Ben Ling, a longtime Silicon Valley angel investor and Internet exec, has joined Khosla Ventures as a venture partner.

Ling is the second hire of high-profile operating execs by Khosla. Former Square, Slide and PayPal exec Keith Rabois — who is a close friend of Ling’s — joined the firm in February.

In an interview today, Ling said he has been contemplating his next move, and the idea of becoming a VC after years of operations was appealing.

“I thought a lot about the ability to have impact across a broad set of companies, and was attracted to Khosla’s model of venture assistance,” said Ling, who added that he will focus a lot on the mobile ecosystem. “When I was younger, I thought it would be fascinating to be an investor, and here I can help a lot of companies grow and scale.”

Ling is a former Google and Facebook product exec, as well as an active investor in 80 startups, including such high-profile ones as Fab.com, Square and Quora. He was most recently COO at Badoo, but left the company last fall.

At Google, he worked on search, YouTube and local products, and was closely linked with former Googler Marissa Mayer, whom he followed internally when her responsibilities shifted there. Many thought he might next pop up at Yahoo, where she is now CEO.

Not so, but also not a surprise; Mayer provided Khosla with a lovely statement about Ling: “Ben is an amazing entrepreneurial leader and has a great eye as an investor for both talent and ideas. I’m excited to see him join Khosla Ventures to find and foster the next set of entrepreneurs who will define the technology world.”

Which means, in a nutshell, that developers will be able to tell their games to automatically record certain types of in-game events and achievements. For example, that amazing headshot you just made in Call of Duty: Ghosts? It will be auto-captured in all its gory detail, packaged and ready to send to your online friends.

Which friends, specifically? Marketing and strategy CVP Yusuf Mehdi declined to name names just yet, but said it will be possible to use a dedicated button on the Xbox One controller to upload videos to “popular sharing sites.”

This isn’t an entirely new phenomenon. Back in April, I wrote about how “gamecasting” is already poised to become a big deal for mainstream gamers. YouTube and game-video site Twitch are arming developers with tools that will let them put video recording and sharing functionality directly in their games.

And, of course, Sony announced way back in February that the PlayStation 4 would also let players snip and share their gameplay videos to live video site Ustream.

But Microsoft isn’t trying to reinvent the social gaming wheel; the company just wants to make it easier. With most games right now, you need additional hardware and software to broadcast a live multiplayer game or record yourself playing through a single-player campaign.

Lowering those mainstream-unfriendly hurdles means that a lot of players who just want to brag about their latest achievements will be inadvertently producing free commercials for games with their socially shared videos.

A Twitch spokesperson declined to comment when asked whether Xbox videos would be shareable to the gaming-oriented site. Ustream spokesperson Joellen Ferrer said, “We were not part of this latest announcement, [but] we aim to provide a ubiquitous experience across all platforms and will continue to push these conversations to provide the best experiences for users.”

Pizza is an obvious candidate for 3D printing because it can be printed in distinct layers, so it only requires the print head to extrude one substance at a time.

– From a description of Anjan Contractor’s 3-D food printer, by Christopher Mims on Quartz

Billion-dollar-plus price tag? Check!

Yes, all of that describes the Yahoo-Tumblr deal. And it also describes Google’s move to buy YouTube in the fall of 2006.

Which doesn’t mean the two deals are parallel, of course. For starters, the $1.6 billion Google spent on YouTube was a drop in the bucket for the search engine. But $1.1 billion is spending is a very big chunk of Yahoo’s cash pile.

And even back in 2006 it was clear that video would be a crucial part of the Web. You can’t use the same certainty when you talk about cat GIFs.

More important is that, then and now, Google viewed YouTube as a nice complement to its core business, which has never flagged. For Marissa Mayer, it’s a crucial part of her strategy to bring new eyeballs to a faded brand.

Still! Fun to compare and contrast.

Here’s what we know about Tumblr: It’s seven years old, has a lot of users, and last year it lost money on $13 million in revenue. And for YouTube: It turns eight tomorrow, is reportedly on track to generate $4 billion in revenue this year*, and Google executives keep murmuring that it either is or could be profitable.

More interesting for today: Here’s what YouTube’s financials looked like for a two-year period ending August 2006 — shortly before Google bought it (the document comes courtesy of the never-ending Viacom-YouTube copyright fight). Note the sharp uptick in revenue, users and costs at the end. Perhaps Yahoo saw something similar:

youtube pl

*As with all YouTube revenue estimates, take Morgan Stanley’s most recent one with a big chunk of salt.

In case you missed anything, here’s a quick roundup of the news that powered AllThingsD this week:

1. As AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher and Peter Kafka were first to report this week, Yahoo is seriously thinking about buying hipster blogging service Tumblr. In fact, Yahoo’s board is scheduled to consider a $1.1 billion all-cash deal on Sunday.
2. Google wanted to dominate the headlines this week during the company’s annual I/O conference … just maybe not like this. By sending Microsoft a cease-and-desist, they helped promote that rival’s anti-Google campaign.
3. That little drama didn’t come up during the official proceedings of I/O, but a lot else did. Here’s a rundown of all the news Google announced in its three-and-a-half-hour opening keynote.
4. Watch this: An interview with Bill Gates, in which the Microsoft founder talks about his longtime relationship with Steve Jobs, on “60 Minutes.”
5. Can productivity apps for the iPad make it as useful as a traditional work PC? Walt Mossberg puts them to the test.
6. Speaking of the iPad, the Justice Department is closing in on Apple with an e-book price fixing case … but one of the seemingly most damning pieces of evidence, a line from a letter from Steve Jobs to James Murdoch, is a little less damning in context.
7. Web video services like Amazon, HBO and Hulu all say they’re seeing significant growth. But is anyone cutting into Netflix’s lead? A new report says: Nope!
8. BlackBerry is bringing its messenger application, BBM, to iPhones and Android phones this summer. But is it too late?
9. Cisco’s earnings only barely beat analysts’ expectations this week, but that beat sent the company’s stock up 9 percent in after-hours trading. Arik Hesseldahl got CEO John Chambers on the phone to talk about where Cisco is and where it’s going.
10. And lastly, if you want more battery life out of your iPhone on the go, you may have considered a special re-juicing case. Product reviewer Lauren Goode tries the battery boosters before you buy.

