MediaBytes

SHAWN GOLD has resigned as SVP of Marketing and Content Development at MYSPACE to form consulting firm SOCIAL APPROACH. In an interview with Shelly Palmer at Digital Hollywood in LA, Shawn confirmed a rumor that was posted to paidcontent.org last week and said the new company plans to “help brands take advantage of social media Continue Reading →

GOOGLE will announce plans for Google-powered phones within the next two weeks according to The Wall Street Journal. The company has been approaching handset makers and aims to bring the phones to market by mid-2008. Google will offer an open operating system that encourages developers to create innovative new applications for phones and aims to Continue Reading →

COMCAST announced the loss of 65,000 basic-cable subscribers in the third quarter, which follows a loss of 95,000 subscribers in the previous quarter. The company is also seeing severely reduced growth in high-speed Internet subscribers. Comcast blames the customer erosion on increased competition from satellite and telephone companies. THE NBA is in talks with Turner Continue Reading →

APPLE found its next commercial for the iPod Touch on YouTube. A lively spot was created by 18-year-old Nick Haley and uploaded to the video-sharing site, where it received a few thousand views. Apple employees saw the ad and had TBWA/Chiat/Day contact the young student. The agency collaborated with him to create a professional, broadcast-ready Continue Reading →

MICROSOFT will purchase 1.6% of FACEBOOK for $240 million, which places a $15 billion valuation on the three-year-old company. Microsoft will begin to sell banner ads for international versions of the site and split the revenue with Facebook. In related news, RIM launched Facebook software for Blackberries. BARRY DILLER told a group of conference attendees Continue Reading →

FACEBOOK is the focus of a heated bidding war between MICROSOFT and GOOGLE. The two companies are competing for less than 10% of the social networking site and a deal could be announced within the next 48 hours. Google is reportedly driving the price very high in an attempt to outbid Microsoft. The winning bidder Continue Reading →

NBC confirmed the pulling of all official NBC content from YouTube ahead of the Hulu launch. The company believes that pulling the content will help push more traffic to the forthcoming online video service. Hulu will host NBC videos and distribute them through Yahoo, AOL, MySpace and other video destinations. However, it does not currently Continue Reading →

COMCAST is drawing heat for allegedly inhibiting access to BitTorrent. The Associated Press claims that the provider “actively interferes” with P2P file-sharing services to reduce network traffic. Comcast denies the claim, saying they do not block access to any sites, applications or services. However a nation-wide test found that Comcast consistently delays connections to the Continue Reading →

BIG MEDIA has formed a coalition to stop pirated material from being released on the web. The group includes Viacom, Disney, Microsoft, CBS, Fox, MySpace, and NBC Universal. These companies have agreed to put “commercially reasonable” content identification systems in place by the end of the year. They issued a 15-point manifesto outlining extensive copyright-protecting Continue Reading →

BEST BUY has stopped selling all analog TV sets and has ordered stores to pull unsold sets from the shelves, ensuring an all-digital holiday season. The mandate is an aggressive and bold move to prepare for the upcoming digital transition. The retailer has committed to selling digital-to-analog convertors and will stock them by early January. Continue Reading →