Recond Labels Talking With YouTube

Universal Music Group, the world's largest music recording company, is in talks with Google's YouTube division to create a musicvid venture.

Instead of just receiving licensing fees or a share of ad revenue from the online video site, UMG is seeking an equity relationship on an ad-supported site focused on high-quality musicvideos unlike the grainy, user-generated fare common to YouTube's main site.

Other record labels such as Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and EMI have also been contacted about the plan, although they are not part of the talks. UMG is a division of France's Vivendi.

The discussions began about a month ago but are still in the preliminary stages, said people who spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions are supposed to be confidential

(from Associated Press, via Variety, via msoefer's twitter).

Mobile Video is Growing

TV networks, like TNT, A&E and VH1, have all recently launched iPhone applications in a bid to make money in the mobile video and features market, including a spooky new iPhone app from A&E.

Plus, mobile video growth should be astronomical over the next few years, experts say

(from Ahead of the Curve). As I've mentioned before, people want to watch what, when and where they want. Let them.

Canonical Link Element

There is a Google Webmaster Central blog post about the presentation about canonical link elements made at SMX West and talked through in a video:

Fingers Breakdance 2 (flash)

Breakdancing fingers (rated PG).

Viewers Watch When They Want (Not When You Want)

Traditional TV or otherwise, people want to watch what they want when they want, and want to watch where they want. This is as real as gravity and just as useless to deny. From ads to shooting to distribution, the viewers' expectation of themselves controlling the place and timing of viewing must be supported.

...the 'Dollhouse' premiere episode's rating increased 30% once time-shifted viewing was added in. 'Dollhouse' went from a 2.0 adult demo number to a 2.6.

'Dollhouse' lead-in 'Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles' gained even more - 36%

(from The Live Feed).

Urban Light (flash)

Friends amongst the streetlamps at LACMA (rated PG-13).

News Feeds (Not RSS)

The first, and strongest, guideline about news feeds is to stop calling them RSS. In our study, 82% of users had no idea what this term meant

(from Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, June 12, 2006). This was why Forrester under estimates feed use; they called them RSS which is meaningless to 82% of users.

Call feeds, feeds. That's what they are in plain English and referring to feeds as feeds clearly tells even the newest users that one item is being fed into another.

I also have more technical advice for feeds.