To stay on top of the latest, follow AllThingsD on Twitter and Facebook, and subscribe to our daily email newsletter.

If so, you’re in YouTube’s core demo, because these guys are huge there. Their video channels have more than 44 million subscribers.

And if names like Jenna Marbles, Ryan Higa and Freddy Wong don’t mean anything to you (probably because you’re not a teenager) don’t worry — there’s an explainer at the end.

Oh, by the way — the video is a teaser for “The Social Star Awards,” which are sort of what they sound like and will be livestreaming, from Singapore, on YouTube this week. And oh yeah — the star of the clip is Jesse Heiman, who has has had barely there parts in a gazillion TV shows and movies, as well as a memorable Super Bowl appearance with supermodel Bar Refaeli.

You gotta hand it to Microsoft: Yesterday they got Google to help promote their message for them.

On Wednesday afternoon, shortly after Google finished a marathon presentation at its I/O developer conference, reports surfaced that Google’s YouTube had sent Microsoft a cease-and-desist letter demanding that Redmond shut down a YouTube app it had built for its Windows Phone.

The issue, in a nutshell, is that the Microsoft app, built on YouTube’s public data feed, violates the video site’s terms of service, primarily because it strips out YouTube’s ads. Windows Phone users can still watch YouTube videos via their Web browser, but the experience isn’t as slick as a dedicated app.

So: Bad for Windows Phone users! But while it’s tempting to turn this into a he said/he said, there’s little to hash out, fact-wise.

There’s no dispute that Microsoft’s Windows app violates Google’s terms. And Microsoft, which has been complaining about access to YouTube for years, had to know exactly what it was doing. It also knows how to play nicely with YouTube, as it did with an Xbox app the two companies built together and launched last year.

The only question is why Microsoft went ahead and built the app anyway. Here we have to do some guessing, as both YouTube and Microsoft executives declined to comment.

So, okay, I’ll guess: Microsoft launched the YouTube app last week precisely because it hoped YouTube would make a fuss.

I’m also guessing that Microsoft is very happy that The Verge and Wired were able to “obtain” copies of the C&D letter.

I’ll keep guessing: I think Microsoft is ecstatic about the fact that Google sent the letter yesterday, on the same day it wanted all eyes on its new products and services.

And the fact that Larry Page closed the Google event by insisting that he’s got nothing but love for everyone, everywhere — even if they’re building rival technologies?

My guess is they have to be over the moon about that.

That was the gist of the Chrome-focused presentation given by Sundar Pichai, Google’s senior vice president for Chrome and Android, and Linus Upson, vice president of engineering at Chrome,at the Google I/O conference earlier today.

Pichai announced that Chrome now claims more than 750 million monthly active users, with 300 million new users since last month the last I/O conference a year ago. (Google used to measure browser users on a weekly basis, but has since adjusted this to reflect industry standards.)

Pichai and Upson didn’t say exactly how many of those users are coming from mobile, except to say that, not surprisingly, that segment is growing. In an effort to nudge the browsing experience forward in a “multiscreen world,” Upson showed how a Chrome Web browser will mimic the experience as you’re running game applications from an Android tablet (Nexus 10, natch).

So the user starts a race or performs a function on a touchscreen Android tablet, and the same action will occur in the game on his or her desktop browser.

They also demoed Racer, a multiplayer Chrome experiment that uses Chrome across up to five devices at once.

Chrome mobile, Upson said, has been getting speedier, with performance improving by “more than 50 percent” on mobile, compared with 25 percent speedier on desktop.

Google’s browser, of course, serves as the foundation for Chrome OS, a computer system based solely on the Web — i.e., the $1,300 Chromebook Pixel — but Google only said that there would be “more to talk about” later this year in regards to Chrome OS.

Chrome has previously claimed the top-browser-in-the-world title, according to third-party analytics firm StatCounter, but other reports indicate that Internet Explorer is still the dominant Web browser in many parts of the world.

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• Shoot the Moon: How Google Turned a Hodgepodge of Upgrades Into a Show of Strength
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• Next Google Maps Update to Include Better Venue Search, Waze-Like Rerouting
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And, yes, Google still plans to launch a separate subscription music service later this year, via its YouTube site.

Make sense? Of course not.

It makes lots of sense for both YouTube and Play, which was built for Google’s Android devices, to sell music subscriptions.

YouTube is the world’s biggest free music service, which could make it a fantastic funnel for a Spotify-like paid offering, which can also help solve some problems with the music labels.

And if you’re going to have the world’s dominant mobile platform, then you ought to be the one selling music subscriptions that work on it, because that could help your customers stick to that platform. No sense in handing that feature over to Spotify, which works fine on iPhones and Kindles, too.

And something that knitted Android and YouTube together — combining a mix of free, paid, mobile, audio and video — could be great.

But that’s not what we’re going to see this week.

Music folks I talked to today expect the Google Play version to be paid-only — no free teaser tier, like Spotify has — and without any features that will set it apart from rivals.

And when YouTube launches its service — as best as I can tell, talks with the Big Three labels are all but completed — that service will likely run parallel to, but not connected with, the Play version. Which means none of the free music that people can get on YouTube will help sell Play subscriptions.

