Yahoo’s Mayer Now Chit-Chatting With Ryan Seacrest About Content Ideas

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is tearing her way through the content celebrities, it seems.

First, news star Katie Couric. Then, prominent tech reviewer David Pogue.

Now, it seems, she has engaged herself in preliminary discussions with Ryan Seacrest’s multi-pronged entertainment production company about what one source called “interesting business opportunities.”

Oooh, I like interesting! Maybe a singing competition? Nope, he’s been there. Maybe a radio show? Yipes, he’s done that. Perhaps a New Year’s broadcast from New York’s Times Square. Does this guy get any sleep?

While Seacrest has indeed been all over the map, it’s largely been in traditional media zones like television. You may thank him now for unleashing the Kardashians upon the world, as well as the “Shahs of Sunset.”

But, the energetic media mogul has been increasingly interested in moving into the digital entertainment arena – he’s also been increasing his personal investing in the space.

Hence, Yahoo and Mayer, who has been personally using her own tech celeb status to try to interest a number of prominent media types to come look at the company as a viable platform for high-profile endeavors.

This has been tried by the Silicon Valley Internet giant many times before, mostly without a lot of groundbreaking. That said: Netflix’s “House of Cards,” people!

And, of course, Yahoo already has some great and successful – though less flashy – content efforts going, especially in sports and finance. These have been flat-out terrific over the years, though the new streaming content redesign does not do them any favors, IMHO.

Apparently, Mayer wants more.

Any deal with Seacrest would not be like the one that Couric is mulling with Yahoo. She is talking to Mayer about doing an interview show that would run on the Yahoo home page. And Pogue will be working on a consumer tech vertical that apparently needs staff.

Sources said it would be to create some kind of original content, though sources also said the discussions are too early to tell. But, I’d expect video to be a big element in all these efforts.

As I previously wrote:

Strengthening its online video efforts has been a recent key focus for Mayer in reviving Yahoo’s fortunes, along with mobile, and sources said that she has talked a lot internally about creating some kind of competitor to Google’s YouTube. Yahoo already tried unsuccessfully to buy France’s Dailymotion, and has since been mulling other major acquisitions in the space.

Mayer has waded into the arena herself (like I said, she’s a hey-look-at-me CEO) in an unusual – but highly entertaining – video presentation of Yahoo’s second-quarter earnings that was formulated in a news-broadcast style.

On the show – which it most certainly was – she stressed the intent to make video a “primary area of investment over the next year.” It’s not just for jazz-hands purposes; video ads are a big area of revenue growth online as traditional graphical ads fade. Yahoo itself has seen a sharp falloff of those key moneymaking ads under Mayer’s regime, part of a larger trend impacting everyone.

I pinged Yahoo for a comment, and a spokesperson for Seacrest declined to comment.

You Tell Netflix What You Want to Watch, and Now It Tells You What You Really Want to Watch

One of the key features of Netflix is a vaunted set of algorithms. They are supposed to find things for you to watch on the streaming service, based on your viewing history.

But if you’d like to collect your own list of things you want to watch, Netflix lets you do that, too, via an “instant queue.”

Now Netflix is combining the two ideas. It is applying its computer intelligence to your watch list, and will start automatically sorting the movies and TV shows you have saved there. The idea is to show users “titles you’re most likely to want to watch right up front,” Netflix product executive Michael Spiegelman said, in a blog post introducing the change.

If you find that concept slightly unnerving, you can continue to manually sort your watch list – which Netflix is now calling “My List” – by changing your default settings. But the company said it has tested the new approach and thinks customers will appreciate it.

Among other tweaks, the new lists will also flag movies and TV shows that are set to disappear from the service in the near future as licensing rights expire.

And if you’re one of Netflix’s eight million users outside of the U.S., this will all be new to you. Netflix never made its “instant queue” feature, which stems from its DVD-by-mail roots, available to international streaming subscribers at all.

(Image courtesy of Shutterstock/Everett Collection)

How to Spread Your Music Across the Web

Cloud storage has transformed the way digital music collectors access their media. But with so many competing hosting services, which should you choose?

How about: All of them. Here’s how to sync your music collection throughout the cloud.

iTunes

Apple’s supplemented its ubiquitous media management program in 2011 with iCloud, a 20,000 track music locker. Its companion program iTunes Match, for $25 a year, matches songs from your local drive with 256kbit versions already floating in Apple’s cloud. This saves you from having to spend hours uploading your entire collection. And it allows you to stream music you don’t have locally saved.

However, unlike other services like Google Play or Amazon Cloud Player, iTunes (without Match doesn’t actually stream files from the iCloud. Instead, it downloads tracks individually onto the device, which conserves bandwidth at the expense of local drive space.

Google Play

If you’ve used iTunes exclusively in the past, syncing your existing collection between it and Google Play Music (GPM) is surprisingly easy:

• Go to Google Play Music and sign up for an account.
• Download and run the Google Music Manager (runs on both Mac and Windows).
• Follow the on-screen instructions to scan and upload files from your iTunes library and playlists.
• When prompted, allow for automatic uploads from iTunes to Google Play.

Conversely, in order to sync purchases from Google Play with iTunes, follow these steps:

• Open up the GMM and choose Download
• Select the “Only include songs since last download” check box
• Set your iTunes library as the download location

• That’s it. GMM will monitor and sync iTunes without any further instruction. Use iTunes as the primary source for your music collection, then point Google Play to the iTunes folder on your local drive—it makes keeping the two competing services in step with each another a breeze.

  Amazon Cloud Player

  Syncing iTunes with Amazon Cloud Player works much the same way as iTunes/GPM, but requires a bit more work.

  • Go to Amazon Cloud Player and set up an account.
  • Amazon uses separate programs for uploading and downloading music, so you’ll need to install both.
  • Log in to ACP, and click on the Import Your Music button in the upper left. Note—the Importer does not work with Chrome.
  • Follow the on-screen Importer instructions. You can either have it scan your system for songs or you can just point it directly at the iTunes folder.
  • Back on the ACP website, go to Settings -> Your MP3 Settings.
  • Set ACP to download purchases to the local drive, in addition to storing it in the cloud. Set your iTunes folder as the storage destination.

  • This way, whenever you buy music on Amazon, it will automatically sync with iTunes, and, if you followed the instructions above, Google Play as well. Unlike GMM, however, Amazon’s player doesn’t actively monitor the source folder for changes, so you’ll need to re-run the Importer whenever you buy music on iTunes.

    Spotify

    Though Spotify leans heavily towards streaming services, it also offers playback of local files. As such, you can sync iTunes and Spotify to a degree:

    • Sign up for the free Spotify service and download the Spotify desktop app.
    • Open Spotify and select Local Files from the navigation list on the left.
    • Select the “from your computer” link at the top and select everything under “show tracks from these sources.”
    • Connect your laptop and mobile device to the same WiFi network. Open both the mobile and desktop apps, and sync your files between them.

    • You won’t be able to sync your streaming Spotify selections with the other services, but this method will allow you to effectively play music stored across all four services through a single program.

      [Google 1, 2 – About – PC World]