Archive for January, 2008
Saturday, January 26th, 2008
According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 48% of internet users have been to video-sharing sites such as YouTube, and the daily traffic to such sites on a typical day has doubled in the past year. The basic findings in a national phone survey show:
- In December 2006, 33% of internet users said they had ever visited such sites. That represents growth of more than 45% year-to-year.
- 15% of respondents said they had used a video-sharing site the day before they were contacted for the survey. A year ago, only 8% had visited such a site the previous day.
Though YouTube usage generally increased in 2007, according to Harris Interactive, reports eMarketer, a solid majority of YouTube users surveyed said they had visited only once or a few times.David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer, concluded “The fact that younger Internet users are far more likely to be regular visitors to video-sharing sites points to a fork in the road… marketers looking to target the under-30 demographic can more reliably find them on these video sites… (while) TV broadcast and cable networks… (can) bulk up their online offerings…”
View PDF of report here.
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Saturday, January 26th, 2008
From Kenradio.com
Mobile instant-messaging (IM) is growing among IM users, especially teens, according to a new survey by AP, which found that 25% of respondents send IMs from their cell phones, including 32% teens. The proliferation of cell phones with full keyboards has made it easier to send mobile instant messages; also, the major instant messaging services let users have their instant messages forwarded directly to their cell phones; moreover, IM users are instant-messaging from within their social-networking profiles. Instant messaging is popular not only at home and on-the-go but also at the workplace: 27% users say they use instant messaging at work, and half of at-work IM users say that instant messaging makes them more productive at work - a 25% increase over last year. The most-popular IM service was AOL’s, cited by 54% of teens and adults surveyed; next were Yahoo’s with 41% and Windows Messenger with 35%; MySpace IM was cited by 15% (23% of teens).
70% and 24% send more instant messages than emails.
* Multitasking remains very popular, as IM users tend to engage in multiple online activities while sending instant messages
* Checking email is the most popular activity among eight in ten adult and teen IM users.
* After email, adult IM users most often conduct online searches (49%), while teens say they like to research homework assignments online (57%).
* 79% at-work IM users say they have used instant messaging in the office to take care of personal matters; and 19% of IM users say they send more instant messages than emails to their co-workers and colleagues.
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Friday, January 25th, 2008
By Mark Levy CEO of MaxxoMedia
The web has forever changed the way people experience music. Here are a few sites I found this week that are cleverly combining elements of social networks, games and artificial intelligence, enabling people to discover and share music like never before.
Music Discovery Game
www.thesixtyone.com is a music discovery game that rewards those who help others listen to good new music. The name of the site pays homage to US Highway 61. According to the founders, “Muddy Waters rode the 61. So did Bob Dylan, Ike Turner and B.B. King. Elvis grew up in the housing projects along it. Highway 61 was the road by which people left to find better opportunities. And by leaving, they took their music to the world.”
On thesixtyone.com, musicians upload music and listeners decide which songs go on the home page. Both musicians and listeners can create profiles to share the music they are interested in and gain influence points, which can be used to help promote the music they like. If you like a song, just click the “bump” button to increase its bump count. Each “bump” increases the artists points in the system.
There is a real-time updated leader board of both the top performing artists and the listeners with the most points. Points record progress, reflect community status and can be spent to bump more songs and influence the community.
http://www.thesixtyone.com
Community Lyrics Search
If it’s lyrics you are looking for, a solid place to start is www.Lyricsmode.com. This new site has combined social networking and lyrics sharing by allowing members to upload lyrics into the site. LyricsMode is a comprehensive online music resource that provides a huge selection of lyrics for music compositions. They boast more than 550,000 lyrics for more than 20,000 artists and are adding new material daily.
In addition to the lyrics on each song, Lyricsmode offers a YouTube widget that you can embed into web pages showing the video and the lyrics to the song. You can also request and share lyrics or get the ringtone to the song.
http://www.lyricsmode.com
Social Playlists and Streaming Music
MeeMix wants to provide the new generation of media consumers with an Internet radio that will give them what they want, when they want it and without having to work to get it. The service is based on an advanced analysis of personal taste in music. With MeeMix, choose a song or artist, and a playlist based on this input will be automatically built. The music will start playing immediately as MeeMix creates a personalized radio station.
The founders spent eight months developing a technology that uniquely identifies individual musical taste by using content and behavioral-based methodologies. The MeeMix algorithm is a taste-prediction tool, which not only points out songs similar to the ones selected by the user, but also takes geographical, behavioral and psychological characteristics into account in order to deliver songs that will match the user’s unique personal taste.
