Andy Plesser

The newly expanded Dealbook section of The New York Times, is adding several video elements to its offering in an effort to capture the "character-driven drama" of Wall Street, says Mac William Bishop, Video Producer, in this interview with Beet.TV

Pioneering P2P file sharing platform BitTorrent has 100 million active users, the company announced on Monday.

Foodspotting, the fast-growing, San Francisco-based social platform for sharing favorite food dishes has 100,000 iPhone registered users who have uploaded 250,000 dish reviews, with 10,000 uploaded every week.

MONACO —  Qlipso, the Los Angeles based video sharing site, which allows users to interact around videos with friends in “private rooms” with videos and their own avatars, claims 14 million unique monthly viewers.

Despite many well established sources for financial journalism, The New York Times will expand its newly revamped Dealbook property with more data features, video and reporter hires, says Jeffrey Cane, managing editor in this interview with Beet.TV.

While more and more online video publishers are connecting with audiences in their living rooms with smart TV’s, Blu-ray players and devices such as Roku and Google TV, advertising on these platforms is not yet in place.

LOS ANGELES — The number of online video ads viewed in November was 5.4 billion, making ads 15 percent of all videos viewed, up 25 percent since June when they accounted for 12 percent according to data provided to Beet.TV from comScore.

NEW YORK — The proliferation of smart wireless devices is creating a need for original content and MTV will be producing original entertainment for the emerging medium says Dermot McCormack, EVP for Digital at MTV Networks in this interview with Beet.TV

While most of the the major video sites and online video services providers are providing HTML5 support, primarily for Apple iOS devices, Blip.tv is going to adopt HTML5 as its standard player for the Web and other platforms, says Justin Day, co-founder and CTO in this interview with Beet.TV

MONACO, Côte d'Azur — In their efforts to establish a presence on Facebook, eight-of-ten of the world's biggest brands, including Coca Cola, P&G, Unilever are now using an enterprise solution from New York-based Buddy Media, CEO Mike Lazerow said in this interview with Beet.TV

The Huffington Post has registered 26 million unique monthly visitors in the United States, a record for the site, according the comScore November data for the "Newspaper Sites."  (See below.)

SAN FRANCISCO  – Metacafe, one of first and biggest online video destination, has been building various special interest areas including one for movie fans.

CBS News, long a major presence on television, has had a modest online presence, widely trailing industry online news giants MSNBC.com and CNN.com – as well the websites of ABC News, Fox News and the BBC.

NEW YORK — Using an algorithm which parses one million records per day, the MTV Music Meter provides a ranking of the the most talked about and fast moving tunes. 

While not a conventional news organization, Denver-based Examiner.com  may be the world’s largest by the sheer size of its writing stable and the amount of content being produced.

New York-based Big Think, which launched in early 2008 with seed capital from Lawrence  Summers*, President Obama's Director of the National Economic Council, and other investors including Peter Thiel, is serving some 5 million monthly video views and has reached profitability, says Victoria Brown, co-founder and CEO.

SB Nation, a network of nearly 300 micro blogs about professional sports teams in the U.S. and Canada, has reached 100 million page views per month, making it the fastest growing, and one of the largest sports sites, says CEO Jim Bankoff in this interview with Beet.TV

While the 30 second pre-roll remains the dominant form of online video advertising, the medium is inexorably becoming more interactive, says Steve Robinson, CEO of Panache, the Los Angeles-based software company which is creating new forms of video ad units for major publishers.

In November, Verizon FiOS announced a substantial increase in connection speed to 150 MBPS down and 35 MBPS up for all of its 12.5 million U.S. subscribers. 

Like them or not, online videos with pre-roll ads can't be stopped, fast forwarded or skipped.  At least until now when MTV debuted an ad for Samsung which can be, well,  fast forwarded.