'Rated R' May Be Coming to a Website Near You

(NEWSER) - Barack Obama is determined to turn the legions of Facebook friends and Twitter subscribers that got him elected into an effective force for his administration, the New York Times reports. He’s already begun issuing his weekly addresses via YouTube video, rather than radio, and crafted a new group called Organizing for America to coordinate his online efforts. More»

Independent web ads for favored candidates are making an impact

(NEWSER) - A glut of political amateurs who produce popular videos on the cheap for YouTube and similar sites is redefining campaign politics. The New York Times takes a look at the phenomenon, in which partisans with nothing but passion and a computer produce often scathing videos about McCain and Obama. The campaigns, meanwhile, are struggling to ajdust to "politics at the speed of the Internet," as one Obama adviser puts it. More»

Even Obama-lovers put up firewall of online sarcasm

(NEWSER) - The Internet may love Barack Obama—he leads other presidential hopefuls in online fundraising—but some new Obama sites are a tad sarcastic, the Washington Post reports. Sites like BarackObamaIsYourNewBicycle.com and SenatorObamas.com are poking fun at Obamamania even as they partake in it. “It’s a backlash with a small ‘b,’” liberal analyst Peter Leyden said. “A ‘baracklash.’” More»

Fan's video of 7-year-old song dissing entrance exams runs afoul of officials

(NEWSER) - A seven-year-old song resurrected on YouTube has five punk rockers facing time in a Turkish prison. The song, an anti-authoritarian rant against the Turkish college entrance exam by the band Deli, was the sound track to a video posted by a fan, who lip-synched the lyrics while jumping around frantically on camera. More»

Ooyala might figure out the riddle of monetization: Forbes

(NEWSER) - There's a startup company you've probably never heard of, but chances are you've seen its work, writes Michael Humphrey in Forbes . It's called Ooyala, and it powers an enormous number of videos across the web. ESPN highlights, Miramax movies, videos that appear on the sites of Rolling Stone, TV Guide, and many more are all managed by Ooyala. The company racks up 200 million video views a month, and its future is all about making sense of the avalanche of data it receives about viewers and turning clicks into dollars. More»