If MTV has proven one thing over time, it’s that it knows where the kids are. Throughout its 25-year history, the cable network has stayed on top of its fickle and elusive teen audience as it moved from Madonna videos to “Pimp My Ride,” and from heavy metal to hip-hop. So when viewers stampeded to the Web, it was natural MTV would be there, too. This time, the kids didn’t follow. “MTV Overdrive,” a free video Web site featuring music videos, news and MTV’s hit programming, attracts fewer than four million unique visitors a month, a small fraction of MTV’s 82 million monthly U.S. television viewers. More worrisome: MTV’s Web sites are being whipped by rivals such as MySpace, the new home of the MTV generation. MySpace gets nearly 55 million unique visitors in the U.S. a month. YouTube, a fast-growing video Web site, draws 16 million.
MTV’s stumble has lessons for major media companies watching the explosion of video on the Web. In the closed confines of cable TV where competition is limited, MTV protected its niche by portraying itself as the iconoclastic outsider. But the Web is a free-for-all, and the roster of competitors grows every day. MTV, now part of the establishment and late to the game, wrongly assumed its famous brand name and product would have the same resonance online.
“If you could argue that they had a lock on the youth market, that lock has now been released to YouTube and other sites,” says Dan Nova, managing general partner at venture-capital firm Highland Capital Partners, an investment firm that has backed companies that develop online video technology. “They won’t have the monopoly that they’ve had traditionally.”
Taylor Spicuzza, a 16-year-old high-school student from Virginia Beach, Va., likes to watch MTV’s “Next,” a reality show about dating, and “Pimp My Ride.” But he isn’t a fan of Overdrive.
“It just doesn’t look interesting to me,” the teenager says. Online, Mr. Spicuzza says he prefers to visit MySpace, where he has his own page and spends about one hour a week. (more…)
This week’s edition of Tech Tip Tuesday focuses on iTunes functionality. Wouldn’t it be nice to control iTunes while multi-tasking in other applications? Do you find it annoying to constantly switch back and forth from applications you currently have open such as Microsoft Word to simply change the song currently playing? If so, this tip is for you. I personally use this functionality and love it (in fact, I’m actually using it as I write this article. (more…)
First of all, watch this video. This is a preview of this discussion, so take a look. This was first introduced to me by Dan Kennedy. It’s a few years old but it’s thus far deadly accurate — except for the references to the dying Friendster which just as easily can be MySpace. (more…)
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