Only one-third of Web users are comfortable with Facebook’s use of personal information for providing targeted ads, suggests a new poll by Harris Interactive.
By contrast, Amazon faired much better with 66 percent saying they trusted the online retail giant with their personal data for product recommendations.
Google came in just above Facebook, with 41 percent of those polled feeling comfortable with Google’s ad offerings based on past searches.
“Facebook, owner of the world’s largest social network, uses data about people’s preferences to help advertisers market their wares,” reports Bloomberg. “It agreed in November to settle complaints by the Federal Trade Commission that it failed to protect user information or disclose how the data would be used.”
The survey of 2,262 American adults online also found that 81 percent of people trust grocery stores’ use of their information for tailoring coupons.
Consulting firm Capgemini reports that brick-and-mortar stores are finally realizing the importance of customer relationship management. A new study found that more than half of shoppers believe physical stores will serve solely as showrooms by 2020.
“According to the report, which was based on interviews with 16,000 consumers from 16 countries, 51 percent of respondents said that, in the next eight years, they expect retail locations to be showrooms for selecting and ordering products,” reports GigaOM. “In developing markets, the study said the percentages were higher but that at least one third of the respondents in more developed markets agreed with the assessment.”
In recent months, it has become clear that cost-conscious shoppers are leaning toward the “showrooming” trend — checking out new products in a store, but then making their purchases online where better deals and price comparisons are clicks away.
The growth of online shopping sites, mobile phones and shopping apps have led to new options for smart shoppers. “As more consumers reference their mobile phones in-store (52 percent according to a recent Pew study), many are realizing that they can find better prices or deals elsewhere, often online,” notes the post.
Some retailers are fighting the trend with new initiatives intended to keep customers happy. Retailers such as Walmart, Macy’s and Sears are increasing customer support with the implementation of payment booths, drive-through customer service centers, pickup locations and other services that blend online and offline.
Best Buy recently announced it will redesign its stores to become more Apple-like, including new features such as a product support center (similar to Apple’s Genius Bar) and the ability to pay from the floor rather than standing in line at the register.
“As the Capgemini report found, the digital shopper isn’t just digital and expects to be served seamlessly across all channels, physical and digital,” concludes GigaOM. “That goes for Amazon shoppers, too.”
A new study from analytics firm RapidBlue has found that online ads have a strong effect on offline sales, showing “double-digit increases in both the number of shoppers and the amount of time they spent in the stores when stores ran Google AdWords campaigns,” VentureBeat reports.
“In fact, we found that the brick-and-mortar impact of online ads could be bigger than their online impact,” explains RapidBlue chief operating officer Sampo Parkkinen.
The findings should be comforting to offline retailers competing with competitive pricing from online giants like Amazon.
“We’re not really tracking the individual person,” says Parkkinen. “We’re installing our solution, which tracks mobile phones in retail outlets. Then we look at the sales metrics and how they’re fluctuating.”
“This result is astonishing and could upend the way the online advertising industry traditionally tracks costs and measures return on investment,” the article suggests, noting the success of ads are typically measured in terms of online results.
Today, Internet companies track online behavior without permission, force you to accept terms and conditions too complex to even understand, and limit one to work within their carefully constructed silos.
A new discipline called Vendor Relationship Management is being developed, which focuses on the needs of the user rather than those of sellers and third parties.
This is a recognition of the new realities of the Internet that gives individuals unprecedented power by allowing them to self-publish, syndicate their opinions, and in general, influence many others often around the world.
In the near future, “you will declare your own policies, preferences and terms of engagement — and do it in ways that can be automated both for you and the companies you engage,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
You’ll be able to knit different apps together to perform what you need. You will decide if you want to be tracked (Microsoft will turn on a “Do Not Track” feature in the next version of Internet Explorer) or if you want to receive ads (ad blockers are already a popular extension for some of the major Web browsers).
“Progress in empowering customers won’t be smooth or even, but it will happen,” notes WSJ. “Today, the supply side still reigns, but by the time of that dinner party in 2022, everyone will understand that free customers are more valuable than captive ones.”
According to a Harris Interactive survey, 44 percent of U.S. adults (18 to 44) plan to use at least two personal devices to follow the 2012 summer Olympic games.
About 14 percent say they plan to use three or more devices. Additionally, roughly one-third of those surveyed 55 and older will follow coverage on two or more devices.
