Andy Plesser

Click To Play A number of start-ups are building businesses by organizing independent video makers to create online video commercials for national brands.  Unlike the San Francisco-based TurnHere, which has organized a network of independent videographers to create editorial content, these start-ups are reaching out to independent video makers to make ads. These are not […]

Candidates are finding their images shaped by online forces beyond their control. Some, like the Obama Girl online video show, have been helpful in forging a cool young image for Senator Barack Obama, reports Matt Bai, in  today’s Sunday New York Times Magazine. Other "surprising" videos have not been as helpful, as this 1993 Rudolph […]

Click To Play Ford Models, the powerhouse modeling agency, has been producing hundreds of online video clips and distributing them on MySpace, Revver, YouTube, Veoh and other platforms. Ford’s channel on MySpace is hosting a global model search competition culminating in January. Its channel on YouTube is among the most watched. Earlier this week, the […]

Click To Play Last month, I was at Om Malik’s NewTeeVee confab in San Francisco where I interviewed Sling Media’s Brian Jaquet who shared a pretty cool demo of the SlingBox. Om reported late last night on GigaOM that Dish Network has decided to spin-off the recently acquired Sling Media.  The SlingBox allows you to […]

Click To Play Rocketboom, the pioneering daily online video program,  is represented by Hollywood powerhouse talent agency Creative Artists Agency, founder and creator Andrew Baron told me earlier this week in this interview. The representation by CAA has been in place for several months but the news has not been publicly revealed.  Andrew declined to […]

Click To Play College students are at great risk for identity theft and fraud by posting personal information to Facebook, says James Bierstaker, an expert in identity theft and forensic accounting at the Villanova School of Business. He urges his students to take "all your personal information off of Facebook." I interviewed him yesterday on […]

Click To Play In the six months since its acquisition for $75 million by EBAY, StumbleUpon membership has nearly doubled to 4 million, according to EBAY, which posted news of the milestone on its official blog today. The site is a video recommendation platform organized by members, or "stumblers," who suggest videos to others with […]

Click To Play Maven Networks, a video management technology solution for media companies, has landed a big win with the Scripps with lifestyle brands including HGTV, Food Network, DIY Network, Recipezaar, Fine Living and Great American Country (GAC). A few weeks  back, Nick Troiano visited the Beet studios to explain the Maven platform.  Unlike some […]

Click To Play Motorola Chief Technology Officer Padmasree Warrior has left to be CTO of Cisco, GigaOM’s Om Malik reports.  I caught up with Padmasree in Los Angeles earlier this year.   In this chat, we spoke about the advent of WiMAX and its potential impact on wireless video distribution.  Maybe she’ll be working on this […]

Click To Play The inevitable evolution to higher quality online video has taken a significant step forward with the decision by Hulu, the News Corp/NBC Universal joint venture, to stream some clips in the HD high quality formats of 1280 x 720 resolution and 2,500Kbps. The initial clips will be move trailers from Fox and […]

Click To Play Recently I sat down with Mark Randall, chief strategist for the Dynamic Media Organization at Adobe.  Mark explained the benefits of using a Flash Media Server to distribute video.  With the dramatic price cuts announced yesterday, this is going to make this technology a even more attractive to independent content creators.  I […]

Click To Play Here’s my second interview with Dan’l Lewin, Microsoft’s main man in Silicon Valley and the  executive in charge of finding and cultivating promising start-ups around the globe.  The company is seeking to align, provide services, and in some cases acquire start-ups through a global program called Microsoft StartZone. Innovation is happening far […]

Current TV, which has built its programming with independent paid contributors, has reached out to news organizations for content through an affiliate program.  The first two content partners to contribute video clips are Britain’s The Guardian newspaper and San Francisco-based Salon. Joan Walsh, editor in chief of Salon just blogged about this a few minutes […]

Click To Play Ask a Ninja, the online video comedy show, a brainchild of  Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine, is taking in over $100,000 per month in advertising revenue and getting a staggering 2.7 million monthly views, according to a report out today in TV Week.Seems that Federated Media is doing a good job in […]

Click To Play Check out  this round up story on the state of the online video distribution in Sunday’s New York Times by Denise Caruso.  I was pleased to see some nice props for Blip.tv, the principal distribution platform for Beet.TV Here’s Blip co-founder Mike Hudack on the history of video blogging and the imperative […]

Click To Play Google will buy content companies so it will enjoy 100 percent of advertising revenue, says Business Week media columnist Jon Fine.  He also expects Google to introduce an operating system for cable television set top boxes. I visited Jon today at the Business Week headquarters in midtown Manhattan.  I wanted to ask […]

The New York Times marketing folks have uploaded this video of Natalie Portman to YouTube.  Over the past day, it’s received some 180,000 views.  It’s the third most watched clip today. The video of the Portman, who is hailed "Screen Goddess," is part of  The Times’ launch of "T" the new, glitzy Web site of […]

Click To Play With all the chatter in the blogosphere today about bad financial results from Warner Music, I’ve reposted this exclusive video of Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman, Jr. that I shot in September at The Deal’s TechConfidential conference in Manhattan.  Bronfman lays out his vision of the recorded music business as a "content […]

Click To Play The traditional rules of television journalism don’t necessarily work on the Web, says Vivian Schiller, general manager of the NYTimes.com Schiller, a veteran of years in television news and documentary production at CNN and Discovery, explains how the Web is redefining the way that video journalism works.  For example, while television news […]

Click To Play Microsoft is "placing a big bet" on the proliferation of IPTV services around the globe and is partnering with 20 major service providers in providing infrastructure and services,  Dan’l Lewin, told Beet.TV In the United States, Microsoft is partnering with AT&T u-Verse. Lewin, is Microsoft’s point person in Silicon Valley where he […]