According to Silicon Alley Insider, Joost founder Niklas Zennstrom announced that the internet TV platform has reached one million users and is looking at a year-end formal launch.

While a million sign-ups and downloads of the app (if you want one, please click on our invite banner in our sidebar) is nothing to sneeze at, I am highly skeptical that there are still one million users. The beta experience has been underwhelming to say the least. Alley Insider Henry Blodget compared the experience to the too-big-for-its-bandwidth hog, PointCast. Additionally, if there were truly one million users, the P2P environment should be delivering much higher quality video than I’ve seen in my testing.

That said, advertisers are in love with its potential and Joost continues to land big media content deals.

Online video can be a nightmare for organizations facing a PR crisis. That is the situation the NBA now finds itself in, and videos such as the one below suggesting that game 3 of the 2007 NBA Suns-Lakers playoffs was fixed, have the power to sway public opinion very effectively.



The video has been viewed nearly 170,000 times since it was posted over the weekend. It was picked up by Simmons and subsequently Deadspin and shows the power of a fan-created mashup in affecting opinion.

calo2006 the user who created the video, expressly states that he doesn’t actually believe the series was fixed, and writes that he only hopes the NBA will make public any games that were. But this does not carry over on an embed, so for most who view it, the video only fans the flames.

Maybe it was just the novelty of seeing questions posed entirely by citizens, but that may have been the most entertaining debate ever broadcast.

It was a great debate not so much because the candidates moved very far off their talking points, they didn’t, but because seeing relevant questions, direct from Americans living the major challenges facing the country brought together the candidates on the stage.

Tonight’s debate for put the focus on squarely on the issues. Ordinary Americans are far more interesting than politicians. And the draw became not duels of words but the question of how to best improve the United States.

All the selected questions are available here.

The Highlights: (will be updated as more comes in)



Shelby Highsmith got a good wrap-up interview with CNN’s John King.


John Edwards’ Hair Video was a fan favorite and a departure from the candidates’ other YouTube-style videos, many of which appeared to be re-purposed TV spots (hey they’re effective).



The question of whether the candidates would work for the minimum wage generated the most discomfort. This was a question they clearly were not expecting.



This question on health care had the greatest impact of any user video.



The final question generated some pretty funny responses in part because it was one of those uncomfortable throwaways to which a witty response is required.

Anyone care to wager on the number of technical issues the CNN YouTube Debate tonight will encounter? For starters the YouTube blog is down.

My first question - how well will those viewer-submitted questions actually work when they have a lead time of less than a day to get them queued up and working correctly on a 25 by 18 foot screen.

I have to admit though that the live stream running through CNN.com looks pretty good at least when using internet explorer.

UPDATE: 7:10 So far so good, live stream is still working well, very cool how YouTube is progressively putting chosen questions on the debate site as they are asked. All the responses so far sound pretty scripted by talking points though. Still waiting for a question that shakes things up.

In what seems to be a trend for music distributors, BrightSpot Media has added Napster to their list of partners, giving away free music in exchange for watching a few ads.

As the industry struggles to provide new vehicles for advertisers to deliver their messages without annoying users, technology providers are introducing new ad formats and ad models that allow users to opt-in to the ads they’d prefer to see. Giving away free stuff certainly works.

The addition of Napster to Go to BrightSpot’s offering puts them directly in competition with other music-for-ads players such as Intent MediaWorks and the still-yet-to-launch-in-the-US SpiralFrog. With rampant piracy on P2P networks, BrightSpot’s deal with Napster seems to be a rather compelling alternative for an end user looking for a lot of legal music without laying out any cash.

Brightspot asks users to answer questions about some basic preferences, and then shows targeted ads based on those preferences. Users watch ads and answer a few questions about them, and are then “paid” between $.50 and $5 per ad watched. At $14.95 a month for a Napster subscription, combined with their unlimited downloads, Brightspot’s offer certainly ranks high in my pain vs. gain department.

