Time Warner Cable: How about some TV with your Netflix?

Tail, meet dog: Time Warner Cable is currently sending a mailer to internet-only customers, suggesting that they should upgrade their broadband speeds for a better Netflix experience and offering to throw in a whole year of free TV as a bonus.

How about some TV with your Netflix? Time Warner Cable’s latest mailer to Internet-only customers.

Why is this remarkable? Because not too long ago, cable companies viewed TV services as their main money maker and broadband as an added service. The Time Warner Cable offer doesn’t just turn this model on its head, it also puts the focus squarely on Netflix as one of the main reasons people would want fast internet access.

Of course, Netflix has been blamed by some in the industry as a reason why people would cut the cord and go internet-only in the first place. For these cord cutters, an ad like this may actually be a smart thing: Instead of making them feel like they’re subscribing to an expensive TV bundle, Time Warner Cable is putting the emphasis squarely on Netflix, a service Internet-only users likely already enjoy.

It’s worth noting that Netflix isn’t actually included in the subscription package advertised by Time Warner Cable, but that could change: Reuters reported in March that Netflix CEO Reed Hastings had been meeting with some large U.S. cable providers to discuss the possibility of adding Netflix to their service bundle. The report also stated that at least one cable company would be ready to try such a cooperation by the end of the year, and Hastings went on the record at an investor conference saying that such bundles are “ the natural direction for (Netflix) in the long term.”

For more on the future of cord cutting, check out my e-book Cut the Cord: All You Need to Know to Drop Cable.

TWC van photo courtesy of (CC BY 2.0) Flickr user The Consumerist.


from GigaOM http://gigaom.com/video/twc-netflix-offer/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=f...

Ivi.ru is Hollywood’s route to Russian VOD

Confirmation that Russian video service ivi.ru is taking a $40 million investment shows the Hulu-like company is building cash for content acquisition.

The investment advisory shop GP Bullhound’s recent 2012 Russia market report said ivi.ru was raising $30 million from Tiger Global and ru-net, in February. That this round has become larger, and joined by Baring Vostok in the lead, suggests investor confidence in ivi.ru’s prospects.

And why not? Russia is Europe’s largest internet audience, with 53 million users (comScore Media Metrix, 2012) – 37 percent on broadband, but up to 91 percent in Moscow. Only 26 percent of users have so far paid for online video (J’son & Partners Consulting).

“We will use this investment to broaden our content offering to our audience including new premier movies, series, TV shows and latest cartoons,” ivi.ru founder and CEO Oleg Tumanov says (via release).

GP Bullhound:

“Recent studies suggest that 13 million Russian internet users are willing to pay for content online, but do not always understand whether content is legal or not.”

“Content rights owners view Russia as a lost market due to piracy and are likely to provide content at lower cost to content distributors who offer at least some monetisation.”

Baring Vostok senior partner Elena Ivashentseva (via release):

“Russian viewers are already used to watching video online, although until recently it has been mainly unlicensed movies and shows. Decreasing levels of piracy should help the growth of legal sites such as ivi.ru.”

Since ivi.ru, unlike Chinese counterparts Youku and Tudou, is not public, we have little site of its operating costs. As well as content licenses from the likes of Hollywood movie studios, Chinese video operators are also spending heavily on intelligent delivery to overcome poor consumer broadband infrastructure. Russian services are likely to need to spend here, too.

 


from GigaOM http://paidcontent.org/2012/09/11/ivi-ru-is-hollywoods-route-to-russian-vod/?...

Carson Daly Tells All About ‘The Voice,’ Its Social Media Clout and ‘TRL’



Hours before watching The Voice's season three premiere, host Carson Daly calls himself a "tech geek."

Social media and gadgets like the Apple TV surround him during much of his waking moments -- and there's plenty of that no-shut-eye time now after he welcomed a daughter, Etta Jones, to the world last week. Like a newborn's tears on a cheek, parenting apps trickled onto his iPhone to aid in any fatherly woes.

