Univision announced this week that it is launching the UVideo Digital Network — “a brand new social experience with Facebook,” reports Lost Remote.
With the launch, the popular Spanish-language channel (it reaches 97 percent of Hispanic households in the U.S.) is putting a priority on online social video.
The official announcement states: “Univision will kick-off live chats with its personalities and celebrities through Facebook Platform… Facebook will be threaded throughout the experience allowing viewers to see what their friends are watching, follow celebrities, have access to exclusive content and join the conversation with Univision’s synched social stream.”
The post includes a Q&A with Kevin Conroy, president of Univision Interactive Media and Enterprise Development.
SceneTap is an Android and iOS social app that uses cameras inside of bars to detect age, gender, and number of people inside the bar at a given time.
Patrons can use the data to determine if bars have a good crowd, while owners can receive data regarding the demographic composition of their bar.
On May 18, SceneTap will add San Francisco to the list of six cities it already serves.
According to CEO Cole Harper, SceneTap is “about 85 percent accurate in determining gender, 90 percent accurate on determining age within six years, and 80 percent accurate within three years. It can also count people entering and leaving with between 85 and 98 percent accuracy.”
Some people question the legality of SceneTap’s recording, but its practices are cleared by the FTC. SceneTap does not store data and bar owners do not have access to the feed, just demographics.
Sprint is paying a lot to carry Apple’s iPhone — up to a $15.5 billion subsidy over four years.
CEO Dan Hesse remains confident that such a hefty price tag is worth it. During the company’s recent annual shareholders meeting, he said that “carrying the iPhone will be quite profitable,” even if it takes a few more years to see positive financial results.
“We believe in the long term… And over time we will make more money on iPhone customers than we will on other customers,” Hesse explained during the meeting.
Because of pressure from shareholders, Hesse cut his compensation package by $3.2 million this year.
“If Sprint’s LTE network launches as planned this year, it will help alleviate at least some of the problems the company has faced and give Hesse time to make good on his iPhone promises,” suggests The Verge.
BlackBerry maker Research In Motion continues trying to improve its brand in order to compete with other smartphone makers. A new customer satisfaction survey released Tuesday reveals that the company likely needs to pick up the pace.
The American Customer Satisfaction Index “found that RIM’s customers were the least satisfied cellphone users among customers of the seven phone makers it tracked in its survey during the first quarter of this year,” reports The New York Times.
On a satisfaction scale of 100, RIM earned a 69 overall. Apple was the leader, coming in at 83.
Thorsten Heins, RIM’s chief executive officer, acknowledges that touchscreen BlackBerrys are not competitive, but that BlackBerrys with keyboards are the leaders in the market.
“Later this year the company will introduce phones using a new operating system, BlackBerry 10, which it hopes will fare better against Apple’s iPhone and phones using Google’s Android operating system,” explains the article.
As television continues to morph into something that operates more like the mobile business, Microsoft has the lead with its Xbox, according to a report from Forrester Research.
“The report, by the Forrester analyst James McQuivey, argues that there is a battle of technology platforms about to commence in the television market every bit as intense as the one in mobile, featuring Microsoft, Apple, Google and a small handful of other companies, possibly including Facebook and Amazon,” reports The New York Times.
McQuivey believes that Microsoft has set itself up in the best position thus far with its Xbox, “creating a meaningful audience of people watching online video through their television sets and holding that audience’s attention for the longest amount of time,” the article explains.
In his words, McQuivey wrote: “Microsoft is in the lead, offering everything that matters: a growing content library, a convenient engagement path for millions of existing Xbox 360 owners, and a growing ecosystem of partners and developers eager to exploit the platform for their own purposes.”
According to the report, around half of all Xbox users in the U.S. have connected their devices to the Internet and overall, Microsoft has shipped out more than 66 million Xboxes throughout the world.
In the wake of Facebook’s acquisition of photo-sharing service Instagram, the social network hired the seven-member team that runs competitor Lightbox on Tuesday.
The Lightbox mobile photo-sharing service plans to shut down as of June 15.
Co-founders Thai Tran and Nilesh Patel posted a farewell to their user community: “We started Lightbox because we were excited about creating new services built primarily for mobile, especially for the Android and HTML5 platforms, and we’re honored that millions of you have downloaded the Lightbox Photos app and shared your experiences with the Lightbox community.”
