The startup hasn't been publicly unveiled, but the company recently launched a splash page with a trademarked logo for Vdio and the slogan "Are you watching?" The site's launch wasn't announced and it's currently blocking search engines from crawling it. The trademark on the page was traced by GigaOm to Pulser Music Services, which is the company that launched music streaming service Rdio in 2009.

With Vdio, the duo is likely taking a new approach, most likely informed by their experience with subscription music service Rdio and this time, aiming squarely for Netflix.

How Vulnerable Is Netflix?

Netflix has been having a rough six weeks or so. Just as its controversial subscription rate hike took effect in the beginning of September, the company made another wildly unpopular announcement: that it would be spinning off its DVD rental service into a seperate business with its own branding and website and keeping Netflix intact as a streaming-only company. Those plans have since been abandoned. Meanwhile, the company has seen its stock price drop as it has lost an estimated 1 million customers.

Despite these recent troubles, Netflix still has 25 million customers and lots of content deals in place, which seem to keep on coming. It's a leader in the online video space and doesn't appear to be going anywhere anytime soon.

Building a Top-Notch Team, But to Launch What?

Still, that hasn't stopped Friis and Zennstrom from assembling a mega-team to work on this startup, which appears to be codenamed Project WBS. That's the name of the entity that owns the Vdio trademark, which counts alumni from Joost, the Apache Foundation, NBC and somebody from Netflix with content aquisition experience. They've even hired somebody from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for their experience wrangling especially gigantic data sets.

The collective experience of Project WBS is impressive enough that whatever they're building, it's a rather serious foray into the online video space.

Other than what bloggers have dug up, very little is known about the company and its actual plans. They appear to be set to launch in the UK first. Their splash page accepts sign-ups via Facebook, but registering doesn't unlock any additional functionality or details about the service.

Today, Joost announced that it is mostly abandoning its original strategy and that the company will focus on offering white label video solutions for media companies and distributors instead.

As Mike Volpi points out on the Joost blog, the company will also downsize its staff in New York and London, and shut down its development center in the Netherlands. Joost will continue to host content on Joost.com, however, and keep the portal running for the time being. The focus of Joost, however, will be on the white label platform, which the company describes as a "cost-effective, end-to-end solution for media companies to publish video under their own brands."

Volpi also announced that he is stepping down as Joost's CEO. Matt Zelesko, Joost's current SVP of engineering, will replace Volpi as CEO.

Lots of Competition

Joost is entering a pretty crowded market, with Brightcove, Viddler, EdgeCast and many others vying for customers. There can be no doubt that Joost will be able to deliver the technology, but we will have to wait and see if Joost can make this transition and attract enough customers for its white label solution.

Having played with the new version of Joost for awhile, it's obvious Hulu has nothing to fear. Joost currently has several issues that need improvement if they ever hope to succeed.

Have you been to the new joost.com yet? If not, go ahead, check it out now, we'll wait. Once you come back, tell us: how did you like that opening cartoon? We found it annoying and obnoxious. We get the idea - they're trying to be cute, but it felt like we had just accidentally tuned into Nick Jr. in the middle of the day.

2) Random Content Playing Upon Login

Let's say you take the plunge and sign up after the cartoon character prods you into doing so (Sign up! Sign up!), upon login you're not greeted with a slideshow of new and popular videos to choose from a la Hulu, you're greeted to some random video auto-playing for you. Sorry, but welcoming me to your site with Britney's latest video already blasting does not give me a good first impression.

3)Poor Navigation

When you first arrive on site, you're probably going to do one of two things: you're going to search for a particular show or you're going to explore what sort of content there is on Joost. If it's the latter, your eyes go to the top navigation to guide you. From the links available (Home, Friends, Groups, Shows, Music, and Film), only the last three are pointers to the site's video content. Each link takes you to a page where you can explore those top-level categories further by genre (comedy, drama, etc.).

Compare that with Hulu's navigation. At the top of Hulu.com, there's TV and Movies available to click on. Underneath those options is a nav bar that features Channels (a drop-down list by genre), Popular Episodes, Popular Clips, Popular Shows, Alphabetical (an A-Z list), and Network (for finding shows by airing network). These are tweaked slightly when you select "Movies." For example, "Network" becomes "Studio." But Hulu doesn't just stop there - beneath their slideshow of new videos are even more ways to navigate. Essentially, it's the same categories at the top (like "Recently Added," "Popular Shows," ), but here they're in columns where video thumbnail links take you directly to the hottest content.

Joost, on the other hand, only offers three static links at the top and the rest of their navigation is crammed into a confusing sidebar next to the video. The tabs across the top of this sidebar scroll horizontally, so you don't even know all your options without clicking around some.

