Social Media

BETHPAGE, N.Y., 05/20/2004 — Cablevision Systems Corporation (NYSE: CVC) today announced that it has successfully deployed five advanced interactive television (ITV) applications to iO: Interactive Optimum digital cable customers across its entire service area. The company also announced that it has more than doubled the size of the innovative subscription games service it introduced for all iO customers earlier this month, with the addition of a “Casino” games package featuring unlimited access to seven gaming favorites.

“This is a watershed moment in the development of our iO digital cable service, because it represents the extension of innovative interactive applications, which had formerly been available only in select areas, across our entire customer base,” said Patrick Donoghue, Cablevision’s vice president of interactive television development and operations. “All of our nearly 1.1 million iO customers now have access to this groundbreaking functionality and compelling content, further leveraging the enormous capacity of our network and giving our digital cable service an even greater competitive advantage over conventional satellite providers.”

With the launch of ITV applications across its entire service area, all of Cablevision’s iO digital cable customers have access to the following services at no additional cost:

Metro Weather Interactive, featuring intensely localized weather information and forecasts, in addition to comprehensive reports on the region, nation and world. The fully-interactive service also includes detailed marine forecasts and advisories.

Metro Traffic Interactive, featuring local and regional traffic information including delay advisories, specific reports on area bridges and tunnels, road conditions and – in select areas – live camera shots of frequently traversed roadways.

iO Dashboard, an interactive information portal, with embedded video, that enables viewers to scan current news, sports and entertainment headlines, in addition to viewing personally-relevant traffic, weather, lottery and horoscope information.

iO Showcase, the innovative promotional channel designed by Cablevision to help iO customers identify unique and interesting elements of its digital cable service, including new on demand titles, subscription video on demand services, high-definition programming and other benefits.

Move ‘n Match Puzzles, an entertaining and educational puzzle game for young children.

The iO Games play-for-fun “Casino” package includes seven captivating interactive gaming favorites developed by Zone4Play, the leading developer and provider of betting and gambling applications for interactive television subscribers. As with all iO Games, free demos are available on a trial basis. Players draw iO-branded cards, throw dice and drop coins with a touch of the remote control. Top players are able to post their scores on leader boards that are visible across Cablevision’s service area.

“The addition of these popular casino games will create additional momentum for a service that is already becoming popular with our customers,” Donoghue said. “We’ve developed a compelling interface and intuitive controls enhanced with incredible graphics that are as real to a casino floor as you can get on television. As we’ve seen with the success of iO Games’ Variety Pak, which we launched earlier this month, there is a lot of excitement and interest in this type of interactive entertainment.”

The iO Games “Casino” package includes Blackjack, Caribbean Poker, Roulette, Video Poker, Battle Royal, Slots and Keno. The iO Games “Variety Pak” and “Casino” are each available for unlimited play for the monthly subscription price of $4.95. In the coming weeks, Cablevision will make it even more convenient for iO customers to subscribe to interactive games services by adding the ability to upgrade using only a television remote control and on-screen prompts.

Nearly 700,000 iO customers were added in 2003, for a current total of nearly 1.1 million. Today more than 36 percent of Cablevision’s cable customers are iO customers, up from just 13.6 percent one year ago, reflecting the breakaway success of a service that was first offered on a limited basis in late 2001 and did not become available across Cablevision’s entire service area until late last year.

This dramatic consumer adoption of iO in 2003 was complemented by strong industry recognition, including Emmy Awards in two categories: “Outstanding Achievement in Interactive Television for an Interactive Television Service,” and “Outstanding Achievement in Advanced Media Technology for the Creation of Non-Traditional Programs or Platforms.”

iO offers customers access to more than 200 channels, including 50 premium movie channels, 45 channels of commercial-free digital music, more than 700 titles available on demand, an interactive programming guide, 14 high-definition programming services and groundbreaking interactive television applications. No other cable or satellite provider exceeds the breadth and depth of the iO service or gives customers more control over their television experience.

