"The Medium is the Massage"

I am not sure I can say this any differently, or any better, so I'll just quote Marshall McLuhan:

"Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication. The alphabet, for instance, is a technology that is absorbed by the very young child in a completely unconscious manner, by osmosis so to speak.
Words and the meaning of words predispose the child to think and act automatically in certain ways.

The alphabet and print technology fostered and encouraged a fragmenting process, a process of specialism and of detachment.
Electric technology fosters and encourages unification and involvement.

It is impossible to understand social and cultural changes without a knowledge of the workings of media.

The older training of observation has become quite irrelevant in this new time, because it is based on psychological responses and concepts conditioned by the former technology- mechanization. "

..more of this to follow post assimilation.

WeareIndia.TV: Engagement numbers from 11 days in a very private Beta

Hello.

We just collected stats from our Beta launch, and as always, for shits 'n giggles, decided to do a little study of where we stand after 11 days of pseudo-action, as juxtaposed with other proud members who co-exist in our ecosystem, despite them being playmates of a slightly varied nature.

The prizes, of course, are the same- eyeballs, attention, and revenue- not necessarily in that order.


This is too early to start making determinations, so we won't.

But there you have it..the numbers from our first 11 days of beta launch:
- average time spent on WeareIndia.TV was a whopping 9 minutes, 10 seconds
- average page views/user on WeareIndia.TV was 4.62

On May 1, we launch playlists. Oh, and we get out of private beta as well.
10 days from then, we'll release another version of these numbers.

You will be pleasantly surprised.

One a day..

Yahoo just announced an interesting tie-up with Major League Baseball "Advanced Media".
On a separate note, its largest shareholder (Capital World Investors) just doubled its stake in Yahoo.

One a day...is it enough to keep the buyers at bay?

The MicroHoo funky chicken dance

The Microsoft-Yahoo dance continues.

Yahoo! will be testing out a partnership w/ Google to display advertisements from Google's AdSense program, on searches made at Yahoo.com(US version only).

Microsoft was quick to retort, that such a move would further consolidate Google's position in the online advertisement marketplace- a statement that was backed up by US Senator Herb Kohl

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Yahoo does not want to be bought, and definitely not in this hostile takeover. It would be a shame to see it go thus, and they're doing everything they can to stall. To their credit, they're doing quite a bit. They acquired an analytics firm earlier today, signed on a promising big-name partnership exploration(the biggest name these days, if you will...), and are, after a very long time, showing a hunger(fear?) that can probably get them out of this jam.

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Microsoft has a point, but it's somewhat moot, because for every little thing Yahoo pulls off, it is able to convince its shareholders that Microsoft needs to name a better price, to compensate for the growth potential being created. So if I were Yahoo, I'd be pulling off a lot of things, every day, through the end of the month, and just before the Microsoft deadline, present my shareholders with a case that outlines a going-it-alone strategy.

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From a shareholder standpoint, a huge price for Yahoo is not something that Microsoft shareholders want to bear, short term. There are estimates pointing to the downturn in MSFT stock that would happen if Microsoft were to go up even by $3/share. Moreover, it's not like the Yahoo stock acquired in the process would pay off their losses. And finally, the long-term benefits of the MSFT-YHOO merger are in the loooooooonnnnggg term- not something that shareholders(particularly the large institutional ones that hold shares in both MSFT and YHOO) want to wait out for.

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All the same, Yahoo is either playing with a great hand(and they either get a huge payout from MSFT, or they get MSFT to walk away), or they're fighting to death(and we see the boring proxy battle).
The "worsening economic conditions" would make it harder for Microsoft to go very high...or so I think.

These next 3 weeks should be very interesting.

Does anyone *actually* know when the two weeks of AdSense testing for Yahoo begins?? What happens if the AdSense tests are in progress, and uncle Ballmer's deadline expires? Does he extend it to watch the next step for Yahoo + Google? Does he start the proxy battle knowing that he might lose(shareholders might love the 16% savings/16% revenue increase from a Yahoo-Google partnership..).

Good stuff...

Our publishers can now be syndicated

Good news: We just added RSS feeds for each publisher.
It's accessible via the "Subscribe via RSS" button, on each publishers channel page.
So head on over to the site, click through to your favorite publishers channel page, click on the "Subscribe via RSS" button, and be notified whenever there is a new video added to the channel!