WebbAlert, a new daily (Monday – Thursday) video news show hosted by X-Play’s Morgan Webb, launches this morning at 2 am PST. The focus of the show will be the major breaking technology and gaming news of the day. Like Rocketboom, each show will be no more than 5 minutes long, for easy consumption. Unlike Rocketboom, I’ve been able to sit through a whole episode – the early content that I’ve seen, including the pilot, is interesting and compelling.
Webb, who’s 28, has the on-air confidence of Lindsay Cambell from Wallstrip, and enough technical knowledge to do a fairly deep dive into the subjects she’s discussing. She has a degree in Rhetoric from U.C. Berkeley and was a web developer for a while after college. As an aside, 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.
Webb also “gets” how new media sites gain quick traction by embracing the community. The show will focus on tech and gaming news and will be featuring blog posts that break and cover the news over traditional news outlets. That will put her in the good graces of the bloggers, who will be more likely to link to the show over time.
This is mostly a one-woman show. Webb writes, creates and produces the content, even doing her own camera work. She works out of her at-home studio. Her husband Rob Reid (founder of Listen.com, exec at Rhapsody) is co-founder and handles the business side of things.
WebbAlert has not raised capital, and the show’s very low cost basis means they don’t necessarily have to, either. This could be a winner – blogs will want to get mentions on WebbAlert and, as with TechMeme, will see it as a badge of honor.
The first episode is embedded below.
Update: I should have mentioned the excellent TeXtra videocast in the post as well, since it in a very similar format. It’s hosted by Natalie Del Conte, a former TechCrunch writer, and covers very similar news items as WebbAlert. A key difference is that while TeXtra is also almost certainly sourcing its stories from blogs, they are rarely (never?) credited, giving bloggers little incentive to watch or link to it. I think the slight tweak that WebbAlert gave the model is going to work out very well for them. And perhaps Natalie will begin to add sources to the stories she talks about as well.
Very cool. Morgan has been a pretty decent analyst from way back in her TechTV days. I have been wondering what she has been up to. It’ll be interesting to watch, and considering the recent Wallstrip buyout this might be the perfect time for a another entrant into the vlogging as news game.
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Sorry, but the rss feed has a typo in the first link “whww”.
Not. She is too pretty and Jim Carrey imitation doesn’t help either. Wallstrip gal strips news better IMHO. Sorry Webb.
“Web writes, creates and produces the content, even doing her own camera work.”
Webb.
I dunno what happened to my original post, but I love Morgan. She’s a hot geek goddess. A curse on all your families that disagree!
Very nice Video !!!
She’s real purdy. *slackjawed chuckle*
I will be checking out her “WebbAlerts regularly!
Agree with what MarkB said, the contents good, its just her presentation which suffers a bit, I think it would help if they loosened up the framing a little as well. Still, not bad for a first edition!
It certainly is more engaging cause of the girl. Wow, jst look at her expressions. I cud watch the show with the voice turned off
@ Tom, I agree… brought back memories of early Britney Spears videos
(not to say the content is in any way analogous)
Nice show,
Anyone know what software is used to create the special effects in the show.. zooming in, and tilting the webpage and more…
If she created the whole thing her self, it must be a easy software to use, not to say that she cant use a harder software!!! …lol
cheers
I’m a fan – it kind of puts the ‘blog’ in videoblog. Hits all the key stories, links to great blog postings on both the big stories of the day & some of the offbeat & fun stuff as well. I like to spend a hr or so each day reading tech blogs, but don’t always have the time, and this’ll be good cliff notes on the days when I’m pressed and can’t read it all myself.
Yeah, when you say “it’s interesting”, don’t you mean to say “she’s hot”?
Can’t subscribe to it in iTunes, so I’m probably not going to follow it that closely.
I think it usually takes a few days/weeks for iTunes to pick new vblogs up in the directory, so I’d give her a bit of time. It only went up today, right? I like the “cliff notes’ analotgy someone made btw. I think this will be a time leverager, for me. And yes, yes, she is very cute!
Pretty cool stuff. The more of these, the better. Pretty girl too.
Why no comments allowed on the episodes? Or am I just missing them?
The show was OK, found it slightly OTT but on the whole I’ll check it out again!
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!
Here is my confusion point. We talk about the fact that blogs bring us the news immediately and that old media (both web and offline) bring it to us a day later. Webb says she is going to do the same thing so why is she heralded as something more?
Rocketboom typically brings us time-independent stories so I believe that’s why it has worked. Here is my interview with Joanne and Andrew:
http://www.cent...drew-rocketboom
Webb will be able to get her audience over from g4 and will be a success based on that. She already seems to have advertisers (ars) which she pimps in the video. I can’t wait until the first boing boing reference!
I also agree with #21 Peter.
Not sure how you can say it’s more interesting than Rocketboom at this point. I watched about one minute and couldn’t take any more. “Don’t worry, I’ll let you know in advance.” That’s okay, Morgan. I’m already not watching.
She’s hot? Man, you guys are starved.
I had not idea how hot Morgan Webb had become. She annoyed the crap out of me when she joined Extended Play back before it was called X-Play… and back when the network was still called TechTV. I never cared for her and thought she was ok looking, but yowza. Do a Google Image Search for her and you’ll find some “wow, wow” material from FHM and Maxim!
Please don’t place mention this show in the same post as WallStrip – their quality and production top to bottom is leaps and bounds better than Webbalert. And host Campbell is actually good…not just a pretty face.
Also, this show is noooot more interesting than rocketboom and not even close to being in the same league.
If you want informative and entertaining Geek news then head over to GeekBrief.TV http://geekbrief.podshow.com/ and enjoy Cali’s excellant show.
