Monday, August 20, 2007

Entertainment Biz Now Uses P2P For Branding

The entertainment industry has been hiring companies to pollute P2P networks with phony files for years, and now some of these very same companies are going into marketing. Instead of sabotaging file transfers, they offer their own media for download, and instead of corrupted files, suddenly it's all about branding. Santa Monica, Calif.-based Mediadefender is at the center of this shift.



Written by Janko Roettgers
Posted Saturday, August 18, 2007 at 12:00 AM PM

Mediadefender Moves into P2P Marketing

You're trying to download the latest Madonna album, only to find the pop queen calling you…a thief? Welcome to the odd and oftentimes annoying war against piracy. The entertainment industry has been hiring companies to pollute P2P networks with phony files for years, and now some of these very same companies are going into marketing. Instead of sabotaging file transfers, they offer their own media for download, and instead of corrupted files, suddenly it's all about branding.

Santa Monica, Calif.-based Mediadefender has been at the center of this shift. The subsidiary of ARTISTdirect is known and hated in the file-sharing world for its anti-piracy work, but has recently gotten a lot of press for an upcoming campaign involving ad-supported MP3 downloads. Mediadefender has been experimenting with P2P marketing for a number of years now, and they've learned a few lessons along the way. VP Jonathan Lee agreed to share some of them with me.

Mediadefender has thousands servers in co-location facilities around the globe; the decision to put them to use for marketing has been brewing for some time, Lee tells me. With such an abundance of resources, he notes, "What else can you do with it?"

Distributing actual content was an obvious idea, but for the longest time the entertainment industry wasn't ready to utilize P2P. Companies felt they would undermine their position in legal conflicts if they distributed their own files through these networks. But all of this changed when the Supreme Court ruled against Grokster in the summer of 2005. "After the ruling those gloves came off," says Lee.

And with that, the learning curve began. "We're throwing things at the wall and see what sticks," he explains. Early attempts to do advertising on P2P networks involved what Lee describes as a "bait and switch". Files were mislabeled in order to get people to watch ads or load Web pages. "Obviously there are tremendous problems with that," he acknowledges. Most brands just don't like to frustrate their customers –- except, of course, porn companies, which still use this technique heavily to spam P2P networks .

Another strategy involved sending people to iTunes and similar download stores to make them buy legitimate copies of the content they were looking for with Limewire and other clients. "That really hasn't worked so well," admits Lee. Same goes for the idea of mixing ads with search results in order to get people to buy concert tickets and ring tones. He believes that people are just too suspicious to click on anything that remotely looks like an ad in a P2P network, which is why they tend to ignore them.

So what does work? "Things you can't buy online," says Lee. It turns out that P2P is actually really good for branding. Mediadefender had a lot of success with a campaign for a soft drink maker that offered people videos they actually wanted to watch. Music works well, and so does goofy stuff. Funny commercials –- the stuff that people re-post on YouTube and then forward to their friends — are a big hit on P2P networks as well.

Does this mean people should just abandon their annoying anti-piracy tactics and instead post some goofy clips on P2P networks? "You are already dealing with your anti-piracy issues if you are doing promotion," admits Lee. He doesn't think that the anti-piracy part of his work will go away anytime soon, though.

In fact, Mediadefender is still making most of its money by polluting P2P networks with spoof files, which is why the company will remain be one of the most hated enterprises in the file-sharing world for the foreseeable future. Jonathan Lee doesn't seem to mind, and he doesn't think it impacts their marketing business at all. Successful P2P marketing campaigns always looks very viral, he tells me, and the focus really isn't on his company. "If it is good content, then it's gonna carry itself."

Read More...

GTalk Conference Chat for Connecting with Multiple GMail Friends

gmail chat conference DI reader Aravindan is currently using a combination of Google Talk and the collaboration features of Google Docs for chatting with more than one GMail friends simultaneously in one browser window. He writes:

I always wondered why google does not have a text or voice conference feature in their google talk software, and I found that a handicap a few times. Yesterday, I had to collaborate on a Google Spreadsheet with 5 of my friends, and after setting up the file and inviting them, the discuss option was enabled in my window, and I would see all 5 of their email's listed.

