Posts under ‘Business Models’

AP: Comcast, Facebook to launch TV series with user videos: Comcast Corp. and Facebook.com are joining forces to create a television series from user-generated videos that will appear online and through video on demand. Good to hear about this, but what will these “users” — the wrong word here — get paid? No word on […]

Over at Micro Persuasion, Steve Rubel takes note of a new pay-per-performance system at ZDNet, where writers will be rewarded in part based on how many people read what they write. It raises questions, he observes: For example, will a blogger favor writing a sensational post that is likely to get more clicks over one […]

UPDATED The rise of the citizen journalist is not a new phenomenon. People have been witnessing and taking pictures of notable events for a long, long time. And they’ve been selling them to traditional news organizations just as long. But professional photojournalists, and more recently videographers, have continued to make good livings at a craft […]

UPDATED Long Island Business News runs an op-ed column under former U.S. Sen. Al D’Amato’s byline entitled, “Newsday’s new day: Murdoch or consortium?” It’s basically a suggestion that Tribune Co. sell its Newsday newspaper to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Two things to consider. First, as the New York Daily News’ Ben Smith notes, “D’Amato is […]

San Jose Mercury News: YouTube, Verizon announce video deal. YouTube plans to announce a deal with Verizon Wireless today to bring user-submitted videos from the Web to mobile phone customers nationwide, marking the biggest marriage yet between a video Web service and mobile phone carrier. This makes some sense, but it also tells you where […]

Wired Magazine’s article about the YouTube “lonelygirl” phenomenon, “The Secret World of Lonelygirl,” is full of revealing detail. But in the end it’s a paean to deception — the hoodwinking of folks as part of a business plan. The article’s near-endorsement of the tactics lends Wired’s own credibility to the deceivers. Was that the intention? […]

Blogworks: The Blogosphere Loses Transparency. It’s been a bad week for transparency and honesty in the blogosphere, demonstrating that once blogging starts making money, the rules change.

Seth Finkelstein: Wikipedia, and the difficulties of criticizing digital-sharecropping. In brief, there’s two important ideas somewhat in conflict: 1) (fact) There are new businesses which can be built on data-mining or large collections of small amounts of unpaid labor 2) (belief) There is social or economic value in openness and commons Fascinating discussion here, stemming […]

The Citizen Media Gold Rush is in full fury, with Google’s buyout of YouTube as Exhibit A. YouTube has been a fantastic success, and deserved a big payday. Is it worth $1.6 biilion, though? I doubt it, and I think Google doubts it, too. Consider that Google paid with stock, not cash. Google’s stock looks […]

Business Week Online: Unrepentant PayPerPost Gets Funding. The Orlando-based startup, which matches advertisers with bloggers willing to write about their products for $2 and up per post, will announce on Tuesday that it has netted $3 million in venture capital. The Series A round was led by Inflexion Partners, with Village Ventures and Draper Fisher […]