Location-Based Services Getting More Traction

The 2010 Christmas shopping season should provide new evidence of the usefulness of location-enhanced mobile shopping, if a survey commissioned by JiWire is accurate. The study suggests 37 percent of mobile users will make more use of location services this shopping season, while 42 percent will continue to use such services as they have in the past.

Finding stores is seen as highly valuable by about 61 percent of respondents.

http://mashable.com/2010/11/17/location-based-services-holidays/

"Finding Stores" is Top Use for Location Services

When searching for local content, 61 percent say that finding store locations is the most valuable feature of location-based media, says JiWire.

(Click on image for larger view)

About 89 percent of respondents to a recent JiWire survey say they likely will use location-based apps and services during the Christmas shopping season.

Some 36 percent plan to use location-based services to find product reviews while 33 percent plan to discover current inventory at nearby stores. About 26 percent plan to connect with social networks through location-based features.

On average, 30 percent are willing to travel more than five miles to redeem a mobile coupon.

Media Center - JiWire.com

Internet TV and The Death of Cable TV

Products have life cycles, which is about all one has to know about changing dynamics in the video business. And while there might yet remain a period of time before a firm trend can be definitively confirmed, "cable TV" might finally have reached that point in the product life cycle where its decline begins.

Telcos have a bit more experience with this sort of thing, as fixed-line voice seems to have reached a clear product life cycle peak in 2000 or 2001, depending on which set of data one looks at. Before that, telcos had to deal with a decades-long decline of stand-alone long distance, not so much in terms of usage, but a historic disruption of profit margins.

Since 2000, though, there has been a steady decline of fixed-line subscriptions. And it is starting to appear as if 2010 might mark a similar turning point for multichannel video, as we now have had two consecutive quarters of overall subscriber decline, something that never has happened before.

A rapid change to new forms of digital delivery will take some time, even though increased talk about "the death of cable TV" certainly will escalate. Content owner financial interests are the main reason. Simply put, content owners have learned quite a lot about the economics of digital distribution and are moving deliberately, to avoid cannibalizing existing business models before the new mechanisms can be perfected.

“The networks aren’t blocking Google TV because it’s Google," AdAge notes. "They are blocking Google TV because it is putting a web TV show, with web TV show economics, on a TV, which would be incredibly disruptive to their business."

Internet TV and The Death of Cable TV

Multichannel Video Subscriptions Grow in Major Markets, Shrink Elsewhere

The number of U.S. households paying for TV subscriptions is falling outside the largest TV markets, and growing in the biggest markets, a new analysis by MediaBiz suggests.

Between the first and third quarters of this year, 335,000 fewer homes out of 100 million subscribed to TV service from a cable, satellite or telecom company, according to research firm SNL Kagan.

But the latest local data show that subscriber drops have largely fallen outside the biggest markets. The 10 biggest media markets collectively saw their number of TV subscribers grow by 125,000 from the first quarter to the second quarter, while the rest of the country lost 279,000 between those two periods, according to MediaBiz.

read more here if you have a subscription to the Wall Street Journal

Facebook: 25% of All Page Views in U.S.

Nearly one in four page views in the United States took place on Facebook.com for the week ending November 13, 2010.

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Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Dougherty

Debt Service Now is the 800-Pound Gorilla of Spending

http://mercatus.org/publication/cost-debt-drives-long-term-spending-explosion

Mobile Revenue Model Has to Change

"Frankly, we are not going to realize the financial return that we are looking for unless we move into the application space or we attract others into that application space on our network; that’s really how we are going to realize value from our network, how it becomes relevant for our customers.' - APAC telco exec"

Realize the full potential of your network’s capabilities

Netflix Launches U.S. Streaming-Only Service

Netflix has introduced a $7.99 streaming-only subscription plan in the United States for the first time. The plan, which allows members to instantly watch unlimited movies and TV episodes streamed from Netflix to TVs and computers, is available now to both new and existing members.

The company also announced that the price of its popular subscription combining unlimited movies and TV shows streamed instantly over the Internet and unlimited DVDs delivered quickly by mail, with one DVD out at a time, will increase by a dollar a month to $9.99. Prices of subscription plans allowing for more DVDs out at a time will also increase.

Netflix Launches U.S. Subscription Plan for Streaming Movies & TV Shows Over the Internet for $7.99 a Month

"Collaboration" and "Telepresence" Trump "Unified Communications" and "Videoconferencing"

One can argue about the future integration of video into today's voice, email, messaging, conferencing and broader unified communications approaches. Cisco prefers the term "telepresence" to "videoconferencing," for example. In fact, Cisco also prefers the term "collaboration" to "unifed communications."

In part, that is because Cisco is banking on video becoming integrated into other existing modes of communication, and in part because "unified communications," whatever you think UC is, and whatever you think it includes, has been in the marketplace long enough to have lost some of its luster.

The change of nomenclature has been underway for a few years already.

read more here

What Ails Newspaper Business Model?

To fix a problem, one first must define the problem correctly. Some might argue the problem for newspapers is "declining readership." Others might argue it is the existence of Internet alternatives which are the problem.

