Harris Interactive reports that nearly 60 percent of mobile users will be looking to their phones while they watch the Super Bowl this weekend.
Second screen usage is expected to increase, as 80 percent of those surveyed said they would use their mobile devices more than or as much as they did during last year’s game.
“The results suggest that the two-screen viewing phenomenon could undercut the multimillion TV campaigns advertisers are rolling out for the big game,” reports MediaPost.
“Per the survey, people who plan to use their phones during the game are twice as likely to do so during commercial breaks as opposed to game play.”
Pepsi, Subway, GoDaddy.com and Chevrolet will offer apps tailored to the game, including related content, social sharing, contests and more.
“Shazam has said that nearly a third of Super Bowl spots will allow viewers to unlock special content and offers during commercials by using the Shazam app,” adds the article.
Now that the Facebook IPO has revealed that game publisher, Zynga, generates 12 percent of its revenue, it is not surprising to discover that Google also has big plans to use social games to build its Google+ user base.
Google’s plans call for a multiplatform approach, which allows developers to build games that run on Google+, Chrome and Android.
Moreover, Google is offering game publishers 95 percent of revenues from virtual goods compared to the 70 percent that Facebook offers.
That said, Google is starting with only 36 games. But it has scored some game exclusives encouraged by Google’s marketing assistance.
“We are a start-up platform,” explains Punit Soni, who runs games and mobile for Google+. “We are humble and know our flaws. As we grow, you’ll see new things. My work has barely started.”
Ray William Johnson is YouTube’s biggest star. Five million viewers watch his show twice a week.
“Known as RayWJ, the 30-year-old has morphed into an idol of the teen set at home and abroad by ranting about others’ viral YouTube videos on subjects ranging from a hippopotamus defecating to people who staple the heads of co-workers,” explains the Wall Street Journal.
YouTube often attracts more viewers than traditional TV networks these days. According to comScore, the video site draws more than 780 million unique visitors every month. Of course, the audience is “fragmented among 30,000 channels and millions of videos,” points out WSJ.
“This is a microcosm of what’s going on in the overall media landscape. We’re moving from a scaled mass media to a more hyper-local, niche media,” explains David Cohen of media-buying agency Universal McCann.
RayWJ’s 1.5 billion views reportedly earn him an estimated $1 million a year from YouTube’s Partner Program. He also sells his own merchandise and mobile apps.
“A Google spokeswoman says that ‘several hundred’ of its partners made more than $100,000 in 2011, up 80 percent from the ‘couple of hundred’ partners who made more than that in 2010,” reports WSJ, suggesting this may be the start of a larger shift in media consumption.
According to a study by the content sharing company Shareaholic, Palo Alto-based start-up Pinterest now drives more referral traffic on the Web than Google+, YouTube, Reddit, and LinkedIn combined.
Pinterest is a virtual pinboard that allows users to collect and share photos online, and it has rapidly gained ground over the last year.
The company accounted for 3.6 percent of referrals in January, just behind Twitter at 3.61 percent.
Facebook came in first, responsible for 26.4 percent of all referral traffic in January. StumbleUpon held a distant second with 5.07 percent.
The link includes Shareaholic’s study results, including Google and other top companies’ referral traffic percentages.
The popular Square credit card readers are coming to select retail outlets, enabling mobile transactions at stores equipped with T-Mobile smartphones.
In an effort to help small businesses, the company hopes the readers will especially help cash-only businesses.
“This easy-to-use solution, paired with T-Mobile’s affordable small business plans, aggregated business applications, equipment financing and trade-in services, and in-store support, allows small businesses to maximize their wireless investment and transform their business,” the press release states.
The announcement makes T-Mobile the first wireless carrier to offer Square credit card readers in stores.
Sony announced on Wednesday that video game exec Kazuo Hirai will become the company’s new president and CEO.
Hirai, credited with the turnaround of Sony’s PlayStation business, was selected in a rare unanimous vote by the Sony board “in a bid to regain some of [Sony’s] magic,” reports The New York Times.
Howard Stringer, chief exec of Sony since 2005, will become chairman of the board on April 1, the company explained in a statement.
“As challenging as times are for Sony now, were it not for the strong leadership of Sir Howard Stringer these past seven years, we would have been in a much more difficult position,” Hirai said in a statement. “The path we must take is clear: to drive the growth of our core electronics businesses.”
The article points out that Hirai is taking the helm at a difficult moment in history as the company faces the global economic crisis, a Japanese recession, disrupted production due to recent natural disasters and a rapidly evolving consumer electronics industry.
Earlier this week Google created an official Google+ page for Android developers to connect and share ideas.
Within a few hours of the launch, the page had nearly 7,000 followers. Google hopes the page will facilitate discussions about new developer tools, SDKs, and training material.
“If you like Android and want to learn more about developing your own apps and software for the platform, this will be a great place to start. The page will also host Google+ Hangouts and will allow the developers to share video and pictures from developer events all around the world,” reports SlashGear.
“It’s no surprise that Google would roll out this sort of page for Android developers,” adds the post. “This is the sort of thing Google+ was meant for.”
Google sent a 13-page letter to several members of Congress, standing firm behind its changes to Google privacy policies.
The company said the changes are intended to “make [the privacy policies] simpler and more understandable, and to improve the user experience across Google.”
According to the letter, Google is not collecting any additional data about individuals and users’ existing settings will not be affected.
“If a user is signed in, she can still edit or turn off her search history, switch Gmail chat to ‘off the record,’ control the way Google tailors ads to her interests using our Ads Preferences Manager, use Incognito mode on Chrome, or use any of the other privacy tools we offer,” explains the letter.
Google’s letter comes in response to representatives’ concerns about consumers inability to opt out of data collection.
