That’s what we’ll find out with this infographic by professional networking site Focus.com. You’ll see how 7 companies such as Skype, Netflix, Apple and Google rolled out products and services that approached their market in such a unique way that they changed everything.

Besides those usual suspects, there are a few surprises in the group, too — products that lowered prices, approached their markets in unheard-of ways, even created new markets — and changed the world. See how they did it in this rich infographic, and then let us know of disruptive innovations you’ve encountered. What do you think will be the next disruptive product or service?

Share/Bookmark

Via VatorNews – Social media analytics provider Viralheat announced Tuesday that it has raised $4.25 million in a Series A funding round led by Mayfield Fund. The round is a big boost for Viralheat, which had previously raised just $75,000 in seed funding.

Marketing tools that take advantage of the thriving social sphere have so far focused on helping brands and businesses keep up with all the content already surrounding their name on the Web. It’s been a game of “catch up” for many brands, especially the larger ones, as they’ve sought to understand how people talk about them on social media and how best to engage with those people, all of which are potential customers.

If seeing content about themselves was the first step, engagement was the next step for businesses. Actively participating in the online discussion about your brand, which will happen whether you’re there or not.

Building off of that, Viralheat appears to be ushering in a third wave of social media monitoring and engagement, whereby businesses can gain insight into which users are literally on the verge of making a purchase in real-time.

“Let’s be honest. Social media monitoring and so-called listening as we know it is commoditized and doesn’t provide the insights that today’s businesses seek,” said Raj Kadam, co-founder and CEO of Viralheat. “We’re drowning in mentions. The next frontier for this market is future-tense intelligence and analytics that tell you what is going to happen – not merely what has happened. We’re already the leader in this blossoming category, and the market is responding strongly.”

The key phrase, ”future-tense,” means that Viralheat is necessarily analyzing a combination of factors, including social media trends (in general), individual sentiment analysis and tons of other data gathered from influencers across the social Web.

Already using Viralheat are several well-known clients, from major technology companies (Microsoft, HP and Nokia) to big consumer brands (Coca-Cola, Disney and MTV). That’s pretty impressive for a company that had hitherto thrived on a seed round.

The new funding will be used to expand Viralheat’s engineering team, to create new products and services, and to accelerate customer acquisition and revenue growth.

Share/Bookmark

A new study by the USC Marshall Institute for Communication Technology Management (CTM) highlights the increasing penetration of tablets and smartphones in the North American market. Among the key findings:

• Tablet ownership in North American households is projected to increase from 8 percent in 2011 to 27 percent in 2012. The biggest growth in tablet users will be among 13-44 year olds.

• The profile of current tablet users is revealing: 70 percent are between the ages of 18 and 44. They are slightly more likely to be male than female, and they largely live in high-income households. Members of ethnic groups, including African Americans, Latinos and Asians, are nearly twice as likely to buy a tablet in the next year as Caucasians.

• Tablet users consume twice as much media as the mainstream, and they increasingly want to control what they watch by using the device in the future as an alternative to traditional television.

• Smartphone ownership will increase from 29 percent in 2011 to 40 percent in 2012.

• The highest penetration of smartphones will be in the Latino and Asian markets.

The “Digital Home 3—The Democratization of Technology” study, which surveyed 4,000 U.S. homes and 1,000 Canadian homes, defines the growing power of digital devices for people across the United States and Canada, according to Lucy Hood, executive director of CTM.

“Technology is democratic—today everyone has increased access to communication, content and productivity through smartphones and tablets,” Hood said.

She pointed to the growth in use of tablets as an important trend among technology adopters. “The number of tablet users in the U.S. has doubled from 4 percent to 8 percent in the last year. And a significant proportion—19 percent—of consumers plan to buy a tablet in the next 12 months,” Hood said. “The increased consumption of media and communication on tablets is striking. We will be following the business implications of this and other trends over the next year and beyond.”

About CTM
The Institute for Communication Technology Management (USC CTM) is a leading strategy organization in the communications sector, with a unique combination of business and consumer insights. CTM is based at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, at the intersection of Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Corporate partners include AT&T, Verizon, Qualcomm, Cisco, HP, Intel, Alcatel-Lucent, Motorola, Adobe, Ogilvy & Mather, Fox, Warner Brothers and Disney. CTM offers business leaders cutting edge multinational research, executive strategy conferences and senior leadership education. The Digital Home and Global Mobile surveys are used by global tech, communications and media companies to guide their corporate strategies.

