Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Matthew Sciarrino Jr. yesterday ordered Twitter to turn over the tweets of an Occupy Wall Street protestor for use against him in a criminal trial.
“The Constitution gives you the right to post, but as numerous people have learned, there are still consequences for your public posts,” wrote Judge Sciarrino. “What you give to the public belongs to the public. What you keep to yourself belongs only to you.”
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office has subpoenaed more than three months worth of tweets in its case against protestor Malcom Harris.
“Twitter had moved to quash the request from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, arguing that like email, Twitter users have a reasonable expectation of privacy under the fourth amendment,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “The judge disagreed, saying ‘if you post a tweet, just like if you scream it out the window, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.’”
“We are disappointed in the judge’s decision and are considering our options,” Twitter spokeswoman Carolyn Penner explained via email. “Twitter’s Terms of Service have long made it absolutely clear that its users own their content. We continue to have a steadfast commitment to our users and their rights.”
Twitter has released its first Twitter Transparency Report. The report is intended to show government requests received for user information, government requests received to withhold content, and DMCA takedown notices received from copyright holders.
“The report also provides insight into whether or not we take action on these requests,” adds the Twitter blog.
The report indicates that from January 1, 2012 through June 30, 2012, Twitter received 849 user information requests. Of those, 679 came from the United States where 75 percent produced some or all the information.
Twitter also received 3,378 copyright takedown notices affecting 5,874 users. In response, some 5,275 tweets and 599 media elements were removed.
“We’ve received more government requests in the first half of 2012, as outlined in this initial dataset, than in the entirety of 2011,” reports the Twitter blog.
Twitter will be releasing these reports every six months.
According to Todd Juenger, an analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein, “Netflix seems highly dependent on kids TV” content. Because of that, he advises Disney and Viacom to make their content more expensive or limited.
“His advice for entertainment companies is to be cautious about how much kids programming they make available to the online video streaming provider and in which windows,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. “We remain firm in our belief Viacom and Walt Disney should limit their content availability on Netflix,” writes Juenger.
Bernstein hosted focus groups to analyze how mothers are encouraging their kids to intake content. Of these findings, Juenger notes: “Moms are increasingly directing their kids to alternative viewing modes for content control, commercial avoidance and time management. The moms we talked to originally subscribed to Netflix for themselves, but have recognized the dwindling supply of content for adults and are now using the service primarily for their kids.”
“The content selection is perceived to be significantly better for kids than for adults, and the lack of commercials and ability to control the viewing choices are seen as positives,” he adds.
But for Disney, Viacom and others, it’s more financially beneficial to have viewers watch on traditional TV or through Video On Demand services. When these companies renegotiate deals with Netflix, according to Jeunger, they should either limit the availability of kids’ content on the streaming service or increase prices to compensate for falling ratings.
Bob Lambert forwarded this interesting commentary by Tom Foremski of ZDNet regarding how every company today is becoming a media company, based largely on the trend of constantly publishing via a multitude of channels.
“Every company needs to be able to talk and listen, and to master our two-way media technologies and publication platforms,” writes Foremski.
He cites Cisco as a pioneer in this area, a company that was leveraging RSS feeds, blogs, and top journalists as early as 2005.
Foremski notes that early in this process Cisco experienced significant traffic numbers: “It was greater than the combined traffic to several of the top industry trade publications. Wow! I thought: what happens when Cisco starts to cut back on the tens of millions of dollars it spends in advertising with these publications?”
The company just celebrated the one year anniversary of its online publication, “the network,” that employs a team of leading editors and journalists.
What makes its approach unique, perhaps, is that Cisco is more concerned with who is sharing the content, and not necessarily the total numbers. They are targeting the key decision makers who commonly control budgets.
“If you can reach a key decision maker like that, you can probably do the same for their counterparts in other organizations, too,” adds Foremski. “Buying millions of dollars in network equipment and other IT systems, will easily pay for the cost of producing a unit of media content.”
He suggests that quality of content is not an issue, but “the network” needs to improve distribution and promotion. But like other companies, Cisco is still learning how to become a media company.
