User Time is Valuable; Don't Waste It

People are busy. But many marketing messages do not take that fundamental observation fully to heart. A study by analysts at IDG, for example, suggests the "ideal" length for an online video is 10 minutes. Some of us would say that overstates the "dwell time" by five times.

A typical viewer will not finish a video available online, and in fact will likely watch for just a bit over two minutes.

Another shocking finding is webcast viewing time. Webcasts routinely run 30 minutes in length. Even IDC suggests the optimal viewing length is just seven minutes. And if IDC is off as much as it might be for online video, less than seven minutes of interest might be the reality.

The point is that content intended to engage a user has to be kept short, much shorter than most assume.

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Screens Now Equal to Paper as Reading Media

The time people spend reading on a digital screen is now almost equal to the time spent reading printed paper text, according to a recent survey by Gartner. You might think that this is a pure substitution effect, but the Gartner survey found that consumers do not generally see print and online content as direct and functional substitutes.

“There are concerns that digital media will cannibalize print media, based on the general decline in newspaper sales and take-up of online news services in many parts of the world, but the evidence from our research is that print and online are not generally regarded as direct substitutes by consumers,” said Nick Ingelbrecht, research director at Gartner. “Something more complicated than a straightforward substitution of print to digital media is taking place."

That suggests "online content" could develop as a new and different media format, not simply a transposed electronic version of offline products. Multimedia likely is one way of describing the difference. It is possible that users instinctively understand that online experiences are inherently interactive, inherently a multimedia format.

The huge majority of tablet and iPad users say they find screen reading either easier than reading printed text (52 percent) or about the same (42 percent). However, 47 percent of laptop users find screen reading harder than reading printed text, and 33 percent reported it was about the same.

Gartner surveyed 1,569 consumers in six countries, the United States, United Kingdom, China, Japan, Italy and India.

Gartner Survey Shows Digital Text Consumption Nearly Equal to Time Spent reading Printed Paper Text

Microsoft Buys Skype, Illustrates Changes in Access Business

Microsoft has bought Skype for $8.5 billion, in an all cash deal. It is the biggest acquisition in the 36-year history of Microsoft.

Microsoft might would want Skype for a number of reasons. Read more about the deal here: http://www.carrierevolution.com/articles/209963/microsoft-buys-skype/.

A decade ago, one could have found much speculation about the extent to which application providers such as Google, Apple, Microsoft or others might "want to become telephone companies." As it turns out, that was the wrong way to phrase the question. A better way would have been to ask whether firms such as Microsoft, Apple or Google might "want to become communications providers."

Clearly, the answer to that question is "yes." None of them want to be "telephone companies," even though video collaboration, voice communications and messaging have become core features for a mobile device, a mobile operating system, email, social networking and other apps.

But that also should raise new questions. What is a "telco, cable company or mobile service provider," when devices, apps and to a lesser extent operating systems also offer communications features?

As it turns out, the unique role in the application ecosystem for telcos, mobile service providers and cable companies is "access" to the global Internet. That doesn't mean those sorts of firms do not also create and sell apps; they do. Voice, texting and video entertainment are apps created and sold by the access providers.

But as the Microsoft purchase of Skype shows, communication applications can be supplied by any number of entities, so the app function is not the "unique" role. The unique role is "access."

That does not mean access providers are restricted from the applications role, simply to note that apps are not the unique role. That also suggests access providers might in the future find sustainable revenue models that build on that unique access role. And many of those applications logically will grow from the unique access role.

Each contestant also can build on a core "app" competency. For mobile providers, location is obvious. For cable providers, many of which also have become content owners, content is a core "app" competency. For fixed line telecom providers, business services remain an area of key competence.

But as Microsoft's move illustrates, "communication services" no longer are a unique competence for access providers. A key competence, to be sure; simply not a unique and irreplaceable competence.

