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YouTube Coming to Vodafone Cell Phones
YouTube sent the mobile industry in a tizzy last year by indicating it would move onto at cell phones this year. First it was a deal with Verizon Wireless in the U.S., and today European carrier Vodafone announced a similar deal to offer YouTube content first to its U.K. subscribers and later subscribers in other European countries.
Sounds good, huh? — the mobile web bringing you the latest YouTube videos, all those ‘in-a-box’ and annoying NoHo clips. But actually, like the Verizon Wireless deal, the YouTube content for Vodafone will be a “daily selection” of YouTube videos, chosen by the companies. Boring. I want to sift through the truly obscure stuff, even if it’s from my phone. Anyway, check out GigaOM for a look at why Vodafone really wanted this deal.
CBS Shows Off Web 2.0 Chops
LAS VEGAS, CES — CBS CEO Leslie Moonves’ keynote at CES managed to squeeze in more Web 2.0 buzz words, and viral videos references than I’ve heard all week — the Numa Numa kid, diet coke and mentos, Second Life, YouTube, wikis, avatars, mashups. Well, CBS has been proactive recently in embracing new media, Internet communities, and mobile services, and it was pretty endearing listening to Moonves joke about the Chenbot video, a viral video of his wife’s favorite catch phrase crutch (Julie Chen outed as stiff and repetitive? truly shocking).
CBS also announced a contest with YouTube that will bring user-generated videos to the Super Bowl commercials show, and said it was beta-testing new video clip-sharing software from Sling Media. All very Web 2.0 for the big-eye network. Read more of this story
SNL on your phone is not so ‘live’
Not much is better than watching Will Ferrell, waist-high in a hot tub cracking himself up during an Saturday Night Live skit. I just watched the 2-minute long clip on Cingular’s video service, which Cingular and SNL officially announced today. While the content and concept are great, there are sometimes glitches in the delivery.
While I was watching a series of SNL clips on a cell phone, every 20 seconds or so the video stops while the service is “buffering.” It could be because everyone is watching those clips right now because of the PR, but if the service is always like this? No thank you. The network I’m running it over is even billed as 3G.
This is where mobile video will run up against problems as the services become more popular. And it’s basically the problem that online video sites have, but times 10.
Photobucket Adds Mobile Video Uploads
Now that everyone is talking about user-generated mobile video as a result of the YouTube/Verizon deal, Photobucket is jumping on that bandwagon too. The company sent out a release today that says Photobucket users can now upload videos taken with cell phones directly to their online accounts using the multimedia messaging service (MMS.) The service may be similar to what other startups are already doing, but because Photobucket already has 30 million registered users, it could prove to be the tipping point for mobile-to-web video uploads.
MyWaves Streams To Mobiles
MyWaves recently launched its mobile video service into a sea of competitors — sharing video camera phone content is everyone’s favorite topic. MyWaves is different in that the company is building a service for streaming videos to cell phones. Unlike many companies that are focusing on sending video camera phone content to be shared on the web, MyWaves focuses on sharing web videos to the mobile.
Recent
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- Open Thread: Web Worker Independence [WebWorkerDaily]
- Structure 08 Recap: Yo Founders! There’s Gold in Them Clouds! [GigaOM]
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