His digital-first mentality to solving problems has seeped into the production of The Voice since the televised singing competition first debuted in 2011. In a way, social media helped raise the show into a powerhouse on TV and online, just as the apps likely will help Daly r…
Continue reading...

More About: TV, carson daly, celebrities, mtv, nbc, social tv, the-voice

from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/09/10/the-voice-carson-daly-app-trl/?utm_source=feed...

Nielsen: more than half of US teens now own smartphones

Nielsen more than half of US teens now own smartphones, Android stays in front

Yes, we know Android is holding steady at about 52 percent of US smartphone market share. What's interesting is just who's driving growth as a whole. According to Nielsen, 58 percent of American teens between 13 and 17 now have a smartphone -- that's a big jump from 36 percent a year earlier and a sign that the youngest owners have a significant sway over where the market is going. Not that young adults don't have an impact. Although the 25-to-34 crowd isn't making as big a comparative leap, its smartphone ownership has climbed from 59 percent to a dominating 74 percent in the same space of time.

No matter how much youth set the pace, it's clear Android is still having an effect. Among the US smartphone buyers Nielsen tracked in the three months leading up to July, 58.6 percent went Google's direction. Most of that gain came from BlackBerry owners switching allegiances, which doesn't bode well when RIM is counting on existing owners to fuel BlackBerry 10 demand. We'd be careful about citing a one-point shrink in iPhone sales as a shift in the balance of power, however -- while it could be part of a trend, it could also represent the habitual lull in Apple's sales during the weeks before a major iPhone introduction.

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Nielsen: more than half of US teens now own smartphones originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Sep 2012 17:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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from Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/10/nielsen-more-than-half-of-us-teens-now-own...

The World’s Most Twitter-Addicted cities

Twitter’s popularity shows no signs of slowing down, as more of the world catches the social media bug. It now boasts more than half a billion accounts, with around 142 million in the US alone. And the site is now available in 33 languages, after adding support for Basque, Czech and Greek.

But where do the most enthusiastic Twitterati live? Some people might be surprised to learn that Jakarta is officially the most Twitter-addicted city. The Indonesian capital is top of the league based on the number of tweets per day.

It’s followed by Tokyo, London and Sao Paolo, pushing New York into fifth place. Other US cities in the top 20 are Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Atlanta and Houston.

A recent report by Semiocast, the social media research firm, examined Twitter use around the world. They looked at the number of tweets posted per day in numerous cities and countries, analysing 517 user profiles and more than 1 billion tweets. They found that use is soaring in Indonesia, Japan and Brazil.

It’s interesting to compare this research with figures from 2010, when North American cities dominated the list. Although London was the most active city, the rest of the top five were Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and Boston. Now Boston has fallen out of the top 20 cities. San Francisco, where the company is based, is another notable absence.

Other countries are catching up fast.  Brazil saw users soar from 33.3 million to 41.2 million in the first six months of 2012. The number of users in Saudi Arabia has soared by 93 per cent since January, helping make Arabic the 6th most popular language.

The social network is also getting more multilingual. In 2010, it was easy to get by only in English. But now only 39 per cent of tweets are in the language, and this proportion is shrinking.

Twitter has successfully used crowd-sourcing to launch in new languages. It has used a network of around 400,000 volunteers to make itself available in 33 languages. Some recent new additions are Ukrainian and Catalan. It plans to continue to build on this total, choosing languages in response to user requests.

Of course there are some shortcoming to Semiocast’s research. Most Twitter users don’t post their GPS location, so the company had to rely on an analysis of user profiles, time zones and languages, to determine where they were based.

The figures also don’t compare the number of Twitter users to population size. Another study found that the UK has the highest Twitter penetration, with around 39 per cent of the population using the network. Latin American countries are also extremely “socially engaged”, according to research by ComScore. And Chile, Venezuela and Argentina all feature in the top ten countries.

