If you haven't heard about DailyMotion.com, you probably will fairly soon, particularly if you're one of those people who wants to watch commercial-free television shows for free. I stumbled upon the video-sharing site via by brother, who read about it on Forbes.com.
So who is DailyMotion? Well, they're based in Paris and there does not appear to be any ways they make money right now: no advertising, no sponsored links, nothing. The company, which received seven million euros of venture capital from Partech and Atlas Ventures, has 18 employees, although some of them could be part-timers or volunteers as opposed to full-time staff. The company's two founders are Benjamin Bejbaum and Olivier Poitrey.
According to Forbes, DailyMotion's traffic has tripled in the past three months, albeit off a small base given it only has 0.22% market share compared with 65% for YouTube. (I'd insert an Alexa chart but you barely be able to see DailyMotion on it.)
With DailyMotion running complete TV shows, the question is whether it's violating copyright laws. Forbes quoted someone from the Electronic Frontier Foundation that DailyMotion could be protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's "safe harbor" provision, which lets sites host infringed content if they aren't aware of it, don't profit from it and remove any infringing content immediately upon the copyright holder's request. I suspect DailyMotion may start getting more of these copyright holder requests once its profile starts to grow. In the meantime, have fun. I'm off to watch some "My Name is Earl" episodes as we speak.
Note: You can read an interview with Bejbaum on seomoz.org

USA Today's Kevin Maney has a very intriguing column on what Internet entrepreneurs and thinkers (a.k.a. consultants) would do if they owned a newspaper. What he discovered was this: "These tech folks don't really have any radical, interesting ideas for newspapers".

That's interesting because you figure a group of people who have embraced the digital distribution and consumption of content would have all kinds of ideas on how to kick-start newspapers into the Web age. You would figure someone would suggest that newspapers simply give away their paper and Web content for free and drive revenue from advertising. Or perhaps newspapers should just do a better job of embracing Internet technology such as RSS, IM, e-mail bulletins, personalized home pages, etc.

Part of the problem facing geeks when it comes to assessing how newspapers should operate is they have little or no knowledge of how newspapers actually work. Sure, they read newspapers - probably less than they did a few years ago - and many of them have all kinds of good ideas about how the Web can deliver content to different kinds of consumers BUT they have no clue of what a newsroom looks like and how reporters do their jobs. It means they don't understand the industry culture and why newspapers are having such a difficult time trying to get some more Web mojo.

Truth be told, newspapers must be a lot more aggressive when it comes to the Web. But it's going to be an extremely difficult process because newspapers have been operating in the much the same way for a 100 years (aside from reporters and editing using computers instead of typewriters). It's not just putting content on the Web but it means changing how content is created, who creates it and when it's published.

The typical reporter, for example, writes one or two stories a day over a nine-hour shift, which gives them time to think, interview, have a coffee, and talk with their editors. But the Web means reporters have to dramatically change how they work. They'll have to write stores in minutes rather than hours; they'll have to do blogs, podcasts and videoblogs at a time when changing economics means they'll have to work harder than ever because the size of newsrooms are shrinking. To really get reporters to buy in, it may take another generation that is more comfortable to multi-task.

In the meantime, newspapers have to focus on no-frills blocking and tackling. They have to embrace the Web with more enthusiasm, they have become leaner, they have to focus less on the news and more on providing readers with smart, well written stories that provide insight and perspective, and focus more energy on covering local stories rather than national and international.

The bottom line is there is no silver bullet for newspapers. They are going to lose readers, they are going to lose advertisers, they are going to lose reporters to maintain profits, and there will probably be much fewer newspapers around 10 years from now. There will be a place for newspapers but people are consuming information in new ways, and it may not mean reading a newspaper every day or, for that matter, at all.

For more thoughts, check out Ethan Stock, who works for a company called Zvents that focuses on providing online local information, and BlackRimGlasses, who would eliminate newspapers and make them all digital (after a dramatic restructuring of operations).

According to TechCrunch, BitTorrent has raised $25 million from Accel Partners and Doll Capital Management. BitTorrent has also signed distribution deals with a variety of major film and TV producers. So, the idea is the money and the licensing deals with MTV, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, etc. is going to make BitTorrent legit - and steer it farther away from its roots as a cool P2P technology used to download free movies, TV shows and music? In theory, that makes sense but it's a bit of a pipe-dream unless some of the $25-million is used to crack down on all those Torrent-crazed pirates out there. Mathew Ingram doesn't think much about the press release given he believes it's going to take a lot more than some PR for BitTorrent to compete against the pirates.

For anyone curious about b5media's roots and where it's heading, check out an interview that CEO Jeremy Wright did with Media Industry Professional Profiles.

In what may be a first for Google, the company has decided to shut down one of its sideshows/experiments - Google Answers - after more than four years. Is this a new strategic direction for Google and/or a sign of the times that some projects should die a quiet death if they're not working well? If this is Google's new approach, you wonder how long it will be before Okrut and Froogle are pushed out of the portfolio. Who knows, maybe this move suggests Google will be more pragmatic about rolling out new services rather than slapping stuff on the wall and seeing if it sticks. While Google gets points for experimenting with all kinds of different things, its less-than-stellar success into new markets (Google Spreadsheets, anyone?) has arguably damaged its reputation as an innovator more than it has produced tangible benefits. Update: Rex Hammock has a theory why Google Answers failed: Wikipedia.

...anyone gets excited about a plan by Verizon Wireless to offer access to YouTube on a wireless device. For $15 a month, Verizon is offering a YouTube-like service as part of a service called VCast that will provide a limited number of YouTube videos that have been selected and approved by both companies.

