Bambi Francisco

Storytellers

In Manhattan last week, I listened to journalists and artists share true stories about times in their past when the lights were off. They were nocturnal tales – some funny, some sobering -- that revealed their obsessions, fears and vulnerabilities. 

The event, hosted by comedian Andy Borowitz, was held by The Moth – a nonprofit storytelling organization. Some of the storytellers included Mike Daisey, who’s been referred to as the “master storyteller” and whose employment at Amazon.com (amzn) was chronicled in the book, “21 Dog Years: Doing time@Amazon.com.” Check out Daisey's site.

Sitting down in the Players Club, amid a crowded room of theater devotees, as I listened to these artists I realized that storytelling was such a gift, and one that I truly did not have. The 10 minutes allotted to each storyteller was just enough to whisk me away into their worlds.  I wish The Moth traveled to San Francisco more often so I could hear more personal stories.  Alas. There is such a virtual venue that hardly compares but offers up storytelling in the form of comedic shorts to satisfy those occasional desires for a dose of humor. That is Acceptable TV, VH1’s new Internet site and weekly television show which launched on Friday. The program appears to be part of a new genre emerging that is 90% professionally-produced content combined with free-form user content.

"It’s a genre that marries reality TV, Google’s (goog) YouTube. “The primary point is to create a really funny TV show,” said Michael Hirschorn, executive vice president at VH1, a unit of Viacom’s(via) MTV Networks. “We’re giving users the ability to tell us what’s funny and what’s not.” Go to my MarketWatch blog to watch my interview.

VH1, a unit of Viacom’s (via) MTV Networks, partnered with executive producer Jack Black (famous for his comedies, such as “Nacho Libre”) and Channel 101 co-creators Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab. Read Net Sense for full column

Eurekster raises $5.5 mln

Congratulations to Eurekster. On Tuesday, the company is set to announce that it closed its Series B round of financing. Eurekster raised $5.5 million in its first institutional round of funding from Technology Venture Partners of Australia, Transcosmos Investments of Japan, and its private investors who were part of the company's A round. By the sounds of its investors, it's obvious that the San Francisco-based company is going global. And, that is exactly Eurekster's intention now that it has new funds. Eurekster is one of the early providers of social search, which is basically search based on audience behavior. Essentially, Eurekster's technology allows publishers to provide better search results to their audience by analyzing click-stream analysis of the audience. The idea is that the audience provides another layer of vetting and ranking of results that algorithms cannot do. I interviewed Steven in the past, and from our past conversations and his demo, I have to say the service could be quite useful for niche publishers who want search rankings to be based on what their audience or experts within that audience find to be most relevant for particular keywords. The theory is that the audience of a particular niche site should be far more astute about choosing which pages are the most relevant for a given search than other ranking systems, such as freshness. Here's a hypothetical: If someone types in "Q1 Google's earnings" into a Swicki (Eurekster's search widget) on a financial news site, the first result would not necessarily be based on date and time, but the article that the most number of people read. Theoretically, the fact that more people read one particular report over another would suggest that one is more relevant than the other. It's a good service. I've had a Swicki (Eurekster's search widget) on my personal blog for more than a year