About the USC Marshall School of Business
Consistently ranked among the nation’s premier schools, USC Marshall is internationally recognized for its emphasis on entrepreneurship and innovation, social responsibility and path-breaking research. Located in the heart of Los Angeles, one of the world’s leading business centers and the U.S. gateway to the Pacific Rim, Marshall offers its 5,500-plus undergraduate and graduate students a unique world view and impressive global experiential opportunities. With an alumni community spanning 90 countries, USC Marshall students join a worldwide community of thought leaders who are redefining the way business works.

Related articles

• Despite The Hype, Just 5 Percent Of U.S. Owns A Tablet, Says Nielsen (techcrunch.com)
• Tablets Aren’t Necessarily Cannibalizing Laptop Sales (pcworld.com)
• Nielsen: 51% of iPad use is in bed or in front of the TV (tech.fortune.cnn.com)

Share/Bookmark

Learn More about Mobile Tagging at Microsoft Tag.

Share/Bookmark

Image via CrunchBase

Via Techcrunch

ComScore has just released data from its Video Metrix service, showing that 170 million Internet users in the United States watched online video content in February for an average of 13.6 hours per viewer.

According to the audience measurement giant, the total U.S. Internet audience engaged in more than 5 billion viewing sessions during the course of last month.

Google Sites (read: YouTube) again ranked as the top online video content property in February, with an impressive 141.1 million unique viewers.

Microsoft notably surged from the seventh to the second place in the ranking with 48.8 million viewers. It was followed by Yahoo and Facebook, who both logged 46.7 million viewers. VEVO ranked fifth with a decent 45.9 million viewers.

Hulu only came in ninth with 27.3 million viewers in February, but according to comScore did generate the highest number of video ad impressions (more than 1.1 billion).

Looking at the top online video content properties last month, Google attracted as many viewers as the three challengers that make up the rest of the top 4 of the ranking, combined.

According to comScore, Google Sites also boasted the highest number of viewing sessions with 1.8 billion, and average time spent per viewer at 262 minutes (or 4.4 hours).

Related articles

• Google continues to dominate online video (news.cnet.com)
• Is Online Video Dying? Comscore’s Video Metrix Fizzle in Feb (reelseo.com)
• 7 in 10 Watch Online Video Every Month in India (penn-olson.com)

Share/Bookmark

Image via CrunchBase

Digital Clarity, a specialist digital marketing agency whch recently polled over 1300 people under 25 from a cross section of the UK has reported that UK Under 25′s not only media stacking with 80 per cent using a second screen to communicate with friends when watching television – 72 per cent Twitter, Facebook or mobile applications to actively comment on shows as they are watching them and they are significantly swapping remote controls for iPhones as the ‘Social TV’ trend takes over.
The ‘Social TV’ trend is proving hugely popular with young people as it allows them to instantly comment on their favourite shows to friends in different locations via the web or mobile phone.

As appmarket.tv previously reported, a joint Nielsen and Yahoo US study late last year found that the trend is already well established with over 86 per cent of mobile internet users choosing to communicate with each other in real-time during broadcasts. Now ‘second screening’ or ‘media stacking’, as it is referred to in the States has become common place in the UK too.

Rather than social networks and television competing for attention it seems that young people are happy to embrace both and use one to enhance their enjoyment of the other.

The UK study found that 34 per cent described the trend as ‘fun’, 32 per cent said it made television ‘more interesting’ with 42 per cent mentioning the ‘community’ aspect of ‘Social TV’.

One survey respondent, Ashleigh Foulser, 18 a student in Bournemouth said:

“I love being able to keep in touch with my mates while I’m at college. They are in different towns to me but it’s like having them round to watch TV. We share a lot of jokes and if I comment on something funny or stupid I get replies almost immediately.”

The survey discovered that the most common way to communicate is to use Twitter (72 per cent ) Facebook was next popular (56 per cent ) and mobile applications (34 per cent ). 62 per cent of Social TV users like a combination of all three.

Certain shows such as X-Factor, Skins, Glee, as well as soaps Coronation Street and Eastenders are particularly popular in the UK generating very high Twitter traffic and Facebook messages as they are broadcast.

Reggie James, founder of Digital Clarity explains:

“Up until 12 months ago, TV was struggling to reach the younger market as more and more channels were becoming available. Social TV has changed this completely by turning programmes into online events where you have to watch them as they happen”.

The significance of ‘Social TV’ is not lost on the television networks who have found themselves with whole new marketplace and a different pitch for advertisers.

