PDA + Digital media

YouTube in the UK is to be stripped of its most popular music videos after the site failed to agree a new licencing deal with the Performing Rights Society for Music, the trade body that collects music royalties.

YouTube said today that after the expiry of its former deal, PRS had proposed new payment terms that would be financially prohibitive for the site and would require YouTube to pay out more than it makes from the ads next each video.

YouTube says it will help find the next Arctic Monkeys. Photograph: Frida Borjeson Photography/Flickr/Some rights reserved

It also said that PRS would not agree to identify which artists and songs are covered by which licence, something essential for YouTube's content ID system to identify and reimburse rights holders for each song that is viewed.

"We value the creativity of musicians and song writers and have worked hard with rights-holders to generate significant online revenue for them and to respect copyright," said parent company Google in a statement.

"But PRS is now asking us to pay many, many times more for our license than before. The costs are simply prohibitive for us - under PRS's proposed terms we would lose significant amounts of money with every playback."

Google said it is still negotiating with PRS but in the meantime, premium videos from artists on EMI, Universal, Warner and Sony BMG and some indie labels have started to disappear for UK viewers and will be systematically removed over the next few days. YouTube's has separate deals with the major labels who control the sound recording rights but PRS controls licencing for the music and lyrics, without which live or pre-recorded songs cannot be performed.

Patrick Walker, YouTube's director of video partnerships, said he couldn't give a figure for the proportion of site traffic generated by music videos, but that music videos are some of the most popular content on the site and generate a lot of activity including remixes and on music blogs.

"This is about long-term viability," he said. "If the next Arctic Monkeys is going to surface we need to get this to work. It's in the interest of the music industry - we're not just doing this for us. The record industry needs a new business models so it's kind of a shame that this has happened. But sometimes you have to step back to step forwards."

PRS said today that Google's announcement was made without any consultation and in the middle of negotiations, and that it is "outraged on behalf of consumers and songwriters that Google has chosen to close down access to music videos on YouTube in the UK".

But it also appeared to contradict Google's claim that PRS had asked much more money for the new licence, saying the tech giant wants "to pay significantly less than at present to the writers of the music on which their service relies".

"We were shocked and disappointed to receive a call late this afternoon informing us of Google's drastic action," said PRS chief executive Steve Porter. "... which we believe only punishes British consumers and the songwriters whose interests we protect and represent."

Clearly pre-empting the fury of YouTube users, PRS emphasised that it did not ask YouTube to remove the videos and "urges them to reconsider their decision as a matter of urgency".

But even if PRS is completely squeaky clean in this episode, it comes soon after the closing days of the Pirate Bay trial and for web-savvy consumers it will confirm the gulf between the traditional music industry and the technology they love.

It also follows some bad press for PRS over licence chasing; PRS has allegedly been pestering small businesses demanding licences if, for example, they have more than two staff and listen to the radio.

The author is the CEO of ContentNext Media, parent of paidContent.

How badly does the newspaper industry need new ideas? Here's the story I often tell when that question comes up.

The year was 2005, and I had recently joined the venerable Dow Jones (NYSE: NWS) from Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), where I had led the team that helped build the financial portal. My job at Dow Jones was head of all consumer online sites, including WSJ.com, Barrons.com and Marketwatch.com. One day I was invited to a meeting to brainstorm about, of all things, the width of the Wall Street Journal. After I made a suggestion that was somewhere between novel and off the wall, the then-publisher leaned on the table, looked at me and said: "How old are you, young man?" The suggestion was clear: If you're under 40, you can't possibly understand the newspaper business. I still wish my response, though impolitic, had been: "How old is your thinking?"

While I don't have a quick fix for the newspaper industry's problems, I know one thing: The very companies that are ensuring newspapers' online traffic/existence should be leading the dialogue on their survival. Yahoo, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and AOL (NYSE: TWX) - not the editors, journalists and cadre of analysts who have led the newspapers to the brink - should be put in charge of identifying ways to keep a select number of news outlets viable. There are three reasons why the tech leaders should be driving this bus: their culture of innovation; their dependence on newspapers; and their track record of creating and growing sources of online revenue.

Technology is embraced in the Valley, not feared

Companies in Silicon Valley depend on having a fast-paced culture of innovation where no ideas are bad ideas, all voices are heard, technology is embraced not feared, and you are irrelevant if you aren't open to change. To achieve aggressive goals in competitive environments, teams have to work together without hidden agendas or obsessive attention to where in the chain of command a new idea originates.