This set-up supposedly stems from former Android boss Andy Rubin’s insistence on controlling his own fiefdom (“Andy and [YouTube head] Salar Kamangar couldn’t be in the same room together,” said a music executive who has worked with both of them). But now we’re in the Sundar Pichai era, and he said he’s all about peace and love.

I’ve heard people in and outside of Google suggest that at some point down the line the two services could be knitted together. After all, just because something gets announced at Google I/O doesn’t mean it will show up. And getting something out there before it’s fully baked is standard operating procedure for Google.

But music subscriptions are an old idea that still really haven’t caught on in a big way. Spotify has six million paying customers worldwide, but its backers concede that it’s still a long way from mainstream. And none of its competitors are even close to those numbers.

If Google really wanted to make subscriptions work, instead of simply offering them as a feature most people won’t use — like the music store it opened up in 2011 — it ought to take the time to get this one right the first time.

RELATED POSTS:

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• Next Google Maps Update to Include Better Venue Search, Waze-Like Rerouting
• Google Gives Search a Deeper Voice and Adds Reminders and More to Google Now
• With Revamped Hangouts, Google Aims to Unify Messaging
• Google+ Gets a Bit More Pinteresting
• Google Chrome: 750 Million Active Users, Synchronized Web and Mobile Browsing
• Coming Soon From Google: A $649 Samsung Galaxy S4 Running Stock Android
• With Sights Set on Spotify (And Pandora), Google Launches a Music Subscription Service
• Google on Android: 900 Million Activations, New Tools for Developers Coming
• Google Doubles Down on Music Subscriptions, Which Means Google Isn’t Serious About Music Subscriptions
• Where Are They Now? Google I/O 2012 Edition.
• At I/O, Google Tilts Toward Android Services Over Android OS
• Google Downplays Expectations Ahead of I/O Developer Conference
• Will Google Deliver on Its Nexus Q Promise? Not at This Year’s I/O.
• Ahead of I/O, Google Wallet Drops Plans to Introduce a Physical Card
• Google Goes With Unified I/O Keynote (But Will It Unify Its Products?)

The video network will add the cash to an earlier funding round, where it picked up $6.5 million from Bertelsmann’s Digital Media Investments arm and other investors. And it means that StyleHaul has now essentially received two different investments from Bertelsmann, since Bertelsmann owns a majority stake in RTL.

StyleHaul has now raised close to $17 million; it says it generates 300 million video views a month. Industry sources say RTL had previously talked to YouTube network/tool startup Fullscreen about an investment; Fullscreen ended up taking money from Comcast and the Chernin Group.

StyleHaul CEO Stephanie Horbaczewski said she’ll use the money to keep building out a non-YouTube home for StyleHaul. Like other YouTube networks, StyleHaul is trying to develop revenue streams that aren’t dependent on the world’s largest video site.

Other projects on tap for Horbaczewski include a “shoppable player” that will let viewers click on videos and purchase stuff they see displayed (here’s a cool example of one at Mr. Porter, starring Elijah Wood).

Horbaczewski said she is also working on two scripted series, which will be StyleHaul’s first foray into original video; it also plans on distributing other people’s work, like a long-delayed “Zoolander” cartoon series from Ben Stiller’s Red Hour Digital.

“This is really going to be a content story for us now,” she said.

But Web video competitors like Amazon, HBO and Hulu all say they’re seeing significant growth. So is anyone cutting into Netflix’s lead?

Not really, said Sandvine, the broadband service company that tracks Internet usage.

A Sandvine report out this morning pegs Netflix’s share of prime-time “downstream” traffic delivered over “fixed networks” — that is, wires and pipes — at 32.3 percent. That’s just a hair down from the 33 percent estimate it provided last November.

Meanwhile, Sandvine said Amazon and HBO have seen their share of traffic hold steady, as well. Sandvine said Amazon dropped from 1.75 percent to 1.31 percent, and that HBO dropped from 0.5 percent to 0.34 percent. But that’s not a lot of movement either way.

The one service that did leap a bit is Hulu, which is up from 1.1 percent to 2.41 percent.*

Bear in mind that these numbers do include data transmitted from a home network, via Wi-Fi, to iPads, iPhones, Android tablets, etc. And that Sandvine said this kind of “home roaming” accounts for a whopping 20 percent of traffic now, up from 9 percent a year ago.

But Sandvine also tracks streaming traffic to mobile devices over wireless networks. And here it said that Netflix has made a move from 2.2 percent of downstream traffic to 4 percent in the last 12 months. YouTube, though, is still dominant: If you’re on the go, and you’re watching a moving image, there’s a very good chance you’re seeing something hosted by the world’s biggest video site.

So what does any of that mean? Short answer: Netflix is streaming more video than ever — it added at least two million American users between measurements, and likely many more — but so are its competitors. So its lead is staying more or less the same. Sandvine said the average Internet household uses about 18 gigabytes of broadband a month — up from 10GB a year ago.

Still here? If so, you’ve probably read Ashlee Vance’s excellent Bloomberg Businessweek piece on the engineering that lets Netflix move all those bits into your house. If not, you should definitely read it now.

* Sandvine researcher Dan Deeth notes that the numbers his company provided last fall were collected in the first two weeks of September, which means that Hulu wouldn’t have had access to a batch of new TV shows from its broadcaster partner/owners. The numbers in today’s report were collected in the first two weeks of March, which means Hulu would benefit from new programming that ran during February sweeps; Netflix would have also benefited from any surge in “House of Cards” viewers.

But the YouTube folks went out of their way to downplay the launch, describing it is as the first stage of an experiment.

We should take them at their word.

Yes, the notion of the world’s biggest video site selling content could be a big deal. One day. But right now there’s not much there there.

