Morgan Webb Launches WebbAlert

Update 9:00PM - Is the WebbAlert Federated Media's new conversation? 

So I wake up this morning to the exciting news that Morgan Webb has launched a daily video show, WebbAlert. Well daily as-in, Monday-Thursday, at least to begin with. I am sure Valleywag is happy as they have new bait to pick on. The first episode was a chore to watch. In the beginning she attempts so show a shy, cute side, a "please excuse me when i F-up, side." Then she jumps into the news! The neck and facial movements are a bit much.

On a positive note, she does appear to be knowledgeable about the content she is discussing, rather than just reading the screen which is great. Providing a new viewpoint on a story will help her gain momentum. She pimps arstechnica twice in the broadcast and then there is an arstechnica commercial in the middle. Bit odd, don't you think?

Mike begins with, "she’s also fairly hot - Webb’s pictures have been in FHM and Maxim magazine, and in April she was voted the 51st sexiest woman in the world in a FHM survey." I am guessing Maxim airbrushed the winching between the eyes when she gets excited. He also believes this is better than Rocketboom. I disagree. Rocketboom brings stories that are not time-sensitive typically and so the content will always be worth watching. UK blogger Peter Cooper made an excellent point:

Despite a reasonable execution, the key problem here is that the info she gives could as easily be given in four or five paragraphs you could read in about 30 seconds. Should we celebrate four minutes of video replacing several paragraphs of text? I don’t know. If you just want the eye candy, then great, but if it’s really about “keeping up to date” with stuff, you don’t need this inefficiency!

You see without any entertainment value, it's just a woman reading news. Tony Hung has his take, "WebbAlert: Morgan Webb Reads Techmeme" and goes on to say, "Geek celeb + blog pimping == lots of blog love == recipe for potential superstardom." Mike also says she will link to blogs. I hope she doesn't fall into the Amanda trap of linking to the same sites over and over. We will have to see as the video shows continue.

Mike and others have said on numerous occasions that blogs are better because they get the news first. But for some reason, now he's ok with it. This show will always be basically a day behind and I put it in the same "tech news" category as Natali's show. In my video host smackdown last week I rated several video hosts. I would put Morgan on par with Natali, above Amanda and below Amber.

Morgan, please move back from the camera a bit for the reasons I noted above. Will she be successful? Sure, for the reasons Tony has noted plus the supposed "hot-chick" factor.

Oh yea, and today is Thursday so the next episode of "this is how we roll - GigaOM TV" should be out. My review to follow promptly thereafter :)

Update: She is already being represented by FM for advertising, she’s been live one day. When I started CN, they told me that you need 1 million impressions a month to qualify. Based on the note listed below, I guess they have either changed the qualification (so perhaps CN can get in now) or some don't need that qualification?

WebbAlert Traffic: 10,000 page views per month.