SplashCast, a startup that lets you create your own broadcasting channel, has announced that it has successfully secured $4M in Series A funding.

While the company once hyped the idea of injecting social networking into podcasting, now its focus is “a new form of online marketing called social advertisements.” According to the compan, their social advertisements consistently receive click-through-rates 75 times higher than typical banner advertisements used on MySpace, Facebook, and other social network sites.

“It’s clear that Internet sites such as MySpace and Facebook are the new TVs for today’s young consumers and that SplashCast is far and away the best tool out there for reaching this audience,” said Bayliss. 

SplashCasts are like multi-channel TV screens that can be placed on an individual’s social network profile page. Brands and media companies can use SplashCast to distribute videos, games, pictures, and other digital content. You can share SplashCasts so that others can embed them in their MySpace or Facebook pages.

Podcasting pioneer and author Michael W. Geoghegan has a great post today on his site that looks at making money with podcasts.

Geoghegan has written several books on podcasting, has been involved since the early days of podcasting, he helped Disney create their podcast and has run a podcasting network. And while many podcasters have been waiting for the podcast dollars to roll in, Geoghegan has been cutting deals with American Airlines and others.

He thinks it’s time for podcasters that want to make money with their podcasts to start treating their podcast as a business:

People often ask how we consistently sell out our inventory on GrapeRadio.

Easy, we have a kick-ass media kit, a proven track record, a book of business with many repeat advertisers and four entrepreneurs as owners Рfolks who aren’t scared to ask for the deal. While the amounts aren’t huge, $1,300 per weekly episode, we can command those prices because we have nailed our niche.

A comparative CPM deal would have to be close to net $100 to make sense. No ad network has ever offered us anything close to that. We have also built a great business in white label production, i.e. non-GrapeRadio branded content specific to individual wineries for their sites.

We decided from day one not to do wine reviews so as to avoid any editorial conflicts. Our figures are not awe inspiring but they buy nice equipment, pay for the trips to Napa and leave plenty leftover for shareholder distributions. Given that we all run other businesses full time, it has worked out quite nicely.

The whole article is a must-read, if you’re interested in commercial podcasting.

Entrepreneur, podcaster and blogger Jeff Pulver has announced that his latest venture, PrimeTimeRewind.tv, is now live.

The site is intended to be a sort of TV Guide for Internet television, with a social media twist.

“We would like to put you one-click away from watching your show,” according to Pulver.

“Prime Time Rewind also allows you to present you personalized Facet. It can consist of existing prime time TV shows, Internet only shows or any RSS feed of videos you would like to include.”

The site presents links to current TV show episodes on the faces of a cube.

When I checked out the site earlier in the year, I said that Prime Time Rewind set Web design back 10 years, and that the site “takes you on a hyperlinked virtual reality journey into cyberspace, the likes we haven‚Äôt seen since around 1998.”

Maybe that sounds a bit harsh, but a text-based interface would be dramatically easier to use than the site’s current Flash-based one.

Pulver says they are working on a variety of updates to the site:

A couple of words on what we are working on next (other than fixing bugs, improving usability, etc. )

1) Twitter Integration (ability to send out twits when new episodes are available etc.)
2) RSS feeds (various feeds, for users, for shows, etc.)
3) more social features
4) better recommendations

Pulver’s concept for the site is great, and it sounds like they have great ideas for the future of the site. The site is dead in the water, though, until they address the site’s usability issues.

Update: TechCrunch has a more favorable take on the site, calling it a step in the right direction.
via Chris Brogan

Based on the latest stats from M:Metrics, the iPhone is delivering on its hype, radically changing what people are doing with the mobile Web.

Check out some of these figures:

• The iPhone is already the most popular device for accessing news and information on the mobile Web, with 85 percent of iPhone users accessing news and information in the month of January.
• 30.9 percent of iPhone owners watched mobile TV or video, versus a 4.6 market average, and more than double the rate for all smartphone users.
• 30.4 percent of iPhone owners accessed YouTube, compared to 1 percent of all mobile phone users.
• 36 percent used Google Maps, compared to 2.6 percent of all mobile users.
• Usage of social networking is also popular among iPhone users: 49.7 percent accessed a social networking site in January, nearly twelve times the market average.
• Twenty percent of iPhone owners accessed Facebook, one of the first Web properties to customize its content for the iPhone, versus 1.5 percent of the total mobile market.

The iPhone offers a taste of the future; iPhone users are using the devices in all sorts of leading edge ways. It also shows how mobile users will use Internet media when they get capable devices and unlimited data plans.
“The iPhone has certainly delivered on its hype,” said Mark Donovan, senior analyst, M:Metrics. “Beyond a doubt, this device is compelling consumers to interact with the mobile Web, delivering off-the-charts usage from everything to text messaging to mobile video.”

“While the demographics of iPhone users are very similar to all smartphone owners, the iPhone is outpacing other smartphones in driving mobile content consumption by a significant margin,” said Donovan. “In addition to the attributes of the device itself, another important factor to consider is the fact that all iPhones on AT&T are attached to an unlimited data plan. Our data shows that once the fear of surprise data charges is eliminated, mobile content consumption increases dramatically, regardless of device.”

Wizzard Software, the parent company of Liberated Syndication and several podcast hosting services, announced today that revenues for the fourth quarter of 2007 were $1,540,992, a 108% increase over revenues of $739,551 in the fourth quarter of 2006.

For the full year of 2007, the Company recorded revenues of $5,163,491, a 75% increase of $2,195,967 from revenues of $2,943,578 in 2006. Wizzard posted a gross profit of $1,562,703, a 47% increase versus a gross profit of $1,064,115 in the full year 2006.

