The Social

Viacom's MTV Networks has brought some of its television content to Netflix's library of streaming online video, the companies announced Monday.

Yaaaaaaay! SpongeBob is taking over your Netflix account!

(Credit: Nickelodeon)

The offering consists primarily of kids' shows from the Nickelodeon network, with select seasons from the shows "iCarly," "Blue's Clues," "Dora the Explorer," "SpongeBob SquarePants," and a handful of others, as well as the first nine seasons of "South Park," the Comedy Central animated series that you probably don't want your kids watching.

Netflix's streaming-video service still very much takes the back burner to its DVDs-by-mail service, but the company has deals in place with TiVo, Boxee, Microsoft's Xbox, and some HDTV providers.

It's also the second streaming Netflix deal for Viacom, which licensed content from its Logo network last year. Viacom has also signed content deals with Joost (Disclosure: CNET News publisher CBS is an investor in Joost) and NBC Universal-News Corp. joint venture Hulu, which now runs episodes of Comedy Central's hit talk shows "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report."

One major player in the video world with which you probably won't see MTV Networks making a deal any time soon: YouTube. Viacom still has an outstanding lawsuit against YouTube parent company Google over infringing content.

Media-center start-up Boxee, which aggregates Web video for television set-top boxes, has launched a new version that restores access to video hub Hulu. The NBC Universal-News Corp. joint venture had pulled its content from Boxee after content partners took issue with it.

But it's not really the same: Boxee has brought back Hulu by extending its support for RSS feeds, and is pulling the video content in that way.

"Like IE, Firefox, or Google Reader, the RSS reader supports Google Video, Yahoo, YouTube and feeds from many other websites," a post on the Boxee blog by CEO Avner Ronen read. "While it's not as attractive or robust as our previous Hulu application, it will additionally support Hulu's public RSS feeds."

Industry talks continue, the post continued. "While we don't come from an entertainment or cable background, we are learning quickly. It is a complex business. Our meetings with Hulu and their content providers reinforced that point," Ronen wrote. "They are trying to adjust to a new reality, but they need time."

Wow. With all the drama and in-fighting among cable companies, TV content creators, and Web video companies this week, you'd think the whole industry was one big junior-high cafeteria. Oh, wait, it kind of is.

First, Hulu--a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp.--pulled its content from TV.com (which is owned by CBS, publisher of CNET News). Then it did the same with Boxee, a company that makes software designed for watching online video on TVs via set-top boxes. The reason for these measures appears to be either mounting pressure from the TV content owners that have licensed their video to Hulu, or mounting pressure from the cable companies, or both, or something like that.

Now, we've got a report in The Wall Street Journal indicating that cable giants Time Warner Cable and Comcast are in talks with some of the companies that operate pay-cable channels, for a plan to make some of the networks' content available online to subscribers. It'd probably be on a streaming, ad-supported basis, and probably available for free to existing subscribers.

I've been watching all this with quite a bit of curiosity and amusement. You see, I canceled my cable subscription and ditched my TV a few months ago, and have since been relying on a combination of Netflix (which may offer a streaming-only option as early as next year), iTunes, Hulu, and randomly dropping in on friends' apartments if I really, really want to watch something live. If I show up with a pizza and a nice friendly smile, most of them are OK with it.

In this Digital Age, cable subscriptions just seem a bit convoluted to me; no offense to the people who run the Game Show Channel or Boomerang, but those aren't my cup of tea and I'd prefer to not have to pay for them.

If this shadowy, in-the-works cable deal involves any kind of Web-only cable subscription where, say, you can pay by the stream or by the channel, I'd be all for it. And if the content providers finally work things out with the set-top box makers and Web video hubs, it could be terrific for me and other people who've gotten totally fed up with Stone Age TV offerings. For now, however, it's just a dramatic mess and recent signs are indicating that it's taking steps backward as opposed to forward.

Consequently, I'm riding out the storm for now. I'm holding off on purchasing any kind of set-top box--or a television, for that matter--until the future-of-television compass stops wildly spinning. In a few years, I'm sure, the solution to it all will seem like it should've been obvious the whole time.

Isn't that always how these things are?

We've all heard it by now. Live streams of Barack Obama's presidential inauguration broke records for the Web, with about 7.7 million streams flowing concurrently at its peak. Which, of course, makes us wonder: what will set a new record?