For example: If a 16-year-old girl from Japan and a 22-year-old guy from New York request the same song, then parameters beyond song selection will be considered to personalize the playlist. When songs are rated, the Internet radio station becomes more in tune with the listener’s music preferences. For instance, if you rate a song, they understand how you liked it and adjust the station accordingly. The more songs the listeners rate, the better the station will become a reflection of their unique music tastes.
Every member can set up his or her personal profile, and interact with other members in a variety of ways and throughout the site, including similar musical tastes or shared passions.
http://www.meemix.com
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Friday, January 18th, 2008
by Mark Levy CEO of MaxxoMedia
For the most part, listening to the radio is a passive experience. Tune in your station and let the DJ lead you through the programming. Aside from the occasional call-in request to win tickets or call-in to Talk radio, there isn’t a lot of direct response interaction with listeners.
A Colorado-based company is looking to bring interactivity between radio stations and listeners to a whole new level. CynoCast (pronounced sin-O-cast) aims to help stations keep listeners tuned in longer and generate new streams of revenue by giving stations the ability to easily launch web pages while broadcasting live on the air.
With CynoCast’s “DJ CynoCaster,” stations can simulcast web pages that run alongside live broadcasts. Instant push-polls, poll results, song lyrics, traffic maps, news articles, blogs, weather maps, sports scores and any other type of information can be fed directly to the listener’s computer in real time.
A single mouse click can launch any URL on the web. Another click launches a sponsor’s home page in time to their on-air spots. Banner ads on web pages can be launched during live broadcasts. Listeners are guided directly to specific pages and interactions in time to the broadcast. Announcers can show listeners what they are talking about with both pictures and videos.
Robert Hayes, CEO of CynoCast, says the software also allows stations to create web simulcasts that run automatically while pre-recorded radio shows are being broadcast or run on demand on the Internet. In addition, stations can pause and re-start at any time and intersperse them with web page launches from their sponsors.
Currently the service is managed through CynoCast. Hayes says he will be releasing a version of the software, which can be installed and run internally by larger radio networks in the second quarter of 2008. “DJ CynoCaster” is designed to work with both terrestrial and Internet radio stations and has a variety of subscription plans to choose from .
Check out www.cynocast.com for more information.
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Tuesday, January 15th, 2008
From Kenradio.com
61% high speed Internet users watch/download online video content at least once a week and 86% do so on a monthly basis, compared to 45% and 71%, respectively, in the 2006 study, according to a new study by Horowitz Associates. News and user-generated, non-professional content are the most often viewed genres, followed by movie previews/trailers, music videos, and previews/segments of TV shows. Weekly viewing of full episodes of television shows doubled from last year, with 16% of high speed Internet users watching TV online on a weekly basis.
NBC and ABC are the networks Internet users mention the most frequently for online TV content, with Grey’s Anatomy being the most often mentioned TV program viewed online. While consumption of broadband video has grown, the study shows that television is still the preferred platform for traditional TV content. The vast majority (70%) of Internet users who watch TV online say do so because they missed the episode on TV. 18% of these respondents say they watch TV shows online to watch them a second time (after having watched them on TV), or that they watch TV shows online just when they happen to find them or when someone else tells them about them (20%). Conversely, 13% Internet users who watch TV shows online say they watch them directly online, and not on regular TV.
Penetration of video-enabled handheld devices is on the rise; concomitantly, so is viewing of video content on these devices. 27% of Internet users have a cell, iPod/MP3 player, or PDA with video capability, and an additional 23% do not have this capability but are interested in getting it. Among those with video-enabled handheld devices, 35% watch video on their devices at least weekly and 62% do so at least monthly, translating to 18% of Internet users overall who watch video content on a handheld device at least monthly. This figure is up from 8% just one year ago.
There is a dynamic relationship between broadband access, broadband content and broadband consumption. More and better broadband content, particularly entertainment content in video form is bringing more consumers to the platform, either on their computers or on their handheld devices. This, in turn, creates an even greater demand for and expectations regarding broadband video. Importantly, the data suggest that broadband video is not cannibalistic to linear video, but rather, an enhancement to the consumers traditional TV experience”.
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Saturday, January 12th, 2008
The Pew Internet & American Life Project finds that 93% of teens use the internet, and more of them than ever are treating it as a venue for social interaction — a place where they can share creations, tell stories, and interact with others. 64% of online teens ages 12-17 have participated in one or more among a wide range of content-creating activities on the internet, up from 57% of online teens in a similar survey at the end of 2004. Girls continue to dominate most elements of content creation:
- 35% of all teen girls blog, compared with 20% of online boys
- 54% of wired girls post photos online compared with 40% of online boys.
- 19% of Online boys post video content online, compared to 10% of online girls who have posted a video online where others could see it.
