San Francisco Wants to Tax Stock Options, and Has Statutory Authority Already

Few people are aware the San Francisco has had a tax provision in its municipal code since 2004 that requires companies to pay a payroll tax on gains from employee stock options, says Sarah Lacy of TechCrunch. No one pays it, she says, and San Francisco hasn’t enforced it to date, but companies are becoming increasingly agitated that the city may change that policy at any time.

San Francisco Wants to Tax Your Stock Options

San Francisco Bites the Hand that Feeds

Twitter and Zynga are threatening to relocate elsewhere if San Francisco imposes a new tax on stock options.

"San Francisco taxes startups like no other city in the world," says Michael Arrington of TechCrunch. Not only is there a 1.5 percent payroll tax, but the city also is trying to tax stock option gains. Some argue that level of taxation actually can chew up most of the money any startup might raise in an initial public offering.

Twitter, Zynga and other startups are threatening to leave the city unless the taxes are waived for a period of time. The stock option tax appears to be the biggest issue.

San Francisco Controller Publishes Candid Report On How Badly They Need Twitter

50% of Web Sales From Mobile in 2015

By 2015, companies will generate 50 percent of their Web sales using their social-media presence and mobile applications, according to Gartner analysts.

“By 2015, context will be as influential to mobile consumer services as search engines are to the Web and information about customers will no longer be limited to data stored in company-owned systems,” said Gene Alvarez, research vice president at Gartner. “Context information can be about identity, such as who you are and your calendar, environment, where you are and the device you use, process (things you do and what you allow and community), who is in your networks and who you communicate with. If used correctly, context information facilitates the move from e-commerce today to contextual commerce tomorrow.”

Gartner Identifies Eight Dos and Don'ts to Drive Sales Using Context-Enriched Mobile Applications

26% of Mobile Apps Get Used 11 or More Times

In a previous mobile application analytics study, Localytics found that while smartphone and tablet owners are very willing to give applications a try, 26 percent of the time they never use the same application again.

In its latest study, Localytics found that another 26 percent of people become very loyal, repeat customers, using a new application more than 10 times.

It is probably worth noting that both "loyalty" and "disinterest" have to be kept in some perspective. Some apps might intentionally be designed around a specific promotion or event, and might not be intended to have a long shelf life.

Some apps are games and users might tire of some games rather quickly. What the data seems to suggest is that a quarter or so of mobile apps are highly engaging or useful, another quarter are not, with half lying in between. But nearly half (48 percent get used three times or less), suggesting there also is a lot of experimentation going on.

read more here

Netflix to Create Original TV Series

Netflix apparently has won the right to a nre original series to be produced byMedia Rights Capital. The drama series "House of Cards" will be executive produced and directed by David Fincher and executive produced by, and starring, Kevin Spacey.

Netflix reprtedly got rights to the series by offering a relatively unusual commitment of two seasons, or 26 episodes. Given that the price tag for a high-end drama is in the $4 million to $6 million an episode range and that a launch of a big original series commands tens of millions of dollars for promotion, the deal is believed involve an investment by Netflix of more than $100 million.

Such a move is traditional for premium cable networks trying to increase value and add uniqueness to their services, and Netflix clearly is aware that unique content not available elsewhere will be a draw for its streaming service and subscriptions.

Netflix To Enter Original Programming With Mega Deal For David Fincher-Kevin Spacey Series ‘House Of Cards’ – Deadline.com

Maybe 7% of People Use Twitter, 92% Know of It

If people aren't using Twitter at the moment, it certainly is not because they have never heard of it. According to Edison Research, more than 90 percent of people surveyed say they are aware of Twitter.

Marissa Mayer, Google VP, Keynote at South by Southwest.

Marissa Mayer, Google VP, making her keynote address at South by Southwest. Mobile is clearly her focus, and a focus for Google.

Home Based Business Grows 11% in 2010

Home-based businesses grew an estimated 11 percent in 2010, analysts at AMI-Partners say, based in large part on people finding themselves laid off from larger enterprises, the research company says.

“What’s interesting is that 80% of those who became HBBs because of downsizing from a larger company,” says Jessica Efta, AMI-Partners manager. “They do not plan to return to the corporate workforce."

That should have implications for sales of products and services to small business customers, since the number of such entities has grown significantly over the past year.

Home Based Business a Growth Sector in the U.S.

Cable Nets ProtestTime Warner iPad Streaming

Time Warner Cable now allows its customers to stream some of their TV content to iPads inside their homes. Comcast, Cablevision and DISH Network also allow streaming of some content to subscriber iPads. Apparently some of the rights holders do not believe Time Warner Cable has the right to do so, under its current contracts.

“Distribution via any sort of third-party app is not addressed in our carriage deals with Time Warner Cable or any other operator,” said one network. “There is going to be a messy dissection of what the rights are, but our position is that [this sort of distribution] is not authorized by our affiliate agreements.”

It isn't clear how serious the disagreement actually is. Time Warner Cable doubtlessly would not have proceeded if it thought there was an issue. Other distributors are doing similar things and haven't been blocked by the networks. This sounds like a precedent-setting effort to assert rights that could be useful in some later negotiating or legal context.

It's just one more bit of evidence of stress in the video entertainment ecosystem.