The major portals already have experience creating win-win situations for publishers, whether it's sending them traffic or providing feedback on headlines that draw in readers. And they can do it again – in part because it's in their best interest to do so. Top news sites such as WashingtonPost.com, NYTimes.com and Marketwatch.com derive an average of 50% to 65% of their traffic from the big portals. Consumers have spoken, and they prefer going to the portals to be directed to their news sources. By the same token, Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL absolutely depend on news from these sites to retain users, make money and differentiate themselves.

Are editorial trusts the future?

There are various ways that newspapers and Silicon Valley companies can work together to preserve graphical advertising rates, create scarcity and ensure that the age-old way of supporting content survives. The simplest solution, of course, is for the portals to just buy the top three newspapers and create an editorial trust, not dissimilar to the Scott Trust, which owns our parent company, Guardian News & Media. As I mentioned in a recent interview with Forbes, the trust model would allow the big portals to continue to monetize, surface and differentiate newspaper content in their own unique ways while creating a set of editorial boards that allow great journalism to flourish. Google itself has expressed interest in this idea.

But since this is unlikely to happen anytime soon, here are three things that the newspapers and the techies can do immediately:

• One good idea, which gets floated now and then, is for the portals to host an online "upfront" for marquee media businesses similar to the TV upfront, which has become a planning and pricing guide for the networks and TV advertisers. For major areas such as news, finance, business, games and entertainment, the portals have 70% to 80% of the online traffic and command higher CPMs than the newspapers. If the sites can accurately forecast traffic, offer CPMs that are consistent, and take the advertisers dollars upfront - the marketers will be able to better plan and spend on the remaining sites. And those sites will have a better sense of what prices would be competitive. At present, portal CPMs for marquee areas can reach double digits, while news sites have relatively low traffic and single-digit CPMs. 

• Another promising idea is for the portals to agree on standard cost-per-click rates to be paid to publishers. In the current system, where rates range from barter to two cents a click, negotiations are like the Wild West. If the portals could agree on consistent rates for various types of publications, newspapers would save money. The portals should also agree on a fee structure that they pay for hosted stories rather than taking that content for free and failing to share any of the advertising upside. The portals' operation margins are significant, and there is ample room to cut the newspapers in on more of what they monetise. 

• Finally, portals should agree to show search results only for the original sources of news content, as opposed to outlets that have repurposed that content. (This is something portals often talk about doing, but don't do very well.) At present, many smaller newspapers are able to place stories that are repurposed from larger news sources into search results on portals. The smaller sites make money from that content, while the original source struggles to surface in search results. Technology and tagging can solve much of this problem, but the technology companies and newspapers need to agree on a method to standardise this process.

The newspaper industry is in trouble, no one questions that. But rather than wait for papers to reinvent themselves, fresh thinking from Silicon Valley should be a big part of the solution. I was 35 when the Wall Street Journal publisher asked me my age. The reality is that even then, I was old in digital terms, and I now look to 25-year-olds for ideas and innovation. Silicon Valley gets that – but I'm not sure the newspaper business does.

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• Wine information and aggregation site Scrugee bought out
• GameFly deploys first game-rental kiosks
• Liberty closes phase two of Sirius Investment; takes stake in company
• Hearst plans online-only version of Seattle P-I; makes offers to staff on it

From paidContent:UK:
• Piczo folding in to Stardoll to create teen-focused network
• Reed chief executive admits, 'We should have sold RBI a year earlier'
• Indie music rights agency Merlin adds tracks to P2P network iMesh
• Overseas video fires still burning for BBC, but whither overseas iPlayer?
• Tiscali UK's sale to BSkyB now 'almost impossible'
• Music roundup: Muzu; Universal-RTL
• Print Roundup: job cuts at Archant, Northcliffe Media

An in-depth study by Nielsen Online confirms that social networking has become a ubiquitous part of our online lives, with two-thirds of the world's online population contributing to some form of member community at least once each month. Those with impossibly bulging inboxes won't be surprised to learn that social networking sites are now more popular than web-based email services like Hotmail, and that we spend nearly 10% of our online time using social networks.

