Amazon Adds Elastic Compute Cloud Persistent Storage

Amazon is adding persistent storage for users of its Elastic Compute Cloud. These volumes can be thought of as raw, unformatted disk drives which can be formatted and then used as desired (or even used as raw storage if you'd like), Amazon says.

Volumes can range in size from 1 GB on up to 1 TB; developers can create and attach several of them to each EC2 instance, Amazon says. They are designed for low latency, high throughput access from Amazon EC2. Needless to say, you can use these volumes to host a relational database.

Users also will also be able to perform "snapshot" backups of your volumes to Amazon Simple Storage Service, a feature that can be used to create new volumes or to roll back stored data to an earlier point in time.

"The snapshot is extremely powerful technology and allows for building highly fault-tolerant applications operating world-wide," says Werner Vogels, Amazon CTO. "Combine these snapshots with Availability Zones and Elastic IPs and you have all the tools to manage and migrate even the most complex of applications."

Both of the new innovations make it easier to envision use of cloud computing resources as the way to host Web-accessed applications for just about any sort of application, especially globally.

AOL Ad Net Hits 91% of U.S. Internet Audience in March

Each of the top 15 ad networks delivered ads to at least half of the total U.S. Internet audience in March, says ComScore. Platform-A, the AOL ad network that combines Advertising.com, Quigo and Tacoda, served ads to 170 million U.S. Internet users in March, representing 91 percent of the total U.S. online population, to rank as the top ad network.

That's not to say 91 percent saw or interacted with every ad, but that the network placed them. That's serious reach, on at least one dimension.

On a stand-alone basis, Advertising.com would rank as the top ad network with a reach of more than 167 million Internet users. Yahoo! Network ranked second with a reach of 160 million, followed by Google Ad Network (152 million) and Specific Media (140 million).

As ad networks have expanded their reach and influence online, a new crop of ad networks has surfaced to serve specific demographic and behavioral target segments, says comScore

Snap Shots Network delivers ads to users of Snap.com’s Snap Shots. The network reached more than 18 million U.S. Internet users in March. Widgetbucks Network delivers contextually relevant ads through a widget, and had reach of 9.5 million, while NeoEdge Game Network, which delivers ads through games, had a reach of nearly 1 million.

Other ad networks on this list target specific audience segments, such as HispanoClick by Batanga (Hispanics), Indieclick (young influencers or “tastemakers”) and The Heavy Men’s Network (men).

Waiting for FiOS

We haven't seen any doorhangers or other outbound marketing yet, but it appears, given the recent activity by Verizon-branded trucks in the neighborhood, plowing orange conduit into the ground, that Verizon is laying an optical distribution network in Reston, Va., presumably in preparation for rolling out FiOS service.

We already buy Verizon voice and digital subscriber line at the Reston location, so what will happen--absolutely, positively--is that a new Verizon video and FiOS Internet access account will be purchased, as soon as we get the opportunity to sign the check. Verizon will, of course, lose a DSL account while Comcast loses at least one video RGU.

These days, consumer services are akin to trench warfare, and this is how the war is fought: one RGU at a time.

YouTube More Dominant than Google

Though online video sites as a category have seen a seven percent drop in traffic year over year since March 2007, YouTube has gained share, recording a 32 percent growth in visits over that same period. YouTube's market share in the video sector is now at 73.18 percent, says Hitwise.

That's even more dominant that Google is in search share. Google saw an all-time high 67 percent of searches performed in March, Hitwise says.

MySpace TV came in second place last month, with just over nine percent of visits. Google Video was 3rd at four percent, meaning that the two Google properties have 77 percent marketshare.

That's about as dominant as a company can get.

A $60 Billion Communications Market

In 2008, U.S. ethnic communities will spend $59.8 billion on telecommunications services, accounting for over one third of all residential telecom expenditures, according to Insight Research Corporation. The largest minority group, Hispanics, representing 14.8 percent of the total US population, will spend the most.

Blockbuster to Buy Circuit City?

Blockbuster has offered to acquire Circuit City Stores. If the acquisition is completed, and if the merger process runs smoothly, Blockbuster would successfully have morphed itself into a broad-based consumer electronics distributor. If it does not, well, at least Blockbuster tried.

Critics of the deal will point to the challenge of merging two struggling businesses to create one viable business. Some will simply say it is tying two stones together and expecting them to float.

The hopeful might say there does not appear to be much of a future for Circuit City as a stand-alone business, while Blockbuster faces key challenges of its own in making the transition to digital distribution of movie content.

The logic might be that some forms of digital content distribution will feature the ability to download immediately inside a retail outlet. That would fit with Blockbuster's traditional video rental business. The broader logic is that Blockbuster needs to get into another business, and this is a way to do it.

Framing P2P

In an interview with the Royal Television Society’s Television magazine, Virgin Media’s new CEO Neil Berkett points out that Virgin already is doing content delivery deals with content providers. In fact, lots of application providers, content providers and ISPs have been doing so for quite some time. They use content delivery networks to expedite delivery of their video bits, for example.

Some people will think that's a bad thing; others think it's a good thing.

Really, it's a matter of "framing," or setting a reference. If you ask a user whether they'd prefer to have their service optimized for best performance of video or voice, whenever they decide to use those services, typical users probably would say "yes."

To the extent you ask a user whether restrictions should be placed on the amount of bandwidth they paid for can be used, they'd probably say "no." If you asked a typical user whether a small minority of users should "hog" most of the bandwidth everybody is sharing, most users would probably say they think that's wrong.

It is the framing of the issue that determines the response. It's not as though all "freedom" issues are on one side, all the "control" or "responsibility" issues on the other. Both issues are intertwined.

As almost always is the case, one has to determine who the "freedom" is for: most users, all users, a few users; a few providers or all providers; a few content providers or all providers. Any shared resource obviously cannot avoid answering such questions in a very practical way.