“Audiences are taking advantage of the proliferation of tablet computers and handsets that surf the Web to complement their experience of televised sports and other programming,” reports Businessweek. “That is influencing how companies tailor the marketing messages as more consumers use social-media tools such as Facebook and Twitter to interact while they watch.”
Organizers are anticipating that as many as 4 billion people around the world will watch the London Olympics and Paralympic Games on TV.
“This survey reveals that a significant number of Americans are choosing to get their Olympic updates on the go, and while doing so, they’re overwhelmingly turning to mobile browsers,” says Krishna Subramanian of mobile marketing tech provider Velti.
The summer Olympics coverage is scheduled to begin Friday, July 27.
Nielsen Soundscan has been keeping track of album sales in the U.S. since 1991. In that time, it has witnessed a massive drop in overall sales with the onset of digital downloads. However, “until last week, they’d never seen old records outsell new ones,” writes OC Weekly.
During the first six months of 2012, 76.6 million “catalog records” were sold, meaning albums that were released more than 18 months ago, compared to 73.9 million current albums.
Of those catalog titles, Guns N’ Roses’ Greatest Hits and four of Whitney Houston’s records sold the most.
This likely has much to do with the fact that retailers are selling those older titles for cheaper prices, often for around $5.99.
“Though album sales dropped 3.2 percent in the first half of the year as compared to the first half of 2011 — with 150.5 million albums sold — digital album sales (current and catalog combined) grew 13.8 percent and physical albums stayed basically flat, shedding just 0.6 percent,” notes OC Weekly.
Jason Hughes, the owner of Ballard’s Sonic Boom, says that new albums should not be sold for more than $12.99. On the other hand, they should not be sold for less, either.
“As you lower the price of the CD, you’re lowering the value of someone’s art,” notes Hughes. “At what point do you say ‘We’re going to sell them for $9.99 and [artists are] not going to be able to make a living off their music, or they’re going to have to tour 11 and a half months a year?'”
As technology advances, the notion of “big data” will become more applicable to everyday life.
People currently use big data to reduce crime, maximize milk production in cows, and reduce rugby injuries, but soon big data will infiltrate nearly every aspect of life.
“The scale of what we’re doing is far beyond anything anybody’s been able to put together before,” says scientist Dr. David Haussler. ” I think you’re going to start to see this sort of big data effort on several fronts — partly because of supercomputing capabilities that we haven’t had until recently and also because of wireless devices that are increasingly being used to transmit data.”
In the entertainment industry, big data is expected to transform the personalization of media.
“Intelligent media distribution powered by Big Data will mean that your TV (and tablet, and phone) will know what you like, when you like to watch it, and what you will want to watch next,” explains VentureBeat.
As big data changes entertainment consumption, viewers will become more engaged and fewer viewers will abandon videos. This translates to better experiences for customers and more lucrative advertising deals for content distributors.
According to a study from Harris Interactive, Netflix and Google-owned YouTube are the leading “must-have” streaming-video apps among smart TV owners and also among those who don’t own an Internet-connected television.
The next most popular apps are Amazon Instant Video, Facebook and Pandora.
“The Harris Poll of 2,634 U.S. adults also found that about three-quarters of non-smart TV owners said they aren’t that familiar (39 percent) or not at all familiar (33 percent) with smart TVs or Internet-connected TVs,” notes Home Media Magazine.
Harris indicates that only 7 percent of those unfamiliar with smart TVs are considering to purchase a new set in the next year, whereas 29 percent of non-smart TV owners who are familiar with the device are likely to make a new purchase.
“As the TV becomes a more overall entertainment device, it is only a matter of time before we see the mainstream use of additional content apps, such as Facebook, being used on the TV,” suggests Manny Flores, SVP at Harris Interactive.
“Yet, manufacturers and retailers evidently have to do a much better job of educating their consumers on what a smart TV is and the benefits of a smart TV experience,” adds Flores. “Increased familiarity appears to be the key to driving purchase consideration.”
Last week, ETCentric reported on the Ptch mobile app from DreamWorks Animation that enables users to create multimedia compositions and share them through social networks. This week we have a similar tool that leverages multiple “producers” based on their proximity to each other.
Vyclone is a new “social video creation, collaboration, and sharing app for the iPhone and iPod touch,” reports Mashable.
The free app enables multiple users within physical proximity of each other to create a collaborative video with multiple angles. Vyclone can even be used by others shooting iPhone videos who do not know each other or may not be aware the other people are recording video.