4) Searches Don't Work Well

Let's say that instead of using Joost's navigation, you try to search for content. Using the popular MTV show "The Hills" for test purposes only (promise!), an initial search seems to return no results for that show. Instead, the first page of results lists shows like "The Hill," "Fire on the Hill," and others. It's not clear how they order search results, but it's not alphabetical. "The Hills" doesn't appear until page 4.

But a user isn't necessarily going to click into page after page of results to find their show, they're going to use one of the filtering options in the left sidebar. A quick scroll down the page shows a list of "Series" available, but nope, "The Hills" isn't there.

However, search for "MTV The Hills" and then you'll see a "Reality" sub-genre appear (it wasn't there before). Clicking on that will reveal the episodes. So what was that "Series" option for then? It must be for series where "hills" is in the episode title, but that's not intuitive by any means.

5) Watching Episodes In Order Is Hard

Let's say you've somehow managed to find episodes of a show you want to watch. Now, you're probably going to want to see the most recent episode...but which one is that? Continuing with the above example, the first episode of "The Hills" in the list is "An Unexpected Call," and the next to the thumbnail it notes "Added: Over a year ago." That can't be the most recent one? No, it's not. IMDB says that's Season 1, Episode 3. Most of the episodes listed in the search results, which appear in a completely random order, don't show Season number or Episode number, so unless you know exactly what you're looking for, Joost is no help here.

Now, for comparison purposes, a search on Hulu returns episodes in reverse order, most recent first, with Season and Episode number listed by each one.

6) Inconsistent Naming Convention

Continuing the example from above, the search results return an array of episodes from the MTV show, but not in any sort of order. To make matters worse, they don't even stick to the same naming convention. Some episodes are listed as Show - Title while others are listed as Show Ep.###: Title. What is this, user-gen?

7) Want More Of The Same? Good Luck

Now let's say that against all odds, you've actually managed to locate and play the video wanted to see. Isn't it reasonable that you might want to see more of the same? This should be available from the horizontal tabs in the right sidebar. The one tab in particular ("Channel") should show more videos from that source are listed. However, in the example we're using, that Channel contained nothing other than the one episode which was being streamed at the time. That's strange because other shows (like "The Daily Show," for example) list several more episodes in that list when you're watching them. Why the inconsistency?

Going back to Hulu, the experience is much different. Beneath the video itself, (using "The Daily Show" as the example this time because "The Hills" isn't hosted on-site), there are different sections to explore beginning with Episodes, followed by Clips, then an Episode List, Clip List, Discussions, User Reviews, and Recommended Videos.

8) Share And Shout?

When the video is playing on Joost, you might take notice of the buttons underneath the main window. The first one is "Share" - that's pretty obvious. You can share via email. There's also a button to share on social media via the "Add This" widget. Not quite as elegant as Hulu's better-integrated "Share" functionality, but it will do in a pinch. Right next to the "Share" button is a "Shout" button. Thanks to Digg, "Shout" makes us think of "sharing with friends," too, so this was a curious inclusion. Could this be some sort of IM option? No. Click "Shout" and you'll see - argh! - a return of the cartoon characters from the opening sequence. "Shout It Out! What does this video make you want to say out loud?", the site asks. It's like a FriendFeed "like" gone terribly wrong.

What's the difference between wink #1 and wink #4, anyway? And is #2 laughing or crying? And, oh dear lord, is #3 actually throwing up? Nice.

9) Why Two Search Boxes?

Just curious - if there's a search box at the top-right of every page, why bother adding a second in the sidebar? Just curious.

10) RSS Feeds Aren't Apparent

In another great design decision, the Joost RSS feed icons are greyed out unless you hover your mouse over them - then they're orange. Last we checked, light grey doesn't show up well and is often associated with a feature being disabled. As RSS fans, we don't like seeing RSS hidden like this. Hulu's RSS icon might not be much larger, but it's placement and color make sure it gets noticed.

Conclusion

If it's not obvious from this list, navigating Joost was much more trouble than it's worth. Of course, we would probably be willing to do so if Joost had exclusive content that we could only see on-site and not anywhere else on the web. However, that's not the case. Instead, Joost's new lineup includes full-length shows from CBS, Viacom and the Warner Brothers Television Group and other offerings which, according to NYT, include the "Friends" archives, "CNN: America Votes," 18,000 music videos, shows from MTV and VH1 like "The Hills," classic sitcoms like "Diff'rent Strokes" and a selection of movies, including "Jerry Maguire" and "Men in Black." Some of that content, like CBS and "The Hills," isn't available on Hulu, but Hulu will still return results as if they were. Clicking to play the video on Hulu takes you to the video's web site (CBS, MTV.com, etc.). So while some content may be hosted in Joost but not on Hulu, it doesn't really feel that way.

