According to VidIQ CEO Robert Sandie, big companies have learned the power of Twitter and Facebook as marketing tools but are overlooking YouTube, which he describes as the world’s “second biggest social network.”

To fill this gap, VidIQ is offering tools that let companies monitor and manage their videos and apply some SEO zest to help their videos rise in search rankings. He explained that most companies are failing to apply even basic search strategies to their YouTube content, meaning it’s still relatively easy to achieve big improvements in YouTube visibility.

“It means an organic boost in video traffic,” said Sandie in a phone interview. “Like the early days of the web, when you could get a headstart on Google or Yahoo or Alta Vista, it’s still early on in YouTube.”

VidIQ’s primary SEO tool is a box that prompts users to add more keywords to their videos. It also provides guidance about the optimal time to publish new videos.

The company also offers analytics tools that Sandie says can deliver important demographic information such as the ratio of male to female viewers. And, like HootSuite does for Twitter and other social media, VidIQ lets users monitor comments and buzz about their YouTube videos.  Other broader social media management companies, like Unified Social, also offer some social marketing services for YouTube but Sandie says VidIQ offers a unique YouTube listening platform to monitor and engage influencers.

To start, VidIQ is offering two versions of its products: a free one that small users can apply to manage single YouTube channel and a more sophisticated enterprise package for a fee.

VidIQ says it has so far raised more than $800,000 from Mark Cuban, Scott Banister, David Cohen, and others.

Ganxy already lets authors and publishers create ebook “showcases” that can be tweeted and embedded on sites like Facebook, or can stand alone as websites. With the new bundling feature, authors and publishers can create “box sets” of ebooks and sell the bundles directly to their audience through the showcase. They can also quickly adjust pricing and offer flash sales.

Ganxy’s showcases for single titles let users either sell ebooks directly through the showcase or link through to retailers. But the bundling option is only for users who want to sell directly through Ganxy. The company’s fee is 10 percent of all the sales made directly through its platform.

Some of Ganxy’s current users include Diversion Books (publisher of Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and the Washington Post ebooks, among others), romance authors Barbara Freethy and Sylvia Day, and New York Times columnist Mark Oppenheimer. The company is self-funded.

Separately, StoryBundle, the startup founded by former Gizmodo and Lifehacker editor Jason Chen, announced its new “Holiday Gift Bundle.” StoryBundle packages together a group of ebooks by self-published authors and lets users pay what they want. The holiday bundle includes six ebooks in a variety of genres; users who pay at least $8 get two bonus ebooks. The company also added gift cards.

One of the first major complaints came in a piece in the New York Observer that accused the social network of being “broken on purpose.” Not long afterward, a blog called Dangerous Minds wrote a long polemic about how what the social network was doing was “the biggest bait-and-switch in history” — since users (including brands) were enticed to use the service on the understanding that they could use it to build up a giant fan base, and were now being charged for the right to reach those same fans. The cost to do this by paying for sponsored posts, the blog said, was just too exorbitant:

“We simply can’t afford to pay Facebook $2000 to $3200 a day and we can’t afford to do nothing, either. Their shockingly greedy business plan offers us no alternative and we’re not alone.”

Hiding valuable content or blocking spam?

In response to this criticism, Facebook explained — both in a post by one of its engineers and in comments to TechCrunch and Ars Technica — that the newsfeed filtering was designed to eliminate spam and noise, and that it was constantly being tweaked in order to show users things they were actually interested in, not just things that brands wanted them to see. The message seemed pretty obvious: don’t be spammy with your posts and lots of your users will still see them for free. And if you want to spam them anyway, you will have to pay for sponsored posts in order to do that.

