Twitter Begins Trials of Business-focused Features

To thrive, Twitter must capitalize on the ability to help businesses interact with their customers. In this vein, Twitter has made a “Contributors” feature announcement on their company blog.

A “Contributor” is a feature that allows businesses to designate people’s names behind a corporate Twitter account for more authentic conversation. For example, if a company has a team of 5 people who tweet on behalf of the company, they most likely all send out tweets as @company_name. With Contributors, the person’s name can be appended as a byline on the specific tweet.

This feature is similar to a third-party called CoTweet. CoTweet allows a team to manage a company’s Twitter presence with features that mirror these new offerings from Twitter.

It’s great to see Twitter rolling out these new features as it points to sustainability for Twitter as a company. Twitter is a useful tool and platform, but without a business model and revenue stream, its future is unknown.

Vimeo Gets Sued for Lip-Syncing?

Lip Dub – Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger from amandalynferri on Vimeo.

Alright, well maybe not quite for lip-syncing, but when are these companies going to give the little guys a break already?

A few years ago, video-sharing site Vimeo hit the big time with a viral video of its employees lip-syncing along to Harvey Danger’s Flagpole Sitta after work one day. Now Vimeo and parent corp IAC are coming under legal attack for promoting the creation and distribution of these so-called lip dub videos in the form of a suit filed by Capital Records, which is seeking retribution for what it alleges is copyright infringement.

The complaint states that Vimeo “induces and encourages its users to upload…audiovisual works,” which it then disseminates virally throughout the Internet. According to Capitol Records, the company’s staff actively participates in “making, selecting, commenting on, and at times choosing to delete” audiovisual works, including those featuring its own copyrighted recordings.

Earlier this year, Universal Music Group lost a copyright infringement suit against another video-sharing site, Veoh. It claimed that Vimeo didn’t do enough to protect copyright owners from users uploading their material. Veoh argued that it was protected under the DMCA “safe harbor” provision, which says video sites are not liable for content that users upload, so long as they take that content down after copyright holders alert them to the material.

The difference, according to Capitol, is that not only has Vimeo not tried very hard to protect copyright owners, but it actively encourages infringement. Capitol alleges that Vimeo’s use of copyrighted material is “not an accident,” claiming that the web site contains “a massive amount of content that features, and draws most (if not all) of its appeal from, the use of copyrighted works.” As a result, according to the complaint, Vimeo is not only aware of copyright infringement happening on its system, but “actively promotes and induces that infringement.”

It’ll be interesting to see whether using copyrighted music for lip-synced videos will be considered fair use on video-sharing sites, especially as recording companies increasingly separate their own professionally produced videos on sites like Vevo from user-generated mashups and lip dubs on YouTube.

Complaint Capitol v Vimeo

Is 'Paranormal Entity' a Sequel to 'Paranormal Activity'?

I really enjoyed Paranormal Activity. It’s one of my favorite horror films ( if you can even call it that, and I don’t generally enjoy horror), yet its ridiculously insane success has proven to be a double-edged sword for horror fans. On the one hand, it gives a level of legitimacy not often seen within the horror genre outside of the throngs of fans who live for it. Conversely, it gives The Asylum an opportunity to make another movie and cash in on the “mockbustermentary”

Those folks over at Quiet Earth got a look at the poster and revealed a brief synopsis for the film:

“Actual footage of the events leading to the 2008 “murder” of Samantha Finley. This DVD, released against the wishes of the authorities, proves that nothing human caused Samantha’s death.”

Short and sweet. The film will pollute video stores on December 29th of this year.

Genre: horror
Runtime: too long
Ratings: IMDB: Awaiting 5 votes | RT
Paranormal.Entity.DVDRip.XviD-iFN
1CD | 750.0MB | ifn-pe
Quality: XViD 640 x 352@949kb/s | MP3 128 kbps VBR
Subtitles: None

New Google Chrome Commercial

Google sure knows how to advertise. The latest ad for Google Chrome is really cute, and well thought out. It teaches you about Google Chrome features and functionality without actually showing any computer or technology. It’s just really smart. Microsoft should get Google to do their advertisements, because most of the times, it’s just not good enough.

Apple Tablet Eyed For March Release

pple tablet speculation heated up in Wednesday, sparked by an analyst’s report which said that the long-awaited e-book reader and Web browsing device was likely to arrive in the spring of 2010.

In a note to clients, Oppenheimer tech analyst Yair Reiner quoted supply-chain contacts as saying that Apple appeared to be preparing to begin production of as many as 1 million units a month. Assuming there were no production problems, at that rate Apple would have the inventory it needs to launch the device by March or April.

Excerpts from Reiner’s note were posted on Fortune’sBrainStorm Tech blog and the tech site AppleInsider.

Other tidbits from Reiner’s prognostications include the information the Apple’s tablet will have a 10.1-inch diagonal screen. The display is said to use the same type of LCD technology as the iPhone, rather than the higher quality, but more expensive, OLED display.

In addition, Apple is believed to be planning to offer e-book publishers friendlier terms for offering their wares through iTunes than they currently get from Amazon. Apple would offer a 30/70 revenue split, with 70% going to publishers, without exclusivity, according to Reiner. Amazon offers the same split, but with exclusivity rights.

As a matter of company policy, Apple doesn’t discuss future product plans. However, most industry watchers believe the company will release a so-called “iPad” tablet.

Amazon’s Kindle is the online retailer’s hottest selling product, and Barnes & Noble, which announced its Nook e-reader in October, won’t be able to fill all its current orders until mid January. Forrester Research estimates sales of e-readers next year will reach 10 million units in the United States.