Mom always said you should never play with your food, and ration your Halloween candy so you don't get sick. Fortunately these creative-minded artists were too stubborn to listen.
When you've scarfed down every KitKat in your trick-or-treat bag, and couldn't possibly manage another until next Christmas, consider turning your stash into a work of art.
These Candy Warhols have the right idea.
Image: Instagram, emadagals
Doomsday arrived on Oct. 30, 1938, when poisonous black gas crept through New Jersey, ray guns shot flames across New York City and killing machines from Mars took over the nation.
Or, that's what nearly 1 million radio listeners thought, at least.
Wednesday marks the 75th anniversary of Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" broadcast, an episode from CBS's The Mercury Theatre on the Air and an adaptation of H.G. Wells' science fiction novel. The show, a fake news report of alien invaders from Mars, struck fear into the nation as listeners were convinced the fictional story was a very real, live broadcast.
PBS celebrated the milestone a day early with the premiere of War of the Worlds, a documentary presented by American Experience.
"This is the most famous media event in history," American Experience Executive Producer Mark Samel told Mashable. "It showed us that fear can overcome even the most rational parts of our brains."
Welles was just 23 years old at the time. Two nights before the broadcast, he scrapped much of the original script, believing the simple retelling of H.G. Well's story was too boring, Samel said. Instead, he found a creative way to make listeners pay attention.
At 8 p.m. on Halloween's eve, the 1938 show started with a weather report and a swing band number before scripted "breaking news" reports of invading tripods interrupted the broadcast.
The host reported that 7,000 soldiers and a fleet of army planes were called in to fight off the invaders. The military's effort was unsuccessful.
"They wrecked the greatest country in the world," one interviewee said in the show. "There isn't anything to do. We're done. We're licked."
The hour-long broadcast concluded with Welles breaking character to assure listeners that what they had just heard was just a Halloween prank, but the warning came too late for many listeners.
The following morning, Halloween 1938, The New York Daily News reported "unbelievable scenes of terror in New York, New Jersey, the South and as far west as San Francisco."
"Without waiting for further details, thousands of listeners rushed from their homes in New York and New Jersey, many with towels across their faces to protect themselves from 'gas' which the invader was supposed to be spewing forth," the original article said.
The New York Daily News report continued: 15 people were treated for shock in a New Jersey hospital, and a woman in Pittsburg tried to commit suicide upon hearing of the "attack."
However, there are conflicting reports about the scale of the reaction. Newspapers especially have been accused of exaggerating the situation, Samels said.
"There was a great variety of reactions, not one mass panic," he said. "Some panicked. Some were confused."
Samels explained that people in 1938 weren't gullible. The confusion and fear came from a perfect storm of emotions and events. These people were living through the Great Depression and witnessed the beginning tensions that would lead to World War II. They became used to breaking news interruptions to report the worst, such as the Hindenburg disaster, and just months before, scientists began speculating about life on Mars.
"Imagine being jolted like economically and politically," he said. "All of these possibilities are up in the air. This spoke to an already anxious country."
Listen to the full 1938 "War of the Worlds" broadcast, below.
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Image: Courtesy of Photofest, Inc.
When you’re applying for a job, you don’t just want to get noticed, you want to stand out as the best applicant the hiring committee has ever seen. You know you’re the perfect person for the job â€" and you want them to know that, too.
But how, exactly, do you do that? We pulled together a roundup of our all-time best job search advice, from getting noticed before you apply to acing the interview, plus tips from our favorite career experts â€" to bring you 35 ways to put yourself ahead of the pack.
