Also: John Lennon's $1.5m glasses | Girls Aloud go "green" | Business 2.0 RIP? | Journalists are rubbish web copywriters, maybe | Businesses don't get blogs and podcasts
TuDou.com, China's home-grown answer to YouTube, is to introduce advertising and has secured $19m in venture capital funding.
According to a report spotted by Search Engine Watch ToDou.com takes something like 50% of China's legal video-sharing market.
Something like 40m Chinese internet users watching more than 1.2bn videos each month.
Advertisers including adidas, Ford, Lenovo, KFC, Nike, Pepsi, Motorola, Samsung, and Sony are on-board to use the new ad serving platform which sounds a like delivering ads into videos.
Funding has come from a range of investors including IDG - not sure if this is the same investor backing MySpace's foray into the China .
RIP Business 2.0?
One of the legends of the internet era, Business 2.0 magazine, is reportedly close to being shutdown by parent Time Inc.
A sad day indeed as Business 2.0 - alongside the likes of Industry Standard, Wired, Red Herring and Silicon.com - was a title I kept a keen eye on when I was working during the first boom/bust on Revolution magazine.
According to the New York Times the seven year-old publication "might" publish its final issue in September.
Apparently plans to close the title have come about because of a nose-dive in ad revenue down 38 per cent to July 9.
A situation that has come about, says the report, because of Time Inc's strategy of combining sales forces across titles such as Fortune and Money leading to sales teams not selling it distinctively.
John Lennon's famous glasses
Are John Lennon's famous glasses worth $1.5m.
According to Reuters a pair of the uber-famous trend-setting round, gold-rimmed sunglasses worn by John Lennon have popped up for auction on a UK website.
Web site 991.com has so far taken bids for up to $1.5m apparently, although the website has said the bid prices are secret. The end date is 31 July.
Is it a hoax? Well, apparently there is an account of the glasses' authenticity from Junishi Yore who was a translator for the Beatles in 1966.
Are journos rubbish web copywriters
Content Content has an interesting look at whether journalists are any good at being web copywriters.
Apparently not a lot of client companies think so. Well, that leaves the traditional role in PR for hacks swanning out of journalism I guess...
Girls Aloud latest artists to co-opt the green movement
Girls Aloud are jumping on the "green" bandwagon in a bid to "minimize their impact on the local environment" when they perform at Plympton.
The girls claim, in a release, to be "one of the first, and certainly the most popular band, in the UK" to use mobile ticketing.
Fans will buy and receive tickets digitally at www.tixmob.com therefore "reducing the environmental and financial cost of printing and delivering traditional paper-based tickets".
Give me strength.
Businesses faile when it comes to blogging and podcasts
Marketing management company WebTrends reckons that businesses are woefully failing to catch on to the power of the likes of blogs and podcasts.
While 85% of marketers surveyed wholeheartedly agreed that a web presence was extremely important only five per cent "utilized blogs on a regular basis"; 78% had never used one.
Only 4% used podcasts often and 81% never had.
The research also investigated online marketers' satisfaction levels with Internet-based marketing tools in terms of delivering against its intended objectives.
Interestingly despite relatively low usage podcasts did extremely well with 44 per cent satisfied and just 18% unsatisfied.
