Matt Kapko

GoTV Networks, which produces videos about the music industry and others for both mobile and broadband networks, is getting close to launching a social media widget for sites like Facebook, where people can store and share videos, images, audio and text, mocoNews has learned. The application, called “Live From You,” will launch in beta soon for GoTV employees and a select group of others. We got a sneak peak Thursday at GoTV’s headquarters in Sherman Oaks, Calif.

Here’s the details:

Live From You Widget: Users will upload media to the widget, which displays it in a chronological time line that can be categorized into albums. GoTV servers will store all of the content. The service will launch first on Facebook and then other social networking sites down the line. GoTV also developed a java client for the phone, so photos, videos and audio can also be uploaded from a device. The photos can be geo-tagged if the device supports GPS. Each widget will be personalized, and appear as “Live From (user’s first name).”

New Path For GoTV: CEO Thomas Ellsworth explains that the widget came about after the company and its board began looking at adding a user-generated component for fans, but quickly realized the amount of content would likely swamp GoTV’s staff with too much media, making it difficult to find the best clips and other media. With the widget, user-generated content won’t get thrown into the mix of professional content, which is still at GoTV’s core. Ellsworth likens it to an “accidental tourist” journey of sorts that lifted it through the “fog of user-generated content.”

Where’s The Money In User-Generated Content?: Ellsworth acknowledges that the big question is “how do we monetize this?” The answer is that the service will be ad-supported (and what isn’t these days?). When a user logs in to the widget, there is a button to show or hide “deals,” which can range from GoTV-produced promos to clips provided by labels and studios offering discounts on upcoming releases. Examples include a $2 off coupon for a new album or DVD and various promotional clips and snippets from music videos being marketed by labels and studios. GoTV will pull Facebook users’ interests and other data to better target deals. While in beta, there’s mostly placeholders for the ads, but once the audience picks up, GoTV wants to sell to more advertisers.

iPhone Apps Coming Soon: As we reported when the iPhone launched, GoTV is gearing up to launch three applications for the iPhone pegged around its music-magazine channels: Hip Hop Official, Rock On Altitude and ES Musica. All three of the apps have been approved by Apple and GoTV is expected them to launch within the next 10 days. The apps will cost 99 cents per download and feature ads. On Oct. 17, the company will make its first major push into country with a new channel called True Country, which will premiere first on Apple’s App Store.

Looking Ahead: The company now has 51 full-time employees. Ellsworth expects the company to outgrow its four-year-old studio within a year and hopes to land at a “more media-esque address” now that more artists are coming to them every week. Ellsworth sees advertising as its next major revenue stream that can pick up where subscriptions or white-label business might be dropping off. He said subscription services are expected to decline over the next few years and GoTV’s white-label service for Verizon’s VCast channels is flat.

CBS Mobile’s EyeMobile citizen journalism application for the iPhone, which Tricia reported on first back at CTIA, has officially launched for free on the App Store and the reviews are in its favor so far. Out of 22 reviews, 15 are between four and five stars while the remaining seven are for one or two stars.

How it works: The Treemo Labs-built application is pretty basic. After you “join as a reporter,” there are two functions: report and browse. There’s no search and under recent reports there are hurricane, politics and videos categories, which I assume will get refreshed depending on the latest news. But more importantly, in the end, the success of CBS Mobile’s first iPhone-related project will be completely reliant on the end user.

More like Flickr: Now I’m not about to judge what might be news for “citizen journalists,” but I’m pretty sure photos of a “five-year-old girl beating Zelda by herself” and a dude double-fisting a couple unopened beers in a doorway don’t qualify. One minute I’m looking at a picture from a John McCain rally in Media, Penn., then a few images down the line I’m looking at a Lego figurine of Amy Winehouse – yes, tattoos, cherry-red lipstick and all. It’s worth noting that quite a few of the more newsworthy posts are from a user named “cbseyemobile,” which makes it possible they are part of the project. I haven’t reported an event today because other than the public works crew tearing up and repaving my street I haven’t witnessed or captured anything worth letting others know about. And that’s the problem with CBS’ endeavor – some are treating it like a legitimate news source while others are treating it like Flickr. It’s a great tool and there’s plenty of potential for citizen journalism, but only if it actually serves its purpose.