We'll give Joost some credit for making the transition from software to web, but it's hard to cheer them on when even their chief executive doesn't seem to have the enthusiasm to do so. Mike Volpi, a former Cisco executive, who took over the company over a year ago was quoted as saying this about the new site: "We'll just keep hanging around the rim to see if we get a break." Right. In the meantime, we'll be using Hulu.

Banking 2.0: Money Management Moves to The Cloud

There was a time when managing finances from your computer meant you had to use desktop software. Today, that's no longer the case. There are now a number of applications that let you do your banking in the cloud, a trend we've dubbed "banking 2.0."

These sites aren't just simplified versions of our former desktop apps, either. Instead, they offer a number of features that take advantage of their "always on" status. Forget downloading updates and typing in your transactions line-by-line, these new banking 2.0 sites can offer you better insight into your financial situation with no additional effort on your part beyond just logging in.

Store, Tag and Print: 10 Great Photo Sharing Services

The photo sharing market is growing at a steady clip and new services are released regularly. In this round-up, we compare the features and usability of 10 of our favorite photo sharing sites. Two years ago, we published a similar list. So now seems a good time for us to revisit the topic.

Some of these sites focus more on mainstream users and photo-finishing, while others stand out because of their extensive social features. Note: we've included a full table of features for the services listed (see below).

Click here for the full-size version of this table.

Sometimes Google Isn't Enough: New Research Engine Searches "Deep Web"

What do you do when you need to research something on the web? You just google it, right? Using a web search engine like Google is usually fine for casual searches, but when you need to delve deep into a subject, it just won't do. What you really need is a research engine that explores the unindexed reaches of the Deep Web. For that, there's now Infovell, "the world's research engine."

Less than 0.2% of the web is indexed and some of the most valuable information lies beyond the search results returned from traditional engines. That's where a service like Infovell can help. This new subscription-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) engine lets you explore content found on the Deep Web.

See also: Semantics + Google = SemantiFind

Finally: Joost Now Available on the Web

This week Joost announced that all of its content is now available directly on its website and not just through its desktop client. Joost was one of the most hyped-up companies on the web when the peer-to-peer streaming video service was still in stealth mode in 2006; and beta invites were rare and coveted. However, once users actually got a look at Joost, disillusion quickly set in. Joost's video quality was very high and it had signed up a wide range of content producers, but its downfall was its reliance on a desktop client. Users were already switching to viewing video on the web and having to start up a client just to watch video was simply too inconvenient.

RWW Predictions: Funding for Yammer

This week's prediction question focused on the winner of the TechCrunch50 event: Yammer. Yammer is a communications product that duplicates the functionality of Twitter, but with an enterprise twist. We certainly have our doubts about Yammer as an enterprise tool. However, we wanted to know your prediction for the financial future of Yammer. Will Yammer raise a round of funding in 2008 or 2009. If so, how much will they take? As at time of writing, here were the results:

SEE MORE WEB PRODUCTS COVERAGE IN OUR PRODUCTS CATEGORY

Web Trends

Are You a Super Influencer?

A new report from Universal McCann discusses the rise of "a new breed of super influencers" that has been created by "the tools of the social media revolution." Before we all don our superhero capes, let's look more closely at the findings of the report.

Entitled When did we start trusting strangers? How the internet turned us all into influencers, the premise is that influence was moved beyond "professional and top down" (mainstream media) and into Web-enabled peer to peer influence. But despite McCann calling this a "democratisation of influence", all influencers are not equal. There are "super influencers" who are "extremely heavy users of social media, particularly in terms of content creation." Are you one of these people? Let's check out what the characteristics are...

Seven Social Media Consultants That Deliver Tangible Value

Is social media nothing but snake oil? Sometimes it can seem that way. As economies shift and trends emerge, would-be experts start popping up like weeds. Really good social media experts are a treasure - and they're not always easy to find.

In this post we highlight seven social media consultants that consistently bring tangible value to the table. These folks aren't full of hot air - they use their blogs to offer clear examples, links, tutorials and other resources you can put to use. If the goods you can see for free are so solid, that's all the more reason to investigate paying for these peoples' services. We hope this list will help you get smarter and maybe save a whole lot of money and anguish.

Tim Berners Lee Launches World Wide Web Foundation - Will it Be Effective?

Tim Berners Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, announced this week the formation of a new organization dedicated to studying how the web works and expanding access to the billions of people who can't get online today. The World Wide Web Foundation kicked off with $5 million in support from media funders the Knight Foundation.

Can yet another organization really make a difference? Some observers seem to be suffering from Organization Fatigue, but we're interested to see what Berners Lee can do. A group dedicated to deep study of the web and the obstacles to its growth sounds like a great idea to us. Not everyone agrees.