With broadband penetration, not to mention Web usage in general, still growing, it's conceivable that some event of historic importance will surpass the inauguration in due time. Chances are, it'll be some prescheduled event that people know to tune into, rather than a sudden occurrence--but you never know.

We picked a few possibilities: World Cup football (soccer), for example, has been a big draw for Web traffic in the past, and with the 2010 tournament taking place in South Africa, the geographic distance from Europe and the U.S. may mean that some football fans are tuning in remotely rather than on location. Or, hypothetically, what if a major TV show chooses to broadcast its finale online? (Yeah, yeah, we know, the networks would never let it happen.)

Choose your prediction, or leave a comment with your own theory.

President Barack Obama's inauguration didn't set all-time Internet traffic records but did mark the most simultaneous streaming-video viewers in the Web's history, according to content delivery network Akamai Technologies.

About 7.7 million video streams, primarily live, were being viewed at peak time Tuesday, which was at about 12:15 p.m. EST, Akamai said. Part of the reason, the company rationalizes, is that the inauguration ceremony happened when most Americans were at the office, and hence more likely to be watching via a computer screen rather than a television.

"In addition to the historic nature of the inauguration, it is now clear that this event has driven unprecedented demand from a global online audience," Robert Hughes, Akamai's executive vice president of global sales and marketing, said in a release. "With the inauguration occurring during workday hours in the U.S., we witnessed record numbers of live streams served in support of many leading news businesses."

Video from the inauguration ceremony and surrounding events was streamed all over the Web, from online video hubs like Hulu to streaming sites like Ustream to the sites of major news outlets. Demand was unprecedented: CNN.com, one of the most popular viewing destinations, had to cut off viewers and establish a wait list.

Updated at 6:41 a.m. PST on Wednesday to update statistics from CNN and Akamai.

From what early numbers are indicating, the historic swearing-in of President Barack Obama was not the biggest traffic day for the Internet. But for many social networks and digital-media sites, Inauguration Day shattered traffic and usage records regardless.

Here are the ones we've heard from so far. We'll be updating this list as we hear more:

Akamai. The content delivery network has some numbers out that indicate traffic on the Web peaked right before noon Eastern time, with about 5.4 million visitors per minute flocking to online news outlets. While this is 22 percent above normal online news consumption, per Akamai, it's not a record. Obama's victory in November pulled in nearly 8.6 million visitors per minute, and the 7 million mark has been broken by both a hotly contested World Cup soccer game in 2006 and last year's March Madness college basketball playoffs.

Akamai said later on Tuesday that the inauguration did break an all-time record for the number of simultaneous video streams.

Visitors attempting to access CNN.com's live stream of the inaugural address got this message instead (Click image for larger view). CNN was just one of many Web sites that got overloaded during the speech.

(Credit: Screenshot by CBSNews.com)

CNN. It was a big day for the Time Warner-owned news outlet's Web site. It's been continually updating its statistics, but at press time, CNN.com said it has served more than 18.8 million live video streams, including 1.3 million at the same time right before Obama gave his address, since 6 a.m. EST. That's a record: Election Day served up only 5.3 million live streams. Apparently, it wasn't all smooth sailing, though. CBS News reports that CNN.com had a note posted for potential viewers who came to see the historic moment that said, "You made it! However, so did everyone else." (See screenshot at right.)

At 6 p.m. ET, CNN.com updated its statistics: There were over 160 million page views in a 12-hour span, along with 25 million live video streams--a new record for CNN, which had a previous high of 5.3 million live streams on Election Day. At peak, CNN estimates that it was serving 1.3 million simultaneous live streams.

Facebook. The social network, which partnered with CNN for a live feed of "status" updates (sort of like Facebook's equivalent of a Twitter post) pertaining to the inauguration, has put out some usage numbers and is still updating them. As of 10:15 a.m. PST, 600,000 status messages had been set using the CNN app, and an average of 4,000 Facebook status updates were set every minute during the inauguration. They peaked the minute Obama began his speech, with 8,500 status messages set in those 60 seconds. "Millions" of members logged into the social network during the live broadcast.

Mogulus. The live-streaming service powered online inauguration video streams for C-Span, USA Today, and other newspapers owned by USA Today publisher Gannett (which has a minority stake in the company). Inauguration coverage broke Mogulus' network record, according to early numbers, with 105,000 concurrent viewers and more than 1 million visitors total.