Cable Nets Riled Up by Time Warner App

Mobile Broadband Grows, Both to Support Mobile Devices and Home Access

Parks Associates forecasts more than 68 million of the 126 million tablets sold worldwide in 2015 will have 3G or greater technology.

The research firm predicts that 29 percent of the 16.5 million tablets sold in 2010 featured embedded 3G technology, while tablets with 3G or 4G technology will account for over half of all tablets sold in 2015.

At the same time, it appears that more consumers are using wireless as an at-home access technology as well. Possibly 16 percent of U.S. respondents to a Parks Associates survey suggested they presently use mobile broadband. That doesn't necessarily mean those consumers are substituting mobile for fixed access, though that certainly will be the case in some instances.

It does indicate that mobile access is becoming much more pervasive.

Google Has Grown Up: How Soon Does it Become "Legacy"

In the lifecycle of a technology company that goes from being a start-up to a large enterprise, growth comes in three phases, says Om Malik.

1. Early days when the company is almost entirely focused on developing technology and figuring out a business model.
2. Phase Two is when it revs up its engine and starts to bring in dollars, and goes on a hiring binge to support the growth of the business.
3. Phase Three is when it starts to seek newer areas of growth in order to sustain its growth engine, and keeps hiring more and more people.

It's an odd notion that Google has grown up to become a mid-life sort of company.

Can Google Save Itself From Google?

Twitter Activity: Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

Twitter spokesman Ryan Sarver has argued that“90 percent of active Twitters users use official Twitter apps on a monthly basis.” Twitter defines “official” as applications it owns and operates for the Mac, iPad, Android and Windows Phone.

Sysomos was surprised by that assertion, as its data has suggested there were significantly more “non-official” users. In a June 2009 report, Sysomos found that TweetDeck had nearly 20 percent of the client market.

Sysomos then reviewed a sample of 25 million tweets on March 11, 2011. The data shows that 42 percent of tweets were made by non-officials apps, more than four times the amount claimed by Twitter.

One way of reconciling the data is to argue that power users who do more tweeting use the "unofficial" clients, while many Twitter client users are relatively inactive.

Non-Official Twitter Clients Still Widely Used, Sysomos Blog

Consumers lose 30% of broadband speed using home Wi-Fi : Epitiro

Wireless services, such as in-home or in-office Wi-Fi, are susceptible to significant drops in experienced connection speed, depending on signal strength. In that regard, Epitiro research suggests consumers can lose an average of 30 percent of their experiences downstream access speed, with increased latency of 10 percent to 20 percent, when using Wi-Fi connections in the home.

Basically, use of Wi-Fi reduces end user device "experienced speed" from about 7 Mbps to about 5 Mbps.

Consumers may find on-line game play, VoIP telephony and video streaming unsatisfactory when using Wi-Fi while downloading large files such as MP3s, videos and programs will take longer.

On the other hand, Epitiro also found that web page download times are virtually the same using Wi-Fi or wired connections, so quality of experience is not always directly related to speed. Web pages download times are less susceptible to changes in line speed.

In other words, real-time applications and services, including video, voice and gaming, are most susceptible to impairments related to poor signal strength and interference from other devices. That is one reason why quality of experience advocates generally advocate packet priorities for real-time services and applications. One way to cope with latency or congestion is to allow high-priority bits preference for immediate delivery.

Consumers lose 30% of broadband speed using home Wi-Fi : Epitiro

Google Launches Mobile Payment Test

Google plans to start testing a mobile-payment service at stores in New York and San Francisco within four months, letting shoppers use their phones to ring up purchases, Bloomberg reports.

The company is installing of thousands of cash-register systems from VeriFone Systems at merchant locations. The registers would accept payments from mobile phones equipped with near field communication capabilities.

Why Google wants to be in the business might not be so clear, but a look at other contenders will illustrate why mobile payments could be a strategic move, not just another mobile-enabled revenue stream.

It's probably quite obvious why Isis, the mobile payment system launched by AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA, with Discover Networks and Barclays, makes sense: it represents a brand-new revenue stream for the mobile providers that builds on their key role in the mobile ecosystem.

For online payment providers, the attraction is the ability to extend a payment business from "online shopping" to the broader realm of payments that occur at retail locations. The latter represents vastly more volume than the former.

For Google, the angle might be different. Google is a company that makes its money from advertising. And virtually everybody thinks the mobile segment of the total advertising business is growing fast, and will continue to shift activity from stationary modes (PCs at desktops).

But some closely-related businesses, such as direct marketing, also are morphing from a largely offline mode to an online and mobile mode. So Google would rightly see direct marketing and promotion (coupons, the equivalent of direct mail and other direct marketing channels) as an important extension of its current focus on search and display advertising.

Also, the ability to target messages and offers to end users on their mobiles, in real time, where they are, is nearly universally seen as an area of huge growth. In the background, of course, most providers of any type of application, service or product would prefer to "own the customer relationship."

If Google is able to tie the final retail payments capability to its advertising, marketing services, location and information capabilities, it plausibly can position as a company that "owns" a customer and user relationship in a profoundly new way.

Google Is Said to Plan Payment Test in New York, San Francisco - Bloomberg

Michael Powell Becomes NCTA CEO

Michael Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 2001 to 2005 and a member of the FCC for eight years, has been appointed president and CEO of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.

Media Center - NCTA.com