1. “The fastest way to an interview is when someone I know makes a referral or recommendation,†says Raj Aggarwal, founder and CEO of Localytics. So, if you have contacts who can refer you to a job or introduce you to a hiring manager, by all means, spend your time and energy there â€" it will have the greatest payoff! Marie Burns, @marieburns
2. Recruiters spend countless hours scouring LinkedIn in search of the high performers. Knowing this, you’ll serve yourself well to market yourself as a high performer, through your verbiage (think action words, accomplishments) and by having multiple endorsements. Want some? Start endorsing others â€" they’re bound to return the favor. Jenny Foss, @jobjenny
3. Create a winning online portfolio, showcasing samples of your work. Better yet, if you’re applying for a specific position, pay particular attention to the skills advertised in the job description, then use that information to help guide you on what to put front and center on your portfolio. For instance, if you’re applying to a health care company, make sure the work you’ve done for other healthcare clients is easily accessible â€" more so than, say, your fashion, sports and media work. Danny Groner, @dannygroner
4. Ask a few key people to write a LinkedIn recommendation for you, and be specific: Tell the person precisely what you’d love showcased and offer specific examples. Recruiters often send their own clients (the companies doing the hiring) right to a job seeker’s LinkedIn page if the recommendations look good, so taking the time to solicit a few great ones can pay serious dividends. Jenny Foss, @jobjenny
5. A very unique way to get the time and attention of startup leaders is to offer a suggestion for the company or present an interesting perspective of the business that they hadn’t thought of before. As Aaron White, CTO and co-founder of Boundless told me, “Coffee is cheap. Ask to meet with me over coffee, and then provide value to me by offering some sort of valuable feedback on my product. I’ll gladly give you my time.†Marie Burns, @marieburns
6. I’ve had a candidate come in for an informational interview (not even a proper job interview) and have a printed, bound, 15-page presentation on ideas for my company. That sort of initiative is hard to ignore, especially when the ideas are spot on. Alex Cavoulacos, @acavoulacos
7. Use as many facts, figures and numbers as you can in your resume bullet points. How many people were impacted by your work? By what percentage did you exceed your goals? By quantifying your accomplishments, you really allow the hiring manager to picture the level of work or responsibility you needed to achieve this accomplishment. Amy Michalenko
8. When you’re writing your cover letter, remember that the hiring manager is likely going to be reading a lot of them (and she probably doesn’t really enjoy reading them much more than you like writing them). So, while you want to make the letter professional, you also want to put some of your own personality in it. Crafting an engaging letter with some color will catch people’s eyes and make them think, “Wow, this would be a fun person to work with.†Erin Greenawald, @erinaceously
9. Recruiters appreciate candidates who prepare and can demonstrate that they’ve read up on the company and understand the organization’s problems and concerns â€" also known as “pain points.†Make a clear connection between with the company needs and your specific skills and accomplishments, and you’ll be a head above the other candidates. Miriam Salpeter, @keppie_careers
10. One of the most important ways to show you’re the right person for the job is to spell out how you would fit in to the position and the company’s goals. Giving a few examples of how your past experience is transferrable shows that you’ve thought through how you would fit in to the organization â€" and makes things crystal clear for the hiring manager, too. Kristin Flink Kranias, @flinkranias
11. I’ve seen graphic designers turn their resumes into beautifully designed, infographic-style works of art, and marketing and communications professionals create ad campaigns with a tagline on how their skills match the open position. Check out these stunningly creative resumes from 1st Web Desiger or Alyson Shontell’s “23 Cool Resumes We Found on Instagram†for everything from graphic art to word clouds to even origami. Ashley Faus, @ashleyfaus
12. Doing extra credit like a video (even if it’s an unedited webcam clip) can go a long way in distinguishing yourself from other candidates. Steffi Wu, @steffiwu
13. For a high-level marketing position I had my eye on, I managed to land an interview by sending in three campaign ideas, complete with ad mock-ups, target segments and a financial forecast. My interviewer told me the company was impressed with my research, attention to detail and willingness to start solving problems for the organization â€" before they’d even called me back! Ashley Faus, @ashleyfaus
14. It’s better to address a cover letter or pitch email to a specific person rather than just saying “Dear hiring manager.†And not just any person, but the right person â€" the person who could choose you for the job. (Need help finding that email address? We’ve got you covered.) Alexis Grant, @alexisgrant