Take a look at the initial list of channels YouTube rolled out yesterday, which the site says will eventually balloon to 53 offerings from 30 partners. You’ll notice a couple of things:

• With the exception of “Sesame Street” (announced but not available yet), National Geographic and the UFC, there aren’t any mainstream brands or shows.
• Just as important: With the exception of The Young Turks (also announced but not available), there aren’t any YouTube-native stars — people/brands/channels who have built big fan bases on the site, and who could presumably convince some of them to pay for extra access.

It’s not surprising to see the Big Media companies steering clear of YouTube. Those guys are wary of Google in general, and when it comes to video, they have a very big, very lucrative business set up already. And their efforts to rent movies on the platform haven’t gone anywhere.

YouTube will have to make a compelling case for them to start selling subscriptions, which is sort of the point of the experiment, anyway.

It is eyebrow-raising to see the lack of YouTube talent there. YouTube has been talking up subscriptions to some of them as they complain about disappointing ad sales, and it seems as though at least a few would want to try it out — not to put all of their stuff behind a paywall, but at least to offer some extras to die-hard fans.

I assume some of that will change over time. YouTube is stressing that it expects to see more partners once it sets up a self-service subscription tool in the next few weeks. And at least a few big players, like Machinima, have been talking about subscription plans.

But it’s not like subscriptions are a surprise. YouTube has been talking about the concept in broad terms for at least a year, and in earnest since last fall. Anyone who wanted to test the concept has had plenty of time to get ready.

So why aren’t they there now?

The optimistic explanation is that they’re waiting to see how it works for yesterday’s guinea pigs, and if it pans out, they’ll show up.

The more cynical version: They’ve decided that if they are going to sell stuff, they’re not going to do it on YouTube — they’ll use the site to promote themselves to a billion people a month, but they’ll make sure they keep additional revenue streams out of Google’s hands.

Both sound pretty plausible to me.

The channels represent a potential new revenue stream for YouTube and its thousands of content partners, and plans for them already have helped to draw some new video makers to the site. They include the producers of “Sesame Street” and “Ultimate Fighting Championship,” both of whom wanted a subscription model for their videos, rather than relying on revenue from advertising that is sold largely by YouTube.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

In addition to earlier investors, who include Lerer Ventures, Oak Investment and Bedrocket, SoftBank Capital has also put money into the new round; SoftBank principal Nikhil Kalghatgi will join the company’s board.

NowThisNews has now raised nearly $10 million in the last year; Eric Hippeau, Lerer Ventures’ managing director, says NowThisNews is still talking to some strategic investors about kicking in a bit more. Danielle Morrill noted the new round earlier this month.

So that’s the money part. How’s the startup itself doing?

Just fine, said Hippeau. He said the company, which launched last fall, has already created 300,000 videos, and that last month it generated 20 million video streams. By comparison, HuffPost Live, Huffington Post’s own version of a video news service, generated 48 million streams in March.

The big caveat with NowThisNews’ video stream numbers is that the conceit behind the service is that it’s “mobile first” and is supposed to reach a new generation of video viewers who live on their phones. But Hippeau said that a majority of the company’s views are coming from the Web, via syndication deals it has with outlets like BuzzFeed, MSN, the Guardian, Forbes and the Atlantic.

“They’re going through the same experience that a lot of people who are trying to do mobile are going through, which is that you’re going to build a mobile audience not only through mobile but from the Web, as well,” Hippeau said.

The big question is whether NowThisNews’ product, which generally leans on quick-twitch, MTV News-style summaries, or found footage with music overdubs, can stand out in a world where there’s a whole lot of that stuff — particularly on YouTube, which pulls in a billion viewers a month, and is increasingly reaching those folks on their phones, too.

Here’s NowThisNews’ take on a pregnant panda story. If you’re looking for a voice-over, there isn’t any. But there is some explanatory text on the video’s homepage: “‘Evolutionarily Challenged’ Panda Is Artificially Inseminated. Dying breed can only mate once a year.”

According to numerous sources close to the situation, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer recently met with top execs at Hulu, the premium video service whose big media company owners have been considering selling it for some months.

Sources said Yahoo is “in the process,” although the Silicon Valley Internet giant has not made any kind of formal bid. Other players whom sources said are considering purchasing all or parts of Hulu include: Former News Corp. COO Peter Chernin, who now has a successful and well-funded multimedia and investment company called the Chernin Group; Guggenheim Partners digital arm, which is led by former Yahoo interim CEO Ross Levinsohn; and Amazon.

Sources said Mayer also had an extensive getting-to-know-you meeting, which was apparently not held at Hulu’s offices in Santa Monica, Calif., along with COO Henrique De Castro. The discussion is taking place in the wake of Yahoo’s failed bid — largely engineered by De Castro — to purchase a majority stake in France Télécom’s Dailymotion video service, after a top French government official said Yahoo could not own 75 percent of the company.

Had the deal — which was reportedly valued at $300 million — gone through, it would have been the most significant by Mayer since she took over at the company last July. Thus far, she has limited her purchases to small mobile startup.

While the meetings with Hulu are only preliminary, Yahoo has been to this video rodeo before, having seriously considering buying Hulu when it was previously being shopped by its owners, News Corp., Disney and Comcast. (News Corp. also owns this site.)

Of course, if Yahoo’s interest becomes more serious, Mayer will have to make important visits to top execs at those media giants, since they control the rights to critical content, and thus Hulu’s value.

As Peter Kafka noted in a previous post about Hulu’s possible sale, “much hinges on the licensing rights News Corp., Disney and Comcast would provide for the money-losing site, as well as what happens to the $300 million debt its owners have taken on in the last year.”

Without those rights, Hulu by itself is a very pretty Web site and video platform, but not worth the billions it would be with very long-term television rights, content that attracts users. Currently, sources said its media owners are offering two to three years of rights, with a lot of flexibility over removing content from the site, which is not quite as attractive a deal (to say the least).

But video is a key component of Yahoo’s strategy going forward. Along with mobile efforts, Mayer has explicitly told investors that video was a key to company under her tenure.

