Social Networks – BEBO

BEBO is even more succesfull then mySpace, lead by Joanna Shields, former managing director at google for EMEA partnerships and syndication.

BEBO also enters the short webisodes, one of them is Kate Modern. Kate modern is typical drama for teens and 20+, the audience of bebo. Bebo also teamed up with Endemol to launch an interactive drama serie called The Gap Year, the series will follow six Bebo users on a globe-trotting journey that will be documented on the site through video diaries, blogs and photos.

Bebo and myspacetv will become full blown media platforms, and bring tv series or webisodes to a next generation. Just as with mySpace, Bebo its target audience is teens and 20+.

Bebo has 40 million members mainly in the UK. Bebo was sold for 850 million dollars in CASH! to AOL a Time Warner company. Bebo is already profitable more then a year now, and in good shape! Branded content will become more and more important.

At Bebo they see less user generated content, and professional conent is taking over. The video content is from broadcasters and is completly owend, the social network is used as a distribution platform.

Content is still very important, and needs to be quality! The storyelling and so forth is very important. Spicing this with all the community features we all know, this will become a powerfull medium!

Social Networking – mySpaceTV

A few month ago I already talked about Quarterlife on plugmedia site. mySpace continues to invest in TV productions on line. They team up with Fox Interactive – a News Corp devision (Rupert Murdoch).
mySpaceTV is launched for a year now, and became a seperate site next to mySpace.

mySpace site is localized in 26 countries, has 200 million users and has 75000 upload a day. As with the other Social Networks like Bebo and Facebook, they get their revenue from advertising.

mySpace also made a deal with the Shine Group, yes owned by Elisabeth Murdoch, the daughter of…, to distribute video content launched on mySpaceTV. It is a reverse world, but we have seen that before on the blog site as well. Blogs that become books!
In that way mySpaceTV will be very fast profitable.

The target audience: teens and 20+, is the internet generation, and looks differnt to the TV. While we came home and got in front of the TV, they go and play or chat or do some kind of entertainment on their computer, and on the internet. And mySapce is clearly one of their playgrounds!

Roommates is one the recent shorts on mySpaceTV. I love chieftown, from the makers of Kate modern (a short from BEBO) will soon be released on mySpaceTV to, a 60 webisodes will be launched mid september. mySapce users will be involved in this process, they will be encouraged to shape the stories and characters. and voila a new format is born!!! There will be plenty of room for branding and advertising, however in subttle ways, and not as traditional advertising! Revenue will also come from DVD sales and other mercahndising.

mySpaceTV will aslo be an excellent plaform to test and promote film productions (mainly arthouse movies), who otherwise have a real hard time to get distributed, will be gaining a lot of this platform, all these eyeballs (visitors a day on mySpaceTV) is a free promotion tool you can only dream of…as an art or cult movie producer. I guess the picture is clear!

Short introduction on MIPTV featuring milia

BBC Iplayer

The BBC has always been pretty innovative. They launched their Iplayer to view online shorts. It is an extension towards the traditional tv channel.

They do try different content formats, e.g Doctor Who tv serie. Where you can make your own Doctor Who trailer. In that way a whole bzz is created around the serie.

Last week, I saw this announcement on the BBC, it was april fools day right. All of a sudden I see these flying pinguins on TV :-), this was one of the showcases today at milia…, it was a joke!

Sex, lies and online TV by Jason Kilar

NBC Universal & News Corporation announced the online video site Hulu in March 2007. Hulu is only available in the US right now, but they are looking at European and Azian parntners to deliver content in he other continents as well.

Hulu is a breaktrough on online television. You have premium content to view, all the time available. And with some tricks, you can also viewed in Europe 🙂

The content is completly free, and the hulu concept is completly add driven. They connect with MSN Video as a partner.