Mahalo.com founder and serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis seems to think so, and he presents some interesting numbers to back up his claims.

Calacanis' corporate vlog, Mahalo Daily, recently passed one million views for March. Certainly, the American Idol-like search for a new host couldn't have hurt. Since the show's inception, they've had over 4 million viewers. Says Calacanis:

If you were to pay for four million 15 second spots on the web the cost would be $25 for each 1,000 views--or $100,000. That's about what we've spent on the show over the first six months. Additionally, the shows have archival value and will get another 2-4m views over their life I'm sure.

In other words, the Mahalo Daily will pay for itself fairly easily after one year. A $250,000 investment in the Mahalo Daily a year will bring in--if the growth continues--somewhere between 15-30M viewers a year.

Granted, it helps that Calacanis is something of a web superstar, what with his thousands of Twitter followers and blog readers that give him a big leg up on spreading his links. Calacanis calls this "monetized marketing" and predicts that in three years every company will not just blog, but vlog.

Color us skeptics - heck, many are just beginning to figure out blogging, let alone vlogging. Baby steps, people. However, early adopters like Calacanis who present us with these numbers will certainly push things forward. Therefore, it's not suprising (plug alert) that the agency I work at built a video studio in our San Francisco office this year.

As our CEO Sabrina Horn recently told PR Week, "We have a video studio in our office and it's not because clients demanded it - it was more like we were shooting videos for so many different things and then all of a sudden, we realized we should just have a video studio. And now we think, "wow this is great - this is where PR is going."

Other PR related vloggers PRNewser follows include D S Simon Vlog Views and Beet.TV. Who else should we pay attention to?

(NPR's Ira Glass about killing crap, via 37signals)

I've been seeing a lot of Tweets complaining of bad corporate video assembled by PR firms and other creators. I thought I'd share an inspiring video about "killing crap" from one of the great storytellers in broadcast, Ira Glass, Host of This American Life.

He talks about the importance of exploring stories thoroughly, and then becoming a ruthless killing machine when it's time to edit. To paraphrase:

"It's time to be vicious. It's time to kill, and enjoy the killing, so something better can live. Not enough is said about the importance of abandoning crap. All video production is trying to be crap. It's like the laws of entropy. Anything you put on tape is trying to be really bad, much like the sentences I'm saying here."

As the PR industry continues to create content on behalf of clients--as it should--this is a critical lesson. Check out some of the video efforts of mainstream print publications, and even the vlog portions of A-list blogs. Doesn't every video seem too long? The same holds true for most press releases. Keep cutting till you have a streamlined, interesting story to tell.

PRWeek EIC Keith O'Brien and San Francisco bureau chief Aarti Shah recently began an eight city tour to discuss with leading PR pros, "an industry close to that respective region."

Starting in the Bay Area, the first topic was obviously tech. See below for a video featuring Facebook PR head Brandee Barker, Richard Cline, President of Voce Communications, Courtney Hohne, Senior Manager of global communications and public affairs at Google and Luca Penati, Managing Director, global technology practice at Ogilvy.

For all you agency folk out there, it'd be wise to connect with Keith or others on the PRWeek staff (if you haven't already) to get a run down on where the tour is headed and if they're looking for panelists.

The name Theodore Barrett is GOP-sounding enough to make you do a double take if you didn't know that Dana "Big Girl Panties" Perino is the current White House Spokesperson.

(Rated somewhat NSFW)

We're including the embed of Sara Silverman's video gift to Jimmy Kimmel again because, you can never beat a viral horse enough.

Snapple lucked in to some good product placement with Silverman rhyming "Diet Snapple" with Damon's meathead classic "how 'bout them apples" [breasts].

Jean Ziliani from Snapple's PR agency Ketchum has been fueling the linkage by sending around a hilarious "letter" from Snapple to Jimmy the Cuckold Kimmel:

Hey Jimmy,

Heard that you found out about Sarah f*cking Matt Damon. Sorry you had to find out that way and that my sublime flavor blinded you to Sarah's philandering ways.

In an attempt to console you, here's a whole lotta me for you to enjoy. Hopefully it will numb the pain. In fact, if your viewers want to share their girlfriend/boyfriend is f*cking someone else story on air, they can have a case of me too...

Anyway, keep your spirits up. It's not like she was f*cking Ben Affleck or anything. Now that would have been embarrassing.

Diet Snapple

The history of the Kimmel/Damon rivalry is available on People.com. At presstime, Ziliani has not returned our call or email.

Haven't heard of Loren Feldman or 1938 Media? Watch the above and you'll see why he evokes so much love, hate, and confusion.

When I wrote "Vlogging and the New DIY PR," I dutifully contacted Feldman to get a quote, and a bit more information about his offering. His reply was to the point: "www.1938video.com" (his separate company site). Granted, this was a few weeks after I missed his return call on another story.

I thoroughly enjoy that Feldman dispenses with buzzwords and overblown adjectives to describe his video consultancy, and tilts at web2.0 windmills to get big attention.

See his Jakob & Julia parody video for a hilarious example.

Like Gary Vaynerchuk and Andy Plesser, Feldman is happy to turn the the camera on himself--often shirtless unfortunately--to promote his firm.

New media PR works best with a good publicist behind, it and Feldman clearly is one. We'll stay tuned to see if his business grows as a result. In the meantime, PRNewser predicts more PR people to try their hand at DIY PR in 2008.