Oliver Luckett used to work for Walt Disney managing the social media presence of Disney characters. Now he runs theAudience, his own social media company for celebrities, which recently collected $20 million in funding.
“For each client, theAudience works to build a network of fans across the likes of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google Plus and to keep those followers engaged by posting a steady stream of catchy pictures, comments and videos,” The New York Times explains, noting that Luckett refuses to identify his clients.
“There is intense downward pressure on artist salaries in all corners of entertainment,” notes the article. “Movie attendance over the summer hit a 20-year low. The Web has decimated the music industry. DVRs are roiling television. William Morris Endeavor, a founding investor in theAudience, sees the assertive cultivation of social media networks as one way to shift power back to stars.”
theAudience helps agents to negotiate better contracts by providing social data; actors can be paid more if they bring more followers into theaters.
Some contracts are already being written to require actors to promote the movie with their social media accounts, the Times reports. Luckett’s company helps stars who are overwhelmed by social media.
The company faces competition from numerous other social media startups. Also problematic, consumers like to think celebrities create their own content. Luckett says all content his company produces for celebrities is approved before posted.
“The real value of these networks is in programming,” says Napster founder Sean Parker, who also helped in making Facebook the social giant it is today. “If you can aggregate effectively, you can start to imagine social media a little bit more like traditional media.”
“Why are TV and cable box interfaces so slow and ugly, and why are we still dealing with gigantic ugly cable box remotes festooned with colored buttons?” The Verge asks, suggesting cable and satellite companies have been insulated from competition with monopolies, effectively stifling innovation.
“Barred from integrating television service directly into their products, companies across the tech industry have spent enormous resources building rich ecosystems of video content delivered over the Internet instead. The goal is obvious but generally left unstated: to provide content offerings rich and varied enough to replace cable TV,” The Verge writes. “There is a nation of potential cord cutters out there looking for an excuse to stop paying Comcast for 500 channels they don’t really want.”
However, these services still have holes and complications with content availability. Notably, none of the over-the-top boxes offer programming immediately after turning on.
Despite providers’ pushback, Internet delivery is actually favorable for cable companies.
“Internet service is much cheaper to offer than TV, so having customers shift the balance of their bills to data instead of TV is pure profit for the industry,” the article states. For example, Comcast has data caps and tiered pricing, but it costs the company “virtually nothing if you use more data because you’re watching video, so the overage charges are essentially easy money,” explains the post.
Various cable providers have expanded into streaming with TV Everywhere but it requires pay TV subscriptions, cutting off certain consumers — and revenue.
“And unless these companies figure it out soon, the rival ecosystems being built by Apple and Microsoft and Google and Amazon and everyone else will eventually just eat their lunch,” suggests The Verge. “Eventually, we’re going to get our TV over the Internet.”
Google may be the biggest name in online advertising, but even the search giant faces difficulties in the evolving digital sphere, especially with mobile ad rates.
“Our revenue growth rate has generally declined over time, and it could do so in the future as a result of a number of factors,” the company stated in a 10-Q filing with the SEC.
Business Insider notes that this warning isn’t new for Google, but now the company is acknowledging that “mobile ad revenue is replacing its desktop ad revenue in a way that may hurt its sales,” the article states.
“Mobile search queries and mobile commerce are growing dramatically around the world, and consumers are using multiple devices to access information,” Google said in its disclosure. “Over time these trends have resulted in changes in our product mix, including a significant increase in mobile search queries and a deceleration in the growth of desktop queries.”
According to a recent earnings call, Google has an $8 billion annual run-rate from mobile ads, which translates to a 2 percent contraction in desktop business as click prices on mobile are cheaper.
“It’s a supply and demand problem: Greater search demand on mobile devices increases the available inventory supply for advertisers, and greater supply always lowers prices — which could hurt Google’s ability to grow revenues on the topline,” the article concludes.
When making travel plans, online search results can be hard to navigate or inappropriate. A new spinoff from SRI International that recently launched in Northern California hopes to leverage artificial intelligence and social suggestions to make mapping out trips easier and smarter.
Currently in public beta and only available as an iPad app, travel service Desti “was built using SRI’s artificial intelligence technology, combined with natural language processing, semantic search and a travel-specific knowledge base,” GigaOM reports. “The system uses contextual clues and what it knows about a user to return relevant results, which are displayed on a very visual results page.”
Users can type in queries — or with the latest versions of the iPad, vocally dictate — to get results with Desti’s rating and information on amenities as well as resources and helpful tips.
