Nielsen is rolling out a program to track views of almost 1,000 shows on Netflix, Amazon’s Prime Instant Video and Hulu, relying on the same 25,000 U.S. households used to track traditional TV ratings. The idea is that, by having access to that data, large media companies such as Comcast NBCUniversal can hammer out better content licensing deals, especially with Netflix. Currently, Nielsen provides data only to studios that own the programs and pay for the information, but it plans to syndicate the data in the future. Continue reading Nielsen to Track Viewership Across Netflix, Amazon and Hulu

YouTube launched its centralized hub for gaming this week, a new competitor to Amazon’s Twitch that features live and recorded video content about popular games. YouTube Gaming is available for game fans on mobile (Android, iOS) and the Web and offers more than 25,000 dedicated pages. The service automatically populates all gaming content from YouTube’s community, and Google is appealing to video creators by promising to make it simpler to livestream their games. Gaming-related video content has exploded in popularity, and is now second only to music. Continue reading YouTube Rolls Out Dedicated Gaming Hub to Take on Twitch

Facebook has added video to its newly released photo-sharing app Moments, enabling users to automatically create, customize and then share a music video created from mobile photos. This is the first update the app received since its June debut. With over 4 billion daily video views, video is becoming an important and fast-growing category on Facebook. By adding video to Moments, the social network competes with services like Flipagram, or Google Photos’ automatically created animations. Continue reading Facebook Updates its Moments Photo-Sharing App with Video

As part of its effort to meet the entertainment needs of the postmillennial generation, Netflix is adding exclusive films and TV series to its service that target teenagers and tweens. Netflix has picked up a half-hour original series about a group of musicians called “Lost & Found Music Studios,” a series called “Degrassi: Next Class” that addresses the issues teens face as they get ready to enter adulthood, and “Fuller House,” the sequel to the popular 90s sitcom “Full House.” Netflix has also licensed two movies featuring YouTube stars — “Smosh: The Movie” and “Bad Night.” Continue reading Netflix to Offer Original Programming Produced for Teenagers

In 2016, Aerosense, jointly owned by Sony and robotics firm ZMP, plans to launch a commercial drone service targeting construction, logistics and agriculture industries. A prototype of an airplane-shaped drone was unveiled this week. The drones, which will be capable of capturing HD images and transmitting them to the cloud, will rely in part on the mobile phone and digital camera technologies developed for Sony’s Xperia smartphones. Analysts believe the unmanned aircraft industry may be worth $82 billion in the U.S. by 2025. Continue reading Sony and ZMP Team Up to Offer Commercial Drone Services

A recent Check Point Software survey determined that enterprise network vulnerabilities often result from the ease in which company employees can now connect their mobile devices to insecure wireless networks. The study suggests that the threat level increases with larger organizations. For example, companies that use 2,000 or more devices experience a 50 percent chance that at least six devices have become infected with malware (something to consider since 82 percent of companies now have a BYOD plan in place). Continue reading Mobile Devices Now the Largest Threat to Enterprise Security

Instagram just turned on its API (application programming interface) for ads, and some experts are calling it the next step in advertising’s digital evolution. Before, advertising on Facebook-owned Instagram was a complex process. Now, any potential advertiser can simply buy an ad on Instagram using online ad-buying tools from Instagram partners. What makes this new process interesting to advertisers is an estimated 44 percent of Instagram’s 300 million users are in the coveted 18-29 year old demographic. Continue reading Instagram’s New API Could Spark Major Change in Digital Ads

The use of ad-blocking software is increasing to the point that some advertisers say it could be perilous to the Internet’s economic model. And it’s about to get worse for them. Whereas, now, ad-blocking software is limited to desktop computers, Apple iOS 9 will extend ad-blocking to mobile phones as well. But there could be a solution, say some experts. Advertisers are going to have to create simpler, less intrusive ads to survive. The other option — begging for customers to disable ad-blocking — hasn’t seen much success. Continue reading Advertisers Face an Increase in Ad-Blocking, Search for Fixes

According to the new “Mobile Messaging and Social Media” report from the Pew Research Center, Facebook is now more than three times as popular as Twitter among adults in the U.S. The report notes that 72 percent of adult Internet users are on Facebook, while 31 percent use Pinterest, 28 percent use Facebook-owned Instagram, 25 percent use LinkedIn, and about 23 percent use Twitter. The figures represent slight increases over 2014 for Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest; no change for Twitter from the previous year; and a 3 percent decrease for LinkedIn. Continue reading Facebook Three Times as Popular as Twitter with Adult Users

Search and apps may dominate today’s landscape for mobile devices, but two different trends are already vying to dominate the future of smartphones and the Internet. One group, led by Apple and Google, sees a future in which artificial intelligence or a virtual assistant — think Siri and Google Now — integrate apps, websites and any other online “silos.” The other group plans to leverage messaging apps to incorporate as many functions as possible. China’s WeChat dominates here, but Facebook and Snapchat also fall into this group. Continue reading The Mobile Future: Operating Systems Versus Messaging Apps

Real-time streaming video has been the focus of several companies in recent months, and now bigger players Twitter and Facebook seem to be decisively pulling ahead of independent player Meerkat. Or not, says Meerkat founder Ben Rubin, who disputes the measurement criteria. What we do know is that Twitter’s live video app Periscope now boasts 10 million total accounts, while Meerkat, in May, reported two million accounts. Live video is still, however, a very small percentage of all consumer video on the Internet. Continue reading Twitter and Facebook Widen Streaming Video Gap with Meerkat

Sales of the once-popular iPads are tumbling, and Apple is taking a hard look at business computing as a way to offset the loss. To make the iPad a tool more compatible to the workplace, the Silicon Valley company has begun to collaborate with more than 40 technology companies to create the kinds of apps and tools that will make it appealing to businesses, a sector it has never seriously gone after. With an estimated $2 trillion spent every year on technology for the workplace, the stakes are big. Continue reading Apple Focuses on Business Computing as iPad Sales Decline

Facebook is about to become a bigger competitor to Twitter-owned Periscope as it begins to offer wider access to the VIP-only Facebook app Mentions and Facebook Live. Up until now, Facebook Live — which allows a broadcaster to start a live video stream immediately, which users can watch in real-time and comment on — has only been available to a handful of high-profile individuals. Previously, Facebook has been circumspect when asked about when more people would have access to Live, which launched on August 4. Continue reading Facebook Live Broadcasting to Open Soon for Verified Profiles

Ad-blocking software has grown dramatically in usage; an estimated 200 million people worldwide now use ad-blocking software of which 45 million are in the U.S. That’s one of the findings of a report sponsored by Adobe and PageFair, two companies concerned about the implications of such software on the advertising industry. Ad-blocking is responsible for nearly $22 billion in lost revenue this year. The Dublin-based PageFair focuses on helping advertisers regain some of this lost revenue. Continue reading Ad-Blocking Results in $22B in Lost Ad Revenue, Says Report

While debates over privacy on and off the Internet rage, Japan has just come out with an ideal item for the privacy conscious: eyeglasses that block facial-recognition technology. The Privacy Visor, which was the brainchild of the government-affiliated National Institute of Informatics and an eyeglass manufacturer over the last two years. The Visor works by using patterns and angles on the lens that either reflect or absorb light, disrupting auto-focus to make faces undetectable. Continue reading Japanese Glasses Guard Privacy by Disabling Face Recognition