LAS VEGAS, Jan 07, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — As the center of people’s online lives, Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) today furthered the company’s Connected TV leadership by globally expanding the availability of the Yahoo! Widget Engine. New partnerships with Hisense, ViewSonic, MIPS Technologies, and Sigma Designs will dramatically increase the availability of the Yahoo! Widget Engine, delivering compelling TV Widget experiences to more televisions and other consumer electronic devices which will begin shipping as soon as Q1 2010. Yahoo! TV Widgets now work on all major consumer electronic device chip architectures worldwide.

Reinforcing the company’s open strategy in this space, Yahoo! also broadly released its Widget Development Kit (WDK) today, enabling developers to create TV Widgets and effectively reach millions of consumers. ”Consumers are in love with their televisions, watching more TV, and demanding Internet connectivity to further enhance their viewing experience,” said Arlo Rose, senior director of Yahoo! Connected TV. “Yahoo! is leading the connected TV market by bringing a rich variety of Internet content and services to the living room — incorporating video on demand, social networks, games, online shopping, and more — making it easy for consumers to personalize their TV viewing experience.”

New Partnerships To Expand Distribution for the Yahoo! Widget Engine

Building on the company’s existing distribution partnerships with Sony®, LG Electronics®, VIZIO® and Samsung® across North America and Europe, Yahoo! is expanding the availability of the TV Widget experience globally by embedding the Yahoo! Widget Engine in an even greater number of television models and a variety of new consumer electronics devices. New partnerships and noteworthy developments include:

● VIZIO’s XVT Series Connected HDTVs with VIZIO Internet Apps incorporate the Yahoo! Widget Engine and will be available at retailers throughout the U.S. in Q1. Taking unique advantage of the Yahoo! Widget Engine, VIZIO’s Connected HDTVs provide consumers with unprecedented choice, convenience, and control of an ever-increasing array of Internet content and services, as well as intuitive and simple access to the TVs’ settings through the Widget dock.

● Hisense International Co, Ltd., a world leading provider of flat panel TVs, household appliances, and mobile communications, announced a partnership with global Internet brand Yahoo!® Inc. to integrate the Yahoo! Widget Engine into Hisense Internet-Connected TVs that will ship across the U.S. and Europe.

● ViewSonic will provide customers with an interactive, connected TV experience via the ViewSonic VMP80 media player. Powered by the Yahoo! Widget Engine, the ViewSonic VMP80 media player will enable current HDTV owners to view movies, TV shows, Web videos, and photos; and to go shopping, play games, and more with TV Widgets. The VMP80 media player will ship in Q1 2010 for an estimated MSRP of US$159.

● MIPS Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of industry-standard processor architectures and cores for digital consumer, home networking, wireless, communications, and business applications, today announced plans to develop an optimized Yahoo! Widget Engine for MIPS-Based™ digital home devices. MIPS will develop an optimized reference platform running the Yahoo! Widget Engine for digital TV and set-top box applications. Leveraging this reference implementation, MIPS® licensees will be able to quickly develop devices incorporating Yahoo! TV Widgets.

● Sigma Designs announced plans to support the Yahoo! Widget Engine on its media processors, which will enable manufacturers to easily support Yahoo! Connected TV in a wide array of consumer electronic devices, including Blu-ray players, network players, AV receivers, and cable/IPTV set-top boxes.

WDK Now Widely Available for Developers and Publishers; Offering Instant Scalability

With thousands of developers in the process of creating TV Widgets, and to further the company’s open strategy in this space, Yahoo! is making its Widget Developer Kit (WDK) broadly available for developers and publishers who want to extend their brand, services, and content to a mass market. Beginning today, anyone can download the WDK and quickly create, deploy and monetize exciting and engaging TV Widget experiences. Leveraging a rich set of application programming interfaces (APIs), developers can write widgets using simple JavaScript and XML, producing rich Internet applications to deliver dynamic content to millions of television sets and other consumer electronic devices globally.

