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Hollywood studios enter the virtual world

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virtual worldWatch out, folks. Major studios are now entering the virtual worlds. That’s right. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Sony Entertainment and Warner Bros each signed a license agreement with Gaia Online.

Soon, virtual residents can watch their favorite movies like The Matrix, Spider-Man, Batman Returns, and the classic slapstick Ace Ventura: Pet Detective in a virtual movie house called Gaia Cinemas.

What’s the logic? Well, these major studios like to benefit from the social viewing experience wherein virtual residents can customize their avatars, buy popcorns to throw to other residents, and express their views via in thought bubbles.

Revenues will be generated from advertiser-fronted skins for free movies, ad-free pay-per-view priced at $2 per movie, and virtual tie-in goods for sale.

If this gamble proves worthy, it is possible to watch current movie releases through the virtual worlds in the near future.

Moreover, Sony has invested in Gaia but declined to elaborate its association with the virtual world.

Originally posted on December 3, 2007 @ 9:21 am

Online consumer reviews strongly affect offline buying behavior

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We already know most consumers rely on the Internet and unbiased consumer reviews before buying anything. What we don’t know is how significant is its impact to offline buying habits.

A new study of comScore and The Kelsey Group reveals that nearly one out of every four Internet users (24 percent) reported using online reviews prior to paying for a service delivered offline.

This study also showed that consumers were willing to pay between 20 percent and 99 percent more for an Excellent (5 star) rating than for a Good (4 star rating), depending on the product category.

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“This study underscores the importance of providing not just good, but excellent, service if a business hopes to generate positive consumer reviews which will result in greater sales,” said Brian Jurutka, senior director, comScore Marketing Solutions.

Read full details

Originally posted on November 30, 2007 @ 5:56 am

News sites want more control over search engines

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online newsIt’s now evident online news publishers are not quite pleased with the way search engines index their sites.

Today, these publishers will unveil their new proposals at the Associated Press headquarters to prevent any disagreements with leading search engines like Google and Yahoo!

Currently, crawlers of different search engines follow the rules of news sites as stated in their text file named as “robots.txt”. However, they still feel this method is not flexible enough to express their terms and conditions.

Common complaints include posting of news summaries, photos, and headlines without permission. The system called Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP) is created to avoid any legal problems.

While Google welcome these proposals, they will need time to thoroughly evaluate these proposed extensions to make sure these represent the needs of the majority and not of a single community.

“Ultimately, ACAP will benefit everyone: publishers, search engines and, most of all, consumers, by creating a fair and content-rich online experience for all of us: no standards wars; no proprietary monopolies; open collaboration: win, win for all,” said Gavin O’Reilly, chairman The World Association of Newspapers, to PC Pro.

Originally posted on November 29, 2007 @ 11:06 am

Facebook folds under pressure

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Facebook is feeling a little broken over its unsuccessful attempt to invade the privacy of its members.

The New York Times reported Mark Zuckerberg’s controversial advertising scheme named Beacon is met with several protests from groups like MoveOn.org. More than 50,000 people have signed the petition to modify this advertising system and uphold consumer privacy.

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The new ad system is a sly version of word-of-mouth marketing. When users who are logged into Facebook visit a participating site, their friends can now view those actions through News Feed or Mini-Feed stories.

Given these protests, Facebook agreed to make a very important change – it will now ask for the members’ explicit approvals before they track their online activities.

As posted in the Caucus, here are some other changes:

  1. Users must click on “O.K.” in a new initial notification on their Facebook home page before the first Beacon story is published to their friends from each participating site. We recognize that users need to clearly understand Beacon before they first have a story published, and we will continue to refine this approach to give users choice.
  2. If a user does nothing with the initial notification on Facebook, it will hide after some duration without a story being published. When a user takes a future action on a Beacon site, it will reappear and display all the potential stories along with the opportunity to click “O.K.” to publish or click “remove” to not publish.

Originally posted on November 30, 2007 @ 10:47 am

Adobe, Yahoo! partner on PDF ads

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adobe adsSoon, Adobe PDF files will no longer be free from online advertising. Adobe Systems has partnered with Yahoo! to provide publishers the option to serve contextually relevant ads to their PDF files.

Dubbed as Adobe PDF Powered by Yahoo, these ads aims will only appear on the right side panel so it will not get in the way of the content. Under this agreement, pay-per-click revenues will be shared with Adobe, Yahoo! and interested content publishers.

To join the program, publishers must register online, and then simply upload their Adobe PDF content so that it can be ad-enabled before distributing PDFs as they do today. Ads can only be displayed within Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat, in a panel adjacent to the content so that they do not disrupt the viewing experience. Every time the PDF content is viewed, contextual ads are dynamically matched to the content of the document.

“By partnering with Yahoo! on this innovative advertising service we are creating opportunities for publishers to build new businesses around unique content that previously was just given away or not available to a mass online audience,” said Rob Tarkoff, senior vice president, Corporate Development at Adobe.

For now, this ad-system works only for U.S.-based publishers.

Originally posted on November 29, 2007 @ 3:48 am