How Decoupled is The Innovation Economy From Rest of The Economy?

What a week of market mayhem! How odd having that as the backdrop to the Web 2.0 Expo in New York. We have been sounding alerts about the economic backdrop to our world of innovation for nearly a year. Back in February we wrote that this is not our bubble. Since then, the news from the economy has gotten worse and nobody is suggesting it will get better any time soon. Reading the papers is pretty grim (unless you stick to Sports or Arts). Yet we contend that it is not grim in the 'innovation economy'. Here's why...

SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY

RWW Enterprise Channel

Report: Nearly 70% of Businesses Allow Social Media Usage

A new report about Enterprise adoption of Web 2.0 technologies, by Awareness, Inc., shows that employers are increasingly allowing staff to use social media applications in working hours. Awareness puts the figure at 69 percent of businesses in 2008, up from 37 percent last year.

It's the latest in a string of reports this year - from Awareness, Forrester and others - which provide data about the growth of web 2.0 in the enterprise. It'll be a $4.6 Billion industry by 2013, according to Forrester. See more of Awareness' findings in this post.

Email us if you're interested in writing for ReadWriteWeb's Enterprise Channel.

SEE MORE ENTERPRISE COVERAGE IN OUR ENTERPRISE CHANNEL

That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.

Even though Joost does not rely on its P2P architecture anymore, the video quality is still high, especially in full-screen mode, but it does not rival that of the 'HD' offering of ABC or Vimeo.

More Social

Joost has also added a wealth of social features to its site. You can now easily share videos with your friends on Joost and join one of the newly established Joost groups. Also, everything you watch is stored in your 'JoostFeed,' which you can choose to make public. If you really do not want your friends to know that you have been watching Brittany Spears videos all night again, you can also turn on a 'Stealth Mode.'

Because of its reliance on a plugin, however, Joost does not offer the ability to embed videos yet. We assume that this feature will be available once Joost has moved over to using Flash.

Too Little, Too Late?

Overall, we think it was about time for Joost to move to the browser. However, a lot of what Joost set out to do in 2006 has already been done on the web. Its biggest competitor is probably Hulu, which has content deals with almost every large TV network and is slowly adding more HD content. Joost will have a hard time competing, unless it can sign up a similarly large number of quality content producers.

Why, then, has one of the most high profile RIA providers in recent years, Joost, moved to ditch their desktop video player?

RIAs are Good for Background Use

We like using desktop Twitter clients like Tweetdeck or Twhirl or other RIAs like Fluid and Snackr. Those are all apps that work well in the background of our workflows. We spend most of our focused time in the browser. Apps that require extended focus, like video viewing, may as well go on in the browser. That way they don't require separate downloads, potentially suspect software, etc.

One advantage to an RIA is that it can sit on your computer and wait until you're in between doing other things. If your browser crashes, while you load page after page from different sources, that RIA is still there keeping up in the background - waiting until you're ready for it.

RIAs Are Best When You Need Responsiveness

Rich Internet Apps combine the responsiveness of a desktop app with the connectivity of the web. If you don't need a lot of responsiveness, though, then you may as well just stay in the browser. Despite its social features, video viewing apps like Joost are mostly consumed passively. You find something you like and then you sit there and stare at it for awhile. Responsiveness to quickly entered commands? Pretty much irrelevant.

RIAs Are Good When Storage and Offline Access Are Important

Desktop RSS readers are nice because you've got a local copy of your feeds. You can see changes to the text and you can read in a plane. It's useful to view videos when offline, but how many of them do you want to keep on your computer after you've watched them? Better to let them stream in through that part of your computer's memory and then be gone.

Amazon may have hit the sweet spot in its move yesterday to ditch Amazon Unbox and rename the service Amazon Video on Demand. Users (now including Mac owners, by the way!) can either stream video or download it locally - it's up to you.

Maybe Video Works Best in the Browser - So How About iTunes?

That's all well and good, but watching video in the browser is so convenient it's hard to beat. As Adobe's Stewart points out, even watching full screen is now trivial with the upgrades to Flash and Silverlight that weren't available when Joost first hit the scene.

Hulu is rocking out and it's no surprise. It's attractive, easy to use and has a whole lot of content. It could be better, but there's absolutely no reason to believe that a desktop client would help make it any better.

We like Rich Internet Apps sitting on our desktop, pulling and pushing data to and from the internet. We don't feel compelled to consume video that way, though. We expect to see other desktop video apps follow Joost's footsteps and move back into the browser. Might iTunes move toward an ad supported model and move to the browser some day for video? It would probably be a good idea for all the same reasons that it's smart for Joost to do so.

As it turns out, TidalTV is more like Hulu than Joost. The videos are available to watch online in the browser, with no software download necessary - not even a special browser plugin.

