Sclipo Releases Live Video Teaching For Hire

Sclipo, a video how-to site similar to SuTree and 5Min, lets you post short recorded educational videos. Recorded video, however, has it’s limits. It’s largely a one-size-fits-all solution that doesn’t let you clarify your instructions or adjust according to the background of your pupils. To confront these short comings, Sclipo has softly launched a new live video feature, “Sclipo Live”. Sclipo Live lets you teach for money one-on-one through live video conferencing. It’s currently available by invite only.

The live video sessions are organized into a directory listing the time of the session, who’s leading it, and what it’s about along with a price. The actual teaching session features live video feeds of the teacher and student along with chat. The whole session is recorded and synced with the chat for easy review later. After the session is concluded, the student can rate their teacher.

The feature set is currently pretty basic. There are now built in testing features or free-form whiteboard. Screen sharing is a noticeably absent feature.

Sclipo joins a host of other companies aiming to monetize user generated content through a consulting marketplace. Ether and Wengo are two services aimed at helping professionals charge for their consulting time. Ether does this through a pay per call model while Wengo does it through a paid a one-on-one video conference.

If You’re Not A Model, Don’t Bother Reading This

Heard of ModelsHotel? Its a hot new social network that you have absolutely no chance of joining. That’s because the site, founded by Jesper Lannung, is for the models only - enabling “models to stay in touch through a gated community.”

To get in you have to be a professional model and invited by the site or by other members. Once you’re in, you can do standard social networking stuff - post pictures, videos and profile information, and find romantic matches so you can have beautiful little photogenic spawn together.

They’re a year old but have been off our radar until this evening when the Wall Street Journal did a profile on them. A choice quote:

Models spend a lot of time in isolation, traveling from casting to casting, often in cities where they don’t know anyone else. But like Shannon Rusbuldt, a 22-year-old model with Elite Models, many fear exposing themselves to unwelcome solicitations from wannabe photographers, agents and suitors. Mr. Lannung, who is represented by Ms. Rusbuldt’s former agency, persuaded her to join by assuring her that his site is similar to other social networks, “but without the creepy people.”

Poor models. It’s good that they have a place to hide from the creepy people (i.e., the rest of the population).

The site may actually be a bit too selective though. 2,000 people have tried to join over the last year, says Lannung, but he’s rejected half of them. That makes for a pretty thinly populated social network. MySpace, by comparison, adds well over 100,000 members daily. Still, high end advertisers are said to be targeting the site to get access to those 1,000 trendsetters. The company is now trying to raise $1.5 million in venture capital, which I honestly hope they raise so that I can continue to make fun of them (and their VCs) before eventually depositing them in the Deadpool.

If you’re hot but not quite model material, check out Darwin Dating, another obnoxious site that is focused on matching up beautiful people on dates. Their tagline? Online Dating Minus Ugly People.

Google May Add Comment Feature On Shared Reader Feeds

Google Blogscoped got their hands on an internal video created by the Google Reader team where they discuss future plans for their popular service.

There’s a pile of interesting information; highlights include Google developing a new way for publishers to notify Google of updates, plans to integrate more social features into Reader including recommendations based on existing subscriptions, a new service called “Activity Streams” that will be a Facebook style feed of activity including integration with Gmail, and new ways to monetize feeds by tapping into Reader.

On the stats side, the video provided some interesting insights: two thirds of all feeds only have one subscriber, and are only polled for updates every 3 hours. Feeds with multiple subscriptions are polled every hour (so Reader is intentionally slow at picking things up). The Google Reader backend stores 10 terebytes of data from 8 million feeds, and according to Feedburner stats Google Reader is the most popular feed reader, followed by My Yahoo.

Its great stuff from the Reader team, and kudos for their ongoing innovation of a great service; but there was one negative: Google is interested in allowing users to comment on items they share, but this currently isn’t a priority.

Please Google, drop the idea altogether.

We all know about the constant battles Google has had with newspapers over Google News, and what seems by some reports so far to be a failed strategy of allowing comments on News Feeds. With the exception of the licensed wire stories which are now reproduced in full, those news stories are always presented only with a small fraction of the story itself, the equivalent to a part RSS feed; ultimately readers must visit those news sites to get the full story and the use of data in this way is usually argued to be fair use.

Google Reader’s share tools on the other hand republish full blogs post for all to read without obtaining permission from blog publishers. So-called link blogs in Reader already break copyright and in a small way undermine blogs and content creators. If Google offers a comment service on “shared” items they are in effect creating copyright infringing blogs; after all they’ll have chronological entries and comments so they’ll look like blogs, even if they don’t provide a fully customizable CMS.

There will always be those who argue that any syndicated content is fair game for republication; it’s the favorite defense of spam bloggers. RSS feeds are in the most provided for personal use/ viewing and are not provided (unless otherwise specified) for someone to use that information to republish on their own site in full, be that powered by Google Reader, Blogger or WordPress.

Google To Invest $10 Million In Green Startups

Google will be investing up to $10 million in “green” startups, the company said today. Specifically, they are looking to invest $500k - $2 million in multiple for-profit startups that are focusing on electric/hybrid transportation. Details are here.

But startups don’t have much time to fine tune their pitches - proposals requesting funding must be submitted to Google by October 22 2007.

This inches Google ahead in the race with Yahoo and other tech companies to show who cares most about the environment.

Does Social Media Make You Dumb?

The “Mainstream Media” has had somewhat of an antagonistic relationship with “New Media”. Journalists have bemoaned blogging on several occasions, stating simply that “Journalism requires journalists”. Once again journalists are gracing us with another study linking the success of the social news sites to the downfall of society.

