Baseball fans in Japan and four other countries have reason to celebrate today. A record-breaking deal involving YouTube and Major League Baseball has been struck, and as a result, said fans will gain access to lots and lots of footage.
In an email to WebProNews, a YouTube representative provided some more details in the form of bullet points. One highlight is that "[f]ull-length, catch-up MLB games [will be] available in Japan 36 hours after they air." Historic game footage will be offered, too, along with profiles of Japanese players.
That's almost bound to go over well, since baseball is quite popular in Japan.
Furthermore, according to the representative, "Baseball fans in Australia, Brazil, New Zealand, and Russia [will get] access to the full range of MLB's highlight clips and archives on YouTube," and both organizations hope this will increase local interest in the sport.
Anyway, regardless of what occurs next or how baseball's perceived in any particular area, this arrangement is supposed to represent "the largest partnership for premium sports content in YouTube history," making it quite significant.
Other large, sports-related deals YouTube's managed to complete involved cricket and wrestling of the not-quite-real variety.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
Facebook Talks Questions, Lists, Mobile : Facebook Thinking About Some New Strategies
As usual, Facebook is making its way into a lot of headlines for a lot of reasons. While many of them have to do with legal issues, some are also based on the social network itself and other areas of innovation.
As reported, the company has partnered with Y Combinator to lend some support to social-minded startups. Facebook will provide product, technical and design resources.
As far as Facebook's own features, the questions feature the company announced recently had gone M.I.A. for some, but has now returned, as MG Siegler reports. It is, however, only available for a portion of Facebook users as this point. Facebook reportedly said that it turned the feature off for some users as they ran some tests.
Siegler, who attended a Facebook Developer event, says that Facebook is also reconsidering its strategy for lists, as Zuckerberg apparently acknowledged that most people don't use them. "He thinks it still has to be something like friend lists, but done a different way. He noted that they have to come up with a way for people to control each thing they want to share, but do it in a way so that the tools are really easy to use."
As reported, the company has partnered with Y Combinator to lend some support to social-minded startups. Facebook will provide product, technical and design resources.
As far as Facebook's own features, the questions feature the company announced recently had gone M.I.A. for some, but has now returned, as MG Siegler reports. It is, however, only available for a portion of Facebook users as this point. Facebook reportedly said that it turned the feature off for some users as they ran some tests.
Siegler, who attended a Facebook Developer event, says that Facebook is also reconsidering its strategy for lists, as Zuckerberg apparently acknowledged that most people don't use them. "He thinks it still has to be something like friend lists, but done a different way. He noted that they have to come up with a way for people to control each thing they want to share, but do it in a way so that the tools are really easy to use."
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Facebook Vows To Improve Chat Feature
The social network that acts as an online home to more than 500 million people intends to do a better job of letting them communicate with one another in the future. This afternoon, Facebook mentioned some ways in which it's improved its Chat feature and promised that further upgrades are on the way.
Without getting into any technical details, Rodrigo Schmidt, a software engineer, wrote on the Facebook Blog, "[I]n the past couple of weeks, we've already made Chat faster and more stable, fixed bugs and improved the technology on which it runs."
Schmidt also wrote, "[W]e will be making important improvements in the way connections are established and messages are sent, so that Chat will be much more stable for you and your friends."
Most Facebook users should welcome these changes. The problems with Facebook Chat have always been annoying, and have often been embarrassing in a they-should-have-fixed-this-by-now sense.
The few people who might not appreciate the upgrades are Internet Explorer 6 fans (if there is such a species). IE6 support will be discontinued on September 15th because the browser won't be able to handle the changes.
That shouldn't represent any sort of major problem, though, and may in fact turn out to be a detail tech-savvy individuals applaud.
Without getting into any technical details, Rodrigo Schmidt, a software engineer, wrote on the Facebook Blog, "[I]n the past couple of weeks, we've already made Chat faster and more stable, fixed bugs and improved the technology on which it runs."
Schmidt also wrote, "[W]e will be making important improvements in the way connections are established and messages are sent, so that Chat will be much more stable for you and your friends."
Most Facebook users should welcome these changes. The problems with Facebook Chat have always been annoying, and have often been embarrassing in a they-should-have-fixed-this-by-now sense.
The few people who might not appreciate the upgrades are Internet Explorer 6 fans (if there is such a species). IE6 support will be discontinued on September 15th because the browser won't be able to handle the changes.
That shouldn't represent any sort of major problem, though, and may in fact turn out to be a detail tech-savvy individuals applaud.
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