This didn’t stop the criticism from flowing, however: one user wrote an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, complaining about the moves by the social network and urging the founder and CEO to remain committed to his stated goal of “giving people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.” Actor George Takei responded to this letter with a Facebook post, saying he was devoting a chapter in his upcoming book to the issue. On Tuesday, Mark Cuban — who had been posting complaints on Twitter for days about Facebook’s behavior — unloaded to Dan Lyons at ReadWrite about the impact that the changes were having, and how he wasn’t going to stand for it any longer. The sports mogul and star of TV show Shark Tank said that he was shifting the focus not just of his own presence or that of the Dallas Mavericks but all of the other businesses in which he is an investor to other platforms, including MySpace:

“We are moving far more aggressively into Twitter and reducing any and all emphasis on Facebook. We won’t abandon Facebook, we will still use it, but our priority is to add followers that our brands can reach on non-Facebook platforms first. We have already pushed more to Twitter. The new Myspace looks promising.”

Filtering is necessary for Facebook, and for users

As Wired points out in a response to Cuban’s complaints — and App.net founder Dalton Caldwell also does a good job of explaining — this kind of criticism makes little sense, unless you assume that Facebook is supposed to be a utility of some kind, broadcasting the messages of its users far and wide without any kind of filtering whatsoever. The reality is that a proprietary platform like Facebook is very much a double-edged sword, and Cuban and Takei are feeling the sharpness of that alternate edge: yes, it reaches a lot of people, but it is also a business that faces significant financial pressure.

Do Cuban or any of Facebook’s other critics really think that Twitter or MySpace are going to be any different? Twitter started off as a much more open platform than Facebook — which is one of the reasons that users like me have responded so negatively to some of the restrictions it has been imposing on external services — but it is heading down the same inexorable path. In order to justify their multibillion-dollar market value, both companies have to find new sources of revenue, and traditional advertising just isn’t going to do it. Sponsored content is the future, whether we like it or not.

It’s one thing to excuse George Takei for not realizing the implications of this, but Mark Cuban is a notoriously sharp businessman who routinely criticizes entrepreneurs on his TV show for failing to understand how markets work. Facebook is a business, not a charity or a platform for social well-being — and it provides that platform free of charge, on the understanding that users agree to be marketed to in a variety of ways. The idea that it should somehow allow Cuban to spam all his followers with marketing content for nothing is nonsensical.

Not only does Cuban’s criticism not make much sense from a business standpoint, but as even social-media evangelist Robert Scoble points out, what Facebook is doing by trying to tweak its filtering algorithms is arguably in the best interest of users as well, since they are already being overwhelmed by noise and marketing spam. From that perspective, Facebook has to do what it is doing or it will suffer a lot more damage than some angry emails from celebrity users. We can argue about how it is filtering and the way it is communicating that to users, but the fact that it is doing so seems inevitable.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr users Cotidad and See-ming Lee

New York-based startup Ganxy provides an easy solution. The company, which was founded in 2009 and is officially launching today at the Frankfurt Book Fair, gives authors and publishers a straightforward toolset to let them sell books and control marketing and promotions. In just a few minutes, anyone can create a “showcase” for a book that includes its cover, description, video and other marketing materials, and purchase options. Authors and publishers can sell books directly through the showcase or simply provide links to retailers. The entire showcase can then be tweeted, embedded in a blog, website or Facebook page, or can just stand alone as a website.

Ganxy also allows authors and publishers to track where their sales are coming from. “People have had no idea what’s working,” cofounder and biz dev lead Joshua Cohen told me. With Ganxy, they know if a book was purchased by someone who clicked on their showcase from Facebook, for example, versus from a tweet. Users can also add an email capture field to a showcase, allowing them to connect directly with readers who are interested in their books.

It’s free to create a showcase, but Ganxy makes money in two ways. The company takes 10 percent of each sale when an ebook is sold through a showcase (authors and publishers can choose whether they want to sell ebooks directly). Ganxy also makes money through the affiliate links to retail sites that are embedded in the showcase. An author can also request to use his or her own affiliate links in the showcase; in that case, Ganxy displays its affiliate link 25 percent of the time and the author’s 75 percent of the time.

