Comcast Emphasizes the Importance of Free Content–(NYT, free with registration) Once given up for dead, Comcast’s stock rose 60% last year. Their strategy involves giving content away for free and then converting happy customers to paid services. Our CIQ thoughts: Too many content providers fear “giving away content.” Comcast is another company that suggests the power of free content.

Social Networking Fad— (NYT, free with registration) Big media has a “crush” on social networking and UCG, this article asserts. The internet space has an unfortunate gold-rush aspect, in our opinion. Things heat up too fast, then unable to sustain all the hype, they crash. Can’t a nice idea be a nice idea, not the next Google? How about just solid quality content that people enjoy?

And How to Sell it to Clients— (MediaPost) Along the same line of thinking, this writer notes, “You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t” promote UCG and Social Networking to clients. Clients want what’s hot, AND they want it to work. That’s the rub. See today’s article.

Feel the M&M; Be the M&M–(USA Today) Marketers are trying viral tactics like an online tool that lets users superimpose their image on an M&M and send it to friends. Also, through CareerBuilder, you can take your picture, age it 50 years and send to a freind. The CIQ phenomenon: A closer melding of content/entertainment creation with advertising.

Get Over Yourself–(CNN Money) “You” were the time magazine person of the year. This article discusses the trouble with monetizing user-generated content. It misses one important CIQ point: In our view, YouTube and MySpace are about the democratizing of content, taking the creation of content out of the hands of a powerful few. But they are not end points in themselves. We believe that new forms will emerge from this, capable of carrying ads and making money in a more long-tail way.

Advertising.com Pays Off for AOL— (Financial Times) Hardly noticed when it happpened, the AOL acquisition of Advertising.com in 2004 was a great decision, and now drives much of the growth at AOL. The CIQ angle: Advertising.com is an ad network that buys inventory on “long tail” niche sites, bundles it, and sells it to advertisers.

Robo Creation— (AdAge) Pick-N-Click is a new technology that allows people to create banner ads through drop-down menus. Its most obvious use would be to allow a franchise to customize standard creative for very little cost. We wonder about this sort of application expanded to other uses. For example, I am using blog software right now to become a web publisher. Could I employ some similarly easy-to-use software to create animations and webisodes?

Brightcove gets $60MM–(MediaPost) A chunk of that was from the New York Times. The melding of print, user-generated content, and online video is a cats-living-with-dogs CIQ phenomenon.

3 Networks Vie for Online Traffic— (Media Daily News) Don’t touch that…er…address bar. The major networks are streaming shows from their websites and competing for traffic. This is a convergence trend where computer becomes TV. The iphone combines phone and ipod. What will the devices be for the future? Will we read, or listen? On what device? Will we make trips to the movie theater, or just to the big, surround-sound, flat-screen TV in our living room?