15. Apply on Monday. A new study by Bright.com, a job search site, finds that applicants were most likely to advance in the hiring process â€" as in, to be called in for an interview â€" if they sent in their resume on a Monday, as opposed to any other day. LearnVest, @LearnVest
16. The person at the front desk may not be the hiring manager â€" but that doesn’t mean his or her impression of you doesn’t matter. In fact, some companies specifically ask their front desk attendants to report back on the demeanor of interviewees who come through the door. Katie Douthwaite, @kdouth
17. A Fortune 500 CEO once said that when he had to choose between two candidates with similar qualifications, he gave the position to the candidate with the better handshake. Extreme? Perhaps, but he’s actually not alone in his judgment. Check out these video instructions for the perfect handshake. Olivia Fox Cabone
18. Dress for success â€" but that doesn’t always mean a suit. Find out how company regulars dress on a daily basis, and then step it up just a notch for that first meeting (e.g., if everyone wears jeans, don a pair of pressed khakis). You’ll easily prove that you can fit right in. Katie Douthwaite, @kdouth
19. Introduce yourself by making eye contact, smiling, stating your first and last name, and giving a firm but brief handshake. Then, listen for the other person’s name (believe me, it’s easy to miss when you’re nervous), then use it two times while you’re speaking. This will not only help you remember his or her name, but also appear sincere and interested in the conversation. Laura Katen, @katenconsulting
20. Imitating certain behaviors and attitudes of your interviewer can help make a fast connection between you and the stranger on the other side of the table (it’s called mirroring, and it works). For example, if your interviewer has high energy and gestures while he or she talks, strive to express that high level of liveliness. And vice versa: If your questioner is calm and serious, tame your energy down a bit. Katie Douthwaite, @kdouth
21. Pay attention to what your body language is communicating. “Once you’ve done this for a while, you have an ability to read people by their behavior,†says Deb Niezer, COO of AALCO Distributing. “You look at body language, the way they speak, and the way they present themselves to show the whole picture. If they say, ‘I’m open to new ideas,’ but then sit with their arms and legs crossed, it’s questionable. If they say they have management skills but don’t carry themselves like leaders, it’s hard to trust that assertion. The details make the difference.†LearnVest, @LearnVest
22. Overall, the most impressive candidates are those who genuinely care about the company and job they are interviewing for, have done their research, and are able to sell themselves based on that information. For someone interviewing for my team personally, one particular candidate read all my blogs, followed me on Twitter, and came in fully prepared based on my online advice and killed the interview. Marie Burns, @marieburns
23. Take your portfolio to a job interview, and refer to the items inside while discussing your work experience. Saying “I planned a fundraising event from beginning to end†is one thing â€" showing the event invitation, program, budget and volunteer guidelines you put together is completely another. Chrissy Scivicque, @EatYourCareer
24. Don’t forget about the numbers! Finding some numbers, percentages, increases or quotas you can use when talking about your responsibilities and accomplishments really sweetens the deal and helps you tell a hiring manager why you’re so awesome without feeling like you’re bragging. Don’t just say, “I increased sales†â€" try “I boosted our sales numbers 75%,†and you’re sure to be remembered. Ryan Kahn, @hired
25. Be ready with ideas for how you’d like to improve the company in your role. What new features would you be most excited to build? How would you engage users (or re-engage existing ones)? How could the company increase conversions? How could customer service be improved? You don’t need to have the company’s four-year strategy figured out, but you can share your thoughts, and more importantly, show how your interests and expertise would lend themselves to the job. Alison Johnston Rue, @ajalison
26. When responding to interview questions, use the S-T-A-R method. Set up the situation and the task that you were required to complete to provide the interviewer with background context, but spend the bulk of your time describing what you actually did (the action) and what you achieved (the result). For example, “In one month, I streamlined the process, which saved my group 10 man-hours each month and reduced errors on invoices by 5%.†Nicole Lindsay, @MBAminority
27. When you’re presented with a complicated question, don’t be afraid to answer it with more questions. What the interviewer is really looking for is that you can think through the information you’ll need to reach a solution, and then ask for it â€" or explain how you’d seek it out â€" in a structured, logical way. Suki Shah, @SukiShah
28. Show them that you’ve made your mark in your past positions and didn’t just follow your predecessor’s checklist, whether it was at an internship, your last job, a college club, or a team-building event you organized to boost company morale. Earned your division more money than the person before you? Share that monetary difference. Reeled in more vendors than your peers did to participate in a fundraiser? Show that outstanding work with something no one can argue with â€" math. Megan Broussard, @ProfessionGal