For more information on the WDK and to begin developing TV Widgets, visit: http://connectedtv.yahoo.com/developer

Slate of New TV Widget Providers Bring Thousands of Content Sources to Consumers

The Yahoo! Widget Gallery continues to expand, enabling consumers to access their favorite TV shows on Amazon® Video on Demand, play music on Pandora®, check sports scores on USA Today®, shop on eBay®, play games, or catch up with friends on Twitter™ and Facebook®, all while watching TV. Joining leading consumer brands like CBS®, Showtime® and Blockbuster®, a sample of recently introduced Widgets will provide consumers access to a personalized selection of music, video, news and information.

● CNBC: The CNBC widget allows viewers to interact with CNBC’s real-time stock quotes direct from the NYSE and NASDAQ, real-time watchlists to track favorite stocks, and other key analytics.

● NBC: View NBC’s show schedule, view full screen photo galleries and catch up on your favorite shows with up-to-date quick text recaps, cast bios, and more.

● Napster: Subscribers can browse, search, preview, and listen to Napster’s entire catalog of music on-demand, as well as enjoy custom radio stations, playlists, and Billboard charts.

● RadioTime: Create your personal selection of music from up to 100,000 radio stations.

● Sky News TV: Delivers breaking news by text and images to users’ TV sets. It includes seven categories of news: top stories, U.K. news, sports, business, world news, showbiz news, and politics.

● Dailymotion: Access one of largest Web video sites in the world through your TV.

● The Weather Channel: Enables consumers to stay up to date with the current conditions, the five-day forecast, and access regional radar, all accessible in a simple interface with the ability to look up and save multiple locations.

● Betfair: The world’s biggest betting community provides sports enthusiasts with an online entertainment experience to enhance their sports television watching in the U.K.

● My-Cast Weather: Provides animated Nexrad radar, hourly to seven-day forecasts, StormWatch, cloud information and more across the United States. Yahoo! has also worked with leading video, data and photo aggregators to provide consumers access to their vast libraries of thousands of content sources.

● FrameChannel: Provides consumers with over 1,000 content channels from FrameChannel’s collection of leading photosharing, social networking and content partners, including BBC News, People.com, EW Picks, Deutsche Welle, Crave, Digg.com, Facebook, Twitter and much more. Browse and configure hundreds of channels to create your personalized TV Widget.

● Brightcove: The Leading online video platform for publishing and distributing video on the Web now makes it easy for media companies and marketers to create immersive, branded video experiences for Internet-connected televisions. Some of the TV Widgets that consumers can expect shortly include: Slate V, This Old House, AllYou.com, My Home Ideas, My Recipes, Southern Living, Real Simple, Coastal Living, Sunset, Cooking Light, Wine Spectator, TheStreet.com, The Hollywood Reporter and Cars.com.

● Zinc: Enables users to enjoy high-quality Internet video, providing a simple and consistent way to browse more than 100,000 professionally produced videos from hundreds of different websites, including Amazon, Netflix, those of major networks, and more.

● 1Cast: This personalized video service delivers up-to-the-minute news video from leading programmers and broadcasters across the Web.

YouTube-backed video site Vevo is now live after a star-studded launch eventin New York City.

Celebrities like Lady Gaga, Adam Lambert, Bono, Pete Wentz, and Mariah Carey joined Google CEO Eric Schmidt in Manhattan to launch the new music video Web site.

Vevo.com currently has 14,675 videos from 5,191 artists in more than 20 categories: alternative, blues, children’s music, Christian and gospel, classical, comedy/humor, country, easy listening, electronic/dance, holiday, jazz, Latino, pop, R&B/soul, rap/hip-hop, reggae, rock, soundtrack, spoken word, world, and other.

Users have the option to create playlists with up to 75 videos. Almost 800 playlists have already been created.

Plans for Vevo were first announced in April with YouTube and Universal Music Group as the founding partners. YouTube described Vevo as a “premium online music video hub” that will be powered by YouTube’s video technology. Users can access the content via Vevo.com or through a new Vevo YouTube channel, which will include a Vevo-branded embedded player.

