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VideoEgg employs a direct sales force to work with media-buying agencies. They can manage an ad campaign as it goes out over Videoegg’s network–a collection of video, social, and gaming sites, Sanchez said. “We can concentrate now on making great tools for brand advertisers.”

The rumors no doubt were churned up by the e-mails the company has sent notifying users of its decision to stop hosting videos uploaded to the site by the public and to scale back hosting services on the VideoEgg Publishing Platform.

Don’t count out VideoEgg just yet.

Already, VideoEgg has shut off the uploading function on the site. The service shuts down completely on May 31, so users had better grab their clips now. As for the company’s platform service, VideoEgg will continue the service for larger, profitable companies. Everybody else is out.

Rumors have circulated that the San Francisco-based company is on the verge of a shutdown, but that’s not the case, said Matt Sanchez, the company’s CEO.

“What we’re doing is focusing on efforts around our ad network brand, the EggNetwork brand,” Sanchez said Wednesday. “We want to focus on ad product and brand advertising online, so these are just steps we’re taking to rationalize the business.”

My.video.videoegg was used for “very small amounts of personal use,” Sanchez acknowledged. “It was people trying out the service. In actuality, for many people it was a demonstration of the upload technology. That was where we started as a company.”

Sanchez said the 100-employee company hasn’t cut back on staffing and will just “refocus” some employees. VideoEgg, founded in 2005, is still not profitable, but Sanchez said the company is encouraged by the growth of its advertising arm and is selling ads in eight markets in four countries.

Clay Shirky, a new media professor at New York University, recently noted that the music industry is the “skull on a pikestaff as a warning to others about how not to deal with the Internet.” Finally, however, things may be changing.

As Ars Technica reports, Universal’s music business is up 3 percent, halting a long-term slide toward oblivion:

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Apple has made it easy to buy music online and has an 85 percent market share as thanks.

The music industry now needs to continue its experimentation with digital downloads, making it ever easier to discover and consume online media. That’s the future.

Digital, of course, is the big driver of better economic performance. At Warner, for instance, it made up 20 percent of total revenues in the second quarter and generated 39 percent more income that it had a year before. Universal notes that its growth is fueled, in part, by “the momentum of digital sales growth.”

Ars Technica has the dirt on an admission from Vivendi CEO Jean-Bernard Levy: digital music downloads might not be evil, after all.

Just in case you don’t know, Universal Music Group–one of the Big Four record labels–is a wholly owned subsidiary of Vivendi. So this is a big deal.

Imagine that. Studies have shown that peer-to-peer downloaders tend to pay more for music, but I think the larger trend is that many of us simply want easy ways to consume digital goods and that forcing us into an offline purchase was a losing strategy.

Also, for now at least, there is no way to upgrade from a OneCare subscription to Equipt, though Gordon said that may be in the cards.

On the main page of the Equipt subscriber center, users can see their subscription status and make changes to their account.

(Credit:
Microsoft)

I was curious just how Microsoft accounts for the revenue it expects to get from Equipt–i.e., how much gets counted toward Office and how much toward OneCare. Gordon wouldn’t say, other than to indicate it would be wrong to think that the Office unit only gets the $20 difference between Equipt and OneCare.

Gordon said some less sophisticated users think they are getting a copy of Office as part of their PC purchase and are disappointed when they come home and find only a trial version of Office. “That’s when a lot of folks will start digging through the drawer for (an old copy).”

Microsoft on Wednesday announced that Circuit City will be the first to offer a new Office subscription service, first known by its Albany code name and now dubbed Equipt.

Equipt bundles a subscription version of Office Home and Student with Microsoft’s OneCare antivirus product for $69 a year–just $20 more than the suggested price of OneCare alone.

The idea behind the subscription service is to convert more new PC buyers into Office buyers. It plays on the fact that although most people don’t buy Office at the same time as a computer, many do purchase a security software subscription.

If you are looking for “Albany,” you might want to try heading to Circuit City.

Microsoft is trying to tap into the fact that while many people would rather find a copy of Office that they don’t have to pay for (either an older version or a pirated copy) they are willing to pay for security software. “Security is basically the No. 1 thing that gets attached with a PC,” said Microsoft group product manager Bryson Gordon.

