Since its launch, YouTube has sparked a revival of sorts with several thousands of users signing up for the service and in turn generating content, which are gobbled up by the masses. YouTube recently announced that its viewers were "now watching more than 100 million videos per day on its site,” and this announcement has sparked heaps of praise onto the young web 2.0 startup. Internet traffic monitor Hitwise also stated that YouTube is the leading net video download site in the US, with 29% of the country's multimedia market.

The Hitwise report also listed other players in the US multimedia entertainment market. News Corp’s MySpace has only a 19 percent share of the market which is a distant second compared to YouTube’s 29 percent share! Then the folks who are really lagging behind in the online video race are Yahoo, MSN, Google and AOL who only have 3-5 percent of the video search market.

For now, it seems like YouTube has firmly established its presence and has large following. The question is, will the folks at YouTube be able to maintain this lead against their competitors? How are they going to address issues of copyright content being uploaded onto their site? All these questions seem unanswered.

Another important aspect to this whole game is the issue of a revenue model. The company says that it is "still working" on developing advertising and other revenue generating services to support the business.

Everyone wants to be a part of the "YouTube culture", but within another quarter will YouTube be a culture or just another fad? With the way things are going for YouTube, I certainly see it growing into something bigger and better. There’s a lot of space for growth, but I think the folks at YouTube have a clear sense of direction if they have come this far.

 MySpace users have been faced with a MySpace hacking scheme wherein malware writers have embedded a Flash-based malicious code in profiles, which redirect victims to an online outburst, which blames the US government for being responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Other reports also state that the visitor’s page has also been hacked into, therefore creating a domino effect of sorts.

Has this happened because MySpace is built on poorly written code? Or is it because it just darn simple to hack into MySpace? A couple of weeks back, MySpace was in the news for all the wrong reasons. The service was gloriously being used by online sexual predators to target minors.

Movielink, an online service that distributes movies over the Internet, has closed a deal with software company Sonic Solutions to acquire technology that will make it possible for consumers to burn DVD copies of movies they download off the Internet. Basically, Movielink is going to help users tide over the bothersome issue of DRM.

The technology from Sonic Solutions is designed to address Hollywood's piracy concerns by allowing copy protection to be added to DVDs burned in the home. This possibly means that users would be prevented from making numerous copies of a certain movie at a single time. According to reports, the on-demand movie service, which is jointly operated by five Hollywood studios, has yet to say which entertainment companies will take advantage of this new feature.

It isn’t clear when the feature will be available since pricing on the feature hasn’t been disclosed as yet. But when it has been accepted, it is sure to take off very well. In this age of video on the net, studios and the like are looking at how to effectively satisfy the consumer without hurting their own profit margins. Could this new yet-to-be unveiled feature by Movielink be the key? Watch this space as it happens.

Salesforce.com, an online business solutions provider (read on-demand CRM provider), has released the latest version of their market-leading CRM suite. The new version codenamed “Summer ‘06” will incorporate upgrades in areas of sales, service and support and marketing.

The most important update is the SAP Connector update. According to Salesforce, “With this latest release, Summer ‘06, salesforce.com is giving a preview of its next important stage of evolution. Beyond the anticipated application functionality it is releasing the critical component to enterprise class customers: native integration to their back office system. With the release of the Salesforce Connector for SAP R/3, salesforce.com is making the very important bridge for customers between their traditional enterprise systems and their on-demand installation.”'

This means that SAP customers wouldn’t really need to move their CRM software over to SAP, especially when Salesforce have a connector in place. The Salesforce Connector for SAP R/3 will be free for Unlimited Edition customers and will cost $12,000 per annum for Enterprise Edition customers.

Other features that have been included in the update include:

• Salesforce PRM: Complete visibility and lifecycle management of indirect sales channels.
• Lead history tracking: One can analyze every time a lead is touched to maximize conversions.
• Mobile enhancements.
• Advanced call scripting to guide sales and service professionals through the right set of interactions with every customer.
• Service entitlements to provide more information to service reps about customer service contracts to help match the specific level of service for every customer.

Summer ’06 is available in Personal, Team, Professional, Enterprise and Unlimited Editions.

Yahoo! Finance is getting a makeover on Monday with completely new interactive stock charts, improved message boards and business-related video clips from content partners.

Also, the revamped website will feature a full-screen application that will allow users to add events such as a company’s stock splits or dividends with one click, see competitor charts and click and drag to customize a chart's time range, as well as type in specific dates.

The fresh inputs into the site will also allow Internet publishers to easily add a stock chart, quotes and news headlines to their Web site. Changes on the Yahoo Finance message board will also include more information on postings, the ability to rate messages, and to sort and filter messages based on ratings.

So, is this Yahoo’s answering salvo to Google’s Google Finance? I definitely think so. Also, will Yahoo’s move elicit a makeover reaction from other major financial websites such as, say, CNN Money and Marketwatch?

Multiply, my personal favorite when it comes to social networking websites has closed a Series A funding round with $5 million from Transcosmos and $1 million from the company’s founders. This is a nice little cash boost into the website.

If used carefully, the website can make many improvements to their service offering and possibly take a larger bite into the social networking pie. According to a blog post by Mr. Arrington, Multiply will use the funds to expand features, functionality, marketing and international presence.

Multiply, is a social networking website that launched in March 2004, has approximately 3 million registered users. The website is a social networking website with a twist. The service primarily focuses on limiting interactions to people who are already connected to each other – and this concept has caught on very well with its users.

Google Video has begun offering new video search and store services in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK and Canada.

Until now, all of Google Video’s content offerings have come off the US Google Video site. And this meant that the US market strongly determined which videos were the most popular video clips.

The new eight national editions will now help mirror the likes of the countries each site serves. According to reports, launch content partners partnering with Google Video in this venture, are ITN, Wimbledon video rights holder IMG Media, the Cousteau Society, Talkback Thames, Buena Vista International, FC Barcelona and France’s National Audiovisual Archive.

After being in a 9-month beta period, Yahoo! publicly launched its Trip Planner, a research tool that allows users to create their travel guides and itineraries and share their experiences online.

The new service that is ready to be used by the public allows users to plan their trips, select various sights, hotels et al. Users could also make their trips public and view other people’s trips to create a sort of collective travel guide. Yahoo! Trip Planner also sees the integration of Yahoo Maps, Flickr, and Yahoo 360 blogs. Users can see their trips plotted on a Yahoo Map, and can chronicle their journey by posting blog items during and after the trip, illustrating it by dragging and dropping their Flickr photos.

Also, in conjunction with the launch of Trip Planner, Yahoo! Travel has partnered with MasterCard to give users the opportunity to showcase their Trip Plans through its Great Trip Planner Ticket Giveaway promotion. MasterCard will be providing two free airline tickets a day in a sweepstakes for qualified entrants through the end of August.

Michael Arrington has reported that Bebo, a social networking website, rejected a £300 million ($552 million) acquisition offer from British Telecom Group.

According to the post on TechCrunch, the social networking site rejected the offer because the folks at Bebo were looking for an offer that would fetch them more than a $1billion!!

You can read the whole post here.

But what really does get to me, is that, how can a social networking website, that recently raised $15 million from Benchmark Capital, throw out a half billion dollar deal in the wink of an eye? How? What is the web 2.0 bubble coming to? Damn!