“Today, we’re happy to announce that the Lightbox team is joining Facebook, where we’ll have the opportunity to build amazing products for Facebook’s 500+ million mobile users,” added Tran and Patel.
The seven-member staff of London-based Lightbox will join Facebook, but the deal is not an acquisition of the company or its user data. “So it’s obviously another step toward figuring out mobile for Facebook,” reports AllThingsD. “The company realizes it needs mobile talent; Facebook acquired mobile discovery start-up Glancee last week, and of course bought Instagram last month for a whopping $1 billion.”
Lightbox has “promised to open source portions of the Lightbox code and post them in a Github repository” reports WebProNews. This will allow for the possibility of a Lightbox clone in the future.
General Motors announced it will stop advertising on Facebook, after determining that paid ads on the social network have had little impact on car purchases. The company will, however, continue to maintain free Facebook pages, reports the Wall Street Journal.
The decision is significant, since it comes at a time when Facebook is determining how it will monetize its 900 million users and justify a potential $104 billion IPO.
GM is the nation’s third largest advertiser and its decision may influence other companies that have said they are also finding it difficult to measure Facebook’s ad effectiveness.
“Companies in industries from consumer electronics to financial services tell us they’re no longer sure Facebook is the best place to dedicate their social marketing budget — a shocking fact given the site’s dominance among users,” suggests Nate Elliott, an analyst at market research firm Forrester.
Elliott believes other companies will begin shifting advertising dollars elsewhere. According to a related SlashGear report, Elliott notes Facebook’s “inconsistent jumping between different advertising strategies as it desperately hunts for something that will actually make it money” as a main reason for frustration.
Facebook has also struggled to profit from the growing number of users on mobile phones and tablets. A wide variety of businesses have told Elliott that “they’re no longer sure Facebook is the best place to dedicate their social marketing budget.”
The Consumer Electronics Association released data this week that suggests a quarter of prospective TV buyers in the U.S. are searching for a 3D-capable set.
“The consumers we talk to want their TVs to be smart and they want them to be 3D,” says analyst Richard Doherty of Envisioneering. “Consumer interest is alive and well.”
According to Rod Riegel, a spokesman for 3Net, 3D TV sets will reach more than 15.3 million U.S. homes by the end of the year and 30 million U.S. homes by the end of 2013. By comparison, HDTV was in only 2 million homes three years into its progression.
Still, growth in 3D channels such as 3Net has been slow. Nintendo announced it will shut down its 3D programming channel by the end of June.
“The other big 3D channel introduced at about the same time as 3Net, Disney’s ESPN 3D, has also struggled to expand its carriage beyond a launch group of top multichannel operators that included Comcast, DirecTV, Time Warner Cable, Verizon FiOS and AT&T U-Verse — and in fact, U-Verse dropped the channel last summer citing low demand,” reports paidContent.
The Pebble Smartwatch has received over $10 million in funding since it began its Kickstarter campaign, easily passing the previous funding record on the popular site.
“Pebble, a smartwatch that wirelessly connects with your smartphone to alert you of incoming calls and messages, blew past the previous Kickstarter record of $3.3 million only five days after launching its crowdsourced funding effort,” reports Wired. “It’s an amazing feat when you consider just how many big-name smartphone and tablet brands are fighting for the same attention.”
Pebble’s ability to connect with the iPhone has helped it capture a mainstream audience, with 85,000 orders from Kickstarter alone.
The Pebble watch will allow users to access notifications for calls, texts, weather, e-mails, and tweets on a 1.26 inch reflective display intended to operate well in direct sunlight.
Pebble has also begun creating partnerships with app developers, including Runkeeper and Twine.
“Pebble has already made Kickstarter history, but it will be even more exciting to see what becomes of the watch once it begins shipping this September. Will it be everything that the 67,000-plus Kickstarter backers are expecting? We won’t know until we get our hands on the finished product,” comments Wired. “It’s clear, at least, that the Pebble team is already working hard to make the best possible device for its initial supporters.”
On the brink of going public, Facebook faces “a new, unenviable test: how to keep growing and enriching its hungry new shareholders,” reports The New York Times.