Last month, a US HBO channel reran the Howard Stern film ‘Private Parts’. Stern was watching simultaneously and started add a live commentary to the action resulting in sky high ratings far higher than could have been forecast breathing new life into a 14 year old movie.

“The audience have already taken their seats and are ready to join the conversation”, concludes James, “it’s now up to the TV companies to tap into this huge and lucrative market.”

Related articles

• It’s Not TV, It’s Social TV [VIDEO] (mashable.com)
• TV Experts at SXSW Discuss the Future of Social TV (jenningssocialmedia.com)

Share/Bookmark

David Henry is a senior director of product marketing for NETGEAR where he works on high performance, dependable and easy home networking, storage and digital media products to connect people with the Internet and their content and devices. You can follow NETGEAR on Twitter @NETGEAR.

The future of home networking will see multiple devices connected to the Internet and to each other. At the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the emphasis was on Internet-enabled everything. Recent market studies also confirm this trend. The penetration of connected consumer electronic devices such as TVs, Blu-ray players, and smartphones are projected to grow 400% between 2010 and 2015, as shown in the chart below.

The introduction of so many new tablets is another indication that the demand for connected consumer electronics is surging. Consumer expectations about the quality of their connectivity is increasing as more and more of the devices are used for entertainment such as streaming movies or online gaming.

As these connected devices become part of future homes, home networking products will have to be ready to support them, with new features that enable the best possible experience.

Powerful routers, home gateways, centralized media servers, powerline network adapters, and wireless add-ons like Wi-Fi range-extenders will soon become the norm for the connected home. The future home network will have to be smart enough to adapt to changing priorities, dedicate more bandwidth to certain activities and switch between devices readily.

Building Your Future Home Network

When looking for an interruption-free Internet experience in the home, consumers should keep an eye out for a router with dual band. These routers provide the kind of bandwidth required by the devices connecting to the home network and Internet. Dual band functionality provides twice the Wi-Fi bandwidth, giving the consumer two completely separate wireless networks within the home. The most used frequency is 2.4GHz, as it is ideal to support web surfing, e-mail and chat. However, having another band to select from (the 5GHz band) enables better video streaming. Fewer devices connecting on this band avoids wireless congestion and renders video streaming without jitters and lags. Consumers should look for this dual band capability from their wireless router at home especially if they are streaming video from sites like Netflix, YouTube or Hulu. Some dual band wireless routers even come with a special “Video Mode” that not only makes it easier to set up wireless for this type of video streaming but also uses video-centric algorithms that reduce video jitter and frame loss during streaming.

Built-in Quality of Service (QoS) is another feature being integrated in modern wireless routers. This feature allows prioritization of devices to deliver maximum Internet bandwidth and performance. This prioritization allows the dedication of more bandwidth to HD movies for flawless viewing. Once the priority is set in the router, the router recognizes the type of Internet traffic and prioritizes it, automatically. Some modern wireless routers come with the most popular applications already set up, auto-assigning priority to activities such as voice calls versus web surfing, e-mail or downloads.

The growth of high quality HD-video streaming is just one of the many reasons consumers need to understand the crucial role their home wireless router plays. As the number of activities occurring over wireless increase, better performance will be required from home Wi-Fi connections. Fortunately, home networking companies are rolling out the features that ensure high quality video streaming and other Wi-Fi activities almost daily.

A Look Into the Future

By 2015, the average bandwidth to the home from DSL, cable, or wireless providers will grow exponentially. Consumers will continue to enjoy video content on various sized screens including flawless streaming to handheld devices. CDs, DVDs and Blu-Ray Discs will be used mostly by those who cherish physical media. However, streaming video from the Internet and from home media servers will more likely become the norm.

Consumers can see this trend today in the modern network attached storage (NAS) device that supports media serving capabilities. Advanced wireless routers have media servers built in, and have the ability to stream and share media stored on any connected external USB hard drive. As customers wish to have instant access to all of their media all of the time, whether at home or on smartphones and tablets, NAS devices and wireless routers need to support remote access. The most advanced NAS products today support this “anytime, anywhere” type of access as do advanced consumer wireless routers.

Home control and security monitoring will also be accessible from any Internet connection, and manageable from a smartphone, PC or tablet.

In today’s modern home, consumers are already seeing the growing trend of everything being connected to the Internet. In many cases, the amount of Internet-connected devices in the home outnumber the people in the household. This means more and more is demanded from home wireless networks and Internet connections. Thankfully, home networking companies are answering the call by innovating new wireless solutions and home router features that facilitate the connected entertainment experience people expect.

