The Onion Covers Parents Facebook Stalking Their College-Aged Kids
The Onion has a pretty hilarious video about how parents can use Facebook and Twitter to keep tabs on their children. The helicopter parent in this video is quite obsessed with monitoring her son's Facebook and Twitter activity. Like any good Onion story there is some truth to it.
News.com's Yahoo Blog reports that Current TV appears to be ending its content distribution deal with Yahoo Video.
"Current is exploring better opportunities to distribute our content," Current TV spokesman Alex Dolan said on Friday. He declined to elaborate. A Yahoo spokesperson said the company does not comment on rumor or speculation.
Current TV, co-founded by Al Gore, is a San Francisco-based national cable and satellite channel that features video created by viewers.
"We are no longer accepting uploads to the Yahoo! Current Network, but would encourage you to upload your videos to another pod family. If you landed here with the intention of uploading to Yahoo! Current Driver, your piece should find a home in Current Speed. Yahoo! Current Traveler submissions will fit in nicely with Current Travel, and Yahoo! Current Action pods should go to Current Edge."
It would be a big loss for Yahoo's video website. Current TV provides some of the best content available on Yahoo Video.
The New Jersey Daily Record has a number of blogs including the typical blogs by columnists covering local news, sports, culture and entertainment. However, they just recently launched a new one called Kate's First Apartment. Kate is Kate McLoughlin. She's a new copy editor at the newspaper and she's hunting for her very first apartment. The blog will detail Kate's hunt for a place to live.
Kate began working as a copy editor at the Daily Record in July, after graduating from Lehigh University. She's been living in her uncle's apartment since then -- and is being booted out Dec. 1, when the lease is up. So the 22-year-old is on a quest to find an affordable apartment -- her first apartment -- in the Morris County area.
The idea may actually be a solid one and could attract young readers since getting that first apartment is something we all through -- unless you are lucky enough to jump right into a house. The blog might interest young readers who are also apartment hunting. The question to ask is will the blog continue with the moving in, finding furniture, etc. and then the life inside Kate's apartment after she finally finds a place? Or, will Kate start writing about a new subject and change the name of her blog?
The New York Timesreports that Yahoo has cut a deal with Al Gore's Current TV video website. Yahoo has set up the Yahoo Current Network and will run videos from Current TV on four channels.
The service, which is called the Yahoo Current Network (video.yahoo.com/currenttv), was set to begin today with four channels. One section, called Current Buzz, will feature segments related to the news. It is produced by Madeleine Smithberg, a former executive producer of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." Three other channels will relate to specialized topics: travel, action sports, and cars. Over time the companies hope to add more channels.
Each channel will have one professionally produced segment each day and 8 to 10 segments contributed by users.
Amateur videographers whose clips are chosen for the Internet service will receive $100. If the clips are also broadcast on Current's television network, the maker will receive between $500 and $1000. Videos that are not selected to be part of the Yahoo Current offering will be included on Yahoo’s broader site that includes user-contributed video.
Current TV also has an ongoing deal with Google Video. You can see Google's current channel here. The Times says Gore was asked about having deals with both companies and he wisely answered back with the following question, "Why wouldn't you want to work with both of these great companies?"
A new blog called Mamarazzi is blogging and snarking about all those new celebrity parents. Mary Tsao, the author of Mom Writes, has a post on BlogHer about the new site.
Mamarazzi is a new blog devoted entirely to making fun of celebrity parents and those crazy things they do "because celebrity parenting is so easy to snark." It was born to the Blogosphere on April 30th and is the brainchild of several seasoned mommybloggers: Angie from Home Grown, Lisa from Nihaus, Lucinda from Suburban Turmoil, M'Kay from Petroville, Poppy from The Opiate of the Masses, and Susie from The Underpaid Kept Woman.
Mary Tsao also says the Mamarazzi "aren't pulling any punches" and she's right. The Mamarazzi has already covered lots of celebrity moms and moms-to-be so far including Britney Spears, Angelina Jolie and Gwen Stefani.
AdBumb offers an in-depth article about MySpace.com's emergence as an advertiser favorite. The article mentions campaigns from Nike, Panasonic, T-Mobile, EA Games, Discovery Channel and the movie Rent.
If MySpace was built on this concept of community, it only makes sense that marketers and advertisers should go with the flow to truly reach their target audience - and Nike's heeded that advice with their new Soccer campaign and profile. When asked for comment on their use of this marketing medium, Media Relations Manager Nate Tobecksen replied by email that though he wasn't at liberty to talk about the company’s specific marketing tactics, "Nike is always looking for new and interesting ways to interact with our consumers, and the appearance in MySpace.com is another example of that."
And Nike is not alone in the MySpace medium. Panasonic has produced profiles for their new Oxyride product and Oxymite character, and EA Games has done one to promote their new SSX On Tour game. The Discovery Channel has joined the bunch, collecting some 14,000 friends in the process. And the soon to be released film "Rent" is on the space too: right now it's registering about 34,793 friends, most of whom have probably toyed with the profile's interactive contents which include contests, polls, actor info, forums, downloadables and on and on.
All the advertisers try to collect friends just like other MySpace members do. The Rent Movie MySpace promotion feature can be found here. It includes character blogs, songs, wallpaper, screensavers, etc. They show over 36,000 friends. The SSX on Tour can be found here on MySpace with their 5,000+ friends. The Oxyride page on MySpace shows over 2,000 friends. The article didn't mention that MySpace also recently created its own music label which is yet another way for this rapidly developing brand to branch out from its free blogging and social networking service.
Reuters reports that former U.S. Vice President Al Gore has launched the Current TV network he founded. Current TV targets the 18-34 age group with short video content known as "pods." Current already reaches 20 million cable subscribers in the U.S. Al Gore says that today's youth want personalized media and they want to be in control of the media.
"If you ever thought, 'TV really sucks ... or I could make a better show than that,' then you came to the right place," on-air host Shauntay Hinton told viewers.
At a gathering of television critics last month, the 57-year-old Gore said Current was "inviting this new generation empowered by digital tools -- of small and good cameras and laptop editing systems -- to actually make television."
"This generation wants to be in control of its media," said Gore, who served as President Bill Clinton's vice president from 1993 to 2001. "They want personalized media."
Further emphasizing viewer control over its programming, Current regulates how often it repeats individual pieces on the air according to audience feedback, as registered on the network's Web site (www.current.tv)
Current.tv also has a blog located here. The blog is written by Robin Sloan, who works on Current's web team.
An Associated Press story says that
some parents are struggling with what rules they should make
about blogging for the children. The rules parents are
setting range from no rules at all to the most extreme approach --
the outright banning of blogging. Banning blogging may be easier
said then done since it is difficult to stop blogging that can be
done using nearly any computer or mobile device a teenage
has access to. Many teenagers do have blogs and while some of
them are quite savvy about password protecting their blog others don't
seem to realize that anyone can find out what they are saying on a
public blog including parents and school administrators.
Rent has started a weblog to promote the Rent movie which will be in theatres on November 11, 2005. Some of the bloggers so far on the Rent blog include Anthony Rapp (Mark Cohen), Wilson Jermaine Heredia (Angel) and Idina Menzel (Maureen). Chris Columbus, the Director of Rent, also has a post in the blog and his is a video entry. The blog also includes some production photos for the movie.
Writers Write, Inc. Launches PleasantMorningBuzz.com
Writers Write, Inc., the parent company of BloggersBlog.com, has
announced the launch of the newest Blog in our Network:
Pleasant Morning Buzz. Pleasant Morning Buzz features light-hearted commentary about current events, celebrity gossip and items of interest.