Gordon said the company’s research indicates that those who opt for Equipt will be people who would not otherwise buy Office, but added “we are going to keep a very close watch on cannibalization metrics.”

The welcome screen for the new Equipt offering lists the products and services available.

Although Equipt is starting out at Circuit City, the deal is nonexclusive and Gordon sees options to go beyond stores and beyond the U.S. Gordon said Microsoft expects to expand to other retailers later in the year and eventually to offer it through other means, such as through computer makers or over the Web.

In addition to placing Equipt on retail shelves, Microsoft is also looking for it to be installed by so-called tech benches, the generic name for things like Best Buy’s Geek Squad.

(Credit:
Microsoft)

“It makes a lot of sense so it’s something you will likely see,” he said.

Tesla Motors is currently headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area and, logistically, it just makes sense to keep its manufacturing close by (versus New Mexico, which was originally listed as a plant location). For the state, this decision will provide more green-tech jobs and reiterates its position as a
green-tech leader. California has some of the most ambitious emissions legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2020. Tesla doesn’t plan on rolling out the second-generation cars until 2010, but in the state’s eyes, the move to keep the plant local is a significant step in the right direction.

The fact that both California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom have added their names to the Tesla Roadster waiting list shows a serious Golden State commitment to the green technology behind the $100,000 sports
car. On Monday, the company returned some of the love by announcing that it would be building its sedan manufacturing plant somewhere in Northern California. According to CNET Car Tech Senior Editor Wayne Cunningham, whom I spoke with in the Daily Debrief, this move is a win for both the company and the state.

The question is: what do you think? Does the DTS upgrade make the PS3 an even better Blu-ray player? Does the PlayStation Store makeover finally put Sony’s online offerings on par with
Xbox Live? Is all of this irrelevant compared with the forthcoming releases of Grand Theft Auto IV and Metal Gear Solid 4? Let us know what you think.

From Crackle: PlayStation Store video walkthrough

Sony wasn’t kidding when it said the next PS3 system update was coming in mid-April. Just in time to take the edge off tax day, the version 2.30 of the
PlayStation 3 system software is now available for download. As revealed last week, the software update adds DTS Master Audio decoding (to deliver the best audio from compatible Blu-ray movies), as well as a major overhaul of the interface for the PlayStation Store (as explained in the Sony video walkthrough shown above).

Meanwhile, analysts Clay and Fred Moran of the Stanford Group note in a research report Wednesday that breaking Yahoo’s business is unlikely to “drive value” for Yahoo shareholders.

Update at 10:40 a.m. PDT, with analyst report on potential break-up of Yahoo and updated stock performance

Some of the people familiar with these talks say they are preliminary and unlikely to result in a deal with Yahoo.

A potential break up of Yahoo’s business would likely result in Microsoft acquiring Yahoo’s search engine, while a large media company could merge its Internet properties with Yahoo, the report states. Yahoo’s Asia assets and investments, meanwhile, could be spun off or sold.

Should such a breakup occur, Stanford Group’s “sum-of-the-parts” assessment would give Yahoo a value of $20 to $24 a share.

The stock price jumped 6.3 percent to $21.48 a share early Wednesday, just a day after Yahoo’s shares fell below $20 to come very near the level where they were trading prior to the start of Microsoft’s buyout bid in February.

Yahoo shares shot up 6 percent in morning trading Wednesday, on word that Microsoft may seek partners to make another bid for the company’s search business.

Microsoft reportedly is talking to Time Warner and News Corp. about this arrangement, giving investors a sense of deja vu. Time Warner and News Corp. were among the white knights Yahoo had reportedly sought out after Microsoft announced its unsolicited bid.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Microsoft has been sidling up to other companies about teaming up to make a bid for Yahoo, a move that would result in a breakup of the Internet search pioneer, with Microsoft retaining the search portion of Yahoo’s business.

Investors may want to keep in mind this one sentence in the Wall Street Journal report:

“We find a breakup would not yield compelling upside from the current stock price,” the research report states.

One respondent was Google chief economist Hal Varian, who said: “The big problem with the cell phone is the (user interface), particularly on the data side. We are waiting for a breakthrough.”