Ganxy also wants to appeal to readers. When someone buys an ebook directly through a Ganxy showcase, it’s added to his or her library and can be downloaded in any format (EPUB, iOS, Kindle and so on). All the ebooks Ganxy sells directly are DRM-free. (Publishers who don’t like that can just display retail links and not sell ebooks directly.)

So far, a few clients are using Ganxy in beta: Diversion Books (the publisher of Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and the Washington Post ebooks, among others), romance author Barbara Freethy (who’s achieved huge success self-publishing her out-of-print titles as ebooks) and author and Cracked columnist Robert Brockway. The site is now opening to everyone and will accept new users in waves.

Ganxy is entirely self-funded. The company’s president is Aleks Jakulin, who previously taught data mining at Columbia and is an expert in artificial intelligence. (The European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence named his PhD research the best artificial intelligence dissertation in Europe in 2005.) Cofounder Cohen previously cofounded the German video identification company iPharro Media and worked at Merrill Lynch, Random House and MTV.

I asked Cohen if and when the company plans to expand Ganxy to include other forms of digital content. For now, he said, the primary focus is books, with the direct sales functionality focused heavily on ebooks. (In an earlier version, Ganxy focused on direct music sales, and those are still available.) But as a promotional tool, Cohen says, Ganxy’s showcases could be used for any type of digital content.

The Portland-based company, which is being demoed at PIE [Portland Incubator Experiment] Demo Day this morning, is also announcing a $1 million angel funding round today. Mark Cuban’s Radical Investments led the round, with participation from Howard Lindzon’s Social Leverage Group, Hubspot cofounder Dharmesh Shah and former Twitter engineer Blaine Cook. MetaFilter founder Matt Haughey, Accel’s Jonathan Siegel, Blogads’ Henry Copeland and social media expert Jay Baer also invested.

Little Bird determines which people are most influential on any given topic based on their personal connections, rather than on the content they create. “Unlike almost every other service out there, we are not doing content analysis for discovery of influencers,” Kirkpatrick told me. “We are looking at the specialists that other specialists are paying attention to…I think of it almost as a robot librarian. Whatever topic I’m interested in, I have the ability to snap my fingers and say, ‘Bring me the world’s most trusted neuroscientist.’”

Little Bird’s algorithm works by crawling the social graph of Twitter accounts and reducing them down to the “most trusted specialists” on a topic. (So you won’t necessarily be finding the world’s most trusted neuroscientist, but you might be finding the most trusted neuroscientist who’s also active on Twitter.) “The only way to climb up the ranks is to win the respect of your peers,” Kirkpatrick said. Though Little Bird is only crawling Twitter and blogs for now, the company plans to add LinkedIn and Google+ accounts soon. “We have reason to believe there are some serious professionals out there using Google+,” Kirkpatrick said, but “nobody knows who they are now.”

While Little Bird sounds somewhat similar to Klout, Kirkpatrick stressed that it’s “almost the opposite of a black box” in that it’s designed to be transparent and rational. He also says it’s a better discovery tool. “If you’ve already got someone in mind, Klout can tell you what their general popularity across the web is. But if you need to do discovery and what you’re really looking for is influence among other specialists, that’s something we provide better than Klout or anybody else.” Even so, he said, Klout data could eventually be added to Little Bird’s algorithm: “Sorting by Klout score would be an interesting way to display the data we’ve discovered.”

Along with person discovery, Little Bird offers various content discovery options. A “hot content” tab shows the links being shared the most around a given subject. “It’s like Techmeme for any topic,” Kirkpatrick said. A “top blogs” feature ranks blogs based on the number of inbound links, and a custom search engine lets users search inside “a whitelist of trusted domain experts” rather than across the web at large. Finally, if you’re in the mood for navel-gazing — and of course you are — “scorecard” lets you compare any Twitter account to other influencers on a topic.

So how well does it work?