CBS EyeMobile vs. big brands: We’re eager for a major entertainment company to show us something cool on the iPhone, and this is a step closer, but we wonder why CBS decided to kick things off with a citizen journalism site that’s only been around since April and not one of its major brands, like say one of its Emmy winners from last night. Is the prevailing mobile strategy in Hollywood to start small and see what sticks or to make people want and expect more, which the iPhone has done supremely well? In this, CBS has shown it’s willing to put its name (Treemo did all the development work on this) on an application for a device with a small marketshare so why noy give me something I’d really come back for time and again like How I Met Your Mother? Or for that matter, anything already available from its line of professionally produced shows developed by creative, talented minds and enjoyed by millions. Something tells me those episodes that cost millions to produce will generate more buzz and excitement than an application that is running a photo of a guy standing in Amsterdam’s Dam Square next to a person in a gorilla suit.

CTIA closed the week with a focus on teens. Following some seemingly requisite video footage of teens talking about their cellphones in Miami, Austin and Los Angeles, Trip Hawkins, CEO of Digital Chocolate and founder of EA, did a quick run through of a teen study released today by CTIA. Release.

Hawkins: “We’re in the middle of what I call an omni (meaning many) media revolution… Most of the people on earth grew up in the age of computers.” Reflecting on what he saw as the inverse law of “omni media,” Hawkins argued that less is more. “SMS is arguably the first omni media application that’s being used by a billion people… The consumer is actually rejecting the most advanced technologies… People are feeling too checked out… What they want is to find new ways to check in… The consumer doesn’t want to feel like they’re being thrown into the deep end of the pool.” And what could be simpler than SMS – more people use it than email.

Then he introduced a group of seven teens ranging from ages 13 to 18. Initial thoughts from the group varied from in-network calling plans that free up minutes to texting, browsing the web and shoddy battery life. All of the teens text message their friends and family frequently, but only some use more advanced features like the internet or games. If it’s not free, good luck getting the majority of these kids to use anything beyond voice or SMS.

– What about the iPhone? “They have, in my opinion, by far the greatest games,” a 13-year old boy said. Another teen said it’s all the privileged kids at his school that own iPhones. Still, all seven raised their hands saying they’d own an iPhone if they had the time and money.

– Games: “I think more people would buy (games) if they weren’t so expensive… It’s just a ton of money paying for games that for the most part don’t have much in visual quality,” the boy said. Another teen added: “If you want to browse for games, it costs money, which is just not good.”

–Ads: “I think if it’s free you can’t really complain,” a girl said.

– Can cellphones improve the world? “If you’re trying to combat something worldwide like global warming and you have an organization, cellphones are a key thing,” the teen boy said. When Hawkins asked the teens if they’d like to be notified of community volunteer work via text message, for example, the issue fell on deaf ears.

– What about BlackBerrys? While it may not scream cool like the iPhone, quite a few of the teens said they’d like a RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) device.

– How do schools react to cellphone use? Most teachers don’t allow their use in the classroom, but one girl said she knows at least one student that takes notes on her iPhone in English class. Another jumped in saying he’d probably get detention for a week if he was caught using an iPhone in class. His school doesn’t allow cellphones at school at all. If they’re caught with a cellphone, they get 90 minutes of detention.

– Who makes cell service and device decisions? “Actually my parents have chosen all of my phones because if it was up to me I’d have a $1,000 phone,” one teen said. Another said he’s the “text support guy” in his house, so his parents typically follow his lead.

– What teens want from future devices: One teen said he thinks the market’s hit a “high point,” but others asked for some already existing services and features such as video chat, better cameras, headphone jacks and TV or video. But one thing all the teens agreed on is a need for solar-powered phones. “If you can do it with a calculator, you can do it with a phone,” one teen said. Another said it would be great if a text message could automatically be sent to their parents when their phone battery died so they wouldn’t get in trouble or cause their parents to worry.

Well, at least big Hollywood names can still get a line of credit in these trying times. The heads at DreamWorks SKG have firmed up a $1.2 billion deal to leave Viacom’s Paramount Pictures and form a new venture funded by Indian telecom and media conglomerate Reliance ADA Group, WSJ reports. The Mumbai-based company will inject $500 million and $700 million in debt through J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. to produce about six films a year.

The deal creates a new powerhouse in Hollywood backed by Steven Spielberg, one of the entertainment industry’s most successful and biggest names, and marks Reliance’s most ambitious push into the United States thus far. While Spielberg and DreamWorks CEO Stacey Snider are locked in with Paramount for a number of upcoming film projects including a Transformers sequel, it marks the coming end of an era at Viacom, which purchased Dreamworks just two years ago for $1.6 billion. It’s still unclear to what extent, but down the line the new venture will likely wrest some major content from Viacom’s film pipeline at a time when films are becoming more valuable across multiple platforms. Following the WSJ report, Paramount issued a statement congratulating the Dreamworks founders and waived provisions in their current arrangement to allow them to “join their new company without delay.” Spielberg and Snider will head the yet-to-be named venture while fellow Dreamworks co-founder David Geffen is expected to resign from Paramount and won’t be involved in the new company.