Step aside, keyboards, laptops, and 9-to-5 jobs. A survey of more than 1,000 Internet activists, journalists, and technologists released Sunday speculates that by 2012, those quaint relics of 20th century life will fade away.

The rough consensus was that “few lines divide professional time from personal time,” and that professionals are happy with the way work and play are “seamlessly integrated in most of these workers’ lives.”

Lee Rainie and the other Pew researchers asked their survey respondents to respond to a series of questions about 2020 future scenarios, including whether the mobile phone will be the “primary” Internet connection (most agreed), whether copy protection will flourish (most disagreed), and whether transparency “heightens individual integrity and forgiveness (evenly split).

Another, which also met with broad agreement: “Talk and touch are common technology interfaces. People have adjusted to hearing individuals dictating information in public to their computing devices. In addition ‘haptic’ technologies based on touch feedback have been fully developed, so, for instance, a small handheld Internet appliance allows you to display and use a full-size virtual keyboard on any flat surface for those moments when you would prefer not to talk aloud to your networked computer.”

It’s easier to read the report itself, which you can find here (PDF). This is Pew’s third report in the series; further reading can be found in its 2005 first survey (PDF) and 2006 second survey (PDF).

It’s not a formal survey of the sort that, say, political pollsters use. Nor are computer journalists especially known for their prognosticative abilities. Still, the Pew Internet and American Life Project hopes the effort will provide a glimpse of the best current thinking about how online life will evolve in the next decade or so.

The latest move from the company is a monthly compendium called Thrillist Invites, which is a listing of stuff you can do for free, if you sign up and RSVP. The first Thrillist Invites list will be for its New York subscribers–you have to already be subscribed to the Thrillist New York newsletter to be ushered into Invites–but versions for other cities, including San Francisco and Los Angeles, are on the way.

Trendy men’s newsletter Thrillist has already shown its penchant for giving the middle finger to all things recession-related, whether it be chartering party planes or throwing ’90s-dot-com bubble-theme parties (granted, both of those stunts preceded the Wall Street meltdown by a few months). But the New York-based start-up may be savvier than its big-pimpin’ image would have you think.

“The concept is that these parties are events that typically, Thrillist readers wouldn’t have access to: 100 percent free, open bar, great entertainment,” co-founder Ben Lerer told CNET News. The invites will range from restaurant openings and wine tastings to nightclub parties and clothing sample sales.

It’s sort of similar to MyOpenBar, a weekly listing of regional establishments that offer free or heavily discounted drinking opportunities, but Lerer said it will have a more exclusive, first-come, first-served focus than the “unlimited Pabst Blue Ribbon” offers that often fill up MyOpenBar’s ranks.

“It originally stemmed from the fact that we surveyed our audience earlier this year and asked, ‘What do you guys want more of?’” Lerer explained. “Something like 80 (percent) to 90 percent of our audience said they wanted more events coverage.”

Thrillist will also throw more of its own events, a move that some other food-and-bar culture companies, including the San Francisco-based Yelp, have taken in order to fortify a loyal following and give their users an “insider” status. Plenty of liquor brands advertise on Thrillist already, which Lerer said has made it easy for them to nail down booze sponsors.

“Obviously, we get asked this question 50 times a day,” Ben Lerer said when asked about a recession strategy. “We are doing really good…even if things slow down in the advertising community, in the online ad space, and even if we’re growing less quickly because of some recession.”

Lerer added that launching Thrillist Invites wasn’t recession-induced, even though belt-tightening readers may be looking for cheap entertainment, and venues may be looking for people to fill their spaces in a time when they might be booking fewer holiday parties.

Earlier this month, Thrillist expanded its Web site to offer more content, putting it further into the niche of “lifestyle publication” rather than “daily newsletter,” and Lerer said that with a bigger focus on events, the site may expand further–like into Cobrasnake-ish party photo coverage.

And Lerer said Thrillist, which is fully advertising-supported and plans to stay that way, is financially sound. Granted, he didn’t start from ground zero: he’s the progeny of former AOL executive and Huffington Post co-founder Ken Lerer, and fellow ex-AOLer Bob Pittman’s Pilot Group investment firm has taken a big stake in the start-up. Another Pilot Group-backed newsletter brand, DailyCandy, sold to Comcast earlier this year for about $125 million.