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Alexander McCall-Smith Engages Web 2.0

The Daily Telegraph is in the middle of a 20-week serialisation of an online book created by author Alexander McCall-Smith, his first such project. New Media Knowledge caught up with the organisers to discuss ‘Corduroy Mansions’.

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Business Brief: Video Advertising Looks to Future

Google has announced it will incentivise advertisers on its video properties as well as launching research programmes into how Web users consume Internet video material. New Media Knowledge spoke to a number of industry players to gauge their views on where the video advertising market is going.

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‘Virtual Home’ for Ex-Pats in London Established

A social network aimed at providing information for ex-pats living in London has been established. New Media Knowledge met the site’s co-founder to find out more.

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The YouTube Dilemma

The quest to work out how to make money from some of the most popular Web 2.0 properties continues with good and bad news for YouTube in a new poll.

The quest to work out how to make money from some of the most popular Web 2.0 properties continues with good and bad news for YouTube in a new poll.

The traffic figures for YouTube are well-known and truly astonishing. Somewhere between 70 and 100 million video downloads a day. The site says there are 65,000 new videos uploaded every day. YouTube videos account for 60% of all online video viewing and the site registers some 20mn unique users a month. The US Library of Congress contains approximately 20 terabytes of data: YouTube broadcasts 200TB of data every day by some estimates. According to the fact sheet, "We continue to grow exponentially month-to-month."

For most web site owners, figures along these lines would not constitute a problem, but YouTube still appears to have some dilemmas as a business. It has solved the immediate problem of how to make money - get bought by Google for $1.65bn is a pretty good answer to that in the short term. But the actual business of revenue remains something of a quandary. Last week's news that the site is to start sharing revenues with its contributors will certainly add to the costs. Increasing pressure to moderate and filter out copyrighted materials is likely to lead to another strain on its finances.

Today, a Harris poll about the site brought good news and bad. On the positive side (from YouTube's point of view), a third of YouTube's users (32 per cent) said that they watched less TV as a consequence of using the service. If advertisers acted on such data, that fact alone could potentially bring an enormous change in the way they purchase media. Thirty-six per cent said that they didn't view other web sites as much. Perhaps less welcome is the news that nineteen per cent of users do less homework and twelve percent spend less time with their friends and family.

Over three-quarters of males aged 18-24 said they watched YouTube videos, with 41 per cent saying they did so 'frequently'. If marketers want to reach this demographic - a problematic matter through traditional media - they know where to go.

However, accepting such advertisements and integrating them into the site could prove problematic. Nearly three-quarters of those who use the site said they would visit it a lot (31%) or a little (42%) less frequently if the site introduced 'pre-roll commercials' - advertisments that run before a video clip begins.

"To be fair," says Harris Senior Research Manager Aongus Burke, "as far as we know, YouTube has never publicly said that they are considering including short commercials before the clips on their site. However, we wanted to see how much resistance there would be at that extreme. Apparently, there is a lot."