The study, conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ), compared the mainstream media’s headlines for one week against those of a host of user-news sites. Specifically:

“PEJ took a snapshot of coverage from the week of June 24 to June 29, 2007, on three sites that offer user-driven news agendas: Digg, Del.icio.us and Reddit. In addition, the Project studied Yahoo News, an outlet that offers an editor-based news page and three different lists of user-ranked news: Most Recommended, Most Viewed, and Most Emailed. These sites were then compared with the news agenda found in the 48 mainstream news outlets contained in PEJ’s News Coverage Index.”

The comparison looked at the top stories (by percentage) from their news index compared to the top headlines (by percentage) for the social sites.

The study found that while the mainstream media talked about important issues like immigration (10%) and Iraq (6%), the only story gaining traction on social news sites was the iPhone. No surprise there. The study does concede that these user generated newsfeeds may not mirror the important news of the day because they may serve has an auxiliary source. However, it ignores the sheer volume of news that passes across their front pages. While mainstream news sites have a limited staff of journalists and real estate to highlight the days news, Digg and its cohorts can link to these stories with plenty of room for LOL Cats photos. For example, Putin’s dissolution of the Russian government made the top 10 of Digg today. So did the iPhone unlock.

Moreover, the study of social sites reveals what users are actually reading, whereas the mainstream news statistics point only at what they’re writing. Much of that “hard-hitting” journalism may not be getting the readership the coverage suggests. Where PEJ sees this as a clean stream of news, I see an echo chamber.

Similar to when the music industry went online, users are no longer forced to buy in a bundle. Instead they can select the stories/tracks that appeal to them without subsidizing the content they don’t want.

Photo credit ChrisL_AK

Apparently Old People Aren’t Dying To Use Eons

The take up of social networking services among over 50’s would appear to be not booming at nearly the same level as the birthrate of the United States in the 50’s and 60’s, with news that Eons has shed 24 staff members. Another twelve employees have left “voluntarily,” bringing the total headcount reduction to around 50%.

According to a report on Xconomy, Eons founder Jeff Taylor, who is too young to use his own site, “called together his remaining staff and engaged in a moment of remembrance for the 24 colleagues he had just laid off…in a dramatic, sobering, but ultimately healthy and air-clearing scene.”

Eons launched in August 2006 with a over 50’s focused social network that included an obituary feature which Michael Arrington reported as seeming “both gimmicky and somewhat distasteful.” The Obituary section includes notable deaths and additional features like deaths near your location “all tastefully wrapped in funeral home, medicare and netflix (?) advertising.”

The sector is far more crowded than when Eons launched, with sites such as BOOMj and others attempting to deliver are more friendly version of MySpace and Facebook to seniors.

Sequoia Capital and General Catalyst, who have invested $32 million in Eons over two rounds, are said to have demanded the restructure.

Update: Here’s a look back on their original ad campaign:

Prince To Adopt New Symbol: Tool

The still popular with some TechCrunch readers 80’s pop idol Prince has announced his intention to sue YouTube, The Pirate Bay and eBay for copyright infringement.

Prince said that in YouTube’s case it could not argue it had no control over which videos users posted on its site: “YouTube … are clearly able (to) filter porn and pedophile material but appear to choose not to filter out the unauthorized music and film content which is core to their business success,” Prince said.

Reuters noted that it is rare for an individual artist “of Prince’s stature to take on popular Web sites while some up-and-coming performers actually encourage online file sharing to create a fan base and buzz around a record.”

Prince was most recently in the news after he decided to give away his latest album “Planet Earth” with an English Sunday Newspaper; some reports indicated that most readers wouldn’t even take the album for free. To those few remaining fans Prince has, those who seek to share his music with others on YouTube: sorry folks, Prince doesn’t love you.

Update: apparently folks feel that Prince isn’t washed up, so strike that until I find another way to describe the act of giving away albums and punishing your diminishing fan base.

Google Launches Australian Election Site

In what is claimed to be a world first (for Google), Google Australia has launched a dedicated Australian Election site.

The Google 2007 Australian Federal Election site offers links to YouTube videos from Australian political parties, a Google Maps mashup that provides House of Representatives electoral information by seat, and “election gadgets” that provide previous statements made by MP’s and Senators, Google News feeds and a Google Trend feature that tracks mentions of parties and issues. Data can also be viewed in Google Earth.

We’ve seen Google become involved in elections before; YouTube’s Presidential debates are well known. The Australian election site takes the idea one step further by offering a one stop shop of related information.

It’s not perfect, least not yet. Candidate information is lacking in Reps seats, probably due to the fact that in the Australian Election process candidates have 7 days to nominate for a seat once the election is officially called and hence there is no official list of candidate from the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC). However it wouldn’t take a lot of effort to add some candidate information with the two major parties having long since preselected candidates for the election; a good example is in the Australian Prime Minister’s seat of Bennelong, where the Australian Labor Party (ALP) has preselected a high profile candidate Maxine McKew, a former Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) journalist who is getting a lot of media in Australia. I’d note also that Google Australia’s Head of Corporate Communications & Public Affairs, and the lead on the Election site Rob Shilkin would know that this information is freely available as well, given he is was formerly involved in the Liberal Party. The use of YouTube is certainly different (and I’m not being totally polite); watching the Prime Minister deliver YouTube exclusive messages in a suit like he was making an address to the Nation doesn’t really strike a chord with me.

Disclosure: in a past life I was a Howard Government Staffer…twice, but since cured.
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Get A Yahoo Mash Invitation At InviteShare

Yahoo Mash, Yahoo’s new social network experiment, sent out the first batch of invitations moments ago. The service is invite only at this point. Get yours at InviteShare now.

I am seeding the first few invitations. Then it’s up to you. Once you get an invite, come back to confirm it and invite a few more people to keep things going. The more people you invite, the higher you will appear on waiting lists for future private betas.