“There is a significant shift going on this year, much more significant than we saw last year, from Web to mobile,” notes Fred Wilson, a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. “It is most noticeable in games, social networking, music, and news, but it is happening across the board and it presents both great opportunity and great challenges.”
Companies that were significant Web presences such as Google, Yahoo! and even Facebook are being challenged. Meanwhile, mobile companies like Instagram, Foursquare and Twitter are flourishing.
Unlike the Web which requires feature richness, mobile demands small app specific services. Facebook should break out a number of small mobile apps such as Messenger, Instagram, and Camera.
“In the past fifteen years, we have seen Microsoft go from being an unstoppable force to being a non-factor in many important new markets, we have seen Google go from being an unstoppable force to being a non-factor in many important new markets, and I suspect we are going to see Facebook struggle with the same thing,” writes Wilson. “RIM is dying quickly now. Yahoo! is a question mark.”
He also notes that while mobile is today’s priority, next year it may be something entirely new.
A broad coalition of public interest groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, Free Press, the Mozilla Foundation, and dozens of others have jointly issued the “Declaration of Internet Freedom.”
“We stand for a free and open Internet,” reads the document. “We support transparent and participatory processes for making Internet policy and the establishment of five basic principles.”
1) “Expression: Don’t censor the Internet.”
2) “Access: Promote universal access to fast and affordable networks.”
3) “Openness: Keep the Internet an open network where everyone is free to connect, communicate, write, read, watch, speak, listen, learn, create, and innovate.”
4) “Innovation: Protect the freedom to innovate and create without permission. Don’t block new technologies, and don’t punish innovators for their users’ actions.”
5) “Privacy: Protect privacy and defend everyone’s ability to control how their data and devices are used.”
The principles are intended to be nonpartisan and are supported by both liberal and conservative groups. There will be local meetups to discuss the principles and later plans to promote them to Congress.
Still, the declarations are vague and will require focused political pressure to insure changes in public policy, notes Ars Technica. An example of public pressure is a campaign from Demand Progress — “the Internet vs. Hollywood,” which suggests that government seizure powers such as those exhibited in the Megaupload case could be used in the future against mainstream Web services like Gmail and Flickr.
Adobe has introduced LevelUp, a new social game aimed to help customers learn Photoshop through missions, badges, and rewards.
Customers download LevelUp for free and then complete levels in their existing Photoshop software. Beginner levels can earn 20 to 30 points while more advanced levels can earn up to 850 points. Points can be applied to drawings for prizes such as Adobe Creative Cloud memberships.
“The directions are very clear: In each stage, the navigation bar tells you exactly what shortcuts to use or what buttons to click to move on the to the next stage. You can opt to use Photoshop’s sample images, or even open one of your own to learn from the ground up,” explains Digital Trends.
Users can also share scores on Twitter and Facebook for increased chances at prizes. Customers can track their progress on weekly leaderboards as well.
LevelUp is available for Photoshop Creative Suite versions 5 and above.
While Google and Asus supposedly created the new Nexus 7 tablet in four months, the device may simply be a version of an existing product minus some features to bring down the price.
At CES, Asus was showing its Eee Pad MeMO ME370T, a 7-inch tablet that looked like the Nexus 7 but also included a rear-facing 5-megapixel camera, a microSD slot, and a micro HDMI port. While it had a Qualcomm chip at the time, Asus announced they would replace it with an Nvidia Tegra 3, but the device would cost $250.
After CES, Nvidia announced a family of low-cost Tegra 3 tablets designed to sell at $199. Removing some of the ME370T’s features and reducing the memory may simply have been a way to get the price point down to the $199 target.
“While the base design and setup was completed in the 370T to meet a certain price point and option list, the efforts required to get that design to $199 meant going back to the drawing board and starting over on just about every aspect of the unit,” an Asus rep told The Verge.
“But if Asus, Nvidia, and Google hadn’t made it a priority to challenge Amazon’s Kindle Fire, the ME370T could have been just another outdated Android tablet on the pile,” concludes the post.
Sources tell BGR that Amazon plans to release two new Kindle Fire tablets in 7- and 10-inch models.
“With Google having unveiled its Nexus 7 tablet this week, it’s vitally important for Amazon that it doesn’t mess up with the launch of its second-generation Kindle Fire competitor, which could happen as early as next month,” notes Digital Trends.
