The Next Net

Disruptors Video: YouTube Vs. News Corp!

Last month at my Disruptors Roundtable in Los Angeles, the  anger and distrust between YouTube and the media industry was palpable in the room.  Two execs from YouTube and News Corp. got into a heated debate about who is bypassing whom in the world of digital video. 

YouTube's vice president of content partnerships Jordan Hoffner charged that networks like Fox and NBC are bypassing their affiliates whenever they put their TV shows on their Websites.  Mike Lang, the executive vice president of Fox Networks, retorted that every time an unauthorized video is put on YouTube that's bypassing the networks.  To which, Hoffner shot back: "Send a letter."  (As in a takedown letter).

Watch the CNNMoney video from the event, which just went up.  What I love about this exchange is that it is so much more candid than what you'd get from the YouTube bosses. (Full transcript after the break)

Google Gears Takes Web Apps Offline

  Gears: Transmission 03 - W.I.P. 
  Originally uploaded by UsokChoe

Google (GOOG) is taking another jab at Microsoft (MSFT) by further blurring the line between Web-based and desktop apps.  Yesterday, it announced Google Gears, an open-source project for software developers that lets them convert their Web-based applications to desktop applications that can operate on their own without a connection to the Internet.  Google will enable such offline use for its own Google Reader so that people can read blog and news feeds on a plane or at the beach just like they now can download their e-mails with Outlook.

Google Gears represents the latest step in what I call the whole Webtop movement, and is similar to what Adobe is trying to do with its Apollo project.  The basic idea here is that if you can get Web software developers to easily create desktop apps, then the current distinction between the two disappears.  And so does Microsoft's hold on the desktop.

Update: Real Networks is joining this Webtop trend by making all video streams downloadable in their new RealPlayer.

Startup Watch: Attributor (Scanning the Web For Copyrighted Content)

Every media executive's fantasy is to be able to scour the entire Internet, see who is using their content, and possibly demand payment or threat legal action—all in a completely automated fashion.  A startup called Attributor promises to let them do just that.  Today, it just announced its first customer, the Associated Press.  "We thought we would start with one of the largest content producers in the world,"  CEO Jim Brock tells me.

Attributor has indexed 13 billion Web pages and says that it can digitally fingerprint any publisher's content—from the largest media company's to the smallest blogger's—and report back where it appears on the Web.  For an organization like the Associated Press which already syndicates its articles to thousands of newspapers and hopes to make 20 percent of its revenues online this year, keeping track of both the authorized and unauthorized replication of its stories is a key priority. 

It's a key priority for any media company in an era of superdistribution.

And while sites like YouTube are developing their own copyright databases to help stem abuses, there are always other sites to worry about.  Says Brock: "If you are playing whack-a-mole and remove something from one site, it will appear somewhere else. Web-wide visibility is what publishers want."

eBay Confirms StumbleUpon Acquisition For $75 Million

Web 2.0 Wednesday continues with eBay confirming (EBAY) that it bought StumbleUpon for $75 million.  As I mentioned back in April, when this story first broke:

The reason StumbleUpon is so hot right now is because it represents a fruitful area beyond search: discovery.  Search engines are good for when you pretty much know what you are looking for. But discovery engines like StumbleUpon's use a combination of your own stated preferences and those of people like you to surface Websites, videos, photographs, and other information you didn't even know you might like. 

That's why eBay would want it, and why Google might be miffed for missing out.  Think of StumbleUpon as a Digg for Websites.  As StumbleUpon's database of the best content on the Web gets bigger and bigger, it can start to carve out discovery engines for specific sites.

The fact of the matter is that eBay is facing some major disintermediation from Google (GOOG) right now.  Many of its biggest sellers are setting up their own Websites and buying keyword search terms on Google to drive traffic directly to their online stores, bypassing the need to pay eBay a commission on each sale.

If discovery is the next of search, buying StumbleUpon could be an attempt to get in front of that curve, and maybe some day disrupt Google's business down the line.

Discovery can also be thought of as the latest twist on recommendation engines.  And every e-commerce site needs one of those.

