Blockbuster Bankruptcy Coming

Blockbuster has told major Hollywood studios that it’s preparing to file for bankruptcy next month despite several pushes to expand into online and kiosk services, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Blockbuster could file for bankruptcy as early as mid-September.

LA Times: Blockbuster preps for bankruptcy after Netflix, Redbox win

Targeted Display and Video Advertising Will Grow 60% in 2011

Online ad spending growth is being propped up by targeted display and streaming video advertising, says Borrell Associates. Both targeted display ad spending and streaming video ad spending will grow by around 60 percent in 2011. In turn, spending on less-targeted ads such as run-of-site display and national paid search is poised to fall.

"There really is unparalleled ability in the past year, year-and-a-half, to be able to deliver ads targeted to that one person as opposed to whom you think might be visiting a site," says Gordon Borrell, Borell Associates CEO.

"That's peeling off a lot of the growth from run-of-site banner ads," he says.

According to Borrell, targeted display advertising will hit $10.9 billion in total in 2011. Local targeted advertising will reach $2.3 billion, while national is expected to hit $8.6 billion, the company reported. And, while national targeted advertising will grow almost 50 percent, local targeted ads will grow at an even higher rate.

"They're not buying mass anymore; they're buying niche," said Borrell.

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African-Americans, Women and Southerners Talk and Text The Most

According to Nielsen, African-Americans use the most voice minutes; on average more than 1,300 a month. Hispanics are the next most talkative group, chatting an average of 826 minutes a month. Even Asians/Pacific Islanders, with 692 average monthly minutes, talk more than Whites, who use roughly 647 voice minutes a month.

African-Americans and Hispanics also text the most. Hispanics send and receive around 767 SMS messages a month while African-Americans send and receive around 780 – significantly more than Asians/Pacific Islanders (384 texts a month) and Whites (566 texts a month). The voice and text results are compiled from one year (April 2009-March 2010) of mobile usage data gathered by the The Nielsen Company.

African-Americans, Women and Southerners Talk and Text The Most in the U.S.

One Million More U.S. TV Households

Nielsen says the number of U.S. TV households will grow by one million for the coming season.

That doesn't seem to portend any shift to online media, does it?

Intuit Press Release - Intuit GoPayment and mophie marketplace Offer Complete Credit Card Solution for iPhone

"The Complete Credit Card Solution" from Intuit and mophie is available for the iPhone 3G and 3GS for $179.95 at Apple retail stores and soon on Apple.com. It allows merchants and others to accept credit card payments directly on the iPhone.

It works exclusively with the Intuit GoPayment App, which is available for free from the App Store.

GoPayment, including the Intuit merchant account, offers competitive pricing at $12.95 a month, a 1.7 to 3.7 percent discount rate and $0.30 to $0.34 per transaction fee. There are no long-term contracts, cancellation, gateway or set-up fees, and one account can enable up to 50 users.

Intuit GoPayment and mophie marketplace Offer Complete Credit Card Solution for iPhone

SIP Trunking Wins Because of 6-Month Payback Rule

A six-month payback project is an easy sale because it can typically be done without expending any capital (perhaps by leasing capital gear) and it usually pays for itself by the end of the fiscal year, when one would otherwise have to explain being over budget.

In fact, a number of IT professionals tell me their company only invests in IT projects with paybacks of six months or less.

That makes SIP trunking an easier sell than most.

The Six-Month Rule

Is Social Media the Next Unified Communications Wave?

Is it possible social media and social networking are the next wave of unified communications development? Some might argue it is, based on the fact that 73 percent of respondents to a recent Yankee Group survey say they use social media tools at work.

Click on image for a larger view.

While tools such as video conferencing, corporate chat and workplace forums are primarily used in the workplace, text messaging, blogs, consumer social networking and chat are important for both work and personal reasons.

Considering roughly 40 percent of respondents participate in blogs or use social networking for both work and personal use, companies might start looking at social media as a part of the UC mix.

Yankee Group :: Research Report

Google Adds Real-Time Search

Google has added a special "real time" search application to its suite of search-related tools, giving "Google realtime" its own dedicated web page.

