I was going to use the term ‘lemmings’ but the United Order of Lemmings have written to me and asked me to stop giving them a bad name.

How did ITV get Friends Reunited and ITV Local so wrong ? And where did NewsCorp managed to get MySpace from 100m to 5m users – and why are they now seeming to do the same with The Times online sites?

Yet, with video they have leveraged this positions well and become dominant in the provision of online video in the US and the UK. In the US no major TV company has tried to stray beyond what they do, and at the same time they’ve come up with concepts such as Hulu.

Collaborative ventures like this have critical mass in the US, but seem futile in the UK where only the BBC count.

Traditional media has great sales capabilities, good production discipline, but the content is what counts.

Great video content is much more difficult to produce than a great article. Volume of video content is even more difficult. For example, by my experience, a minute of high quality video takes an hour to edit on average.

Likewise, audiences now form themselves and generate their own ‘content’.

So why can’t old media monetize this ? This, perhaps, is the most valuable question in media.

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Excerpt from:
Why Is Old Media Being Perverse ?

There’s been a dreadful earthquake in Chile and the BBC are reporting it by showing pictures from Ustream and reading out Tweets. Nice to know our £3.5bn is being deployed so effectively in the marketplace under the new cost cutting regime. Now here’s an idea, why don’t we get rid of the smug presenters interviewing each other and just get this news for ourselves ?

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More:
Bad News Day for BBC

Italian courts yesterday found 3 Google executives criminally responsible for breaking anti-privacy laws and they were sentenced, in their absence, to 6 months in prison. The offending piece of material was a video of teenage boys harassing an autistic boy.

Google have always argued that they are in no way responsible for any content published across their network…….which is pretty thin given that they are actively working with channel partners and have a variety of take down tools they can deploy if they wish. They are a digital content channel.

Italian judges, perhaps with the beady eye of Mr. Berlusconi on them, have ruled that Google and YouTube are to be treated as any other content provider / network and are thus reponsible for content published on their network via YouTube.

The example given by Google is that postmen should not be held liable for what they deliver. However, this does not seem quite right as Google (via adwords) have a direct financial interest in what is delivered across their network, which a postman does not, and a postman would not deliver a smoking, ticking parcel through a letterbox as he owes a duty of care.

European legislation appears to offer ISP’s safe harbour – but this is not definitive and with the Digital Economy Bill waiting in the wings it seems that tide may be turning against the copyright infringers.

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See more here:
Key ruling against Google – execs do time (if they visit Italy)

The anti-trust authorities are beginning to circle Google and ask the question whether the internet giant has abused its dominant position. As any publisher who has tried to sell online inventory will know it is vitually impossible to compete with the adsense model – mainly because from a buyers perspective it offers the best return.

Some models based on video pre-roll have started to work but as Google moves to make YouTube a profitable entity this may also come under pressure.

For me this raises an interesting question over whether Google should be “punished” for its success ? They have created a superior platform for advertisers which unfortunately takes a large slice of revenue away from traditional publishers and will doubtless lead to the closure of a large number of ad supported paper based publications.

As a buyer of adwords the system is excellent and much more effective than anything else out there – we should celebrate the success of the model and accept that we cannot indefinetely prop up outdated business models. The French have never really supported the free market however and are likely to take a different view.

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Excerpted from:
Google has 80% share of the online ad market in France

Not surprisingly, the web is abuzz with chatter about Apple’s new iPad. To add in my ha’pennysworth it seems that Apple is aiming directly for the paid for market. The majority of web advertising is now in the Flash format and the device doesn’t support Flash, so it’s very clear that this device is meant to extend Apple’s hegemony in the music market into books, magazines and movies.

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Go here to read the rest:
Why The iPad Is A VOD Product