Unified Communications Goes Social, Because Social is a Competitor

"You can have enterprise social software without unified communications, but no unified communications technology player worth its salt is without an enterprise social media strategy," says David Carr at Information Week.

One might also say that the reason social software now is being grafted onto unified communications systems is that social software to an extent replicates the value claimed for much UC software. Another way of explaining what "social software" is to say it is "collaboration." And collaboration is another way of describing the value of much unified communications.

One might also point out that in many instances, social software can be seen as a replacement for much of what UC is supposed to provide.

Unified Communications Goes Social -- InformationWeek

Better Ad Targeting for GMail

Google's Economic Value $119 Billion?

Here's how an economist would conduct the analysis. Google economist Hal Varian came to the conclusion that Google saves us 3.75 minutes per day, and then used the average U.S. hourly earnings numbers ($22) to calculate that Google saves users $1.37 a day. That number multiplied by 365 days in a year equals $500. Varian then multiplied that $500 number by 130 million, the number of people employed in the US, to get to $65 billion value in savings for users.

Adding those two bottom line numbers $65 billion + $54 billion together results in the rough ballpark of the total value of Google to US users ($119 billion), Varian holds. For comparison Google’s global market cap is $187.04 billion.

But that $119 billion number doesn’t take into account extraneous factors like the value to non-employed. “You should think about these numbers as an underestimate," says Varian. The value of getting answers to questions immediately is a pretty big deal.”

Tablets Now Represent Difference Between Decline and Growth for Worldwide IT Spending

Among other things, tablets now represent all of the difference between "flat" global information technology growth in real terms and a decline in real terms, according to Gartner. On a nominal basis, tablets drive most of the 5.6 percent growth in 2011.

Worldwide IT spending is forecast to total $3.6 trillion in 2011, a 5.6 percent increase from $3.4 trillion in 2010, according to Gartner.

Tablets account for the increase in top-line growth, said Richard Gordon, research vice president at Gartner. “Absent the addition of media tablets, the forecast would have slightly declined in constant-dollar terms; however, with their addition, there's virtually no change in underlying forecast growth at the level of overall IT.”

Gartner Says Media Tablets Help Drive Worldwide IT Spending Up 5.6 Percent in 2011

Netflix Canada Creates 3 Streaming Rates

To cope with new user caps in the Canadian market, Netflix has created three different image quality levels for users of the streaming service. The "Good" setting is the default setting and provides good picture quality and lowest data use per hour (about 0.3 GBytes perc hour).

The "Better" setting consumes about 0.7 GBytes per hour. The "Best" setting picture quality consumes about 1.0 GByte an hour, or up to 2.3 GBytes per hour when streaming HD content.

The "Good" setting limits video and audio to 625 kbps and 64 kbps, respectively. The "Better" setting limits video and audio to a maximum of 1300 kbps and 192 kpbs, respectively.

The "Best" setting will use any of the video and audio rates available. The highest quality files are 4800 kbps (for 1080p HD video) and 384 kbps audio (for 5.1 audio).

http://blog.netflix.com/2011/03/netflix-lowers-data-usage-by-23-for.html

AmEx Mobile Payment Addreses "Debit Card" Gap

In yet another take on the mobile payments value and business model, the American Express "Serve" service gets American Express into the "debit card" revenue stream, essentially.

"In our view, this is a bold undertaking for American Express that has the potential to address the company's key strategic weakness, debit," said Stifel Nicolaus analyst Chris Brendler.

Serve could also help extend Amex's reach beyond just the high-end consumer as Serve is clearly targeting the mass market. So in addition to making possible an Amex foray into the debit card revenue stream, it also extends Amex activities in the broad consumer market in a new way.

AmEx's Mobile Payment Scheme to Boost Revenue: Analysts - TheStreet

Is There a Social Networking Bubble?

Bob Metcalfe says "yes," there is a bubble.