Sony Music Entertainment joined the venture in June, and AT&T signed on in October. Abu Dhabi Media Company also joined as a founding shareholder that same month, contributing a reported $300 million.

Earlier this month, Vevo announced a content deal with CBS Interactive Music Group, which will provide users with access to CBS properties like Last.fm and more than 90 CBS Radio music stations beginning next year.

On Monday, EMI Music said it would share content from its labels like Astralwerks, Blue Note, Capitol and Virgin, as well as the independent artists and labels represented by EMI Label Services and EMI’s Caroline Distribution unit.

Is behavioral targeting the answer?

Consumers worldwide surveyed for Synovate’s “IN:FACT global study on media and advertising” were not very ad-friendly. Two-thirds thought there were too many ads on TV, and 39% said the same of the Internet.

North American respondents were trying harder to get away from advertising, rather than looking at ads as interesting items to share or discuss with friends. More than four in 10 US consumers said they were skipping ads on TV and the radio as well as avoiding Websites with intrusive ads more in 2009 than they were the year before.

When asked about positive ad-related activities, such as searching for advertisements online, sharing and discussing ads with friends, or following brands on Facebook and Twitter, responses were in the single digits. Most consumers reported never doing any such activities.

Behavioral targeting, because of its ability to improve ad relevance, is billed as a way to combat such ad fatigue. As eMarketer senior analyst David Hallerman notes, the technology will only come under further scrutiny due to privacy concerns, which make consumers resistant and will require transparency from marketers.

When Synovate surveyed consumers worldwide about targeted television and Internet advertisements, explaining that behavioral targeting would increase ad relevance, 42% of those polled responded positively.

“This form of behavioural targeting is something that many media owners and advertisers would like to be able to implement and our survey indicates that a substantial proportion of people would be willing to accept it,” said Philip Shaw, Synovate director, in a statement.

But the majority of those who were up for receiving behaviorially targeted ads insisted that the information collected not be personally identifying. Respondents in the US and Canada were among those most concerned about privacy issues, and most likely to reject behavioral targeting on that basis.

The Web is changing before our eyes. Traffic to almost every major media and portal site has been in a free-fall since September 2008, according to Nicholas Moerman, a planning intern with Proximity in London. This begs the question: If we are spending more time on the Web, not less, just where did our attention go? The answer is, unsurprisingly, social networking sites. According to Moerman’s analysis, they buck the trend.

Social networking is on a tear. Other than Google, few sites loom larger today in brokering traffic and attention flows than Twitter and Facebook. The New York Times reported recently that Twitter will soon become one of its top 10 traffic drivers. Facebook alone grabs 25% of the entire Web’s page views, according to an analysis by Perry Drake of Drake Direct.

To date, however, social networking has largely remained a two-foot experience. We engage using our PCs or, increasingly, via mobile devices. This, as a result, means that social networking has largely siphoned time and attention away from other online media, while leaving TV relatively unscathed. That’s all about to change.

A race is underway to turn social networking into an engaging 10-foot experience–one that we interact with via TVs. The technology has been in place for years. However, the price of Internet-connected HDTVs was, until recently, out of reach for most. No longer. High-definition TVs were among the top sellers on Black Friday, according to ShopperTrak RCT Corp. And just in time, the major social networks are racing to make the entire experience more interactive via number of channels–not just cable TV, but gaming consoles too.

Television inherently has been a social experience for decades, dominating water cooler conversations worldwide. But as social networking enters the living room via embedded Twitter and Facebook streams and more, some observers see it changing the live experience, which has largely remained passive. This potentially could shake up the millions of dollars spent on TV advertising, while ushering in new ways to reach both women and men.

Robert Tercek, president of digital media for OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, a joint venture between Discovery Communications and Oprah Winfrey launching January 2011, sees social networking immediately adding value to the traditional viewing experience–with women leading the way. He believes that now is the time to act, with a flood of applications and widgets that connect directly to the Web from TVs.

By Juliana Koranteng, London

Music is playing such a critical role on fast-growing social networks that brand owners can no longer ignore it for brand-awareness strategies, says a new report by Heartbeats International, the Sweden-based international marketing agency.

