Online Media M&A Timeline: Yahoo! grabs JumpCut

Now that Microsoft's MSN is in the game with Soapbox, techtainment giants Apple, NewsCorp, Google, and Yahoo! know they're in for a battle. And they're desperate to acquire audience from some of the up and coming start-ups in the wild west of online media. Here's a select timeline of techtainment online media acqusitions, leading up to yesterday's Yahoo! announcement:

• July 19, 2005 - News Corp. acquires Intermix Media (MySpace parent) for $770M
  
• August 23, 2006 - Sony Home Entertainment buys Grouper for $65M

and after announcing a partnership with CurrentTV

• September 27, 2006 - Yahoo! acquires JumpCut for an undisclosed amount

Whose the next online media acquiree, you ask? THR predicts YouTube, Revver, and Brightcove - but not necessarily in that order.

It's a real industry now: Microsoft Launches Soapbox

After watching from the sidelines for a year while MySpace was acquired and while YouTube went from 0 to 60, Microsoft has entered the game through its MSN Video division with their user-generated site, Soapbox.

In a suprisingly savvy move, Soapbox is billed as a public beta and open by invitation only. This is a surprising and refreshing play as most of the online media sites hang the 'Beta' or 'Preview' moniker but then don't limit access to the service. Or update their services very often.

While generally not a Microsoft fan, THR is optimistic that Soapbox will raise the bar for the online, user-generated content experience - both for publishers and viewers. One interesting technology note - Soapbox produced a cutesy video to promote the service. Said video is embedded on the Soapbox home page ... in Adobe's Flash. Not as a streaming Windows Media file.

Latest Cyberstar - LonelyGirl15

Following a Korean teen's expert electric guitar rendition of Pachobel's Canon, the latest YouTube phenom is a pretty, home-schooled, devoutly religous American teen named Bree ... or Lonelygirl15.

Or is she 'real'? Or the latest internet hoax - some hook for a new high budget, studio TV show? Like the jilted lover billboards in New York and LA and the accompanying blog, That Girl Emily - all which later came out as a promo for the CourtTV show Parco P.I.

But then those ever-present online conspiracy theorists went on the hunt - and sure enough Lonelygirl15 isn't lonely at all. She's 19 year old actress Jessica Rose. Lonelygirl creators - Miles Beckett, Ramesh Flinders and Greg Goodfried - wanted to "to create a community in which audience members can interact with each other and be real participants in the show" according MTV News, one of the many major media outlets that have covered Lonelygirl's outing.

Apple's Showtime

Amidst scathing reviews of Amazon's Unbox, Apple's Steve Jobs delivered the long awaited news - the iTunes Music Store now features 75 leading feature films from the Walt Disney Co. studios - Disney, Pixar, and Touchstone and from Miramax.

Nipping the feature-length-content-won't-play-at-this-size-or-resolution argument, Jobs announced a new Video iPod line and increased 640x480 resolution.

Paul Boutin at Engadget has an excellent, detailed account of Job's announcement - take a look or just launch iTunes and install the upgrade to v7. Then hop on over to your local Apple Store and pick up the postage stamp size Nano or the brighter, longer battery lifed iPod.

And coming early in '07, Apple's Media PC equivalent, tentatively dubbed iTV, will try to find its place on your rack, between the receiver and the amplifier.

Amazon Joins the Online Pay-Per-Download Party

Adding another shot to the bullseye of existing online movie download sites - CinemaNow, MovieLink, and Guba - Amazon announced it's flavor, curiously called Unbox.

The Digital Video Download Service includes films from seven studios (minus the Disney owned crew which are holding out for Apple's pending announcement) including some recent box office winners: 16 Blocks, V for Vendetta, The Matrix, Walk the Line, and Brokeback Mountain.

Unbox also has TV shows from the major broadcast and cable networks such as 24, C.S.I., and the PBS current affairs show, NOW with David Brancaccio among many others. Star Trek debuts with Unbox as well, but THR can't imagine Kirk won't be flying the iTunes galaxy sometime soon.