I tested Little Bird and had pretty good results. I tried searching for two topics, “book publishing” and “ebooks,” figuring that I’d be most familiar with the results and would be able to gauge how good they were. My search for “book publishing” mostly turned up publisher accounts (for Simon & Schuster and Sterling, for instance) rather than individuals. Kirkpatrick admits that “in some sectors, companies do dominate,” but users can filter their results to show only individuals. When I did that, my results were much better.

My search for “ebooks” turned up a mixture of people I know and would actually consider influential, but also a number of marketing, company or promotional accounts that people probably primarily follow in order to get freebies. There were also many users speaking in foreign languages (though you can confine your search to a geographic area).

My search for “hot content” around ebooks revealed basically useless results: Two separate tweets about Catalonian independence (from the same user), two duplicate tweets from an editor and one tweet about Mitt Romney’s education policy.

These results may improve when Little Bird starts pulling in sources beyond Twitter. And the service also might be better for broader topics. A search for “broadband” pulled up our own Stacey Higginbotham, while “journalism” found people like Clay Shirky and Tim O’Reilly.

What it costs

Today you can view a few reports for free. Then Little Bird is rolling out free previews and subscription access in waves to individuals, small businesses and large businesses, with general availability expected in the next year. Individual accounts are $50 a month, and business accounts range from $250 for companies with three or fewer employees to $1,000 a month for companies with 26 to 500 employees (larger companies can get in touch for custom pricing). “It’s a little less expensive than [social media monitoring tool] Radian6 and more expensive than Meltwater,” Kirkpatrick said. “It’s a lot less expensive than hiring a consultant or agency to go out and do this research.”

Beginning as early as June, AXS (pronounced “access”) plans to deliver behind-the-scenes coverage of live concerts and music festivals, red carpet premieres, award shows and celebrity parties, as well as in-depth interviews with entertainers and various glitterati.

“This isn’t another E!,” Cuban told paidContent via e-mail, describing the re-christened channel. “Think of it more as ESPN (NYSE: DIS) for music and pop culture. We will work towards being live all the time. We will have a live studio show that will go remote to actual events rather than being driven by celebrity rumor packages … If you see a tweet for breaking pop culture news, we want you to be able to turn on AXS and know we will have someone on site to cover it and a studio to discuss it.”

In the current cable and satellite realm, larger media conglomerates like, say, Fox (NSDQ: NWS) Networks can use the reach of popular channels like FX to leverage better carriage for more obscure networks like Fuel. As a result, channels like HDNet have often been squeezed into the less popular programming tiers and channel numbers of the various cable and satellite carriers — or worse, pushed off altogether.

But partners like AEG, which has the ability to offer AXS subscribers early access to perks like concert tickets, vastly improve the channel’s negotiating position. “These are things we could never do before,” Cuban pointed out.

Right away, AXS TV will get enhanced carriage from Dish Network (NSDQ: DISH), which will take its standard-definition feed and put it on its top-tier America’s Top 120 programming package. Dish will also make AXS-branded live events available on VOD channels and has a ticketing. AXS TV’s reach will expand from its current level of 27 million to 35 million cable and satellite subscribers as a result of these moves. Dish Network also extended its carriage contract for the channel for seven years.

At least at the beginning, AXS TV will remain confined to the HD tiers of operators including Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA) and DirecTV (NYSE: DTV), but Cuban said he discussed the re-brand with these other carriers and “they love the idea.” Of course, loving and paying are often two different things.

Seacrest, AEG and CAA are giving up their own idea for a new network, opting instead to rebuild one that already has some carriage agreeements. As for how the various partners fit in, AEG will provide the production wherewithal for the new venture, with much of that coming from operations situated in the LA Live entertainment complex in Downtown Los Angeles. AEG will also leverage its connections in the live entertainment world to set up red carpet events, performer interviews and back-stage access.