Amazon has experienced immense success with its 7-inch Kindle Fire, and the new version will reportedly feature a more solid build than its predecessor, including “a metal casing instead of the soft-touch plastic body found on the first-generation device,” explains the post.
“They’ll reportedly be thinner than the original iPad, with the 10-inch model featuring a front-facing camera,” reports Digital Trends. “There’s no mention of a camera on the 7-inch device, but with Google’s recently-released Nexus 7 tablet — which is set to go head-to-head with the Kindle Fire — sporting a front-facing camera, it’s hard to believe Amazon will omit such a feature.”
Reports suggest the new Kindle Fire tablets are likely to be available in the coming months.
E-book apps from Amazon, Apple and Barnes & Noble track reader behavior and pass that information back to be analyzed as an aggregated data pool.
The apps can determine how much time readers spend with a book, where they lose interest, which search terms they use to find books, which sentences they highlight, and much more.
Barnes & Noble, for example, found “nonfiction books tend to be read in fits and starts, while novels are generally read straight through, and that nonfiction books, particularly long ones, tend to get dropped earlier,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “Science-fiction, romance and crime-fiction fans often read more books more quickly than readers of literary fiction do, and finish most of the books they start.”
“The bigger trend we’re trying to unearth is where are those drop-offs in certain kinds of books, and what can we do with publishers to prevent that? If we can help authors create even better books than they create today, it’s a win for everybody,” explains Jim Hilt, Barnes & Noble VP of E-Books.
Still, some publishers are skeptical about using the data. “The thing about a book is that it can be eccentric, it can be the length it needs to be, and that is something the reader shouldn’t have anything to do with,” says Jonathan Galassi, president and publisher of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. “We’re not going to shorten ‘War and Peace’ because someone didn’t finish it.”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation working with the ACLU has argued that people’s reading habits should be private. They are lobbying states to enact privacy provisions as California has done.
There is one company that has taken this approach to an extreme. Coliloquy is not only gathering reader data to help authors craft their works to best fit reader interests and behavior; it uses a proprietary data platform that allows readers choose from different paths through the story.
Comedian Louis C.K. announced last week that he had sold 100,000 tickets for his upcoming tour directly to his fans in less than two days via his website.
The comedian, who has been successfully experimenting with distributing his content and stage performances online, decided to bypass major retailers such as Ticketmaster and StubHub because of the 40 percent mark-up often added to the final cost of tickets, reports Digital Trends.
“Tickets across the board, everywhere, are 45 dollars. That’s what you’ll actually pay,” wrote C.K. “In every case, that will be less than anyone has actually paid to see me (after ticket charges) in about two years and in most cases it’s about half of what you paid last year.”
“The benefit for me is that I won’t get angry emails from anyone who paid a ton of money to see me due to circumstances out of my control. That makes me VERY happy,” he adds. “The 45 dollars also includes sales tax, which I’m paying for you. So I’m making more or less depending on the state.”
In a related report, TechCrunch notes that C.K. has also taken steps to thwart scalpers. “You’ll see that if you try to sell the ticket anywhere for anything above the original price, we have the right to cancel your ticket (and refund your money),” writes the comedian. “This is something I intend to enforce. There are some other rules you may find annoying but they are meant to prevent someone who has no intention of seeing the show from buying the ticket and just flipping it for twice the price from a thousand miles away.”
C.K. kick-started direct online distribution in December with the successful release of his performance “Live at the Beacon Theater” for $5 via his website. Other performers such as Jim Gaffigan and Aziz Ansari have since been following his lead.
The MPEG Industry Forum announced last week that after 10 years it will merge with the Open IPTV Forum.
According to an email sent from the MPEGIF officers: “We have ‘declared victory’ and the activities of the MPEG Industry Forum are now being wound up. By the end of this month all remaining assets will be put into the hands of the Open IPTV Forum where you can access these through http://www.oipf.tv/mpegif.”
The group was first initiated in June 2000 in an effort to develop alternatives to MPEG-2. “Our task was to educate and evangelize an emerging standards based solution that became known as MPEG-4 Part 10, aka AVC, aka H.264,” notes the email.