“Desti is able to understand context when a user interacts with it,” the article states. “If I’m looking at a destination and ask what else is around, it pulls up results related to my last search. And if the weather is cold, it can change its results to find you something to do indoors.”
“Like many new travel services, Desti also taps your social graph,” GigaOM continues. “So it can learn your tastes from Facebook likes and you can share your collections with others. And when you visit a place where another user has been, Desti will let you know and see what comments they’ve left.”
The service, which has raised $1.5 million in funding, faces competition from social travel apps like TripAdvisor and Google, “which is loading up on travel services and is working on its own semantic search efforts,” the article reports.
Although the service allows users to save a destination and share it with other users, it doesn’t yet work on smartphones so users have to email themselves to sync their research.
Musician David Gilmour will become the first artist to release a music concert as a smartphone app.
DVD authoring group The Pavement has created a new technique to convert DVDs into apps and is hoping to reach a larger audience with the concert app, rather than the traditional DVD-only distribution.
Gilmour, formerly of Pink Floyd, released a compilation of songs on DVD recorded during Robert Wyatt’s 2001 and 2002 Meltdown Festival at London’s Royal Festival Hall. The app will be a version of the successful DVD release.
“The critically acclaimed performance features Gilmour alone with just his voice and along with a vocal choir that’s accompanied by a group of acoustic instruments,” reports The Unofficial Apple Weblog. “Robert Wyatt, Bob Geldof and Pink Floyd’s Richard Wright also join in on some of the performances.”
The concert app will be available for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch starting next week (an Android version is in the works). According to Gilmour’s website, the app will cost $8.99.
“The App works exactly like its source DVD — full of rich video and audio material with interactive motion, menu navigation options and bonus extras,” explains the site. “It is envisaged that this new process could open the door for many other classic musical performances to be made available as apps to be enjoyed on mobile devices, away from the restrictions of the home DVD player.”
Former Adobe executives Fang Chang and Nigel Pegg launched the free public beta version of Bookboard this week — an iPad app that offers streaming access to children’s ebooks.
The app already has a library of 300 titles from publishers Charlesbridge, Orca, Twin Sisters, Illumination Arts and Bubblegum Books.
The goal is to provide iPad content for kids and their parents that is more educational than YouTube or “Angry Birds.” The startup plans to eventually charge a monthly fee between $5 and $10.
“Bookboard titles are not enhanced with widgets, games, or other interactivity features (other than an ability to tap on text to enlarge it),” reports paidContent. “The company says that is intentional, to leave the focus on the reading experience.”
However, the company is expected to provide “more premium content and add-ons available in the future.”
Publishers will receive royalties based on page views. Other startups including Oyster and 24symbols are pushing to become the Netflix of ebooks, but have experienced challenges with the model, given resistance by publishers and conflicts with author contracts.
Chang told paidContent that “publishers are being a lot more savvy these days, making sure they obtain the digital rights for these books.” But the article points out that digital rights do not always cover streaming or subscription models.
Japanese firm Ortus Technology Co. Ltd. claims it has created “the world’s smallest LCD panel capable of displaying 4K2K video,” Tech-On! reports.
The high definition panel has a 9.6-inch, 3,840 x 2,160-pixel LCD screen featuring up to 458 ppi resolution.
“The panel is targeted at video equipment, medical equipment and commercial equipment such as monitors for broadcasting,” the post states.
The device boasts a 72 percent color range on NTSC standards. Its view angle is 160 degrees for both horizontal and vertical orientation.
“Ortus Technology realized the resolution of 458 ppi by using microfabrication, liquid crystal alignment and panel driving technologies based on the HAST (hyper amorphous silicon TFT), which was developed by the company,” the post explains. “As a result, it became possible to display 2D video that is natural and looks 3D.”
The panel will be displayed in Munich, Germany this week during Electronica 2012. Samples will also be made available this month.
LG announced last week the launch of its 21:9 UltraWide monitor, which the company claims is the world’s first monitor in that format.
The 29-inch EA93 UltraWide Monitor boasts a 21:9 aspect ratio and features 4-Screen Split with the ability to offer four customizable screen views.
“That could make this monitor a possible alternative for people who use a dual-screen setup,” notes Digital Trends. “In fact, it has a Dual Link-up option to connect the monitor to two external devices, which means you could have a similar setup to multiple monitors without any variation in color or image quality. It also features a DVI-D port and two HDMI connectors.”
With a maximum resolution of 2,560 x 1,080, the IPS (In Plane Switching) display should prove an excellent option for watching movies. LG is emphasizing the monitor is designed for work and personal use.
