Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor has been doing some amazing things over the last few years, experimenting with new media and doing more than any other major musician to forge a new model for using the Internet to interact directly with his fans.

Here’s a few examples:

• Reznor has released several albums as free downloads, using a Creative Commons license.
• Reznor’s Nine Inch Nails site offers a variety of free NIN podcasts
• He’s reinvented the concert video, filming shows with cheap HD cameras and uploading the footage YouTube
• He’s embraced Twitter, quickly amassing over six hundred thousand followers.

Now, though, Reznor says he’s giving up on social networks because of a seemingly endless stream of negativity from anonymous members:

I will be tuning out of the social networking sites, because at the end of the day it’s now doing more harm than good in the bigger picture and the experiment seems to have yielded a result.

Idiots rule.

By closing the door on Twitter and social networks, Reznor’s cutting off a direct channel to hundreds of thousands of Nine Inch Nails fans.

And, in a move that he may regret, he blames his decision on “unattractive plump females who publicly fantasize about having sex with guys in bands” and then goes on to explain how they can best slit their wrists.

Reznor’s Twitter experiment has crashed and burned.

Do you think having 600,000 followers is inherently unmanageable? Or could Reznor do something different on Twitter to maintain a direct relationship with his fans but avoid the trolls?

paidContent and The New York Times today have interesting articles looking at Craigslist’s growing revenue.

According to the Times:

The Internet classified ads company, which promotes its “relatively noncommercial nature” and “service mission” on its site, is projected to bring in more than $100 million in revenue this year, according to a new study from Classified Intelligence Report, a publication of the AIM Group.

That is a 23 percent jump over the revenue the firm estimated for 2008 and a huge increase since 2004, when the site was projected to bring in just $9 million.

“This is a down-market for just about everyone else but Craigslist,” said Jim Townsend, editorial director of AIM Group. The firm counted the number of paid ads on the site for a month and extrapolated an annual figure. It said its projections were conservative.

Meanwhile, paidContent notes that Craigslist’s revenue is nowhere near matching the decline in newspaper classified ad revenue:

Is that estimated $100 million in revenue for Craigslist responsible for the steep decline in newspaper classified revenue?

Glennco Consulting Group estimates 2009 newspaper help-wanted advertising will decline about 50 percent to roughly $1 billion, which is in line with many analyst forecasts. That would mean that even if Craigslist went from $0 in 2008 revenue to $100 million in 2009 revenue on the strength of its paid job listings, it would only account for about 10 percent of the decline in newspaper help-wanted advertising during that period.

So – where did the other $900 million in classified ads revenue go?

paidContent attributes the lost revenue to the economic downturn and to other sites like Hotjobs and Monster.com.

There’s more to it than that, though – something that old media and new media types alike don’t want to address.

Internet media has dramatically lowered the cost of publishing…..and it’s devalued publishing, as a result.

Sites like Craigslist can let you publish an ad for free, so the value of publishing it in the paper is gone.

Based on AIM Group’s numbers, Craigslist and other classified ad sites have blown away 90% of the value of publishing classifieds.

That’s a sobering trend, for old media and new media publishers alike.

A prelaunch webcast, live blogs, podcast, pictures and videos will highlight NASA’s Web coverage of space shuttle Endeavour’s STS-127 mission to the International Space Station. Endeavour is scheduled to lift off this Saturday, June 13, at 7:17 a.m. Eastern (US) time, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Mission coverage will begin with a webcast on Friday (June 12) at 10 a.m. Damon Talley of NASA’s Digital Learning Network will preview the flight, and payload mission manager Scott Higginbotham will describe the Japanese Kibo laboratory complex and the elements to be installed during Endeavour’s mission.

A blog will provide launch countdown updates beginning at 2 a.m. on June 13. Originating from the Launch Control Center at Kennedy, the blog is the definitive Internet source for information leading up to launch. During the STS-127 mission, visitors to NASA’s shuttle Web site can read about the astronauts’ progress and watch their five spacewalks live.  The blog index is here. The shuttle-launch-specific blog feed is here.