The Hollywood breakup has been expected for some time. Executives at Dreamworks and Paramount have clashed ever since the companies came together. Back in June, details surfaced about Reliance’s talks with Dreamworks’ heads, which seemed to jive closely with the Indian company’s public plan to create a name for itself in Hollywood and then build itself into a global media empire. The new venture will now have to select a distribution partner and Universal Pictures, where Spielberg began his career, is a heavy favorite, but no agreement has been reached. A deal with HBO is also expected to be announced soon.

Did you get a text message or e-mail from the Barack Obama campaign late Friday night (on the West Coast)? I didn’t and I’m supposing a few others didn’t receive one either. Earlier this month the campaign said the vice president pick would first be announced via SMS and email. Instead the choice came to us through more traditional means, such as the LAT Top Of The Ticket blog where I first caught the news. Sure, it’s a blog, but it’s also the LA Times. The leak from a “Democratic official” up-ended whatever power SMS and email might have wrested from traditional media as a mass communication tool in politics. The Obama campaign planned to do a first for SMS and it didn’t happen. If the leak was authorized — which seems likely since cable news networks and news outlets were confirming the news directly within minutes — did the Obama campaign abandon the first-of-its-kind plan to break the news via SMS and email or did it simply fail on the backend? After all, this wouldn’t be the first problem we’ve encountered with breaking news text alerts.

Update: Well, the Obama website has finally been updated. And here’s some of the text message we received at 12:58 a.m. (PT) Saturday, almost three hours after the news first broke: “Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee.” The email from the campaign finally arrived in our inbox at 8:43 a.m. (PT) Saturday although some people received it at least six hours before then. Ironically, One.org sent us the news in an email at 12:29 a.m. (PT) Saturday, before the campaign’s text message or email arrived.

When it comes to Olympics coverage on the mobile phone, the best Olympics coverage hands-down was found at mobile.NBCOlympics.com.  That’s likely not surprising given NBC’s exclusive rights to the game, but it’s the kind of experience that may turn first-time visitors into long-term mobile users. Today’s review is part of a series we are conducting during the Olympics, which is expected to be one of the biggest digital events ever. Last week, we reviewed the general sports WAP sites from ESPN, CBS, NBC and Fox. In that comparative review we gave the gold to ESPN while NBC tied for the bronze with CBS. The Olympics-focused site easily picked up the baton where NBC’s generic sports Wap site lacked content. For the purposes of this review we tested mobile.NBCOlympics.com on the browser of a Nokia E71.

Features: At the top of the page, NBCOlympics highlights a couple of feature pieces that include photos and text stories. Sitting below that are three news headlines, a link for more stories and then a section of 10 categories where the fun really begins. The categories include: medal count, results and schedules, TV and online listings, video, photos, top stories, team USA, inside the sport, about Beijing and polls.  Some of the categories like medal count are pretty straightforward, but quickly get the point across. The TV and online listings are a great resource for those of you like us who are depriving themselves of sleep to make sure they don’t miss a tape-delayed competition they badly want to see. The TV schedule information has much more detail than what most cable providers are offering in their guides. Aside from video clips, which we’ll address below in more detail, we particularly liked some of the basic, yet informative sections on China and the various competitions underway in Beijing. Did you know, for example, that Tiananmen Square is the size of 75 football fields or that China only has one time zone? The photo galleries were also fun, but they didn’t keep our attention for long.

Video: This is what sets NBCOlympics.com apart from its other U.S. mobile competitors. Having locked up exclusive U.S. rights to the games, NBC can’t do enough with all the video available as far as we’re concerned. We’ll always want more, so keeping that in mind NBC has done a pretty good job when we look at this through the mobile lens. It was a little hard searching for specific videos, even though there wasn’t a ton of inventory. NBC broke videos down into categories ranging from sport type to date and popularity. We’re not sure exactly where the fault lies on this, but this was some jerky video that often became too pixilated to make out anything distinguishable. We tested the site over a WiFi connection so we know it’s not the carrier network. The video clips varied from more than 7 minutes for the Daily Olympics Recap to less than two minutes for snippets on single competitions or interviews. The site gets credit for having video, but the quality can’t top either SlingPlayer Mobile or MediaFLO, but those are in different leagues all together.

Ads: At the top of the homepage we saw banner ads for GE and Visa and there were pre-rolls for DirecTV in the video clips.

