Study: 60% of Generation Y Leaning Toward Cutting the Cord

Fully 60 percent of survey respondents between the ages of 18 and 29 are either leaning towards or seriously considering giving up multichannel video services, a survey by Ideas and Solutions has found.

"Cost was the major factor in cord-cutters decisions, with 69 percent of "at-risk" respondents and 61 percent of "leaners" citing it as the primary reason for cutting the cord. See http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/reports-see-generation-y-poverty-193432.

While Netflix, Hulu, YouTube and the like don't offer video services comparable with pay TV, "when faced with a choice of pay TV or a third meal, will some customers choose to make do with a back catalog or off-the-run TV shows and movies?," asked Craig Moffett, Sanford C.
Bernstein analyst. "Of course they will."

"Other ways I can watch entertainment content" was the reason given by 36 percent of "at-risk" respondents and 35 percent for the "leaners."

Nearly 50 percent of those at risk of cutting the cord are Netflix and Hulu users as opposed to 29 percent of "loyalists" and 42 percent of "leaners."

The study of 500 respondents ed 18 to 29 who were current multichannel TV subscribers.

Study: 60% of Generation Y Leaning Toward Cutting the Cord

68% of Marketers Did a Website Redesign in the Last 12 Months

Fully 68 percent of marketers said they redesigned their website in the last 12 months, including 34 percent in the last three months plus another 34 percent from 4 to 12 months ago, according to HubSpot. And, the marketing teams are the ones driving the majority of the website redesign projects. About 55 percent of the website redesigns were initiated by the marketing team.

That might be a bit more than you'd expect, but I have yet to encounter many websites that wasn't essentially "always in beta."

68% of Marketers Did a Website Redesign in the Last 12 Months

YouTube’s "Studio" Strategy

Some liken YouTube to the distributor role multichannel TV networks now hold. Others might liken the role to that of HBO. Either way, YouTube wants to encourage new "native to the Web" content developers that essentially act as studios, fostering creation of video that has more of the appeal of professionally-created video.

For YouTube, it is all about scale, and networks of loosely aligned online video producers scale better than individual shows and viral-video phenoms. In fact, there is a brand new department inside YouTube called Networks that reports to global head of content Dean Gilbert. The purpose of the department is encourage the formation of these outside networks which then use YouTube as their distribution channel.

YouTube’s New Strategy: Create a Network Of Networks

Nortel Patent Portfolio is of Interest Because of 4G

At its peak, in 2000, Nortel had a market value of $350 billion and 86,000 employees. At one time, the stock represented 36 percent of the entire value of the Toronto Stock Exchange. See http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=M1ARTM0012362. On June 20, 2010, Nortel will no longer exist and the intellectual property it owns will be sold off to the highest bidder.

Of course, Lucent doesn't exist anymore, either. Nor does Scientific-Atlanta or General Instrument, once the two dominant technology companies serving the U.S. cable industry. That tells you something about the fundamental changes in the cable and telecom industries, aside from the value of assets serving those industries.

Google has made a formal bid for the patent portfolio, but many believe Ericsson, Research in Motion and Apple also might bid.

Some say the move is simply a defensive one for Google and Apple because a treasure chest of patents is increasingly seen as a strong defense against intellectual property litigation. According to research firm Fairfield Resources, there are 105 patent families essential to 4G technologies. Nokia holds 57 of these, Ericsson 14. Nortel holds about seven of the families.

It's The End Of The Road For Nortel

Consumer Satisfaction with Subscription TV Falls

Video cord cutting has new drivers, a new study by Edelman suggests. As consumers are accessing content from multiple devices, 68 percent of US and UK consumers think the value they are getting from the entertainment industry has fallen, and only 17 percent of all respondents feel that entertainment sources today provide 'very good' or 'excellent' value.

One might infer there is very high latent dissatisfaction with current offerings, and presumably high receptiveness to alternatives.

At the same time, social media is arguably emerging as a potential contributor to changing end user perceptions of the value of linear video entertainment subscriptions, just as video games and other Web applications earlier established their own places within end user discretionary time pursuits.

According to the 2011 Edelman “Value, Engagement and Trust in the Era of Social Entertainment” survey, 63 percent of UK respondents and 56 percent of US respondents report they are spending more “entertainment” time than a year ago with the Internet, and 40 percent in the UK and 49 percent in the US report spending more time with social media.

Consumer Satisfaction with Subscription TV Falls

Broadband Choices Tend to Be Rational, No Matter What Experts Say

People often buy products, or use those products in ways not originally intended. People also sometimes buy products experts think they should not buy. Consider the matter of broadband access. Virtually all studies suggest that fixed line access “works better” than terrestrial wireless, mobile broadband or satellite broadband, whether the measure is peak throughput or latency.

But all the evidence suggests that people continue to buy mobile broadband and satellite access services. In fact, there is evidence from the United Kingdom that significant numbers of people in the U.K. market buy mobile broadband access in place of fixed access, even though the mobile service has limitations, compared to fixed access.