There was a shoutbox like feature embedded in which the 6 of us were able to conduct a discussion while editing the spreadsheet. Therefore, to have a live conference using google chat just follow these steps in Google Docs & Spreadsheets : Create a dummy document -> invite friends as collaborators -> click on "Discuss" option near top right -> start conferencing.

That's innovative but there's a more simple method for group chatting with more than one GMail contacts inside the same GTalk window.

First, open the talkgadget client webpage (or load Google Talk in Sidebar) and sign in using your Google Account / GMail credentials. Next, initiate a conversation with any of your Google Talk contacts who's online and then click the "Group Chat" button.

That's it. You just have to invite your other Google Talk friends to this private Google conference room. And there's no limit on the maximum number of participants that can join your Gtalk conference session.

Like other internet chat rooms, Google Talk will also announce each new participant as they join with a message in the chat window. And you can also use tons of interesting smileys (emoticons) in your group chats which are otherwise missing in the desktop Google Talk software.

Read More...

The Most Relevant Video Search Engine That Indexes All Video Clips

If you enjoy exploring video content on the web, you'll absolutely love Truveo - an extremely impressive and powerful video search service from AOL that helps you find video content from all other video sharing websites (like YouTube, blip.tv), content portals (like CNet, iVillage) and most mainstream media websites (like CNBC, ABC News, BBC, etc).

jenna bush video

Truveo provides an amazing array of options (like Google advance search operators) to further refine the video search results. For instance, you can limit the search results based on categories (like Technology), source of video or even the relative importance of the video (like most viewed, rated, recent).

Every search results page comes with an RSS feed, a feature that's missing even in the popular YouTube. And if you are in a mood to browse videos not search, Truveo is again useful - all the viral videos, TV shows, breaking news videos, movie clips, music videos and sports videos are neatly organized in categories.

With Truveo in town, there's little reason for you to use any other video search engine. Competitors include uLinkx and Blinkx.

Read More...

When You Have to Fill, Sign and Then Fax A Paper Document or PDF

Have you have ever come across a situation when you had to fax a paper document or a PDF file after filling in the details and putting your signature in ink ?

I recently attended a conference in another city and the organizers asked us to fax or snail mail a copy of the actual receipts for them to reimburse the travel expenses. Fair enough.

pdf fax document sign

Since the receipts were no legal documents and were required just for the purpose of maintaining records, I took a picture of the entire paper receipt with a digital camera and sent it as an email attachment. They happily accepted the 'digital' format.

amit signature An extension of this technique comes very handy when you have to print a 12 page document, sign every page and fax it back. Either get a scanned image of your signature or create one at Live Signature.

Then paste this image near the footer of every page, print the document as a PDF file (so that it's non-editable) and email it back. No hard copies. You save money, time as well as some trees.

Another trick: Use Mobile Phone Camera as a Scanner

Read More...

Windows Update Crashed the Skype Network - Can You Believe It?

skype website microsoft

This is unbelievable. Skype is blaming Microsoft "Patch Tuesday" for the downtime and the sign-on problems that lasted for more than 48 hours.

As per Skype, the disruption was initiated by a massive restart of our user's computers across the globe within a very short timeframe as they re-booted after receiving a routine software update. This is presumably the Windows updates that were sent out on Patch Tuesday last week, which required the PC to be restarted.

Normally Skype’s peer-to-peer network has an inbuilt ability to self-heal, however, this event revealed a previously unseen software bug within the network resource allocation algorithm which prevented the self-healing function from working quickly. Regrettably, as a result of this disruption, Skype was unavailable to the majority of its users for approximately two days.

It's kind of funny because Skype is using Windows Update as an excuse rather than admitting that they had a bug in their software that was exposed when Microsoft fixed their Windows software. Patch Tuesdays happen every month - how could Skype survive the previous "bulk restarts" on Windows machines. More commentary on Skype Blog, BBC and Neowin.

Read More...