Internet Programming

On Thanksgiving Day, 22-year-old Stanford graduate student and entrepreneur Daniel Ackerman Greenberg posted an article on the widely read technology blog TechCrunch titled "The Secret Strategies Behind Many 'Viral' Videos." "Have you ever watched a video with 100,000 views on YouTube and thought to yourself: 'How . . . did that video get so many views?' " the post began.

Last week in a CBS Studios picket line, one TV writer referred to the current WGA work stoppage as "the first Internet strike." And there may be something to that. Certainly you'd want to clarify that, first of all, even in the last few years of the Internet era, there have been plenty of labor strikes across the country -- to say nothing of the world. Thousands of UAW workers are striking right now against truck-maker Navistar. New York cabbies have called two strikes since September.

That Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, the team behind "thirtysomething," "My So-Called Life" and "Once and Again," have turned their attention to the emerging world of Web-based TV, is on the whole good news. It would be better news if their new "quarterlife" -- which began streaming Sunday over MySpace.com and today on the team's own new social networking platform, at www.quarterlife.

What's wrong with this picture? On the first night of November, a group of about 15 professors, graduate students and film school alumni half-filled USC's tiny Ron Howard Theater. They came for a sneak preview of the much-anticipated Web series "quarterlife," an event hosted by the show's co-writer and director, Marshall Herskovitz. "Quarterlife" is about kids a few years out of college trying to find their way in the real world.

Tribune Co. and Gannett Co. said Monday that they were working on a joint venture to expand Tribune's Metromix local entertainment website network throughout the United States in a bid for more revenue from national advertisers. Metromix will be owned equally by Chicago-based Tribune and Gannett, based in McLean, Va.

Last week MySpace debuted its first original Web series, "Roommates," a new scripted reality show that places four gorgeous young women together in a beach house, along with a reality TV crew. Over its life span of 45 three-minute episodes, the show will encourage viewers to interact with its characters via MySpace's social network -- hinting that by doing so, viewers can influence the arc of the story.

Can you believe GodTube.com? First, the upstart Christian video site became the nation's fastest-growing Web property for August, according to ComScore's Media Metrix. Its 1.7 million unique visitors represented a 973% increase in traffic over the previous month. In September, the number of visitors leveled off, but the length of the average user's stay nearly doubled to a healthy 7.7 minutes, ComScore said.

san francisco -- When it comes to finding local products and services, consumers are increasingly letting their fingers do the clicking. Locally targeted search engines have replaced thick phone books as the starting point for millions of people seeking plumbers, personal injury lawyers or hair stylists. That trend is creating a big business opportunity for a slew of online players, including advertising start-ups, Internet giants and traditional yellow-pages publishers.

The social-networking website MySpace.com is launching a free, advertising-supported cellphone version as part of a wider bid by parent News Corp. to attract advertising for mobile sites, the company was set to announce today. The new version will work with all U.S. phone carriers and allow users to send and receive messages, comment on pictures, post bulletins, update blogs and request, find and search for friends. Fox Interactive Media, which oversees News Corp.'

The Screen Actors Guild announced Friday that it signed a contract to cover performers on "quarterlife," a Web series that will debut Nov. 11 on MySpaceTV.com, the video page for the popular social networking site. Billed as the most ambitious stand-alone Web project to date, the series is being produced by Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, the Emmy-winning creators of TV hits "My So-Called Life" and "thirtysomething."