Also: Revver goes P2P | MySpace China launches | Photobucket & MySpace make up | Joost announces advertisers
Magic Lantern chief executive Anthony Lilley, fresh from his turn at MipTV last week, spoke to digital publishing heads at the AOP on Thursday to brief them on Ofcom's proposals for a new "public service publisher".
Lilley thinks this PSP would fund projects that would not be commercially viable, though publishers have expressed concern that the new organisation would present a threat to their businesses and would need to be subject to the same public value tests as the BBC.
Lilley advises the DTI, DfES and Ofcom on broadband content and public service TV, so is well placed to give an overview of the PSP proposals.
"It should release content free of charge and encourage it to be shared, modified or integrated into new services by others. Delivering public benefit should be sufficient reason for the PSP to invest - others may then be able to build on this investment to create commercial value," he said.
Its basic principles should be, according to Lilley: shareable, mashable content and appropriately flexible rights systems for that content; cross-industry partnerships to represent all the regions of the UK; distribution as widely as possible; free content, but content that can pass a commercial value back to creators; and to not compete against existing content firms. (AOP)
Revver to distribute its clips P2P
Video-sharing site Revver is to distribute its clips through a P2P network called INTENT MediaWorks, we learned this week. The key point is that Revver's content is user-generated and those users get paid for it, so however those clips are distributed - whether people embedded the clips on their site or share them on a P2P network - a share of the revenue from the ads embedded in the footage goes back to the creator. (Beet TV)
MySpace China: a local site for local people?
Everyone's favourite social networking behemoth MySpace finally announced the launch of its Chinese service today after months of rumbling speculation. Rupe's new media baby was very carefully pitched for China, noting that even the biggest US web names - eBay and Google, for instance - have struggled to get a foothold in China because of established and popular local brands. MySpace China has been pitched as a local site run by local people, with News Corp just one of several investors. Murdoch's wife Wendy Deng is one of three News Inc members on the MySpace China board (it worked for Wolfowitz) along with the two MySpace founders Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson. Yep, that's the Tom all the no-maters have as their only MySpace friend, for those on ground level. MySpace obviously sees phenomenal potential in the Chinese market, and I'm sure they are right. (Sydney Morning Herald)
Photobucket and MySpace make up
Photo sharing site Photobucket has apparently resolved its differences with MySpace: the social net site had effectively banned its users from using Photobucket services - including a popular slideshow tool - because the service was showing its own ads. That violated MySpace's terms, but Photobucket seems to have backed down and chief executive Alex Welch blogged this week that his site would abide by MySpace's terms. So it's worth them bending their ad-supported business model a bit so they don't lose that vital MySpace traffic. MySpace, for its part just doesn't want any other company monetising its audience. Neither company would give details on what kind of compromise they came to though. (Northwest Florida Daily News)
Joost confirms its advertisers
You have to give it to the Joost boys - considering it is one of many web TV platforms emerging at the moment, they do very well on the press front. That's down to the Skype/Kazaa pedigree, and that fancy web ad of luminous liquids probably helped. Thirty-one blue-chip advertisers have signed up ahead of the service's expected launch on Tuesday, including, in Europe, Virgin Money, Vodafone, Warner Bros, Nokia NSeries and IBM. (Reuters)