Facebook's 'social graph', visualised. Photograph: paul_irish/Flick/Some rights reserved

The star pupil in Nielsen's report is Facebook, on which the Collins English Dictionary bestowed mainstream status last year by including as both a noun and a verb. The site now dominates the European market and is set to overtake MySpace in its native US.

Facebook grows; MySpace slumps

On Nielsen's figures, its global audience of 108.3m users each month is equivalent to 30% of the world's web users. That reach grew 168% through 2008 alone, while arch-rival MySpace saw its global audience drop by 3% to 81 million monthly users. And in the UK, Facebook is used by a staggering 47% of the online population.

Time spent on Facebook increased by 566% from December 2007 to December 2008, compared to around 18% for the web overall.

Nielsen credits Facebook's growth to simple design, broad appeal, better privacy controls and more inventive features than its rivals. But crucially, despite its popularity, Facebook's focus on communication over entertainment makes it a less comfortable sell for advertising - even though its fastest growing userbase has been the older, more valuable 35-49 age group.

MySpace and Bebo both focus on entertainment content, which creates a more comfortable, complementary space for brands - and can tap the infrastructure of respective parents companies News Corp and AOL.

The big three struggle in China and Japan

Outside Europe and North America, China is a critical market but subject to very regulatory challenges and, like Japan, presents particular cultural and linguistic issues; consequently domestic brands dominate. 51 is biggest in China and Mixi in Japan, and in Brazil Google-owned Orkut is 29 times more popular than Facebook.

In sharp contrast to ITV's awkward acquisition of Friends Reunited, Germany's Bertelsman executed a smart move buying half of Wer-kennt-wen in February last year. One year later, the site is the country's most popular social network, benefitting from the largest global sector growth through 2008 of 12.5%. Bertelsman is in a position to exploit the trend of TV watchers using the web at the same time, behaviour Nielsen describes as "mutually reinforcing media" that, surprisingly, is most common among the 35-54 age group.

The challenge to find the new business models

The usefulness of social networking sites is proportionate to the number of users they have and, for that reason, they need to remain free and advertising-supported. The challenge is that users feel 'ownership' over the spaces they create on these sites, which makes them less tolerant of advertising, and sites have yet to identify the 'magic recipe' that balances targeted ads without seeming to invade a user's privacy.

Despite the problems, report author Alex Burmaster said short-term concerns over the economy should not stop advertisers or media companies innovating in such a crucial space. They need a "magic bullet," he says that taps the potential of targeted advertising without

"The magic bullet will be forged advertisers and publishers partnering to developing new and creative ad formats and inventory models," he said. "That advertising will be based on the notion of having a conversation with consumers that is candid, authentic and adds value."

The strategy, he said, should be to approach social media like any other communication channel, embrace the consumer willingness to create and share content and encourage conversation and engagement about its brand across the web. It's a tough nut to crack, but the rewards will be rich for those who do.

Bebo is trying to increase its foothold in the US by introducing a new version for the Latino audience from today.

The social network is partnering with eight-year old sister network AOL Latino as well as Hearst Digital, which will provide video, photos, polls and various content from its MisQuinceMag.com site - all geared around the 'quinceañeras', or coming out festival for Latina girls when they reach fifteen years old.

One quinceañera. Photograph: DC Atty/Flickr/Some rights reserved

Content from AOL Latino will include selected bilingual news, music and entertainment, sport, fashion and beauty, all distributed through the site" open media platform' which lets content companies distribute content throughout the network and make money from related ads. AOL is also launching a Spanish-language tech site called TechnoPadres.com today.

"Expanding into new markets is a key pillar of our growth strategy, and we see huge potential for the growing Latino audience in the US," said Bebo's vice president of international, Nicole Vanderbilt.

Bebo still pitches itself as the most media-focused social network with the aim of creating a more familiar environment for brands and advertisers. AOL will be keen to expand Bebo's current audience of 22 million monthly users by linking it to its existing US userbase, as well as its ad network.

Hispanic and Asian populations are predicted to see the fastest growth in the US in the next 30 years, according to the US Census Bureau, and Latino web users already account for around 10% of overall web population. Despite the advantages of AOL's established Latino audience, Bebo faces competition in an already crowded marketplace of more than a dozen social networks including MyGrito.com, LatinosConnected and Salsalicio.us.