“LG has been making waves with its efforts to improve screen quality this year,” notes the post. “The company has gone very small with a 5-inch LCD screen with high definition and 440 ppi, and insanely big with a whopping 84-inch Ultra HD television.”
The EA93 will initially roll out in South Korea this month before availability in the U.S. The company has yet to announce a price point.
According to PCMag.com, Apple remains on top in the tablet competition with its fourth generation iPad.
“Apple’s latest iPad is the best large tablet you can buy, period,” notes the review. “The Apple iPad has it all: top performance, a stellar screen, a surprisingly good camera, speedy Wi-Fi, and a breathtaking library of spectacular apps.”
The review examines pricing, features, apps, performance, camera upgrades and comparisons to similar products. It suggests games and apps launch twice as fast as they do on the iPad 3 — and notes the significantly improved gaming performance.
The review also notes the device’s stellar Wi-Fi performance: “On PCMag‘s 5GHz 802.11n network, I got 37Mbps down on the iPad and 23Mbps down on the Nexus 10. Both speeds are fast, but it’s the iPad’s processor and software that seem to be making the difference here.”
The review claims the iPad is the best 10-inch tablet on the market, but also suggests the iPad mini is not the best 7-inch tablet currently offered.
“Unlike other 10-inch tablets on the market, it’s the full package, which makes it a very rare five-star product, and a slam dunk for our Editors’ Choice,” writes PCMag.com. “The fourth-generation Apple iPad is the only product I have ever personally rated five full stars because it represents the tablet state of the art.”
“I believe that the iPad mini and smaller tablets will be even more disruptive to the traditional PC market than the iPad has been to date,” writes analyst Tim Bajarin for Tech.pinions.
Eighty percent of the tasks consumers perform with a PC can be done with a tablet; keyboard accessories enable tablets to do more than just content consumption, he notes.
Now with the smaller tablets, the ratio has shifted to 90-10. The iPad mini has become Bajarin’s “go-to-device because of its lightweight, small size and literal duplication of everything I have on the iPad as well as the full iPad experience,” he says.
Bajarin has been interacting with iPad mini users: “Almost all that we talked to told us that the role of the laptop has diminished for them significantly since they got the iPad, and were now using the iPad mini more frequently than their larger iPads.”
“They said that if the PC were only used 10-20 percent of the time, they would most likely just extend the life of their PCs or laptops instead of buying new ones. And if they did buy a new PC or laptop, it would be the cheapest they could find, as they could no longer justify a more expensive and powerful version if it mostly sat at home and used for such a short time for more data or media intensive apps”
Some argue that PCs will still be around to fulfill data/media intensive tasks.
“But if tablets increase their role as the dominant device for consumers to access the majority of their digital needs, than the impact on PC demand has to be impacted down the road,” Bajarin writes. “In fact, some key industry insiders call this the PC Cliff, suggesting that we could see a time in the not-so-distant future where demand for PCs fall by a steep amount, giving way to tablets that will take over their role as the major growth segment and primary of the PC industry.”
“I fear that a PC cliff is not far off and we are urging all PC vendors to seriously consider the ramifications of what these smaller tablets will mean to their future PC and laptop demand,” he concludes.
AT&T is dropping its copper telephone network and copper DSL business in order to streamline its businesses with an all-IP network.
“AT&T said it will invest $14 billion in its networks over the next three years,” GigaOM writes, “with those dollars going into wireless, business services and the fiber-to-the-node U-verse product.”
“Those three product lines make up 81 percent of AT&T’s revenue and collectively are growing at 6 percent a year. AT&T expects to spend $8 billion for wireless initiatives and $6 billion for wireline initiatives.”
The company’s new investment in LTE will cover 99 percent of the U.S. and its wireline U-Verse service will grow to reach 75 percent of customer locations. The 25 percent not covered by wireline are expected to subscribe to LTE broadband, “which comes at a much higher cost and has onerous caps that DSL access and AT&T phone lines do not have,” comments GigaOM.
“This news will have huge ramifications for Americans in rural areas as well as those who still rely on their wireline copper-based telephones for burglar alarms, emergencies and fire alarm systems,” the post explains. “Competitive local exchange carriers in many regions also woke up this morning wondering how they will continue to offer their products over AT&T’s copper pipes.”
“Instead AT&T will use its fiber network and LTE to deploy broadband to smaller cities and towns. These decisions also mean the end of network upgrades to the copper network, although it’s not clear how exactly Ma Bell will back away from copper from its network, and it will have to do so with regulatory approvals.”
