What's ahead for Net, digital entertainment

USATODAY.com
"The Internet and digital technology are changing entertainment at lightning speed. The coming years will scramble concepts of music-making, movies, TV networks and advertising. Last week, USA TODAY's Kevin Maney assembled a panel of some of the industry's most influential players to talk about what's ahead."

Yahoo! on the frontier of the new money

Technology News
"Yahoo Video Search, which had been in beta form since December, was formally launched by the portal yesterday along with a slew of new partnerships that will beef up the vault of video clips that can be searched and viewed online.
Yahoo said the video tool now can be used to search entertainment content from CBS News, MTV and Buena Vista Pictures as well as news from CBS News and Reuters, Independent video fed into the site through Real Simple Syndication (RSS) can also be searched."

Get off the phone becomes get the phone off you!

Reuters
"SEOUL (Reuters) - Parents looking to grab a teenager's attention with a stiff punishment should confiscate their mobile phone.
A study by a top South Korean advertising firm shows that a mobile is one of a Korean teenager's most prized possessions.
Among 13- to 15-year-olds, 77.5 percent said a mobile phone was a 'must-have' item, while for those aged 16 to 18 the figure was 76.7 percent, the Cheil Communications survey showed.
'Cell phones are the key to a teenager's social network,' said Andy Joohyun Lee, senior researcher at Cheil Communications' Brand Marketing Institute."

Time Warner Cable DVRs near a million

CNET News.com
"The number of Time Warner Cable customers with digital video recorders is closing in on the one million mark. During its announcement of first-quarter results last Wednesday, the cable division's parent company Time Warner said DVR subscribers were up 136,000 to 998,000. Subscriptions to video-on-demand service were up 108,000 to more than 1.6 million."

9% of US users have blogged

Pew Internet & American Life Project Commentary
"In two surveys of American adults conducted between January 13 and March 21 that involved 2,871 internet users, we found that 9% of internet users now say they have created blogs and 25% of internet users say they read blogs."

Corporate Marketers Try Out Blogs - Vespa takes a lead

WSJ.com
"In a move that runs counter to current popular notions of how the so-called blogosphere ought to operate, Piaggio Group, the Italian manufacturer of Vespa scooters, intends to launch two blogs written by U.S. Vespa owners. Piaggio views the blogs as extensions of traditional scooter clubs, in which enthusiasts of the vehicles gather to discuss issues and ideas, says Paolo Timoni, chief executive of Piaggio USA."

Blogs enter marketing mainstream

Yahoo! Finance
"Almost half of marketers plan to decrease spending in traditional
advertising channels like magazines, direct mail, and newspapers to fund an increase in online ad spending in 2005. Total US online
advertising and marketing spending will reach $14.7 billion in 2005, a 23 percent increase over 2004."

Social search concept interesting

PR Newswire
"Multiply Inc has introduced the first search engine that finds
information that's been published in one's social network. Conventional search engines attempt to catalog the Internet at large and display search results purely in order of content relevance. Multiply's search returns content published by people that have a relationship with the person searching, and
relevance is based not just on the content, but also on the social
relationship of the content owner to the searcher."

100% mobile penetration

Reuters.com
"Cell phone penetration in western Europe will hit 100 percent by 2007 as mobile savvy customers continue to buy multiple phones or phone cards, according to a report published on Thursday."

EMI and Snocap deal

Reuters.com
"The world's third-largest music company, EMI Group Plc (EMI.L: Quote, Profile, Research) , has signed a deal with Snocap, a technology firm that is working to create a legal peer-to-peer music-sharing network.
Snocap, headed by Napster founder Shawn Fanning, identifies songs by their digital 'fingerprints' and determines how copyright holders want them to be used. For example, a music label could authorize an up-and-coming single to be freely distributed, or to play three times before requiring payment."

� Yahoo Working on Music Search Engine

Search Engine Journal
"Yahoo is working on a Audio / Music Search Engine according to a CNET article which states that Yahoo plans to introduce the music search engine within the next couple of months, according to a source familiar with the service. "

Ad growth numbers from Forrester and others

WSJ.com
"Nearly 85% of advertisers plan to increase their online ad budgets this year, with the increases averaging 25%, according to a report the Cambridge, Mass., research company plans to release today. More than 40% of these advertisers are cutting spending on traditional ad vehicles such as magazines, newspapers, and direct mail to help fund the online increase, Forrester says. The report is based on recent surveys of 99 national advertisers who buy online ads. Forrester also surveyed Internet-related companies."

Ads to fund twist in Real's challenge to Napster et al

The Register
(TOLD YOU SO TOLD YOU SO TOLD YOU SO ETC ETC ETC!)
"RealNetworks announced its anwer to Napster To Go yesterday, but with the twist that it plans to give away songs in exchange for advertising.
The new incarnation of Rhapsody, Real's music download and subscription service, will provide punters with 25 songs a month free of charge. The catch - a business model not dissimilar from the original Napster's approach - is that the 'Rhapsody 25' version of Real's jukebox software is funded by advertising from Chrysler, Google and others, so there's an added inconvenience."

Experience drives new hotel campaign, not destinations

WSJ.com
"The Ritz-Carlton hotel chain has long been known as a quiet and dignified choice for upscale travelers of a certain age -- not a place for the young and moneyed to frolic. Hoping to shake up that staid image, Ritz-Carlton next month will launch a print ad campaign designed to capture a more youthful crowd with an emphasis on experiences, not destinations."

Nokia knocking some heavy hitting handsets ...

The Industry Standard
"Nokia Corp. on Wednesday launched three new Nseries mobile handsets, hoping users will be seduced by the smart phones' built-in multimedia gadgets, which take print-quality pictures, read e-mail, play music, browse Web sites and display mobile TV."

More data on online ads

MediaPost
"ONLINE ADVERTISING REVENUES FOR THE year climbed to a new record of $9.6 billion--up 33 percent from 2003, and 19 percent from the previous record of $8.1 billion in 2000--according to a report released Thursday by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Web ad revenues for the last three months of the year contributed $2.69 to the annual total, representing a 24 percent increase from the $2.18 online ad spend in the fourth quarter of 2003."

Online Advertising Spending Projected to Increase by 20.2% in 2005, reaching $11.3 billion by Year's End

WWWcoder
"Online advertising is accounting for an increasing share of traditional retailers' advertising budgets. Paid search and e-mail marketing are showing strong growth, and spending on rich media advertising is rising as retailers begin to view the Internet as an essential component of brand advertising."

Another look at P2P

SSRN
"The use of file-sharing technologies, so-called Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks, to copy music files has become common since the arrival of Napster. P2P networks may actually improve the matching between products and buyers - we call this the matching effect."