More than 700 US radio stations will be part of Google's radio ads trial but that could be as high as 5,000 in the full roll-out. The ads work through a similar system to Google's AdWords scheme with advertisers bidding for space in radio ad slots, setting a limit for what they want to spend. Trial advertisers submit a 30-second MP3 file of their ad.
Also: Virtual worlds discussion, Webby awards drinks, Tocmags and some revamps.
• Virtual worlds TechCrunch UK has some notes on the MusicAlly virtual worlds debate earlier this week: Alan Patrick's notes are delightfully east to read if you're interested in Second Life, and the rest. SL's TV network VirtualLife TV has been viewed by 475,000 people, new SLers tend to dress up their avatars to begin with (purple rabbit aliens and the like) but then morph them into their own image over time.
• Webby party I'm not quite sure why the Webby guys had a party at the ICA this week, but the venue combined with free booze managed to ensure a good turnout. Just last week I was trying to remember the name of the guy that did those cool cut-out kitten animations that were all the rage about three years ago - and lo! Here was Joel Veitch of rathergood.com in the flesh. He (quite rightly) had a bit of a dig at all the ad firms that tried to nick his steez, and showed 'We like the moon' it all started with plus his new Christmas campaign for Tommy's which features Olly Gervais - Ricky Gervais' cat. Words of wisdom from Joel:
- "There's only one rule - the internet loves kittens." - "There's still a certain lack of understanding between the internet guys and the new media ad guys. People have their own territory that they like to piss on a lot." - "I just make shit and put it out in the world. I want to evangelise to kids out there to just make some shit too."
The three behind filmmakers' network Shooting People also did a talk; classic web business that started in a bedroom several years back and then took off. When it started to take over their lives, they took a risk, borrowed £30K and went subscription in year 4 - and haven't looked back since. As they described it, they didn't want just anyone who could fill out an online form - they wanted filmmakers who want to be part of the site. They send 50,000 email bulletins a day, edited as a digest of the most interesting and useful information. The community tends to self-regulate when it comes to flame wars and the like: "most of what we do is driven by the experiences of filmmakers and freelancers".
Deadline for the Webby Awards is December 15th. I think that was the point.
• Mobile magazines Mobile UGC service Tocmags says one million of its mini-magazines have been downloaded in its first full month of service. Tocmags are compiled by phone users and free to create and download, but people tend to use like multimedia picture messages rather than the conventional notion of a magazine. One user puts together a monthly six-page mini movie magazine combining trailers and news stories, and that has recorded 15,000 downloads since it started last month. Tocmags got in there before MySpace and YouTube, though they won't be long.
• Launches & new stuff - Viral campaign for Those Scurvy Rascals; these pant-hunters have made it onto the PSP, MySpace, Bebo, Piczo and YouTube. - The Centre for Creative Business has launched its site.
• Scoopt/Flickr Photo agency Scoopt is trying to encourage people to add a 'Scoopt' tag to their pictures so they can pull out targeted news pics from Flickr more easily.
• Another industry mover News International's former director of digital sales David Roddick is the new group commercial director for Northcliffe Newspapers, but doesn't start the role until April 2007. Roddick was at News International for 17 years and left after the appointment of Jim Mullen as News Group's digital strategy director.
• Nokia's short film awards Nokia Shorts was founded by Kevin Macdonald, the director of Touching the Void, as a partnership between Nokia and the British Independent Film Awards. These are (very) short films of 15 seconds and the winners were announced this week at nokiashorts.co.uk.