As far as content goes, TidalTV has quite a bit, offering up premium video from content owners such as the Associated Press, CBS, diy network, Fine Living Network, food network, National Geographic Channel, HGTV, MSNBC Features, NBC News Features, Ford Models, The Chef's Kitchen, Classic College Sports, Sports Illustrated, somagirls.tv, The Weather Channel, This Old House, TV Guide, Vogue TV, weddingtv, and the WSJ.

The viewing experience isn't bad, either. When the site initially displays, the video is in a small window on the left, with featured programs to the right and the full program guide below. One click on the video takes you to full screen. Move your mouse to the bottom of the video window, and the controls pop-up, letting you start, stop, pause, adjust the volume, and access other site features like the guide, your options, or site search. There are also three other buttons at the bottom right of the video window that let you share the video with a friend (via email only - no embed codes were available), mark the video or series as a favorite, and display the current program's description.

As with many online video services, TidalTV makes its money from interspersed, no-skip ads, but they were no more frequent or lengthy than you would expect - averaging about four per a half-hour of programming. The site also performed well in both quality and speed, though it's hard to tell how it will do under a load of traffic. Thanks to its quiet launch, there hasn't been a rush of users to it yet. However, at this time, transitions from page to page were smooth and videos began instantly, no stopping and starting and no buffering.

Try It Now!

Unlike with Hulu's beta, you won't need an invite or login to watch TidalTV - it's available to everyone. Check it out for yourself here: beta.tidaltv.com and let us know what you think in the comments.

This week Hulu - the online video project from Newscorp and NBC/Universal, with participation by Sony, MGM and others (our previous coverage) - launched to the general public in the United States. It's been in private beta nearly five months, wrote Dan Langendorf at last100.

Joost makes live-streaming video available, starting with March Madness

Joost, the Internet TV service, is making live-streaming video available through an update to its desktop client. Joost has landed a deal with one of its investors, CBS, to stream live and relatively ad-free NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship games. The new Joost client — for the PC and Intel Macs only — was made available for download this week and is needed to access live streaming. Joost began looking into adding “live television” back in October.

TiVo continues expansion, adds YouTube to “television services” lineup

It seems a bit late, but the important thing is that TiVo keeps improving its “television services” offering. This time, TiVo is adding YouTube to its ever-expanding lineup.

TiVo’s partnership with YouTube will deliver Web video directly to user’s televisions. The catch is to get YouTube content you must own the latest TiVo HD and TiVo Series3 models.

Check out more Internet TV news from last100, our digital lifestyle blog covering Internet TV, digital music, Mobile Web and more. You can subscribe to last100 here.

Each of these applications, however, is really just a proof-of-concept for the "Web Media Player Framework" that Yanez is trying to create. According to Yanez, the way videos are displayed now is broken. Requiring users to navigate from page to page on multiple sites isn't as intuitive as what we're used to from television. Instead, users should be able to browse multiple videos from multiple sources from within a single player.

Writing about Hulu, Yanez says, "a video player that is capable of multi video plays is necessary for Hulu because the main complaint against embedding individual videos is that it causes the page to have endless scrolling. I believe Hulu needs to have an embeddable player unlike that of a YouTube, mainly because players like that are meant for web page viewing of short length videos and are not scalable to contain large volumes of videos."

His experimental multi video players are a solution for that problem. His goal with the media player framework is to build a single media player that is capable of sucking videos from any online source and display them in a way that is TV-like and familiar to users. Yanez also hopes to create a player that can be used on multimedia devices like the Nintendo Wii.

"My goal is to build a media player that integrates with all web video, be easy to use, have a television style feel and have capabilities to be fully integrated with multimedia devices such as the Wii and mobile phones," he writes. "The television without a doubt was one of the biggest inventions of the 20th century. I believe web video is going to be one of the biggest breakthrough's in the 21st century."

In July, when Yanez first released his Joost player, NewTeeVee suggested that Joost should hire him to create a web-based version of their player. We agree. Even better, Sling Media or Tivo should hire Yanez to create a player for the Slingbox that can suck videos off the web and put them on our TVs.

While the market for Internet TV is growing steadily — survey after survey shows that people are consuming more video online than ever before — as 2007 draws to an end, Google-owned YouTube is still the number one video destination site.

This isn’t just true in terms of traffic but also in terms of “mind share”; when people talk about online video they often refer only to YouTube. As a result, a number of hardware companies have added YouTube support to their devices in 2007, such as YouTube-compatible cameras and mobile phones capable of viewing and publishing video to YouTube.

And then there’s the strong relationship between Google and Apple, which this year has led to YouTube support being added to both the AppleTV and iPhone, with a change in the video format to boot. Apple successfully persuaded YouTube to start re-encoding its video catalog to the much higher quality (and Apple-preferred) H.264 codec.