• How Silicon Valley can help save newspapers >> paidContent
• YouTube Integrates Google News for 'YouTube News' >> Beet.TV
• Paul Carr: The column I wasn't supposed to write >> Guardian
• Mobile browsing market dominated by iPhone >> Econsultancy
• Twitter begins rolling out search and trends >> ReadWriteWeb
• iPhone Bits: Five apps median for smartphone users >> mocoNews
• Robert Scoble to leave FastCompany >> TechCrunch
• Reid Hoffman: 'Every individual is now an entrepreneur' >> TechCrunch
• Beatles fans to get videogame September 9 >> Reuters
• Analyst: Apple turns its back on e-book market >> Computer World
• The quest for the nearly empty in-box >> NYTimes.com
• Why Googlers are leaving to start social sites >> Mashable
• Omniture adds Twitter analytics for brands >> Mashable
• The artist's guide to Flickr >> Mashable
• DNA09: Local media must embrace social media, says Michael Rosenblum >> Journalism.co.uk
• Moderation, the law and censorship part 1: Defamation >> BBC Internet Blog
• Mahalo employee sentenced to four years in prison >> Guardian
• UK politicians' Wikipedia worries >> BBC
• Fifty new Digg tools and resources >> Mashable
• The lessons I've learned as a blogger >> Econsultancy

Via delicious

I always pounce on those stories about managing your email overload, as if they might contain some magic secret to conquer the beast. But they don't.

Email is busted. Photograph: Esparta/Flickr/Some rights reserved

The latest, from the New York Times, is a valiant effort but cannot disguise the fact that email is broken. Farhad Manjoo recommends six strategies:

• Don't check your email more than three time each hour

• Clear out your inbox and deal with all new mail as soon as it arrives

• When you've responded to or actioned an email, move it to an archive folder

• If someone else can deal with it better, delegate to them

• Only hold mail to reply to later if you absolutely must

• Spend 15-39 minutes at the end of each day dealing with anything in your inbox, so that you can clear it again

I do all of this, but it always feels like a battle. The barrage of mail on Facebook et al doesn't help either, and - though I hesitate to use the T word yet again - there's a lot to learn from 140 characters. What we have learnt from social messaging is that 'ambient' communication makes it far easier to handle a large volume of mail - and also that your key message can be summarised in 140 characters. If not, you link through to the rest. I think a GMail/Twitter mashup wouldn't be a bad place to start. TMail, anyone?

I'm convinced the behaviour that [whispers] Twitter is encouraging is a more realistic more way of filtering information. It has a built in priority/privacy system with @ and direct messages, but also reinforces the psychological burden of email which stems from traditional letterwriting.

Even before we've read the 182 emails in our inbox that day, we're burdened with the expectation that we will reply in full letterwriting etiquette, along with the guilt and rudeness we feel when we don't have time to reply. And that's without taking spam and unsolicited newsletter subscriptions into account.

There are plenty of occasions when email does work, but those out outweighed by inconsiderate senders, burdensome corporate email systems and the sheer impossibility of a physical medium being reinterpreted, badly, for the digital world.

Email needs reinventing, if anyone is short of something to do this weekend?

Facebook's new homepage design

It seems like just yesterday that Facebook overhauled its site design, but then it was only July last year.

I'm not the only one that thinks it made navigation more complex and made several features harder to find - so it's probably just as well we're about to get another revamp. This one will focus on real-time newsfeed updates (very Twitter, the commentators say) for the homepage and, thankfully, bring back the left-hand navigation menu. That menu also includes some overdue filters for the newsfeed, so you'll be able to 'mute' annoying friends or pick out just those in your city, for example.

Here are the visuals; this rolls out on 11 March.

Filters: A box on the left-hand side will let you remove updates from less interesting friends and prioritise news from your college or work networks, for example, or from applications including photos.

Users will be able to filter the updates in their real-time newsfeed

Stream: The newsfeed has been given a higher profile in the new design.

The newsfeed, or stream, is central to the new design

Publisher: You'll still be able to post updates quickly through the 'publisher' box, which stays at the top of the main Facebook page.

The 'updates' box stays at the top of the page

Highlights: Birthdays, new photos and video will be picked out from your friends' profiles and displayed on the 'highlights' box on the right-hand side.

