Some Insights into successful User generated Video Business

Here again is an article about successful business with user generated content. It is about video business at YouTube, where some people are earning a reasonable income.

YouTube Riches

Live Monitoring Tool for LiveJournal Posts

A live monitoring tool for posts at the LiveJournal blogging and social media community has become introduced. The tool is called Aqua and has a cool flowing interface. The service is both a surf board and research tool. For professional research at the help section there are instructions available to set filters and the like.

Widget Generator and Marketing Services by iWidgets

iWidgets is offering several kinds of widget services, that suits the needs of small as well as established publishers. The solution enables to distribute existing content across the social web and the sharing of content to increase the reach of content suppliers by viral marketing effects. To make a widget there is an easy to use wizard available, which allows to create widgets by drag and drop. The widgets are customizable and there are tracking facilities including profile information and social graphs.

There are two versions available at iWidgets, a free ad supported version and a viral marketing package.

Using own Domains for shortened URLs

This is great stuff. Shorty is a software application, which enables to use the own domain name for url abbreviation. One needs to have some technical skills as the software needs to be installed on a server. If the software is installed, the own domain name can be used for url abbreviation.

The tool is even comfortable by offering several ways to create abbreviations. This may either happen by using a particular keyword, several keywords or randomly by automatic url generation.

Some further information sources about installation are available by this article.

Short Films and Video Business

I became aware of some nice and new video sites, which are both great to view videos and for business.

At first there is Openfilm, a site dedicated to short films. It is an open place, where everyone can become a member for the purpose of watching videos, reviews or to connect with others to discuss or to do business. But as Openfilm wants to be a place for films of high quality, the content and especially the films are moderated. Film makers may run own channels and earn revenues by of revenue sharing. At Openfilm there are already a lot of well known internet celebrities represented.

Another site with nice short films is Coffee Shorts. They got nice films and are offering uploads and monetization, too. NomadsLand is dedicated to documentary films. It has a similar approach like Openfilm and enables watching and uploads, discussions and business networking.

Blogging Business

Business Thursday: There have been launched a couple of new and useful services for improved and professional blogging, that have not been mentioned for now.

At first there is Bloggapedia. It is a new launched blog directory and community with a couple of interesting features. At all it is a directory, where bloggers may submit their blogs. Additionally members are able to rate blogs Both members and popular blogs may become featured at the homepage. The directory is searchable for blogs as well as contributions by members. Last but not least there is a tool box. which is not comprehensive but contains a useful list of blogging tools. If you visit Bloggapedia to submit a blog, do not miss the list of blog directories at the tool box.

Two further blogging communities are Blogger Talk and FreelanceBlogger. Blogger Talk is a blogging source and support community for discussions with information and help forum. There is also a blog directory and source page. FreelanceBlogger.net is community for the blog business, that connects bloggers with companies.

Another but different kind of blogger support is offered by GooseGrade. By connecting authors and readers GooseGrade aims to improve the writing style and to help bloggers to correct spelling and writing errors. This works by a widget, where improvements may become suggested.

By the way, a new blog publishing service has launched using Twitter usernames for login. The service is called Twitblogs. The service combines the microblogging features of Twitter and common blog facilities like usual length of posts and multimedia publishing.

Content Monetization and Social Sharing

Grouptivity is a content sharing tool for information sharing with monetization opportunity to publishers. The tool works with plugins both for information sharing and to enable the process. Once the tool has become implemented into a blog or a website visitors are enabled to share the content and to start co browsing and sharing the content. This leads to a viral effect by spreading the content across the web by promoting the content source. To publishers there is a monetization opportunity by integrated adverts. The advertising revenue even goes 100 % to the publisher as the key issue to Grouptivity is to develop publisher tools.

The Space of Microblogging Solutions becomes crowded

Another provider of a webbased microblogging solution has entered the market. This is Yonkly. It is a white label solution enabling personalization. Further features are an image viewer and a search engine. There are only premium accounts available at Yonkly.

By 400 % growth of Twitter the market seems to be attractive to new participants. There is already a broad range of solutions available. Everyone may run a microblogging community by joining ShoutEm or Twingr. Enterprise microblogging solutions often are more comfortable by additional social networking facilities. Providers of enterprise microblogging solutions are Co-op, present.ly, SocialCast and Yammer. Beside these there are open source microblogging solutions available.

New Study about Social Networking Trends

A new study about social networking has been released by Netpop Research. The results of this study do confirm a strong trend to social networking as the already mentioned study by Forrester Research does. There are some more findings in this study especially about shopping. The results do refer on on time spending. It has been found that there is less time with online entertainment and shopping to the advantage of social networking. The latter may wonder because of the shopping season. But there have always been shopping related statements, that people often spend time researching products at shopping sites and then spend their money offline. So the time shift probably is simply reasoned in social shopping sites with product comparisons and reviews.

The study concludes a need to rething advertising strategies and to be presented at social networking sites. There is an extract available at the following link with a presentation and further information on downloading the whole study:
93 Percent Growth in Social Networkers Reveals Need for New Approaches to Online Advertising

Online Music Player with Synchronous Playlist Listening

Spool.fm is an online music player and playlist editor with a great feature for music lovers to listen to playlists of songs synchronously. To find tracks there is a search engine. Editing playlists is facilitated to everyone, non members and of course to members. To members there is the unique feature to create playlists, that may become listened synchronously by sharing links. Editing playlists is most simple by drag and drop of songs. There are also rating and voting tools and introductions to top rated tracks. Unfortunately I have found that the playlist editor does not work with every browser. It works fine with IE but not with Firefox.

For video viewing a similar feature is available by online video show rooms like SeeToo or Streams by YouTube.

Video Commerce Platform with Widgets

Qoof has an interesting offer to both, publishers and retailers. The service enables to publish videos at social networks by widgets. The customizable widgets do carry promotional videos as well as commerce facilities. To publishers this works like usual affiliate programs, which means that earnings are generated by referral fees. There are even solutions for parked domains.

To retailers it is a most comfortable service by offering various ways to become involved in video shopping and connected to publishers as well as to customers. If a retailer is ready to go, there are several solutions to start. One may start by using own media or use the Qoof video production tools to create new videos. To start to distribute the videos there is already a complete network of publishers available, which may become affiliates to spread the videos and to sell the advertised products. Last but not least Qoof even enables to become involved with customers by letting them create customized videos as user generated advertising.

Social Recommendations with Earnings

With Ciao there is another social shopping service available, which pays for reviews. It is a comparison shopping site, that offers product reviews and recommendations by members and price comparisons. The site is free to join and offers a lot of features. Beside comparisons and recommendations there are product lists and video reviews by members.

I know Ciao for long. It has been one of the first services offering product reviews by internet users. As far as I know it started in Germany and expanded through Europe. Today the service is active in Europe and North America. According to the corporate homepage it has been acquired by Microsoft lately.

Advertising and Money with Twitter

Business Thursday: Twitter is the fastest growing social network as reported in September. Figures in September have been 400 % growth rate. Meanwhile I read that about 6 million users have been reached and found an interesting article lately about upcoming features and strategies to monetize the service. Advertising will not be an issue told Evan Williams, one of the founders. Monetization probably will happen by charging companies, who want to reach twitter users at the platform.

