Startups | Internet Marketing Blog

MySpace founder files lawsuit, accuses News Corp of 'evil behaviour'

MySpace founder Brad Greenspan isn't too happy with the censorship creeping into the social networking behemoth, so he has decided to take the matter to the US courts.

Greenspan’s lawsuit accuses the company of censoring users of the world's most popular social networking site by barring references to competing websites, including his own.

by Graham Charlton 03 November 2006 13:27pm 3 comments

Startup provides better search for BBC video clips

Former head of BBC News Online Bob Eggington has launched a video search engine called searchbbcvideo.com to allow users to scour the BBC archives for clips.

The company claims that the new site it does a better job of finding BBC videos than the corporation’s own online search tools.

by Chris Lake 03 November 2006 12:31pm 3 comments

Fake Web 2.0 vs Real Web 2.0

Is YouTube really a Web 2.0 site? A pointless question, you might think, especially when its founders have just sold the site for $1.65bn.

But not according to a recent blog by Lawrence Lessig, which seems to have sparked off a weird political row over sites that allow users to share content online.

by Chris Lake 02 November 2006 17:12pm 0 comments

Reddit acquired by Condé Nast, to join Wired Digital

Social media site Reddit has been bought by Wired publisher Condé Nast for an undisclosed sum, with TechCrunch again breaking the rumour. Reddit has itself just confirmed the news.

Reddit, which enables users to suggest and rank stories, is a user-generated news aggregator, with stories rising to the top based on popularity, rather like competitor Digg.

by Richard Maven 31 October 2006 17:50pm 0 comments

Google buys wiki tool developer Jotspot

Google has today acquired Jotspot, a three year old California-based company which develops platforms for building wiki-based applications.

Wikis, popularised by the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, are platforms for user-generated content. Users can create, modify and even delete information, to build up pages, in a structured format.

by Graham Charlton 31 October 2006 16:16pm 0 comments

Self-service ad agency gets WPP financing

Web-based ad agency Spot Runner has confirmed it has gained a new round of funding from WPP, CBS, Interpublic and other major media groups.

The firm, whose site enables small companies to create and place ads on local TV stations, said it had received $40m to expand into new forms of media, including online video, video-on-demand and IPTV.

by Richard Maven 30 October 2006 08:09am 0 comments

Digg "turns down" Murdoch's takeover offer

Social news bookmarking web start-up Digg has reportedly been in acquisition talks with several suitors - but instead opted to continue operating independently for now.

The San Francisco-based site, started by former TechTV host Kevin Rose and cohort Jay Adelson, has been talking with "a number of companies, including News Corp., according to multiple sources close to the negotiations", TechCrunch reports.

by Robert Andrews 25 October 2006 10:50am 0 comments

Video-sharing website Travelistic launches for travellers

Internet startup Travelistic.com - which aims to be the YouTube for travellers - launched yesterday, headed up by one-time CEO and president of MTVi.

Travelistic combines user-generated video with professionally produced programming, some of which is exclusive. The self-funded company itself plans to move into content creation, with a travel-themed 'video podcast' in the offing.

Diversion Media built the website using Ruby on Rails, harnessing the Google Maps API in the process to make it easy for users to browse videos by location, in a visual way. Users can also search for videos by tags.

All in all it looks pretty good. We spoke to CEO Nicholas Butterworth to find out a bit more...

by Graham Charlton 24 October 2006 11:03am 0 comments

Top UK blogs, ranked by unique users and impressions

Last Friday I wrote a post called “Are inbound links the best way to measure a blog’s influence?”, where I challenged a study published by Edelman and Technorati.

That study ranked the top blogs in the UK by influence, but rankings were determined solely by links from other blogs. My big issue is that the quantity of links doesn’t tell you very much, not when many blogs listed in Technorati are spam blogs.

In any case, I don’t believe that PR professionals or media planners would subscribe to this link-based methodology to measure influence (or very much else for that matter).

So I promised a closer look at the top blogs in the UK, ranked by a more suitable metrics: unique users and page impressions.

After the jump, the results...

by Chris Lake 18 October 2006 12:20pm 2 comments

Universal sues video sharing sites over copyright infringement

The predicted backlash against the infringement of copyright by video sharing sites has begun, with Universal Music launching legal action in the US against both Grouper.com and Bolt.com.

Universal, whose artists include U2 and Mariah Carey, is seeking compensation of up to $150,000 for each incident of copyright infringement, as well as demanding that the sites cease using their content.

by Graham Charlton 18 October 2006 10:59am 0 comments