29. When you start listening to your interviewer’s responses, you can determine what kind of of answers he or she is looking for. Does your interviewer go into a lot of elaboration? Does he or she use data sources as examples? Model your responses the same way: If your interviewer consistently mentions percentages and numbers, make sure to weave those into your answers, clearly indicating that you decreased your department’s case backlog by 65%, or that you exceeded your fundraising goal by $1,500 last quarter. Katie Douthwaite, @kdouth
30. If you know someone in the company, find ways to bring it up naturally during the course of the interview. Think: “John told me about your yearly company BBQs with a dodgeball tournament â€" that sounds like my kind of fun.†Erin Greenawald, @erinaceously
31. It’s awesome when people skip the typical, broad “day-in-the-life†and “company culture†questions and dig much deeper into what we do, how we do it, and what we’re looking for.†Steffi Wu, @steffiwu
32. Studies show that the highest rated interviewees are those who seem positive, interested, and engaged (P-I-E) in the conversation. But it’s hard to pull off this trifecta when you’re obsessing over what question might be coming next and then scrambling to recall how you’re supposed to answer it. Focus more on being a thoughtful participant in the conversation than on trying to predict what’s coming next and how you’re going to respond. Jenny Foss, @jobjenny
33. Besides providing thoughtful and succinct answers to the questions asked, I think personal thank-you notes (referencing specific parts of the conversation we had) really nailed home that this person was interested and amazing. Christie Mims, @revolutionsclub
34. After the director of a marketing agency told me I didn’t have enough experience for the gig, I sent over a thank-you note, plus some ready-to-use language for their soon-to-be-re-launched website, as if I was already part of the team. By keeping my follow-up note short and sweet â€" and by including a surprising burst of generosity â€" I caught the director’s attention, big time. It was a simple a-ha! that forever changed the way I ask for favors, pitch ideas and tease out opportunities. Alexandra Franzen, @alex_franzen
35. I’ve met with a number of great candidates, but one who stood out was a designer who came in and blew everyone away. She did so much research on the company, the role and the gaps she could see filling, and she asked really smart questions. She also did her research on the interviewers so she knew her audience and connected with each of them in a personal way. It was almost like she was already part of the team. And if that wasn’t enough, she followed up with a handwritten note attached to a dozen amazing cupcakes! Amy Knapp, @amoodyknapp
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Image: Flickr, World Relief Spokane
This article originally published at The Daily Muse here
You have your souped-up Halloween costume and festive beverages, but this Halloweekend won't be complete until you've got the bumpin' jams you're going to shake your costumed keister to on All Hallows Eve.
From Kanye West to Rob Zombie, all the way back to Ray Parker, Jr., these mashups have your undead dance floor covered.
Now you won't have to sit alone in your apartment, listening to "Monster Mash" on repeat and wondering why your friends don't come to your parties anymore.
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BONUS: 10 Halloween Masks You Can Print at Home
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Flip phones are making a comeback, just in time for Halloween. Hello again, Moto!
Redditor NoBackstreetboys created a wildly impressively Motorola Razr costume, which might trigger flashbacks to the mid-2000s. (Sorry in advance.)
The clever costume designer even shared some of the specs with curious commenters. This tech flashback marvel used an iPad for the front screen and LED flashlights to achieve the light-up effect. The rest was simple mechanics â€" and a lot of creativity.
So don't discount that fax machine or pager costume just yet.
BONUS: 10 Kids Unaware of Their WTF Halloween Costume
Homepage image: Flickr, lemsipmatt
As the holiday season approaches, a bevy of gadgets continue to be announced in order to make it onto wish lists around the world. What are the most popular gadgets up for the gift-wrapping treatment?
The answer is mobile devices â€" smartphones and tablets â€" and though there are plenty on the market already, that didn't stop the impressive flow of tech that occurred this week.
The big news this week was the unveiling of Apple's new iPad Air, the super sleek but powerful next generation tablet. The device comes with an A7 chipset that makes it faster than its predecessor. The 16GB Wi-Fi only version will cost $499, and a 128GB version will be $799. The latest Apple gadget will be available for purchase Nov. 1.
Apple wasn't the only company to announce a new tablet this week. Nokia will release its first Windows tablet, the Lumia 2520. The device will be one of the few devices that run Windows RT 8.1 and will be Wi-Fi and LTE enabled. AT&T will sell this new tablet, though there is no news on when or how much customers will have to pay if they want to pick up their own Lumia 2520.