Called “Social Music Revolution,” the report will be unveiled at the Eurobest advertising festival in Amsterdam today (Nov. 25). It follows “Sounds like Branding,” Heartbeats’ survey on branded music projects published early this year.

The new report examines the role of music in social media and how brand owners can adopt recorded and live music to reach young audiences that have stopped using traditional media.

It analyzes several international studies by firms like SIFO Institute, Entertainment Media Research, and Millward Brown and concludes: “The same digital technology that changed the music industry is changing advertising as we know it.”

It finds that, on average, consumers listen to music on five different platforms, including mobile handsets and PCs.

Moreover, “two out of five social networkers have music embedded in their personal profile.” And the number of hours spent listening to music per day is growing.

“We want to open up more marketers eyes to the massive impact that music has on these networks,” the report’s author, Heartbeats’ CEO/founder Jakob Lusensky, tells Billboard.biz. “There are definitely differences depending on the market and culture. But the digitalization and increased usage of mobile phones, iPod/MP3-players and Internet (in the developed world) have created a situation where more people then ever easily have access to more music then ever before.”

As services like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Last.fm alone gain more than 500 million users, they are reaching consumers on a scale global marketers crave for.

Even the 140-character text limitation on Twitter has not stopped the service from making music sharing possible via add-on services such as imeem, Twittytunes and Blip.fm.

Heartbeats’ report advises advertisers to work with the music industry on social network platforms by adopting the new marketing principles of the four Es (emotions, experience, engagement and exclusivity) – as opposed to the traditional four Ps (price, product, placement and promotion).

Brands should also consider three types of strategies, the report continues. The ‘Association’ strategy centers on connecting artists to audiences. An example is Bacardi rum’s collaboration with dance act Groove Armada earlier this year.

The ‘Involvement’ strategy advocates co-creating to encourage fans to interact with music, such as remix competitions using legally licensed hits. Computer chip giant Intel worked with media-buying agency Universal McCann on its Intel Powers Music social-network campaign in Europe last year. The campaign resulted in 19,000 bands and performers adding Intel as a friend on their MySpace page.

The ‘Exploration’ strategy offers music discovery platforms and introduces fans to new music. Duracell, the batteries manufactured by consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble, has set up Scandinavia-based music sharing Web site Ramp Music.

• Xbox 360 Continues to deliver the Leading Games and Entertainment Experiences
• Connect to Facebook and Twitter with your Xbox 360
• Great value addition for 20 million users on Xbox Live
• Tweet and Update your status while playing your favourite game
• Compare your Xbox LIVE and Facebook friends’ lists to see which of your friends are on LIVE

For people who are addicted to Social networking and can’t seem to get enough of it, here is breaking news! Microsoft now gives its ardent Xbox 360 fans an opportunity to go Live and enjoy social networking along with games right on the gaming console! This next wave of Social Networking will be available on Xbox LIVE from the 17th November, 2009, and transform the Xbox LIVE into the most entertaining connected experience ever!

Jaspreet Bindra, Regional Director, Entertainment and Devices Division, Microsoft Corporation (India) Pvt. Ltd. shared the excitement around the launch by saying “Since the time of the launch of Xbox 360 and XBOX Live, we have always heard our customers and continuously worked to enhance their interactive entertainment experience. The addition of Facebook and Twitter brings an altogether different level of excitement and action for 20 million Xbox LIVE users across the globe. Only on Xbox 360 can you find the best in movies, music, games and now social networking tailor-made to suit your needs and demands.”

Keeping up with its promise of providing the best in entertainment, Xbox 360 will now become your complete source of social entertainment experience by enabling you to enjoy a lot more! So, here’s what you can do:

Facebook- Update your status to share what movie, game or entertainment you’re enjoying, connect with friends and view their Facebook stream, status updates and photos on the big screen – all seamlessly integrated and custom-built for Xbox 360. You can even compare your Xbox LIVE and Facebook friends’ lists to see which of your friends are on LIVE.