Facebook may be the world’s dominant social network, with close to 1 billion users around the globe. But Twitter seems to be catching up fast in many countries. As more of the world gets connected, it will be interesting to see if its growth continues.

from BostInno http://bostinno.com/channels/the-worlds-most-twitter-addicted-cities/

Meet ProfitBricks, the Cambridge Startup Going After Amazon in the Cloud

Back in July, I wrote a post about Amazon’s cloud hegemony, wondering whether competitors could seize on its occasional outages to lure customers away.

Well, today Cambridge startup ProfitBricks has launched its new set of cloud services in an effort directly competitive to large cloud players like Amazon and Rackspace.

“We deconstructed cloud infrastructure down to its most basic elements and discovered there was a far better way to deliver the service,” said ProfitBricks’ Chief Executive Officer, Achim Weiss, in a release. “We ended up reinventing the architecture, which allows us to offer substantially better performance and a new level of flexibility in cloud infrastructure. Our platform allows ProfitBricks to offer unprecedented services at prices others cannot touch because of legacy design and built-in costs.”

The central innovation here is live vertical scaling, meaning the ability to add additional computing power and memory without a server reboot. ProfitBricks also offers by the minute pricing, rather than by the hour.

The company was founded in 2010 by Achim Weiss and Andreas Gauger, co-founders of 1&1, a web-hosting company now owned by United Internet, a German ISP. The company says it’s funded by its founders as well as by United Internet, and already boasts a team of 100. It is jointly headquartered in Cambridge and Berlin.

from BostInno http://bostinno.com/2012/09/10/meet-profitbricks-the-cambridge-startup-going-...

Breakdown: Corporate Social Media Team

The purpose of this post is to be a living document and industry reference on the topic of social media teams, as part as my ongoing coverage of corporate social media programs.  This perspective stems from industry research and deeper client engagements.

Business Needs:
By definition, social business requires transformation within a company, resulting in leadership, program management, and a team to see this change through.  In most cases, we see this team as a centralized resource that’s often cross-functional working closely with a number of corporate functions as well as business units ranging from product teams, geographies, the field, and departments.  Without this team, the company will struggle to scale as different business units launch their own programs in a uncoordinated manner resulting in a fragmented customer experience, replication of duties, slow response in a coordinated manner, and a variety of tools, agencies, and vendors intersecting into the company.


Definition: The Corporate Social Media team is business program lead by a corporate social strategist that achieves business goals using social tools by coordinating with multiple business units across the enterprise.


Starting with Strategy
Before rolling out any team or putting job descriptions on the careers page, the leadership team and executive sponsors must ensure the right mindset and systematic rollout are in place.  We find that many companies who are successful follow the following traits:

  • Align with Corporate Goals –Not Social Media Goals. Don’t start with the aim of fans and followers instead first, have a business purpose that aligns with goals executives have already set, strategists should already know these, and then meld this new medium to these.  Next, evaluate current skillset and resources including obtaining resources from existing teams. I typically see companies developing a business case, with a request for resources and executive blessing from a charter.
  • Systematically Roll Out Program use Hierarchy of Needs.  Companies who run and deploy blogs/communities/FB pages are at risk by not first getting ready.  We found that advanced companies have deployed internal readiness such as governance, education, policies, process, and a roll-out program in a pragmatic method –not jumped to implementation.  Read the Social Readiness report to learn more.
  • To Scale, Let Go; Empower Business Units.  Companies who reach a level of maturity often allow trusted and trained business units to implement their own social programs after aligning to the program charter of the social media team.  This state allows business units to manage and deploy their program –encouraging scale and customization and speed at local levels.

Detailed Anatomy of Team
Altimeter found in a former survey of 144 global national corporations (read the full report) that the average composition of an enterprise class (over 1000 employees) company’s full time social media team is 11 professionals, often cross-functional. This research includes dozens of interviews and close interaction with Altimeter brand side clients who are leading these programs on a daily basis.