MyPhotobucket Becomes Official

It's Web 2.0 Wednesday!  After nearly a month of speculation, News Corp.'s (NWS) Fox Interactive Media finally fesses up to buying Photobucket, the photo-sharing site that got into (and then mysteriously out of) trouble with Fox-owned MySpace for showing ads on some of its video widgets inside MySpace.  Terms were not disclosed, but the earlier rumor was about $250 million. 

Fox Interactive Media also bought an early-stage, photo-editing startup called Flektor, which TechCrunch puts at $10 to $20 million.

Okay, who's next?

MyPhotobucket Becomes Official

It's Web 2.0 Wednesday!  After nearly a month of speculation, News Corp.'s (NWS) Fox Interactive Media finally fesses up to buying Photobucket, the photo-sharing site that got into (and then mysteriously out of) trouble with Fox-owned MySpace for showing ads on some of its video widgets inside MySpace.  Terms were not disclosed, but the earlier rumor was about $250 million. 

Fox Interactive Media also bought an early-stage, photo-editing startup called Flektor, which TechCrunch puts at $10 to $20 million.

Okay, who's next?

Is Apple TV Zune-like?

Fortune's Brent Schlender on the Apple TV:

It's about as uninspired as another prominent dud, the Zune, the MP3 player Microsoft launched last year. In fact, the Apple TV is so Zune-like, you'd think Jobs was so busy with the iPhone that he outsourced the Apple TV project to the folks up in Redmond.  To wit:

—Apple TV's most highly touted feature is its weakest one: It requires an HDTV, but the video you download is so low-res that it looks as fuzzy as plain old broadcast TV.

—There's no way to order a movie directly from the iTunes store via your TV, even though Apple TV has its own connection to the Internet. Instead, you have to download it to your computer first.

—Apple TV lets you show photos only from a single computer, even though photos are the one source of HD content everyone has, and are easy and legal to share over a network.

Move over, Mac Cube.

Microsoft Introduces Surface Computing

Microsoft unveiled a new tabletop computing interface it is dubbing "surface computing."  In the works for five years in Microsoft Research as a project called Milan, the idea is to transform a surface as big as tabletop into a touchscreen in order to be able to manipulate images, paint with brushes, or move digital objects around with your fingers.  (Check out the Popular Mechanics video embedded above). 

Microsoft did not invent this concept.  I've seen it before in high-end custom-hardware mapping applications, and Apple's upcoming iPhone shares some of the "multi-touch" interface techniques (such as being able to make a picture bigger by pulling apart opposite corners with two fingers).  But this may signal that the technology is finally ready to leave the research labs and venture into the real world.

Still, I wonder if this technology is getting ahead of itself, or are we truly on our way to a more immersive, Minority Report-like era of computing?  We are still many years from this going mainstream.  These Microsoft Surface computers will cost $10,000 to start, and are being sold to enterprises such as T-Mobile and Starwood to liven up their retail stores and hotels.  I still want one though.

CBS Picks Up Last.fm For $280 Million

Keeping his spring dealmaking spree going, Quincy Smith  just bought Last.fm for CBS (CBS) to the tune of $280 million.  (He's the CBS exec behind the deals with Web video and Web widget companies, as well as the one who bought the videoblog Wallstrip recently). 

With 15 million users, Last.fm (An original Next Net startup) is a smart buy for a media company that owns a lot of radio stations.  I mean, who listens to the radio anymore?  It's so annoying.  Last.fm, in contrast, programs commercial-free streaming radio for you over the Web based on the playlists of songs you've been listening to on your computer as well as what's on teh playlists of other Last.fm listeners like you.  It's social music, where the people are the programmers.  It is also one of the best of the new so-called music discovery engines out there (others include Pandora and Finetune).

The $280 million is a tidy sum for a Web 2.0 startup.  It's not Facebook numbers (which reportedly turned down nearly $1 billion from Yahoo), but it's also not Flickr numbers (which sold itself two years ago to Yahoo for a rumored $30 million).  And with royalty rates on streaming Web music set to soar, Last.fm picked a perfect time to sell.  CBS can afford to pay those higher rates.  A standalone Last.fm, might not have been able to survive them.

Flickr Photo of the Day: Surfing With the Sharks, er, Dolphins

Cool Public Domain Image by Kurt Jones, originally uploaded by UpNorth Memories - Don Harrison.