Another challenge will be, as Facebook attempts to match ads to each user, it needs to do so without violating the sense of privacy and security that users hope for on a social network.
Additionally, Facebook needs to figure out other revenue options, “like allowing people to buy more goods and services with Facebook Credits, a kind of virtual currency,” suggests NYT.
It also needs to figure out how to make money on mobile devices, as more of its users log in through smartphones and tablets, which have so far been much less profitable for the company.
“The first wave of Intel-based Windows 8 tablets are expected to land in retail stores in November,” reports CNET, and more than a dozen of the products will be hybrids, according to a source. The hybrid or convertible models will incorporate aspects of both tablets and traditional computers.
“The schedule is tight,” said the source. “Looking at what Windows is trying to achieve not only with a new OS, but a new OS that needs to run four to five architectures — three ARM, Intel, and AMD.”
The Windows 8 devices will use Intel’s new Clover Trail Atom chip. The dual-core chip is designed using Intel’s 32-nanometer process technology.
There’s also a Bay Trail chip in development. “It is a gigantic performer, with similar battery life to Clover Trail,” said the source. “It will also have a lot of security features built in and Infineon [3G/4G] silicon inside.”
Researchers from the Tokyo Institute of Technology have broken the record for wireless data transmission in a proof of concept experiment, reports Gizmodo.
The scientists achieved data speeds in the terahertz range that were 20 times higher than current Wi-Fi speeds.
The team achieved this success by utilizing the “T-ray” band, part of the electromagnetic spectrum between microwave and infrared — a currently unregulated segment of the electromagnetic spectrum.
The impressive data speeds were made possible by using “a 1 millimeter-square device known as a resonant tunneling diode, which produces smaller voltages with increasing current,” explains Gizmodo. “By tuning the current, the team are able to make the tiny device resonate, and spit out signals in the terahertz band.”
Microsoft hopes to enhance the Xbox 360 experience by providing users with Web browsing capability. Microsoft is currently testing a modified version of Internet Explorer 9 that would allow users to browse from their Xbox 360.
Geek.com reports the modified version includes Kinect integration, which would allow users to surf the Web “using voice and gesture controls on your console in the very near future.”
The announcement comes soon after the success of PS3’s Webkit browser, which suggests users may now be embracing console-based Web browsing more than they had in the past.
In addition to Internet Explorer 9 integration, Xbox 360 is also working on a Skype app, and Microsoft is rumored to be releasing the “Woodstock” music service at E3. Geek.com believes these changes signal Xbox 360’s shift from “a connected gaming console into a more full-featured living room entertainment hub.”
Research firm BIA/Kelsey predicts that social media spending will grow at a compound annual rate of 21 percent.
The firm predicts that by 2016, advertisers will spend $9.8 billion in social media advertising. Last year, $3.8 billion was spent in social media advertising.
“BIA/Kelsey (which advises companies in the local media space) further forecasts the local segment of U.S. social media ad revenues to grow from $840 million in 2011 to $3.1 billion in 2016, driven by better performance and richer ad formats like videos,” reports The Next Web.
“The firm says Twitter and Facebook will be a boon for local businesses and ‘democratize social ads’ by offering self-service ad creation, distribution and analytics tools,” adds the post.
A new Nielsen report suggests people are more likely to shop with their smartphones when buying expensive consumer goods.
TechCrunch reports: “mobile coupons are most popular at grocery stores, (41 percent of mobile shoppers said they used coupons there), department stores (41 percent), and clothing stores (39 percent). At electronics stores, the majority (73 percent) read reviews, compare prices (71 percent), and scan QR codes (57 percent).”
People do not frequently use smartphones when at convenience or dollar stores, but occasionally use smartphones at mass merchandisers such as Walmart and Costco. Although these stores are known for their low prices, 34 percent of customers read reviews and 31 percent scan QR codes, according to the Nielsen study.
“Given the right pricing on the right products, it seems department stores, electronics retailers and online shops can woo customers from the Walmart-sized chains, when it comes to higher priced goods,” adds TechCrunch. “With brick-and-mortar stores turning into Amazon’s showroom, it’s more important than ever that merchants offer in-store shoppers some other advantage besides low prices. Expect the new crop of customer loyalty startups to have a big role in framing what that advantage might be.”