In addition to all the changes to the Journal’s print edition, Murdoch plans to make the online edition free. Apart from porn sites and MMOs, the WSJO was the only online service the managed to charge a subscription fee – for a total of $50 million in revenue.

Murdoch’s plans include broadening the appeal of the site and switching the revenue model to advertising. Industry experts doubt WSJO will reach $50 million in advertising any time soon, especially when projections for 2008 seem rather gloomy.

This bit from Kevin expresses one reader’s concerns:

Mr. Murdoch has said that he wanted The Journal to step up its coverage of politics and national and international affairs, making it a more direct competitor to The New York Times. He has lobbied for more hard news and more succinct articles — a marked shift in tone for a newspaper whose signatures include long, often quirky news features that start on the front page…

I, for one, often enjoy the front page, long quirky articles. I find those articles to be a refreshing break from the constant barrage of facts, figures, and strong opinions. Moving along to the free with advertising versus subscription based model, I favor the latter. I do not want to be constantly bombarded with advertisements that I need to move out of my way to read an article. I prefer a clean, uncluttered look.

Now, I have a sample that could actually let me calculate it in a scientific manner. This list of youtube music videos contains 11,500 songs, spanning all genres.

I plan to revisit it in two weeks, assuming it’s 100% fresh now. I must confess I’ve tested it quite a bit though I haven’t touched Donna Summer or some of the other disco legends!

Tags: google, gootube, Marilyn Manson, online, playlists, video, youtube

google, gootube, Marilyn Manson, online, playlists, video, youtube

They in this case is no other than Yahoo’s BoD. The big news is that Yahoo’s CFO, Susan Decker, gets promoted, while quite a few senior people leave. Here’s the details:

Sources told CNBC’s Jim Goldman that Lloyd Braun, head of Yahoo’s media and entertainment group, was asked to leave the company on Tuesday morning after Yahoo first suggested he take a lesser role. Senior Vice President John Marcom, who ran Yahoo’s International Business operations, also was asked to leave. Yahoo also announced that Chief Operating Officer Daniel Rosensweig, once considered a rival to Decker to succeed Semel, will leave the company in March.

Yahoo posted a 37% drop in quarterly profit and its long-term options don’t look too good either. MySpace and YouTube, are effectively Google’s playground now, so there isn’t a quick M&A fix for Yahoo.

On top of that I’m always suspicious of companies run by CFOs, especially when they’re in a high-growth market. My gut feel is that CFOs work best with milk cows. I already feel sorry for Jumpcut and del.icio.us.

Tags: google, jumpcut, online, social, video, yahoo, youtube

google, jumpcut, online, social, video, yahoo, youtube

They just came out with an article about Youtube’s Greates Hits.

Charles Isherwood goes ahead and posts a dozen Youtube videos that demonstrate its high class.

Until recently I had assumed that the “you” in YouTube referred to anybody but me, maybe everybody but me. Like who? College kids with a compulsive need to procrastinate. Media-obsessives anxious to keep track of the hot new joke or political gaffe. Exhibitionists and their friends. Lovers of humiliation comedy. People with an excessive fondness for the cute antics of their pets.

Certainly, this freakish and freakishly large video archive offers plenty of material to sate the appetites of those constituencies. But it also offers a dizzying array of material for addicts of what, for lack of more egalitarian term, I’ll call high culture. Or high-ish culture: I’m talking not just about opera and dance, but also that often derided but enduring enterprise called the Broadway musical…

Unfortunately, Youtube playlists decay pretty quickly, so most of this high culture has already been removed. The text remains though:

Tags: Broadway, greatest hits, online, opera, playlists, video, yahoo, youtube

Broadway, greatest hits, online, opera, playlists, video, yahoo, youtube

The article speculates that it’s all related to Google keeping its leading position in search. I think these guys are probably right – though not 100 percent. I bet a lot of this new space will go to some of the new applications that Google is building.

More importantly though, between Google buying Youtube and their own video service, I think Google’s thinking about the future of video. (Don’t forget NBC launched their youtube clone).

Text indexes are one thing. Storing, indexing, analyzing, encoding, hosting, and delivering video is quite another. With the growth of broadband people want to see a lot more than a list of text bits mixed with hyperlinks.

Tags: bandwidth, google, google video, online, video, yahoo, youtube

bandwidth, google, google video, online, video, yahoo, youtube

He’s right of course. I’ve done a few playlists myself with the same goal in mind. What was my surprise when I came back to one of these playlists 2 weeks later.

The playlist consisted of four songs by Marilyn Manson. That’s it. The first one played OK and then it hit the second one. No luck there – video removed. Same thing with the next and then next…

It turns out, my playlist lost an amazing 75% of tracks in a two-week period. So it’s either Gootube has stepped up their cleaning a hundred times, or they hate Marilyn Manson in particular.

Tags: google, gootube, Marilyn Manson, online, playlists, video, youtube

google, gootube, Marilyn Manson, online, playlists, video, youtube

Gizmodo did a pretty good job of coming up with a name of the merger between Google Video and Youtube. They even went so far as to create a logo. I love it.

Tags: google, google video, gootube, online, social, video, youtube

google, google video, gootube, online, social, video, youtube

Now, TechCrunch posts that there are rumors that Google’s going to acquire Youtube.

The Wall Street Journal is now reporting this as well, saying “Google Inc. is in talks to acquire popular video-sharing site YouTube Inc. for roughly $1.6 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. The discussions are still at a sensitive stage and could well break off, this person says.”

It’s pretty obvious that Youtube have the FOR SALE BY OWNER sign on their front lawn. Their burnrate is in the millions per month which is close to the days of Bubble 1.0. Let’s see what happens.

Tags: google, jumpcut, mashup, online, social, video, yahoo, youtube

google, jumpcut, mashup, online, social, video, yahoo, youtube

When I met Jumpcut earlier this summer, they had 11 employees, had raised $1 million in seed money, and were trying to close another round. Perhaps it has to do with Jumpcut’s fairly advanced experimentation with Flash, led by former Macromedia developer Ryan Cunningham.

When I proposed buying Jumpcut might be a good competitive edge for one of the online video sharing sites or portals, CEO Mike Folgner told me he’d wasn’t looking to settle down with just one company, rather to build partnerships with everybody. Ah well…I can understand how a Yahoo acquisition offer could be persuasive.

Guess she’s right. Only problem is once Yahoo buys you there isn’t much AGILE development anymore. There’s some internal competition to boot. UC Berkley and Yahoo have already been developing a their own video mashup site. I guess they simply want to take Jumpcut off the market before Google buys them. Or, God forbid they become a real hit like Youtube!

Tags: editing, google, jumpcut, mashup, mixing, online, social, video, yahoo

editing, google, jumpcut, mashup, mixing, online, social, video, yahoo