Here’s what’s going on this rainy Monday in New York:

• All eyes are on the CNN/YouTube debate tonight. More than 1,000 questions were submitted over the weekend bringing the final total up to 2,989. David All will be live-blogging the Republican angle and Shelby Highsmith will be streaming live video from the spin room.
• Google is offering $4.6 billion for unused spectrum, will they open it up for the public good? As always we can count on Donna Bogatin to point the finger back at them.
• It’s earnings season. Google disappointed last week, Yahoo! didn’t but they’ve been disappointing for years, and Netflix is taking a dive ahead of earnings today.
• Check out Jackson West’s video report the Disillusionment of Philo Farnsworth. A must read/watch and raises the question: is the long tail actually offering a solution to the lack of quality content on TV, or just perpetuating “more way[s] for people to waste a lot of their lives”?

I am really looking forward to a presidential debate for a change. Nearly 2,000 questions have been submitted for the candidates in the CNN/YouTube debate on Monday including the most recent one below.



Users have until Sunday to submit questions for the Democrats, and YouTube has announced that it is already accepting user questions for the September 17th Republican debate.

So far GOP candidates have trailed democrats in generating online attention, the one exception being Ron Paul who is doing everything right online if nowhere else. Paul leads republicans in every category tracked by TechPresident which ranks candidates on things like Facebook friends and YouTube views despite having only an estimated 2% of the vote if the election were held today.

There are a ton of debate parties going on around the country. One of the largest is taking place at the Irish Rogue on 44th & 8th here in New York. While you could stay home and watch online, if you go out, hosts DFNYC, ACTNowNY, and Drinking Liberally promise drinking games.

I have been trying to stay away from the ObamaGirl/GulianiGirl/Hot4Hill online video clusterf*ck we saw during the past few days. At least the first Crush on Obama video was original. (And kind of catchy, I’ll admit it was stuck in my head for a little while.)

But after watching it do battle with the iPhone hype it became overkill. So it’s great to see the focus shift back to other videos.

Starting off with these Filipino prisoners doing the ‘thriller’ dance which has been all over the internet in the last few days. Crazy, and raises some questions to be sure. The video was posted by byronfgarcia, a Filipino security consultant who apparently does some work with the prison.

Many more videos of other dances including several from the film Sister Act featuring convicts dressed up as nuns, are on his YouTube channel.

Being from Boston, I can’t help but love when a Dunkin Donuts ad goes viral.



And speaking of Donuts, here’s another Simpsons viral video attempt:


Finally, ahead of Monday’s CNN/YouTube Democratic debate click above for five tips to consider before submitting that question. (via Daniela)

This is pretty great. Coin-Operated has come up with a downloadable bandwidth meter which constantly monitors the data rate and triggers a Mr T catch phrase when the connection speed gets over 1.5 MBps.

In my experience, most DSL users seem to be topping out at around 900 kbps, and with the proliferation of wireless routers and shared network connections (one of the reasons this meter was created), most people are actually getting way below this.

So what is your connection speed? I’m curious how many people out there are actually getting 1.5MBps and above.

UPDATE: Anyone else having a large discrepancy between this app and online sources? MR T1 is clocking my rate at between 500k-700k but a bandwidthplace.com test put me at 4.8MBps.

In the final panel of the day Eric Picard showed some of the technology Microsoft is working on to create new formats for better serving of ads. The goal is to use technology to provide maximum value for both advertisers and consumers of content, and the way they are doing this is with shorter ads providing viewers a choice to receive more information.

Based on their research, Microsoft believes that some of the major building blocks of next generation ads will be made up of five second spots. And they are developing ways of displaying very short form ads. Picard gave two examples:

1. The “Speed bump” - As users fast-forward a five-second ad comes up showing a real-time commercial while skipping through other commercials.
2. “Telescoping” - An interactive bug or lower third that when selected expands into a commercial spot or offers more information while still displaying the content being viewed.

Scott Wassmer of AKQA discussed what he called “Integrated Divergence” - Bringing a personalized story to every individual. User data will eventually be used to create customized messaging and to inform every customer of the specific brand info they want.

Rebecca Paoletti of Yahoo! stressed Integration: Most innovative advertisers are extending their online campaigns with video, social, and mobile. All campaigns should involve all mediums to be successful.

The common idea seems to be that with the greater targeting capabilities of online distribution, users will inevitably be served more relevant ads but won’t want to navigate away from the content they are viewing right away.

Gradually advertisers are accepting that a less invasive presence and allowing users more choice to interact is a smart move, and this will result in a better experience for both marketers and consumers.