Twitter– Stay in the know by discovering, posting and replying to Tweets right on you’re Xbox 360. You can even view friend profiles, trends and conversations, or search to see who’s tweeting about your favorite game.

With these updates, Xbox 360 is bound to become the one-stop shop for everything. You can now connect with your friend’s online, show them your cool new victory in that favourite game that you play and proudly upload those pictures on your Facebook profile. All this and much more while you are still busy fighting the devils in the game. Sounds exciting? It sure is the best.

So, what are you waiting for? Make sure that you are right in front of your Xbox 360 on the 17th of November. Go LIVE and experience Social Networking like never before. Upload the picture of the cool new car you buy while playing Forza Motorsport 3 on your Facebook profile and make sure that your most recent tweet does talk about your victory on Halo 3: ODST.

There’s tons more to experience with Gold subscription as well. Play the latest game titles like “Halo 3: ODST” and “Forza Motorsport 3″ online multiplayer, participate in “1 vs. 100,” host an Xbox LIVE Party or even video chat with friends. All of these Gold-only features will be available all weekend long for anyone to try.

As 2010 fast approaches, digital marketers are gearing up for yet another year of changes that will incorporate both the transformational and the incremental.

From the economy’s influence on the burgeoning “do-it-yourself” culture to an increasing reliance on collective wisdom, information-based art, and remote computing, digital experts at Last Exit (via MarketingCharts) have put together the following list of top digital marketing trends they believe will play out in the year ahead.

1. Facebook Replaces Personal Email: As Facebook becomes increasingly used as a verb (e.g.”I Facebooked you today”) in ways that Hotmail and gmail never were, it will be interesting to see the extent to which it will displace personal email as a communication tool.  It’s already completely permission based, there is no spam (yet), and no address book required – your friends are already there.

2. The Cloud Helps Open-Source Software Make Proper Money: Open-source software projects that were typically the purview of programmers and technophiles are now available to the masses. In one example, Beanstalk, a fully hosted, version-controlled code repository that uses the Subversion open-source project has created a subscription based service that – for a small fee – removes the hassle of setting up Subversions and maintaining servers.  Services like this can really only be financially viable with cloud computing infrastructure – so companies such as Beanstalk don’t have the huge upfront capital outlay for servers. With the right skills any open-source project can be commercialized this way.

3. Mobile Commerce -  The Promise That Has Never Delivered, Yet: Though mobile phones have, for a while now, delivered real benefits to global societies by facilitating the transfer of money, only recently has mobile device use extended to payment for goods and services. The game changer has – and will continue to be – the iPhone/iTunes platform.  In-app purchases on the iPhone can tempt users to buy small items, upgrades, updates, etc, while iTunes holds their precious credit card information.  All, of course, is done in seamless fashion, enough to promote impulse purchases.  It would seem like an easy task for this to be extended to other platforms with PayPal or Google Checkout, but so far it has not been done.

4. Fewer Registrations – One Sign-in Fits All: As consumers grow increasingly frustrated  and resentful about registering yet again on another website, juggling different IDs and remembering a dizzying array of passwords, information-managing services such as Facebook Connect and OpenID will becoming even more useful and will continue to be adopted at great speed through 2010.

5. Disruption vs. Continuity – Alternatives to the “Big Idea”: As the significance of social networks continues to grow, businesses are investing more in community building as a marketing driver. According to the recent Tribalization of Business study released by Deloitte, 94% of businesses will continue or increase their investment in online communities and social media and, for the majority of these companies, their marketing function will drive this investment. At the same time, as evidenced by Google’s recent release of “free floating” social tools, such as Google Waves and Sidewiki, there is an increasing shift toward online identity and social activity being an integrated part of the network as a whole, rather than concentrated within discrete platforms such as Facebook.

With the increasing emphasis on marketing and advertising through social networks and the increasing pervasiveness of social tools, marketing objectives come into conflict with advertising techniques. While advertising has often sought to distinguish itself and stop the consumer in their tracks with a disruptive “big idea,” the emphasis is now shifting toward persuasion through fitting organically into the consumer’s social sphere. It will always be the objective of marketing to provide creativity and novelty, but the way in will increasingly be one of persistence and continuity.

