Boom. Bust. Rinse and Repeat<br>MediaBizzBuzz.com for January 21, 2008

This is not a time for the risk-averse. The markets are tumbling. The threat of recession looms. Last Friday the CIA admitted that the Northeast blackouts were the result, in part, of cyberattacks on the power grid. But if the short-term looks a bit grim, the Big Picture is that much more exciting.

This volatility makes its presence known across media as well. Once the darling of the digerati, Joost is being unfairly written off, in the wake of a restructure, by those who incorrectly pegged it as a "YouTube killer." Reality, as always, is far more nuanced, as the company has decided to build a US development hub in NYC. Even as Yahoo! struggles to lockdown its stock price above the teens (and, reportedly, might layoff 20% of staff in the coming weeks), widget maven Slide managed to attract $50MM in investment from some Blue blood investors (Fidelity Investments and T Rowe Price).  As Wall Street eats its own, Yale economics prof Robert Shiller argues, even the once-invulnerable Manhattan real estate market is due for its comeuppance.

It might seem too trivial to discuss MacWorld's iTunes movie rentals, or digital spectrum, but innovation is our one and only tonic. It is our forward march that can upend a slowdown. Depending on where you look, in fact, you might say, "What Slowdown?"

Web analytics company Compete charted the top online winners and losers of 2007 in terms of sheer growth. LinkedIn shot up 1048%; TechCrunch (are you sitting?) 3240%. News filtering Web sites Reddit and Stumbleupon grew at 1033% and 777%, respectively. While ClubMom took off like a shot -- 2320% growth -- the social network space is an exclusive club. It continues to to grow like gangbusters, but the marketshare is concentrated in only a handful of movers. Last week there were a flurry of reports and white papers commingling with press releases trumpeting the dominance of either MySpace or Facebook. Hitwise proclaimed MySpace Lord and Master of the realm, but TechCrunch was quick to note that Facebook had made some spectacular gains globally, causing an effusive Silicon Alley Insider to add, "Facebook is coming up behind MySpace like a Ferrari about to blow a bus."  Online video is another runaway train with Google's YouTube owning 31% of the space, as MySpace retreats from a marketshare of 8% to 4%. (Sidebar: Advertising revenue from streaming video jumped 38% to $1.37B.) Search actually sees some unpredictable trends: Google and Yahoo! have both lost ground to MSN Search, while a recent USC Center for the Digital Future study found that only 51% of people (trending down from 61%) currently believe that "most or all of the information produced by search engines is reliable and accurate." 

The Writers Strike continues to wear on, its combatants themselves becoming newsworthy. In his Friday Think Tank, Jack Myers posited that broadcast network ratings might counter-intuitively increase. Here's why. The DGA's tentative agreement with the AMPTP has had its infancy as a cudgel with which to force the Writers to say uncle. Robert Elisberg, a former board member for the WGA, has a thorough primer about that contract on HuffingtonPost. United Hollywood, a WGA blog, has a comments area that's even more illuminating than the posts from its strike captains. In the wake of the work stoppage, the Internet continues to be an enticing outlet for writers. 60Frames and Doug Liman's Jackson Bites have both just announced funding and launches. 60Frames, with the Coen Brothers on its advisory board, raised $3.5M and is looking to rollout some 50 series on the Web(think Quarterlife), while Liman will be producing TV-like content for non-traditional platforms including the Web and mobile, and was quick to seize the day by signing an interim deal with the WGA. Television itself might be spurred on by the Strike to plant its flag on uncharted territories. Cable networks, believes TellyTopia CEO Kshitij Kumar, would do well to coopt some of Web 2.0's social networking features.  With NBC Everywhere and CBS Outernet, Out of Home networks are on the rise. A concise scorecard of their recent moves.

Rx: Laugh at the abyss. Savor this moment, as Esteban Colberto (WGA-sympathizer Stephen Colbert) interviews a very game Lou Dobbs about illegal border crossings. Viva Colberto Reporte Gigante!