Seacrest, who also owns equity in the re-branded venture, doesn’t plan to be on the channel but will provide his reach through Ryan Seacrest Media, including his various relationships. He’ll produce some programming through Ryan Seacrest Productions.

Hollywood talent agency CAA, which represents Seacrest, is promising access to its extensive industry relationships, as well as its advisory services in the areas of corporate development, marketing, technology, brand integration and sponsorship.

The re-brand won’t entirely wipe away all remnants of HDNet’s current form – the sports-themed HDNet Fights and Inside MMA, the channel’s Sunday concert series and the news show Dan Rather Reports will continue on AXS TV but with more live elements. HDNet Movies, meanwhile, will retain its current focus on high-definition films.

Cuban said the re-branding would include some cross-platform elements, but their form would not be “typical,” he added, and they will be announced later. One effort was included with the news: the AXS Headliner Club, an online audition site with Dish, is planned for an August launch.

Every technology company I have is getting hit by patent lawsuits that are the biggest bunch of bullshit ever. Every week it seems like a new one comes up. Between having to pay our lawyers a lot of money to review each, to increasing insurance rates and settlement costs because we can’t afford to pay to fight the nonsense, it’s an enormous expense. So much so that money that would have gone to new hires to improve and sell the product has to be saved to pay to deal with this bullshit.

I’m not talking about a new company that had an idea that someone beat us to. No sir. I’m talking about companies that have been doing business the same way for years that are getting hit by patent trolls. These aren’t operating companies that are trying to protect their business. These are companies that aggregate patents and raise capital for the sole purpose of suing companies and extorting money from them.

It’s bad for my little companies. It’s horrific for bigger companies. It’s so bad that major tech companies are buying big collections of patents not because they want to own the intellectual property but rather because they want the ability to respond to patent lawsuits with a lawsuit of their own. It’s like playing a game of thermo nuclear war. If all sides have “nuclear patents” they can respond to patent litigation with equal force. Another words, if you have enough “nuclear patents” no one will sue you for patent infringement because you have enough power to respond in kind. Its crazy and costing this country jobs.

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) just spent $900mm buying a patent collection. Other big companies are spending the same way. That is money that for many companies would have gone to job creation.

We need to face the facts, patent law is killing job creation. If the current administration wants to improve job creation, change patent law and watch jobs among small technology companies develop instantly. I know I have at least 1 company that would hire instantly.

Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and cofounder of HDNet, offers running commentary on Blog Maverick and allows us to publish it here, as is, when the subject fits.

Cuban, however, tells Kafka that he is investing in the company because of the potential for Revision3′s online shows to carry over onto TV.

Revision3 disclosed that Cuban had invested in the company in an update on its overall performance. The company says it was profitable during the fourth quarter and revenue increased 80 percent year-over-year in 2010.

The company, which was started by Digg co-founders Jay Adelson and Kevin Rose, had already raised at least $9 million in funding from backers including Greylock Partners and Marc Andreessen.

The idea that they would take and fight for money from their distributors, who generally are the same ISPs that Google TV delivers content over, and then offer the exact same shows for free through Google TV, or any aggregator that expects that content for free is probably one of the dumbest concepts ever.

Now if Google were to go to those networks and offer them money per month for every buyer of a Google enabled device or TV, that would be different. Then they would be a tv provider competing with the rest and they should take their money. Think Google will ever do that ? I don’t.

So giving the same content they not only charge their distributors for, but also charge their local affiliates for to Google for nothing or for a share of revenue ? STUPID.

If Google sticks to their guns of not paying up front for content like Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) does, they will have handed Netflix the entire streaming universe on a platter.

Did anyone else see the report that Netflix streaming consumes 20pct of download throughput during weekday primetime hours ?

If this is true. Its one more reason to think that Netflix has won the streaming wars and those broadcast networks would be moronic to give their content online away for free. Why ?