47% of online teens have posted photos where others can see them, and 89% of those teens who post photos say that people comment on the images at least “some of the time.” Many teens, however, limit access to content that they share.
28% of the entire teen population are super-communicators (teens who have a host of technology options for dealing with family and friends, including traditional landline phones, cell phones, texting, social network sites, instant messaging, and email) and they are more likely to be older girls.
Among the latest survey findings:
- 39% of online teens share their own artistic creations online, such as artwork, photos, stories, or videos, up from 33% in 2004.
- 33% create or work on webpages or blogs for others, including those for groups they belong to, friends, or school assignments, basically unchanged from 2004 (32%).
- 28% have created their own online journal or blog, up from 19% in 2004.
- 27% maintain their own personal webpage, up from 22% in 2004.
- 26% remix content they find online into their own creations, up from 19% in 2004.
In addition to those core elements of content creation,
- 55% of online teens ages 12-17 have created a profile on a social networking site such as Facebook or MySpace
- 47% of online teens have uploaded photos where others can see them, though many restrict access to the photos in some way
- 14% of online teens have posted videos online
For more from the release, please visit PewResearch here, or read the full report here.
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Friday, January 11th, 2008
By Mark Levy
CEO of MaxxoMedia
Lately, my inbox has been inundated with invitations to join new online social networking sites. Unlike early entrants to the social networking market like MySpace and Friendster, these new services are more focused on helping people do business. The largest and seemingly most popular business network is named Linkedin. A little over four years old, it boasts over 17 million members.
New social nets seem to be popping up daily.Many just duplicate features and functions of the leaders. They simply offer a network of people from many different walks of life the opportunity to connect with each other. However, one recent entrant is making waves by focusing the power of social networking software into a marketplace that has always been insulated and inefficient - the entertainment industry.
Nextcat.com aims to be THE business social networking hub of the entertainment industry. Based outside of Boston, the company was founded by two serial entrepreneurs, Jeff Pucci and Richard Viard. Though they both attended the Berklee College of Music, they didn’t meet up until 1988.
Since then, armed with a love of music and the entrepreneurial spirit, the two have collaborated on a number of projects, including the development of computer-generated music software, CD-roms that teach the history of music and Smarterkids.com, a website that evaluated educational toys and matched them with children based on their educational needs. They took Smarterkids.com public in 1999, riding the dotcom wave, and sold the company in 2001.
The vision for Nextcat.com would come in 2004 when Pucci first encountered Linkedin. Viewing the service from the eyes of a musician, he quickly saw how the online social network could help transform the highly fragmented world of the music industry. He was also looking for a more professional experience than on other networking sites like MySpace.
The tag line for Nextcat is so true when it comes to this industry - “It’s all about who you know.” But until these online networks came into play. “who you know” was limited by “who you knew,” if you know what I mean. Let’s say you need to find an engineer for an upcoming session. You probably have a list of three to five people you know who you can call. With a service like Nextcat, you now have potentially hundreds of engineers you can connect with. You can also see how those people are connected to you or other people you know, and listen to samples of their work. That can give you more comfort in reaching out to someone you don’t know.
Currently the service caters to five broad sections of the entertainment industry: Music, Film/TV/Stage, Modeling, Arts & Literature and Gaming. Each section focuses on the talent — actors, producers, screenwriters, DJs, engineers, composers, models, game developers — and the supporting service providers. The site also features job boards and forums where members can find work and discuss industry specific issues.
Signing up to Nexcat is easy. The first step is to get a free account and set up your personal profile page. On it, depending on your discipline or talent, you can fill in information about your career experience. Then add people you have worked with and your interests. You can even add samples of your work, complete with photos, music files, slide shows or video demo reels. You can put as much or as little information on your profile as you wish. However you should think of your profile as a database. Meaning, you never know what keywords someone may search on, so more information is better. Connecting to someone is easy. Click on the Request Connection button, add a personal message and hit “Send.”
It’s also really easy to find other people you know who are already members and to invite people you think would benefit from the service. You can have the service scan your e-mail address book from many of the top e-mail services and Linkedin. You can then choose which people to invite, draft an invitation message and Nextcat does the rest. The site is free to sign up for the basic service.
New members have been signing up in droves, prompted by word-of-mouth only … and they like the service so much that they are inviting their friends. Lately they have been attracting bigger names to the service who are willing to help others aspiring to achieve their career dreams. Much like the vision for their previous successful company, Smarterkids.com, Pucci and Viard plan to add specialty subscription services specific to each market which, will keep members coming back again and again.
