A year and a half later, Yahoo is already ditching it. The company has said that it is planning to "wind down its customer base."

"This decision will allow us to focus our resources on the continued improvement of our core video offerings, such as enhancing the consumer video experience on Yahoo!," the company said in a statement. "Since Q4 2008, we have closed or announced our intention to close, nearly twenty Yahoo! services– such as Yahoo! 360, GeoCities, My Web and Yahoo! Briefcase. We continue to evaluate our portfolio of products and services on a regular basis, and plan to share details of further changes with people who use our products in the months ahead."

Maven has been integrated into both Yahoo’s video player and the Yahoo video advertising platform. It is unclear what will be used as an alternative at this point.

Yahoo’s video ad products include in-player video advertising (pre- and post-roll), In-banner video advertising, and original video content sponsorships. They also offer opportunities for publishers.

The company says that while video initiatives are still a priority for its consumer and advertising experiences, they are increasing investment in some areas while scaling back in others.

Other video-related products that Yahoo has parted with include Y!Live and Jumpcut.

In September, Fox News tapped Maven for its Internet TV technology. Major news publisher Gannett has followed suit, Maven announced today.

Gannett will use Maven to deliver ad-supported news video on its various news sites. Their audience should be in the neighborhood of 22 million visitors per month, which according to Nielsen//NetRatings was 14.3 percent of the total US Internet audience in October.

"Our Information Center approach to news and information relies on multimedia, and video is a key element of our news and information offerings on all our Web sites – whether they are related to our newspapers or TV stations," Gannett Digital president Jack Williams said in a statement.

The key to success will be the advertising Maven can enable Gannett to deliver. A variety of customization options for the Maven media player can make it resemble the look and feel of various Gannett properties.

Advertisements can receive similar treatment, a feature Gannett certainly will promote as the company pitches big-name brands and other advertisers as Maven unfolds across its properties.

A Maven spokesperson said the technology should be available on USAToday.com in the first quarter of 2008.

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Fox News Partners With Maven Networks

The Maven Internet TV Platform allows media companies to make video libraries available for syndication to online media outlets, while keeping control of their content and advertising.

"The popularity and demand for Fox News online video content are enormous," said Jeff Misenti, General Manager and VP of Fox News Digital.

"Online video opens up an untapped and arguably limitless landscape of inventory for media companies looking to grow their advertising revenue-creating an extremely valuable opportunity for businesses today. It is critical for us to be on the cutting-edge of innovation in Internet video syndication, monetization and user experiences."

As video consumption grows beyond Fox New’s current streams per month, Mavens scalable syndication platform will improve the delivery of Fox New’s online content to its affiliates around the globe.

"News Corp. in general, and Fox News in particular, have been at the forefront of transforming the online experience. We are excited to be partnering with a true Internet media innovator to bring the market-leading capabilities of the Maven platform to Fox’s millions of viewers worldwide," said Hilmi Ozguc, Founder and CEO of Maven Networks

Sony BMG will syndicate "Sony BMG Musicbox," its music video player, to its network of Web properties in 19 European country’s. The Maven-powered Sony BMG Musicbox players, features content from a variety of artists and will be available in each countries native language through geo-targeting, and monetized through interactive advertising.

"SONY BMG is delivering a visually rich and compelling video experience to satisfy the huge demand for Internet video," said Ulrich Jaerkel, Senior Vice President, Digital & Business Development of SONY BMG in Europe.

"Our Maven-powered players are a critical part of our overall strategy to develop a direct-to-consumer proposition based on our ever-growing library of world-class content, creating great value for both our artists and their fans."

FT.com will use Maven’s syndication platform to deliver all of its video content on FT.com.

"As Maven has experienced in the U.S. and Canada, industry-leading media organizations require a flexible and scalable Internet TV platform to keep up with the demands of the growing international audience" said Hilmi Ozguc, founder and CEO of Maven Networks.

"We’re thrilled to partner with leading media innovators to expand our capabilities globally into the European market and to enable them to obtain the scale and flexibility necessary to meet to the demands of their consumers and advertisers."

Maven will work with TV Guide to launch broadband video for TV Guide on 300 video players to deliver media and entertainment content to the site’s user base. TV Guide has selected Maven to mange and monetize its library of videos. The Maven platform will act as a part of the foundation for TV Guide’s direct-to-consumer video offerings and ad revenue generation.

"There’s an old adage that content is king. Our video offerings already attract a sizable online audience, but with Maven’s viral syndication capabilities, we can continue to expand our user base," said Paul Greenberg, General Manager of TV Guide Online.

