Social Networking Ad Spend up 13 Percent in 2010

After about a three percent dip in 2009, U.S. ad spending on social networks is expected to climb 13 percent in 2010, with another eight percent rise in 2011, researchers at eMarketer say.

Nokia, AT&T to Unveil Phone for Social Networking

AT&T plans to sell the Nokia Surge, a handset optimized for social networking and messaging, starting July 19, 2009. AT&T will sell the Surge for $79.99 with a two-year service agreement and after a mail-in rebate. Without the contract, the phone will sell for $130.

The phone will use an advanced Web browser with Flash support to view sites in full HTML or watch YouTube videos. Additionally, AT&T will supply the phone with their popular network features, including AT&T Navigator for GPS navigation, AT&T Music for Napster music support, and AT&T Video Share for one-way video conference-like calling.

Nokia is not positioning this phone against their high-end Nseries or Eseries smart phone devices, but more as a mid-range smart phone, which many of us would argue is the sweet spot for users who are big on social networking but unable or unwilling to spend much more for a smart phone.

The Symbian S60-based smart phone features a full QWERTY keyboard, a browser with Flash and supports IM, text or e-mail, sending multimedia messages, AT&T Video Share and updating and connecting to popular social networks.

The Surge also features a 2.0 megapixel, GPS capability, AT&T mobile music and AT&T video share. Through the pre-installed JuiceCaster users can share videos and pictures from the Surge to sites including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.

The "Nokia Surge hits the sweet spot between a quick messaging phone and a smartphone because of its low-price and strong feature set," says Michael Woodward,AT&T VP.

The Surge also features a microSDHC expansion slot and Bluetooth with stereo audio support.

France Telecom Gets Aggressive About Content

Many observers think telcos, which have no legacy core competencies in content, will not be much of a factor in the video market to the same extent that cable operators have become. France Telecom suggests those views might be wrong.

Last year, France Telecom launched five channels featuring films and TV shows from several major U.S. studios. France Telecom subscribers could get Warner Brothers "Harry Potter" movies or "The Sopranos" on their TVs.

France Telecom also has exclusive rights to popular soccer matches by France's Ligue 1 to create a mini-ESPN that French consumers can get only by signing on with Orange.

And the move seems to be paying off. In the last year, sports and TV offerings have helped boost Orange's TV customer base by 69 percent.

There are a couple of ways this could play out in the U.S. market. DirecTV, which does own exclusive National Football League programming, might wind up wholely owned by a U.S. telco. Beyond that, firms such as Verizon and AT&T already offer exclusive content.

AT&T iPhone customers recently had the chance to watch AT&T National golf tournament coverage on their iPhones, for example.

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/jul2009/db20090710_654693.htm

Will Google Voice, Google Wave be Business UC Contender?

Some people might not think Google Voice and Google Wave are contenders in the business unified communications business. But executives at Cisco Systems are not among them.

Officials at Cisco Systems Inc. say they are closely watching Google Inc.'s aggressive foray onto their unified communications turf and plan to respond quickly by boosting the capabilities of Cisco's offerings.

Cisco's announcement in late June that it plans to offer at least some pieces of its IP voice technology as a hosted service could be viewed as a direct response to Google's recent move to start limited release of its Web-based Google Voice and Google Wave communications tools.

Though Google Voice and Google Wave might be seen primarily as consumer offerings, they could provide value for smaller businesses. And as often is the case in communications, tools that start out in the consumer space frequently wind up adding more features over time, ultimately becoming useful for more business users, and even larger businesses.

Google Wave, which has been in development for about two years, promises to give users a single platform for accessing e-mail, instant messaging, blog, wiki, multimedia management and document-sharing tools.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/340831/Google_s_Unified_Tools_Pose_a_Threat_to_Cisco?source=rss_newssaid.

Wireless: Fixing What Isn't Broken?

The Federal Communictions Commission says it wants to examine exclusive wireless carrier deals with handset makers because it may be "anti-competitive. But Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett says "it’s laughable" assertion.

Moffett argues that the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice are wasting their time reviewing the wireless market. Wireless providers don't have market power, handset manufacturers increasingly do.

Apple has taken any power that AT&T has had, Bernstein argues.

Wireless prices are falling as carriers compete, handset makers are gaining more power in the ecosystem and the wireless game is about apps, a game carriers cannot control.

"The argument that handset exclusivity is anticompetitive also comes at a curious time," says Moffat.

"Indeed, a case can be made that handset makers – well, Apple, actually – have played one carrier off against the other in virtuoso fashion, and are on the brink of stealing the wireless business from the wireless carriers," says Bernstein.

Moffett says iTunes provides a better analogy.

"Apple’s direct-to-consumer end run around the wireless industry is in many ways simply a repeat of its brilliant negotiation with the music industry at the dawn of iTunes back in 2001," Moffat says. "Less than a decade later, Apple has managed to capture considerable value from the music industry as it sells ever more iPods."

Customer loyalty is to Apple, not AT&T.

"Something more profound than just short term economics is afoot," he says. "Apple has radically tilted the strategic playing field away from the network operator in favor of the device manufacturer"

"Remarkably, Apple has so thoroughly stolen the customer relationship – who would argue that Apple iPhone customers’ first affinity is to the device rather than to the network – that the network is not only irrelevant, it is rather a source of derision," says Moffat.

The iPhone seems to be doing just fine at "wrecking" the wireless business without the government’s help.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/148431-forget-the-feds-apple-is-doing-just-fine-wrecking-the-wireless-business?source=feed

O2 Offers 600 Free Tweets

The UK's second-largest largest mobile phone network, O2, will allow customers to use Twitter for free, up to 600 total messages, starting in August.

The move says something about the cost of sending and receiving text messages in the U.K. market, the new role social networking is playing in driving mobile data usage and suggesting the growth of a new niche within the mobility space.

As Blackberry devices catered to email centric users, and iPhones catered to mobile Web users, we should now see the emergence of service plans, and perhaps devices, optimzied for social networking or texting.

"We believe that mobile will soon become the most popular way of accessing social networking sites, giving real-time access to tweets and status updates wherever you are," says Antony Douglas, the head of content at O2.

O2's move follows Vodafone's earlier move to allow free Twitter status updates, though Vodafone's offer is billed as a "limited time" offer.

The move by O2 is a result of a deal between Twitter and the UK's mobile phone networks struck earlier this year. That deal followed Twitter's decision to stop its text message update service in 2008 as a result of the high cost of sending texts over the UK's networks.

Orange and T-Mobile are expected to produce their own Twitter services soon.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jul/13/o2-free-twitter-service

U.S. Online Advertising Grows One Percent a Year

The Internet’s share of total media ad spending is rising by at least one percentage point every year, partly because marketers are spending more on Internet ads, and less on ads in traditional media.

As often is the case for businesses with a key technology component, productivity improvements are not captured accurately by retail prices or spending.

Online advertising works better than offline media, so campaigns sometimes, perhaps most of the time, can be run for less money than has been the case in the past. As the shift to online media continues, overall advertising spending by brands can decline even as effectiveness increases.

In the United States, eMarketer projects that the online share of ad dollars will grow from nearly 10 percent this year to slightly more than 15 percemt in 2013.