“Vyclone uses the GPS in your iPhone to determine your location,” notes the post. “If you’re recording a video with the app at the same time and place as another person, then the app will automatically edit together your two videos into one ultimate video mix. Bring four people together in the same spot and Vycone will combine all four video streams into a single synchronized mix.”
Completed videos can be shared with just the people you’ve linked to on Vyclone or everyone. They can also be shared on Facebook and Twitter.
The Vyclone site features sample videos created by early users.
Internet service providers Cablevision, Time Warner Cable, and Comcast have traditionally protected their users from spies and eavesdroppers. But a new alliance with Hollywood studios may lead to ISPs and media giants monitoring accounts together in an effort to combat piracy.
The Center for Copyright Information effort will implement a “graduated response plan” across all cable companies in the agreement. The ISPs can crack down on offending parties while sharing a standardized amount of blame since the companies will share the policy.
“The fact that they are all agreeing to participate makes it harder for any one company to win the disgruntled customers of those who have been disciplined by another,” reports CNN contributor Douglas Rushkoff. “But now that they’re free from individual blame, there’s also the strong possibility that the ISPs will be doing the data monitoring directly. That’s a much bigger deal.”
If companies begin directly tracking ISPs, they will open up numerous negative possibilities. Internet companies could use the software to track open networks and subsequently charge neighbors who tap into the network.
Also, users will lose their expectation of privacy when using the Internet. Privacy is especially important for users, such as doctors, who need to send sensitive information over their network. If cable companies begin to track user data and messages, people (and businesses) will consider hosting their Internet offshore.
“The risk of losing their ‘net [access] because someone accidentally streamed the wrong thing is a business prerogative significant enough to tunnel all their traffic to a country that provides sensible data privacy laws,” explains Internet security expert Josh Klein. “How much long after that until the rest of the company gets off-shored?”
The MIT Media Lab’s Camera Culture group wrote a paper outlining a new type of glasses-free 3D technology. The technology, called Tensor Display, uses layers of LCD displays to create a 3D illusion.
Tensor refers to “compressive displays that can create a wide field of view by splitting a 3D image into 2D slices for processing, in a similar way to a CAT scan,” according to Electronics Weekly.
The display requires a refresh rate of 360 hertz. Current LCD TVs have a 240 hertz refresh rate, suggesting that 360 may not be too far away from reality.
One of the authors of the paper, Douglas Lanman, explained that while many people see holograms as the future of 3D, “The problem, of course, is that holograms don’t move. To make them move, you need to create a hologram in real time, and to do that, you need … little tiny pixels, smaller than anything we can build at large volume at low cost. So the question is, what do we have now? We have LCDs. They’re incredibly mature, and they’re cheap.”
To create different perspectives from different angles, the scientists display different patterns on screens at different depths. Not all aspects of a scene change relative to the viewing angle, so the scientists use algorithms to isolate and change only the aspects that need to change with movement.
“This quality, called ‘multiview 3D,’ simulates the act of looking at an object in a whole new way,” reports the Huffington Post. “If you were to watch an outdoors scene, for example, and looked up at the screen while lying on the floor, you might be able to see up to the sky, even if it’s not visible when the screen is viewed straight-on. The fact that each of your eyes will see objects on the screen from slightly different angles will help create the illusion that you’re looking at something truly three-dimensional.”
“It’s definitely suitable for commercial applications, because each component is commonplace, and it sounds easy to manufacture, so this ought to be something that a consumer-electronics company would license,” explains Gregg Favalora, principal at the engineering consultancy Optics for Hire. “Honestly, this is a really big deal.”
MIT economist Abhishek Nagaraj analyzed the effects of copyright law on Wikipedia, especially “how digitized, public domain works dramatically affect the quality of knowledge,” reports The Atlantic.
Nagaraj’s research used digitized versions of Baseball Digest to analyze how public domain pictures and information can change Wikipedia traffic. Google digitized the journal in 2008.
After the digitization, “Nagaraj found articles on four decades of All-Stars between 1944 and 1984 grew by about 5,200 words per article,” according to The Atlantic.
But Nagaraj’s true findings came not from the length increases of the articles, but from the traffic driven to the Web pages. Copyright laws allowed articles from 1944 to 1984 to be in the public domain, so authors could use images from these articles on Wikipedia.
The image availability caused the number of pictures on articles to rise to 1.15 per article. Players with articles still under copyright law only had .667 pictures per article, despite playing in a more modern era.
