TechScape

Interesting news in today's FT of a deal between internet TV firm Veoh and Hollywood talent agency United Talent Agency to set up an online TV channel to discover new talent. Apparently the deal was brokered by former Disney exec Michael Eisner, one of the major stakeholders in Veoh.

Veoh's CEO Danny Shapiro has described the new channel as "the new gateway for talent discovery in Hollywood", although Veoh will also be selling advertising around the channel.

In theory, UGC sites like Veoh are good proving grounds for new talent, although it remains to be seen if the videos that are popular among users translate well to movies. The proof will come if, in 12-18 months time, UTA has signed up anyone via Veoh, and put them on the big screen.

(via FT.com)

Many people believe 2007 will be the year when social networks and video-sharing sites start to splinter into niche services aimed at specific demographic groups, split by age, gender, nationality or interests.

Early evidence comes with the launch of DayZ Loop, which claims to be an "online infotainment television network" aimed at teenage girls (specifically, 13 to 17 year-olds). The site's aiming to attract users with a mix of video content, social networking, workshops and editorial content.

What are the most popular online videos on any given day? You could try and work it out by tracking viewing figures across the many video-sharing sites. Or you could let someone else do it for you.

That someone else appears to be Vidmeter, which has software recording the number of views and comments every hour on the top listed videos on *deep breath* Atom Films, Break.com, Daily Motion, Google, iFilm, Metacafe, Myspace, Revver, vSocial, Yahoo, and Youtube.

The iPod might be a (theoretically) closed system in terms of application development, but it's always been open in terms of the content you put on it. After all, your entire collection of CDs and digital photos can happily sit on there. But there hasn't been much talk about putting other people's multimedia gubbins on it.

A friend just sent me a link to Mogopop, which claims to make that easier. The idea is you upload your photos, video clips, music and text, and then they're combined into a single file, which other users can then download.

Yesterday, I wrote about the launch of DayZ Loop, an online TV network aimed at teenage girls. I had a couple of questions: one about how advertising would work on the community, and also over whether its focus on 'infotainment' would appeal to a wide base of users.

Renee Steiger, creator of strategic alliances at the company, got in touch today with some more info on both of those. Let's start with the latter point.

"Believe it or not, our teen girl members - as well as some other recent market studies - show that girls get tired of the 'in your face' aspect of some other sites," she says. "Also, they often feel uncomfortable with being approached by strangers who may have ulterior motives."

It can't be easy launching a new photo-sharing site. After all, once you've uploaded hundreds of your pics to one place online, it's a real faff when you then have to upload them all again if you switch loyalties to another service.

Nevertheless, plenty of firms want Flickr's crown, and the latest is Pikeo, which has been launched by Orange. As you'd expect, mobile is strongly tied in, with the site providing a link to the ShoZu mobile application, which allows users to upload photos directly from their phones.

Presumably, Orange will be preloading the app on handsets sold through its retail stores if the community takes off.

Forget short films. South African film-maker Aryan Kaganof has made a full-length flick using just a pair of Sony Ericsson W900i phones. It's called SMS Sugar Man, and is due out in May, when it'll be distributed in cinemas, but also on DVD, over the internet and, yes, on mobile phones.

The distribution is the interesting thing for me here. It's unclear how involved Sony Ericsson was with the project – a trailer for SMS Sugar Man will be preloaded on the W900i when it actually goes on sale in South Africa, which implies they had a hand in it.

It's not such a big surprise, but nevertheless, useful proof of how consumers trust each other rather than industry or professional views when it comes to booking holidays online.

Nielsen//NetRatings asked 863 Brits which online source they most trust, 21% said user review sites like TripAdvisor, while 15% plumped for professional review sites, 15% for official tourist board sites, 12% for travel agent sites, and 11% for search engines.

Hmm, could be a slight obstacle to this new 'make money by placing ads alongside YouTube videos' strategy that Google's just announced. Well, kind of.
Harris Interactive has been conducting some research into YouTube, and claims that nearly three quarters of adults who frequently visit the site would visit it a lot (31%) or a little (42%) less if it included short commercials before every video on the site.

No, not doggers. At least, I hope not. Instead, Outdoorzy is a social networking site for mountain bikers, rock climbers, hikers and anybody else who hates being cooped up indoors.

It has all the usual social networking features, like profiles etc, but also has a bunch of features specific to the outdoor lifestyle, like trip reports and gear reviews. The nearest equivalent I can think of is Everytrail – which throws in GPS features – although presumably if outdoor retailers started to include more community features in their sites, they'd compete too.

Some things never change. Remember when Radio 1 DJ Mike Read smashed a copy of Frankie Goes To Hollywood's 'Relax' live on air, outraged at its lyrical content? And how the furore only served to ensure the song shot straight to the top of the charts?

Well, it seems YouTube isn't so different. 'Dirty Folk' comic Jessica Delfino claims to be awash with hits for the video to her song 'My Pussy is Magic', thanks to a denunciation from the Catholic League. It's been whipped off YouTube twice, apparently, but the renamed 'Jessica Delfino Is Magic' version now has over 45,000 views.

