Also: Ad-supported music | Craigslist | The Telegraph vs Google | Deustche Welle on YouTube | TwoFour merges with Makeni | Alan Johnston | Visumes | Hotdogs
MySpaced out? James Wagner Au has written a very puffy piece on Gaia Online for GigaOm. There are two million people visiting Gaia Online every month, he writes, and most of those are teens. Gaia is a venture funded and little known social world where users can maraud through a series of virtual towns to socialise, buy property and find treasure.
Different spaces within the world offer group chat, a show-and-tell forum for artwork and images and some rampantly popular message boards with around a million posts per day. Interestingly, the money with Gaia is earned rather than bought, so there's an incentive for joining in with discussions or uploading artwork. Just like Habbo, users spend their "gold" on clothes and accessories for their avatars, mostly through auctions. And why Gaia, over the rest of the virtual world and social net pack? Chief executive Craig Sherman: "In a world where teens are constantly branding and packaging themselves, Gaia is where you get away from it all." (GigaOm)
The rise of ad-supported music
Ad-supported P2P music platforms are building momentum, according to this NYTimes piece, which says that Qtrax is just about the sign a deal with Song BMG to add its Warner and EMI inventory. The company is also in negotiations with Universal, according to chief executive Allan Klepfisz. After dwindling CD sales and, finally, a recignition that millions of people probably can't be wrong, music companies are putting their faith in ad-funded music download services as the way forward. The hope is that the format isn't too different to the illegal services. Advertisers on Qtrax won't be able to advertise next to specific artists (quite why, I'm not sure) but can choose "buckets" of a particular genre. The labels are partnering on a revenue-share basis initially, though this is expected to change to a costly royalty payment.
Jupiter Research analyst David Card is dubious: "I'm a believer in advertising, which pays for an awful lot of media consumption in the US. But I have yet to see the model that makes me feel good they'll get enough money out of advertising. The question is, can they get enough mass to lower the royalty?" (New York Times)
Craigslist and newspapers
Yes, yes - I think we all know what Craigslist is now, I Want Media. He spoke to students at a New York University journalism class last week and said, as we've heard before, that Craigslist is not a threat to newspaper revenues. What he actually means is that there are bigger threats, like job-sucking sites like Monster and rival sites publishing in niche areas. So why does Craigslist get the blame?
"It's largely publishers who have, I guess, missed the boat," says Craig. "Sometimes it's easier to say something like that instead of taking responsibility. Actually, not very many people say that. It's usually the same people repeating it over and over. Sometimes when you say something over and over, some people get the impression that it's true. But a lot of people in the business use our site. They use it to get stuff done." (I Want Media)
Telegraph wants to keep Google out
Sounds like the Telegraph is jumping on the increasingly rickety anti-Google bandwagon, but then editor Will Lewis was speaking on behalf of chief executive Murdoch Maclennan at the Ifra newsroom summit. In executive circles, I can imagine it is considered the right thing to do to say how evil Google is and what a parasite it is to "proper" media companies. He said, or rather Maclennan said through him, that search companies are building a business on the back of "our own investment". Well yes, but they also give you a huge amount of your traffic.
"Success in the digital age, as we have seen in our own company, is going to require massive investment," he said. It will need "effective legal protection for our content, in such a way that allows us to invest for the future." Do we sniff another Agence France Press debacle? (journalism.co.uk)
Deutsche Welle joins the YouTube crew
And another one - German publisher and broadcaster Deustche Welle is the latest big media organisation to introduce an official YouTube channel and the first German broadcaster to do so. The channel won't offer unique content - all the clips are also on Deustche Welle's own site, but will be expanded over time. (Variety)
TwoFour expand webcasting with Makeni merger
Webcasting specialists Makeni has merged with TwoFour Digital, the technical wing of TV production firm. TwoFour is working on a handful of international webcasting projects for some extremely interesting clients, none of which they can say very much about yet. But something to keep an eye on.
Alan Johnston button
BBC staff are circulating a site button in support of Alan Johnston, as you can see on the MediaGuardian homepage and a rapidly increasing number of blogs. BBC World news editor Jon Williams posted about this last week: copy the code from his entry on the BBC Editors' blog. (CyberSoc)
Got that "visume" ready for your new job application?
Here's a career on the up: video training. Former ABC news anchor and producer Bill McGowan is charging $3,5000 for a 2.5 minute "visume" - a video resume. These will be the essential job application tool of the future, we are led to believe. (New York Times)
Gratuitous comedy link of the day
It gives a whole new meaning to the word "hotdog".
