MaxxoMedia Digital Media and Entertainment Trends

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 48% of internet users have been to video-sharing sites such as YouTube, and the daily traffic to such sites on a typical day has doubled in the past year. The basic findings in a national phone survey show:

• In December 2006, 33% of internet users said they had ever visited such sites. That represents growth of more than 45% year-to-year.
• 15% of respondents said they had used a video-sharing site the day before they were contacted for the survey. A year ago, only 8% had visited such a site the previous day.

Though YouTube usage generally increased in 2007, according to Harris Interactive, reports eMarketer, a solid majority of YouTube users surveyed said they had visited only once or a few times.David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer, concluded “The fact that younger Internet users are far more likely to be regular visitors to video-sharing sites points to a fork in the road… marketers looking to target the under-30 demographic can more reliably find them on these video sites… (while) TV broadcast and cable networks… (can) bulk up their online offerings…”

From Kenradio.com
Mobile instant-messaging (IM) is growing among IM users, especially teens, according to a new survey by AP, which found that 25% of respondents send IMs from their cell phones, including 32% teens. The proliferation of cell phones with full keyboards has made it easier to send mobile instant messages; also, the major instant messaging services let users have their instant messages forwarded directly to their cell phones; moreover, IM users are instant-messaging from within their social-networking profiles. Instant messaging is popular not only at home and on-the-go but also at the workplace: 27% users say they use instant messaging at work, and half of at-work IM users say that instant messaging makes them more productive at work – a 25% increase over last year. The most-popular IM service was AOL’s, cited by 54% of teens and adults surveyed; next were Yahoo’s with 41% and Windows Messenger with 35%; MySpace IM was cited by 15% (23% of teens).

70% and 24% send more instant messages than emails.

By Mark Levy CEO of MaxxoMedia

The web has forever changed the way people experience music. Here are a few sites I found this week that are cleverly combining elements of social networks, games and artificial intelligence, enabling people to discover and share music like never before.

Music Discovery Game

www.thesixtyone.com is a music discovery game that rewards those who help others listen to good new music. The name of the site pays homage to US Highway 61. According to the founders, “Muddy Waters rode the 61. So did Bob Dylan, Ike Turner and B.B. King. Elvis grew up in the housing projects along it. Highway 61 was the road by which people left to find better opportunities. And by leaving, they took their music to the world.”

by Mark Levy CEO of MaxxoMedia

For the most part, listening to the radio is a passive experience. Tune in your station and let the DJ lead you through the programming. Aside from the occasional call-in request to win tickets or call-in to Talk radio, there isn’t a lot of direct response interaction with listeners.

A Colorado-based company is looking to bring interactivity between radio stations and listeners to a whole new level. CynoCast (pronounced sin-O-cast) aims to help stations keep listeners tuned in longer and generate new streams of revenue by giving stations the ability to easily launch web pages while broadcasting live on the air.

With CynoCast’s “DJ CynoCaster,” stations can simulcast web pages that run alongside live broadcasts. Instant push-polls, poll results, song lyrics, traffic maps, news articles, blogs, weather maps, sports scores and any other type of information can be fed directly to the listener’s computer in real time.

From Kenradio.com

61% high speed Internet users watch/download online video content at least once a week and 86% do so on a monthly basis, compared to 45% and 71%, respectively, in the 2006 study, according to a new study by Horowitz Associates. News and user-generated, non-professional content are the most often viewed genres, followed by movie previews/trailers, music videos, and previews/segments of TV shows. Weekly viewing of full episodes of television shows doubled from last year, with 16% of high speed Internet users watching TV online on a weekly basis.

NBC and ABC are the networks Internet users mention the most frequently for online TV content, with Grey’s Anatomy being the most often mentioned TV program viewed online. While consumption of broadband video has grown, the study shows that television is still the preferred platform for traditional TV content. The vast majority (70%) of Internet users who watch TV online say do so because they missed the episode on TV. 18% of these respondents say they watch TV shows online to watch them a second time (after having watched them on TV), or that they watch TV shows online just when they happen to find them or when someone else tells them about them (20%). Conversely, 13% Internet users who watch TV shows online say they watch them directly online, and not on regular TV.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project finds that 93% of teens use the internet, and more of them than ever are treating it as a venue for social interaction — a place where they can share creations, tell stories, and interact with others. 64% of online teens ages 12-17 have participated in one or more among a wide range of content-creating activities on the internet, up from 57% of online teens in a similar survey at the end of 2004. Girls continue to dominate most elements of content creation:

• 35% of all teen girls blog, compared with 20% of online boys
• 54% of wired girls post photos online compared with 40% of online boys.
• 19% of Online boys post video content online, compared to 10% of online girls who have posted a video online where others could see it.

47% of online teens have posted photos where others can see them, and 89% of those teens who post photos say that people comment on the images at least “some of the time.” Many teens, however, limit access to content that they share.

By Mark Levy

CEO of MaxxoMedia

Lately, my inbox has been inundated with invitations to join new online social networking sites. Unlike early entrants to the social networking market like MySpace and Friendster, these new services are more focused on helping people do business. The largest and seemingly most popular business network is named Linkedin. A little over four years old, it boasts over 17 million members.

New social nets seem to be popping up daily.Many just duplicate features and functions of the leaders. They simply offer a network of people from many different walks of life the opportunity to connect with each other. However, one recent entrant is making waves by focusing the power of social networking software into a marketplace that has always been insulated and inefficient – the entertainment industry.

Nextcat.com aims to be THE business social networking hub of the entertainment industry. Based outside of Boston, the company was founded by two serial entrepreneurs, Jeff Pucci and Richard Viard. Though they both attended the Berklee College of Music, they didn’t meet up until 1988.

According to the latest Horowitz Associates report, Broadband Content and Services 2007, six out of ten high speed Internet users watch/download online video content at least once a week and 86% do so on a monthly basis, compared to 45% and 71%, respectively, in the 2006 study. News and user-generated, non-professional content are the most often viewed genres, followed by movie previews/trailers, music videos, and previews/segments of TV shows.

Weekly viewing of full episodes of television shows doubled from last year, with 16% of high speed Internet users watching TV online on a weekly basis.

NBC and ABC are the networks Internet users mention the most frequently for online TV content, with Grey’s Anatomy being the most often mentioned TV program viewed online.

SEOUL: IPTV – internet protocol television – broadcasting over South Korean broadband networks in real-time was, until a few days ago, technically illegal. However, the country’s National Assembly last week legalized this anachronism.

According to the Assembly’s website, the country’s two largest broadband-service operators by sales, Hanarotelecom and KT Corporation are now poised to launch IPTV services as a new source of revenue.

The move comes as a welcome respite to increasingly sluggish growth in traditional broadband and telephone markets.

NEW YORK: Findings from State of the Media Democracy, a new-media survey by Deloitte & Touche, were leaked late last week to The Hollywood Reporter. The data, which will not become officially available until next month, underscore the rise and rise of online media platforms.

Based on an online sample of 2,081 people during the last week of October, the study shows that 38% of respondents watch TV online; 36% use their cellphones as an entertainment source; and 45% create online content such as websites, music, videos and blogs.

But it is the pace of growth that astonishes. In a similar survey conducted only eight months earlier, usage of cellphones as entertainment devices was just 24% – a leap of fifty percentage points.