901am

New Media News Every Morning

GEICO spurs business through social networking

By

MyGreatRides.comGEICO promotes business through its social networking site, MyGreatRides.com, that’s aimed at motorcycle aficionados, giving riders around the world a place to network their interest for bikes, rides, and road trips.

“For many people, riding is way of life,” said Jess Reed, GEICO’s chief information office, “MyGreatRides.com takes both the independent spirit of motorcyclists and the camaraderie of the riding community, and brings them to the web.”

With over 1500 active members already, MyGreatRides.com works both ways as it allows members to post profiles, share pictures, have a personal page for their bikes, and get to know people with the same interests. At the same time, GEICO also uses it as a means to learn bikers’ expectations and needs to improve their service to current and potential clients.

Originally posted on July 2, 2007 @ 10:45 am

Harry Potter’s final book makes pre-sale record at Amazon

By

Harry Potter and the Deathly HallowsWhile the rest of the world wide web is gushing about the iPhone, here’s a record being made over at the biggest online retailer’s side of the web.

The seventh and final installment in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series has become Amazon’s most pre-ordered product now with over 1.6 million copies bought even before the official book release on July 21, a clear indication that the whole world is watching out for the most-awaited ending of the boy wizard’s story that’s become a part of not only J.K. Rowling’s but everyone’s imagination.

The demand for “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” is said to have passed the record of the previous Harry Potter book, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” which got 1.5M pre-ordered copies sold.

Amazon expects that the number of orders for the seventh book would rise by “many more hundreds of thousands of copies” within the coming weeks.

Originally posted on July 2, 2007 @ 8:41 am

FinditQuick.com adds video-sharing, social networking to search engine platform

By

Find it QuickFinditQuick.com, Inc. partners with KickApps.com as it launches Quick Shots, a new video adventure and social networking site to fuel up the online up entertainment community some more.

Quick Shots combines media center with social network, giving users the option to upload, tag, share and save favorite videos, photos, and audio, as well as the functionality of RSS feeds to keep up with what’s the latest in the community. Users can also send and receive messages and interact with the other members of the network.

“We believe that users are looking for a video and audio streaming source with the interaction of individuals of the same interest” says Ron Halleen CEO/President of the company. “An individual now can go to one site and have all these options of a social community”.

FinditQuick started as an independently owned PPC search engine platform in March 2000. Kickapps.com, meanwhile, is a hosted platform that allows webmasters to deploy user-generated content and social networking functionality directly on their website.

Originally posted on July 2, 2007 @ 12:21 pm

Universal Music declines iTunes deal

By

Universal MusicUniversal Music Group has declined to sign a two-year deal with Apple’s iTunes music store, which is said to possibly hurt Apple’s dominant hold on retail digital music.

Universal chooses to continue selling music and videos via iTunes on a monthly basis, instead of being tied up with a long-term deal. With this arrangement, the Vivendi-owned music company is still open up to accept other possible deals with other services.

Apple now covers over 70% of the market when it comes to digital music sold in the US. Universal, on the other hand, has been the leading producer of music albums. Last year Universal inked a deal with Microsoft to have a share of sales of the Zune. Universal is open to more possibilities like this.

Originally posted on July 2, 2007 @ 9:56 am

Jason Kilar joins NBC, News Corp; heads online venture to rival YouTube

By

Jason KilarNBC Universal and News Corp appoints former Amazon executive Jason Kilar as CEO of the still unnamed online video venture that is said to join the growing battalion of YouTube rivals.

Kilar, 36 years old, joins NBC and News Corp starting July 9 after nearly a decade of being a key executive at Amazon.

“Jason’s product and consumer expertise in the world of e-commerce is arguably unrivaled in this business and gives him a great insight into what it takes to create a superior user interface,” Peter Chernin, President and COO of News Corp. “We already have access to world-class content and near ubiquitous distribution, and the next step is marrying it with the features and tools that will help define the ideal user experience for video content on the web. We think Jason is the ideal person to lead that effort.”

Meanwhile, this online video venture to be headed by Kilar debuts later this year and is said to surprise us with thousands of hours of full-length programming, movies and clips from various networks and film studios. Partnering with Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft, MySpace, CNet, Comcast, among others, they are said to have access to about 98% of the monthly unique users on the Internet in US alone.

Originally posted on June 29, 2007 @ 12:59 am