Facebook will pick highlights from your friends updates and publish these on the right-hand side

BSkyB (NYSE: BSY) is adding six more live streaming channels to the Sky Player online pay TV platform it relaunched in December. With the addition of UKTV's Eden and GOLD, National Geographic Wild and Sky's own Sky Real Lives and Sky Movies Screen 1 and 2, Sky Player is now becoming an internet counterpart to the premium satellite offering that has been Sky's core for the last 20 years. On-demand director Griff Parry told paidContent:UK Sky's plans for the future...

• The strategy is twofold: First, Sky Player is now untethered from the satellite proposition - meaning new, online-only customers can join despite not having a dish on their home. Second, nevermind Slingbox; for those who are Sky satellite subscribers, Sky Player is all about place-shifting - free to those who also take broadband or multiroom, the service's 18 live channels are available not just in rooms beyond the lounge, but anywhere there is an internet connection; there's also VOD content from across 23 TV channels, too.

"Long-term, by nature Sky is a platform operator, an aggregator and a retailer - what we're trying to do with Sky Player is broadly replicate the proposition you would get on a set-top box. We're reaffirming ourselves as the natural aggregator of TV, online."

• From PC back to TV, and beyond: Though Sky Player is currently available only on computer screens, the idea is to do "Sky TV to devices that aren't (just) set-top boxes": "As we enhance Sky Player, we will expand it to devices linked to TVs. The range of devices will extended over time, just as iPlayer has extended..." Just like the BBC's player, Sky's roadmap includes games consoles and mobile - "both are definitely in our plans".

Sky already has a relationship with Sony (NYSE: SNE) to offer shows to PSP handhelds via the Go!View brand, so one can at least imagine Sky Player being delivered to Playstation 3, though this wasn't confirmed. The satcaster already offers live channels via mobile operators.

• To IPTV, under Canvas?: Parry also said Sky Player could end up also being available on the next generation of IPTV set-top boxes. Hypothetically, BT (NYSE: BT) Vision would seem an obvious contender, but what are Sky's views on the BBC's proposed Project Canvas open IPTV platform... ? Whilst, on the face of it, Sky's aim to migrate its status as pay-TV gatekeeper in to new platforms seems to run counter the BBC's hope to offer a free alternative via Canvas, Parry said: "It could potentially be quite an interesting development for us on the Sky Player side."

He said Sky Player should be platform-agnostic but, with the Canvas proposal only published a week ago, stressed it's early days: "It's not clear to anyone really what Canvas is - we're looking for a degree of openness and information. We have quite exacting standards with regard to user experience." On the other side, Sky Player itself already offers iPlayer access, though via web links and not direct video content.

From paidContent:UK:
• Stats LLC acquiring PA SportsTicker
• Dutch online language learning start-up Myngle raises €950,000
• Earnings: WPP predicts two percent drop in 2009 revenue; 2008 profits, revenue up
• Crain Communications pulls plug on FinancialWeek.com; folds two European magazines
• Player X gets portal on Telefónica
• Beatles game due September; rock band tie-in; pricey instruments
• Print Round-Up: Trinity Mirror; Metro; Economist Group; Archant; Dagenham paper; Sport Media Group

From paidContent:
• Vidyo nabs $15m third round; adds new chief financial officer
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• VMTV sell-off looks more likely as chief executive Wall exits
• Barnes & Noble buys its way into e-books with Fictionwise acquisition
• Google's latest money grab: expandable display-ad units

So here it is folks - the faves from the virals, and yes an animal tops the list. But it has to be said that there is something rather disarming about Bizkit's dream, especially when the Labrador wakes up and crashes into the wall. It's almost Shakespearean - bless thee, Bizkit! bless thee! thou art translated, you might say.

As for the rest, well, if your early life was blighted by the music of Vanilla Ice you'll love what looks like a very mock apology from the great man and there's an amusing pay off to this ping pong skit that's worth waiting for.

Enjoy.

Guardian Viral Video Chart – compiled by viralvideochart.com

1 Bizkit the Sleep Walking Dog
Some canines clearly know how to engage with their dream life - and Bizkit is one.

2 JULIAN SMITH - 25 Things I Hate About Facebook
Only 25? Hit-and-miss comic diatribe against the ubiquitous site.

3 Vanilla Ice says 'Sorry'
Well it's about time. Mr Ice apparently says sorry for the music.

4 Zapatero dice para follar en vez de para apoyar
Uneventful speech by Spanish PM

5 Everything is amazing, nobody is happy ...
Chat show paean to the fabulousness of today's age. Not one for grumps.

6 Jazmine Sullivan Dream Big
Catchy toon - do you think Bizkit's a fan?

7 Oren Lavie - Her Morning Elegance
Imaginative video, also with a sleepy theme.

8 The T-Mobile Dance
Commuters strut their stuff.

9 Excessive Celebration Fail
Who thought ping-pong carried so much passion?

10 TNG episode 15 - "That Jean-Luc Picard"
Clever re-editing offers a whole new take of the Star Trek favourite. To Boldly go indeed.