Gadgets aren't just holiday presents; some can save lives. The Gene-Radar, developed by U.S.-based nanotechnology firm Nanobiosym, can detect HIV/AIDS. The iPad-sized device takes a bodily fluid sample and delivers the test results in less than an hour. The gadget makes HIV/AIDS testing cheaper and can help diagnose patients more accurately in poor countries, where medical resources are often few and far between.
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Homepage image: Carl Court/AFP/Getty Images
For over 20 years, The Simpsons have been the most famous animated family in the world.
YouTube channel Alltime10s dug deep to find some facts that even super fans might be surprised to learn.
You may know what "knifey-spoony" is, but did you know Homer's iconic "D'oh!" was inspired by a character from Laurel & Hardy?
Check out the video for more facts to stuff in your brain.
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Homepage Image: Flickr, Pop Culture Geek.
It's hardly a secret: Young people have been hit harder by this recession than any other age group. Companies have drastically slowed the rates at which they hire entry-level employees to cope with a shrinking economy. This has meant that the most highly educated generation in U.S. history is also taking the longest to get their careers off the ground.
But paradoxically, one of the few growth sectors of the U.S. economy right now is one that generates very little interest among millennials.
With cybersecurity concerns increasingly dominating political and business conversations, the digital security industry is one of the fastest growing segments of an economy still reeling from the Great Recession. But a new survey from a leading defense technology company shows interest is low among those most in need of work.
According to Raytheon's poll, only 24% of millennials have an interest in cybersecurity as a career field. Comparably, 40% of respondents said they'd rather work in TV or entertainment, while 26% expressed interest in being a lawyer. (Survey takers could pick multiple career interests.)
This relative lack of interest comes at a time when the industry itself is booming, Motherboard points out. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the market for "network systems and information security professionals" is expected to grow by 53% through the next five years.
Part of the reason for this gap might be that the the vast majority of young people â€" 82% â€" say cybersecurity as a job option was never mentioned to them once in high school by a teacher or guidance counselor. For many, it’s a field they may never have considered.
"Given that we need to add thousands of cybersecurity professionals to the workforce in the coming years, the data shows we have a long way to go in engaging young people in the idea of a career path in cybersecurity," said Michael Kaiser, executive director of the National Cyber Security Alliance.
But part of the difficulty in guiding young adults toward cybersecurity may have to do with what millennials want out of a career and what they perceive working in informational security to mean.
The industry certainly pays well, with the average worker making six figures, according to another recent survey. But Raytheon's research supports the conventional wisdom that younger workers prioritize having "interesting work" over "competitive pay." And though most workers in the field report being challenged and enjoying their work, the impression of the general public is one of tedious office work.
It also doesn't help that there is a rift brewing between corporate or government cybersecurity and the independent hacker community. Some who pride themselves on their computer prowess may be loathe to take corporate or government security positions that clash with their political ideals. For instance, federal recruiters were asked to avoid Defcon this year â€" one of the world's largest hacking conventions â€" after the fallout of Edward Snowden's government snooping revelations.
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Image: iStockphoto, maxkabakov
This article originally published at The Daily Dot here
The invention of the Kindle, we're still consuming flat text files on devices capable of so much more.
Inkling, a digital publishing company founded by Apple alum Matt MacInnis in 2009, hopes to fulfill the early promises of e-readers by creating beautiful, interactive editions of reference titles with its software, Inkling Habitat.
While Amazon and other competitors have taken the traditional book and converted it to a digital format, Inkling is breaking away from the standard text file to create something more usable: interactive decks of cards covered with text, photos and video. With hundreds of titles already available for purchase for Apple devices, Inkling is launching the publishing industry into the digital age.
Inkling Habitat, a cloud-based, collaborative digital publishing software, is the cornerstone of the Inkling model, and has allowed the company to reimagine the definition of "e-book."
With Habitat, teams collaboratively create content for any Apple device. Editors convert text and images from the original printed version of the book into digestible chunks of information, which designers and developers then format into beautiful "cards." All of this is accomplished within Habitat, a software at once as powerful as an Adobe Suite tool like InDesign and as collaborative as Google Docs. In theory, the entire team can work seamlessly and simultaneously to build a book from start to finish, commenting on each other's work and contributing ideas right within the software.
