Daily Marauder

INDECENT EXPOSURE IN FACESPACE: APPLICATIONS

You know who you are.  Biting chumps, sucking blood. . . .you’ve obviously watched 28 Days Later one too many times.  Every morning, I awake with grand expectations from my social networking profile, only to find it bogged down in application requests to hug someone, drop kick your mom, fight your knight, take a quiz, buy you a drink, etc.

Stop the insanity! 

I do miss Susan Power’s self-help infomercials.  In this case, “Eat, Breathe, Move” should be changed to “Eat, Breathe, Stop Sending Random Application Requests.”

In May 2007, Facebook released the Facebook Platform allowing developers to create applications exponentially increasing the innovation available on the site.

In November 2007, Google responded by releasing Open Social, their APIs (application programming interfaces) for any social network site that supports them including MySpace.com, Friendster.com, and Hi5.com. 

The biggest difference between them:

Facebook’s API allowed developers to create applications for the Facebook environment alone as compared to Google’s Open Social which allowed developers to create applications on a variety of social networking platforms simultaneously.

To be very fair, Open Social has not quite delivered on this promise.  In the beginning, it only worked on Google-owned social networking site Orkut and not well to boot.

Back to the problem at hand.  Marathon application requests.

I attempted to take matters into my own hands by joining a group which I thought clearly demonstrated my disgust with the zombie/vampire/pirate/werewolf applications.  The biting continued.

To be very fair, I was an application whore myself and probably still am to some degree.  In the heat of adding that Sex and the City Which Character Are You? application, I sometimes feel compelled to send to my friends. 

Here’s the really brilliant part about applications.  They’re so successfully viral because of the way that sharing them personalizes the sender.  I send you some application bringing the hotness and maybe, just maybe. . .you’ll think I’m super awesome because I also love Gossip Girl quotes.

Personalization is the underlying force behind sharing of any kind and hateration aside, a force that I can get behind.  So share away, but maybe limit those zombie requests.  On the flipside of positive branding, some applications can have negative branding forces instead.  I’m now going to go Hug It Out with someone. 

Ah, application love.   

BROADCAST/CABLE

ESPN’s eight telecasts of Winter X Games 12 from Aspen last weekend averaged 863,000 homes which was a 17% increase from the previous year, making it the most-watched in the network’s history.

News Corp., Disney and Time Warner are expected to announce higher December-quarter profits when they report financial results next week. Still, the conglomerates, which are seeking ways to cope with the sluggish economy, are expected to discuss their cost-control plans. (http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/higher-profits-anticipated-media-conglomerates/story.aspx?guid=%7B5C08044B%2DA45E%2D4223%2DAD68%2D38FAB5D1E183%7D  1/31)

The prolonged Hollywood writers strike is triggering a serious look by U.S. broadcasters into local series produced in the top English-language markets, especially Canada. Canadian series are seen as accessible to U.S. audiences. Canada is said to be “the next big thing.” (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i2b58004ff7cfb26218aaa25e1a0ba3ab  2/1)

More than 1,000 MTV Networks contractors reportedly are being converted to staff from their previous freelance status, in a move to appease workers upset over recent benefit reductions. MTV employees held a protest about the cuts outside MTV’s Times Square offices in December. (http://gawker.com/5002747/1000-mtvn-permalancers-to-earn-staff-positions 1/31)

“Entertainment Tonight” and “The Insider,” the entertainment news programs syndicated by CBS, say they won’t air a video they acquired that shows the late actor Heath Ledger allegedly under the influence. The Hollywood community pressured the programs not to air the “exploitive” clip. (http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2008/01/entertainment-1.html  1/30)

Nickelodeon’s “Zoey 101″ was the top-rated cable show for the week of Jan. 21 to 27, according to Nielsen Media Reszearch. The Jamie Lynn Spears-starring episode that ran Sunday, Jan. 27, at 8:30 p.m. was viewed in 4.13 million homes, narrowly edging out Disney Channel’s “Minutemen” telepic, which scored in 4.07 million homes. (International Herald Tribune/Associated Press 2/1)

TiVo won a decisive court battle Thursday against Dish Network, which sent the DVR maker’s stock price on a 29% upswing. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a lower court’s ruling that Dish Network infringed on some of TiVo’s software patents. (The Hollywood Reporter 2/1)