Not one to rest on its laurels, YouTube introduced a number of new features of their own, including a redesiged player, the introduction of interactive overlay ads, better copyright filtering, and — like many Google properties — improvements to its mobile offering.

What can we expect in 2008?

Coinciding with improvements to the quality of Flash video, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen has said that the company is currently testing a version of its player that detects the speed of the viewer’s Internet connection and serves up higher-quality video if the user wants it. According to Chen, we can expect to see higher-quality playback on YouTube as early as February 08.

Also in part related to an upgrade to Flash Lite (Adobe’s version of Flash for mobile devices) that adds full support for Flash video, along with the launch of Google’s mobile phone-oriented OS called Android, 2008 will likely see YouTube being offered on an ever greater number of mobile devices.

On the content front, with Google stepping up its monetization options for YouTube, including expanding its ad-revenue share scheme with independent producers, 2008 may well see more professionally-produced video being offered on the site.

Television networks and movie studios reluctantly experiment

In 2007 we’ve seen a large amount of online experimentation from the television networks (both in the U.S. and UK) and, to a lesser extent, from the major movie studios too. The problem, however, is that many seem to have been doing so with their hands tied behind their back.

In September, we took an extensive look at what the U.S. television networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and The CW, were offering on their own websites. Dan Langendorf wrote at the time:

The good news: Major U.S. television networks continue to embrace Internet technology and are putting their shows on the Web for online viewing, just like they did last year.

The bad news: Their online offerings remain sporadic; their Internet strategies feel like “we have to” rather than “we want to”; and — worst of all — they still haven’t embraced the idea that we are living in a new digital world, with different rules, participants, and expectations all around.

This year also saw a number of new efforts by the U.S. television networks to offer their content elsewhere on the Web (not just through their own sites), embracing both ad-supported models and paid-for rental and to-own.

On the ad-supported front, the big news was the launch of the much awaited video destination site Hulu, a joint venture between News Corp. and NBC that offers streaming video of both companies’ television and film content along with offerings from other studios such as Sony Pictures Television and MGM. While many industry pundits were skeptical of Hulu’s chances, upon viewing a Beta version of the site, early reactions have been positive.

NBC, who in some ways seem the most willing to experiment, also launched a Beta version of NBC Direct, an Internet-based catchup TV service. We came away unimpressed by NBC’s thinking, however, noting that shows are only available up to seven days after broadcast, and once downloaded, expire after 48 hours.

With regards to paid-for downloads of television shows, 2007 was also the year in which NBC and Apple’s iTunes divorced. Following a very public spat, NBC chose not to renew its partnership with Apple and is instead selling downloads through Amazon’s UnBox, Sandisk’s Fanfare, and Netflix, among others.

In July we took a look at the Internet TV offerings of the five major UK television broadcasters, noting that the then yet-to-launch iPlayer from the BBC looked the most promising.

However, when the iPlayer finally launched it wasn’t without controversy. The BBC was accused of being corrupt due to the iPlayer’s reliance on Microsoft technology and its lack of Mac/Linux support, and UK ISPs were reportedly critical of the application’s use of peer-to-peer technology and potentially high bandwidth costs. Answering the former, in October the BBC announced it had partnered with Adobe to develop a streaming version of iPlayer based on Flash that will be compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux PCs, and possibly mobile devices in the future.

In the movie download space we compared eleven download stores, concluding that “it’s still very early days in the paid-for video download space, where so far, greater competition hasn’t produced nearly enough innovation in terms of pricing and convenience — particularly in relation to copy-protection.”

What can we expect in 2008?

There’s evidence to suggest that watching full length TV shows online is becoming increasingly popular, in part due to higher broadband penetration rates but also because the studios are making more of their content available on the Web. Encouraged by this, we hope to see the television networks and movie studios take greater risks, although don’t expect the constraints of traditional scheduling and release dates or geographical territories to go away anytime soon.

One likely possibility is that iTunes will start to offer online movie rentals, putting Apple in direct competition with Netflix.

In the UK, broadcasters, BBC, ITV and Channel 4 have announced an initiative to develop a combined service for accessing their on-demand and catch-up services. The new service is currently known under the working title “Kangaroo”, and if approved by the BBC’s governing body, could emerge in 2008.

Internet TV comes to the desktop

The year 2007 is definitely the year of the desktop Internet TV application, with a number of companies launching products that aim to combine a TV-like viewing experience with the best of the Web.

Joost, founded by the team behind Skype, is the most high profile, along with Italian billionaire Silvio Scaglia’s Babelgum. Add to list VeohTV, Zattoo, Livestation, Next.TV (backed by HP), Adobe’s Media Player, and Microsoft’s Internet TV, and it becomes clear how crowded this space has got in 2007.