“Our efforts drove in many directions including many informational events — the MPEG IF Master Class series — and, crucially, a series of important interoperability test rounds combined with some very active tech-lists (that will now be closed on July 1st),” reads the email. “Slowly but surely H.264 gained mind share and then market share and today is clearly the dominant codec of choice replacing MPEG-2 around the world. Hence the declaration of victory.”
Los Angeles is placing a new focus on technology and entrepreneurship, according to Investor’s Business Daily.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa last week “announced a new business council with 25 local entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and business leaders,” notes the article. “His Council on Innovation and Industry aims to attract investors and spur the tech scene in the City of Angels.”
“The announcement comes four days after the local beach towns of Venice and Santa Monica hosted Silicon Beach Fest, a tech celebration featuring local start-ups, panels, workshops and mixers, with about 2,000 in attendance over two days,” reports IBD.
“Relative to Northern California we are undercapitalized,” says Zack Zalon, managing partner at business incubator Elevator Labs. “L.A. is an incredibly rich market of opportunity. It has a boundless creativity that exceeds anything I’ve seen in Silicon Valley, New York or Seattle.”
Creativity — especially in regards to online digital media content — has been largely fueled by the major entertainment studios, but until now the area has been hampered by a shortage of VC funding and a supporting community.
L.A. is experiencing a surge in support for start-ups from business incubators (or accelerators), the availability of facilities that start-ups can use to invent and work, and new programs at the University of Southern California and the University of California at Los Angeles that “help students and graduates with business ideas and research,” says the article.
Investors are beginning to take note of the changes and VC funding is on the rise. ETCentric staffer Phil Lelyveld also notes that L.A. has a reinvigorated networking, crowd education, and social scene.
At VidCon last week, YouTube announced Video Creation Marketplace, a new platform designed to help connect brands and agencies with content creators.
YouTube pays out millions of dollars to partners each year in shared ad revenue. “Thousands of channels are generating six figures a year,” claims Baljeet Singh, group product manager at YouTube.
“The idea is to create a more formal revenue stream for the long tail of YouTube creators,” reports Advertising Age. “YouTube has been very focused on launching and promoting its first 100 ‘Original Channels,’ but its message to VidCon is to the YouTube stalwarts: We’re here for you, too.”
Marketers will be able to tap the creative talent displayed by YouTube’s users, notes Singh. This could potentially appeal to smaller businesses that do not always have the resources for expensive campaigns.
“The creativity coming out of YouTube rivals that coming out of creative agencies any day of the week… And we already know that their content performs really well on YouTube,” he says.
According to the article, YouTube “will launch the site and talk to marketers later this summer.”
Google hosted its “Next Up” event, where talented YouTubers were invited to New York for tips and training and were awarded a check for $35,000. The purpose is to accelerate “the growth of the next big YouTube stars,” according to the YouTube blog.
There are hundreds of YouTube stars — such as Ray William Johnson, Mystery Guitar Man, Smosh, Michelle Phan, the ShayTards, Jenna Marbles, Freddie Wong and Philip DeFranco — whose videos attract millions of views, and a share of the resulting ad revenue that could amount to six figures or more.
The New York Times interviews a number of these stars to understand how they got into the business, what motivates them and how their lives have changed.
About half of the Next Up winners live in and around Los Angeles where a YouTube ecosystem has developed among YouTube pros, YouTube-focused production companies and agencies.
The bond between YouTube creator and audience has attracted interest among advertisers. Some brands are paying stars six figures to create an ad.
“Five years ago, ‘brands would not touch this stuff,’ says Barry Blumberg, the former president of Disney television animation who now runs Web sites and YouTube channels for Alloy Digital,” reports NYT. “‘The audience thinks they know them.’ And that, he says, can be monetized.”
Google is now expanding its efforts by identifying and seeding separate categories — including Next Chef, Next Comic, Next Vlogger.
“YouTube is doubling down on content creation as a core feature of its site,” Richard MacManus argues on ReadWriteWeb. “It is doing this across the whole spectrum of content creation: from amateur to professional, with a lot of gray in-between.”
