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Forrester Research has just opened to the public a powerful application and database which analysts have used to gauge the interest of customers in participating in social networks.  The  database, which provides profiles of customers of many companies in 10 nations, went live last week.  It is free.  This was first reported last week by […]

Google News, which indexes thousands of text news sources and  images, will "ramp up" video  on the site, according Josh Cohen, business project manager at Google News in this interview with Beet.TV. The program was launched last year and is set to expand. It works as follows via YouTube:  A small group of video producers […]

I have come to think of H.264 as a kind of everyman’s HD video production and distribution  platform.  The encoding software, referred in the industry as a codec, was released by Adobe into the Flash ecosystem in December. It has greatly improved the quality of Beet.TV videos. Let me explain how this works: David edits […]

Congrats to Rafat Ali and the growing success of paidContent, the essential online publication about digital media.  Today, Rafat announced the "next phase" of his company with appointment of Nathan Richardson, former head of Dow Jones Online as the new CEO. Rafat announced other hires, the promotion of Staci Kramer and said the Santa Monica-based […]

Rocketboom, the pioneering video blog that led the way for episodic online video programming, has launched its first new show, Pop17 with Sarah Meyers. Although the new show launched in February, an event chronicled by TechCrunch and others, the association with Rocketboom and Andrew Baron has not been previously disclosed. I spoke with Andrew earlier […]

Jason Calacanis, the scrapping entrepreneur built Weblogs and sold it AOL for $25 million. He is hard at work with his latest start-up Mahalo. He has a direct, immersive approach to managing people.  In hiring process, he says he tries to "scare people."  I don’t think Jason is really scary.  This interview is quite informative […]

According to a new report on the valuation of the top 25 blogs, the eight month-old Silicon Alley Insider is worth $5.4 million.  Not bad work for founder/backer Kevin Ryan and editor/pundit/power blogger Henry Blodget. I’m not quite sold on the valuation equation and find it hard to believe that SAI is worth $2 million […]

Revision3, the fast growing producer of online tech programming, has signed an agreement with Blip.tv to syndicate the video for all its shows.  The news was first reported this morning by Michael Learmonth of the Silicon Alley Insider. Earlier this month, I was in San Francisco for a tour of the very cool Revision3 offices […]

Revision3, the fast growing producer of online tech programming, has signed an agreement with Blip.tv to syndicate the video for all its shows. The news was first reported this morning by Michael Learmonth of the Silicon Alley Insider. Earlier this month, I was in San Francisco for a tour of the very cool Revision3 offices […]

The Washington Post, long an innovator in expanding its online presence, has created a popular application on Facebook with some 350,000 downloads, Jim Brady, Executive Editor of the washingtonpost.com tells Beet.TV The application (L) is a kind of political badge which members put on their Facebook pages, showing their political leanings from liberal to conservative. […]

Josh Bernoff, VP and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, told me that some marketers are finding success by putting videos into social networks.  Not ads, but content of value to the members of the networks. He talks about successes of big and small marketers and explains the values of such interaction which is far greater […]

Co-founders Jason Liebman and Daniel Blackman, along with other Google alumni, have raised $8 million and launched HowCast a  new  company that produces and distributes "how to videos" on a range of topics.  Recently, Beet.TV visited Jason and Daniel for a tour of their Manhattan offices and to talk about the sector and progress at […]

Google News, the aggregation platform for news from thousands of news sources, has a short shelf life. After news stories are posted, they expire after 30 days. However, all these stories, plus millions of older articles never posted, reside on Google News Archives.  Last summer, Google announced plans to archive major news sources.  It recently […]

Finally wrapping up our extensive coverage of SXSW.  Here’s our interview with Felicia Day, producer of "The Guild" the successful online video series.  It grabbed top honors for new video series at SXSW. My colleague Daisy Whitney interviewed the actress at the show. Here is our interview, a joint production of TV Week and Beet.TV. […]

Click to play I had a chance to catch up with Jon Fine, media columnist for Business Week earlier this week at the McGraw Hill Media Summit.  I asked Jon about his takeaway from the conference.  He says that the success of digital media remains elusive.  He points to the relatively modest revenue of Gawker […]

Kevin Ryan, former CEO of DoubleClick, has been busy these days creating a number of businesses including one of our favorite blogs, the Silicon Alley Insider. Much more under the radar screen is a content delivery network (CDN) called Panther Express.  Kevin stopped by the Beet.TV studios recently to share a little update.  He told […]

Kent Nichols, co-creator of the web video sensation "Ask a Ninja," has just been tapped to co-write the remake of the schlock classic Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. My colleague Daisy Whitney of TV Week spoke with Kent about the project earlier this week at SXSW in Austin. It’s very exciting to see how online […]

That ubiquitous YouTube watermark on the lower right hand side of the embeded players seen on millions of blogs and Web sites is gone.  This development was spotted and reported by the eagle-eyed Liz Gannes, editor of NewTeeVee. I’ve been checking around and Liz is right. We don’t know if the watermark is history or […]

Here’s a quick clip of ABC News president David Westin, a panelist at the McGraw Hill Media Summit.  He was on a panel which explored the value of broadcast journalism in the new media landscape.  Yes, he agrees a certain amount of news has become a "commodity."  But Westin addresses the value of enterprise reporting […]

Last night at the McGraw Hill Media Summit, I attended a private dinner where I had the good fortune to catch up with John Byrne, Business Week’s Executive Editor. I asked John about his intrepid technology columnist Sarah Lacy, who created a quite firestorm among the digerati in Austin on Sunday at SXSW with her […]