Coincidentally, today in an onstage interview at a Wired conference in New York, Mayer broadly addressed the video issue when asked a question about the topic, noting it was important across all of Yahoo’s properties.

“I think video is really important … video is something that we’re all innately designed and born to experience, everyone is born being able to watch and to hear,” she said. “Video is just this amazing format.”

Mayer would know that well, having been at Google when the search giant bought YouTube, ironically snatching it at the last minute from a competing bid by Yahoo, which was then led by Terry Semel. Since then, YouTube has become the most important and powerful player in the space by far.

Yahoo, despite being one of the largest video players on the Web, has mostly been a lackluster competitor in the arena, pinging over the years from creating original content to doing branded deals with media companies, but never establishing a major beachhead with consumers as Hulu did from scratch.

Short of a full acquisition, there may be a way for Yahoo to partner and invest in Hulu, instead of buying it outright that works for all sides — owners get a new owner to foot part of the bill and also increase distribution, and Yahoo can claim that it’s providing users with exponentially more content that would help Yahoo’s long-declining engagement problem.

Sources said News Corp. and Disney have mulled scenarios where one or both companies hang on to the site, while Comcast has no control over Hulu’s fate, having given up its management rights to the site as a concession to federal regulators.

But the strength of the Hulu brand is clear and it has had some success in building a more significant business. While a lot of its video offerings are free, about four million people are paying for a Hulu Plus subscription.

Still, Hulu’s strength might be lagging, especially given after talented founding leader Jason Kilar recently left. Last year, Hulu was a top 10 video site, according to comScore. No longer — in a report in March, it had dropped out of the top 10.

While this likely has more to do with methodology than real decline in Hulu ratings, it does show that while it’s the biggest thing Yahoo could buy or invest in, Yahoo itself has plenty of video views, many more than Hulu.

The question for Mayer then is how much of Yahoo’s multi-billon-dollar cash kitty she wants to bet on a big video play. She might also be considering buying several smaller ones, said sources, with Yahoo having also looked at some smaller video sites, including Blip and Grab Media.

A spokeswoman for Hulu declined to comment and Yahoo PR has not responded to a query for comment (if ever).

(Correction: With more details on Wong’s correct position below, who will be working as “senior advisor” to United States CTO Todd Park and not as Chief Privacy Officer.)

Nicole Wong, Twitter’s legal director of products and longtime veteran of Internet litigation issues, has been picked by the Obama administration to be the nation’s top privacy officer assisting U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The exact details of her new position are unclear, but it’s likely that she’ll be working closely with Park, who assumed office after replacing Aneesh Chopra, the nation’s first CTO (a position also created by the Obama administration).

Wong’s appointment, first reported by CNET, is a new position in the White House.

Wong joined Twitter approximately five months ago to head up its legal team, which has long dealt with First Amendment issues for the microblogging service. Previous to her time at Twitter, Wong spearheaded decisions at Google on whether certain user-generated content would remain up on YouTube and other Google-owned applications. She also dealt much in litigation with China and its government’s decisions to censor Google search content in 2010.

Sources said Twitter has not yet picked a replacement for Wong.

Neither Twitter nor the White House immediately responded to requests for comment.

Full correction: A previous version of this post stated Wong’s new position was as Chief Privacy Officer. As was amended this morning, sources said Wong will act as “senior advisor” to Park. We will update what that role means when we get more information.

Kreiz, formerly the CEO of TV production studio Endemol, joined Maker as an investor and its chairman last year.

Asked to explain the change, Kreiz described it as standard operating procedure for a startup that needed more professional help as it matured; Zappin will become a “special adviser” to Kreiz, and will stay on the company’s board. COO Courtney Holt will continue in his position.

“I’m not the first professional help that’s coming on board,” Kreiz said. “It became more obvious that we had to run Maker in sync with the potential in terms of where it can go.”

Maker is one of YouTube’s biggest content hubs, and boasts more than three billion views a month. The majority of those come from video makers the startup represents via its distribution network, but it is increasingly focused on creating stuff for itself.

Late last year, as Maker was closing a $36 million round led by Time Warner, the company got involved in an ugly spat with Ray William Johnson, one of its former stars, who has since left the channel for a deal with Blip. Johnson and Zappin engaged in a weird public back-and-forth, which eventually prompted Zappin to write a companywide memo acknowledging a former conviction for felony drug possession.

I’m told the spat did worry both Maker and its investors, but not enough to scotch the deal. But Kreiz says Zappin’s move isn’t related to the incident.

Here’s the memo Zappin is sending to Maker employees today:

Hey Everyone,
I have some important and exciting news I want to share with all of you.
First off, I would like to thank everyone for being part of this amazing journey of building Maker Studios. It’s been quite a ride and I feel very proud of what we’ve all accomplished together!
I founded Maker with Lisa and Ben because we were passionate about creating content and making things verses pitching and auditioning. Youtube gave us a platform as content creators to do just that. We were able to reach a world wide audience and actually make a living doing what we loved, being creative.
The vision for Maker was to create a company that would provide resources, knowledge, and monetization opportunities for content creators around the world so they too could make a living doing what they love.
We have now grown from a small production studio with offices above a Campos Tacos in Venice to being a global media company with a Network of more than 50,000 individual partners in less than 2 years. The rapid evolution of this organization has been an incredible thing to witness.
Being the CEO of Maker Studios has been the single most challenging and rewarding experience of my life. I’ve learned more and accomplished more than I could have ever imagined. The amazing people I’ve shared this journey with will always be loved. Despite all odds Lisa, Ben and I have successfully led and navigated a rapidly growing company that has become the market leader in the space, despite having very little or no business background. No one thought it was possible. I know I could not have done it alone.
It is the very unique partnership between the 3 of us that made it work. While challenging and full of complexity there is no doubt that what we have is special and rare. The success is unquestionable. I feel honored to work along side my cofounders Lisa and Ben. I’m happy to be sharing this journey with them and with all of you at Maker Studios.
As we’ve grown, we’ve added many other remarkably talented people who I also feel privileged to work alongside. From Shay, Kassem, Alex, Christina, Matt, Glasgow and Paul in the early days to our current executives Courtney, Chris, Ryan, Karen, Amy and Sam. It’s a privilege to work with all of you. To all my friends and family, thank you for joining me in this unique opportunity and journey. Working along side so many people that you love has been a rewarding and unique experience that I am extremely grateful for. Mike.D. Without you none of this would be possible. Thank you.
So back to the exciting news!
A little over a year ago I had the privilege of meeting Ynon Kreiz. We both shared a great passion for Youtube and the new media space. He was very excited about what were doing at Maker and believed in our vision of what it could become. We connected immediately and developed a friendship over the next few months. About a year ago I asked Ynon to join Maker’s board of directors as the Chairman.
Since then Ynon has been an advisor, mentor, and sounding board for me. We have spoken almost daily for the past year. We could not have navigated the company through the past year without his help and support. Not only has he helped advise me, he has also learned a lot from his relationship with, Lisa, Ben and I. We have all grown close and have a lot of trust and mutual respect.
As we now prepare to move into the next phase of growth for Maker Studios, I felt it was the right time to make a significant transition. As the former CEO and Chairman of Endemol, the worlds largest independent production company, and as the co-founder and CEO of Fox kids, Ynon has the specific media exec experience that we need to take Maker to the next level. After much thought and discussion with Ynon, my co-founders and the board, I am happy to announce that I will be stepping down as the Maker Studios CEO. Ynon, our Executive Chairman will now be taking over my responsibilities and operational oversight of Maker.
While I won’t be responsible for day to day operations, I will remain on the board of directors and will serve in an advisor role to Ynon and the company. I will work very closely with Ynon during this transition phase to make sure everything goes smoothly.
I love this company and all of you. I’ve always been committed to do what I feel is best for the company and that will never change. This transition is what is best for the company right now. I am confident in my decision. I’m very fortunate to have had the experience of being the CEO of Maker Studios. I also feel lucky to now have the opportunity to hand over the keys to Ynon after a proper amount of time to build a solid relationship, trust, and mutual respect. I feel fortunate to have Ynon join the team. I’m very excited about the future of Maker Studios.
Thank you all,

Danny

Then you’re not going to be any happier with most of the subscription videos the site is going to start selling. They’re going to have ads, too, say people familiar with YouTube’s long-awaited plans.

That should give you a sense of how incremental YouTube’s move will be when the site formally announces it this week, likely on Thursday: This isn’t a shift in strategies, or an attempt to take on Netflix or Hulu, but a relatively simple add-on option that gives YouTube video makers another way to make money.

YouTube’s core business is going to be the same: Selling its billion-person audience to advertisers.

Subscriptions may still be welcome news for some video makers, who have been complaining about the ad dollars they are generating from the site. And an ad-free option that YouTube has also pitched may appeal to children’s-TV producers, as well.

But lots of video makers will likely hold back and wait to see the results of the experiment YouTube is starting up. The key question for a producer: If I’m already struggling with the economics of the free stuff I’m providing, where am I going to find the resources to make “premium” stuff, too?

A la carte subscriptions seem particularly useful for established YouTube stars with low production costs and rabid fans, like Freddy W, Ryan Higa or the Smosh guys.

Certainly, almost all of their teen video viewers are unable or unwiling to pay to watch their stuff. But they may be able to convert a small percentage of their superfans to open their wallets (or their parents’). Just like the Rolling Stones will convince some poor soul to pay $169.98 for a boxed CD set next fall.

Eventually, if this stuff works, YouTube may be able to start bundling cable-like packages of content together — say, a comedy block, or a sports block — and then things could get more interesting. And if all of that works, and YouTube proves there’s a real business for pay video on the site, perhaps it will start becoming attractive to the TV and movie guys YouTube has been trying to court without success for a very long time.

And then things could get very interesting.

But for now, don’t expect much. And do expect a lot of ads.

For instance: Jack Conte of the band Pomplamoose makes intricate remixes, mashups and original songs where the videos are an integral part of the experience because they depict how it was made. With Pomplamoose or independently, Conte releases about one new item per month. Here’s his latest hit, a mesmerizing Daft Punk-Skrillex remix with about 2.5 million views:

Conte thinks it would be a better model for his superfans to support him by committing to pay for everything he does. Say, $1. This isn’t a recurring monthly subscription; it’s a Jack Conte subscription.

So he’s starting a new site, Patreon, that launches today, for himself and other artists.

Patreon users will be able set the terms of the perks they’ll give to patrons at various payment levels. (They pay a 5 percent cut to the platform, with payments handled via Stripe.)

On the one hand, Patreon is yet another spin on crowdfunding that really only serves one particular form of fan-artist relationship. On the other hand, Conte is exactly that guy, and he thinks there are many more musicians, short filmmakers and bloggers like him.

“On YouTube, there are now tens of thousands of people with hundreds of thousands of followers each,” Conte said in an interview yesterday via phone from Sonoma, Calif., where he is based. “This is the burgeoning artistic middle class. It’s not a Bono or a Zach Braff, but micro-demi-celebrities. So, power and fame, instead of being in the hands of the few, is incredibly distributed.”

But wait a second, isn’t YouTube announcing its own paid subscription plans any day now?

That’s totally different, Conte said, because it’s likely to be for premium networks and channels rather than creators themselves. It’s a way for YouTube to try to cut a deal with a Disney or an HBO, not a Pomplamoose.

