LONDON -- VideoPlaza, the Stockholm/London-based online video advertising platform, has raised $5 million in its first venture round, the company announced today. Last week, I spoke with Sorosh Tavakoli, VideoPlaza Founder & CEO.  He was a panelist at the Beet.TV Online Video Roundtable at the offices of the Guardian newspaper.In the interview, he provides an update on the developments at the [...]

After years of anticipation, it seems that the open source community is ready to publish video on Wikipedia. Users will encode videos with a free codec called Ogg Theora and publish them on an HTML5, open format.  Earlier today, Nicholas Reville of the Participatory Culture Foundation announced the creation of Let's Get Video on Wikipedia, an initiative to educate the public [...]

Video Highlights from Beet.TV'sOnline Video Roundtable in London Sponsored by Brightcove Financial Times Mulls Paid Model for Online Video Apple Inexorably Pulling Video Publishers to HTML5 -- Whether They Like it Or Not News Corp's BSkyB Gaining Ad Traction with Online Offering and "TV Everywhere" Play Reuters Readies Syndication Plan for Third-Party Video News Producers Scottish TV Gaining Online Users via Facebook Connect Sky Player Gives Subscribers [...]

Late last year, Capture Your Flag, a new online video site that chronicles the leadership philosophy and strategy of emerging leaders, launched in beta with some 500 clips. Erik Michielsen, an MBA and former financial analyst, has self-funded the New York-based company.  We sat down with him recently for this overview of this site and his goals.Andy Plesser, Executive Producer

AUSTIN -- YouTube is making a big push to pull musicians to YouTube to help them build audiences and monetize their videos.   We caught up with YouTube's Sara Pollack this weekend in Austin at SXSW for this update.The program is titled "Musicians Wanted."  Here's a report in the Los Angeles Times and more from Wired.com. Andy Plesser, Executive Producer

Want to know what new media players to keep an eye on? The marketing technology firm Bunchball is generating major buzz in the media and advertising business for its tools and services centered on engagement. In this week's New Media Minute, I share details on why advertisers, TV networks, and media companies are turning to this firm to deepen customer loyalty [...]

LONDON -- The BBC's iPlayer, a destination site for BBC news and entertainment programming, is enjoying rapid growth in the U.K.  Unique monthly visitors reached 6.3 million in February, according the most most recent data compiled by Nielsen. Time spent on the site averages 18 minutes, Nielsen finds. Nielsen does not compile video views and the BBC has not released its February [...]

SAN FRANCISCO -- Television consumption is going to explode in growth over the next several years thanks to online and mobile video. That's the conclusion of Jeff Cole, director of USC's Center for the Digital Future, who studies media habits of consumers all around the world. I caught up with him at the recent 4A's conference in San Francisco, and [...]

SAN FRANCISCO -- One of the keys to being successful as an independent digital studio lies in striking international licensing deals, said John Evershed, CEO of Mondo Media, in an interview with Beet.TV at our online video roundtable in San Francisco. He explained that Mondo Media will both sell foreign rights for its shows and pick up rights for international Web [...]

AUSTIN -- YouTube Rental, the video sharing site's nascent pay-per-view service that launched in January with a handful of independent films, is becoming a paid platform for creators of education, travel, and entertainment programming, according to YouTube's Sara Pollack. We caught up with her over the weekend at SXSW.  She said that the program is pulling in more film producers, but [...]

LONDON -- STV, the digital arm of Scottish Television, is gaining 10 percent of new registered users through its integration with Facebook Connect, according to Alistar Brown, who heads new media for the company. I spoke with Brown last Monday, at the Beet.TV Online Video Roundtable in London.We reported yesterday that some 80,000 Web sites are using Facebook Connect.  For media [...]

PALO ALTO -- Facebook has 80,000 sites using Facebook Connect in addition to the 500,000 applications on Facebook, according to Ethan Beard, who heads up the company's developer network. The most popular application/category is gaming, says Beard, citing the massive success of Farmville. In Austin at SXSW, CNET's Caroline McCarthy reports that Facebook is "flexing its gaming muscle."This is the [...]

SAN FRANCISCO -- While the Webisode is not dead, many of the big media players who had made sizable commitments to creating Web-original entertainment content, have thrown in the towel. This was the consensus of media execs from CBS, Fox and Comcast speaking at the Beet.TV Online Video Roundtable. Karin Gilford, formerly a top video entertainment exec at Yahoo, now at [...]

LONDON -- Reuters, which produces and distributes news videos to many of the world's broadcasters and top news sites, is working on a plan to syndicate videos from third-party content producers, said Greg Breitchman, Global News Editor of Reuters, at Beet.TV's online video summit. He explains that the growing demand for video news, often in raw form, is creating a big [...]

Video views in February jumped 42 percent in February to 152 million, making CNN.com the fastest growing video site among the top 10 in the U.S, Nielsen just reported. We assume that the traffic has come from big stories including the earthquake in Chile, Tsunami warnings, and follow-up coverage in Haiti.   Video has also become far more integral to the [...]

LONDON -- BSkyB, the satellite programming service, is getting considerable traction with its online offering, including sustained advertising rates and engagement, which averages 26 minutes according to Nicola Clarke, an executive with the company. Clarke was a participant at the Beet.TV Online Video Roundtable on Monday.  She was questioned by co-moderator Robert Andrews, editor of paidContentUK.  She is a digital strategist [...]

SAN FRANCISCO--NBC Local recently launched a beta site called Feast.  It combines ratings from top sources including the NYT.com, Zagat, and Yelp to determine overall rankings of local restaurants. Brian Buchwald, EVP of NBC's Integrated Local Media, explained the website to Daisy Whitney at Beet.TV's San Francisco roundtable last month.  He equated Feast to "Rotten Tomatoes for restaurants," but also [...]

LONDON -- The Guardian, which has been offering its API as a syndication tool since last year, has just made that offering much deeper with the release of information from elections going back to 1992, according to Stephen Dunn, who heads technology strategy for the newspaper. The paper announced the government data API offering on March 1. Dunn believes that the [...]

LONDON -- In August, Josh Tyrangiel, then managing editor of Time.com and now editor of Business Week, told Beet.TV that long-form journalism on the Web is "not working."  He was referring to reading articles in a browser.  While the browsers may pose limits, new e-readers like the iPad could spawn entirely new forms of journalism, says Daniel Franklin, Executive Editor [...]

LONDON - While big newspapers and broadcasters have made substantial investments in online video creation and distribution, most have limited their reach and opportunity to the wider Web.  These are some thoughts I shared with Laura Oliver, editor of Journalism.co.uk on Monday. I spoke with her at the offices of the Guardian after Beet.TV's roundtable event.  She did produced this [...]