"The Maven Internet TV Platform, combined with the knowledge and expertise of Maven’s Media Services team, provided us with the right mix of technology, processes and people to help execute this large, complex project."

TVGuide.com has increased the appeal of its Internet video players, providing programming that features clips from television shows, behind-the-scenes footage, reviews and celebrity news.

"TV Guide is a powerful brand, and we’re excited to power its Internet TV initiatives," said Hilmi Ozguc, Founder and CEO of Maven Networks. "With Maven, TVGuide.com can expand its audience, enhance its viewing experience, and offer new opportunities to its advertisers."

The current plans entail short (<3 minute) semiweekly serial webisodes for each magazine website. MediaPost predicts that this will put them on equal footing with such enterprises as Time Magazine, which recently started its own in house online video production.

Is it a YouTube killer? Far from it. While the webisodes will feature a little bit of user-generated content (visitors can contribute plot ideas), Hearst’s proposal is more analogous to television than YouTube—passive entertainment rather than a community of users sharing funny, personal clips.

I find it particularly interesting that Hearst chose to partner with Fox. Their first announcement said they’d be using Maven Networks‘ Internet TV Platform for their video players. Among Maven’s other clients? Fox. Hm…

Comments

From identifying the best acquisition sources and most popular video titles to evaluating detailed user interaction metrics (percent of clip played, playlist additions/removals and viral “send to a friend” actions, etc.), media companies now have the answers. With the power to detail what and where users are interacting online, media companies and advertisers are able to make smarter decisions for their online video initiatives and ad campaigns.

Later this week we hope to speak with personnel form Maven Networks in order to get some further insight on today’s collaberation…so stay tuned!

Comments

Hearst Magazines, publisher of Cosmopolitan, Esquire and Good Housekeeping, is launching 14 new Internet channels built on the Maven platform with their own individual branding, promotions and advertising around the audience of each magazine title.

The Hearst

Get the Latest Price on the The Tipping Point (an absolute must read):

The Maven is a person who knows everything about something. Ask them a question about that topic and they’ll give you more information that you care to know. They are, according to Gladwell, information brokers who have the knowledge and social skills to start epidemics.’

Paul points out a few Maven bloggers and how being one (or becoming one) is a great blogging strategy and an excellent way to build blogging traffic. He’s spot on the money with this observation.

The great thing is that because blogging is so global you don’t necessarily have to be a maven of some mega popular topic in order to be successful. Recently I’ve had contact with a number of bloggers that have come to dominate (in a nice way) the tiny niches that they write in and in doing so have become quite prominent.

A number of them are readers of this blog so I thought it might be interesting to open up the comments in this post for people to talk about either:

1. Blogging Mavens that we know of (ie people who are becoming or who have become experts in a niche through their blogging on it)

2. The Niches that we are trying to become mavens in – tell us about your journey to become an expert in your field. How are you doing it, how’s it going, what has worked and what hasn’t? What have been the benefits of this approach? Don’t be shy or modest – feel free to just share it like it is.

Reader Comments…

Darren Rowse is the founder of ProBlogger.net, a blog about the many ways of adding an income stream to blogs.

Darren owns and writes a variety of blogs including Digital Photography Blog and Camera Phone
Zone. He is also a co-founder of the Breaking News Blog Collective.

In a post on his web site, Mr. Sullivan urges the top two search engines to quit playing the “size matters” game and start reporting on relevance instead.

MSN Search has claimed an index of some 5 billion items. Google says it’s got 8 billion. Yahoo says 20 billion. But all the pages in the world don’t mean much to a user who can’t find the information he needs to locate.

Counting files in an index is a trivial task, even if it’s a big index. Counting relevancy, as Mr. Sullivan would like to see done, poses a much different problem. Relevance for a given search keyword or phrase will vary depending on who makes the query.

Consider the old riddle Isaac Asimov used in one of his Union Club mysteries, where Griswold gains the confidence of a young murder witness by demonstrating he’s at least as intelligent as the boy. The boy asked Griswold to identify the six letter word he could write down, and Griswold wouldn’t know how to pronounce it.

Of course, Griswold knew the word, the boy recounted the murder, and the story tied up as neatly as always. But a search engine would have trouble with the term. Relevance would be much different to a shoe care professional than a researcher of Eastern European history.

Mr. Sullivan acknowledges the relevance challenges in his post:

“I want to see the major search engines come together to develop a unified, accepted way to measure relevancy in various ways: web search, local search, advanced queries, whatever. Establish a research center, a consortium or something and a methodology that all will agree upon. Then test every four to six months and pledge you’ll accept the results publicly.”

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.