But one nice thing about Twitter is the openness of the services by its api and the possibility for third parties to develop services relying on the platform. By this at least two advertising services have become developed to earn money and to reach users by advertising, which are most different.

The newer advertising network is be a magpie. This ad network matches advertisers with users based on interests. At the adverts keywords are used within tweets to reach interested parties. Keywords may be found by the various Twitter services like search engines. Additionally tweets containing ad messages are marked with a #magpie hashtag. The earning is calculated by the general popularity of a topic and the numbers of followers. To join the be a magpie network one must submit the Twitter member name at the homepage at first. Then the amount of possible earnings becomes calculated and a sign up form appears.

The second advertising service network relying on Twitter is Twittad, which has already been mentioned at a former article about Twitter tools. Twittad offers advertising by uploading background graphics.

Video Contest Site combines Advertising with Awards

TubePrize has created a platform to connect video creators with promoters for video advertising by product placement and the like. The service allows everyone to create a video contest and by this to promote a product. The service relies on YouTube and the winner will be the one who generated most views based on YouTube statistics. The latter might be just an example as contest creators are free in the creation of a contest. The service just started and has two contests listed actually.

Social Bookmarks with Following and Lifestreaming

The just launched Krumlr social bookmarking community combines a couple of most successful features of todays popular social networking services. Integrated tools are microblogging, lifestreaming and news ratings.

For social bookmarking there is tagging of course. Tags or clouds are called a 'krum'. Further available tools are a browser bar plugin and an iPhone mobile version. For more visit the Krumlr homepage.

New Live Video and Personal Broadcasting Service

Floobs is a new and promising live video service. The service is still in beta with some features already available and some in preparation. Floobs surprises with some features that have not been found elsewhere. At first this is an integrated VJ tool, which enables to mix live streams with other videos. This might be most useful for presentations and of course music shows.

According to the FAQ various different video formats are supported enabling the usage of nearly every camera device as mentioned at the company wiki. The up to date beta version already supports webcams and computer connected digital cams. The usage of smartphone cams and even tv cameras is in development, but may become tried by arrangement.

Floobs is available in various languages.

Interactive Video Features at Overlay.tv

Overlay.tv has added a couple of new interactive video features since it has been covered by the very first post at this blog about interactive video. Also the website has been completely redesigned. As far as I remember the site has been dark and it has been turned into a bright one now. Furthermore videos produced by members now are in the center of the page instead of being placed at the bottom to showcase the interactivity of the video platform. Whereas promoting own products is still a key issue of the site this gives it a video sharing touch.

Some of the new interactive video features are unique as far as I know. These features are amazing and come along with the embedable proprietary video player. At first there is a chat, which is placed directly within the video screen. One may suppose this might be intrusive, but I have not felt like that. It rather improves the comfort and enables to chat without diverting the video watching experience. Technically it is a true overlay feature like it has been shown in some science fiction movies. A second tab at the video player is for information purposes showcasing the author and possible third party sources.

One of the key intentions of interactive video is to represent additional information or products within a video and to enable to shop for represented products. At Overlay.tv this feature has become enhanced by a new bar at the bottom of the player. This is a comfortable step, too, as one now may find presented products easily after watching a whole video.

Furthermore the player now is full screen enabled. Below there is a nice video with product presentations.

Internet Music TV with Personal Channels

MUZU is an internet music tv site and a vertical video sharing portal for music related content. It is a site for music lovers, artists and labels. The service enables everyone to start an internet music tv channel. Topics may range from artist features and interviews to gigs and music videos. Videos may become shared and embedded at third party sites.

There are even more features for artists and business networking. A recording studio is available to unsigned artists and a video tool to convert existing videos. Artists and labels may connect to the music industry for contacts and promotion.

Come2Play Widget and Social Gaming Platform

Come2Play is an online social gaming platform with some amazing opportunities. It is a platform with free multiplayer flash games to share and to embed at social networks and websites. This is already a great opportunity for gamers and to enrich sites. But by offering a couple of business opportunities Come2Play is much more.

There are business opportunities for publishers and developers available. To publishers (in this case blog or website publishers) have several options to embed content at their sites. The opportunities start with a simple widget integration followed by a customized widget gallery. In the latter case customization includes a free selection of ready to use games as well as co branding with an own logo. These game galleries may become shared by users and by this they are a free advertising and branding tool. The third option supplied is even more comprehensive. There are whole hosted gaming communities, which may become added to an existing project. At all these option there is monetization by sharing of advertising revenues.

The opportunities to game developers are amazing as those to website publishers. Come2Play offers a complete environment for game development and testing by an api. Created games may become hosted at the platform, which makes developers game publishers at the same time. Now developers are able to distribute their games through the Come2Play network or to share and develop a gaming community like it is offered to website publishers. Furthermore developers may earn even 100 % of the advertising revenue generated by their games.

For further information and advertising options visit the Come2Play homepage.

Document Sharing for Business Networking and Marketing

Business Thursday: Today a big part of doing business at the internet is about new contacts at the social web. A proven way to get in contact with prospects is by distributing useful information. Depending upon the business this may happen at general social networks and for b2b at particular business networking sites. For business networking some services have specialized explicitely in enabling the exchange of documents and to deliver relevant information. These services are as well value information sources as they are a place to distribute information and to collaborate on industry news and even to get content for blogs and websites by embedding documents.

A popular services for document sharing and collaboration as well as for generating leads by distributing information is Docstoc.com. There is a comprehensive service offer to exhange documents and even forms. The service is stuffed with a search engine to find related information and assorts documents by rubrics. Documents may become shared at blogs and websites.

Scribd is another already popular service with features to embed documents at third party sites. There is a broad range of categories available. Scribd has started to feature most popular documents lately at a site named Topics.

The edocr service is rather b2b oriented. The service is still in alpha mode with categories on construction, finance and government. The service encourages to upload documents, to collaborate on case studies and white papers and to promote a business.

New launched services are Issuu, a publishing and sharing hybrid, ThinkFree Docs by the collaboration and project management platform ThinkFree and WePapers, a document sharing and collaboration platform for scientific papers.

A first to Market Vertical for Product Reviews

This seems to be the first service that is offering a vertical search engine dedicated to product reviews. The service is called OpThink and it lists nothing else than reviews and user opinions about electronic products. Further verticals are planned.

Success Story about Instructional Videos

In a press release 5min, a video sharing site for how to and instructional videos, has informed that they now are reaching 110 million monthly unique users. This vast number is facilitated by a network of syndication partner sites, which may syndicate content by a proprietary content syndication platform, the VideoSeed platform. The content in indexed with semantic data to assure most relevant content. 5min foresees a bright future for properly targeted user generated content in a similar way as it has been reported here.

Another Insight into User generated Advertising

Here is another insight into user generated advertising. This is related to Wildptich.tv, which has been covered already here by this article. By a press release there is given some insight about the way business customers may assign artists at the Wildpitch.tv platform. At a cooperative press release by Wildpitch.tv and its business partner Kimochis it is reported how a creative has been selected from the Wildpitch.tv pool. It is a nice case study, which you may read by the full press release here.