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Microsoft has made a $44.6 billion, $31 per share bid for Yahoo. The offer represents a massive 62 percent premium over Yahoo’s latest close. The offer will allow Yahoo shareholders to choose either cash or stock, although the total outlay will be half of each. Microsoft believes that the tie-up will give the companies needed scale in the online advertising space and is expecting at least $1 billion in synergies for the combined company. A letter sent from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to the Yahoo board, and included in the release (posted it here in full), presents the Redmond company’s arguments for the deal, including the fact that Microsoft itself has seen strong growth of late and that Yahoo shareholders should be happy trading in their shares for Microsoft shares. The company is also promising “significant” retention packages for key engineers and leaders. (http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-microsoft-makes-446-billion-bid-for-yahoo  2/1)

Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo may end up putting other companies in play. High on the list is Time Warner’s Internet unit AOL. Google, which already owns 5% of AOL, may feel compelled to make a dramatic move now that Yahoo and Microsoft may be joining forces. (http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/will-yahoo-bid-put-aol-in-play  2/1)

Google is reporting profit and sales that trail analysts’ estimates, signaling that an economic slowdown may reduce demand for online advertising. (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601204&sid=arACsb95xMts  1/31)

Yahoo is ready to acquire video hosting company Maven Networks for about $150 million, reports TechCruch. Maven handles video streaming duties for clients such as Fox News, CBS Sports and Scripps and operates a new Internet TV Advertising Platform designed to maximize dynamic ad insertion revenue.

Mark Zuckerberg, the 23-year-old founder of privately held Facebook, is openly discussing the social networking site’s finances with staffers. He projects revenue to increase from $150 million in 2007 to about $350 million this year. Staffing will rise to 1,000 in 2008 from 450 now. (http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080131/chatty-zuckerberg-tells-all-about-facebook-finances  1/31)

Application developer Wallop is enabling content providers MTV, Paramount and Fox to host TV viewing parties on Facebook and Bebo with a widget called Party On. Users can invite their friends by sending customizable invitations, helping studios build buzz around new shows, movie premieres, season premieres and DVD releases.

Syndicated online content is said to be the hot topic at this year’s NATPE conference. As broadcast growth flattens, local television stations are looking to their Web sites for new revenue. Some stations are already airing the Warner Bros. sitcom “Two and a Half Men” on their Web sites. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/business/media/01adco.html?_r=1&oref=slogin  2/1)

How do you make sure that millions of Americans will pay attention to your multimillion-dollar Super Bowl ad? Advertisers are posting them online, unveiling them at news conferences and screening them at cocktail parties. “They want to get more bang out of it,” says one observer. (http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-superads31jan31,1,6449030.story?ctrack=4&cset=true  1/31)

KickApps is implementing a lot of new features and capabilities with its newest release, version 3.0, which debuts today. For a complete list of the improvements, you can check out the company’s official release (see the summary in the second half). (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/31/kickapps-wades-into-ning-territory-with-version-30/  1/31)

(Below)  Frankly, I think this assessment is crap.  December is a holiday month.  People are shopping, readying for the holidays, etc.  I expect engagement times most likely will be back up in January.

Engagement numbers on America’s leading social networks are trending downward, according to the latest ComScore data, suggesting the social networking fad may finally be waning. Even on Facebook, which increased its user base from 19.1 million to 34.7 million in the past year, users averaged 169.4 minutes on the site for the month of Dec. 2007, after averaging 195 minutes two months earlier.

Average Minutes per Month Spent on Social Networking Sites
(Home/Work/University U.S. Users)
  Site                                             Dec-06        Oct-07          Nov-07      Dec-07
___________________________________________________________________
MySpace.com                                  234.6         192.9           196.0         179.3
Bebo.com                                        213.3         231.8          246.8         173.9
Facebook.com                                  150.4         195.6          189.7         169.4
HI5.com                                            22.7          53.6            62.5           56.6
Friendster.com                                   39.5         109.2            69.8           39.2
Windows Live Spaces                          17.3           14.0            13.2           14.9
Linkedin.com                                        8.0           8.7               9.9            7.1
Source: ComScore Media Metrix

Will Hartman’s sardonic Tough Love and Nick Hagen’s mocumentary The Paranormalists have emerged as the grand prize winners of The Storyteller Challenge, sponsored by MySpaceTV, FOX and the Producer’s Guild of America.

