from under Viacom’s nose.)

- Peter Ellenshaw, a great matte painter who worked with Walt Disney on movies like 'Treasure Island' and '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,' has died at age 93. He shared in the Oscar for visual effects awarded to 'Mary Poppins,' in 1965. Here is the AP obituary. The Wall Street Journal has a longer remembrance. Stephen Miller writes:

A master of a now-dying art called matte painting, he helped usher Walt Disney Corp. into live-action films by painting miniature scenery that was combined through technical wizardry with frames depicting actors. He reached his apogee with "Mary Poppins," which won the Oscar for special visual effects in 1965. Mr. Ellenshaw, who died Feb. 12 at age 93, was nominated three other times and worked on 30 Disney films.

"He helped define the Disney look," says Roy E. Disney, nephew of the founder and a former vice chairman. "He created a kind of faux-realism which you believed in. It didn't look like something pasted onto the frame. ...Walt loved him."

Mr. Ellenshaw's handiwork can be viewed in films from "Treasure Island" (1950) -- his first for Disney -- "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" (1954) and "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" (1971). He also left his mark on several Disney television programs, including "Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier," where actor Fess Parker as Crockett -- on his way to Washington to serve a spell in Congress -- journeyed down a dirt road that was an Ellenshaw painting.

Also a nice piece about Ellenshaw's work on Jim Hill Media, a Disney fan site.

- Fun piece in the NY Times about Bob's Basement, a collection of famous Hollywood props.