The Convergence of Digital Signage and Mobile Marketing

Guest Article by Mobi33

The Power of Convergence

Over the past year, a tremendous amount of buzz has been generated by the convergence of digital signage and mobile marketing. Advertising agencies and ad networks want to know what convergence means for the future of their enterprises. This article will clear up some of the myths surrounding the buzz and show you how to prepare for the future of digital signage.

Mobile technology will soon be at the center of all cross-media advertising convergence. Look at the numbers and you'll understand why mobile is already on everyone's mind: The number of mobile subscribers worldwide rose from 11 million in 1990 to 2.6 billion this year; that number is projected to rise to 4 billion by 2010. And almost all mobile phones are capable of receiving ad content in one form or another.

Before you decide on a mobile strategy, you should understand two things: how mobile marketing works to your benefit, and how to determine the optimal configuration for your digital signage network.

If you're familiar with mobile marketing, you probably know that it's next to impossible for mobile carriers to push your ads directly to their subscribers. Meanwhile, mobile Internet is still in its infancy compared to online advertising. As a result, mobile ad content still relies on other forms of media in order to be distributed. But here's the key: As soon as mobile content takes up residence in a mobile phone, it produces a long-lasting effect.

A Merger That Makes Sense
The key to understanding the changing landscape of advertising lies in the simple fact that mobile ad content forms a symbiotic relationship with digital signage. It does this by solving some of the deficiencies associated with digital signage, such as information recall, distance of influence and lack of long tail marketing opportunities. On the other hand, digital signage is an excellent medium for generating leads from the natural traffic found in public venues.

In addition, mobile increases consumer engagement by offering a tangible benefit on the spot. Before consumers are willing to take part in any commercial activity, they want to know, What's in it for me? Consumers want answers to these questions:

Can you deliver the information I need right here? Right now?

Can you save me money?

Can I get something for nothing?

A clear Call to Action in the digital signage ad encourages viewers to respond to content that captures their interest. Viewers are given the option of calling in or sending a text message to receive product information and coupons on their mobile phones. Offering prizes for advertiser-sponsored sweepstakes and trivia games increases consumer engagement; few people understand the crucial role that prizes play in subliminally training consumers to look for deals on digital signage screens.

Planning a Mobile Strategy
Sweepstakes promotions create a win-win relationship for consumers and advertisers. For example, a franchise who has store presence in shopping malls is sponsoring a trivia question on the malls' digital signage network. Shoppers participate by calling in or sending a text message with the correct answer. All participants immediately receive a $5 coupon as SMS to their mobiles. Trivia winners have a chance to win an iPod in a weekly drawing. The iPod winners are notified by SMS after each drawing.

The coupons get consumers into the store even though the trip wasn't on their original agenda. Although most participants will not be winners, the weekly iPod drawing creates the opportunity to stay in contact with customers by sending them a "Thank you for participating" message as SMS. In addition, every SMS communication creates the opportunity to include a promotional message and a link to a mobile landing page. The goal, of course, is to create as many marketing opportunities as you can.

An optimal mobile marketing strategy must have the ability to:

deliver content to ad viewers' mobiles immediately

communicate with opt-in customers for future promotions

provide a mobile site that customers can access for future offerings

deploy text-to-win, voting, polling, surveys and trivia games

collect marketing data such as demographic information, signage site response rates and ad effectiveness



What kind of resources do you have to invest to implement this type of cutting-edge campaign? Less than you think. Thanks to next-generation software technologies, many components of mobile campaign deployment are fully automated, including: (1) mobile content delivery, (2) winner selection, (3) mobile alerts and notifications, (4) mobile Internet site creation, and (5) capturing of response data from consumers. With the software automation, new campaigns can be created in minutes and deployment cost can be kept to a minimum.

Content Access: An Important Consideration
The final element to consider is the choice of methods for content access. A content access channel makes it possible for consumers to send coupons and other information to their mobile phones. The most widely used channels are text messaging and interactive voice response (IVR).

IVR allows consumers to call a voice number and enter an ad code to receive content as SMS. Text messaging allows consumers to receive content as SMS by sending a short-code keyword. Some mobile marketing software platforms offer both access channels. You can use either channel independently or combine these two channels in your mobile marketing strategy. The strategy you choose will determine your deployment cost.

Research shows that text messaging is most popular among younger demographic groups. Older audiences are less likely to know how to text message—and therefore less likely to participate in text message campaigns. On the other hand, everyone knows how to call a voice number and enter an ad code from a keypad. An additional benefit of IVR is that the use of short-code keywords requires advertisers to pay a monthly fee; IVR ad codes incur no charges. Unless you're running a campaign that targets a younger audience, always use IVR as your access channel.

Short Term Goal
What does this mean for the future? The answer is clear: Digital signage networks will increasingly equip their ads with mobile response capability. Now is the time to start planning your mobile strategy. One suggestion is to work with a provider who can help you set up a test campaign. Once you're familiar with the process, you'll discover how easy it is to merge these two applications, especially since no hardware or software integration is required.

According to a recent survey, mobile is the most important emerging media, followed by digital signage. Due to their symbiotic relationship, the convergence of digital signage and mobile responses is sure to give rise to a powerful and effective advertising medium.

About Mobi33: Prepare for the Future Today
Learn more about how to put the power of convergence to work for you at mobi33.com. Mobi33 was the first company to develop a mobile platform that enables ad content to be accessed and delivered over multiple channels, including voice and SMS. Our interactive cross-media solutions maximize the effectiveness of any digital signage network. We also provide auto-generated mobile and online sites as landing pages for advertisers to conduct long tail marketing.

Visit www.mobi33.com to set up a test campaign.

Video Discussions and Presentations with VoiceThread

VoiceThread is an interesting multimedia presentation and Video application with some unique features. The presentation may include mostly all kind of media. The key feature of VoiceThread is the the interactivity of presentations. Visitors are able to add comments beside or within a presentation like it happens at some interactive video applications. The comments may become added by text, audio or video. With this feature VoiceThread is a great application for various purposes like collaboration, education or discussions. Related to video discussions VoiceThread may be compared with Seesmic.

Web based Video Communities with Business Opportunity

Business Thursday: Citizen entrepreneurship is a characteristic of social media. People may participate in business by a couple of means like widgets or even running own social media communities and Video is a feature with an own appeal.

Boostcast is a web based service, that enables everyone to run an own video sharing community even at an own domain. This service is customizable to give a unique look to particular communities. For monetization there are several up to date business opportunities offered like in stream advertising and community owners are able to integrate own advertising partners. To acquire new members to an own community this business opportunity may become passed on to attract new users. By this the up to date video community solution comes complete with an up to date business model.

Actually Boostcast already host nearly 20000 video communities. This figure may show that success will not achieved easily. A great concept might be needed and niches mostly are worth a try. To facilitate creativity Boostcast is offering an award to video community owners.