The surprisingly popular iPhone application, Pandora, may not be around much longer. The company, which began online and quickly grew on the mobile front, lets users sample new music and create personalized radio stations that recommend other songs and artists based on hundreds of musical attributes. This is some potentially sad news for music fans who like their music free, but don’t want to risk the recording industry’s wrath. Pandora founder Tim Westergren has turned up what can only be seen as a lobbying effort in an interview with the Washington Post. Pandora is “approaching a pull-the-plug kind of decision,” a potential “last stand for webcasting” as royalty fee increases begin to take hold. It’s clear he wants legislative support — and if that can be helped by spurning a coordinated outcry from the company’s million-plus users who listen to Pandora daily so be it. “We’re losing money as it is,” he told WaPo. “The moment we think this problem in Washington is not going to get solved, we have to pull the plug because all we’re doing is wasting money.”

There are some dire economics standing in the way of web radio. Last year, the Copyright Royalty Board ordered per-song performance royalties to be more than doubled for use online. Rates will increase from 8/100 of a cent per song per listener to 19/100 of a cent per song per listener by 2010. Pandora’s royalty fees this year are projected to hit $17 million, about 70 percent of its projected revenue for the year. The fee increases don’t effect traditional or satellite radio, but SoundExchange, an organization that represents artists and record companies, is trying to up those rates as well.

Pandora makes most of its revenue by placing ads on its website. Currently, no commercials run between songs, but the company plans to start airing brief sponsor ads in the audio feed — a la NPR. “We’re funded by venture capital… They’re not going to chase a company whose business model has been broken. So if it doesn’t feel like it’s headed towards a solution, we’re done.” Read more at paidContent, our sister site.

In our second  of a series (first is here) of reviews on mobile content from the Olympics, we took a look at the major sports news sites – ESPN, NBC Sports, CBS Sports and Fox Sports – to see which is providing the best mobile experience on their mobile site’s homepages. Using a Nokia E71 and Nokia’s web browser, we compared each of the companies’ mobile WAP sites to determine which gave more credence to the global competition and how each presented Olympics-related content on a mobile phone. Albeit richer experiences can be had outside the constraints of WAP, results we encountered for purposes of this review were disappointing. Most notably, there was no video to be found on these sites. Keep in mind that we’re only comparing each of the main sports news homepages and not the specialized sites that have been launched in tandem with the games. Still, we expected to find at least some video. We’re awarding ESPN with the gold medal because it offered the richest, deepest and most visually appealing of the four sites we visited.

Gold: ESPN

– Features and overall review: ESPN beat out the competition mostly because it seemed to be the only site developed for mobile phones built in the last two years. At the top of the page, you see photos of the U.S. mens swimming team, analysis, scores and schedules and a series of Olympics-related headlines. You can track down medal counts by sport and then deeper in the site you encounter sections dedicated to different sports at the games that include news headlines and more detail. The site also presented an Olympics sport guide, overview, a section titled “Beijing Experience” and a detailed Olympic history section. So needless to say, I learned a few things about Taekwando and enjoyed reading through some of the history of the games, noting gaps in competition during both World Wars. ESPN also has a simple Olympics trivia section – I went two for five, and by pure luck.

– Ads: Bank of America and Tropic Thunder both had banner ads sitting at the top of the site on different days.

Silver: Fox Sports

– Features and overall review: Right at the top of the page we encountered a nice-sized photo of Michael Phelps biting ever-so-slightly into his latest gold medal.  Then Fox laid out a series of mixed headlines on the homepage, but there was no separate Olympics category or section. Headlines from the Olympics were mostly aggregated from multiple sources along with a few FoxSports.com stories. Overall, nothing special, but visually pleasing and Olympics coverage got some good real estate on the screen.

– Ads: There were some MSN Mobile-related banner ads, but nothing from outside advertisers that we saw.

Bronze: NBC Sports

– Features and overall review: NBC has built a separate site, NBCOlympics.com, for all of its Olympics coverage, which we plan to review in a more detailed review next week. But for this review, we’re only looking at NBC Sports’ mobile site, which is pretty basic compared to some of its competitors. Other than the banner ad linking to its separate Olympics site there was no mention of the games on the main page. The Olympics didn’t even qualify for one of the categories the site uses to organize sports news headlines under. Headlines are simply mixed together in a general section. Disappointing overall for the outlet that has exclusive rights to Olympics coverage for the U.S. market.

– Ads: There were two banner ads for NBC Sports and its Olympics site and then one for a ringtone company.