But a new book published by Oxford University essentially argues "too much reliance on advertising" is the problem newspapers in some countries face. The study, commissioned by the Oxford-based Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, examined newspaper industries in several countries, including the US, UK, Germany and Brazil.

In many countries where online activity is high, including Scandinavia and Germany, newspapers are still faring well, with titles typically generating 50 percent of revenues from advertising.

The U.S. newspaper industry, which has generated more than 80 percent of its income from advertisements, is today in a much more serious crisis than its counterparts in Germany and Finland, where advertising typically constitutes about 50 percent of total revenues, Reuters suggests.

To be sure, there probably are numerous reasons why newspapers are in trouble. See http://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/five-key-reasons-why-newspapers-are-failing for one view on what the problems are.

But it might seem somewhat silly to suggest that excessive reliance on advertising is the problem. Advertising only works when users already have ratified their appetite for consuming content in a particular venue. To argue "too much advertising" is the problem, or more accurately, that declining advertising now is the problem, sort of mistakes a symptom for a cause.

In the United Kindgom and the United States, where advertising accounts for a larger proportion of revenues, the picture is worse, but could be explained by a cyclical advertising recession which has seen spend fall dramatically in recent years, the study suggests.

That ignores the fact that readership has been falling for decades. Falling readership leads to lower ad spending and lower ad rates, which leads to lower revenue. But those problems are directly related to the availability of other channels that have more user engagement. People have shifted attention to other media formats.

The book challenges the conventional wisdom that the Internet has undermined business models by claiming there is no correlation between Internet usage and newspaper profitability. Up to a point, that is undoubtedly true. But likely only up to a point. To be sure, newspaper readership has been declining for decades, including the period before the advent of easily-consumable Internet news.

But advertising is shifting throughout the media world, and it might be wishful thinking to assert that the growing use of online channels is not directly responsible for a shift of growing amounts of advertising.

To be fair, one might argue that the researchers mostly are saying there should be a better balance between end user payments and ad support. That's fair enough, but anybody who has spent time in print publishing would agree that it is tough to get large numbers of readers to pay very much for the ability to read publications. The reason advertising historically has been important in the publishing business is precisely that readers do not necessarily "value" print content all that highly.

http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/Publications/Changing_Business_of_Journalism_Exec_Summary.pdf

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/nov/21/british-newspapers-advertising-revenue

Viacom Nixes Google TV Access, Web Streaming Options Dwindling | Android Phone Fans

Add Viacom to the growing list of networks blocking access to online streaming content from Google TV. News Corp, NBC Universal, Disney and CBS are among networks that block Google TV access to content. You might argue the networks have multiple reasons for crippling Google TV.

The networks are not enthusiastic about forms of online TV that cut them out of the controlling role. Networks are uncomfortable handing a third party more control over online video, as music companies have found Apple iTunes now is able to do.

Viacom Nixes Google TV Access, Web Streaming Options Dwindling | Android Phone Fans

The Future of Work

The Future Of Work

View more presentations from Jeff Brenman.

Distributed, virtual work offers many advantages for avoided energy consumption and employee happiness. It also makes outsourcing of work easier.

Channel Stuffing is a Bad Sign

Most analysts and investors likely were quite shocked when Cisco Systems reported a surprise revenue miss in its third quarter financial report. That is relatively unusual, and has some observers wondering whether technology sales are suffering more than people think. Some are worried about "channel stuffing," a practice that can temporarily hide market weakness.

Groupon Said to Weigh Sale to Google

Groupon, the application that sends daily messages to users in 300 markets in 29 countries, offering steep discounts on products and services ranging from cupcakes to yoga classes, dinner cruises to dental exams, is said to be weighing selling itself to Google.

Groupon keeps a 50 percent cut of every deal sold, while the business benefits from a rise in new customers. Deals, known as groupons, activate when a certain number is sold, encouraging users to recommend offers to friends.

The deal is noteworthy for several reasons. For starters, it is part of Google's announced acquisition spree, which Google says will occur basically on a "a company a month" sort of pace. The other angle is that a Google purchase would show Google's deepening moves into mobile-facilitated commerce and shopping, all with social networking angles and local advertising angles.

Groupon might be seen as a "social coupon" or "digital coupon" business. That makes it a mobile marketing and advertising vehicle as well. Local advertising through media including newspapers, direct mail, radio and the Internet will reach $133 billion in the U.S. this year, according to BIA/Kelsey, a consulting firm.

Groupon also illustrates the growing synergies between mobility, location, local advertising and commerce.

Groupon Said to Weigh Sale to Google vs. Raising More Funds - Bloomberg

FCC Still Looking at Title II Regulation?

The FCC might still be looking at putting common carrier regulation of broadband up for a rule-making in December, some suggest.

Reclassifying the Internet under Title II regulations would be bad for business, bad for consumers and would hurt broadband’s innovative drive, many will argue. Congressional leaders also reportedly are gathering signatures for yet another letter to the FCC insisting that the FCC does not have authority to do so.

FCC's Broadband Regulation Would Hurt Economy | Broadband for America