I think I just got dumber watching webbalert.
I’d hit it
Why do speakers in video blogs always have to overact so much? I can’t stand it…
Ah, seems Mike is biased towards Webb?
lol – i don’t want to sound old fashion, but i prefer the voice credibility of a male. i always usually think females use their sex appeal to get where they are, or just to otherwise captivate an audience for not the true substance of the story.
Hey.
Back up off of Rocketboom. I like that show.
And by the way:
“The focus of the show will be the major breaking technology and gaming news of the day. Like Rocketboom, each show will be no more than 5 minutes long, for easy consumption.”
Yeah. Cause that’s what the web’s been missing.
Anyone remember Cat Schwartz from TechTV? She was a cutie too. It would be cool if she sat in for Morgan when she wasn’t available.
Great idea with awesome content! I love it.
…and a hot geek girl?
I’m a huge fan already.
Wow, I can’t believe the comments here. Mike since when was your audience a bunch of old guys that don’t don’t like women? see comment #30 – I can watch the old-school media guys on TV anyday thanks..
Rocketboom died the day Amanda left and Wallstrip (yawn)…
Morgan has a huge following from G4/X-Play, you know the younger, hipper guys that don’t wear Dockers every day of the week like I suspect that most of the guys that made comments above do. She’s reviewed all of my favorite video games even….
Morgan pulls off her first video just fine. Give her crew a chance to improve on what they’ve started here… It’s quirky, interesting and I like the format.
Go Morgan! I’ll be tuning in and so will a lot of other people…
i was actually watchin some of it with the sound off LOL
(Was at work)
-Rb
There’s another great new video blog that I stumbled upon recently: http://www.ampolo.com.
Even though it has nothing to do with techy stuff, I think the host is great and the content is very original. It’s basically a site that gives away a wide variety of ideas for free…hoping someone will take one of them and actually do something with it. And no, there’s no catch…I thought the same thing too!
WebbAlert is currently at 3 million plus on Alexa. Surely it will beat my ranking in no time.
She looks pretty when she doesn’t talk. She moves her head a lot. I will probably be a regular of that site though.
Morgan Webb is grrreat, but of course she’s no Lindsay Campbell…not even close! Of course I’m biased though, I’m one of the producers of Wallstrip
#37 – I included the neck movements in my review:
http://www.cent...eo-show-its-hot
If she moved back a foot from the camera, it would help.
feed://feeds.feedburner.com/webbalert
Just paste this link into iTunes under advanced… subscribe podcast… and it works.
Always liked Morgan from the TechTV days.
“Her Husband Rob Reid…”
You have just put a stake through the heart of millions of fanboys!
That’s a pretty sweet burn in the title.
Anyway, I think this has potential, and I like that Webb is apparently a big fan of Gawker, since she cited Valleywag and Kotaku, just in the first show.
The biggest problem I see is that she’s talking too fast, like she’s trying to cram 10 minutes of content into a 5 minute clip. It feels like she’s rushing through every segment, to get to the next one. Which makes me feel like I’m rushing through Webb Report to get to something else. I’ll take lower content if it means a more measured delivery.
Sorry, but I just find her kind of annoying and distracting to watch. I agree she’s good looking, but is that all it takes to please some of you?
It’s funny to hear all these people talk about how Morgan is “Overacting” or “Valley Girlish”. They obviously never watched her on G4 or Tech TV. She has always acted like that, and it works for her.
I think this show has legs. I look forward to catching it (unregularly)
Heh, thanks for defense everyone in the comments. Michael, I know you dont watch the show so I appreciate the nod. I dont take subjective opinions about the content personally, different people like different things and I never expect anyone to like it.
Morgan’s seem’s cool, it’s nice to have some more options out there.
Word to the wise for all jumping in: A talking head and webpage text is not taking full advantage of the medium. When 10000 people write headlines about the same thing, the video format has the opportunity to provide more.
Providing entertaining and compelling information in visual form is something we are challenged by (and often fail on) everyday. I hope that this new show will do more to provide us with more than headlines that we could more quickly read.
Michael, I’d love to see you next. If you did a weekly forum with several other CEO’s, I dont think it would be just another boring talk show. It would prob be really entertaining because it could get really heated and the CEOs might say things that we dont usually get to hear them say. Thus, we could all learn a lot more about how businesses work, in a somewhat entertaining way, right from the horses’ mouths.
For a one “gal” show, the production value is quite good. Perhaps too good because I would have liked to have seen this yesterday as more breaking news but I’m sure it takes time to put this all together. The problem is that I already learned about all this news, mostly from TechCrunch. Although beating Michael to the punch is a near impossible feat.
Morgan is gorgeous…which will definitely keep the guys coming back. You add an attractive tech head to the mix and I’m a happy guy. The content was well collected but if you want people to watch for the information, it’s going to have to get out ASAP.
Very cute.
Seems it does not work with Internet Explorer 6 (at least on two virtual machines i tested). Wow, that’s rejecting quite a lot potential viewers if true…
Can someone else confirm?
Interesting…let’s see how long she lasts…
At the end of the day, no one will care about the content — just the face that’s delivering the news. If I were a woman, I’m sure I’d be far ahead of the game in new media than I am now.
Repeating the headlines doesn’t seem to be taking the medium up a notch.
RB sometimes falls flat but when they nail a show it is very much a work of art.
This feels more like something from CNET news.com. For a different take on tech, I’d rather see Mike put up 60 seconds of mediocre video (bad lighting, no makeup) and just spout gratuitous opinion like a caller into the Jim Rome show. Have a take, don’t suck.
Record it with your iphone. Doh, it can’t do that yet.