Conte argued that for independent artists like himself payments shouldn’t be mandatory; they should be an option. If he were to set up a pay wall, nobody would share his content. “The backlash would be awful. Talk about adding friction,” he said.

And, on the other extreme, Patreon probably isn’t a fit for major stars, Conte agreed. If Lady Gaga or Louis C.K. were to ask fans to pay directly per new release, millions of people might sign up, and the Kickstarter-like transparency of Patreon would show just how much money they were making per new video. And Conte thinks that would turn people off at some high number.

So is Patreon a tech startup? Conte — who built the site with ChompOn and OurSpot founder Sam Yam, who happens to have been his freshman roommate — said he isn’t sure yet.

“I’m not part of Silicon Valley and I don’t intend to be,” Conte said. “Not that I have anything against it. I have a succesful band with one million downloads on iTunes, so I’m approaching this from a fan perspective.”

Here’s a video of Conte explaining the Patreon model, and here is his own Patreon page:

Right? Maybe!

But right now that’s not true: Just about every ad you see on YouTube or Hulu, or any other video site, is either an ad that ran on TV, a shorter version of an ad that ran on TV, or an ad that could run on TV.

But there’s a school of thinking that says Web video ads should be their own special thing that takes advantage of the freedom and flexibility that the Internet offers.

And, weirdly enough, lots of people keep pointing to the same clip as an example: A three-minute-28-second mini-documentary from McDonald’s Canada, which explains why the chain’s burgers look better in ads than in real life. (Spoiler: They cheat.)

Last week, before YouTube’s big “brandcast” pitch for advertisers, I met with a bunch of people who are betting big on Web video, and they cited this ad as an example of Web advertising’s future. Then, at YouTube’s event a couple hours later, content boss Robert Kyncl said the same thing onstage. And this morning, BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield makes the same assertion in a research note (registration required).

So here you go:

Scintillating? Nope! And you can certainly think of other Web ads that were a lot glitizer, and got a lot more press. But it takes a lot of money and resources to get Jeff Gordon in costume and behind the wheel, or to drop a dude out of a spaceship. And there’s no way advertisers can treat each Web spot like a summer blockbuster.

Meanwhile, McDonald’s modest ad tells a story, flatters viewers by telling them they’re smart enough to go backstage, and still ends up pushing pretty images of hamburgers in front of them. That’s pretty clever advertising sort-of masquerading as something else but not really.

And people seem to like it: Since last June, it has racked up nearly 8.5 million views.

In any case, it is coming, and at some point some of you who have one are going to want to use it post a YouTube video after you’re done skydiving or showering.

And now you can do so, courtesy of YouTube startup Fullscreen:

Fullscreen, recall, just rounded up money from the Chernin Group and Comcast.

So if you’re paying the country’s biggest cable company for monthly access to TV, take heart in the fact that a tiny slice of your check just made it easier for people with $1,500 gadgets to upload clips of your co-workers eating lunch.

Stick around to the end to hear an exchange Google Glass users are going to hear many times.

iPad image copyright Skylines

Napster was the first of its kind, providing music fans with easy and free access to albums and tracks and giving them a reason to avoid buying expensive CDs — the lifeblood of the music industry’s business. The ability to share files around the globe reduced the barriers to music discovery and allowed Napster users to find new artists and songs in ways never imagined. It was a truly disruptive service, and it scared the hell out of the music industry.

Instead of embracing the massive adoption of this new service, finding a solution to accommodate the changing landscape or harnessing Napster as a future platform, the music industry held onto its rigid CD-based business, prayed that file sharing would go away and eventually tore Napster down.

Today, you can draw several parallels between the music industry in the late ’90s and early 2000s and the TV industry today. Viewing habits are changing. Just like music in the early 2000s when young adults started turning away from physical media and opting for singles versus complete albums, viewers are “tuning in” very differently to movies and TV programming.

Today, if Netflix were part of a cable package, it would be one of the top viewed networks, according to a Facebook post from CEO Reed Hastings. Meanwhile, Nielsen recently reported that cable cutting is up by 150 percent since 2007, marking a significant shift in viewer behavior. Additionally, Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia is now assuming the role of Shawn Fanning by intimidating the cable companies with a disruptive service that lets viewers access broadcast programs at a much lower cost than cable packages.

But, instead of adapting to changing viewer behavior, the cable companies, Hollywood and broadcasters are holding onto old business models for dear life and calling the lawyers. Sound familiar?

Avoiding a Bad Sequel: Lessons for the TV Industry

Ignoring or fighting digital consumer behavior is a recipe for disaster — resulting in rejection faster than an unpalatable creation by a contestant on Hell’s Kitchen. It’s time for TV broadcasters, content creators and advertisers to innovate their businesses instead of maintaining existing models through threats and litigation.

First, they need to understand that their viewers are setting the rules and defining the life expectancy of their programming and services. They will decide your fate — not you. Consider the following:

• You Can’t Take Content Away: The outdated model based on controlling distribution is dying. If you force it underground — that is, “illegal streams and downloads” — you’ve lost the battle.
• Adapt or Die: The millennial generation is addicted to YouTube, on-demand and streaming services. They no longer tune in at a specific time and date, and are increasingly shying away from paying for premium cable bundles. With filmmakers and producers spending the time and resources to make great TV programing, like “Homeland,” “Girls” and “Mad Men,” delivery methods should be figured out to get these shows to viewers who won’t pay $150 per month in subscription fees.
• Open the Windows: The “distribution window” is used by Hollywood to define how long a VOD and streaming service can distribute movies and TV programming. The problem? If the window for season one of “Downton Abbey” is about to close from Netflix or your cable provider, and you haven’t watched any of the episodes, you better call in sick to work to get your fill of the Granthams and the Crawleys, or miss the entire season altogether.
• Stop Explaining Business Models: Movie and TV viewers don’t give a sh*t about business models. They just want to watch their favorite shows — whenever and wherever they choose. The music industry followed the same pattern in the early 2000s, explaining why the economics of music streaming and downloads would not support artists and the industry. Guess who won?
• Open Up to Developers: Don’t assume innovation will only come from within your organization. By tapping the developer community, you will be able to move faster and find new ways to use or distribute content, which could result in new monetization strategies. Some of the more forward-thinking media properties, including ESPN, are already doing this, allowing developers to hack ad strategies and sports data.
• Rethink Discovery: As video distribution evolves, there needs to be a corresponding evolution in how people discover new movies and TV programming. If viewers are paying hefty monthly subscriptions (which today support a lot of what they don’t watch), it is critical to provide paths to find what they really want to watch. The current TV guides embedded in our set-top boxes have to be completely rethought.
• Reinvent Measurement: We still depend on a small sample of viewers to rate the popularity of programs and we base all advertising decisions on this data. However, the technology to measure real time usage inside the TV exists today and has the potential to enable more precise measurement and better targeting of advertising.

The TV industry’s fate is as much in the hands of viewers as the next American Idol. Not only accepting, but also realizing that TV programs and movies are easily accessible via proliferating distribution channels such as Netflix and Aereo, the industry can turn the tables and find opportunities with additional platforms and options to reach viewers for their eyeballs and spending. Most importantly, cable, broadcasters and Hollywood have the opportunity to move forward and determine better and more efficient business models to thrive.

Forward-looking networks like HBO have slowly worked toward a compromise by offering specialized content that depends on the Pay-TV ecosystem. However, with cord-cutting slowly beginning to eat into cable subscriptions, the HBOs of the world need to take distribution models a step further and offer everything streaming with direct-to-consumer subscription models, or risk losing their next core audience. If TV viewers are willing to pay for subscription streaming services, then the industry needs to jump on that bandwagon.

Rewriting the Ending: To Be Continued

The nature of distributing media is evolving, and the music industry learned the hard way as it struggled to adapt to a new generation of music fans. More than 10 years after the music industry forced Napster to tear down its P2P platform, the same industry has embraced free, ad-supported services from Spotify, Rhapsody, Deezer and others. In fact, this year marked the first time that the music industry made a profit since 1999.

Instead of struggling against the Internet Age and the connected world, broadcasters, cable companies and Hollywood can capitalize on the audience’s need to enjoy what they have to offer — great TV programming. Content will always be king and the industry creates a tremendous amount of really compelling material. It just needs to keep the crime scenes to “Law & Order” and save the video star by taking a cue from music’s past.

As president of Gracenote, Stephen White has played a critical role in shaping the company into a digital entertainment leader. He spearheaded the development of Gracenote technologies for top entertainment platforms and brands, including Apple, Ford and Sony. Today, he oversees all company strategy and operations, and is responsible for growing Gracenote’s core business and vision.

Last night, YouTube tried the same thing, but changed its pitch. Instead of trying to convince ad buyers that YouTube’s stuff is as good as what’s on TV, YouTube is now arguing that the stuff people watch on YouTube is better than TV — because they’re watching it on YouTube.

Gone from last year: YouTube’s efforts to push its “funded channels” program, where it handed out hundreds of millions of dollars in an attempt to get to more “professional content” on the site. Also missing: Testimonials from traditional actors, directors, producers, etc.

Instead, YouTube kept hammering on its huge audience — a billion viewers a month — and played up the stars that are mostly famous to that audience.

Actress/VJ/producer Felicia Day got a long monologue where she explained that she turned to YouTube after hitting a wall in Hollywood. Following a clip where she was reduced to tears on NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” dancing violinist Lindsey Stirling explained that YouTubers embraced her after Piers Morgan gave her the cold shoulder.

And hip-hop sensation of the moment Macklemore, who doesn’t have a record label but has a big YouTube presence and the second and third-biggest song in America right now, finished the show with a mini concert.

A handful of people who made their mark off of YouTube made their way onstage, as well, but only in a YouTube context: Producer Brian Robbins, who just sold his AwesomenessTV YouTube channel to DreamWorks, came on to talk about how his teenage sons don’t watch TV; DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg followed him to talk about how great Brian Robbins is.

And the artist formerly known as Snoop Dogg, who is now signed up with YouTube network Maker Studios, showed up to slouch through a couple of songs, backed by a group of YouTubers.

If you were a skeptic, or a YouTube competitor, you might argue that YouTube had stopped trying to promote “real” stars on its site, because it spent the last year doing that, and many of those projects have underwhelmed.

You might also note that, unlike other Web video sellers, YouTube spent very little time trying to convince advertisers that it was willing to sell them video ads the way many advertisers want to buy them — that is, the way they buy TV ads.

A lot of people who make videos for YouTube think that’s a real problem that will prevent the site from ever achieving the TV-like ad rates it wants to command. And some of them are hoping/planning to take their stuff elsewhere, where they think they can make more money.

The flip sides of those arguments: Every other Web video site pitching at this week’s “newfront” sales events are making a big deal of the TV and movie stars they’ve signed on — Yahoo has Ed Helms! AOL has Sarah Jessica Parker! Hulu has Seth Meyers! — so YouTube’s approach will help set them apart.

And while lots of people would like YouTube to approach sales the way old-media buyers like to approach sales, that’s not very Googley. The pitch might alter again next year, but I’d be surprised if YouTube made a fundamental switch in the way it sells its eyeballs.

I’m guessing that at some point YouTube will have nice-looking video available from last night’s event. Because they’re a video company and all that. Meantime, you can get a flavor via some user-generated footage — via YouTube, of course.

Here, via BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield, is Lindsey Stirling:

And here, via Storyful’s David Clinch, is some Macklemore and a cast of dozens:

(Image courtesy of Felicia Day/Instagram)