Screen shot 2011-12-22 at 8.11.57 AM

Matrix:  Breakdown of the Corporate Social Strategist Team

Note that in smaller teams, individuals may cover multiple roles, and in most cases these are cross-functional teams, as community managers may often come from product marketing, customer support, or corporate communications.
Role Primary Duty What No One Tells You
Social Strategist Leader and program manager,The program leader for social business, the strategist is responsible for overall vision and accountability towards investments.  We’ve done a detailed study on the career path of the social strategist including demographics, psychographics, business goals and challenges. Don’t hire an evangelist if they don’t have program manager chops. This individual must run a business program, and able to measure against real business results like: leads, sentiment, csat, customer support, and reduced costs.
Community Managers Primarily outbound and customer-facing, this role is a trusted member of the community, serving as a liaison between the community and the brand. These are often the most under-appreciated professionals in the team as they deal with customer woes time off hours and some even suffer personally as they deal with customer angst. Hire community managers that are balance brand enthusiasm with passion for customers –these are not PR pros that are on party message, but instead are trusted members of the community. Read the four tenants of the community manager to learn more. Celebrate these roles on Community Manager Appreciation Day.
Business Unit Liason These internal facing members have a primary duty of reaching out to business units to get them to collaborate, get on board and often join a center of excellence. They may also represent a particular business unit, department, product line, or region. These are key conduits to maintaining relationships with many business teams, and are key for achieving enterprise coordination in scale. As an interface inside of larger corporations, this role serves as an internal conduit to 1.5 coordinate efforts with other business units, in order to provide them with resources, as well as ensure consistency. Yet don’t let them talk to business units unarmed, they should have a checklist of requirements and slot in education manager to obtain consistency.
Education Manager This often part-time role is designed to serve multiple business units and rank-and- .5 file employees in planning and organizing social media education, including best Manager! practices, policies, and resources Seek an individual that knows both social technologies but is patient to teach executives, business program managers, the team and rank and file.  Encourage them to work closely with existing education programs.
Social Media Manager This professional will have several projects with fixed stop dates to manage and ongoing programs.  This may include launching programs, managing campaigns, dealing with agencies, and keeping teams on timelines.  They may work in corporate or with business units. This individual is the engine of the team that keeps time, resources, and expectations aligned.  Beyond finding social media expertise, look for project managers that have a background in operations or may be project managed certified.
Social Analyst Using brand monitoring, social analytics, web analytics, and traditional marketing 1 tools, the social analyst is responsible for measurement and reporting across the entire program and for individual business units This individual should be able to see the big picture of the forest and ascertain how social is impacting the customer experience and business beyond minute details.
Web Developer The web developer typically already exists at the company, yet provides dedicated assistance to help plan, brand, configure, and integrate social technologies as stand- alone efforts, or into existing systems Work with a developer that is capable of connecting disparate social technologies with existing enterprise systems.  As social software suites become dominant, the need for data integration will become a strategic asset for corporations.
Content Strategist (new role) This individual will coordinate content strategies across the enterprise, customers, and partners, spanning both advertising, corporate content and social media content. Ensure this person is well read on Altimeter colleague Rebecca Lieb’s book on Content Marketing, and research report on same topic.
Digital Strategist This role already existing in many corporations and will closely work with team to integrate social into all digital channels, both online, on TV, in real world and beyond. Ensure this role knows that social can be a different medium and may require longer term efforts, dealing with negative content, and a rapid response team.
Agency Partners Most companies rely on third party experts, both digital agencies and specialized social media agency of records.  These teams can provide services for education, strategy, creative, content management, community management, analytics and beyond. Over the coming period, expect that the social media agency of record (SMaoR) will start to vaporize as digital agencies offer similar offerings, acquire them, or social agencies offer ads.

