Fergie's Tech Blog

Why Stephen Colbert Is Google's Best Friend

Stephen Colbert
Image source: eWeek

As Marissa Mayer prepares to give her speech to television executives at the Media Guardian TV festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, tomorrow, she would do well to consider how a fake TV news anchor is helping Google's advertising plans, one video mashup at a time.

The 31-year-old will encourage the boob tube brass to consider the Web as a way of increasing its popularity. Internet as friend, not foe. Ad generator, not ad competitor.

"The Internet creates more of an appetite for media--it doesn't replace physical books, radio or TV," she told the Guardian recently. "I don't think it should be a threat to existing business models. It should cause users to consume more."

Enter Stephen Colbert. The faux media maven has made an art of using the Internet--especially online video--to promote his Comedy Central show. After successfully inciting his users to edit Wikipedia entries on his behalf (the traffic uptick may have crashed the server), Colbert exhorted fans to create video mashups of his light-saber antics in front of a green screen. The result: Hundreds of thousands of people watched his show on YouTube. Apparently satisified with the exposure on YouTube, Colbert is now asking participants to upload videos to colbertnation.com.

posted by Fergie @ 8/25/2006 02:55:00 PM