Check it out at http://www.nextcat.com
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Wednesday, January 9th, 2008
According to the latest Horowitz Associates report, Broadband Content and Services 2007, six out of ten high speed Internet users watch/download online video content at least once a week and 86% do so on a monthly basis, compared to 45% and 71%, respectively, in the 2006 study. News and user-generated, non-professional content are the most often viewed genres, followed by movie previews/trailers, music videos, and previews/segments of TV shows.
Weekly viewing of full episodes of television shows doubled from last year, with 16% of high speed Internet users watching TV online on a weekly basis.
NBC and ABC are the networks Internet users mention the most frequently for online TV content, with Grey’s Anatomy being the most often mentioned TV program viewed online.
While consumption of broadband video has grown, the study shows that television is still the preferred platform for traditional TV content:
- 70% of Internet users who watch TV online say do so because they missed the episode on TV
- 18% of these respondents say they watch TV shows online to watch them again after having watched them on TV
- 20%watch TV shows online just when they happen to find them or when someone else tells them about them
- 13% of Internet users who watch TV shows online say they watch them directly online, and not on regular TV.
Penetration of video-enabled handheld (portable) devices is on the rise as is viewing of video content on these devices. 27% of Internet users have a cell, iPod/MP3 player, or PDA with video capability, and an additional 23% do not have this capability but are interested in getting it. Among those with video-enabled handheld devices, 35% watch video on their devices at least weekly and 62% do so at least monthly, translating to 18% of Internet users overall who watch video content on a handheld device at least monthly. This figure is up from 8% just one year ago.
Howard Horowitz, President of Horowitz Associates, Inc, concludes that “There is a dynamic relationship between broadband access, broadband content and broadband consumption… bringing more consumers to the platform… (which) creates an even greater demand (and expectation) for broadband video… the data suggest that broadband video is not cannibalistic to linear video, but rather, an enhancement to the consumers’ ‘traditional’ TV experience.”
For more about this study conducted Sept.-Oct 2007 by Horowitz Associates, please visit here.
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Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008
SEOUL: IPTV - internet protocol television - broadcasting over South Korean broadband networks in real-time was, until a few days ago, technically illegal. However, the country’s National Assembly last week legalized this anachronism.
According to the Assembly’s website, the country’s two largest broadband-service operators by sales, Hanarotelecom and KT Corporation are now poised to launch IPTV services as a new source of revenue.
The move comes as a welcome respite to increasingly sluggish growth in traditional broadband and telephone markets.
Data sourced from Wall Street Journal Online. additional content by WARC staff, 02 January 2008
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Tuesday, January 1st, 2008
NEW YORK: Findings from State of the Media Democracy, a new-media survey by Deloitte & Touche, were leaked late last week to The Hollywood Reporter. The data, which will not become officially available until next month, underscore the rise and rise of online media platforms.
Based on an online sample of 2,081 people during the last week of October, the study shows that 38% of respondents watch TV online; 36% use their cellphones as an entertainment source; and 45% create online content such as websites, music, videos and blogs.
But it is the pace of growth that astonishes. In a similar survey conducted only eight months earlier, usage of cellphones as entertainment devices was just 24% - a leap of fifty percentage points.
And there are marked variances by age group.
The current figure rose to 62% among millennials [those in the 13-24 age group] compared to 46% in the earlier study. While among Generation X consumers [age group 25-41], the number grew to from 29% to 47%.
Viewers of TV online rose in similarly spectacular fashion - from 23% in the previous study to 38% - of whom a majority (69%) said they watched or listened to consumer-generated content.
Other key findings reveal that . . .
- 54% of consumers said they socialize via networking sites, chat rooms or message boards, and 45% said they maintain a profile on a social network.
- 85% of consumers still find TV advertising to have the most impact on their buying habits, although online ads come second best with 65% saying they have the most impact, ahead of magazines at 63%.
- On the web, search engine result ads are the most effective, gaining 78% of the vote, followed by interactive ads (62%), banners (60%), pre-rolls (31%), post-rolls (19%) and embedded ads (17%).
- 67% of consumers said they would willingly be exposed to more online ads if they could receive free content they found valuable; but 65% opined that any type of internet ad was more intrusive than ads in newspapers and magazines. 37% said they would rather pay for online content than be exposed to advertisements.
- 59% said they pay greater attention to magazine ads than any type of internet advertising, and 55% said they pay greater attention to newspaper ads.
Advises Ken August, vice chairman of Deloitte’s media and entertainment practice: “For advertisers one of the conclusions is you don’t make decisions to advertise either on television or the internet when you want to hit all the demographics, but rather you need to have a multiplatform strategy.
“It shouldn’t be an ‘either/or’ proposition.”
Data sourced from AdWeek (USA); additional content by WARC staff, 31 December 2007
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