Common Team Characteristics by Maturity

Not all teams are equal, and we’ve measured the sophistication of teams by maturation which is dependent upon culture, resources, duration, and team skills to navigate. While it’s difficult to put a team in a direct specific column, the following trends are common across the following maturation phases.
 Maturity Novice Intermediate Mature
Summary Description Evangelism, Education, Catalzying Change Program Formation, Coalescing, Coordination as a Central Resource Empowerment of business units to succeed within established guidelines
Primary Focus Areas Proving business case, wrangling business units, scrapping for resources Managing interest from business units that may be out of control, or getting the entire org coordinate and on board. Still proving business case to executives and business units that are threatended Company is on board, consistently, yet primary focus is integrating into existing business systems and optomization
Common Resources Often a small scrappy team (3) of just a few folks, this team has a small budget and humble set of resources that likely include brand monitoring, social media management tools and online communities. Typically, we see a larger increase of internal team size (8) there are more resources being applied to this program. At this phase, most companies launch centralized resources (often called a Center of Excellence) to serve the corporation. Often a larger team size that we’ve seen grow beyond 20 folks in an FTE capacity this dedicated team is cross-functional, yet has consolidated leadership from a core function across the enterprise.
How to Drive Business Case When pitching to executives, focus on three data points: 1) Social is a trend, not a fad 2) Our customers are using it (show data and anecdotes, 3) These are trusted conversations (show Edelman data) and we’re not actively involved. Focus on risk of social media proliferation and social crises from risk of lack of coordination. Show cost benefit analysis of not conjoining a single program Ensure programs are aligned with business objectives that executives are setting, if it’s market size increase, more leads, or better customer satisfcation, integrate into these existing programs.

Prior Research and Web Strategy Resources
This has been my core research coverage over last few years, here’s some of my prior reports and resources, that span career paths, team orgs, tools, industry hires, and list of team leaders.


Select Industry Resources
I read as much as I could that was already published online, here’s a few select resources for further insights.


Future of Social Media Teams
In closing, these teams are dedicated units that are serving the corporation in a cross-functional manner. In time, they will give up much of the deployment in exchange for allowing business units to scale. Expect that these teams evolve or become subsumed into content strategy teams, digital marketing, or customer experience teams that span multiple channels and mediums, as they are already not limited to social channels.

from Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Social Media, Web Marketing http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2012/09/09/breakdown-corporate-social-medi...

Can Breaking Bad’s Story Sync get viewers to give up their DVRs?

Last Sunday, I did something I haven’t done in a long time: Watch an episode of television as it aired — commercials and all.

Please note: This article contains MASSIVE spoilers for the 5th season of “Breaking Bad.” You’ve been warned.

For the past two months, AMC has prefaced each new episode of the critically-acclaimed drama Breaking Bad by alerting viewers to the existence of BreakingBadStorySync.com: A second-screen experience for each episode, timed to update with the show if you skipped the DVR and watched live.

Second screen experiences are nothing new, but they’re something I’ve always primarily associated with award shows and lighter fare. I was curious as to what a second-screen experience for a gritty cable drama like Breaking Bad would be like. So for the 2012 finale, I made sure I was home in time, with my laptop on the couch with me.

Powered by the real-time web platform Echo (whose website was down as of writing — Google cache here), Breaking Bad Story Sync proved to be a relatively entertaining mix of photos, video, polls and flashbacks, cleverly tied to the on-screen action — a great way to engage fans. But it was also, at times, a crass effort to get people watching ads — while watching ads, on top of ads.

The episode, “Gliding Over All,” began with anti-hero Walter White (Bryan Cranston) gazing intently at a fly — Story Sync began by reminding us about the 3rd season episode where Walt was super-obsessed with a fly in the lab…

…before moving on, a few minutes later, to poll viewers on whether or not the shocking murder which ended last week’s episode was necessary.

(For not the last time, the poll showed that an overwhelming majority of people are no longer rooting for Walt.)