Once created, all of Inkling's content indexes and becomes searchable in Google. Just type a topic followed by "Inkling" as a Google query; the first link will show the available Inkling texts on subjects ranging from digital cameras to The Modernist Cuisine to dog training. Habitat has become so useful that some of the largest publishers in the world, such as Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Elsevier, formed partnerships with Inkling to create interactive versions of their own reference titles.
While Amazon corners the market of e-book distribution for titles like Fifty Shades of Grey, Gone Girl and other bestsellers, Inkling is looking to the remainder â€" and more sizable portion â€" of the e-book market: reference texts. MacInnis says Inkling re-conceptualizes the book as a carrier of information.
"The things that were printed in books for the last hundred years are just a massive array of different use cases," MacInnis says. "If you really zoom out, you can look at magazines and pornography and you can look at novels and business books, and it's actually remarkable that a single device, a bunch of pieces of thinly mashed out wood pulp, strung together by glue, that that stuff was able to serve so many different kinds of use cases."
Image: Inkling
Reference content, however, can sometimes fall on the untrustworthy spectrum, depending who's authoring and hosting it (see: many Wikipedia entries). Don't forget the authoritative yet tedious content, like subscription databases or textbooks. Inkling is attempting to transform reference content into something both trustworthy and dynamic. Consumers can even purchase cards by chapter, much like one would select a song from an album.
"[The Kindle] took the simplest, easiest kind of content, which was just text, and they scaled [it] onto a digital device and made it really easy to read the text in order. And they're a really elegant solution for that. We solve for a completely different use case," MacInnis says.
In fact, MacInnis doesn't even consider Amazon, the largest e-book distributor in the world, to be a competitor, saying, "We just are not dealing with the same end user use cases, and we don't have overlapping technologies [or] approaches to the market. People only ask that question when they've conflated 'e-book' with everything the publishing industry has done to date."
So what does this mean for the consumer? For starters it could translate to a more expensive e-textbook. The Inkling version of the popular Campbell biology textbook is almost $30 more than the standard e-book version for Kindle. Thrifty students aren't likely to shell out additional money even for a better product. Even books like the For Dummies series can cost an additional $8 more for Inkling. In an industry where Amazon has trained consumers to expect an e-book for $9.99, higher prices can mean failure for a budding startup like Inkling.
Some consumers don't seem to mind the raised prices. Catherine McGee, a graduate student at NYU, has bought several cookbooks and a textbook from Inkling. She raves about the products.
"I wholeheartedly believe the Inkling platform is where textbook publishing is going," she says. "The enhanced and interactive features like photographs, videos, quizzes and the ability to share notes with other Inkling readers are integrated into the books in a way that regular (e-pub) ebooks are not capable of."
Another issue? Compatibility across devices. Inkling's interactive texts are available only through Apple's iPad, iPhone and Mac. This is likely due to the difficulty that comes with developing for a variety of devices. But if Inkling's interactive card model catches on, it's a difficulty the whole publishing industry will have to navigate, making the prices of all e-books rise as the cost to produce them increases.
Inkling's toughest challenge, however, will be re-establishing what it means to be an e-book. Creating a whole new model for how we consume text is no easy task, particularly in a slow moving industry like publishing. The hordes of paper book devotees (and publishers) hesitant to make the switch to digital undermine the entire model of a company like Inkling. But while the major publishing houses stay rooted in the traditions of the last hundred years, their business models slowly crumble to pieces.
It may be up to small startups, like Inkling, to right the whole industry back on track.
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Image: Inkling
When one thinks of the major players in online video, YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, Vimeo, perhaps even Amazon first to mind â€" not AOL.
Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL (pictured, right), and Susan Lyne, the former ABC Entertainment president who was appointed CEO of AOL's Brand Group in late February (pictured, left), are out to change that â€" lured no doubt by lucrative forecasts for online video advertising.
AOL is a small but growing entity in the video space, bringing in around $100 million in video revenue last year, according to Armstrong. (YouTube, by comparison, is estimated to have generated $4 billion that year.)