The company noted several podcasting-related accomplishments in its announcement:

• Acquisition of Podcast Company Liberated Syndication (Libsyn) 3/19/07
• Completed Raise of $7,500,000 for its Podcasting Business 7/9/07
• Adds Nielsen//NetRatings’ Site Census to Advertising System 9/12/07
• Announces Largest Ever Industry Ad Campaign 11/14/07
• Ends Year with Approximately 10,000 Podcast Publishers 12/31/07
• 1 Billion Download Requests in 2007 12/31/07

In 2007, Wizzard Media surpassed download request forecasts with one billion podcast download requests achieved, surpassing the 450 million download requests for 2006.

“Podcasting is becoming a necessary audience expansion tool for content publishers and brand advertisers seeking cost effective, high return outlets to capture the migration of audiences from traditional media outlets to the internet,” says Chris Spencer, Wizzard CEO. “We are seeing an increase in advertiser understanding of the high quality, subscription and episodic benefits of podcasting versus other internet video offerings. We believe that our ambitious undertaking of targeting similar audiences through interesting, engaging podcast micro-communities is a very compelling advertising opportunity and we expect advertising revenues to grow substantially in 2008.”

This video, via the always-awesome Seth Godin’s blog, is an awareness test.

Can you count how many times the white team passes the ball?

TiVo today introduced version 2.6 of TiVo Desktop for Windows, adding deeper support for Web videos and podcasts.

Features include:

• You can now transfer all your downloaded Web Video from your PC to your TiVo DVR so you can watch them on your TV.
• Automatic conversions of your TiVoToGo transfers to support portable devices that support MPEG-4 or H.264 video‚ÄîTransfer video to your iPod, PSP, Treo, Nokia and other portables devices.
• Set automatic transfers of your favorite shows and videos from your PC to your TiVo DVR.
• Improved video quality and aspect ratio in the Series3 and TiVo HD DVRs when downloading high-quality video.
• Automatically transfer shows from your TiVo DVR to a Windows PC or laptop.
• Browse and listen to your computer‚Äôs MP3 library from your TiVo DVR.
• Watch full-screen slide shows of your computer‚Äôs digital photo collection on your TV.

In a nutshell, the updated Tivo Desktop for Windows allows you to sync content automatically between your TiVo and Windows computers and peripheral devices.

Unfortunately, TiVo’s support for podcasts is fairly convoluted. Details below.

We’ve noted before that bad advertising is holding back the development of Internet television.

Advertisers aren’t sure where to advertise on the Internet, how to advertise in new media or how to measure their success, and they’re spending their money on old media as a result, even though they know traditional advertising is becoming less effective.

Incredibly, for every $1 advertisers spend on ads in Internet video, they spend $100 on TV ads.

This is despite the facts that:

• Most people get their news from the Internet.
• Kids aren’t watching TV like they used to.
• While TV is declining, Internet TV is set to grow 42% this year.
• Television networks are failing to deliver the audiences they have promised, because people are watching Internet videos.

If It Keeps On Rainin’, The Levee’s Going To Break

Advertisers know that they need to move their money into new media, but they are clueless about how to do it:

Spending on online video ads represents less than 4 percent of all Internet advertising and just 1 percent of the amount spent on TV, according to eMarketer. But growth is expected — with the research firm forecasting U.S. spending more than tripling to $4.3 billion in 2011 — especially as more viewers embrace full-length TV episodes and other video online.

The challenge is finding the right formula — in the creative approach, the format or the frequency with which the ads appear — so visitors notice the pitches without getting so annoyed that they never come back.

“Users love free content and advertisers love to fill up every minute and pixel with the messaging, and publishers do have to find that balance,” said Geoffrey Coco, an advertising executive with Microsoft, which has a video news partnership with The Associated Press. “There’s been a lot of innovation but I don’t think we’ve settled down yet.”

There’s going to be a flood of money coming into new media very soon, but nobody’s sure what path it will follow.

Where do you think it’s going to go?

Podcasting startup PodShow has laid off one-third of its staff, according to a report Valleywag:

PodShow, the San Francisco-based online-video network best known for launching the career of CNET’s Natali Del Conte, is laying off about 20 employees, or as much as 30 percent of its staff.

“There are no secrets, only information you don’t yet have,” is the slogan for former MTV VJ Adam Curry’s podcast. Curry, a PodShow cofounder, didn’t show up to deliver information about the firings; we’re told he left that to middle managers.

This looks like the end of the podcasting hype.

None of the heavily hyped podcasting startups have delivered on their promise, despite a one-year jump on the mainstream competition and inexorable trends driving people to podcasts and other Internet media.

Expect more podcast hype backlash in the next year, while forward-thinking organizations and early-adopters push podcasting technology to mainstream adoption.

More: Our take on the podcasting hype cycle.

YouTube has announced that it’s going “higher def”:

We’re making these streams available on certain videos, based upon the source file uploaded to us, and over time you’ll find a greater percentage of the library is available to view in higher quality. This feature applies to all eligible videos uploaded from the YouTube community, and is not restricted to partner content, so everyone can enjoy this upgrade.

How do you watch higher quality videos? On your Account page you’re now able to choose “always show me higher quality when available” or “never show me higher quality.” We suggest you select “always show me…” only if you have a fast internet connection, otherwise you might find that videos don’t play as quickly or smoothly as you’re used to. Higher quality videos also have a link right below the video player which will allow you to select between the normal or higher quality settings.

YouTube is putting usability over image quality, though:

Our general philosophy is to make sure that as many people as possible can access YouTube and that videos start quickly and play smoothly. That’s one reason why you don’t see us racing to call this “Super Duper YouTube HD,” because most people don’t want to wait a long time for videos to play.