1 Million Gmail Calls in 24 Hours

Somebody likes calling from inside Gmail. Google's "Call Phone" apparently has been used to make one million calls in about the last 24 hours.

tweet from Google

Unified Communications Seems Less Important than Conferencing, Survey Suggests

For almost a decade now, the industry has touted unified communications (UC) and VoIP as technologies that can help individuals collaborate, improve worker productivity and dramatically lower the total cost of corporate communications.

However, despite the promise and hype, the majority of UC applications deployed today revolve around basic conferencing services and unified messaging.

UC applications such as presence and mobile integration remain low in both adoption and plans to adopt. Click on the image for a larger view.

Yankee Group :: Research Report

Google Adds Real-Time Search, With its Own Web Page

Google has added a special "real time" search application to its suite of search-related tools, giving "Google realtime" its own dedicated web page.

When it first introduced our real-time search features last December, Google wanted to provide real-time content from a comprehensive set of sources, integrated right into your usual search results. Now you can access Google Realtime Search at its own address, www.google.com/realtime (the page is rolling out now and should be available soon. Use this link if you want to try out the new features right away).

Premises IP Telephony Issues About What You'd Expect

A survey of 475 ShoreTel prospective customers found key issues you might expect, including desires for simplicity, reliability, ease of use and management, reduced costs, and easier integration with business processes.

Nearly 81 percent of respondents expressed a desire to simplify their communications system yet only 47 percent, less than half, have actual goals in place to help them achieve this.

Of system capabilities most important to IT managers,  80 percent of respondents indicated ease of use for end users, 80 percent indicated reliability, and 76 percent indicated ease of management.

The survey also revealed that the highest ranked causes of complexity are “Integrating communications system with business processes,” “integrating new equipment with legacy systems,” and “the number of remote or mobile workers.”

The top three system qualities that are most important to end users include ease of use, reliability, and sound quality.

Among the issues seen as most challenging were management time and complexity; costs for moves, adds, and changes; end-user complaints and difficulties; and inconsistent or incompatible systems.

Other irritations were after-sale costs, which 65 percent of respodents indicated they were frustrated by “many invisible costs after purchase.”

About 63 percent were frustrated by “systems that are hard and costly to manage” and 57 percent were frustrated by “systems that are complex and hard to use and learn.”

None of that should come as news to suppliers of IP telephony systems.

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For Enterprise Non-Traditional Stakeholders, Online Networks Will Be Key

Large enterprises these days find they have lots of non-traditional stakeholders, apart from investors, employees and customers. The largest enterprises have to deal with non-governmental organizations, special interest groups, research groups, citizen groups, universities and charitable organizations, for example.

The direct risks for large enterprises are damage to company reputation as well as the costs of managing such relationships, loss of market share and sales revenue, according to a an Economist Intelligence Unit study.

The study found 78 percent of the respondents say interaction with special-interest groups, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or citizen groups is important to their business, while 33 percent say that online communities will be their most important category of "non-traditional stakeholder" in five years.

In part, the reason is that the non-traditional stakeholders will be using presence-enabled applications, converged fixed-mobile communications, online white boarding, team workspaces, blogs, podcasts and wikis that enterprises will have to respond to.

In essence, the study suggests large enterprises must learn to use the same tools the non-traditional stakeholders do, or risk damage to their reputations, intellectual property or even market share and revenues.

read the study

Apple's Enteprise Strategy? Target People

It’s possible Apple will become more enterprise-centric in the future, but not because Apple will spend much more effort than it now does to reach enterprise buyers.

Instead, Apple aims its products and people, not enterprises. If people want to use its products at work, Apple assumes they will.

Apple Doesn’t Target Markets. It Targets People

Social Media Affects SMB Purchasing

A recent study by the SMB Group gathered data from 475 respondents working at companies with less than 1,000 employees.

The study found that social media sites have significant relevance when small or mid-sized business executives and personnel are weighing product or service purchases.

Click on image for a larger view. 

You might suspect younger users would rely on social media and the study suggests that is true. But the study also finds that users in all age ranges consider social media significant sources of information.

The differences are that older users are more likely to rely on advice from colleagues than younger users are. For users 34 or younger, colleagues and social media are about equally important.

For user 35 to 40 colleagues are slightly more important. For users older than 40 there still is a tendency to rely on advice form colleagues. But even in the worst case, social media is viewed as more important than advice from business advisors.

Study: Social Media Affects SMB Purchasing Decisions