Big Noise, White Noise

Two interesting news bits made their way across my sphere of awareness today.

Blip'd

On twitter, Schlomo Rabinowitz asked Charles Hope from Blip TV what the website "Blipd" was. I noticed the message and went clicking around myself.

Turns out that Blipd is the brainchild of Ty Graham. An easy Google search pulled up this blog post from Startup Booster, in which the specifics of the Blipd concept are discussed.

In a nutshell, Blipd appears to be a patented way to monetize social networks. Graham's ultimate goal is to sell the idea, which he's been sitting on since 2005, to Google for use in YouTube.

Despite the bravado in his claim -- phrases like "It’s stunning how no one has thought of this yet" and "I hold the ultimate key for more tremendous Youtube success" do nothing for the cause of humility -- it could be interesting to see how this all plays out...

... especially since I find it odd that someone would coin a phrase ("blipp'd") to describe something so startlingly similar to the existing Blip TV that he even used the same color scheme on his own site...

Pyro TV

Speaking of borrowing ideas...

Jeff Pulver received a phone call from the folks at Pyro TV today, asking him to promote their site. During the phone call, Pulver noticed that Pyro TV seems to have all the great shows on their homepage -- Ask a Ninja, Rocketboom, Diggnation, even the evening news from ABC and CBS!

When he asked if the gent on the other end of the line had a working relationship with these content creators, he was told that, no, because the RSS feeds are just "out there," he felt they were free for the taking.

I have a sneaking suspicion the Ask a Ninjas and CBSs of the world may beg to differ -- especially because the Pyro TV logo is all over their content...

Onward and upward...