6. Self-Sufficiency: The Continuing Evolution of Web-Driven, Open-Source DIY Culture: Much has been said about the power and potential of collective intelligence, and many of the breakthrough solutions of tomorrow appear to lie in more effectively pooling the resources and intelligence of our increasingly networked world. On the other side of the equation, the power of pooled intelligence and networked resources have empowered individuals to take on more and more complex undertakings themselves.

From drawing on the collective intelligence of blogs and university open courseware to educate themselves, to services like ponoko, spoonflower and cafe press that facilitate small-scale production, to offline resource pooling like pop- up retail and collective office spaces, individuals are discovering that it has never been easier to try doing it themselves.

7. Info-Art: Where we once had pop-psychologists and pop-philosophers, we now appear to have pop-statisticians and pop-economists. The growing wealth of data and the access to rich and diverse data sources that are significant by-products of information networks have made the art of data analysis a defining skill of our time.

At the same time, the skill of elegantly visualizing that data has become a defining art of our time. The art of the infographic is becoming increasingly pervasive as people look more and more to the growing amount of data at our disposal for insight, and more refined as the interactions of that data becomes more complex. Expect to see greater innovation spurred by more elegant ways of capturing and visualizing information by a growing number of info-artists.

8. Crowd Sourcing: Across many industries and organizations, crowd sourcing will become a growing tool as part of various outsourcing strategies. Organizations will mobilize the passionate special-interest groups to not only carry a message but also to lead and take part in activities on their behalf. From political canvassing to software development, from people journalism to environmental activism, expect to see huge growth in crowdsourcing models provoked and led, in large part, by digital social media strategies.

9. More Flash, Not Less: Outside of the obvious brand sites, micro-sites and media sites (video, games, etc.) where it appears absolutely necessary, Flash has often been looked down upon if not completely discounted by both techies and search engine optimizers. It seemed to face an uncertain future as a viable tool for serious websites and applications such as eCommerce tools and corporate websites. However, Adobe’s rich media tool has enjoyed the grit and determination of its advocates and external development community. Now, several tricks, authoring tools and server side scripting workarounds have meant that Flash-built websites no longer serve up a single, impenetrable page. They offer deep, searchable, indexable sites that will allow acute, detailed traffic and behavioral analytics and search engine optimization.

As websites continue to increase in their importance as a company’s storefront, the demand for rich, brand-extending experiences will also increase. Further proliferation of  fast broadband will reduce download issues while the adoption of Flash on mobile devices will dramatically increase and fuel reach and the desire/need for highly usable, brand transporting, conversion oriented experiences

News Web sites are starting to look a lot less like newspapers and a lot more like television.

CNN.com and ESPN.com are featuring video much more prominently on their home pages, often prompting visitors to press play before they begin to read. Even The Wall Street Journal has moved its video player front and center with a twice-a-day live newscast onWSJ.com.

A major reason is commercial. At a time when other categories of advertising dollars are shrinking, video ads are booming. News sites are adding more video inventory to keep pace with the demands of advertisers, and benefiting from the higher cost-per-thousands, or C.P.M.’s, that ads on those videos command.

The attention to video mirrors changes in how consumers are experiencing news. Major events — be it the presidential election or the death of Michael Jackson — bring a surge in video stream viewings by new users, and each time some of them stick around.

“Every watershed event leaves video more popular than before,” said Charles W. Tillinghast, the president of MSNBC.com, a joint venture between NBC Universal andMicrosoft.

K. C. Estenson, the general manager of CNN.com, a unit of Time Warner, said that “people are using the Internet in a different way now.” He added, “With broadband penetration becoming ubiquitous and more and more sites having this easy capability, people are expecting video to be there.”

Media companies typically do not break out figures for video advertising, and certainly the video revenue pales next to search and display advertising. But the growth has spurred investment and interest in video production.