What can we expect in 2008?

The jury is out on whether people are really willing to leave their web browser and use a number of separate desktop applications in order to get their Internet TV fix. A big question mark also remains around whether the various desktop offerings will be able to secure enough compelling content in order to compete with the Web as a whole.

PC-to-TV and set-top box ambitions

Admittedly we at last100 are more obsessed with PC-to-TV and Internet connected set-top boxes than most industry watchers and consumers alike — 2007 has been a fairly busy year for these type of devices.

The biggest launch was that of the AppleTV, which at the time Steve Jobs hailed as the final piece to Apple’s digital lifestyle strategy, since the device bridges the gap between the PC and the television. However, the AppleTV has been far from a smash hit, with worldwide sales reportedly as low as 400,000 units, a dwindling amount of video content following the NBC Universal loss, and Jobs himself repositioning the device as the company’s “hobby”.

In comparison to the AppleTV, which feels far too tied to the iTunes store, in 2007 TiVo added numerous third-party web services to its line of broadband-enabled DVRs.

This year saw the launch of the Vudu set-top movie box and accompanying download store.

Microsoft and its partners’ unveiled the latest Windows Media Extender devices, with new functionality including higher-speed wireless and DivX support.

Sandisk also entered the PC-to-TV space, with the launch of TakeTV and download service Fanfare.

But perhaps the two companies who best positioned themselves in 2007 to eventually solve the PC to TV problem, along with getting Internet content into the living room, are Microsoft with the XBox360 and Sony with its PlayStation 3.

What can we expect in 2008?

While the market for PC-to-TV devices will remain modest, getting Internet content directly into the living room will remain the pursuit of many companies, particularly Apple, Microsoft and Sony. For example, we’re pretty confident Apple will take a second stab at the AppleTV, and Microsoft and Sony will ramp up their efforts to offer more video and other content through their respective game consoles. Also expect TiVo to continue to add more web services to it DVRs.

Other companies to watch in 2008, in relation to set-top box activity, are Netflix, DivX and possibly Joost.

DivX support is everywhere

Another trend in 2007 was an increasing number of devices supporting DivX video, most notably Microsoft’s Extenders for Media Center and XBox 360, as well as forthcoming DivX support on the Sony PlayStation 3. Additionally, DivX has developed a reference design for its own DivX enabled set-top box, and Sandisk added DivX support to its Sansa line of portable media players.

What can we expect in 2008?

More of the same.

Social Networking

Social networking has been making headlines for the past few years. In 2005, News Corporation made a huge splash in the social networking market when its Fox Interactive Media division purchased MySpace for a cool $580 million. However, though MySpace remains by far the largest social network on the web, it has been new kid on the block Facebook that has been stealing all the headlines since fall of last year when it opened up beyond the college audience that had been its bread and butter. 2007 was an especially good year for Facebook and the company has made a number of moves that pushed the entire social networking market.

According to Compete, MySpace actually saw traffic fall this year, while Facebook enjoyed a 111% up tick in monthly unique visitors (in the "people count" metric, Facebook showed similar growth). Facebook nearly caught up with its rival in search volume, and overtook MySpace in press mentions by the end of the year.

To what does Facebook owe their amazing growth? In part, perhaps, because of the launch of their platform in May. The platform allowed outside companies to hook into Facebook's massive user base. Almost immediately we began to hear the success stories, such as iLike, whose application was added by 10,000 users in the first 10 hours of the platform's existence and by nearly 5 million in the first two months.

Facebook now has over 100,000 application developers working on platform apps, and over 85% of their users have added at least one app to their profile. The success of Facebook's platform initiative compelled other social networks to consider their own platform strategies. The rumors started to fly. First LinkedIn was getting a platform (which they have finally made good on). Then it was MySpace's turn. Finally, and most impressively, the world's second most valuable technology company announced their plans to compete with the Facebook platform.

Google's OpenSocial arrived in November with some of Facebook's biggest competitors as launch partners: Ning, LinkedIn, Hi5, Friendster, orkut, bebo, and the big daddy of the them all, MySpace. However, many of those companies have continued to build out their own platforms and Google's initiative has so far failed to deliver anything very concrete. Facebook may have had the last laugh when it announced last week that it was opening up its platform architecture. Facebook's first partner? bebo, an OpenSocial participant.

So influential has Facebook been on the Internet in 2007, that Microsoft agreed to invest $240 million in the company for what amounts to about a 2% stake. This deal shot Facebook's paper valuation into the stratosphere and gave it the cash it needs to take on competitors like Google and MySpace.