Facebook has launched a new app, possibly designed to appease naysayers of the network’s Timeline feature.
Utilizing the new profile layout, the Facebook Timeline Movie Maker app turns your content into a minute-long movie that highlights noteworthy moments from your Timeline.
“You don’t have to do anything, and apparently you don’t pick the photos; the app does it for you. The app checks your content, identifies the most engaging and relevant life moments, then builds a chronological story for your movie, and renders it up in a few minutes. You get to pick background music from five tracks, and then the movie is posted to your site and can be shared with friends,” explains SlashGear.
The article points out the app is likely Facebook’s attempt to encourage Timeline adoption even though the format will be mandatory soon.
“Want to run Boxee on your PC or Mac?” asks GigaOM. “Then hurry up; Boxee is removing all copies of its PC-based app from its servers by the end of the day Tuesday to fully concentrate on the Boxee Box.”
The company announced it is removing its PC-based app from its servers and will no longer support the most recent PC version.
“We believe the future of TV will be driven by devices such as the Boxee Box, Connected TVs/Blu-rays and 2nd screen devices such as tablets and phones,” wrote Andrew Kippen, Boxee’s VP of marketing. “While there are still many users who have computers connected to their TVs, we believe this use case is likely to decline as users find better alternatives.”
“As for Boxee, cutting its losses and concentrating on its CE platform should help the company to keep up with an emerging market that pits it against much bigger players like Google and its Google TV platform,” comments GigaOM.
Following the controversy over network diagnostics software Carrier IQ, U.S. Rep. Edward Markey has released draft legislation that would require consumer consent for any monitoring.
Called the “Mobile Device Privacy Act,” the legislation would require full disclosure concerning monitoring software when a consumer buys a mobile phone. It would also require written consent before manufacturers can collect or transmit information and establishes security policies for handling personal information received.
“Consumers have the right to know and to say no to the presence of software on their mobile devices that can collect and transmit their personal and sensitive information,” Markey said.
For now, the draft is still in the early stages of the legislation process and would take time to be enforced.
A source from Microsoft revealed to The Daily some facts about the Kinect motion-sensing technology for Windows 8-equipped devices.
According to the inside source, Microsoft will license the technology to other manufacturers with the requirement that it is the only motion-control tech on the devices.
Asus will likely be a launch partner, but the company is not directly involved in testing the product.
Microsoft techs have been using prototypes “in the wild” at crowded locales to fine-tune the sensor.
Devices with the technology should be plugged in as much as possible because it quickly drains batteries.
Fragmentation, like that of Android when manufacturers created dissimilar versions, may happen because Microsoft enables makers to customize the look of Windows 8 on Kinect-enabled devices.
Perhaps most notable, the “log me in” feature enables the Kinect sensors to analyze the user’s voice and face to grant access.
Facing competition from the likes of Netflix and Amazon, Hulu has invested in securing exclusive content and curating original series. However, content creation is not its top priority.
“It’s important for us to differentiate the service and create content not out there right now, [to tell] stories that aren’t being told right now,” CEO Jason Kilar said. “Consumers are asking for it … [and] it does build up heavy differentiation. But it’s not ‘the thing’ on our agenda; it’s part of it.”
Hulu’s primary focus is distributing content to customers and “that’s about developing a solution that serves both content consumers and creators, one that makes premium video content available to consumers on as many connected devices and platforms as possible, and compensates content providers generously,” explains Mashable.
In 2011, the company earned $420 million in advertising and subscription revenues, a 60 percent increase over 2010. Kilar said Hulu plans to spend $500 million on content this year, but won’t need to raise additional funding.
Recently appointed Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson has already pulled the plug on 10 of the company’s under-performing mobile apps.
According to a recent company blog post, Yahoo will stop developing and supporting the following apps: 1) Yahoo! Meme (iPad and iPhone); 2) Yahoo! Mim (iPad); 3) Yahoo! Answers (Android); 4) Yahoo! AppSpot (Android and iPhone); 5) Yahoo! Deals (iPhone); 6) Yahoo! Finance (BlackBerry); 7) Yahoo! Movies (Android); 8) Yahoo! News (Android); 9) Yahoo! Shopping (iPhone) and 10) Yahoo! Sketch-a-Search (iPad and iPhone).
“As you can see, the list is a mix of some of Yahoo’s more popular online brands and some services it created especially for mobile users, but all have one thing in common: they weren’t being used much by consumers,” reports paidContent. “In the words of Yahoo itself, it is removing the apps as part of its effort ‘to continuously measure and scrutinize what’s working and what isn’t’ as part of a new ‘mobile first’ strategy.”
Technology in the decommissioned apps will be repurposed in some of the more successful apps that remain available, as Thompson continues to focus on the company’s culture of innovation.
“Thompson still has a very big task ahead, though, to convince an increasingly more distracted consumer base that this slightly tired Internet brand is one worth watching for the future,” comments paidContent.
A consortium of Vancouver-based production, tech and media companies recently launched a service called RenderCloud.
“Vancouver is revving up its computing horsepower to allow Hollywood studios to more speedily render data-intensive animation and special effects in the cloud,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“Vancouver is also hoping its ultrafast RenderCloud server will allow the west-coast city, already enjoying the advantages of close proximity to Los Angeles, [to] compete with emerging global production centers in the UK, Australia and New Zealand.”
The local server farm will allow studios to render in the cloud and enable work-sharing on projects. Clients will pay on an as-needed cost-per-day basis with an option of subleasing their resources to other studios.
The project is led by Vancouver Studio Group, Great Northern Way Campus, Scalar Decisions and BC Film and Media. RenderCloud includes more than 600 servers, with plans to grow to 1,500 by this summer.
The service is designed for large-scale production of 3D, animation and special effects for film, TV and games.