Do-Not-Track Bill Introduced In Senate

The head of the Senate Commerce Committee on Monday introduced a new privacy bill that would require ad networks and other companies to honor consumers' requests to opt out of online tracking.

The Do-Not-Track Online Act, unveiled by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), directs the Federal Trade Commission to craft rules establishing standards for a universal do-not-track mechanism.

There is no question users deserve protections of their personally-identifiable data, as one would expect protection of credit card and other personal data. As with all well-intentioned objectives, it will be tough to craft rules that are effective for those purposes, yet flexible enough to be implemented by application and service providers without excessive externalities and unintended consequences.

MediaPost Publications Do-Not-Track Bill Introduced In Senate

YouTube Enters Online Movie Rental Business

YouTube is adding around 3,000 new movie titles users can view, in the U.S. market. The inventory will include short movie trailers, funny movie parodies and full-length blockbuster films.

YouTube also says it is hiking investment in the content that’s already being viewed by hundred of millions of people on YouTube, especially support for 20,000 partners that already are producing original content and whose work appears on YouTube.

YouTube Blog: Welcome to the future of video

Better Broadband a 2-Edge Sword for Mobile Service Providers

You won't find too many people arguing that Long Term Evolution, WiMAX or 4G in general is a bad thing, long term. You can find lots of people who might say the timing of the investment is an issue, that the danger of overpaying to acquire spectrum is an issue, or that protocol decisions carry some risk.

One hears less talk about the impact on voice services as lower-latency mobile broadband services are introduced. One advantage LTE offers application providers and access providers is much better latency performance, which means better real-time services performance. That means better voice and video.

But that lower latency is better for all providers of real-time services, not just the mobile broadband provider.

"Because LTE is all-IP and offers lower latency, it puts mobile calling services from OTT providers like Skype on more equal footing with existing carrier wireless voice services," says Tole Hart, Yankee Group senior analyst.

In other words, though LTE is strategic for mobile service providers, it also means a better platform for over-the-top application providers who have services requiring good latency performance.

Yankee Group forecasts smart phone penetration reaching 50 percent by the end of 2011 and 70 percent by 2013, meaning there will be more customers using their smart phones to download alternative calling apps from application providers like Skype, Vonage and Google Voice, and possibly from social communities like Facebook in the future.

The standard "advice" for mobile service providers is to enhance the value of their captive voice services. It's good advice, though strategically problematic, since the application providers will continue to enhance the value of their own services as well.

Obviously, at stake for carriers is a portion of the approximately $730.4 billion in global mobile voice service revenue. But there also will be danger from application providers who bundle text messaging with their voice services, as well.

Text messaging generates about $74.7 billion worth of revenue, and very-high profit margins.

Mobile service providers have important advantages in terms of creating bundles of services that will tend to keep customers "glued" to a basket of features including voice, text messaging and broadband access. That would be a simple adoption of the fixed-line "triple play" strategy, where the incremental cost of any one service is relatively low, in a package of three or four services.

Of course, in some markets mobile service providers might also be able to apply native quality of service mechanisms that provide meaningful experience advantages for end users, and are not available to other application providers. In other cases mobile service providers might want to sell those capabilities to third-party voice providers as a revenue-generating product.

The point is that there is no simple, fool-proof way to "firewall" a mobile voice service from more-effective application provider competition once an LTE network is in place. Bundles and quality assurance are likely to be important weapons, though.

77% of Tablet Users Say the Device Replaces PC Actions

When asked whether they used other connected devices more often or less often since purchasing a tablet, 35 percent of tablet owners who also owned a desktop computer reported using their desktop less often or not at all, while 32 percent of those who also owned laptops, said they used their laptop less often or never since acquiring a tablet, according to the Nielsen Company.

Those findings do not necessarily settle the issue of whether a tablet can completely replace a PC. That will be true in some, perhaps many cases over time, especially as tablets become devices that work right out of the box and do not have to rely on a PC for configuration or updates.

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