The BOBs Blog Award streams Award Ceremony Live

Tomorrow the award ceremony of The BOBs happens, a blog award. There are some great features added to the award ceremony. The ceremony will be streamed live at the internet and accompanied by live blogging realized by using the Cover it Live application, which has been covered here. That is great at all, but the best thing is that everyone may put the live video and blogging streams onto an own blog or website by embedding the codes. You may get the codes at the homepage of The BOBs or view the event at this page. Starting time is 27th Nov. 20 CET.

The AppAppeal Directory of Webbased Applications

AppAppeal is another directory for webbased applications like the already mentioned Go2Web20.net and Simple Spark. AppAppeal is an edited directory that looks for up to date webbased applications. Issues they mention for their choice of apps are easy use and registration processes. By this one may expect a quality choice of apps at AppAppeal without risks to join.

Glue combines Semantic Data with Social Networking and Shopping

Glue seems to me one of the first true semantic web applications. It is a social networking and social shopping hybrid. The Glue application is a browser bar, that connects to friends and others like a co browsing application. Opposite to most other co browsing applications Glue connects and interacts with particular web pages, which have enabled the Glue experience. Whereas there is no limitation actually this happens mostly at popular shopping destinations for books and movies and other things. By showing up the browser bar at enabled pages users are able to get reviews and recommendations by friends and other people and of course to add own ratings and reviews. People can also connect within the browser bar, join lifestreams of others and put their own lifestreams onto the web by connecting to other social networking services. Below there is a shared video supplied by Glue


Glue Overview from AdaptiveBlue on Vimeo.

The Tusavvy Social Search Engine

Tusavvy is further social search engine and again a social search engine with a different approach. The Tusavvy index is in part based on the social web and how people have linked websites and other data. The index ranks pages by popularity and other factors, where relevance and groups of interests are most important. By doing this the search engine aims to provide information important to niche interests. The index of the search engine is build by a crawler. But the main factor to crawl the web is following data at the social web.

This approach to crawling the web becomes visible at the search engine results pages (serps). The serps do consist of two different columns, pages discovered and tagged by people and most popular pages at the web at all. A nice and useful feature of the serps is the ability to add and delete keywords to narrow search results. There is also various factors to assort the search results, by date, by popularity and by the proprietory zRank. Tusavvy is in public beta actually and free to join.

OneRiot combines Social Search with Buzz Rankings

OneRiot is a new search engine, that has just been launched on 11th November and that claims to have 2 million members already. OneRiot is a search engine, that indexes the web. But the search results are based on a proprietary popularity ranking called the Pulse. The ranking of the search results is based on up to date popularity giving the results an aspect of a the live web search engine like SocialMention mentioned at social web research. The intention is to deliver most up to date information about queries.

The rankings at OneRiot are based on the behavior of the members and the exposure and popularity of web pages within the community. The popularity of sites or items becomes evaluated by members using a toolbar and communicating what pages or items have been bookmarked, visited or watched. There are a couple of tools for buzz research like indicators for the popularity of web pages at add ons.

Free Social Media Webinars at HubSpot

HubSpot is a webbased internet marketing suite. The service supplies some interesting social media marketing information at marketing ressources. There white papers and webinars beside others. HubSpot hosts live webinars and makes archived versions available. Especially at marketing tips and webinars there are a couple of interesting social media marketing papers and presentations. The following links to a comprehensive and free Social Media Marketing Kit download with a video and an ebook.

The HubSpot service is an interesting up to date internet marketing suite. The webbased service contains several publishing tools, a search engine optimized content management system and a publishing tool for business blogs. Furthermore there are optimization tools for search engine marketing and social media marketing. For both there are analytical tools integrated like keyword intelligence and link management, automated buzz monitoring and lead management. There are two versions, one for business owners and one for marketing agencies.

The Invision.tv Media Interface for Internet TV and Video

Invision is the next service in the range of the upcoming new web interfaces for tv and video. Invision.tv is describing themselve as a guide for internet tv and video. They got a lot to offer, full episodes and videos, and to find further stuff there is a video search engine. The content reaches from internet video to established tv channels. The site is easy to navigate and there is a broad choice of media already available at the homepage. Further media is located at the 'Channels' menu tab. Channels at the homepage may become assorted by date or popularity. Another way to find interesting stuff is by the tab 'Interests'.

Furthermore there are social networking capabilities integrated. People may connect with others to discuss and share media or create groups of interests. To members the interface is cusomizable and they may receive information about new episodes, shows or videos. Last but not least there is a playlist editor. Edited playlists may become shared with others or at the internet.

Mobile Commerce Applications and Services

Business Thursday: The mobile market is one of the most promising growth markets and now might be the right time to start a business to participate or to establish a mobile channel. There are some business opportunities that are most similar to the web and some that are unique. The most similar business opportunity to the web is to monetize mobile pages by advertising. Another opportunity is to monetize applications. Something unique in mobile business is premium sms messaging. In the following there are two webbased applications, which are easy to use for everyone and a took kit to monetize applications. For more professional business solutions have a look at mobile commerce and to monetize content by advertising visit mobile advertising.

Fortumo offers messaging services in european countries and china. These messaging service may become applied to offer premium content services and to create a sms chat box. People may either pay to receive content or to send messages. A more advanced option is the opportunity to create own sms campaigns and to offer rewards. An outstanding option is the ability to connect the premium content facility with YouTube. This way it is a way to monetize video content. The Fortumo service is free to join and offers ready to use applications and advanced service for developers. The business opportunity is based on revenue sharing. If you look for an international service, you may try TeleWord.

Playscreen is a mobile platform for user generated content, that has already been covered here.

Mogees is a service to monetize mobile applications. They are offering a tool kit that needs to become integrated into an application. By this the application may become transformed into a shareware version to sell the full version. Another way is to monetize applications by the subscription model. All the business is handled by the online service.

Internet Video Trends and Movies

Here are some interesting internet video and video business trends in addition to the post emedia trends, where it has been mentioned that internet video becomes narrative elements.

At first there is a article confirming that internet video becomes favored to the disadvantage of tv viewing.
Web Video Chips Away at TV

The conclusion is a need for new content and at least this will be in part user generated content. A research from Gartner has found an increasing demand for Protail Video, a term describing semi professional content and similar to the term prosumer.
Gartner: Demand For 'Protail' Video On The Rise

The latter trend is followed by marketers looking for new advertising opportunities.
The Suits Are All About New Media

Opposite to this there seems to be some trouble in the range of professionally produced internet video formats like webisodes. The following article reports about lay offs, which might be reasoned in the weak economy. Personally I think that people are able to evaluate content and that there is a true favor for internet content just because of the success. The Gartner research is confirming this. At least it seems that the market of professionally produced internet video formats is not booming like social media.
Hyped Web Video Sector Starts to Hurt

The above context is difficult to match with the following. There are two further websites offering free content, movies and tv episodes, which one usually would describe as premium content. This is the german MSN Movies website and Crackle, a Sony property. I had already fun at Crackle by watching shorts. But in the context of the content business one may either think of a wise strategic step because of tough competition or one needs to question the value of professionally produced content. At all it seems that it will be most difficult to establish a business based on the paid content business model. Especially this might be due to the early hyped video on demand business model.
Sony Shapes Snappier Crackle

There are two other articles with future media trends. This concerns the use of the so called White Spaces. This is free part of the broadcasting signal, which either may be used for broadband internet connection or as a backchannel to realize interactive tv. Probably it will be used for both. Great news for new media enthusiasts. The second article is about an interactive tv pilot project in the US.
Google, Microsoft Win Big With FCC 'White Spaces' Ruling
LIN TV to Test Interactive Television

Taboola Video Recommendation Engine with Advertising and Business Opportunities

Taboola is a video discovery and recommendation solution. The system analyses video content and matches it with the user behavior. To publishers Taboola is offering the video discovery platform called ViDiscovery. It is a customizable video recommendation solution to engage viewers and to increase the retention at a website by a personalized video experience. The business opportunity consists of an integrated video advertising solution called DiscoverAd. Further information about the system and for advertisers is available at the website.

