I’ve been researching the Google/MacFarlane deal some more and wanted to detail some of the most interesting commentary from the web below:
‘However, while the deal may be groundbreaking, it’s not necessarily going to set a larger model for original online video. MacFarlane’s content is the best indicator that this project will be successful, combining the success of animation online, the bite-size format that does so well with web audiences, the preponderance and attractiveness of MacFarlane’s young male demo, and especially the known track record of Family Guy clips online.
MacFarlane said he saw the project as an opportunity to connect with his audience without being censored for broadcast television. He apparently also shaped the format and content of the series around “stacks of data showing how people interact with Web video,” and scrapped his original ideas since they were made on assumptions that the data disproved. It sounds like a spontaneity-sucking move, but it may just be the reality of getting content paid for online.
The resulting deal is a revenue split between four separate parties: MacFarlane, Media Rights, Google, and the web site where someone clicks on one of the syndicated videos. What the article doesn’t say is whether or not there will be a central web site that archives the episodes.’
Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy has cut a deal with Google to create 50 x 2 minute cartoons, provisionally called ‘Seth MacFarlance’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy’ (clearly to avoid any confusion!).
So far, so crowded comedy market… BUT and it’s a big Family Guy sized butt, the cartoons ‘…will play in the space reserved for Google AdSense ads on a multitude of sites that Google deems the perfect fit for the content.’ (via VentureBeat)
‘MacFarlane will receive a percentage of all ad revenue made off of these clips. And that is where things get more interesting, because in a separate deal with some of the advertisers, MacFarlane is also creating some of the animated ads that will run alongside the show (most likely in preroll form). Read the rest of this entry »
Paul Glazowski has a great article over at Mashable on how attempts to suspend BitTorrent trackers in an effort to counter file sharing are only the last gasp of a myopic old media.
For more on all things file sharing and the emergence of compelling business models in this space, please do check out TorrentFreak.
‘So it bears repeating, even if it entails beating the dead horse deader still, that action against users of BitTorrent is not any way to make progress in the media distribution industry. Instead, employing the protocol to try to play the game better than the non-legal crowd is the way make a qualitative, and thus quantitative impact. Otherwise the market will go nowhere.’
Through a heinous misappropriation of diary resources, I am unable to attend the Minibar meet up this evening in Shoreditch to hear the pre-announcement of the Channel 4, £50m 4IP fund.
I’m really rather upset about it, not the free beer or the lure of Friday night Shoreditch when I know I should be going home to see my heavily pregnant wife asleep in front of Big Brother. But because I want to hear about it FIRST.
It’s a great initiative, though I may have to convince the holders of the booty that Barcelona is in fact a UK Regional Development Agency with a native dialect that needs preserving.
To drown my sorrows I have turned to looking at pictures of Google’s toilet.
It has buttons enabling oscillating, and both rear and front cleansing, Techcrunch, bastion of start-up excretion says so:
Despite desperate attempts to keep it alive, the era of big music labels has been dead and rotting for a long time.
Topspin Media, a just-launched start-up led by the former GM of Yahoo Music, wants to throw some dirt on its grave. The Santa Monica, CA, company builds tools that enable musicians to market themselves and distribute their music directly to fans — no middleman involved.
This concept is not new, but Topspin’s timing is right: Last year, Radiohead famously rattled the old guard by ditching its label, selling its newest album online and letting fans pay whatever they felt like paying.
Some chairophiles at the Design Academy in Eindhoven have designed an RFID-control-led chair, which if you commute in London and have an Oyster card is kind of like having the ticket barriers at the Tube Stations follow you to work.
Whilst I applaud the creativity, this frightens me, particulary the scene with the chairs moving en masse (nice special effect that!) and the guy with the lecturn addressing a bunch of empty seats.
Also the way the chairs wriggle when you activate them, like they’re a bit frisky. Yikes! I feel a B-Movie coming on, Revenge of the Frisky Library Chairs or The Chair From Planet Lust.
Yup the blogotronicsphere’s gone nuts for FriendFeed the ultimate social aggregator machine thing.
I could detail examples of this nuttiness but you’d be better just Googling it and oggling the results.
I got a side interest in urban art (formerly ’street art’ until Bonhams had a sale of it and called it something different, it’s all a matter of semantics). I see it in the street and I feel all warm and fuzzy, I point at wheatpastes and tell anyone around me who the Artist is, a habit my wife has long been able to ‘tune out’ from, but my daughter and nearly born, smile and kick respectively.
So the thought process could have gone something like this:
Hey let’s sell t-shirts?
Yo
You hear me?
Yo
Let’s get other people to design them
Yo
Then mash it up with Pop Idol
Yo
So people vote on designs
Hmm… yo
And buy them, buy them by the million
Another Oreo?
Ex of Techcrunch, Duncan Riley who is perhaps equally as clever as some other clever people all writing clever things at the same time, if not more clever, presents his view on Seesmic’s new threaded comments:
‘Loic Lemeur has announced that Seesmic now supports threaded comments within Seesmic embeds, delivering the entire conversation where ever the embed is shown.
The even cooler part: users can sign in and reply from within the embedded player as well, possibly a first from any company in the online video space.
I’ve been on the record as not being a huge Seesmic fan originally, but as the company has evolved and added new features I’ve been completely converted into a fan, as others have as well. This is a clever company, led by a smart leader doing interesting and new things.’
Threads, Phreadz call them what you want but they’re the new black, but Qajack is mostly grey so maybe that’s the new black?
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I’ve been researching the Google/MacFarlane deal some more and wanted to detail some of the most interesting commentary from the web below:
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