“Copyright law affects to some degree what information makes its way onto Wikipedia, but what it more strongly affects is how we use that information once it’s there. In other words, digitizing any knowledge increases an article’s text, but only digitizing public domain images makes articles more frequently updated and visited,” notes the article.
Google’s algorithm favors updated Web pages and images, so perhaps this helps explain the rise in traffic.
At the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen last week, panels addressed the future of entertainment.
“Neil Smit, president of Comcast Cable and Anne Sweeney, president of Disney/ABC Television Group talked about how the two organizations agree on a strategy for ‘TV Everywhere,’ letting Comcast subscribers receive Disney content on any device,” reports PC Magazine. “Most interestingly, it is a ten-year deal, even though technology may change a lot over that time.”
Smit pointed out that Comcast is working to make identification and authentication easier for consumers.
“As TV is now available on more platforms, the ratings have gone down but overall TV-watching is up,” explains the article. “Including video on demand does change how the content is viewed and this is impacting scheduling, Sweeney said.”
NBA commissioner David Stern and Turner Broadcasting CEO Phil Kent discussed how live sports and social media are evolving.
“Social media has been a big part of fan engagement for the NBA, Stern said. The personalities in the league have led to enormous interest and social media has given the opportunity for the community to be more interactive.”
Stern said that the NBA retains the rights to its games, but that in general, social media involving fan videos on YouTube is still great for the game. Kent added that anything driving fan engagement leads to increased viewership.
In a related Brainstorm Tech post from Fortune, Jason Hirschhorn, CEO of ReDEF Group, moderates a panel on TV Everywhere and the future of video across multiple platforms. The 58-minute video features Courtney Holt of Maker Studios, Alan Patricof of Greycroft Partners, David Rhodes of CBS News, Eric Solomon of Nielsen and Anthony Wood of Roku.
DirecTV and Viacom reached a new long-term carriage agreement on Friday to restore Viacom-owned channels to subscribers of the satellite TV provider.
As previously reported, the channels (including MTV, Comedy Central, BET and Nickelodeon) had been unavailable to DirecTV’s 20 million customers since July 10.
“Financial and other terms weren’t disclosed, but sources said the deal will run for seven years,” notes The Hollywood Reporter. “DirecTV will carry all 26 Viacom channels, or 17 when excluding HD feeds, but said it is not required to carry Epix, the premium TV joint venture of Viacom, Lionsgate and MGM.”
“In addition to the channels’ return, DirecTV customers will also gain the ability to see Viacom programming on tablets, laptops, handhelds and other personal devices via the DirecTV Everywhere platform,” according to the satellite TV company.
“The attention surrounding this unnecessary and ill-advised blackout by Viacom has accomplished one key thing: It serves notice to all media companies that bullying TV providers and their customers with blackouts won’t get them a better deal,” said Derek Chang, executive vp of content strategy and development for DirecTV. “It’s high time programmers ended these anti-consumer blackouts once and for all and prove our industry is about enabling people to connect to their favorite programs rather than denying them access.”
Written by ETCentric contributors Walt Klappert and Mike Nichols
Ironically during these years when Congress is blamed for doing little, the legislators passed the most significant changes in patenting since 1952. The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) is going into effect in stages with some aspects currently in place.
One big change however, happens after March 16, 2013 — not long from now — when the United States goes from a first-to-invent country to a first-to-file country.
Opponents to this change argue a first-to-file system gives an advantage to large companies over small companies. They point out with the first-to-invent policy a small start-up company might have nurtured a new idea while they raised the money they needed to pursue a patent.
When first-to-file is in place these small companies may be in a race to the patent office in the hope of beating out bigger better-funded organizations even if the big company’s employees come up with the start-up’s idea later than the start-up did. For good or bad, this change puts the United States more in synch with the rest of the world.
On the other hand, the AIA cuts some patent-related fees by 75 percent for small entities, individuals and universities. Also, some new programs are going into place to move patent applications through the process faster, albeit by paying more.
Other changes are happening, too. For example in appeals, the AIA affects people trying to get intellectual property. In reexaminations, the law affects people trying to fight patents.
In the end, how the entire act will help or hinder entertainment technology is hard to predict, but certainly worth discussing. The good and the bad of the bill may depend on the size or type of company you work in, or for that matter if you work alone, or for a university. But if patents affect your business, it is pretty certain the America Invents Act will affect what you do soon.