An extensive list of NASA podcasts can be found at this link. There is a “Shuttle and (Space) Station” audio podcast feed, as well as a “Shuttle and Station” video feed.

As Endeavour’s flight wraps up, NASA will blog the details of the spacecraft’s return to Earth.

Startup digital advertising and technology firm VoloMedia (formerly known as PodBridge) has  announced today a free metrics and analytics service that helps podcasters track the activity of the programs they publish to iTunes.

VoloMedia founder Murgesh Navar described the service in a post today on the Association for Downloadable Media blog:

“Bridge-to-Google Analytics is a plug-in to the iTunes Media player, now installed with over 100,000 iTunes consumers in the US…. Publishers are free to use this free service if it meets their needs, i.e. collect anonymous usage statistics regarding usage of their content on iTunes, and to analyze them using Google Analyics: a free and robust industry-standard platform. If you have ever used Google Analytics, then you are familiar with “GA_ID – Google Analytics ID”. With a simple modification of the RSS feed to incorporate the GA-ID the publisher can start flowing aggregated play and download data to their Google Analytics account.  More information is on our website: http://www.volomedia.com”

Navar also pointed out that podcasters can use the metrics and analytics service whether or not they are VoloMedia customers, insisting, “this free service does not require any relationship, contractual or otherwise, with VoloMedia.”

Podcasters will also have access to the API for VoloMedia’s iTunes plug-in (now available for PC and Mac). The plug-in gives the audience tools for sharing podcasts via email or social bookmarking sites and provides the podcaster with a place to display supplemental content or advertising/sponsorship messages, along with a way to track data on whether the audio/video file is played.

Reed Kavner, Associate Marketing Manager at VoloMedia, elaborated on the benefits of the service: “It’s a cool move for VoloMedia, as previous products and services were only available to top-tier publishers who had partnership agreements. And while we will continue to offer enterprise-level services, this is VoloMedia’s first offering to publishers of any size without any business development paperwork. And it’s free.”

On Sunday, American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee were sentenced by a North Korean court to 12 years of “reform through labour” for an unspecified “grave crime” and for allegedly entering the country illegally, according to Reporters Without Borders.

The two journalists for Current TV were arrested in March, The Guardian reports, while filming a report about North Koreans refugees fleeing into China across the Tumen River. North Korea claims the two illegally entered the country, but other reports said the two had been filming from the Chinese side of the border.

The women’s trial began on Thursday. U.S. and international officials are working for the women’s release amid a tense diplomatic climate as North Korea and the west dicker and negotiate over N.Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

Here is a 2005 Rocketboom interview with Ling and [former Rocketboom correspondent] Zadi Diaz, where they discuss the “shuffle” format of the just-formed Current TV.

Apple today introduced Podcast Producer 2, part of Snow Leopard Server. Podcast Producer 2 is designed to be an end-to-end solution for encoding, publishing, and distributing podcasts.

Snow Leopard Server adds two new video capture features:

• dual-source capture, enabling you to create picture-in-picture podcasts using Apple-designed templates or your own layout; and
• web capture, which lets you capture video by controlling remote cameras and microphones through any modern web browser on your Mac, PC, or iPhone.

To automate the completion and publishing of podcasts, you can create your own workflow with Podcast Composer. It offers an Automator-style graphical interface that lets you choose introductory, title, and exit videos; specify different effects and transitions between videos; and add watermarks and overlays to podcast content.

Once the podcast is complete, Podcast Producer 2 automatically publishes the content in the format you choose and to the location you’ve specified.

Online book mega-retailer Amazon.com today announced the “Your Amazon Ad Contest.”  The competition solicits customer-created television commercials, the best of which will win a $10,000 Amazon gift card.

“One need only look at the customer reviews for Tuscan Whole Milk and the Three Wolf Moon T-shirt to see how many creative and talented customers we have,” said Steve Shure, vice president of global marketing at Amazon.com. “We’re excited to invite them to create a television ad for us and can’t wait to see what they come up with.”

