Archive for March, 2007
How Consumers Hijacked the Media Model
From Marketwatch:
It is no secret that the traditional media are under assault from audiences.
Not only are some consumers not paying for content, some are displacing those heretofore assigned to create it and others are affecting the economics by their online-sharing behavior.
That additional power given to the audience is evident in the financial results of many companies.
In the magazine industry, advertising pages at Time Warner Inc.’s Time magazine were down 23.8% in 2006 from 2000, according to Publishers Information Bureau. Newsweek’s ad pages fell about 17.6% in the same period. In the newspaper industry, the New York Times stock has been halved since trading above $50 in 2002. In the music industry, sales of CDs have been declining in the last seven years and fell 20% in the first quarter of this year. Contd…
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Most indian marketers and traditional media professionals would discount these as western trends. Keep in mind, indians are highly aspirational and have shown a higher affinity for technology-entertainment than most developed countries (a classic example is india’s booming Mobile VAS Industry). India’s share of global internet users has hovered between 3-4% since 2000, clearly illustrating a set of advanced users and new user growth proportionate to the rest of the planet. We’re already approaching the tipping point and distribution continues to get better (wi-lan, mobile…). While traditional media waits and watches, online media models change …real-time…by the user, for the user, of the user!
He who laughs last, laughs loudest…
Yahoo Mobile Publisher Services Launch
instead of pointing you to a PR announcement, here’s quoting Search Engine Journal….
Last week Yahoo introduced their oneSearch mobile search experience for the majority of cell phones which offer Internet access. This week, Yahoo is working to fortify its innovative hold on the mobile search market with a suite of services which enable publishers to increase the discovery, distribution and monetization of their content via oneSearch; Yahoo Mobile Publisher Services.
AB in the Rokr Ad
Hats off to Moto & Ogilvy for pulling this off… there is nothing i can say that will do it enough justice!
The Apple TV Sales Pitch - Compelling huh?
Got this email from Apple announcing and pitching Apple TV.
We all know Jobs is a good great salesman, this pitch is well in line…i’m not saying i’d buy it…just saying even this email pitch has Apple’s signature packaging…
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Your computer is the center of your digital life. Your TV is the center of your entertainment life. But what if you want to watch movies, TV shows, movie trailers, podcasts and photos from your computer on your TV? At $299, Apple TV brings iTunes to the big screen.
Enjoy your iTunes library — movies, TV shows, music and podcasts — plus movie trailers from Apple.com on your TV. And your digital photos from iPhoto on a Mac or Adobe Photoshop Elements or Adobe Album on a Windows PC appear in high definition, so you can put on a stunning big-screen slideshow.
With QuickTime 7 Pro and Apple TV, you can easily enjoy your home movies on your TV. QuickTime 7 Pro allows you to export any file playable in QuickTime to a format optimized for Apple TV. You can even export 720p content from most high-definition sources.*
Change the way you watch digital media. Learn more about Apple TV, now shipping.
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Gootube has met its match
Simple math.
Quality of Video is directly proportionate to volume of Streams.
TV Programming is high quality. (NBC + News Corp produce adequate content globally to keep every demographic entertained)
Y! + MSN + AOL = Huge Captive Audience (30% of online video is viewed on Y! alone)
Y! (and the others) have a lot of respect for rights & IP …
UGC quality still lags commercially produced content. (I illustrated this point in my post titled….the funniest phone review EVER)
A certain portion of the USD 1.65BN bid for youtube was premium to prevent the competition from getting their hands on a portion of it… a huge portion of this was for audience (since google video had poor adoption)
So Gootube now has a USD 1BN Viacom lawsuit to deal with (obviously factored in during acquisition), NBC + NewsCorp + Y! + MSN + AOL, Joost, Apple TV (will eventually converge), Grouper and the rest of the long tail of online video.
Excess pride in a nascent, evolutionary and shifting mediascape is dangerous.
I must add…all views on my blog are mine alone….i am not a spokesperson for any of the companies listed above…and as much as i’d like to believe i know enough, there’s still a long long long way to go 
Yahoo! launches Widgets 4
Excerpts from the Y! Widget Blog
Yes! Yahoo Widgets 4 is now available for download. This version has a lot of cool new features for users as well as developers of Widgets.
For those that think we’ve been sitting around drinking tequila and not really focusing on Konfabulator/Yahoo Widgets, today’s the day we show you what we’ve really been up to for these past months. Well, we’ve been drinking some tequila too, but let’s stay focused, shall we? What?!
Read the rest of this entry »
PS - Am downloading it, as i type this. Excited, and how! Yahoooooooo!
The funniest phone review EVER
Was checking phone reviews and a search for the i-mate pdal found me this site…
http://www.gsmarena.com/i_mate_pdal-reviews-1787.php
Look closely at what ‘S9he’ had to say…..i’m still dying laughing!
Talk about the power of UGC!
Yahoo! Offers Best Mobile Web Experience
Boston, MA - March 12, 2007 - The newly launched Strategy Analytics Wireless Media Lab service has released, “Yahoo! Offers Best Mobile Web Experience as Interest in Web 2.0 Outstrips Media Industry Content,” which concludes that Yahoo! has the leading mobile web experience, based on evaluation of leading mobile web offerings by a Strategy Analytics Wireless User Panel.
Yahoo! beat Google, Napster, YouTube and MySpace, after participants carried out a set number of tasks specific to each provider on both a laptop PC and a wireless device.
“Yahoo! Mobile achieved the highest rating, primarily due to the fact that it represented the best replication of the full website on the Third (mobile) screen,” according to Paul Brown, User Experience Analyst at Strategy Analytics. “However, mobile implementation of these brands is tangibly inferior to the fixed user experience across a range of metrics.” Mobile implementations of these brands are tangibly inferior to fixed with user experience ratings ranging form -12 to – 34 index points. MapQuest is the most sought-after web location on mobile followed by Google.
David Kerr, VP of the Global Wireless Practice, added, “Many users, especially among digital enthusiasts, show a preference for web search, web mail and web 2.0, user generated content and social networking content over branded content. However ease of access and discoverability of content on mobile handsets continue to be a huge pain point which is directly limiting content consumption”
Benchmarking Key Brands: Fixed and Mobile Experience