The Procrastinator’s Pitstop

Hard to believe, but the former teen heart throb Taylor Hanson is all grown up, with a growing brood that now includes a 4th baby.  According to People, Taylor’s wife gave birth to Viggo Moriah on Tuesday.

Sony is expected to launch Home later today.  Home, which will be available for PS3 users, rivals the formerly popular SecondLife and allows players to create avatars that interact with other virtual characters in cyberspace.

Sony’s Home joins the PS3’s video download functionality which has 15 million subscribers worldwide.

Need proof that online video is continuing to grow? 

According to ComScore, the viewing of videos on Google owned sites (i.e. YouTube) grew 6.5% to almost 5.4 billion views. In October, YouTube commanded a whopping 39.7% of all videos viewed, with its next closest competitor being Fox Interactive with 3.8%.At the same time, its share of the video category is down almost 10% over the same time period.  

Why? 

Because of new(er) sites like hulu.com which grew video views 97% between July and October to reach 235 million views and move into the No. 6 spot. It went from 1% of the share of online videos viewed to 1.7%. Hulu was also the biggest riser in terms of unique visitors, and noted ComScore, while the duration of the average online video was three minutes, the duration of the average online video viewed at Hulu was 11.6 minutes 

Yahoo sites, which were responsible for 2.7% of all videos viewed with 363 million views, up from 2.4% share in July.  

Fox Interactive Media sites lost 0.1% in share, but gained 74 million views.  

And Viacom Digital lost 0.1% of share but gained 59 million views.  

Disney lost the most share and was the only property in ComScore’s top 10 to actually lose video views between July and October; views were down 32%. But Disney property ESPN broke into the top 10 in October, with 105 million views. 

When it came to unique viewers, the biggest riser was again Hulu, which broke into the top 10. In total, 77% of the total

U.S. internet audience viewed an online video in October, according to ComScore.  

*Advertising Age - YouTube Gains Online Video Views but Loses Market Share

The Daily News is reporting that the New York Yankees have signed CC Sabathia to a 7 year $160 million dollar contract.   While the details are still not confirmed, it sounds like Brian Cashman met with CC Sabathia and his wife at their home in San Francisco where they came to an agreement that upped the original 6 year $140 million offer.

Even with today’s economy as it is, there was a common belief within the industry that sports were protected from the economic downturn.  Today, we’ve learned that isn’t completely true.  According to the New York Times, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has announced that the NFL will cut 150 jobs after the upcoming Super Bowl.  Compared to some other recent corporate layoffs 150 may seem like a small number, but it represents nearly 10% of the NFL staff.  Job cuts will affect the New York, New Jersey, and LA offices for the NFL.

MySpace has announced the development of a single sign on service, which apparently follows on the heels of similar programs that were created by Google and Facebook (so why is this the first time I’ve heard about it…?? hmmm), which were launched last week.

The service allows users to easily sign onto third party sites via the MySpace platform, and includes partners such as: Vodafone, Netvibes, AOL, Flock, Eventful, Flixster, and Yoono… not to mention the fact that this effort also supports Google’s Friend Connect.

I don’t know about you, but I rarely log onto MySpace anymore let alone use it as a platform to log onto other sites.   Can’t say that I would want to use the platforms that have been designed by Google and Facebook either, but I would be happy to see y’all prove me wrong.

Throughout my years of working in Social Media, the topic has repeatedly turned to the subject of Social Bookmarking.  If you’re like me, you’ve probably heard some of the following questions too:

• I don’t understand how to do it?
• Why would I want to post that?
• Can search engines spider these links?
• I just don’t understand, why would anyone want to see my favorite sites?

Well today, some of the biggest social bookmarking sites are upping the anti.  A prime example is Reddit, a leading name in the space, who has announced the creation of a new feature that allows you to utilize an open source version that can be hosted on your own domain with customizable features including look and feel.  

According to Mashable.com, the move follows news last week that Ma.gnolia was going open source, and word earlier this summer that Digg is working on their own offering to let users create their own custom social news sites.

While some argue that social bookmarking is dying, the new wave of open source versions allow the general public to add customizable platforms to expand their own sites, thus breathing new life into the art of tagging sites for the benefit of an entire community.

What’s going on in Hollywood these days?  After only 8 weeks of marriage, Chris Kattan and his wife have filed for separation.  Shocking for a couple that was engaged since December 2006.

And yet another cast has been announced for the newest season of Dancing With the Stars, which is set to begin on September 22nd.

This season’s cast includes:

LANCE BASS
TONI BRAXTON
BROOKE BURKE
ROCCO DISPIRITO
MAURICE GREENE
KIM KARDASHIAN
CLORIS LEACHMAN
CODY LINLEY
SUSAN LUCCI
MISTY MAY-TREANOR
TED MCGINLEY
JEFFREY ROSS
WARREN SAPP

In March I wrote a brief post about a 2-year old who passed away after he was allegedly crushed by an obese relative.  

Today, police don’t know how to take her to jail!  Although a grand jury believes that the woman should face murder charges, authorities are unclear as to how to transfer the 1,000 lb 27-year old to the court house due to her massive size.

Apparently, the bedridden woman cannot fit out her front door, let alone into a jail cell.  One has to wonder if that is already punishment enough.