One more poll popped up before we reached the first commercial break of the episode, at which point I expected to see some bonus content to keep those normally used to a DVR experience from getting twitchy. Instead, we got this:

Yeah, that’s a banner ad right above another ad.

There were three more ads for the SRT over the course of the Story Sync experience, turning my two-screen viewing experience into two screens of commercials. In addition, when I clicked to watch a video replay of a violent prisoner-shanking montage (which was the StorySync update immediately following that montage airing on TV), the video began with a 30-second pre-roll ad — for Breaking Bad.

Yo dawg, I heard you like “Breaking Bad” so I put an ad for “Breaking Bad” in your “Breaking Bad” Story Sync experience.

Overall, the technology powering the service performed well — there were no lags in updates, no loading issues, and the interactive elements were glitch-free. I also liked the subtle “tock” noise which indicated an update — just enough to alert you without being distracting.

Beyond the technology, though, watching with Story Sync had two strong benefits: First, the polls and quizzes, which at times lacked subtlety:

But did offer some fun interactivity:

Second: The flashbacks and reminders of past episodes, which were timed perfectly with the on-screen action. If you’ve never watched Breaking Bad, know that it’s a show which loves thematic callbacks and inside jokes, a fact which Story Sync celebrated all episode long:

The biggest drawback to a second-screen experience on a drama like Breaking Bad is that like many sophisticated dramas, there are often big moments that are played quietly. Which is to say that I was looking at my stupid computer when, on screen, it was revealed that Walt had brought along his trusty vial of ricin poison to his meeting with a potentially expendable contact — a big character and plot moment, and one that I completely missed.

In fact, I didn’t learn about it until the next day, when I read one of the many blog recaps of the episode. Instead, I thought that the Story Sync update which followed that scene was foreshadowing ricin’s appearance.

Despite that unfortunate glitch, I overall found the whole experience intriguing, especially those moments which proved that whoever was behind the experience had some snark in them:

Second-screen viewing is definitely not a fad, and leaning into the curve of distracted audiences isn’t a bad strategy, especially when you can also simultaneously encourage real-time engagement. And given that Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan has said he’s worried about how DVRing affects the current TV business model, it’s hardly a surprise that this show is one of the first to play with this combination of elements.

The next time we might see Story Sync again will be when The Walking Dead returns for Season 3 this October (it originally launched during Dead‘s second season last spring). But while my first experience was interesting, I’m not sure it was compelling enough to make me forego using my DVR for future AMC programming — especially given the additional ads that came with it.

Perhaps it’s enough to just watch a TV show — especially when it’s one of the best shows on television. Perhaps I’m more old-fashioned than I thought.


from GigaOM http://gigaom.com/video/can-breaking-bads-story-sync-get-viewers-to-give-up-t...

2012 MTV Video Music Awards: 2nd Most Social TV Event of All Time!

Last night’s MTV Video Music Awards amassed an enormous 12.8 million social media comments, making it the second most social TV event of all time, behind the 54th Annual Grammy Awards (13.0M).

This year’s show had numerous social TV integrations: nomination announcements in August via Twitter, an online Twitter Tracker that showcased the moments and topics being discussed most, and even a live social vote for the “Most Share-Worthy Video,” which was won by One Direction.

On top of that, many of the stars encouraged the social conversation by live-Tweeting colorful commentary and behind-the-scenes pictures.

Here’s a little taste of what I’m bringing to the #vma tonight!instagr.am/p/PQGMcUQFnL/

— Alicia Keys (@aliciakeys) September 6, 2012

The biggest spike in social commentary of the night occurred during Frank Ocean‘s performance of “Thinkin Bout You.”  Many viewers tweeted their adoration, and some questioned why he didn’t win more awards.

Dang, Frank Ocean gave me goosebumps with his performance of Thinkin’ Bout You.

— iBarry (@barryvernon24) September 7, 2012

Here’s the full social TV infographic:

from BostInno http://bostinno.com/channels/2012-mtv-video-music-awards-2nd-most-social-tv-e...