AOL's video push began in 2010 when the company acquired professional video maker StudioNow and later 5Min, which distributes third-party video clips across various web properties (and which AOL has been able to sell ads on top of). Last year, AOL launched an online video portal, AOL On, which hosts videos from its portfolio of websites, including TechCrunch and Moviefone. It also launched its first live video network, HuffPost Live. Several months later, it struck a deal with YouTube to begin distributing its original videos on the massive, Google-owned video network.
AOL made further strategic steps in video this year, launching a string of on-demand series around well-known personalities, including Nicole Richie, interior designer Jonathan Adler, and The Sartorialist street style photographer Scott Schuman. Episodes are short, typically under five minutes in length, and distributed both through AOL's platform and YouTube.
Also this year, AOL made a big investment on the ad side, acquiring Adap.tv, a platform for buying and selling video ads, for $405 million â€" $90 million more than it paid for The Huffington Post in 2011.
Together, those acquisitions and launches have given AOL much more video inventory and more methods to sell ads against it â€" two things AOL will continue to build on through the end of 2013 and on to next year.
AOL's next big video project is the launch of a second live video channel, AOL Live, slated for later this fall. That its name is similar to HuffPost Live, the 12-hour/day streaming video network AOL's Huffington Post Group launched 14 months ago, is no coincidence.
Like HuffPost Live, AOL Live plans to deliver a mix of live online video each week â€" two hours per weekday to start â€" with a heavy emphasis on viewer interaction. Video will then be cut up and redistributed through various AOL channels. Lyne says that the "vast majority" of HuffPost Live's 100 million monthly views come from the short clips it spins into standalone segments (like this one) or embeds in longer articles that are then shared among friends. The sharing component is critical: She believes five to 10 years from now, most video views will come from such shares.
Where AOL Live plans to differentiate itself from its predecessor is content. While HuffPost Live claims to focus on news and commentary, AOL Live plans to target a younger consumer â€" one more interested in entertainment and humor than news, Lyne says. AOL has recruited producers with a background in entertainment-focused networks like MTV and VH1 to help set the tone. Still, considering how much entertainment and pop culture falls under HuffPost Live's "news and commentary" umbrella, we expect there to be quite a bit of crossover, subject-wise.
Given that the focus isn't news, why does it need to be live?
"It doesn't have to be," Lyne says. "We're starting with a two-hour live show from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. It's a moment when people can actually take a break from work and put on something that's fun and hopefully shareable."
I asked Lyne if advertiser demand for real-time marketing had anything to do with the imperative for live video, but she dismissed the idea. "What's interesting about live is that it's always unpredictable," she says. "Something could end up being unrehearsed and sometimes over the top, something could go wrong. It's why we watch the VMAs."
With all the focus on short â€" short clips, short episodes â€" does Lyne see a future for long form video on the web? Lyne admits she doesn't know. "I don't think we know exactly how this is going to be consumed. We know the old rules are breaking down."
One thing that's also breaking down, she says, is the concept of the channel.
"I don't know anyone who watched a channel anymore," she says. "They watch a show, or follow a personality." She approached a white board and drew a number of app icons on a simulated TV screen. "I think that the likeliest scenario is that you'll turn on your Apple TV one day and you'll see a brand. You'll see YouTube, Breaking Bad. Hopefully you'll see HuffPost Live and AOL Live as well."
Will AOL make it that far? James McQuivey, principal analyst at Forrester, thinks they have a shot â€" at least in drawing ad revenue. "Despite AOL's repeated attempted to become more relevant in video, all of which has faltered, it's worth trying again only because online video is one of the strongest draws for people and it's a great way to increase engagement time which translates almost directly into advertising time."
Image: Rob Kim/Stringer/Getty Images
When you think of industry giants lobbying Congress, you may envision massive oil companies. But tech giants of Silicon Valley are getting a piece of the action, too.
Google, for instance, spent $3.4 million on lobbying in the last quarter alone. Facebook and Apple are also strengthening their lobbying efforts, and their main reasons for doing so include net neutrality, surveillance reform, self-driving vehicle and immigration.
Several big tech companies recently joined forces in their lobbying pursuits to create the Internet Association to work for an "open, innovative and free Internet."
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This article originally published at NowThis News here
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