First of all, do you know the difference between Netflix and Google when it comes to content ? Netflix pays up front and offers minimum guarantees. Google and everyone else for that matter, pays a commission based on ad sales. (which works wonderfully on Youtube for them)

So riddle me this batman. Netflix is on Google TV , correct ? Given that Netflix pays and Google TV doesn’t, why wouldn’t/shouldn’t the broadcast networks offer all of their shows to Netflix as a way to reach Google TV users, knowing that they will get paid for their content. Paid HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OR MORE for their content.

All you internet pundits want the broadcast networks to give the content away for free. THAT IS STUPID. Get Netflix to pay you on a per subscriber basis on a par with what your other TV providers pay you. Netflix becomes a competitive TV provider. BRILLIANT. You get paid. You reach Google TV users and non Google TV users.

Of course you basically cede to Netflix control of the streaming content world. You give their streaming only subscriptions a unique value beyond old shows and movies. Goodbye Hulu as well.

Of course once they get the broadcast nets, how long until they add the cable nets like ESPN (NYSE: DIS), Disney, etc., etc. ?

Back to the Netflix using 20pct of bandwidth. Now that they have gotten there, it is going to be easier for Netflix than anyone else to grow their bandwidth usage. They can add streaming subscribers at a controlled level and it could work. Growing their usage as a percentage of total bandwidth consumption quickly becomes a trojan horse in the streaming wars. They are consuming so much bandwidth, they literally are blocking out the ability of anyone to compete with them.

If Netflix gets to 25pct do you think Google is going to be able to also get to 25pct during primetime and all of the sudden 50pct of the internet’s bandwidth during primetime is allocated to streaming tv originated shows, movies and other video ? Of course not. And that’s before consideration for Youtube. How much bandwidth in primetime does and will Youtube use ? After you combine Netflix and their growth to Youtube and its growth, what kind of internet bandwidth is going to be left for anyone else for streaming TV to millions ?

There will be big problems and lots of quality and delivery issues long before we get close to those percentages. Leaving Netflix in a phenomenal position. They get to adapt to a declining available bandwidth environment with an existing product , revenue and subscriber base. There is no such thing as equal access when you are blocking up 25pct of the lanes on the highway 24—7. The others can’t even get on the ramp.

Their competitors have to figure out how not only how to overcome the technical hurdles of reduced available bandwidth, but also a business model since no one will want to give content away for free when Netflix can pay them.

Netflix is smart as shit.

Netflix is also great for traditional TV providers. TV works. TV works for any number of subscribers or viewers. 100pct of the digital bandwidth that TV uses is designed, managed and operated purely for the distribution of TV and complementary features. It will work.

Netflix should end up as the only “TV” provider that truly works on the internet, Which means that content providers like the broadcast and cable networks can be paid by Netflix on a per sub basis for their subs who want to subscribe via the net, and from traditional tv providers for those who want buffer free, (relatively) full quality TV the old fashioned way.

Oh, and one more thing. Expect your internet bills to go way way up as ISPs make it clear that all this video over the internet is going to require billions in upgrades. The irony is that while you may not like paying for cable channels you don’t watch. You will end up paying for cable channels on the internet that you don’t watch as well. In this case you will be paying via higher net bills for the extra bandwidth required to stream cable channels that your neighbors like to watch

Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and cofounder of HDNet, offers running commentary on Blog Maverick and allows us to publish it here when the subject fits. This one shows why we were so keen to have him at our Nov. 8 conference, The Battle for the Digital Home (register here), and so regret that the Mavericks are playing that day.

The latest example came this week from Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) CEO Reed Hastings, in an interview (via Ken Doctor). We decided to sift through advice from six of them — Hastings, Eric Schmidt, Craig Newmark, Mark Cuban, Vint Cerf and Ted Turner (Turner isn’t known for his digital work, but he’s clearly got business-reinvention cred). Read on.

Reed Hastings

Advice: Hastings suggests that entities like newspapers deploy most of their resources toward their future business model rather than their current one. “We knew that the DVD business was temporary when we founded the company. That