Bronze: CBS Sports/Sportsline

– Features and overall review: Not a single mention of the Olympics on CBS Sports Mobile main page and nothing under its menus and categories. Only after clicking on “more headlines” did we pull up a few Olympics-related stories. After searching specifically for “Olympics,” the site returned more than 100 links to news articles aggregated from various news outlets.

– Ads: There was a banner ad for the Hampton, and then banner ads for a few CBS properties.

Sirius XM might be making its first play as a combined platform on the iPhone, according to Orbitcast. This would be the first time programming from the two could be accessed together. The iPhone application called StarPlayr, which is being developed by GeeksToolBox, could be released months before Sirius XM sells its first receiver capable of pulling content from both Sirius and XM. The company has hinted at numerous combined programming options but post-merger details are still scant.

Sirius XM is trying to diversify its revenue streams as car sales drag. Until only recently, it was hard to imagine the day when Apple would let any potential competitor to its iTunes service on the App Store and millions of potential iPhones. Apple is now partnering with numerous services that stream music, but this would be the first built around a subscription model. How will Sirius XM package the content on the iPhone? Will non-existing subscribers get to purchase monthly access to Howard Stern for $5? Or will it even offer access to its premium content on the iPhone? If not, it’s hard to imagine the company will gain many new paying customers from a platform that already offers similar choices for free. Sirius and XM have offered limited online and mobile access to their programming for years now. XM set up its mobile shop on AT&T while Sirius went with Sprint. As with the online access offered by both companies, programming is mostly limited to the music channels and some talk radio, but no sports or premium content. Aside from exclusive programming, it’s the satellite company’s infrastructure and near-nationwide coverage that’s been its longest-standing selling point. The programming delivered by Sirius XM on mobile and online is streamed purely through the internet and not the more trusty satellite or terrestrial radio infrastructure.

MocoNews has learned that mobile games developer Hands-On Mobile is shedding its European game business six years after acquiring the company. This division, which also covers the Middle East and Africa, will be transferred to an expanded Connect 2 Media, a cross-platform game developer. The business goes right back into the hands of Eric Hobson, CEO of Connect 2 Media, who originally sold the earlier incarnation of the division, Blue Beck Media, to Hands-On six years ago. He left Hands-On earlier this year to join Connect 2 Media. Hands-On will retain a minority stake in the operation, which at the same time is receiving a $6.7 million investment from Acuity. Hands-On injected some cash into the deal, as well, but it was minimal since the deal was mostly pegged around the transfer of its EMEA assets. This follows Hands-On’s sale of its Korean division to EA less than two months ago for $29 million in cash.

Niccolo de Masi, president of Hands-On, explained the move in an interview today: “We’ve been looking at how we can bulk up our distributing ability in EMEA for a while now.” The company had to buy or build in order to achieve that and thinks it’s getting both with this deal. By “rolling ourselves into one vehicle,” the company’s opportunity will grow substantially by getting more boots on the ground and combining each of the parties’ areas of expertise across multiple platforms. “We’ve effectively taken a smaller stake in a much larger entity… We don’t consider ourselves to be selling anything to be honest.” Hands-On wouldn’t disclose how much of a share it gets in the bigger company, but said it retains all the rights that come with being a minority shareholder. Acuity and Connect 2 Media will also be minority shareholders in the newly merged company, leaving no party with a majority share. Hands-On plans to increase its equity in the company through continued investment, De Masi said, adding that exact terms should be cleared up by the end of the year.

Global reach is essentially required for any mobile games publisher to make money off a particular title and to compete with the likes of Glu Mobile and Gameloft, which have large reach and a global footprint. De Masi agreed and said the deal will give all parties a wider reach and expertise on multiple platforms. “We’ve really done this mostly because we’re getting more monetization” out of the titles, he said. As for bringing the division back full circle, De Masi said: “We wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t have faith in our ability to continue working together.” Terms of the deal that originally brought the business to Hands-On have not been made public and so it’s difficult to say how well the company fared on the acquisition. “Ultimately it’s hard to put a value on those sorts of things. We’ve done well in the short term in our investment in EMEA,” De Masi said.

Korean sale: Hands-On originally bought the Korean business in 2004 under the name MobileGame Korea, which it later re-branded to Hands-On Korea. Following this latest deal, the company’s only other business outside the U.S. is in China, where it admittedly faces difficult regulatory issues. Asked if the company made a concerted decision to focus internally on the U.S. market, De Masi replied: “We are, of course, big believers in the U.S. That’s not to say we’re looking to reduce our exposure anywhere else in the world.” Overall, the company’s strategy is to reach more platforms with its titles, he added.