Digital Trends
MSN in the UK has announced plans to launch a service that will let users stream full-length television shows at no cost.
Funded by ads, the service is set to begin next week with around 300 hours of programming, which will be extended. The beta will include content from BBC Worldwide and ALL3MEDIA.
The programs will be available to both PC and Mac users, in both WMV and Flash formats, and they’ll be streamed without DRM – but only to those with a UK IP address.
Microsoft’s casual games portal MSN Games is getting in on the newfangled social networking thing, today launching versions of its two most popular titles—Hexic and Chess—on both MySpace and Facebook. Both of the games enable users to collect merit badges for game achievements, and feature leaderboards, MSN Games news feeds, and the ability to share applications with friends.
“We’re excited to bring two of our most popular games to the Facebook and MySpace communities,” said MSN Games marketing manager Megan Hodel, in a statement. “These networks reach more than 200 million people around the world, and the MSN Games applications will make it easier and more fun for Facebook and MySpace users to play some of their favorite casual games.”
Microsoft has moved on from the SPOT watch from a few years ago, taking MSN Direct and its FM radio technology for distributing on-location data from your wrist to the automobile. Now with almost 30 partner devices (granted, many of them are Garrmin), the service is expanding in interesting ways.
First up in the next few months: the Garmin 885T will be powered by MSN Direct for GPS-enabled services such as flight information, much more detailed and expansive traffic data for major cities, and real-time weather radar maps. It will be released in the next few months.
In an email message to customers, MSN’s general manager for entertainment and video services Rob Bennett informed customers that Microsoft will cease supporting retrieval of license keys for songs purchased via MSN Music as of August 31, 2008. Users can authorize new computers to play music purchased through MSN Music up until that date—but after that, users will not be able to transfer the music.
It’s getting so mobile phone users had better hope they have an affordable data plan with their phones, because an ever-growing number of bytes they’re paying to download come in the form of advertisements
Today, Microsoft entered the fledgling mobile advertising market, starting with putting ads on its free MSN Mobile service, launching with promotions from Jaguar, Paramount Pictures, and Bank of America. Users will see both text and banner advertisements on the MSN Mobile service; Microsoft says the ads conform to guidelines provided by the Mobile Marketing Association.
Last weekend’s Live Earth concerts might have been criticized for their green credentials, but there’s one way they were a huge winner. The nine concerts, inspired by former Vice President Al Gore, held in cities spanning the globe, drew a record 10 million video streams. Designed to raise awareness of climate change and global warming, concerts were held in New York, London, Sydney, Tokyo, Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg, Hamburg, and elsewhere, with a lineup that included the re-formed Police, Genesis, Bon Jovi, Crowded House, Madonna, Kelly Clarkson, and Black Eyed Peas among hundreds of others. The shows were streamed online by MSN, which was the exclusive online media partner for the concerts. Of course, with names like those, it’s inevitable that the MSN streaming would draw high numbers, although no data has yet been released as to how long each user watched on average, or even whether the 10 million were unique users, or made up of people watching several streams simultaneously. Still, MSN was happy at the numbers, as well they might be. “History is being made today,” said Joanne Bradford, MSN’s corporate vice president and chief media officer. “The over 10 million streams MSN has delivered so far today represent a milestone in live Internet broadcasting.” And although the concerts might be history now, with the stages torn down and the artists far away in their private jets, MSN expects the footage to remain popular with on-demand viewing of both the streams and the artist interviews. The live streaming industry is still very much in its infancy, and this should give it a boost, according to some analysts.
Microsoft today relaunched its MSN Mobile service offering, unveiling what the company is calling a “redesigned, reinvented” portal for Internet-capable mobile phones to tap into news, email, and other Web-based information, as well as Microsoft’s own Windows Live service offerings. Users can tap into the service by pointing their phones to mobile.msn.com, and Microsoft says it has gone to great pains to make sure the service is compatible on all WAP-compliant Internet capable phones and mobile devices.
Microsoft’s MSN Video has inked an exclusive, multiyear deal to offer liveand on-demand streaming of live concerts from Control Room, the company behind the live Webcast of last year’s Live 8 concert events. Under the agreement, MSN will exclusively Webcast 36different live concert events, which will also be available for on-demand viewing for a fixed period of time after the event. The shows will be available on MSN’s 42 worldwide sites, and kick offOctober 2 with John Legend at London’s Royal Albert Hall, followed shortly by a New York City concert by John Mayer.
(We’re assuming the concert offerings will not exclusively be tied to performers named “John.”)
MSN has teamed up with LA production company LivePlanet to create Fan Club: Reality Baseball, a new unscripted reality program for the new MSN Originals initiative.
MSN announced the MSN Originals idea back in May 2006, with the idea that MSN would produce original video programming for the Internet, with advertisers integrated into the productions from the very beginning.
With all the talk about MySpace becoming one of the most heavily trafficked sites on the Internet, it’s a little surprising to see that the comScore Media Metrix has ranked Microsoft’s MSN Spaces as the largest blogging service on the planet, garnering more than 100 million unique visitors during April 2006, compared to 41.7 million unique visitors a year ago. More surprising: comScore finds that nearly one in seven Internet users worldwide has visited MSN Spaces.
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