Not everyone's happy that Yahoo is planning to migrate all its old-skool Flickr users over to Yahoo logins. "When it becomes mandatory to sign up to Yahoo, I will have to delete all my pics and close my account down and join with one of the other similar services on the net," writes one.

I've got an original Flickr login too, and got the email the other day explaining the shift. I have to admit, I didn't think much of it. Is there really kudos among the Flickr community if you're old-skool, rather than nu-skool? I think that's how it's spelt, by the way...

Can user-generated content work on the telly? Facebook hopes so. The social network has teamed up with video-sharing service Ziddio to allow its users to upload, view, share and rate videos about their own lives.

The vids will then be used as material for a TV show called Facebook Diaries, which is being produced by R.J. Cutler, who's scooped Oscar nominations and Emmy awards in the past. It'll have 10 half-hour episodes which will air on Comcast's network (it owns Ziddio).

Will this content work on the small screen? Well, given the choice between most new British sitcoms, or a bunch of user-generated videos, I'm with Facebook. The contest kicks off in March.

It's been quite a week for Vodafone, which is making a strong play to show 3 that more than one operator can play this Mobile 2.0 game. Having signed deals with MySpace and eBay earlier in the week, now it's announced a deal to launch YouTube Mobile.

Full unmediated access to the video-sharing site? Not quite. The press release carefully describes it as "a YouTube experience" that lets customers access "a version of the popular YouTube service directly from Vodafone live!".

Seeing as one of the main subjects for Techscape is Web 2.0 going mobile, we were bound to prick up our ears at LaNetro Zed's announcement that, yes, it's taking Web 2.0 mobile.

The company runs the Club Zed mobile subscription service here in the UK, which has traditionally involved users paying £3 a week for unlimited games, ringtone and wallpaper downloads. However, LaNetro Zed has now introduced user generated content, social networking and communication features into the mix.

I caught up with president and CEO Javier Perez Dolset to find out more. "We're trying to fully integrate the mobile device as a new machine to have full access to the internet, and everything Web 2.0 can offer," he says.

Next week, I'll be sprinting around the 3GSM show in Barcelona, catching up with the latest mobile innovations. Some press releases are already dribbling out before the show gets underway, including one from Enquire.
The technology sounds good though. Enquire will be showing off a suite of 'participation products' at 3GSM, which all use video-calling for some entertaining user generated content applications, including karaoke and dating.

Mobile blogging isn't going to be about text. Instead, it’s going to be about photos and video that you upload semi-automatically from your phone as you take them, with the bare minimum of words required. Of course, you might go in later and write some proper captions from your PC, but for the most part, moblogging will be visual. Which answers those questions about why anyone would blog from their phone.

That was certainly the message on the Motorola stand, where the company was showing off its mobile blogging application which basically makes it quick and easy to post pics and videos to a range of online file-sharing services. It’s nothing that the ShoZu application doesn’t do already, but since it’ll be on Motorola handsets out of the box, it’ll find a wide audience.

Yospace could be described as the poster child for the mobile user-generated-content brigade. The company's video-sharing services for 3 (See Me TV) and O2 (Look At Me) have been hugely successful, while recently Yospace was bought by Emap as part of a strategy to work UGC around its magazine and radio brands. More of that later.

But as a firm that's been doing mobile video-sharing for a while now, Yospace has a good perspective on the implications of YouTube's mobile deal with Vodafone, which was announced last week. I asked Yospace CTO David Springall for his views at 3GSM.

"The trouble with the big internet players is they don't understand mobile very well," he says. "It's considered simply as a technical issue of getting content onto the phone, but it's far more than that. Also, these big guys have a different view on what the business model is for mobile, as opposed to the operators."

Many people know Hands-On Mobile for its mobile games - the company has sold millions of downloads of its World Poker Tour game, and has also released a stream of games based on Marvel superhero characters.

However, the company is now diversifying into mobile user-generated content and social networking, with two new services announced at 3GSM this week. The first is a distribution deal for an existing service called FunkySexyCool, which started in Australia, and bills itself as a “mobile nightclub community”.

“It’s a bit like a game in many ways,” Hands-On Mobile’s Eric Hobson told me at 3GSM. “In essence it’s a flirting service where you vote on people online, and have to work your way to the top in terms of votes. And then there’s lots of ‘money can’t buy...’ prizes on offer too. It’s been really big in Australia, they’ve got 200,000 members there now.”

It's not even close to being massmarket yet, but geotagging is one of the technologies I'm personally most interested in, especially if it gets automated enough that the people using it don't even need to know what geotagging is to make use of it.

ShoZu's announcement this week that it's including geotagging in its Share-It mobile application is a step on the road. Users with GPS-enabled phones will be able to automatically attach location information to photos and videos when they're captured, and then have this uploaded along with the content to whatever sharing service they're using.

Currently supported are Flickr and YouTube, along with Buzznet, Pikeo, Dada.net, moblogUK and Textamerica. For Flickr, images will automatically be added to the user's Flickr map.

Now all I have to do is get myself a GPS phone. Anyone got any Nokia N95s going spare? ;o)