Eh. . .I watched a bit of Tough Love but Cupid seems like he’s doing a second rate Terry Tate impression.  I can’t get down with that.

The four men who operate the defiant file-sharing site The Pirate Bay have been charged with conspiracy to violate copyright law in Sweden. The lawsuit names Warner Bros., MGM, Columbia Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Sony BMG, Universal and EMI as plaintiffs, accusing the site of profiting by offering downloads of copyright-protected content. The Pirate Bay, which is still operating despite the charges, claims a user base of over 2.5 million active registered users.

The site offers TV shows along with their music selection as well.  In a sample search, I found their selection to be quite extensive.

Google’s Head of Ad Sales Tim Armstrong suggested TV advertising would resemble web-based direct response models in the near future during a panel discussion at NATPE, after image and video search functionality get baked into the TV platform. Preliminary set top data trials with EchoStar’s Dish Network indicate commercial zapping is even more prevalent than previously thought, he said.

The Bush Administration tried to convince critics the state of broadband penetration in America has vastly improved under his watch in a new report issued by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. FCC numbers indicate broadband subscribers have grown from 6.8 million in Dec. 2000 to 82.5 million in Dec. 2006. But here’s the catch: the FCC defines broadband as 200 k/sec. at a time when developed European and Asian nations are enjoying speeds of 4-6 gigabytes/second. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has used the excuse that American’s vast rural areas present a unique challenge to the broadband infrastructure in the U.S. But critics worry the lack of bandwidth is placing America at a serious competitive disadvantage.

WIRELESS

Motorola is exploring spinning off its mobile devices unit “to recapture global market leadership and to enhance shareholder value.”The move comes in an ever increasingly tight market which has seen Apple capture 19.5% of the smartphone market in its first twelve months, a new iPhone style device announced by GPS provider Garmin, and a slew of Android powered phones coming later this year, including at least one mobile phone from computer maker Dell. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/31/motorola-may-spin-off-mobile-devices-unit-iphones-first-casualty  1/31)

ABC News added a real-time election results feature to its mobile web site, providing instant primary and caucus results. ABC News also streams video to the site and optimizes video content for the iPhone, iPod Touch and Blackberry devices.

Google has succeeded in its push to force the winner of airwaves being sold by the U.S. government to open its network to any mobile device. (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601204&sid=aP8Ski4smd74  1/31)

Garmin, a leading maker of global positioning systems, is entering the wireless market with a phone that incorporates GPS, amid predictions that GPS-equipped handsets will outsell navigational devices by next year. Garmin’s Nuvifone will compete with a handful of devices, including Apple’s iPhone, that offer a variety of advanced features. (The New York Times/Associated Press 1/31)

GAMING

Sony’s gaming division, reinvigorated by console price cuts, posted a 31% increase in sales during its fiscal third quarter, with 4.9 million PlayStation 3 consoles and 5.8 million PlayStation Portables being sold during the period. LCDs and digital cameras also performed well for the company in the quarter. (TWICE 1/31)

The NPD Group’s recently published list of the 10 top-selling console games of 2007 may signal a changing of the guard in the industry. The list included family-geared games such as “Wii Play,” which failed to garner much critical acclaim, while it excluded critics’ favorites such as “BioShock.” (The New York Times 2/1)

TECHNOLOGY

Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos says his company is “super-excited” by the consumer demand for the Kindle, its recently launched e-book reading device. “The Kindle, in terms of demand, is outpacing our expectations. It is also, on the manufacturing side, causing us to scramble.” (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080131-amazon-ceo-we-cant-keep-up-with-demand-for-kindle.html  1/31)

Apple has put off issuance of a software upgrade that Apple TV users need to download and rent films, which they then can watch on home-entertainment centers. The company, which had earlier given an end-of-January date for its release, now says it should complete the update within two weeks. (InformationWeek 1/31)

Gateway has introduced two new quad-core desktop computers that the company says marry “high performance with affordability.” The GM5664 and GT5662 offer a bevy of entertainment-friendly features, with the GM5664 also adding Blu-ray and HD DVD support. (Yahoo!/newsfactor.com 1/31)