www.dpingram.com

This article from Mashable (original article)

MySpace to Exclusively Stream Rip Curl Shows
April 24, 2007 — 05:12 PM PDT — by Kristen Nicole, Mashable
MySpace has just announced an agreement with Rip Curl, a company dedicated to products and events surrounding action board sports.

With the exclusive partnership, Rip Curl content will be broadcast and promoted on MySpace. Rip Curl Search TV shows, their International Films back catalog, and streaming and event video productions from Rip Curl contests will show on MySpace and their own website. As both companies have a global audience, the deal is beneficial for all parties involved. Rip Curl reaches a broader audience, and MySpace ramps up their online video offerings, moving beyond the realm of user-generated content to more premium offerings.

The deal signifies the onset of a new video strategy for MySpace, which is important as they play catch-up to YouTube, who has landed several deals with broadcast networks, and Joost, who has recently signed deals with several players in the indie film market.

YouSendIt, the file delivery SaaS business solution, will announce today that it has raised $10 million in funding.

The Series B round of venture capital financing came from Sigma Partners, Alloy Ventures and Sevin Rosen Funds. YouSendIt is a file delivery service that securely sends and tracks time-sensitive and and high-value digital documents of all sizes. As a business solution, YouSendIt can be used for sending desktop applications, productivity tools, ISPs and Web-based portals. As they try to expand their reach in the business world, funding will help further their growth editor (what else do people use funding for?!). They will be adding inter-company business collaboration to their service offerings and integrate YouSendIt into the workflow of their customers in an effort to increase productivity.

YouSendIt has already raised over $10 million in funding prior to this most recent round.

source: Kristen Nicole at Mashable

After recent news that MySpace was blocking Photobucket photos and videos, it seems that they are back on.

It seems the original rift developed because MySpace objectied to Photobucket’s sponsored content infringing on MySpace’s own advertising property. Photobucket has now issued a statement:

“Moving forward, we’ve established open lines of communication and procedures with MySpace to prevent a sudden block of Photobucket content in future. We want our users to be able to share their content and understand it must be within the framework of MySpace’s Terms of Service for it to appear on the site.”

Facebook looks as though its about to launch free local classified service. The service will probably allow free classifieds posting to your own Facebook networks, with a small fee for posting outside your networks to the broader community.

The source of the rumour is a survey that was sent to facebook users that looked something like this:

Imagine you log onto facebook one day and find a new classifieds feature, where you can connect with other users to buy/sell goods and services in your local area. You see that it is FREE to make a post to any network you are in.

1. Knowing it’s free, would you list something to your network?
Yes
No

2. If you were making a free listing for something in your network, would you also want to list it in nearby networks?
Yes, I would.
No, I wouldn’t.
I said I wouldn’t list an item.

3. If you said you would want to list your item in nearby networks in addition to your network, would you be willing to pay to do this?
Yes, I would.
No, I wouldn’t
I wouldn’t be at all interested in listing in nearby networks.

4. How much would you be willing to pay for each additional network (knowing your own network will be free)?
50 cents
$1.00
$2.50
$5.00
I don’t think it’d be worth any money.

There is some general concern being voiced that Facebook will piss off people that have used Facebook’s API to deliver features like this, but that comes with the API territory I guess.

Pete Cashmore at Mashable has the full story and screenshots.

YouTube is said to be introducing ad revenue shares with users, 50:50, in the near future. Users will select ads from a range of ads in the YouTube network and the chosen ad will then run inline with their video (something akin to Revver ads). Users will then share 50:50 in the resultant click-though revenue.

There are obvious concerns that advertisers have had, in terms of control of what content their ads appear alongside (ie concerns of innappropriate content, illegal content, or copyright infringing content) so there will be a few things to work out before it can go into production, but you better bet its on its way.

I got a GREAT piece of DM this morning. A hand written DL envelope with two things inside: a small platic magnifying glass about 2 inches in diameter, and a single sheet of A4 paper with the following URL printed in TINY FONT in the middle:

http://haveacloserlook.com/davidingram

The company that semnt it is http://www.vialuna.co.uk/

Charlene Li has just published her Social Technographics report for Forrester. It states that many companies see social media as a set of features that they should be incrementally adding to their consumer offerings. Charlene sees a different view (that makes obvious sense I might add) that companies should not just wade in and start adding features without first considering what it is they are seeking to achieve. By understanding what their customers do, and the varying levels of possible social participation, you can set a more effective strategy for social engagement. Obviously the strategy is what then drives the product features.

One of the findings mirrors past figures that I have stated, that is that 13% of US Online adults are ‘creators’ meaning they actually contribute to the user-generated-content (be it blogs, YouTube, MySpace, etc). I have previously quoted 10%. Prior to Forrester’s ‘ladder’ of engagement, we’ve used a simplistic 10:90 ratio of contributors (publishers) to 90 just viewers (consumers). (though by being a publisher you are also a consumer, so i guess you’d have to correctly state that as 10:110). The research breaks down that binary view into a bit more granularity.

Here as an except is her illustration showing 6 levels of engagement.

The Minibar event on Friday night at The Truman Brewery in East London was a great session, with (i guess) 200+ people in attendance. Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntu/Canonical gave a headline talk about Ubuntu a viable open source and free Linux alternative to the MS dominance. I also personally met up with Glan Thomas of design shop Substance, Alex Straub of Truphone, Paul O’Nolan a consultant at IRRI, Gavin O’Carroll at Rememble, and Margaret Gold of Mobile Innovation.

By and large the presentations were good, but most could have done with a simple demo (our own included). The only demo I remember was Gavin O’Carrol from Rememble.com, and it was a valiant effort by one man trying to operate keboard, mouse, and hold the microphone simultaneously while battling with terrible feedback. Still, well done Gavin, it worked out well.

Yes, so izimi should have demoed, thats the feedback I’ve been getting, so we’ll do next time. I learnt a lesson: with just five minutes you can either try to cram in all the facts with words and slides, or you demo just two of three key things and then leave the audience to follow it up. Conslusion is that to this technically aware audience a set of slides comes across as bull*, but a demo speaks volumes. Shame that when I spoke to the organizers a demo wasnt even suggested as possible.

Another that would have benefitted from a demo was Truphone. Alex showed us a really cool demo of what his VoIP over WiFi from your mobile (throw away your SIM!!!) could do while we chatted before the presos started. Then when he did his 5 minutes he just talked and it was no-way as interesting. My lesson is learnt.

I’ll be speaking about izimi and meeting other internet people at the next Minibar event in London on April 20th.

Minibar is a social-business evening in East London which offers people a chance to snaffle some free beer while discussing p2p, Creative Commons, web applications, social networking and general Web 2.0 (3.0) mayhem & fandango. Usually there are upwards of 200 of London’s - and beyond - finest web entrepreneurs.

Go here for info on Openbusiness and Minibar in general
Go here for info specific to the April 20th event, attendees list, speakers, etc.

Spending on UK internet advertising surged in 2006, overtaking newspaper ads for the first time. Online advertising expenditure jumped 41.2% to £2.01bn during the year, the report by the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers said.

In contrast, spending on national newspaper ads grew just 0.2% to £1.9bn, taking a 10.7% share of the market. But despite online ads taking an 11.4% market shares, internet ad spending was just over half that for TV adverts. TV advertising itself experienced a 4.7% fall in spending to £3.9bn.

“With almost all expenditure on traditional media in decline, the upward momentum of the internet reflects a new era … which is driven by high-speed broadband take-up and user-generated content,” the report said.

More here at source, BBC source