The mobile & instant messaging most become friends in the near future and Tjat (www.tjat.com) proof that it’s here.

There wap site, which every mobile user can browse with is mobile phone (wap.tjat.com) enables instant connection to the user’s ICQ, AIM or messenger.

You don’t need to download anything, like there competitors’ products. You just browse, type in your user name and password and you are connected with all of your buddy list.

It’s easy, it’s simple and it’s really open new world of options.

I can see it already integrated with next generation mobile devices.

K.

Photo courtesy of CNN

Is it the end of using other people’s content in order to build assets? According to the Wall Street Journal, Universal Music claims that MySpace “knowingly and intentionally” violated copyright law with regard to Universal’s music and videos. That’s despite the fact that MySpace has been working to detect and remove copyrighted songs uploaded by users, and that they’ve just announced a similar system for MySpace Video this morning (too late, it seems). MySpace, meanwhile, just put out a press release to say the suit is “meritless” and that they don’t “induce, encourage or condone copyright violation in any way”.

Google said last week that they backed $200M for legal copyright issues (regarding YouTube).

It seems like the days of sites violating copyright regulations, uploading content without paying royalties and gaining traffic and valuation for that – are over. The next YouTube or the next MySpace will need to pay royalties from day one.

Photo courtesy of The Age

Is it a sign for the future or is it just the final stamp that the future is here? Israeli video sharing site MetaCafe announced today that Hollywood producer Steven Bochco will produce content specifically for the site.

Until recently most of the video sharing sites basically had 4 lines of content: porno, stolen content from the majors, commercials and “my funny cat” content”. Users provided amateur home videos, sometimes with great success like two of our great talents in Logia, Tasha and Diksha, but most of them were really not worth wasting time on.

We are entering into a new area, where the real content creators, the guys that know how to write a script, who are skilled in holding the camera and have real editing capabilities.

The role of the majors and the large networks in the old world was picking the right content, financing and especially distribution. In the new world, financing is not an issue – because for the internet the production costs are very low. Now if we add that to it the cutting of the distribution - it will change the world as we know it and will bring the power from the networks and the major studios to the producers and content creators.

They should ask themselves what their role in this new world is. And they should do it fast.

K.

Sites offering tools to improve social networking profiles with song lyrics, pictures, quotes and layout designs are the most popular for teens ages 12-17. This information is according to recently published research by Nielsen//NetRatings.

PLyrics.com ranked No. 1 among teens, who made up 68.4% of its unique audience. Notably, nine out of the top 10 teen sites either offered content or tools for social networking site profiles, or were social networking sites themselves. Snapvine, which offers a voice player for social networking sites, ranked No. 2, with a 67.6% teen audience, followed by WhateverLife.com, with 60.6 percent.

This is a shift. A three-year shift from those sites offering a selection of instant messaging buddy icons to those providing assistance with social networking profiles and page layouts. In September 2003, the No. 1 site among teens was Originalicons.com, with teens composing 77.6% of its unique audience. Buddy4u.com and Badass Buddy also made it into the top 10 sites among teens three years ago, with teens accounting for 73.5 and 66.6 percent of their September Web traffic, respectively.

The millennium generation had been born with a keyboard. They will be the driving force for personalization. They need everything to be just the way they want it: the interface, the pictures, the music. They don’t need anybody telling them what is right. In the future, as they will grow up, they will shape there homepage with content from the sites they like. Pageflakes is a very good example for that.

Instant messaging is going to be changed in the next two years. The change will come from the combining of two new abilities: personal pages like MySpace and FaceBook with their friends list and with the personality of the users - and mobile phones which will allow easy connection to IM anywhere, anytime.

K.

Photo courtesy of Tieke

Only 30% of Europeans are interested in mobile TV, according to a new survey which was published last month by the Yankee Group. Fifteen percent of those between the ages of 18-34 were reported “very interested” and 15% were “interested”. As the ages grew older, the percentage diminished. Of the people in the age group of 35-49, 10% were “very interested” and 13% were “interested”. Finally, in the ‘Over 50′ age group only 4% were “very interested” and 7 “interested”.

And this is even before talking about how much it will cost them.

Last week, Pay-TV company BSkyB announced they will be launching a mobile TV service with 3 UK and Orange UK. A spokeswoman for Orange said the company expected to have between 1.5 and 2 million 3G customers in the UK by the end of the year.

Looks like winning customers will not be as easy as they thought.

K.

Photo courtesy of BloomsburgPL

Today’s consumers trust traditional media sources the most, or at least that’s what a new research study done by LexisNexis shows.

The findings show that when consumers are faced with major events that significantly affect their lives, such as a pandemic or an ominous hurricane, their trust mostly remains with traditional media, such as professional journalists at mainstream newspapers, magazines, television and radio, versus emerging media sources created by citizen journalists including Internet-only publications, blogs and podcasts.

Half of those surveyed said that they would turn to network television for immediate news information in such situations, while the next most popular source was the radio (42%). Findings show that approximately a third of consumers (37%) would use daily local newspapers, cable news or business networks (33%), and a quarter of those interviewed would rely on Internet sites of print and broadcast media. In contrast, emerging media like Internet user groups, blogs and chat rooms would be used by (6%) surveyed.

LexisNexis asked consumers which news sources they are more likely to trust for information about the news that interests them the most. On average, consumers are four to six times more likely to feel that traditional media is more trustworthy than emerging news sources for news they feel is most interesting.

In the future, more than half (52%) of the consumers surveyed anticipate they will continue to mostly trust and rely on traditional news sources. However, more than a third (35%) expect they will trust and rely on both emerging news and traditional news in the future, and more than one in ten (13%) anticipate they will trust and rely mostly on emerging media.

The question is will blogs be part of the traditional media in the coming years. My bet is they will.

K.