BEVERLY HILLS -- Video consumption on MySpace far outpaces Facebook, and all the other social media sites in video streams served and unique users, according to Nielsen Online's April numbers, Beet.TV has learned.    Video streams on MySpace were 290 million vs. a mere 8 million on Facebook.  Unique users of videos on MySpace were 15 million versus 2 million, [...]

StumbleUpon, the recommendation platform for video consumption, organizes primarily videos from major video sharing sites.  Having videos discovered, or "stumbled," is a powerful way in which videos are propagated. Last week I spoke with StumbleUpon co-founder Garrett Camp. He has set his sites on pulling major media sites into his network.  For big publishers from newspapers to broadcasters to music [...]

LOS ANGELES -- Jesse Draper, one of the stars of the hit Nickelodeon show Naked Brothers Band, is about to star in weekly series about innovation in Silicon Valley in a show titled Valley Girl.  The show will debut next month.  Google CEO Tim Schmidt and Craig Newmark are among several Valley executives and VC's who have been interviewed for [...]

Gigya is powering widgets for over a thousand online publishers, including video producers. As publishers seek to get content distributed, widgets are essential. Gigya's widgets get 128 million unique users per month.  It's an enormous base. More than just distributing widgets, the company is offering analytics so publishers and advertisers know how media is being consumed. I spoke with Gigya's [...]

With hand held cameras, video reporting is a natural extension of print reporting and holds great advantage for newspaper publishers, says pioneering news producer Tammy Haddad. In the world of innovative television news producing, Tammy is at the top. She has produced “Larry King Live,” “Hardball with Chris Matthews” and others. These days, she’s reporting on the presidential campaign as a contributor to Newsweek.com with [...]

NewTeeVee, the 18-month-old video site dedicated to covering the business of online video, has expanded its franchise with a site that reviews and recommends online video content. The new site is called NewTeeStation.  A guide to what's new and worth watching is very much needed.  And it's a field that is just now taking shape.  One big player in online video [...]

LOS ANGELES -- It was a little depressing listening to Quarterlife producer Marshall Herskowitz give the keynote address at iHollywood today over at the Roosevelt Hotel.  He is clearly still bitter about NBC's decision to remove his show from its line-up.  He said that the days of user generate video success, with a hit on YouTube, are essentially over.  The [...]

At Advertising 2.0 in Manhattan earlier this week, I caught up with David Rosenberg, who heads the Emerging Media group at JWT, the big global advertising agency.  David talks about the new aesthetics of online video advertising, a major departure from the traditional 30 second spot.  David says that the pre-roll and post roll will become less prevalent.  He sees [...]

Nielsen Online is very close to launching a platform to monitor the number of downloaded media served through iTunes and other systems.  While Nielsen and others track the views of streaming video, third party monitoring of downloaded video does not exist, as far as we understand. In this interview with Beet.TV, Jon Gibs, VP for Media Analytics for Nielsen Online says [...]

Long a leader in creating and publishing original and stylized video journalism, the Washington Post is educating a large number of print journalists in how to use video cameras. Some 185 staffers have been trained, according to Chet Rhodes, Assistant Managing Editor for News Video at the washingtonpost.com Further, the paper is providing low cost Canon HF 100 video cameras to [...]

Artists like platinum-selling superstar rapper Chamilllionaire are taking advantage of the new opportunities of video sharing and social network sites to build reputation and business. I interviewed him earlier this week at Advertising 2.0 in New York.  He told me that reality TV is indicative of consumer demand for video about people's lives.  He says that includes stars like himself.  [...]

The Semantic Web been the longtime vision of Tim Berners-Lee, the British physicist who invented the World Wide Web.  It is a highly organized index of Web objects and pages. It is far from being implemented but is starting to emerge. Michael Zimbalist, head of R&D at The New York Times Company, told me that the opportunities arising from the Semantic Web [...]

NEW YORK -- The bubble of excessive funding of of digital media companies is over, according to paidContent founder and editor Rafat Ali.  Beet.TV caught up with him at his company's packed mixer last night at the IAC headquarters.  The second half of the year does not look very good as many venture backed companies will  be running out of [...]

Our intrepid producer David Kavanaugh headed to Brooklyn last night to attend the diggnation event.  David said the place was packed and the light was low but he managed to get some stage shots and quick interview with Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback who explains the Kevin Rose frenzy.    Caroline McCarthy from CNET was on hand as was Dan Frommer [...]

Last night at the paidContent mixer in Manhattan, I caught up with Eric Hadley, CMO of the Heavy.com, the successful New York-based online video site for guys 18-35.  Hadley is a longtime senior Microsoft executive who joined the company last year. Yesterday the company announced plans to build out its video services division called Husky as a separate operating unit.  [...]

Here at Advertising 2.0 in New York, just spoke with Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried the founders of EQAL, the producers of lonelygirl15. The ground-breaking show will go into production soon in Italy, in an Italian language version, they told me. Liz Gannes at NewTeeVee reported the development earlier today. - Andy Plesser

Word just came out from CBS and Yahoo! that the broadcaster will greatly expand its program offering to Yahoo! Here is a statement from Karin Gilford from Yahoo!"As the #1 online TV site, Yahoo! TV is committed to offering our users the most comprehensive television experience on the Internet," said Karin Gilford, Vice President of Entertainment and Lifestyles, Yahoo!.  "The partnership with CBS significantly expands [...]

Jason Glickman, founder of New York-based Tremor Media, a video ad network, has his sites on European expansion where he says the business for online video advertising may be greater. As we reported yesterday, advertising rates for online video advertising could be as high as $35 per thousand views. Tremor has positioned itself for expansion into Europe with a strategic investment [...]

Larry Kramer, founder of Marketwatch and now working in venture capital and consulting, was on hand at the paidContent conference in Manhattan today.  Larry is on the board of ContentNext, the corporate parent of paidContent. Here's an interview with Mary Kathleen Flynn of TechConfidential.  Interesting take by Larry on how advertising networks work and which ones will succeed. Here's a summary of [...]

I caught up with the CEO of Paris-based Hi-Media Cyril Zimmerman today at the paidContent conference in Manhattan where he was a panelist.  Cyril heads one of Europe's largest ad networks and one of the world's most unique. The company is expanding its ad network and acquiring content companies.  Last year, it bought Fotolog for $90 million. Cyril says that eventually ad [...]