Related articles

• CES: Netgear shifts focus to connecting entertainment devices throughout the home (zdnet.com)
• D-Link Introduces HD Media Routers, SmartBeam Technology, and 500Mbps PowerLine Networking (lockergnome.com)
• Home Routers Still Stumble When Delivering Wi-Fi Signal (online.wsj.com)

Share/Bookmark

Image via Wikipedia

The term multi-screen is being used just about everywhere these days. But what does multi-screen actually mean? For years, network equipment suppliers and operators have been espousing the benefits of a converged intelligent network that offers integrated multi-screen services. Converged network services will, for example, permit a voice call session to be upgraded to a video call session on the fly. The term multi-screen can also imply bundled network services, such as TV Everywhere, with a common authorization mechanism linking pay TV subscriptions to the PC and mobile handset. Since Netflix is accessible from just about any web-enabled device, it must be a multi-screen service. And last month at CES, Samsung (and others) demonstrated the ability to share video between a tablet and a big screen TV, provided both are running the same proprietary multi-screen application platform.

With so many ways of accessing and viewing multimedia content on multiple screens, it only seems logical that everyone must want to do it. Yet, In-Stat research has confirmed that nearly two-thirds (64%) of consumers acquire, store, and view their online video content on a single device (usually the PC). In contrast, only 14% of US broadband consumer households view locally stored content on multiple screens. The remaining 22% of consumers have no interest in acquiring online video at all. Consumer behavior will change over time, but the data suggests that there is very little pent up demand for multi-screen services today.

The implications of multi-screen adoption (or lack thereof) will be far-reaching. Mobile operators must justify their huge investments in LTE. Pay TV operators need TV Everywhere services to fend off video cord cutting. The future of equipment manufacturers, such as Ericsson and Alcatel Lucent, depend on making public networks more intelligent. Most importantly, content producers have bet the shop that multi-screen licenses will generate greater consumption and higher profits. The question to be answered is not whether we will be operating multiple screens, but how will we use our many web-enabled devices?

Our initial research indicates that traditional demographics, such as age, income, or education are not useful in predicting multi-screen behavior. Even psychographics, such as In-Stat’s Internet Usage Behavior segmentation (power, social, and passive Internet users), which more accurately predict technology adoption and content consumption fall short. As a result, forecasting the market for multi-screen services will require an understanding of both the technological alternatives, as well as the unique characteristics of multi-screen consumer behavior.

In-Stat has just published a research report entitled Home Video Library Acquisition, Storage, and Viewing Trends. The report examines how consumers are currently acquiring, storing, and viewing video content, and it forecasts home video library growth using new multi-screen behavior segmentation.

Share/Bookmark

Share/Bookmark

Between September 10 and October 8, 2010, Deloitte polled 2,000 U.S. consumers ages 14-75 on their digital habits. Unsurprisingly, it found that Americans are plugged in. 85% own a desktop computer, yet another 68% own a laptop or a netbook and another 41% have Internet-enabled phones. Moreover, 1/3 of American households now own a smartphone, up from 22% in 2007.

TV is still king, though. 74% of U.S. consumers still watch TV primarily on their TV sets, and a full 59% of U.S. households now own flat-screen TVs. In 2007, that number was just 17%. Still, Deloitte’s survey shows that younger consumers are moving towards the Internet for their TV content; 37% of 22 to 27-year-olds surveyed said that they watch TV on the web five to seven times a week.

The TV-watching experience is changing, too. A full 42% of American consumers surf the while they are watching the television, 29% talk on their phones while the TV is on and 26% of consumers are texting or sending IMs. Multitasking has become a more prominent behavior of U.S. consumers. No longer do you find he whole family circling the TV to watch Cronkite deliver the news; instead, they’re checking Facebook and making phone calls.

The survey also addresses the decline of print media. Deloitte specifically mentions print magazines as a medium that is “surviving the digital tsunami.” 2/3 of U.S. consumers have read a print copy of a magazine in the last six months, higher than newspaper and other forms of print media. Interestingly, 87% of U.S. consumers say that they prefer the print copy of magazines over the digital version. In fact, 55% of U.S. households still subscribe to at least one print magazine, up by 1% from 2009.

Related articles

• With IntoNow, is social TV ready for the masses? (venturebeat.com)
• Unprecedented Changes in Consumer Behavior Lie Ahead, Says Deloitte Report (prnewswire.com)
• U.S. Consumer Say They Now Spend As Much Time on the Internet As They Do Watching TV (readwriteweb.com)
• Hype surrounding streaming TV services is a bit over the top (theglobeandmail.com)

Share/Bookmark