A Little Of The Old In And Out



(image via bandwidthblog)

In: Evan Williams. Ashton Kutcher's quixotic war against CNN will have only one winner: Twitter. In the final arena, there will be no judges, only witnesses to Evan Williams's greatness. Today Williams Tweeted, slyly: "Tomorrow just became a very big day. (Sorry for the teaser -- more later.)" -- and then a deafening silence.

Gawker's Owen Thomas speculates that the surprise will be Oprah wholly embracing Twitter. He writes:

"She's already set up an account. Ashton Kutcher, a big Twitter user, is scheduled to appear on the show Friday to talk about Twitter. Ex-dating columnist Julia Allison is trying to recruit other Twitterers for the show. And videoblogger Robert Scoble has posted that Oprah is going to be doing her first tweet."

Sounds about right.



Out: John Madden. Madden's career as one of the most successful -- and beefy -- broadcasters (as well as a popularizer of mind-destroying video games) is drawing to a goddam flatulent close. Excellent! Farewell John Madden: goodbye to soulless video games, the bad grammar and that meaty something creepily called "Turducken (Averted Gaze)."



(image via videomaker)

In: YouTube. Monetizing YouTube has been difficult to say the least. But today's news goes a long way to better the bottom line of Google, which is delivering their quarterly report later today. From HollywoodReporter:

"YouTube is set to announce a deal with multiple studios Thursday that will seed the site with full-length, ad-supported library films.

"Details are still emerging, but essentially YouTube users who click on a film will be redirected to sites controlled by the studios, which will be able to serve their ads to, and collect traffic from, their own video player.

"The films, which are not thought to include new releases, will be promoted on YouTube in designated areas for premium entertainment.

"Unlike their television counterparts, studios have by and large been hesitant to provide full-length features for free via Web sites. MGM is one of the few studios to offer full-length movies, which it does via its own channel on YouTube."

(image via mobilewhack)

Out: iTunes. We could have told you that in this economy it would be stupid to raise music prices. But try to explain business to anyone in the music industry. From Rory Maher of Paidcontent:

"Last week was the first week of iTunes’s new, steeper pricing on some tracks, and consumers voted with their wallets, according to Billboard. Sales figures from iTunes show that tracks that now sell for $1.29, up from $0.99, sold 12.5 percent fewer units than during the previous week, while tracks whose prices were unchanged sold 10 percent more than the week before. (Overall track sales were up 3 percent during the week).

"Billboard also looked at how the sales of iTunes’s top 100 songs (about half of which now sell for $1.29, up from $0.99) were impacted by the price hikes. While unit sales dropped about one percent, revenues were up over the prior week, according to iTunes, though exact figures weren’t provided by Apple."