Among Web sites operated by newspapers, The New York Times, Gannett and Tribune each reach more than a million viewers a month with video streams, comScore says. The home page of The Times sometimes streams live video of events; it carried a news conference Friday about the shootings Thursday at Fort Hood, Tex.

But video can be costly to produce, hindering some sites’ efforts to expand and leading people like Mr. Tillinghast to predict that access to television film (like a bounty of NBC News video) is an advantage.

Beyond news sites, video is now the fastest-growing segment of the Internet advertising market. Digital video amounted to $477 million in revenue in the first half of 2009, up 38 percent from the same time period in 2008, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

With an estimated $5 billion in revenue in the first half of 2009, search remains the dominant segment of online advertising, but it is expected to grow only marginally this year.

Augmenting the increase in video spending is the growing acceptance of pre-roll — the once-derided ads that appear before a video plays.

“It actually works really well,” said Brian Quinn, the vice president and general manager of digital ad sales for The Journal’s digital network. A 15-second pre-roll “followed by two to five minutes of high-quality content is a fair-value exchange,” Mr. Quinn said.

Analysts say they expect the flow of online advertising dollars to video to continue. The research firm eMarketer projects 35 to 45 percent growth for the segment for each of the next five years, topping out at $5.2 billion in 2014. (Even then, it would hardly rival search advertising, which is projected to be a $16 billion business.)

In the five-year outlook it released last month, eMarketer said that video ads would be the “main channel” for major advertisers seeking to increase their online spending. Already, ads for companies like Johnson & Johnson and Unilever pop up often on sites likeMSNBC.com.

“More and more advertisers are starting to play in the online video space,” said Jeremy Steinberg, the vice president of digital sales and business development for the Fox News Channel.

News sites account for only a small portion of the 25 billion video streams counted by comScore on an average month. The firm reported almost 500 million video streams in its news and information category in September — still a substantial figure. Most of the streams occurred on MSNBC.com (162 million, according to comScore) and CNN.com (148 million).

Advertising dollars have not always kept pace with the growing view counts, but Mr. Quinn said video was currently the strongest ad format for WSJ.com.

“I wish we had more, since we’re sold out,” Mr. Quinn said.

In September the site introduced “The News Hub,” a live Webcast from The Journal’s newsroom at 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. each weekday. When “Hub” is shown live on the WSJ.com home page, it includes a sponsorship mention and a companion display ad. When it is replayed, it includes a pre-roll ad. Sponsorships are sold monthly, with Charles Schwab being the current one.

The rate card for WSJ.com lists pre-rolls for a $75 C.P.M. before advertiser discounts. Mr. Quinn said the C.P.M. was around $50 last fall.

FoxNews.com, which like WSJ.com is a unit of the News Corporation, now sells sponsorships of its daytime Web show, “Strategy Room.”

When the show had its debut in its current form earlier this year, it included only an occasional remnant pre-roll ad. This month, as viewership increased, the show started to include TV-style commercial breaks and advertiser logos in the corner of the video screen. Fox says the 9 a.m.-to-5 p.m. show gets an average of 35,000 streams per weekday.

Web executives say some clients think of online video as an extension of TV, and others think of it as an enhancement — one that allows for interactive messages and instant feedback from viewers. They acknowledge that the medium is still in many ways immature. Sites continue to disagree about the legitimacy of “autoplay,” a setting that starts videos automatically when a Web page loads, increasing the number of streams without necessarily knowing that the Web user is watching.

Web executives say that ads next to dispatches from Afghanistan normally cannot draw the same C.P.M.’s as lighter fare. MSNBC.com has found success with lifestyle segments that are sold as a package between TV and the Web. Last month it introduced TodayMoms, a section for mothers sponsored by Wal-Mart with a TV connection on the “Today” show.

“The Web is fulfilling this promise of being a medium where you can enjoy video as much as you can see it on TV,” Mr. Tillinghast said. “The difference online is, if you want to do something with it — share it, stick it on a blog, post it on a Facebook page, or mark it and save it — you can do all that. And that was never possible before.”