11 Microsoft's Future Vision Series - Microsoft's 2019 Future Vision Montage: Envisioning the Future HQ
'Nuff said.

12 Different Presidents, A Different Corps
Dubya greeted by whooping troops who don't extend the same courtesy to Barack. Not very nice if you ask me.

13 Musiq Soulchild - 'So beautiful'
Snap those fingers.

14 Lil' Wayne Jimmy Kimmel Interview 3-3-09
Little Wayne. Big ego.

15 Wii Breakfast
No, me neither.

16 Closed Zone
Musical skit addresses the Middle East.

17 Hudson River Plane Landing (US Airways 1549) Animation with Audio
CGI recreation of the moment that made a hero

18 Athletic - Sevilla Copa Del Rey Fiesta
Spanish sports fans - dontcha just love 'em?

19 Live iPhone musical performance - Kids by MGMT played on iPhones and iPod Touches
Stop Press. Not all of these are rubbish.

20 Breakfast song
A hymn to God and, er, breakfast.

Source: Viral Video Chart. Compiled from data gathered at 5.45pm on 5 March 2009. The Weekly Viral Video Chart is currently based on a count of the embedded videos and links on approximately 2 million blogs.

• Fifty new Digg tools and resources >> Mashable
• The lessons I've learned as a blogger >> Econsultancy
• New York Timessurvival strategy: Become a blog software company >> Gawker
• Turn your catalogue into weather-based targeted ads >> Econsultancy
• Unpronounceable search engine plumbs Twitter for tunes >> Wired
• Google's Tip Jar uses crowdsourcing to help people save money >> TechCrunch
• Yahoo's Inquisitor makes search shine on the iPhone >> TechCrunch
• The nation's new chief information officer speaks >> NYTimes
• Twitter business plan count-up: day 1 >> AllThingsD
• Google letting cash 'pile up' >> Reuters
• Facebook in 2010: no longer a walled garden >> O'Reilly Radar
• Blackberry apps: $2.99 minimum >> CrackBerry
• Joost teams up with social network Netlog >> TechCrunch
• MySpace still trying to work out how to monetise mobile >> mocoNews
• Twitter: the new emergency tool for travellers >> Guardian
• Why did New Zealand drop plans to cut off net users? >> Guardian
• To describe online discussion as a 'burble of banalities' is unfair >> Guardian
• Spot of bother for Spotify after hackers steal users' passwords >> Guardian
• Open-source guru Ruby leaving IBM for Microsoft >> CNET

Via delicious

I'm in two minds about the creation of a Twitter correspondent by Sky News. This is, to be clear, not someone who reports solely on Twitter (though recent mainstream press coverage might lead you to think otherwise) but someone who scours Twitter for breaking news. Which probably means sitting on TweetDeck and watching trending subjects. No prizes.

Twitter Fail. Photograph: helloylying/Flickr/Some rights reserved

As TechCrunch UK picked up, an internal email told Sky News staff:

"The Twitter phenomenon continues to explode. A phono with an eyewitness in Lahore yesterday came to us through Twitter. Last night's breaking story on the death of a Briton in the Alps came to us from Twitter. The first phone on the Buffalo plane crash came from Twitter. The first photo of the Hudson River rescue came from Twitter. Convinced?

"The Online team is using Ruth Barnett as a 'Twitter correspondent' - scouring Twitter for stories and feeding back, giving Sky News a presence in the Twittersphere. If you don't understand Twitter and would like a demonstration of its power as a newsgathering tool, the Grand Master of Twitter, Jon Gripton, is running a session in Meeting Room 5 next Tuesday at 1400..."

Half of me thinks this the inevitable, ludicrous conclusion of the frenzied Twitter coverage we've seen in the past few weeks, and it will last about as long as the Reuters' Second Life correspondent. The other half thinks it rather misses the point, which is that Twitter should be a tool that any forward-thinking journalist tries out, learns and then incorporates into their news gathering.

