VentureBeat

Social network MySpace is launching a new worldwide service that will let its users watch videos on its mobile site from their phones. Mobile video has not been a smashing consumer success. But MySpace’s mobile site (m.myspace.com) gets more than 10 million monthly unique visitors and more than 3 billion monthly pageviews, the company says. So the introduction of video could give mobile-video streaming a big boost.

MySpace users will be able to watch any video they’ve uploaded to the web site or marked as a favorite within the Myspace video player. They’ll also have access to branded video channels offered by well-known companies like TMZ, National Hockey League, National Geographic, The Onion and College Humor. This content creates new opportunities for MySpace and its partners to make money from mobile advertising.

RipCode, a mobile video infrastructure company, is partnering with MySpace on the deal. Its technology lets users access videos from a range of phones with different types of video-playing systems. However, it doesn’t work on the iPhone.

Of course, user access to videos will also depend on data plans. Mobile carriers around the world typically offer plans that charge more for high data usage, necessary for video. If MySpace’s mobile video feature is a hit, it could make carriers more money by pushing more expensive data plans. And, of course, users should check their plans before watching.

A boost for mobile video?

Mobile video has been available for several years, mainly through applications that come pre-installed on phones per agreements with carriers. But its adoption has lagged. Startups that offer variations of online streaming video services include MyWaves, and live-streaming sites Qik and Kyte. YouTube also has a mobile site.

More than 100 million U.S. consumers have phones capable of playing video, or around 42 percent of all U.S. mobile subscribers, according to a recent report by research firm Nielsen. But only 10.3 million mobile users watched video on their phones in the third quarter of this year. That’s up from 9 million the previous quarter; so there’s some growth, driven by a range of new video-playing devices. The average mobile video viewer watches videos 17 times a month, spending about 15 minutes watching per session.

MySpace is popular with teenagers, an audience that spends an inordinate amount of time watching mobile videos compared to other groups. Some additional statistics to highlight that point:

– 65 percent of mobile video viewers are under age 35, compared to 35 percent of total mobile subscribers.

– 32 percent of mobile video viewers are between 25 and 34 years old.

– 18 percent of mobile video viewers are teens, an avid and engaged mobile video segment.

– On average, teens engage in 22 mobile video sessions per month and spend 15 minutes per session viewing mobile video.

– Over half of teens (54 percent) report watching video on their cell phones in bed. That’s 1.5 times more likely than average viewers.

– 64 percent of teens report watching programs to completion, the highest portion of any age group.

– Teens are watching an average of 11.7 channels a month on their cell phones.

– Teens are also more interested in seeing user-generated content in the future than average viewers.

In terms of devices, Apple’s iPhone is unsurprisingly the top device for video watching in the U.S., in part because it comes with an application pre-installed for watching YouTube videos. Nine percent of mobile viewers use the iPhone. But MySpace won’t gain traction there until it works out a deal with Apple.

A boost for mobile advertising?

Besides making money for carriers, mobile video could infuse mobile advertising. MySpace told us back in May that mobile advertising has “grown in the last six months to be a real business” — the company aims to bring advertisers on its web site to its mobile offerings. It has since told us that it intends to keep its mobile content free and ad-supported to attract more traffic and more advertisers.

MySpace, part of News Corp.’s Fox Interactive Media division, has a dedicated sales team to sell sponsorships and cost-per-impression ads for both web and mobile in several countries. Advertising clients include Ford, Saturn, Warner Brothers, Toyota, Disney, McDonald’s and P&G. It also works with reputable third-party mobile ad networks including Millennial Media, Quattro Wireless and AdMob. Advertising campaigns include ways to get users to register their emails and phone numbers with a company, click to call a company for more information, find a nearby store or deal, get a coupon to use at a physical location, content downloads, and more.

Take a look at our in-depth article about the opportunities in mobile advertising — in spite of the recession, and advertising cuts — for more details on where the overall market is headed.

Also, MySpace Music, the social network’s new streaming music site, doesn’t yet include mobile integration. The obvious guess as to why would be that its partners — music labels — don’t want to let people stream playlists of their favorite songs onto their phones from the site. Let’s hope MySpace can resolve that question, because mobile streaming music is a killer feature. Internet radio station Pandora, for example, is the most popular free application on the iPhone. MySpace Music is a way for labels and musicians to make money from selling digital tracks, concert tickets and much more. Doing it right could make everyone a lot of money, and make users very happy. As of now, though, music rights issues have not been resolved. But MySpace knows that music is part of its longer-term mobile strategy.

Update: MySpace sent us a link to a how-to video on the service: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=47525015

Here’s the latest action:

Google adds search to Reader — In an obvious but very useful move, Google Reader, the company’s web-based RSS feed reader, has added the ability to search through your RSS subscriptions, or the categories and tags you use to organize them. So you can search for words in articles in RSS feeds you’ve subscribed to, without actually having the articles on your screen. Cool!

First venture capitalist to sell his blog: Rob Day — We’ve been a fan of venture capitalist Rob Day’s blog Cleantech Investing from the day it started. It’s about clean technology. Greentech Media Inc, a company that has just launched to focus on the clean-technology sector, has acquired the blog for an undisclosed amount, and now runs it on its site. By the way, Greentech Media is also pulling feeds from VentureBeat’s articles about clean-technology. It provides links to our full stories. Day told us about the purchase last week, but we were waiting for Greentech to launch and get its feeds squared away, which it did yesterday. Day now works for @Ventures.

Quattro Wieless raises cash to help companies adapt their Web sites to mobile versions – The Waltham, Mass. company serves businesses by providing them with mobile versions of their sites. This field has many competitors now. The year-old Quattro has raised $12.3 million in a second round of funding from Globespan Capital Partners and Highland Capital Partners, bringing its total funding to $18 million. It provides online software to let companies see what their mobile site would look like. If the publisher likes it, they can join Quattro’s network, which customizes it for most mobile devices. The company helps publishers serve advertising on their mobile site, and takes a cut while doing so.
reword:

Universal sues Veoh — Universal Music Group, a record label that has been actively suing music and video-focused startups, is at it again. It is suing Veoh, a site where you can upload and share videos, for letting users upload and share videos that Universal claims a copyright to. Veoh received threatening letters from Universal earlier this summer, and actually counter-sued for court protection against Universal in August, saying that it should not be held liable for what users do on the site. Universal was not deterred. Paid Content has more.

Groxis, the company with a visual search engine, now gets third CEO in little more than a year — We profiled Groxis and its search engine Grokker here and here. It was an early challenger to Google’s search format. Instead of giving you pages of results, it provided spheres, breaking out result by categories. Search for Paris, for example, and you’d get spheres titled “History,” “Museums,” “Universities,” “Hotels” and so on. It was always a bit complicated, however, and it has struggled to find direction. It has moved away from the sphere format, and is clearly still experimenting. We’ve heard almost nothing new from this company in years. Here’s the announcement of its latest CEO, Randall Marcinkio. He replaces Brian Chadbourne, who replaced founder and CEO R.J Pittman last year. Groxis raised $16 million for its search engine Grokker from investors including Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Jackson Boulevard Capital Management and Draper ePlanet Ventures.