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How do you replicate big-box retailers online? Mashery has an answer

Offline, vendors recognize the importance of moving products as close to the would-be consumer as possible. Retailers, fast food chains, and other vendors therefore build physical locations all over the world, seeking to be physically proximate to potential customers.

Online, we still somehow believe that it's acceptable to build one store (e.g., BarnesandNoble.com) and expect the world to beat a path to the vendor's door.

Best Buy doesn't think so, and is doing some exceptionally interesting work with San Francisco-based Mashery to effectively replicate and extend the local shopping experience online.

The key to it all is the API (application programming interface), as The New York Times describes, which "lets Web sites make their content easily available to other Web developers, who can import it, display it on their own sites and mash it up with other material."

In Best Buy's case, this means making its product catalog available to the world. No big deal? Consider that this essentially opens up a Best Buy store on every niche Web site on the planet (that chooses to use the Best Buy Remix API, of course). Perhaps I'd like to provide detailed information about scanners that I want to sell. Best Buy's Remix lets me leverage its catalog (along with product reviews and more).

The next phase for Best Buy? Open up its shopping cart, as well, so that each of these corner stores becomes not only a place to browse but also a place to buy Best Buy products, taking a share of the sale in the process. Best Buy everywhere...even more than it could hope to achieve offline.

Best Buy, however, isn't alone in this. Mashery is also working with MTV, which suggests the following services with its API as a starting point:… Read more

MTV Networks buys Social Project platform

NEW YORK--Viacom division MTV Networks announced Monday that it has turned its minority stake in software company Social Platform into a full acquisition: Social Project, formerly known as Tagworld, is the basis for Viacom's Flux.

MTV Networks launched Flux just over a year ago as a social-networking platform that would be used across all its digital entertainment properties as well as eventually sites outside Viacom. The original Tagworld investment started in November 2006. Flux now powers community features on MTV.com, Colbert Nation, Atom.com, and other Viacom-owned sites, allowing users to access all of them with a single … Read more

MTV's next step in social networking: Backchannel

Once the global leader in youth culture, MTV's attempts to address the social-networking craze have seemed a little puzzling sometimes (the Twittering Moon Man?) But now we've seen another piece of the entertainment brand's puzzle: Backchannel, a play-while-you watch game that's one part chat room, one part Digg, and one part Mystery Science Theater with a Mean Girls twist.

It's debuting on Monday night with that evening's episode of wildly popular reality-soap The Hills.

Here's how Backchannel works: Watch the show (for now, only The Hills is on Backchannel, but later this fall … Read more

MTV's 'Soundtrack' jumps on stage

MTV might've strayed away from music these days--My Super Sweet Sixteen, anyone?--but the entertainment mainstay's latest project aims to both bring it back to its roots and propel it into the social Web. Ambitious, yes.

It's called "Soundtrack," and it's an "interactive music guide for TV." If you're watching a heated moment of cattiness between Lauren and Audrina on The Hills and are dying to know what song's playing in the background, you can log on and find out exactly what it was. Then you can purchase the MP3, … Read more

Guns N' Roses to release song on 'Rock Band 2'

We've heard about songs getting released on iLike, Imeem, MySpace, and a whole lot else. But Rock Band?

That's on the way, according to Microsoft's press conference at the E3 Expo. The New York Times reported that that it could be on the way as rumors swirled that Rock Band 2, the second iteration of the music video game from MTV, would include a track called "Shacklers' Revenge" from legendary hard-rock group Guns N' Roses.

Now it's been confirmed. The long-delayed new Guns N' Roses album, Chinese Democracy, is on the way too, and … Read more

Atom Films relaunched as Comedy Central sister site

NEW YORK--Two years after acquiring it, MTV Networks has shaped Atom Films into Atom.com, a sister site to its Comedy Central network dedicated to short-form, Web-based comedy.

Executives from the Viacom-owned MTV Networks held a press conference here on Thursday to kick off the new site, which Executive Vice President of Digital Media Erik Flannigan described as "our punk-rock label...where you're purposely encouraging development that's supposed to (expletive) with the system and break down boundaries."

Along with four new original Web series commissioned by Comedy Central, which range from an animated show about conjoined … Read more

'Guitar Hero,' 'Rock Band' soon playing Beatles?

Beatles music may soon be strumming a new tune via air guitar video games, according to a report in the Financial Times.

Apple Corps and EMI, which respectively represent The Beatles' business interests and ownership of its master recordings, have reportedly been in discussions with video game publishers Activision and MTV Games.

Under a possible deal that could be worth several million dollars, users could put their air guitar to use while listening to The Beatles and playing Activision's Guitar Hero or MTV's Rock Band games, according to the report.

The move to push The Beatles' music onto … Read more

MTV does another phone for Europe

MTV is continuing its march across Europe to get its logo on various continental-based gadgets. Its latest effort is a co-branded "MTV Edition" of Sony Ericsson's W760i Walkman phone.

It's the second MTV handset released on the European market, following one designed by Paris-based ModeLabs for France. Both are sliders, though the newest version at least tries a different design, as opposed to the rather lame logo on ModeLab's red 3G phone.

The Sony Ericsson version also features a GPS receiver, games, and an "enhanced music experience," according to MobileWhack, as well as … Read more

MTV Networks launches video hub for gay community

Execs at MTV Networks say the best way to distribute media over the Web is to "go an inch wide but a mile deep."

Instead of one central Web destination, Viacom-owned MTV Networks is building hundreds of sites around its content. An example of that strategy can be found at Logo, the unit that serves the gay and lesbian community.

Logo launched a new video hub on Wednesday that Lisa Sherman, Logo's general manager, said will feature 3,000 ad-supported clips and be the largest central library of videos for the gay and lesbian audience.

"This … Read more

MTV trots out mobile phone in France

MTV is continuing to push its brand onto gadgets, though it seems to be more interested in Europe than anywhere else. A couple of weeks ago its logo showed up in an X-ray on a "multi-room box" distributed by U.K.-based Sky TV, and now it's coming out with a branded mobile phone in France.

The red 3G slider, from handset designer ModeLabs, has a 2.2-inch display, a 2-megapixel camera, Bluetooth, and, of course, an MP3 player, according to Pocket-lint. Aside from the obvious logo, it offers exclusive access to MTV content, as well as … Read more