Shortly after Wikipedia launched its HTML5 video player, its for-profit counterpart has released a streaming multimedia player and announced new syndication deals.
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales launched Wikia as a “Web-hosting service for crowdsourced wikis, free for readers and editors, but funded by advertising to make money,” explains The Next Web.
Now, Wikia has launched a new Lightbox streaming media player for the site’s 50 million monthly global visitors and is offering access to nearly 100,000 videos and 14 million photos, thanks to new syndication deals with AnyClip, IDG, IGN, RealGravity and ScreenPlay.
Through the Lightbox, users can stream trailers, previews, clips and exclusive studio videos at up to 1080p HD. Additionally, fans will be able to curate this licensed content and insert it into wiki pages.
During its beta period, Wikia offered multimedia collections on wikis for “Mortal Kombat,” “Shrek,” “The Hunger Games” and “The Lord of the Rings.”
The Lightbox is now available to all 250,000+ Wikia communities. Video content is also shareable on Facebook, Twitter and via email.
“The new video library, and Lightbox player will amplify Wikia’s naturally strong community creation and curation activities by enabling the assembly and packaging of user created and premium photo and video content in one place,” says Wikia CEO Craig Palmer. “These efforts will make it easier to showcase the passionate pursuit of knowledge through collaborative storytelling.”
The way consumers interact with music today is not simply evolving from an analog to digital experience, but also involves shifts from downloads to streaming.
Web radio services, such as Pandora, have experienced more recent growth than on-demand players such as Spotify and Rhapsody, indicates a new study.
In the second quarter of 2012, U.S. audiences for Internet radio services increased by 27 percent over the previous year, according to findings from The NPD Group. Meanwhile, on-demand services including Rhapsody, Spotify, YouTube and others had an 18 percent increase in listeners.
NPD also reported that AM/FM radio is still the top choice in the U.S. for listening to music, followed by music streaming services and Web radio, which have displaced CDs.
“Since 2009, the percentage of Pandora users who also listen to AM/FM radio declined by 10 percentage points,” notes the report. “Listening to digital music files on portable music players also dropped 21 points.”
“NPD said that contributing to part of those declines was Pandora’s successful move into automobiles,” reports CNET. “The research company said that 34 percent of Pandora’s users are now listening to the service in their cars.”
BufferBox is a Canadian startup that offers shipping lockers for consumers who aren’t available during the day when their packages arrive. Now with Amazon’s expansion of its Lockers service, BufferBox is looking at new competition and the possibility of acquisition.
BufferBox is based on a simple idea. “There will be a locker at a certain retail location, which will become your address and you can ship your packages there,” explains GigaOM. “Once you get your package, you get an email with a PIN number and that is what you need to open the locker and get your package. BufferBox takes a cut of the delivery costs.”
The company faces competition from similar startups such as ShopRunner, Kiala, MissNev, and now Amazon’s Locker program. Amazon has already teamed up with Staples, RadioShack, 7-Eleven and Albertsons for its Lockers.
“If you are wondering why these retail chains are sleeping with the enemy, the answer is foot traffic,” the post states. “If people are coming to stores to pick up their packages, there is some likelihood that they might pick up other goods. Groceries or Big Gulps, sure, but paper goods and electronics, too.”
As Amazon looks to offer locker locations at retailers, it would seem that BufferBox might be edged out.
“However, fear of Amazon is enough to get Google or some other giant galvanized into snapping up this startup,” GigaOM suggests. “Google, which is pushing hard to get traction for its Google Checkout service, could use something like BufferBox as a way to get more businesses to use its service. For retailers, the lure of foot traffic is pretty strong.”
Researchers have recently used Twitter to forecast election results, changes in stock market prices and box office revenues. Now, researchers are turning to Wikipedia for similar forecasting.
Marton Mestyan of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics in Hungary and his team of researchers have used Wikipedia behavior patterns to predict box office revenues a month before films are released, writes Technology Review.
Number of views, number of human editors, number of edits, and a factor known as collaborative rigor all contribute to the predictions.
“We show that the popularity of a movie could be predicted well in advance by measuring and analyzing the activity level of editors and viewers of the corresponding entry to the movie in Wikipedia,” explains Mestyan.
One problem with the system is that it only seems to work for high-revenue films. Mestyan says the Twitter predictions have similar problems predicting revenues for films that do not do well at the box office.
He says that his method works up to a month in advance, while Twitter only works after the film has been released.
Technology Review cautions that making “predictions” about the past (creating correlations between data sets) is one thing, and actually making accurate predictions about the future is another.
