Around the World

» In US: Major online video sites have doubled their audience since the US writer’s strike started in November. YouTube’s audience was up 18% in the two months post-strike and Crackle doubled its audience from 1.2 million users to 2.4 million users.

On a similar note, daily traffic to video-sharing sites in general has soared in the past year. (Traffic has nearly doubled to 48% of adults). One key factor is the increased penetration of broadband within households: 54% of adults now have high-speed Internet connections at home.

» In China: A Chinese blogger was beaten to death by Government authorities for attempting to record a protest on his mobile phone. He was trying to document a protest by local villages against municipal authorities when more than 50 municipal inspectors turned on him, attacking him for five minutes. The killing has sparked outrage in China, “with thousands expressing outrage in Chinese Internet chat rooms, often the only outlet for public criticism of the government.” Scary.

» In Europe: Antitrust officials are probing possible anticompetitive behavior by Microsoft. Investigations will probe whether Microsoft is preventing competing products from interoperating with its own Office suite of business applications, the .Net programming language, and other products by refusing to disclose key information. Allegations could disrupt the company’s Internet strategy and weaken its dominance of desktop software.

» In Eastern Europe: Fears of a global economic slowdown on a U.S. recession have shaken the young capital markets of Central and Eastern Europe, many of which have boasted strong growth in the last five years. The Prague Stock Exchange had the worst start in its 15-year history in the first three days of 2008 (falling 3%). Warsaw and Budapest also took early hits.

» In [online advertising] World: study found viewers are more receptive to TV ads if watching TV online. They are 47% more engaged in ads that air during online programs versus those shown on a TV set and are also 25% more engaged in the content of shows.

Facebook Update

» Due to complaints about the over abundance of apps on user profile pages, Facebook will soon allow users to hide their apps. The “profile clean-up” tool will essentially remind users to get rid of unused apps.

Newfangled Things

» Swedish spirits company Absolut will launch absolutmachines.com, a site where users can instruct multi-instrument devices to play music. The video and audio results will then be streamed, and the audio can be downloaded and shared. Start date: January 31st.

» Awdio seeks out cool places with DJs and streams the music live, in real time. Places include the Colette Shop in Paris, 1015 in San Francisco or Favela in London. Awdio’s technology enables any live music source to be streamed over the internet with high quality sound. Listeners need to subscribe for unlimited access (currently priced at 9 euros/month or 54 euros a year).

» Pixel Qi is a new for-profit startup spun off from OLPC (One Laptop Per Child). Its goal is to commercialize the technology inside the laptop and put out a $75 laptop. Pixel Qi hopes to be “leveraging a larger market for new technologies, beyond just OLPC: prices for next-generation hardware can be brought down by allowing multiple uses of the key technology advances.”

» iMantri seeks to match mentors up with mentees using a niche social network that focuses on “goals” and “competencies”. For example, you can become a mentor for someone who wants to develop better time management skills or you can seek help with project management. The service creates a space for people to match themselves up directly instead of going through services like Big Brothers Big Sisters.

» Heavy Facebook users can check out Social.im, which is a normal IM client that grabs all of your Facebook friends via the Facebook API and brings them into Social.im. It’s currently only available for Windows, with a Mac version promised soon.

» Microsoft is expanding into emerging digital channels. Its new deal is to show grocery store customers video ads tied to their past shopping history and in-store location. The pilot system uses technology to identify the cart’s location in the store. It then directs 7- to 15-second ads and product offers to consumers based on items nearby. What’s more, Microsoft is serving ads based on prior shopping history stored on ShopRite loyalty cards. The MediaCart shopping carts come equipped with a card swipe, which can be used to display shopping lists. Microsoft will use the non-personally identifiable information to make ad-serving decisions. For instance, a frequent Coca-Cola buyer could get an ad offer for Coke Zero when approaching the soft drink aisle.

» Amazon.com and Pepsi have teamed up to create “Pepsi Stuff”, a new free music cross promotion that will allow Pepsi drinkers to earn free music on Amazon. Starting February 1, Pepsi users can “bank” their points on PepsiStuff.com to redeem them for music on Amazon MP3.

» Netflix will begin offering unlimited online movie streaming from a library of over 6000 movies to customers on their $16.99 plan. Netflix has previously offered limited movie streaming to its 7 million + customers, but capped the streaming access at 17 hours a month.

» Babbel is a German startup that helps language students get needed practice and experience through a language learning community. It combines a social network with a series of language learning tools for English, German, Spanish, Italian, and French. The language learning tools are fairly basic and include vocabulary quizzes. The site then tracks your progress and reminds you to continue training on new sets. Babbel leverages the social network by letting users message each other and work on forming lessons together.