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MySpace, the social networking phenomenon that News Corp. purchased last year for $580 million, could be worth $15 billion in a few years’ time, according to RBC Capital analyst Jordan Rohan. But note–that’s in terms of the added value the News Corp. site will have created for shareholders. “$15 billion in a few years? It is possible,” Rohan wrote in a research note to clients after coming away from a meeting with Fox Interactive, News Corp.’s online unit. Rohan said “media investors may not fully appreciate what has already been done with MySpace or what may lie ahead.” Rohan later acknowledged he was making an “audacious claim,” but justified his forecast based on MySpace’s unprecedented usage (90 million-plus members), growth (hundreds of thousands of new users every week) and capacity to become a major international brand and “intellectual property distribution powerhouse.” Rohan based his analysis on recent market valuations for other Internet properties, including YouTube and Facebook (each valued at around $1 billion), and Google, Inc., valued at $120 billion. MySpace is the No. 1 video site on the Web, according to traffic measurement firm comScore Media Metrix–showing 1.2 billion videos in July. Rohan said MySpace was currently sold out of video advertising inventory, whose CPMs go as high as $35-$40.

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Perhaps there’s been an abrupt change in thinking, but online video startups are thinking about going public. Some you’ve never heard of, but the momentum of online video is pushing newly public video stocks higher. DivX, for example, is a video-sharing technology provider. It just completed an IPO last Friday, raising $145 million–about $50 million more than Wall Street expected. Yesterday, its shares closed at $18.11, two dollars higher than its opening-day stock price. Other online video IPO candidates include MobiTV, which delivers video to mobile phones and PCs, and BigBand Networks, a video on demand provider for telecom and cable companies. Why are they going public? Well, many of these online video startups are attracting dollars from some of the biggest venture-capital firms. Redpoint Ventures, an early investor in MySpace, has poured money behind MobiTV. To be sure, investors would rather see these companies go public than be acquired, because it provides them with bigger returns. Bruce Sachs, an investor with Charles River Partners, admits that the recent success of Internet IPOs means the window for going public could be opening. “Given how hot video is, we could see some interesting exits in 2007,” Sachs says. Online video should only get hotter. In-Stat, a Web consultancy, estimates that by 2010, user-generated video sites will reel in 65 billion page views–up from 17 billion this year. Ad revenue growth should be even more robust, the firm says–growing from $80.2 million this year to $852 million by 2010. By any measure, that’s solid growth–although admittedly, $80 million is starting with next to nothing. For a little perspective, consider that the click-fraud industry is estimated to make between $300 and $500 million this year.

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It turns out YouTube isn’t the No. 1 video site on the Web after all, according to the most recent comScore figures, which now factor in third-party video providers. And maybe it never was. That honor goes to MySpace, News Corp.’s massive social-networking web within the Web, whose 37.4 million unique users collectively watched 1.4 billion videos in July. That size probably merits its own new paragraph, but we don’t do those here. Any guesses for No. 2? No, not YouTube. Not Google Video, either. Yahoo, which had more total unique streamers than MySpace, actually came in second with 812 million video streams in July. YouTube, then, was third–generating 649 million video streams. These numbers, by the way, don’t include double counting, so YouTube videos streamed on MySpace don’t count toward MySpace’s total, although they would for YouTube. In total, 7.2 billion videos were streamed on the Web in July, 20 percent of them from MySpace.com. Google Video actually placed 8th, below Time Warner’s network, ROO, Microsoft’s sites and Viacom digital. comScore and other research firms never used to take large third-party providers into consideration when doling out online video usage numbers. That’s why we’re seeing MySpace, Yahoo, Time Warner, Microsoft and Viacom included in the top 10 for the first time.

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ABC has inked $3.6 million worth of deals with 36 advertisers for its new abc.com streaming video that promotes its prime-time lineup. Media buying and selling executives equate the figure as about double the CPM viewer prices of traditional TV. In the case of ABC, that rate delivers about three months of episodes for seven shows. Advertisers include Visa, Honda and Johnson & Johnson.

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Digg.com founders Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson are moving on to the next project, starting a second company just as their first one is taking off. Called Revision3 Corporation, this next venture is an Internet video production firm they have been running in their spare time.

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Here’s a question that’s been bandied about thousands of times: Is the social-networking phenom Facebook worth $1 billion? Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons answered that with a resounding “no” last week. CNNMoney also posits the question, asking investors from Wall Street as well as Facebook’s college student users what they think of its possible $1 billion sale to Yahoo. “What’s beautiful about Facebook is that it’s a great place to advertise because it generates the equivalent of online word-of-mouth.

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Dall’Advertising Week di New York. I responsabili media, marketing e interactive di Johnson & Johnson, HP, e Coca Cola spiegano perchè hanno deciso di aumentare gli investimenti sui nuovi media o di dirottarli dalla tv. La banda larga riesce a emozionare, ma le agenzie ancora non lo sanno.

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Dall’Advertising Week di New York. Da NBC a Colgate Palmolive, dalla compagnia telefonica Verizon al Gruppo ING, negli Usa si accende il dibattito tra media e direttori marketing sulle possibilità di comunicazione offerte dai mezzi interattivi, e sulla loro misurabilità.

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Londra - L’uso indiscriminato delle tecnologie di Digital Rights Management (DRM) sta subendo le cannonate del management della British Library, la biblioteca centrale britannica, una delle maggiori istituzioni culturali del mondo. I sistemi anticopia che sono oggi impiegati sulla quasi totalità dei contenuti digitali offerti al pubblico, spiegano i responsabili della Library, di fatto violano le leggi sul diritto d’autore.

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Google is calling on the computer industry to create a simpler and more efficient power supply standard that it says will save billions of kilowatt-hours of energy annually.

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