But not everything is rosy for Facebook. Following the launch a controversial new advertising system last month, Facebook faced a backlash from the media and consumer advocacy group MoveOn.org. Even though it appears that Facebook put the issue to rest with an apology and policy change, as Danah Boyd notes, this is the third time in the past couple of years that Facebook has pushed the envelope on privacy issues. They are practicing a form of "slippery slope" software development, she says, and users may not continue to stand for it.

Look for social networking to continue to play a major role in our lives in 2008 as the platform war brewing between Facebook and Google (and the others?) heats up.

Personal Publishing

The other area in the vast consumer application space that was extremely influential this year was that of personal publishing. No one company has been more disruptive than our top LittleCo, Twitter.

A pioneer in the area of "microblogging," Twitter is, as Alex Iskold recently wrote, a natural evolution of personal publishing that fills the gap between blogging and social networking. Twitter really picked up steam at the SXSW conference last March and has since become something of a phenomenon. In fact, people are even talking about "Twitterdiction" to describe how passionately some users feel about the service.

As we wrote when naming Twitter our best LittleCo of the year, the company truly "stands out as being something that has captured the imagination and become a new hybrid of chat, social networking and blogging." But perhaps one of the most interesting things that has come out of Twitter, is how it has pushed the creation of an entirely new type of personal publishing.

Probably the second-most talked about microblogging app after Twitter (which some might not really classify as a microblogging app at all -- but lets leave semantics aside for now), is Tumblr. Tumblr takes the traditional blog form, and strips it down to a sort of stream of consciousness inspired state in which posts are meant to be short and to the point: a single photo, video, quote, link, or thought. Tumblr certainly wasn't based on Twitter (it was based on "tumblelogs" like projectionist or Anarchaia), but Twitter's success really opened the door for more microblogging apps to be developed.

These tools are important because they are highly accessible. Microblogging apps like Tumblr and Twitter are pushing personal publishing into the mainstream in ways that probably hasn't been done in the past. Though disputed, Forrester Research reported that 6% of US adults use Twitter regularly. That's remarkable for such a young service (and one that actually has something of a learning curve to really "get").

Just how important is this new form of personal publishing? Important enough for Google to purchase Twitter rival Jaiku in October for an undisclosed sum.

Other

Facebook and Twitter weren't the only things to happen in consumer apps this year, just the most disruptive and influential.

IPTV: Another of the most anticipated and talked about startups of the year was Joost. Founded by Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom (you know, the Kazaa and Skype guys), Joost is an IPTV service that delivers streaming, on demand television over the Internet using P2P technology. Though they have signed a number of major content deals, including Adult Swim, Warner Bros. Records, the National Basketball Association, and CNN, Joost has yet to really capture the attention of the mainstream. See our full review of Joost, which compares the service to competitors Babelgum and Zattoo and be sure to check out last100's 2007 Internet TV review.

Politics: Also in 2007, web 2.0 began to play a big role in US presidential politics. Following the trail that Howard Dean blazed in 2004 with his innovative use of blogs and Meetup.com to mobilize grassroots support, this year saw candidates utilizing social web apps as never before. Having a profile on top social networking sites became almost mandatory -- almost every major party candidate had a presence on MySpace and Facebook, and some also utilized LinkedIn, Twitter, and others. YouTube held candidate debates with CNN and MySpace got in on the act with their Candidate Dialogues. Some candidates even began broadcasting live on UStream (like Dennis Kucinich or Chris Dodd, for example). The use of consumer web apps in politics is only likely to heat up in 2008 as applications continue to reach more mainstream Americans and the presidential races progress in the United States.

Web Office: Another hot area in the consumer apps space in 2007 was the web office. Because Richard MacManus already wrote a detailed year end wrap-up of that entire market, I'll be brief in my comments. With the continued maturation of online office suites, especially Google Apps and Zoho, and with Microsoft finally starting to show its online office hand, web office is a very hot sector. And while enterprise customers are who the real battle will be fought over, many of the current crop of offerings are mature enough for home use. Consumers already have access to fairly reliable, fairly complete online word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and email applications. Be sure to check out Richard's write up for a more detailed overview of what went down in the web office this past year.

iPhone: Finally, I will take a moment to mention the Apple iPhone. No other product launched this year has captured the imagination of the press and the public like the iPhone, and with good reason. The iPhone has the potential to be a truly game changing gadget that forces other mobile device manufacturers to make a quantum leap in cell phone functionality. One of the areas that the iPhone can make the largest impact is in the adoption of the mobile web via its ability to so elegantly bring the entire Internet to your pocket. Be sure to read Alex Iskold's list of reasons he loves his iPhone as well as his follow up wish list for the device.

Your Turn

What do you feel were the most impactful consumer apps of 2007? What service or product did we leave off of our wrap up (and there were many!) that you think we really should have paid more attention to? What do you think will be the big trends of 2008? Let us know in the comments below.