Beginning today and until July 17, 2009, customers can upload their “Your Amazon Ad Contest” creations to this link.  An Amazon-appointed jury will review the contest submissions and select five finalists based on creativity, overall appeal of the ad, and the likelihood that the ad will inspire viewers to shop with Amazon.

The five finalists will be announced Aug. 24, 2009, and Customers can view and vote until September 6 on their pick for “Audience Prize” winner. An Amazon judging panel will select the Jury Prize winner. Both winners will receive a $10,000 Amazon.com Gift Card as their prize, when the contest winners are announced.

Contestants can submit their entries at www.amazon.com/yaac or at www.withoutabox.com, an “indie film network” acquired by Amazon via its IMDb subsidiary.

Campaigning for sweeping reform of copyright, privacy and patent laws, Sweden’s Pirate Party this weekend won enough votes in the country’s national elections to secure a seat (possibly two) in the European Parliament. Sweden is accorded 17 representatives in the EU governing legislature, and the Pirate Party’s 7.1 percent showing is enough for at least one of the Swedish seats.

The Pirate Party, was founded in 2006, and got a boost in the Swedish polls earlier this spring, when bittorrent tracking site Pirate Bay was in all the news. The owners of Pirate Bay, called “the world’s most high-profile file-sharing website” by BBC News, in April were found guilty of assistance to copyright infringement, and sentenced to one year in prison and payment of a fine of approx. $3.6 million.

Rickard Falkvinge, the leader of the Pirate Party, said that the outcome of the trial angered many Swedes and “played a significant role” in the party’s showing in this week’s elections.

New media and cheap technology is making it easy for anyone to podcast, video podcast and create all types of media for the Web.

It’s a mistake, though, to think that this revolution is limited to low-budget indies.

Check out this concert video for Nine Inch Nails‘ performance of Survivalism, live in Atlanta, GA, May 10th, 2009.

At first glance, the video may not seem that different from a lot of concert videos. Look closely, though, and you’ll see that this is a basically a glorified home movie. One shot, filmed by Rob Sheridan with a Canon 5d Mark II.

Like a lot of things that NIN has been doing lately, it’s not immediately obvious how insanely innovative this is.

Put a guy on stage with a relatively cheap HD video cameo, let him interact with both the band and the audience, and you’ve changed concert videos forever. There’s no reason that any band, not just Nine Inch Nails, can’t have an HD concert video made for all their shows.

Which would you rather buy: the concert video of your favorite band, or the concert video of your favorite band at the show that went to……last night?

via Synthtopia

Online measurement company ComScore today released findings from its April 2009 “Video Metrix” data. Internet users viewed 16.8 billion online videos during that month, representing an increase of 16 percent versus March. A significant increase in video viewing at YouTube contributed to the month’s gains.

In April, Google Sites, whose online video properties include YouTube, once again ranked as the top U.S. video property with 6.8 billion videos viewed (equating to 40.7 percent online video market share), a 15-percent increase versus March. YouTube.com accounted for more than 99 percent of all videos viewed at Google Sites.

Fox Interactive Media, parent of social networking site MySpace, ranked a rather distant second with 513 million videos viewed, or 3.1 percent online video market share. Hulu.com followed in third place with 397 million videos viewed (2.4 percent market share), ahead of next-ranked Yahoo! Sites, with 355 million videos viewed (2.1 percent).

ComScore also reported that, across all the online video sites being tracked, nearly 152 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 111 videos per viewer in April. Google Sites (again, the parent of YouTube), reached an all-time high of 107.9 million video viewers during the month. Fox Interactive Media (owner of MySpace) ranked second with 58.8 million viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites (45.4 million) and Hulu (40.1 million).

Other notable findings from ComScore’s April 2009 report include:

• 78.6 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
• The average online video viewer watched 385 minutes of video, or 6.4 hours.
• 107.1 million viewers watched 6.8 billion videos on YouTube.com (that averages out to 63.5 videos per viewer).
• 49 million viewers watched 387 million videos on MySpace.com (7.9 videos per viewer).
• Hulu accounted for only 2.4 percent of videos viewed, but made up 4.2 percent of all minutes spent watching online video.
• The duration of the average online video was 3.5 minutes.