Facebook introduced a new 360-degree spherical video feature this week for the social platform’s newsfeed. At launch, users can roam an immersive trailer for “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” by dragging their mouse over the video in order to access different vantage points. Mobile users can change their angle within clips featuring NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” and workouts by NBA star LeBron James by simply tilting their smartphone or swiping their finger across the screen. Continue reading Facebook Betting On VR with New 360-Degree Video Feature

NBCUniversal has launched a free Roku app that offers television viewers access to day-after-air full high definition episodes and highlights of their favorite NBC shows, including new fall series such as “Blindspot,” “Heroes Reborn” and “The Player.” While no provider login is required for select new series, authentication will be needed for access to returning NBC shows and older content. The network also plans to make late night programming — including “Saturday Night Live” and “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” — available as full episodes and as clips. Continue reading Instant Access to NBC Shows and Highlights with Roku App

New research by Twitter suggests that 87 percent of tweets about TV originate on mobile devices, 85 percent of Twitter users active during prime time tweet about television, and last year there were one billion tweets about TV. Adweek has posted a compelling infographic that offers additional findings, including: “4 in 5 users active during prime time hours have mentioned brands in their tweets. Users who tweet about TV have twice the influence as those users who only tweet about brands. When a TV show has a hashtag integration, there is a 20 percent increase in tweets per minute.”

A new report from the NPD Group indicates that mobile devices have supplanted computers as the platform of choice for children who play video games. Smartphones and tablets are now most popular with 63 percent of gamers in the age range of 2 to 17, according to NPD’s “Kids and Gaming 2015.” “On the flip side, 45 percent of kids use a home PC for gaming, a drop of 22 points since 2013,” reports CNET. “The decline is most prominent among children ages 2 to 5. Video game consoles are also losing ground — used by 60 percent of kids surveyed compared with 67 percent in 2013.” While mobile’s popularity grows, PC sales have declined. Game console sales are still strong, but kids spend more time on their mobile devices.

According to the Recording Industry Association of America, streaming music has officially surpassed physical music sales for the first time in the U.S. In addition, streaming is poised to take the lead from digital downloads as the top source of revenue for the music industry and could do so as early as next year. “Streaming currently accounts for about one-third of overall spending on music, totaling a little more than $1 billion for the first six months of the year,” reports Bloomberg. “The shift toward streaming is likely to accelerate.” “The data continues to reflect the story of a business undergoing an enormous transformation,” said Cary Sherman, chairman of the RIAA.

Facebook announced yesterday that its popular photo-sharing app Instagram now has 400 million monthly active users. More than 75 percent of Instagram users are outside the U.S. (with more than half of the most recent 100 million users living in Europe and Asia). “Facebook’s strategy of creating separate apps appears to be paying off,” suggests The Wall Street Journal. “The texting app WhatsApp, which Facebook acquired for $19 billion in 2014, recently reached 900 million monthly active users.” CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that Facebook’s standalone Messenger app had more than 700 million users.

Digital scrapbooking startup Pinterest has influenced numerous companies to reimagine the importance of photos over text. The San Francisco-based startup, which has been under the gun to justify its $11 billion valuation, announced last week that it has surpassed 100 million monthly active users. However, the number is “dwarfed by the user bases of some digital contemporaries it competes with for ad dollars,” notes The New York Times, citing Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp and Facebook. “To live up to its $11 billion valuation, Pinterest must continue to expand its user base beyond 100 million, while proving that it can grow into a robust and viable business.”

As interest in virtual reality heats up across industries, a number of international media players — including Disney, Sky, Axel Springer, ProSiebenSat.1 Media, China Media Capital and Evolution Media Partners (backed by TPG and Creative Artists Agency) — are investing $65 million in Palo Alto-based VR startup Jaunt. The investment follows other high-profile moves in immersive tech: Google joined venture funds in investing $542 million in Magic Leap last year, and Oculus VR raised $75 million before Facebook picked up the company for $2 billion. Continue reading Investment from Media Firms Brings Jaunt’s Funding to $100M

According to Nielsen, live television viewing in the U.S. dropped during the second quarter, while the number of broadband-only homes and those with streaming video subscriptions increased. Multichannel News reports that U.S. households with pay TV subscriptions dropped by 1.2 million to 100.4 million during Q2 from the previous year, and broadband-only homes increased more than 50 percent to 3.3 million. Nielsen’s findings indicate that 45 percent of homes had SVOD in Q2, up from 38 percent in the same quarter last year. Homes with connected TVs represented an 18 percent share, up from 11 percent.

MSNBC launched its 24-hour streaming news channel Shift in December, and has since been programming a blend of live news content and original documentaries in a social environment. Its videos are now generating millions of views each month on Facebook. “Shift shows feature diverse topics, alternative formats, edgier talent and intelligent dialogue, around the culture and lifestyle topics that matter to our audience,” said Sam Go, editorial director for MSNBC.com, in an interview with The Drum. “There are so many other interesting stories to cover that don’t make it to the main broadcast, and we love that there’s a home for it on Shift.”

As hotels in the U.S. continue to offer faster Internet connections, an increasing number of guests are more inclined to stream video content via popular services such as Netflix, Amazon and Hulu than opt for in-house video-on-demand. As a result, hotels are beginning to experience a significant decline in VOD use. Some have recently cut their adult-themed VOD content, and may eventually do the same with other on-demand offerings. However, this may not be the end of video-on-demand in hotels if providers make their services more competitive. Continue reading Streaming Services Send Hotel Room VOD to Chopping Block

TV technology is getting closer to monitoring and analyzing our facial expressions in order to distinguish between boredom and enthusiasm to better understand our viewing tastes. Software from media startup Affectiva could usher in a new frontier in television viewing, one in which our devices watch our reactions and offer content suggestions or enable brands to provide more targeted ads. If consumers are willing to allow their emotional data to be gathered, movie and TV show recommendations from Netflix, for example, could become more relevant. Continue reading Facial Monitoring Software Could Impact Your TV Experience

Atlanta-based United Parcel Service recently rolled out 100 industrial 3D printers at its hub in Louisville, Kentucky. UPS is testing whether 3D printing centers could impact supply chains and its transportation business — or prove advantageous for a new local production and delivery market. The company is proceeding cautiously; it does not want to see 3D printing cause a similar disruption to how the Internet undercut overnight document deliveries. The project is being run by Atlanta startup CloudDDM with plans to add another 900 printers next year. Continue reading UPS and CloudDDM Experiment with New 3D Printing Service

One year after the disappointing release of its Fire smartphone, Amazon is introducing a line of low-cost devices including a new tablet and smart TV plug-ins. The Seattle-based company debuted seven new products yesterday that are slated for release by this year’s holiday season. Among the announcements: a 7-inch Fire tablet with front- and rear-facing cameras that will run for less than $50, an updated $100 Fire TV set-top box that now supports 4K, and a Fire TV stick with voice-activated wand that turns your TV into a cloud-based personal assistant. Continue reading Amazon Debuts New Tablets and TV Devices to Lure Shoppers

Disney researchers are working on the “Linux Light Bulb,” a protocol that flashes out data using visible light, which could eventually be used to enable the “Internet of Toys.” “The bulbs are designed to work with gadgets and toys that may not need a full Wi-Fi or wireless component and instead will read data from the environment,” explains TechCrunch. “The technology is called Visible Light Communication.” According to researcher Stefan Mangold, who created the technology, “Communication with light enables a true Internet of Things as consumer devices that are equipped with LEDs but not radio links could be transformed into interactive communication nodes.”