Further video advertising solutions and business opportunities are available by the tags below.

Developing Widgets on a PaaS for Flex

Adobe has launched a public beta platform for the development of rich media applications aka widgets. The platform is called Cocomo. Cocomo is a PaaS, which means that both the development tools and the application hosting is managed by Adobe. There are already a lot of cool features available like voip, collaboration and file sharing.

The Junta42 Article Rating Service now features Top Blogs

Junta42 is a content marketing portal offering an article rating service for content marketing and content publishing articles. They now have launched a new rating service for content marketing blogs. The ranking service is scoring blogs and offers widgets for every blog just beside the rankings.

There are a lot of useful tools and business opportunities at Junta42. Right at the homepage there is a rating service for content marketing articles. Articles may become submitted by authors or are gathered by editors of the service. For business there is a matching services, which brings together marketers and publishers of consumber and business content.

Other marketing related article ranking service are Sphinn, which is about online marketing at all, and the search engine marketing related SEO Voter. Find more marketing business networks.

Co Browsing with Plista

A new co browsing application has been launched. The service is called Plista. As the other covered co browsing applications the tool enables to share interesting sources and to leave comments at third party websites. And there are a couple of further things this application can do. Plista makes recommendations in several ways. There are suggestions and a menu to navigate as well as matching with other people and their choice of websites. The latter feature may be used to find like minded people. Furthermore there are intelligent recommendations based on the user behaviour and made available by the self learning application. This is a similar feature like the just introduced newsfeed applications do offer. Last but not least it is a social networking applications to share sources and information with others, known and newly matched friends. The application is free.

PostRank filters Newsfeeds for Buzz and Information

PostRank is newsfeed filter that enables to find the most popular and the most related information. The application automates two important tasks, looking for popular feeds and personalization to find related news. For both tasks there is a buzz filter to find the most engaging content at the socialsphere. PostRank is doing this by analysing social media sources like posts about an issue and resulting acitivities like bookmarking and commenting. The application may become used online as a webbased reader or with nearly every application, browsers or newsreader software. There is a video introduction available, a particular page for users and for developers.

Filtering information is a great way to manage possible information overload. Another way to organize information overload might be the use of self learning applications that filter and suggest resources automaticly like FeedHub or Feeds 2.0. Here you will find further newsfeed applications.

YouTube Live Event

YouTube will host a live event on 22th November. There is a big announcement at YouTube Live. It will be a major global event with all kind of artists, big stars and independents, comedians and scientists. The event celebrates all participants of the site and will be streamed from San Francisco. Find further information at the YouTube Live site.

Online Gallery for Vector Art

Vector Art is using vector graphics for art. It is a kind of computer graphics and as usual one may do many things using a computer program. But generally I would describe vector art as a way to make illustrations and of course electronic images. There is a new online gallery and artist community dedicated to vector art managed and founded by two artists, Jared Nickerson and Brad Mahaffey. By this one may expect a lot of good stuff and expert opinion. The galley is called BloodSweatVector.

Spot.us matches Citizens with Journalists

The approach of Spot.us to journalism is a hybrid of citizen journalism and conventional reporting. Spot.us is calling it 'community funded reporting'. The way this is done happens by several steps. The initial step is to suggest a story. Then people become matched with journalists, if someone is interested in the subject and pitches it. Now people may fund the story by donating money. The rights to a resulting story may become bought by a news publisher or available to everyone by a creative commons license.

Motive Interactive offers Ajax based Media Planning Tool

Ajax has changed the way websites are created and navigated. Motive Interactive is bringing this great experience to media planning. The innovative interface is called Advent 2.0. It is available to advertisers as well as to publishers. Both parties now can control the performance using a most comfortable interface. There are a couple of presentations available at the homepage. The Motive Interactive network is offering performance based advertising and affiliate marketing. Advertisers may buy display advertising, too.

Social Networking with Artificial Intelligence

TrueThinker enhances social networking with artificial intelligence. It is a knowledge management and networking tool for information gathering, storing and sharing. The webbased service offers a personalizable interface that is based on ajax. Artificial intelligence is used to assort the information and for search. Members are able to create public and private groups. The service is fee based and by this free of ads and targets private as well as business users. To try the service there is a free trial available.

In the future for sure further services will embrace artificial intelligence to enhance social networking and other kind of services. This will enable further interactions between applications and fulfill automated tasks. To learn more about TrueThinker there are a couple of presentation available at the homepage.

Further information about artificial intelligence.

New Media Hub and Surf Board with innovative Interface

With Radus another service has launched offering a new kind of interface to experience and surf the web. It is a social network aggregator at the same time offering access to various social media networks including facilities to post from within the web application. Radus describes itself as a media hub and content discovery tool. This is a main feature of the homepage with up to date news and a side bar at the right to access various topics. The news section of course is customizable and beside popular sources news from most active users are displayed. What makes it useful for music and video is a playlist editor at the bottom of the right to create personlized playlists.

A Blog Publishing Network to Earn Money

There are a couple of strategies to earn money by blogging. Usually this happens by blogvertising. But this does require some knowledge about the advertising landscape and mostly a serious amount of visitors to earn a reasonable amount of money and to be accepted by an advertising network. To join a blog publishing network that pays for blogging might be an alternate option. Being part of a network assures some visitors by networking and the earning opportunity comes with the network.

So does today. It is a blog publishing network serving both novice and experienced bloggers. Newbies are invited to start an own blog using the free blog hosting service. Experienced bloggers may submit their blog to the directory. The latter is useful at all as today has an own blog search engine to become found and a directory with a broad array of topics. You may register here.

Another blog publishing network that aims to pay for blogging is Overblog. Whereas free publishing is already available the earning opportunity actually is announced to come soon. Nevertheless it already might be an interesting networking option as Overblog is available in multiple languages and does encourage bloggers to connect with each other.

And of course there is Blogger. With Blogger one gets easily connected to Google Adsense, which might become integrated without programming skills by a widget.

Social Web Research and Popularity Indexes

Business Thursday: Finding popular sources is a crucial mean of research to find and interact with influencers. Here are some new services to research the blogosphere, forums and the social web.