The very flow of media-on-media stories exclaiming how astonishing it is that news was being broken on Twitter all missed the point; it's a communication tool, and the fact that New Yorkers reported on the plane crash on Twitter is a given, and no more surprising than the same people using the phone to pass on news.

The danger is that is this rush to fetishise Twitter, the media perpetuates the rather irritating habit of always looking for The Next Big Thing. The point is not Twitter itself, or the company that Ev Williams, Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey built, but the behaviour it has facilitated and encouraged. It's the impact of the tool and not the tool itself that is meaningful, because that is what will grow and influence more new services, and impact existing ones. Facebook is already responding, and there are swathes of services all plugging into the conversations Twitter is driving.

A few observations on what I've learnt from Twitter:

1) Because of both the time and energy it takes to learn how to use it, the level of conversation is generally more constructive, useful and friendly. You don't get 'trolls' wading in, planting one shitty comment and then leaving again, as you do on blog posts.

2) That is reinforced by users building up relationships with other people slowly, over time, with gradual conversations. Furthermore because people are encouraged to use their real names, because expertise and real life anecdotes and advice are often called on and because it's easier to meet people at events because you've already communicated with them.

3) From a news gathering point of view, you use your knowledge and trust in that person to determine how reliable their information is. That's another reason to be cautious in using networks like this for 'cold' newsgathering.

4) Twitter messages, and pages don't really make sense until you've been 'following' that person for sometime. There's an interesting technical and conceptual challenge in how Twitter conversations could be visualised in a way that helps map trends, sharing and discussion threads. And much more to be done in monitoring, assessing and verifying facts in a newsroom context.

So you really don't need a Twitter correspondent. You need a pack of responsive, quick-to-learn journalists who use these tools instinctively. Bets on how long it lasts, people?

Sources are telling the WSJ and CNET that YouTube and Universal Music Group (UMG) are in late stage talks to launch a music video site tentatively called Vevo. The plan is to boost music video ad revenues by hosting them in a more brand-friendly environment than YouTube currently provides; YouTube would also provide tech and ad sales support, helping to get UMG's content distributed on other sites as well. YouTube's official statement -  "We are always working with our partners to find creative ways to connect music, musicians and fans" - doesn't shed any light on how close the two parties are to an agreement (or if there even is one).

While YouTube has struggled to generate meaningful revenues from its swatch of user-generated content, music videos have been a cash cow—and the labels have been pushing for a bigger cut in recent weeks of negotiations. Sony BMG (NYSE: SNE) was the first major to re-up its licensing agreement with YouTube, but talks with Warner Music Group (WMG) ended with WMG taking down all of its content; this partnership could be one way for YouTube to appease UMG and make more money for itself in the process.

It could also be one of the most amicable pairings, as CNET notes that UMG's YouTube channel is the largest on the site, garnering over 3.5m views, and UMG reportedly had plans to launch a "Hulu-like" music video site on its own last year.

Staci adds: This may sound imminent but I gather that even if a deal were to come tomorrow - and no one is telling me that's the case - it's still at such an early stage that much of the detail has yet to be determined and any site (micro or standalone) would be months away.

Despite the often oblique statements, YouTube has been pretty clear about wanting deals that keep a label's music on the site legally but with economics that swing both ways.  That would suggest a deal that gives YouTube the UMG licensing it needs across the main site and includes revenue sharing for advertising, e-commerce and any other revenue streams, in addition to any new setup. It's hard to imagine a site completely outside of YouTube's current ecosystem, especially with YouTube powering the back end but there are a lot of ways it could be accomplished.

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Queen Elizabeth II (possibly) twittering, on her way to Westminster Abbey. Photograph: John Stillwell/PA

Another day, another hysterical Twitter story. The Queen is Twittering!

Now, I know what you're thinking - that Stephen Fry is already on Twitter and doing very nicely, thank you. But this is about that other Queen, the one with all the palaces and stuff.

In what will trigger a new batch of bandwavey news stories on 'that Twitter thing' - as well as giving the Daily Express that Twitter news peg it has been waiting for - the Telegraph proclaimed today that Her Majesty the Queen has "taken a bold technological step by becoming the first member of the royal family to twitter".

The only problem is that she hasn't. Officials at Westminster Abbey will be twittering during the 60th anniversary Commonwealth Observance on Monday, but they are not representatives of the Queen or the palace. Nice try though, Mandrake.

