Comcast Acquires Plaxo

Comcast is acquiring Plaxo, presumably to further integrate social media, based on address books and the social application Pulse, into Comcast applications.

Plaxo will remain an independent operation in Silicon Valley, reporting into Comcast Interactive Media, which is a division of Comcast that develops and operates Internet businesses focused on entertainment, information and communication.

Plaxo says it already has on its road map projects to socially enable the Comcast media experience on the Comcast.net portal, Fancast and Fandango as well as content on TV screens.

Plaxo already provides the universal address book for Comcast’s SmartZone communications center, and now also hosts all of the address book accounts for Comcast Web mail users.

Plaxo suggests it will help Comcast make “social media” a natural part of the lives of regular people, not just early adopters. Plaxo suggests applications will include the ability to securely post family photos online in Pulse and have them viewable by any of your family members, whether they are online, at work, on their mobile device, or in their living room watching TV.

Comcast also will use Plaxo to create recommendation engines that allow viewers to find new content.

Consider this an example of how social media is a feature, not a business model in its own right.

Ad Skipping: Tall Tales

Some some say they use their DVRs to skip all ads, a recent survey that suggests 100 percent of males in the 55 to 64 age bracket skip all ads is an improbable story.

Approximately 30 percent of online Americans, ages 12 to 64, own or subscribe to a TiVo or a DVR service from their cable or satellite company. And some amount of ad skipping does occur in a fair number of those homes, one has to assume.

But perhaps we should not take literally what some people say they do.

When asked whether they skip ads 100 percent of the time, 52 percent of men ages 55 to 64 said they do, according to research conducted by Frank N. Magid Associates. By comparison, only 21 percent of males ages 12 to 17 report skipping ads all of the time.

There are, to be sure, other studies that suggest ads are more likely to be skipped when time-delayed content is watched. You might ask yourself whether human beings you know tend to do so. You might also ask whether you have seen users--watching content in real time--behave so aggressively that all ads are skipped.

That some people might skip all ads is possible. It probably does happen in some cases. Anecdotally, I'd have to say I've never actually seen a human being behave that way. But then, most human beings I know watch only some time-delayed content. Most of the viewing still occurs in real time, and other studies suggest the amount of ad skipping is far mroe prevalent for time-delayed material.

"Happiness" Doesn't Predict Loyalty

Customer satisfaction, while important, is not the most-important measure of customer loyalty. In fact, even customers who say they are satisfied are not necessarily "loyal." The converse also now appears to be true. Even "dissatisfied" customers are not "disloyal."

Verizon, for example, gets higher satisfaction ratings than AT&T. But when asked whether they plan to switch providers, Verzon has just a one point lead over AT&T in the loyalty area. Changewave analysts think the Apple iPhone is the reason.

Verizon, the perennial leader in customer satisfaction among cellular service providers, earned a 42 percent "very satisfied" rating in ChangeWave's latest cell phone survey.

Tied for second were AT&T and T-Mobile, each with a 28 percent "very satisfied" rating. As a result, you might conclude, Verizon customers should less likely to defect to another provider. And, to be sure, only 10 percent of its current customers reported they plan to switch to another cellular provider.

But although saying they are less satisfied, AT&T customers who say they plan to switch carrier is just 11 percent. More surprising is the finding that 28 percent of users plan to switch to AT&T over the next 90 days, compared to the 22 percent who plan to switch to Verizon.

Presumably a new customer cannot yet have formed an opinion about the quality of a service. BSo the "switch to" data probably does not provide much indication of user expectations about the quality of service.

The switch indications would fit nicely, though, with an argument that a specific device is pulling new users into wanting a relationship with a carrier.

The Apple iPhone, which looks set to capture more than a third of smart phone sales during the next 90 days, is the answer. Customers are fanatically loyal to the device.

All of which ought to suggest a couple of really important implications. Measuring and creating "customer happiness" does not provide protection against churn. Even happy customers in the wireless and other areas show a marked willingness to churn.

The other thing is the clearly-growing importance of devices as the "thing" determining loyalty and churn resistance. People don't care about their "service providers." They care lots more about their devices.

Vapps: HD Rather than High Speed

Vapps has adopted High-Definition Conferencing as its new brand, replacing High-Speed Conferencing. The change makes sense. HD is a huge consumer value proposition, and one that they understand. "High speed" is a provider attribute, and enough people now use "high speed" services to recognize that quality varies.

“We want to let everyone know Vapps is raising the bar on sound quality in audioconferencing because we’re the only conferencing company able to give users a "high definition" audio experience through Skype, while still admitting participants on any kind of phone,” says Vapps CEO Ben Lilienthal.

“When we speak, our voices produce sound in the 20 Kilohertz (KHz) range and our ears hear 20 KHz, but the copper wiring of traditional telephone networks supports only 3.5 KHz. Our High-Definition Conferencing operates in the 16 KHz range for Skype audioconferencing, a quality difference you can easily hear. At the same time, we conference in traditional telecom users, so that no one is excluded.

Declining Teen Discretionary Spending

Economic sluggishness now is hitting teenager discretionary spending. Total teen spending on fashion declined nearly 20 percent on a year-to-year basis, indicating a "discretionary recession," says Piper Jaffray senior research analyst Jeff Klinefelter.

The survey results, from mall research and classroom visits across the United States, as well as 4,500 online survey responses, shows that total spending trends were weakest for young men with a 15 percent year-over-year decline versus an 11 percent year-over-year decline for young women.

While the fashion category represents 41 percent of the total teen budget in the survey, the retail research team notes this allocation is low compared with the past several years.

Klinefelter says "the current economic challenges are impacting consumers at all income levels and ages, indicated by the low level of average planned spending in the fashion category this spring."

$99.99 Plans Not Cannibalizing Revenue

Based on the most recent first quarter results from Verizon and AT&T, one would have to conclude that the $99.99 monthly unlimited calling plans introduced in February have not cannibalized revenue.

Verizon reports that 13 percent of its new customers opted for the plan while AT&T had four percent of customers choosing the plan.

Since the number of total users paying $100 or more has been in low single digits, at least as reported by Verizon, it seems clear enough that most customers are trading up the $99.99 plans rather than downgrading from more-expensive plans.

Analysts feared a new price war, but carrier executives seemed to have done their homework on this, and predicted the reaction. Heck, they've probably exceeded their expectations. The bottom line was protecting their base of heavy users.

It now appears the $99.99 plans are adding to the base of higher-average-revenue-per-user customers.

One has to careful making cross-country comparisons, but it appears that Japan's NTT user base is talking less than they used to in 2000, though mobile talking appears still to be growing.

One possible outcome of the $99.99 plans is that more people are going to be tempted to "cut the cord" and abandon their landlines, as one of the obvious problems with wireless substitution is that the added call volume can require a shift to a calling plan containing more minutes.

The $99.99 plans take care of that problem.

Widgets Emerge as Ad Venue

So far, social network ad spending is about as concentrated as search advertising is. MySpace alone gets 53 percent. Add in Facebook and two companies control 72 percent of all social network advertising.

It is interesting that widgets have emerged as the only identifiable category among the "other" sites that get some advertising support.