BoardsMD.com is a research tool for boards and forums. They have an own ranking system called the Health Score. This ranking system counts the number of members of forums, the amount of posts and the activity by scoring discussions. There are a lot of tools available to find and match forums related to topics and to find most active forums. Furthermore there are several monitoting tools, email alerts to stay informed about particular boards and at the website there are rankings about various topics. Last but not least board owners may become listed at the directory.

TopOfBlogs is a blog ranking service using own metrics and integrates third party metrics, which makes it a meta tool for blog research. They are counting pageviews and feed subscribers. Integrated third party services are Google PageRank, Alexa Ranking and Technorati Ranks. Blogger may list their weblog at the directory.

DiggTop shows top rated stories and media at Digg. It is a desktop tool to gather information and for monitoring.

SocialMention is both a search engine and research tool. It monitors and searches the social web in real time and by this it is showing up to date search results. The search engine is able to find various kind of media and posts. It searches blogs, bookmarks, news, videos and even comments and microblogging services.

You will find further related popularity indexes and social media research tools by the link Social Media Research.

Business and Start Up Valuation Services and Tools

Some new services with information about start ups have been launched. These may either offer information about launch time or more insights into the business with information about collaboration, merger and financial valuation.

Watching the start up market is done by FirstEntrant.com. It is a social networking site monitoring which company has entered the market first. The site has lists about several vertical social media ranges like social bookmarking, business networking and video sharing sites. To watch start ups and new market entries in the range of social media and web apps there are two other interesting directories listing closed alpha and beta as well as fully launched services, Go2Web20.net and Simple Spark.

The PDEC KIT is a special online service to monitor the financial performance of companies financed by venture capital. There are particular reports available about social networking and online advertising companies. A more general business valuation service is available by BizBuySell, a marketplace to buy and sell companies.

Twitter Research Tools

Here is a choice of further Twitter tools for marketing and research. In general there is a trend to more professional marketing tools and analytics. This concerns the analysis of unfollowing and the influence of members as well as the value of posts.

Friends and Members

Just tweet it is a directory of Twitter users to find other like minded people.
tweetmeme shows communications.
TweetWheel is a research tool for relationships.
Twemes shows global tags and conversations.
Twinfluence analyses the influence of members.
TwitterLess informs about unfollowing.
Tweeple Twak, actually in private alpha, aims to analyse unfollowing.

Monitoring Tools

SocialTops.com is a popularity index for posted stories and topics. You need to click on Today's Top or somewhere else as no stories have been found at the homepage itself.
TweetBeep.com is a monitoring tool for topics and names.

Statistics

Tweetrush visualizes usage stats for Twitter and Twitter clients.
TwitGraph analyses user activity and visualizes topics by the frequency of words.
What's your Tweet worth evaluates the value of posts.

Last but not least there is a new blog dedicated to twittering: TwiTip

WordTracker released a Keyword Tool for Q&A Queries

WordTracker is an online tool to research relevant keywords for search engine optimization. It makes it easy to find words relevant to business segments, that one may use within a website to be found. WordTracker now has released a service dedicated to real questions. By Keyword Questions one now is able to find questions related to business segments and may target these questions instead of particular keywords alone.

WordTracker is a recommendable service offering free and premium services, which are both available at the homepage. Furthermore there is a free keyword suggestion tool available.

The MP3 Ghetto Blaster is here

I already wondered how the problem of tiny smartphone screens will become solved related to viewing videos on a mobile phone. The solution rather will be flexible screens and even foldable or rollable screens made of technologies like epaper than a ghetto blaster design. But might a ghetto blaster styled mobile phone with a big screen be an alternative and comfortable option? (Is there a ghetto blaster on the market equipped with phone and networking facilities?) It might be or might not, but here is a solution for mp3. It is a shopping bag with a ghetto blaster look, that is equipped with real speakers and a port for mp3 players. Well, it might be a convenient gadget for picnics and such occasions: The Ghetto Blaster Tote

User generated Advertising at Current.com

Using a thorough approach the news sharing site Current is matching citizen journalism with user generated advertising. Current is a well known site to share written news and video news. A success story has been reported by ReadWriteWeb that Current makes millions by user generated advertising. This of course supposes that the feature is worth to have a look. It is easily to become found right at the top menu and by this it is an essential part of the homepage. The link refers to a particular page called Viewer Ads. At this page visitors are encouraged to make an advert. At the top there are some ads and below sponsoring offers by advertisers. It seems to be a fair and lucrative business as further information is telling that spots aired at Current will earn 2500 dollars and if a spot is aired by a sponsor elsewhere, too, the opportunities are even rising up to 60000 dollars. Below there is the coverage by ReadWriteWeb with some further information.

Has Current Solved the User Generated Advertising Mystery?

New Overlay Advertising Solution for Internet Video

Keystream is a new video advertising provider, which uses the overlay feature of interactive video. An ad becomes implemented within a video and opens in new windows, if one clicks on it. The system is supplied as software as a service serving both advertisers and publishers. What is different with other providers of interactive video advertising is that the solution searches and finds blank spaces within a video automaticly. At these spaces the adverts may become placed.

An Email Marketing Report with Fresh Metrics

A free email marketing report has been published by Mailer Mailer, a webbased email and newsletter marketing solution provider. The report covers industry sectors and key elements that influence email click and open rates. A key finding has been that emails now are opened sooner with about one third within the first two hours. Probably this is because a better and ongoing integration of internet tools into working processes. The report has analysed "over 350 million emails in 21 different industries from the first six months of 2008".

Email Marketing Metrics Report

Amazing Online Advertising Innovation within Calendars

This is a real online advertising innovation. Calgoo provides In Calendar Advertising with this first to market application. It might become for calendars what advertising at maps is for local advertising. The application is compatible with major online calendars and even available for outlook. There are amazing targeting opportunities right suitable to events noted at a calendar. For businesses it might even be an opportunity to get quotes and offers for their event planning. The service has just launched and is even looking for campaign ideas within a forum at the Calgoo website.

eMoney Applications for Facebook

iCoins is a provider of electronic money and wallet systems enabling sending and receiving money online for free. They now have released a Facebook application with an integrated money transfer system. The application is called Hotcoins. It is a free money transfer system and prize game at the same time. People may transfer money free of charge and anonymously like using cash. The system may be used for any purposes like making gifts or paying someone. To exchange the electronic money into real cash there is the CoinJars ewallet application available at Facebook, which connects to a licensed emoney issuer. Further information about the system is available at the iCoins homepage, for further electronic money and incentive systems for social media usage click here.

Using Social Media for Online Support and Business

Business Thursday: The social media sphere is a space of communications and interacting both for business and private purposes. Usually it is about information. Some services are going beyond this by offering real business services for website support. These services are helpful to website owners and service providers in any case and do help even small companies or private publishers to realize a real time support service.

A service to realize online support is Get Satisfaction. It is a social support platform already delivering support services for thousands of companies and products. The service is used by some real big companies and newcomers like Twitter. At the Get Satisfaction platform employees as well as users meet to deliver support and advices. At the same time it is a great tool to get feedback from customers. Support services do happen at the Get Satisfaction website by linking to it. To offer contact within a site there is a widget available.

