The 9
I intend no sarcasm whatsoever as I say that when I first watched this clip, a bolt of lightning hit my third eye and activated a vision of the future of the internet.

The 9 (9.yahoo.com) is a web-video program where an attractive American female (Maria Sandstone was her name I think--if not, it should be) gives commentary of 9 submitted links, the kind you find on any of the blogs on the right pane of this page.

This will be, without a doubt, one of the most emergant trends in web entertainment. It is short enough to be easily digestable (maybe 6-8 minutes), with interactive content (you can click on each of the links to view the 9 presented by Ms. Sandstone), and promises a revenue source through advertising on the page (this one is "Refreshed Daily By Pepsi").

The 9 is hosted by Yahoo, as evident from its URL, and I find it no surprise that 3 of 9 links go to video.yahoo.com. 2 of them go to flickr. Even clicking back a few days to investigate, I could find no links to either YouTube or video.google. I'm guessing I won't see any eBay either.

One link goes to a careerbuilder.com gimmick whereby you purportedly are building an email with a monkey in it that says something funny; in reality you are being subtly advertised to by careerbuilder. This should immediately alert the savvy browser as to the bias towards advertising.

The stuff on The 9, as a whole, is pretty interesting, and can make for an interesting way to being a hard day of fucking off on the web, and the production model--combining commentary and interactive media--will be certain to catch on with any halfway intellegent staff of 5 and a hot chick.

Director/Video Editor
Dude who runs the camera
Dude who writes the flash
Sysadmin/Fashion Magazine Connoseur (for wardrobe)
LAMP guy
Chick with tits who can crack jokes and looks good on video

There you go. A gift from me. Now run out and patent the process so no one else can do it.
- posted by frank crist @ 7:49 PM