Come on, it's a tough enough sell trying to get people to watch videos on teeny-tiny screens without neutering the world's most popular video sharing service...and asking people to fork out $15 for the privilege. The New York Times has a strange quote from YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, who contends "Everybody carries a phone with them, but they may not have a computer...[so people] can take the phone out of their pocket while waiting for the bus and watch a video."

In theory, that's a nice sentiment but in practice, that's easier said than done. In trying to sell YouTube-lite at a premium price, Verizon clearly wants to manage demand while still getting a sense of whether the service actually works and if there are any bleeding edge suckers out there will be guinea pigs.

Of course, wireless carriers are happy to explore all and any ways to increase average revenue per subscriber (ARPU), which is an acronym for trying to squeeze more money out of existing customers. If YouTube-lite can help boost ARPU, there's no harm in trying to sell it. That said, any consumer who jump at YouTube-lite isn't thinking straight.

Whatever happened to the paperless office? The PC and Internet was supposed to save millions of trees but office workers are using more paper than ever. A joint project between Xerox Research Center of Canada and Palo Alto Research Center, however, may have a solution with ink that "disappears" from paper after 16 hours. This means a lot of paper, including the 21% of documents that are printed and thrown into recycling bins on the same day were printed, can be used over and over. In theory, it's a fascinating technology given many people print documents because reading them on a computer screen is less than user-friendly. Currently in prototype, the process uses no toner and produces a low-resolution document on specially-coated paper. Who knows if this technology will ever appear at an office near given we've been hearing about this kind of thing for years. For example, whatever happened to plastic paper that Xerox worked on for years, and that E Ink is trying develop now?

The University of Toronto's Citizen Lab will make free software available later this week that will help people deal with Web censorship issues in countries where access is restricted or limited. A downloadable tool, called psiphon, can transform anyone's personal computer into encrypted servers (or access points) that can access blocked sites and associated Web pages. People who want to access these sites connect to a psiphon server or psiphonode by logging in through an encrypted connection and using it as a proxy. The user does not have to install any software on their machine. The technology was created by the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Munk Centre for International Studies, as part of an Open Society Institute-funded project. The psiphone Web site is here - with free downloads available on Dec. 1. A New York Times story on the psiphon software can be found here.
Update: A comment (see below) raised an interesting point that the UoT is trying to fight Web censorship while a group of Canadian ISPs and Cybertip.ca introduced a plan last week to block Web access (specifically child pornography). If anything, it makes for a fascinating discussion on the right approach, who gets to do it and why.

Michael Urlocker, who writes the OnDisruption blog, has a column in today's National Post looking at whether satellite-radio can survive the growing popularity of the iPod in the mobile music battle. One fact that jumps out is that 70% of 2007's U.S. car models will have built-in iPod connectors, which will give the 67 million iPod owners another way to enjoy their devices. Urlocker, a former telecom analyst, suggests XM and Sirius must implement some "tough measures" to compete such as pursuing lower growth targets so they can become profitable, and "looking for marginalized customers who don't want or can't afford iPods". When it comes to the challenges facing satellite-radio, Mike and I are perfectly aligned.

If you're looking for a lite read on a Sunday afternoon, the Guardian has a gushy story about all the cool things happening in Silicon Valley these days, which seems to have been researched by a reporter who spent a long time hanging out with aspiring entrepreneurs at a coffee shop called Ritual Coffee Roasters in San Francisco. The best quote in the story comes from Rubyred Labs co-founder Jonathan Grubb, who proclaims 'The coffee shop has replaced the garage for internet start-ups. " I'm not sure whether this statement talks more to the coffee shop culture that has flourished in North America over the past few years, or the new no-frills, no-cost operating environment that start-ups have embraced.

Two seemingly unrelated developments this week in the world of user-generated content: Gather.com raises $10-million from a group of investors including Hearst Corp., McGraw-Hill and Pilot House Ventures to expand its citizen journalism business; and Michael Richards (aka Kramer) launches himself into a profanity-laced racist rant after someone heckled him during a stand-up comedy routine.

What the two developments have in common is they both involve user-generated content. Gather.com publishes it; Richards was thrust into the media spotlight because someone used a cell phone to record a video of his outburst. It has come to the point where everyone is becoming a journalist and nothing is private any more. It explains why "off the blog" may become a common disclaimer during personal and professional conversations - kind of like what CFOs dutifully read the Safe Harbour rules before a conference call.

At a time when traditional media under are siege, we're in the midst of a publishing renaissance/revolution where anyone can create and distribute whatever they want. It has spawned blogs, podcasts, video blogs, wikis, photo albums (Flickr, et al) and video libraries (YouTube, etc.).

But at what point does user-generated content cross the line? How much user-generated content does the world really need? And how does user-generated content get filtered for quality - if that's an issue at all? Don't get me wrong, user-generated content is wonderful and has changed how we produce, distribute and share information but I wonder there's a limit on how much content needs to be product and how much of this content can be consumed.

As well, how will the nature of user-generated content change as next-generation players such as blog networks become more established, while traditional media players, who have been on their heels in recent years, start to re-load strategically and get a strong foothold. Will major brands dominant the user-generated content landscape - leaving less room for the independents (including individuals)? Will the emergence of dominant players be good for user-generated content with the establishment of quality standards? It's all the unanswered questions that makes this phenomenon so fascinating.

Update: Some more thoughts on user-generated content and social networks (specifically about Digg.com) can found on Tech Beat.