Expert services are another way to offer online support. But usually these platforms are indepent businesses that are not related to particular websites or products. Nevertheless these platforms can be used to offer support serivces and to enrich the experience of a website. There are even business opportunities for new revenue streams by affiliate programs and offering advices beyond the own homepage. To offer support by using an expert service one needs to join an expert network. As a member one may link to an own profile or service offer from a website and serve foreign customers that are visiting the platform. Two services offering such services are LivePerson and Support Space.

Remixable Film Content

To easily copy content is as well an advantage as a problem of digital media. MOD Films aims to make a business out of the advantages and the remixing culture. The company produces remixable film content and film production methods. Remixable films are described as a kind of sampling. Examples are available at MOD Films services and further content by another site of the company, remixable.tv.

Machinima Sources and Videos

I did some further research about of machinima and have found a diversified genre. Furthermore I have found a nice advertising example with complete information about how this video has been made and furthermore some sources and video sharing sites.

The machinima genre does differ by the available forms of media as described at the already mentioned wikipedia machinima article. At first there are all kind of electronic games, primarily mmorg and video games. A video sharing site for this kind of genre is machinima.com. It is a typical video sharing site with a lot of short videos. Nice to view are the featured videos, where my favorite has been the Dude series. Further video sharing site for videos made within games are Gamerz Theatre and sims99.com.

Different to videos with game scenes are the videos made within virtual worlds. A video sharing site dedicated to virtual reality worlds is Koinup. It is a place to share avatars and other created virtual reality items. By the media tab at the menu one reaches the machinima genre. A recommendable artist is Giu. Some further virtual reality videos are available again by a second life channel at machinima.com.

As a third kind of genre one may describe the use of special software independly from third party media as described above. This kind of software enables to easily create videos without programing skills. Related software is mentioned at the wikipedia machinima article.

The latter is the way Volvo has created a video to promote the V50. At the Game On Project homepage there is the award winning video available. Furthermore the whole production process is described, which makes it a nice case study.

Here are some further sources. A community of interest to promote the machinima genre is Celebrating Machinima. The site has a forum and does enable video uploads. Machinima 101 is another forum. At Second Life there is a particular page for information on how to create Machinima at the Creation Portal. Last but not least there is a machinima channel at Twitter.

Personally I am something fascinated by the idea to make a movie within a virtual reality world by playing real world and to start a virtual film production and studio. You may contact, if you feel the same by the contact at the bottom at the left.

Vidize is a Video Talk Show Application

Vidize.com is an online application to host and record video talk shows online and to publish these show on blogs and websites. After joining the service the talk master is able to invite guests to join the show and record the contributions of all participants. Participation does happen by webcams. The whole show will be stored and can become embedded at blogs and websites.

Another but different talk show tool is TalkShoe. This applications works by phone calls and enables audio recordings.

Some amazing eMedia Trends

At the end of very month I do some basic research for the update of FOLDEN.INFO and I have found some really interesting articles and trends, that are most related to the topics here at emediablogger. This concerns interactive video and is even related to the former post about machinima, interactive films made within virtual reality or games.

At the first article there is an expert opinion that there is not only a shift toward video consumption at the internet, but that there is evolving a new kind of media format. This new format is described as storytelling by video. Whereas there is no example mentioned, I do think about the latest movements of converging various forms of internet media into new kinds of services. Exemplary I do think about interactive video services like the new YouTube feature to link videos or Seesmic, which is for video conversations enabled by follower functions that are usually available at microblogging services. Last but not least there are the live video services, that are beloved here. You will find this statement at the end of the following article.

Online Video Market Evolves, Begins Morphing Into New 'Storytelling' Device

The second case, that is related to new narrative forms of video, are alternative reality games. At these kind of games there is a given and designed playground with a story and some characters. But the story and the game evolves by the engagement of users, who are solving tasks and contribute to the story. This happens as well in the real world as online by using all means that seem to be suitable. At the article especially the usage of internet video is mentioned and the possibilities for marketing. Here is a wikipedia definition of alternate reality games.

Industry Watch: Games Break Loose

Last but not least two articles about an interactive tv advertising pilot project and the emerging social media space.

MPG, Navic Test Interactive Ads (TV)

Social media goes global

Of course there have been more noteworthy occurrences. If you like to have a look at my review of latest internet marketing and emedia trends, you may visit the monthly internet trend coverage at FOLDEN.INFO. To stay connected and to be informed about updates you may either subscribe to the full text newsletter or to the newsfeed, which links to the newsletter contains parts of it.

User generated Advertising might be a true Business Opportunity

Here is a success story from the other side, the users part. The New York Times reported about a guy who made 200000 dollars by user generated advertising. This confirms that user generated advertising is serious. On one side there is money and on the other side there is a real business opportunity for creators. What might be necessary to succeed? Usually there is a need of a larger audience that may become reached by viral video or widgets. This may be the case for the uga systems that work by voting. The other option is to be creative and to capture the idea of a product. A good example and another success story is the ad that has been created for the super bowl for some time. There has been an award, which has been won by a guy driving in a car and eating chips. The story has been that the spot made it to tv and that is has cost just a couple of dollars to make it.

Finding a Gold Mine in Digital Ditties.

User generated Advertising Sources

Do you know Machinima?

I found an article related to the video posted a couple of days ago showing a scene within Second Life. There is a special term describing such videos. It is Machinima. I have not known this, but this is what research is for. Here is a link to a definition at wikipedia. The article describes Machinima as "animated films created by using a number of different game or virtual world engines" and is stating that this kind of films may be an option for marketers. This is similar to my statement at the former post, in some way marketing related and a possible new form of journalism.

Machinima is a futuristic, viral option for marketers

Video Start Up Clipta aims to index 1 Billion Videos

Clipta.com is a video search engine and video sharing network that has been launched in May 2008. Now a new and self learning deep web crawler technology has been implemented. Using this technology Clipta aims to crawl 1 billion videos up to 2010. Actually about 35 million videos have been indexed by the search engine.

According to a press release Clipta is one of the fastest growing search providers worldwide and has found an investor lately. An interesting issue are the markets, where the video search engine is available. Beside others Clipta.com has started by targeting some of the most populized markets by being available in english, chinese, japanese, portuguese and spanish.

The Need for Social Media Engagement

Business Thursday: Social media sites and activities for social networking are now reported as mainstream according to the latest social media stats according to up to social media statistics Twitter is the fastest growing social media network and if Twitter itself has already become mainstream is the issue of a discussion. However, being in the tv news and being subject of a an article of the Wallstreet Journal is something significant and indicates the importance. This is a real and nice success story for a service, especially as mostly everyone who visited it for the first time has been wondering what it is about. It has been a place, where people are telling what and where they will eat.

The conclusion for marketers now is that social media has become the place to be. Whereas up for now the discussion was on how to become evolved and where, now the need to be represented is emphasized at marketing publications. This trend is a business opportunity for all participants. Up to date business opportunities have always been a part of the emediablogger weblog. Some recommendations to find relevant services are the tags business, social shopping and widgets.