Hulu. The video hub, a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp., declined to provide any viewership statistics for Inauguration Day.

Our colleagues at CBSNews.com report that they, too, ran into trouble with their live stream of the inauguration speech, saying that many people could not load the stream around the time of the address due to overwhelming demand.

Twitter. Co-founder Biz Stone put up a blog post after the craziness had died down on Tuesday, saying that the rate of "tweets" (Twitter messages) per second hit as much as five times the normal rate, and that the rate of tweets per minute hit four times the normal rate. He acknowledged, though, that there was a lag time of two to five minutes for many users. The good news? Twitter, once highly outage-prone, didn't crash entirely.

The New York Times. No official numbers have been released, but a representative for the newspaper's NYTimes.com division said that early data indicates the live stream of the inauguration pulled in a record number of viewers compared to all the live video it's ever run. Not surprising.

Disclosure: CNET News is published by CBS Interactive, which also publishes CBSNews.com.

(Credit: Criterion.com)

Highbrow film company The Criterion Collection has launched Criterion.com, an "online cinematheque" for people who want to watch movies, delve into some editorial content, and socialize with other fans.

Perhaps the most notable aspect of the new site is the fact that you can rent many Criterion films (a melange of old and newish, domestic and foreign) for $5 per stream, and that $5 will be deducted if you then choose to purchase the flick on DVD. Kind of a cool model that nobody seems to be using yet.

Criterion has also teamed up with a new film-centric social site, The Auteurs, to host a monthly "film festival" that makes a handful of Criterion films available for temporary free streaming and discussion. November's picks, sponsored by IFC, follow a "cruel stories of youth" theme and feature the World War II drama Au revoir les enfants as well as the quintessential nasty-kids story, Lord of the Flies, among others. No, there's no Mean Girls.

I know, I know, it's all a bit pretentious. Now go put on a scarf and down a few macchiatos and think about something deep.

News Corp.'s MySpace has the presidential debate stamp of approval.

The social network has been officially sanctioned by the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) to launch MyDebates.org, which will debut Wednesday. The site offers a downloadable app that will stream the presidential debates live, archive them for on-demand viewing (searchable and tagged, naturally), participate in polls, and track the candidates' stances on issues.

The first presidential debate is September 26, followed by a vice presidential debate on October 2. This marks the first time that the CPD has officially partnered with a Web property for debate coverage.

Since the early days of the '08 electoral process, MySpace has been launching high-profile activism initiatives through "MySpace Impact," a nonpartisan politics site. The social network has rolled out a register-to-vote contest geared toward indie bands, a citizen-journalism competition in conjunction with MSNBC, an NBC News-powered election site, and a series of polls. In addition, the site held a series of candidate "dialogues" in partnership with MTV.

MySpace, and social networks in general, were far more under-the-radar in the last presidential election cycle, so their potential impact on turnout, awareness, and election results remains unmeasured. But the site's stereotype as a teen hub shouldn't get in the way: MySpace says that four-fifths of its members are of voting age.

It's public beta time for Qik, the mobile live-video service that's captured the hearts of Web 2.0 bigwigs like Jason Calacanis and Kevin Rose. The service has been in private beta since late last year.

Along with its debut to the masses, Qik has made some tweaks: technological improvements mean that video has a lag time of only half a second to three seconds now, for example. "Groups" and "Events" features have been added to the mix, and the company has also announced that members no longer need a compatible phone to register for the service, though they'll still need a phone number to confirm their accounts.

"We've been working hard to maintain Qik's position as the world's leading mobile streaming service," CEO Ramu Sunkara said in a release. "Even if your particular phone model is still in the works, you can still sign up to participate in the Qik community, and as we roll out support for your phone, you'll be able to easily transition to streaming live as soon as it's available."

Requiring a phone number for accounts, Sunkara explained to CNET News, helps to cut down on one of the inevitable problems facing a streaming-video site: porn.

In addition, Qik has expanded its hardware reach and added more compatible handsets to the list of Windows Mobile and Symbian devices it currently supports. New additions from Samsung and Motorola bring the total count to nearly 30.

And its Web reach has broadened, too: Qik applications are now available for social networks Facebook, MySpace, and Orkut.