Emap has been working on its digital strategy for the past year and today's announcement about the acquisition of YoSpace is the first result of that project.
YoSpace provides various software tools to power user-generated content services including 3's See me TV and O2's Look at me TV. At some point further down the line, when Emap has its feet under YoSpace's table, Emap will decide how to incorporate more of those user content features with its own sites, but YoSpace also has various mobile services so there are further complements there.
A little more detail: Emap said later that in terms of strategy, the deal puts Emap in a market-leading position for mobile UGC, gives it added mobile technology capability and gives them access to the expertise of Tim Sewell and David Springall, CEO and CTO respectively.
How will Emap make money from YoSpace?
Look at me TV will be extended to other operators in the UK and internationally, and Emap will save money and expand user numbers simultaneously by integrating various pieces of YoSpace's mobile technology. Plus there are new opportunities, said Emap, to explore advertising revenue on these platforms.
In the bigger picture, the mobile content market generates around £350m annually in the UK and is growing by 20% each year. Emap is moving to position itself ahead of this growth and the subsequent surge in demand for mobile content.
2007: Officially the year of video
It's the same story whoever I talk to: video is set to go ballistic this year and there's a mountain of exciting stuff on the way. Informa's latest data, via the AOP, backs this up, predicting that global TV and video revenue will increase ten-fold by 2012 to £3.2bn.
Of that, only the US will record a higher revenue than the UK. Our 2006 revenue of £22m is predicted to increase to £708m by 2012 when the US market will be up to a staggering $3.94bn. Japan and Germany are predicted to report the next highest revenues by 2012.
This increase is attributed to the consumer move away from passive, linear TV to on-demand, online content but the challenge for publishers and broadcasters (increasingly "broad-lishers", maybe) is to adapt their product and their business models so that they can exploit that demand.
Turner's bomb-scare ads
In the US, Turner Broadcasting is suffering the fallout of a guerilla marketing campaign that backfired rather badly.
Turner was promoting Cartoon Network's film Aqua Teen Hunger Force by installing 40 electronic devices or "mooninites" around Boston's streets. The black signs featured the show's characters on the front in flashing lights and were posted in various public places including on public transport.
A US Media Week report said that residents subsequently "flooded" police with reports of suspicious devices and one was even blown up by the local bomb disposal unit. The cost to the police has been put at $750,000 and the mayor of Boston is "livid".
The two men that installed the devices were charged with placing a hoax device and disorderly conduct, and Turner chairman and CEO Phil Kent promptly issued a public apology on the Cartoon Network site.
Rather mysteriously though, the company Turner took on to install the signs did exactly the same in New York, LA, Chicago and a host of other US cities - but not one person complained anywhere other than Boston.
Plenty more discussion on Technorati's Where's the fire and in the Mooninites search on Flickr. Was that the sound of cultures colliding?