Co Browsing and Information Management by Online Annotations and Notes

This is the fourth part and for now the last part of the co browsing software and tools series. At this article annotation tools and information sharing services with sticky notes at third party websites are introduced.

Online annotation services enable to share information about a site either by a social networking community or by sticky notes at websites. There are annotation services strictly for sticky notes and others are real social networks. The way these services do work is most different, too. Usually there is a browser plugin necessary to make annotations, but the information sharing can happen in completely different ways. As diverse as the services work so are the purposes they may be used for. But at all online annotation services are closer to clickstreams and used for information sharing even in a professional way opposite to co browsing with chat.

At first there are the social networks, where Diigo is probably known best and the service with the most features. Diigo works by a browser extension. It enables to make sticky notes and to share these notes by different means. Information can be tagged and there are buzz and top lists. To find like minded people and relevant information the service is stuffed with a recommendation engine. It is a real research and information sharing service, which is offering particular conditions to educators. Another annotation service that works with a browser extension is Fleck. Fleck enables social notes and information sharing.

Reframe It offers two different way to share information and to make annotations. This may either happen by a plugin or within the community. When browsing from within the community the information will appear within a sidebar. Too, collected information and annotations may be shared by emailing a link.

Another way of sharing information about a website is by citing it. kwout is a tool to share whole websites or citing parts of it. For sharing members get an own website or can post the citations to other social networks. Quotations are also a feature of SharedCopy.com. Annotations and quotes may be shared with others and posted to other social networks. A further step beyond does ShiftSpace. It is an open source software that even enables to change the look of a website for sharing.

Last but not least there are collaboratiion tools. A.nnotate and Stixy do enable to make annotations to uploaded documents, that may be changed or complemented by co workers.

There are a couple of further tools that have been reviewed lately at FOLDEN.INFO. If you are interested in these have a look at information management.

New Widget Platform for Data MashUps

youcalc is a new widget platform that has a directory and a community with widget creation tools. It is a vertical widget platform dedicated to data. Data is supplied by youcalc, which is gathering information by data sources at the web. The data can be used for analysis and calculations and to generate data presentations and research. What is making the youcalc widgets advantageous in comparison with presentations is the feature of up to date information. Visitors who see a widget on a blog or website will always see information that is updated in real time.

Presentations from the Web 2.0 Expo Berlin

To those who are interested in the Web 2.0 Business here is a link to a lot of presentations from the event.

Nice Video about Crowd Sourcing at Virtual Worlds

I came across a nice video, which shows something like crowd sourcing in virtual reality worlds. It is a video about a group of women, who seem do have assembled. Then they are swarming into the virtual world of Second Life and do visit some places. They do either look like some activists or something like a workforce or maybe they have just gathered because of common interests. Whereas in some way it might be natural that groups arise within virtual worlds or that groups are made professionally for some purposes, this video is giving something like an impressive view of such groups and their power. And while the video has something like a journalistic style one may think about a new form of journalism and reporting from within and about virtual worlds. Ok, there are already journals about games and virtual reality, but have a look how this video has caught the scene. Unfortunately the video ends a bit adrupt.

A Platform for User Generated Mobile Content

Playscreen is platform for user generated content used at mobile phones and a mobile commerce system. The service is dedicated to everyone as well as to professionals. There are tools for wallpapers and ringtones. Members may use own images and sell them by using the mobile commerce system. The same is due to ringtones. Ringtones may either consist of available media or may become created with the Playscreen Music Mixer. The ringtone feature too does offer bands and musicians a way to promote tracks and montize by selling ringtones at a mobile content portal.

Social Networking is as popular as Email is

There are some up to date stats about social media usage available. Now about 75 % of internet users do connect with others by social networking. Additionally users do embrace other social media services like blogs to be informed, do use recommendations and reviews as well as video sharing sites. 75 % is an amazing large share and one may contemplate if social networking is replacing email in part. Email up for now has always been the number one internet activity. A couple of years ago it has been considered if newsfeeds would replace email. Newsfeeds today are used everywhere, but these are not interactive as email and social media are. But newsfeeds are an enabling technology for social networking and by this it seems that those considerations might become real.

The mentioned study, which I became aware of by an article at ReadWriteWeb, has been released by Forrester Research .

Report: Social Web Usage Tipped in 2008

Researching Popularity for Social Media Campaigns

Business Thursday: A successful campaign does always need a basic research where to start. For social media campaigns this means to find relevant publications or buzz at the live web and for shopping it might be recommendations. The second step will be to find the most popular places to be most effective. At the same being represented at popular services is a proven mean to publishers to become noticed.

To find relevant places there are two basic strategies. One may either research a topic at a vertical directory like blog directories or choose to start at the big social media sites by looking for opinion leaders based on their activity or the amount of followers and the like. The decision where to start depends on the issue of the campaign. Blog directories are an ideal way to research a topic. Particular topics may also be represented at large social media sites, but in general these do already target the mass market. Exemplary for the latter are new features offered lately like offering music to broad audiences. To start at large social media sites the motto is to become involved by making interesting offers e.g. by widgets.

Even while new social media technologies like lifestreaming and live applications become popular, weblogs do remain a basic mean. This is due e.g. for the popular lifestreaming service FriendFeed as I have found that there is no way to add a particular newsfeed to own lifestream profile. The newsfeed must either be collected from within a blog or become added by a third party service like Twitter.

So blogs are really a good way to start researching sources for a social media campaign and to find relevant sources. Furthermore opinion leading blogs do mostly refer to other important sources that may become a starting point for a campaign. blog directories as well as popularity indexes for social media research are available at FOLDEN.INFO.

Instant Website Chat with Business Opportunity

Gabbly is an instant chat application, that neither require an installation nor to join a network. The service has an ingenious simple way to put a chat onto a blog or website. Simply the url of a website needs to be added behind the url of the Gabbly homepage and a chat window will appear. For the emediablogger it looks like that: click gabbly.com/emediablogger.blogspot.com and you are welcome to the chat. By closing the chat window one becomes relocated to the original url of the website using the chat. Advanced features are embedded and private chat rooms.

There is a business opportunity by using the embedded chat and replacing the ad within the chat window by own adverts. Read more or try the chat at the Gabbly homepage.

Video Gift Guide enables Interactive Video Shopping

There has been a lot of posts about interactive video and video shopping lately. Video Gift Guide now is launching a new service that will seriously use interactive video to feature goods. The site will launch finally on 24th November, but there a video introduction available showing the interactive parts and aims to use them and giving some general information. So there will be shopping shows that are live. At the range of shopping this is another innovation. At the shows special deals will be introduced by real people and viewers are encouraged to request product introductions and deals.

The concept reminds on crowd sourcing to facilitate affordable prices. For now I wonder how the website will look, when the service does launch finally. As the shows will be live it will rather not become a video shopping directory like the introduce video shopping sites Shopflick or Talk Market. It might be one show every day like Woot does it with one product every day.

There is a Twitter Channel to keep updated with news about Video Gift Guide.