I spoke to the palace press team who said that although they are looking at how Twitter could be used for the royal family's communications, it would probably be members of the press team who posted updates rather than any member of the royal family.

"It would be correct to say we're looking into it, perhaps for another event like the opening of Parliament or horseguards," said a spokesman.

A trip to twitter.com/thequeen will confirm just 48 followers and no updates, so far. Could I dare to suggest that Twitter might be better suited to the hectic party schedule of the younger members of the Royal family rather than for blow-by-blow updates on regal ceremonies?

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Via delicious

News broke today that Apple is in talks Chinese telecoms giant Unicom over introducing the iPhone to China. As luck would have it, today was also the Digital Business China conference in London where speaker after speaker confirmed the phenomenal size and growth of the mobile and web industries in China, and the opportunities for UK companies to get involved.

There's so much opportunity in China, says BDA consultancy chairman Duncan Clark, that if you travel out to investigate the business scene you won't need that return ticket back. Opening the one-day conference, which is part sponsored by UK Trade & Investment, Clark set the scene with some eye-watering statistics.

China is predicted to have 1bn mobile subscribers by 2013. Photograph: myuibe/Flickr/Some rights reserved

While western web giants Google, Yahoo and eBay are all trying to break the Chinese market, domestic services (sometimes blatant copies of those major sites) dominate the market. Though much of the web-related China news we read about focuses on sites being blocked, the reality is that the Chinese web content market is thriving, driven by booming audiences to domestic sites.

As outside China, video, social networking and online gaming are major trends; the latter alone predicted to be worth $8bn per year across China by 2012. Illustrating the potential for growth, he said that telecoms revenue for last year was $120bn but half a trillion dollars in the US, a far more saturated market.

In telecoms, China is predicted to have 1bn mobile subscribers by 2013 - easily the largest single mobile market in the world - and 200m of those subscribers will be on 3G networks. Clark added that he's never been anywhere in China where he couldn't get a mobile signal - an astonishing claim for a country of 3.7m square miles. "The Chinese could teach the Americans show to build out mobile networks," he said.

The Chinese telecoms market is so vast that the representative from UKTI's official partner China Academy of Telecommunication Research describes the userbase in fractions of one billion, rather than millions.

The president of the China Academy of Telecommunication Research, Yang Zemin added that a key point of this technology is that it is helping lift poorer families out of poverty, and also that ICT research and development in China needs to address  energy consumption and clean technology - another potentially massive industry.

Already, American billionaire Warren Buffet has stuck his finger in the clean-tech pie, investing $230m in the electric car company BYD. This is another high growth sector the UK can't afford to ignore," said Martin Bloom, co-founder of design and branding consultancy Bloom & Tse.

Apple's iPhone in China?

As for Apple, there has been no official launch of the iPhone in China yet, and though Unicom is in talks now, that doesn't guarantee anything - market leader China Mobile had talks for a year with no result. Either way, the delay is proving am extremely productive opportunity for China's domestic manufacturers with an estimated two million 'iPhones' in circulation already. Those are either imported jailbroken phones or, more likely, near perfect copies.

On top of that, China Mobile - which controls more than 70% of the Chinese mobile market - has its own plans for a rival called the 'OPhone'. For the government-owned company (as all China's major telecoms firms are) the objective is return of the value of that market sector to the country; though much of it is manufactured in China, 80% of the value is exported along with the device.

Another opportunity is in music; 30% of the average Chinese mobile bill is spent on ringtones and music is bigger on mobile than any other medium, said Clark. The next stage is mobile video - what will happen with that? He added that though there is an inevitable hit from the downturn, with mobile revenues declining in November and December, the growth of 3G services should counteract that decline.

And very interestingly, Clark said the next market to be cracked open and disrupted is Chinese media, at the moment controlled by the state and rather 'flat' as a result.  "China has the largest TV and print audience in the world, but very low production values in the media sector," he said. "The rise of new media, the internet and the iPhone is a real challenge to traditional media - not least because media is the future of telecoms."

There's a move to innovative business models and that's particularly true in the digital industries," said Bloom. "Few Chinese know the rules of western business schools and they don't know the constraints we do in the west, so they experiment and find novel solutions. Chinese entrepreneurs are street smart, not book smart. They have to adapt very quickly, and that's important."