One has to assume consumers are illogical, or that they mostly are buying products based on overall utility, and that value is not defined by top download speed or even latency.

Broadband Choices Tend to Be Rational, No Matter What Experts Say

Android Leads U.S. Smart Phone Market Share and Data Usage

According to Nielsen’s April 2011 survey of mobile consumers, 36 percent of smart phone consumers now have an Android device, compared to 26 percent for Apple iOS smartphones (iPhones) and 23 percent for RIM Blackberry.

Some 74 percent of Android smart phone owners and 79 percent of iPhone owners report having downloaded apps in the past 30 days. About 43 percent of Android owners and 46 percent of iPhone owners say they streamed online music or mobile radio in the past 30 days.

Also, 35 percent of Android smart phone consumers and 37 percent of iPhone owners report having watched video or mobile TV in the past 30 days.

But smart phone users still consume little data, compared to fixed-line PC users. Android users used 582 Mbytes per month. BlackBerry users consumed just 127 Mbytes.

Android Leads in U.S. Smartphone Market Share and Data Usage

Human Brain Limits Twitter Friends To 150

Virtually all social networks, even when originally composed of people one actually knows, become "media" at about the point that any user reaches 150 people in the network, research suggests, because a human being cannot actually maintain more than 150 "strong link" relationships at a time.

Bruno Goncalves and researchers at Indiana University recently studied the network of links created by three million Twitter users over four years. These tweeters sent each a whopping 380 million tweets.

Researchers say it's not enough simply to follow or be followed by somebody for there to be a strong link. Instead, there has to be a conversation, an exchange of tweets. And these conversation have to be regular to be a sign of a significant social bond, so occasional contacts don't count.

At some point, "strong links" have to be replaced by "weak links." And turns any social network into a broadcast medium.

Human Brain Limits Twitter Friends To 150

Will Facebook Credits Work as a Real-World Currency?

Millions of Facebook users use Facebook Credits to pay for virtual goods inside games like CityVille and FarmVille. But the logical next step is to use Facebook Credits to purchase digital and real-world goods. That might have some implications for mobile payments, in some instances.

This has begun to transpire; we are seeing a robust Facebook Credit economy for virtual goods and an early stage Facebook Credit economy emerging for digital and real-world goods. Facebook Credits are used to purchase movie rentals, for example.

Will Facebook Credits Work as a Real-World Currency?

Twitter Becoming a Niche Media?

Some believe Twitter will increasingly be a one-to-a-few medium, with a small base of hard-core users, increasingly selective about the contents they broadcast and who they follow. To be sure, power Twitter users are few. About five percent of the users account for 75 percent of the page views.

As an example, a recent Pew Research study indicates that 85 percent of USA Today.com users visit the site less than three times a month. And for the top 25 American news sites, “power users” who visit a site more than 10 times a month, account for seven percent of total visits.

That has some observers questioning Twitters’s limitations as a channel to drive consumption of online news. According the Pew Research Center for Excellence in Journalism, Twitter is an insignificant referral (one percent) source for news when compared to Facebook (five percent) or Google (30 percent).

Trifling Twitter | Monday Note

YouTube Reaches 3 Billion Daily Views

More than 48 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, the company says. This constitutes a 37 percent increase over the last six months, and 100 percent over the last year.

YouTube also has surpassed the three billion views-per-day mark. This is a 50 percent increase over views last year.

YouTube Celebrates 6th Birthday With 3 Billion Views Per Day

Apple has Serious Brand Equity

Researcher Eric Fisher analyzed millions of Flickr photos and recorded where each was taken by using associated geotags. He determined that the four most popular places to snap photos in Manhattan: Times Square (4), Columbus Circle (3), Rockefeller Center, (2) and the 5th Avenue Apple Store (1).

That is some serious brand equity.

More People Take Photos Of The NYC Apple Store Than Of Times Square

'Please ReTweet' Generates 4x More ReTweets

Dan Zarella, writing at HubSpot, suggests that asking followers to "re-tweet" actually results in much-higher re-tweet rates. After analyzing more than 10,000 tweets and found that 51 percent of tweets that included 'Please ReTweet' were retweeted more than once, 39 percent of those including 'Please RT' were re-tweeted more than once, and only 12 percent of tweets that included neither were retweeted more than once.

New Data Proves 'Please ReTweet' Generates 4x More ReTweets

QoS is Next Frontier for Broadband, Ovum Says

Asus Launches Padfone

Asus is the latest firm to market a converged smartphone-plus-dock approach to smart phones. The Padfonecombines a smartphone and a tablet computer into one symbiotic gadget that allows users to choose the screen size that best fits their activities while sharing data and 3G Internet access.

The Padfone features a way to dock the smart phone inside the tablet to give users an expanded view. With the phone docked, it can recharge from the tablet’s larger battery and the tablet can also make use of the smartphone’s 3G Internet connection.

The dual interfaces for both the pad and phone ensure the layout is automatically adjusted for all activities such as video conferencing, web browsing and emailing.

Asus Launches Padfone, Notebooks, Netbooks