The dirty secret of YouTube's Chad Hurley: Despite selling an online-video startup whose slogan is "Broadcast Yourself" to Google for $1.65 billion, he's still desperately uncomfortable in front of a camera. Google PR's media training has only turned the millionaire's awkward mannerisms into a hilariously stiff…
CEO Eric Schmidt botched Google's $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube. Under his misguided traffic-first strategy, the online-video site has seen off would-be rivals, but failed to grow a business. When he decided, rather late, to make revenue a priority, he wasted time looking for a magical new ad format. (The one…
Yes, all anyone can talk about are Apple's new laptops. Always prone to squandering a PR opportunity, Microsoft is set to debut the next version of its answer to Adobe's Flash — Silverlight, the video player everyone talks about but no one has installed. Silverlight 2.0 has digital rights management software to power…
Look, you're going to be reading a lot on AdAge and NewTeeVee and Silicon Alley Insider about YouTube's deal with CBS to run full-length TV shows, and what this means for online-video advertising models and what this means for the Google-owned site's rivalry with Hulu, the joint venture between NBC and News Corp.…
The deep mystery of the Camp Cyprus 20: What were they thinking? The most common theory floating around is that the 20 or so Internet-employed twentysomethings who filmed themselves cavorting by the Mediterranean, even as the markets imploded and Silicon Valley shuddered, were simply drunk. Oh no, my friends: This was…
Every Netflix subscriber who's ever added a Blu-ray disc to their queue — which triggers a setting for Blu-ray movies — is getting a $1 a month fee added to their bill for "access" to the high-def movie discs on the rent-by-mail service, even if they didn't intend to watch Blu-ray movies. Users can log into their…
Ex-Disney CEO Michael Eisner's grand insight on online video: Sex sells. [PaidContent]
On November 22nd, YouTube will host a two-hour event in San Francisco, "a celebration of the site's vast user communities." Looks like we can expect performances from Akon, Soulja Boy, will.i.am and a bunch of online video-powered Weblebrities. And it will be broadcast live over the Internet. So, it turns out that …
So-called "postroll" ads — commercial clips which play automatically at the end of a video — are coming to YouTube, NewTeeVee reports. It's an embarrassment for Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who had insisted users hate postroll ads and predicted YouTube would find a new, more effective ad format. The postrolls, while they…
Funny because it's true: Web-video comedienne Kara Luiz's "I Google Myself" aptly charts the YouTube's generation self-obsession. The best part: A blog post about the video is already the No. 2 Google result for Luiz's name.
It's only a matter of a few hundred dollars, but after high acquisitive LiveUniverse acquired affiliate movie marketer Peerflix, blogger Eric D. Snider stopped receiving the until-then-regular checks. Which happened around the exact same time that we got a tip — in late August — that LiveUniverse didn't have enough…
YouTube will now run a post-roll commercial after you watch a clip if you don't click on the overlay advertisement that pops-up on partner videos. It's the kind of exciting, innovative thinking from re-hire Ben Ling, who was brought back into the Google mothership to figure out how to turn YouTube's revenue deficit…
Click to viewOMG you guys gadgets and girls and hey it's the rich girl from Los Gatos and her iPhone and her friends and one is Julia Allison! Julia Allison you guys! Who is totally not the point of this story, because wow NextNewNetworks is really producing this?NextNewNetworks, an online-video startup better known…
In a deal with premium cable channel Starz, Netflix will now be able to offer Walt Disney and Sony Pictures films to its streaming video service. (Netflix's films play in a browser or on your television through a set-top box made by Roku.) It's an important step — what's been holding back better content from many…
Site YouTube Reviewed began banging the drum early and loudly that the original content project for YouTube from HBO Labs, Hooking Up, is terrible. They've since chronicled everyone from YouTube's content partnership wrangler George Stromoplous to one of the YouTube fameballs who appears in the show, Cory "Mr.…
Amazon.com's Video On Demand service, which allows you to preview and purchase streaming videos online, uses Adobe's Flash Media Server to deliver the video. Late last week, Reuters reported that hackers had discovered an exploit that would allow users to turn the free preview into the full stream, allowing folks to…
In character, the used-car dealer is a close cousin to the Web spammer, so he appreciates the advantages of misleadingly labeling a car ad as porn in order to drive up views, which is what Massachusetts-based Clay Corp. did with a YouTube video titled "Let's Get Naked." Expect much, much more of this to come: There…
Click to viewBoomTown's Kara Swisher paused in making ribald jokes about Joost's London office to report that the online-video purveyor will be offering six full seasons of NBC's former hit Friends. With this, Joost will reach an audience who prefers New York City when there's no black people, just like in dated…
CBS CEO Les Moonves pontificated at the Mixx conference in New York today, saying that he loves the Internet, really. Departing from the party line of other networks, Moonves pointed out "The Internet is not cannabalistic; it is only additive," presumably referring to audience attention share between television and…
Click to viewThe latest shockumentary from portly auteur Michael Moore, Slacker Uprising, has launched today. To watch the film, you have to sign up with an email address. While Moore says his fans should go ahead and download it, there's no actual link to do that. And you can't embed the whole film on third-party…
