Hulu just announced a major content partnership with HBO for its Japanese subscription service that will make episodes of shows like Entourage, Sex and the City and The Sopranos available to Japanese audiences. Shows will be available on Hulu Japan for a limited time, and the release will be staggered: Viewers will be able to watch the first season of Sex and the City starting in July and through September, with episodes of the second season becoming available in August and the third season popping up on the service in September.
Hulu’s SVP of International Johannes Larcher announced the deal on the company’s blog, where he also said that the content offered by Hulu Japan has grown by 300 percent since its launch less than a year ago. From his blog post:
“The amount of content available to subscribers overall has increased by more than 300% since the service launched in September 2011. There are now more than 800 films and nearly 6,900 TV show episodes from 24 content providers. And we have continued to heavily invest in creating original subtitles for TV shows that have never before been available in Japan, including new series like “Sons of Anarchy”, “The Office” and “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia.”
Hulu’s Japanese service is subscription-only, and the company lowered its price earlier this year to increase demand. Larcher said that Hulu now has 19 people working in Japan.
U.S. users of Hulu shouldn’t hold their breath for HBO content coming to the service any time soon. The shows added to the Japanese catalog are all part of the DVD window, and HBO has been successfully established its own online service HBO Go in the U.S. – and access to that offering is limited to cable TV subscribers who also pay for HBO access as part of their cable bill.
Plans to introduce new measures that will limit the visibility of hate speech and trolling on Twitter are underway, the Financial Times reports. Leadership has sought to maintain its devotion to free speech — a premise on which the company was founded — yet management has become increasingly discontent with the flood of hate speech and trolling that inundate the social service. Twitter’s governance hopes to strike a happy medium between the two goals.
The pseudonym debate
One proposal is to hide replies from users who lack credibility — those with no followers, profile information, or photo — but management is concerned that this could subdue two of the biggest factors making Twitter so socially influential: free speech and anonymity.
The reason we want to allow pseudonyms is there are lots of places in the world where it’s the only way you’d be able to speak freely
The flipside of that is it also emboldens these trolls … how do you make sure you are both emboldening people to speak politically but making it OK to be on the platform and not endure all this hate speech? It’s very frustrating.
Tweets must flow
Twitter’s “tweets must flow” mantra has enabled incredible social movements like the Arab Spring, but also allowed for relentless streams of hatred towards public figures.
One such incident came at the end of April after the Boston Bruins lost a Game 7 playoff game to the Washington Capitals on an overtime goal by African-American player Joel Ward. Immediately after the game ended, the “Twitterverse” was inundated with racist and discriminatory comments.
In the United Kingdom, a student was sentenced to 56 days in prison after sending a racist tweet to Barclay’s Premier League soccer player Fabrice Muamba.
Finding a middle ground that maintains Twitter’s ideals yet limits abuse won’t be easy. But, as appalling incidents continue to occur, Twitter increasingly feels the need to make changes.
BlueStacks announced a public alpha version of their Android App Player for the Mac today at Google I/O.
The company had originally released a beta version of their App Player for Windows back in March. The software allows users to run Android apps directly on their Windows PCs, and the newest version begins to extend that functionality to the Mac.
While the Windows version allows you to run any Android app without modification, the early Mac version seems to be limited to 15 initial apps that comes bundled with the download. The bundled apps include Air Control Lite, Alchemy, Basketball Shot, Drag Racing, Elastic World, Facebook, Glow Hockey, Guns'n'Glory, Paper Toss, Pulse, Robo Defense, Seesmic, Twitter, Whatsapp, and Zebra Paint.
Their support page claims that "in the very near future", they plan on opening the Mac version up to over 400,000 Android apps:
The BlueStacks App Player for Mac OSX (alpha) supports both Lion and Snow Leopard. You can test drive a fixed set of curated apps for the first release (alpha-1). In the very near future, BlueStacks will let you select from over 400,000 Android apps to play on your Mac.
Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire is excited about the Apple TV and its future. The head of the video publishing powerhouse recently presented the idea of an apps-driven platform that relies on AirPlay to share content between the Apple TV and other Apple hardware. iOS devices, Allaire says, will become "the next-generation TV set-top box" and will bring "hundreds of thousands and soon millions of rich interactive applications and experiences onto your TV set."
To bring this new way to interact with the TV one step closer to reality, Brightcove has introduced the App Cloud Dual-Screen Solution for Apple TV. The technology will let iOS users use AirPlay to stream a show to their HDTV, while simultaneously interacting with information about the show. You could, for example, watch an episode of History's Mountain Men and read trivia about the adventurers in the show at the same time. The solution includes a software development kit that'll let developers easily create dual-screen AirPlay-enabled apps. You can watch a demonstration of the technology in the video below.
Brightcove announced today the introduction of App Cloud Core, a free edition of the company's app platform that allows developers to create native iOS apps using HTML5 and JavaScript. In addition, one of the major new features of the API is the ability for developers to easily create dual-screen apps for iOS devices to broadcast content to the Apple TV over AirPlay.
The new solution enables media publishers to develop rich content apps for the iPhone and iPad that simultaneously control content, data and information presented on an HDTV while displaying synchronized content on the iPad or iPhone. The unique dual-screen solution leverages Apple's AirPlay technology, which allows viewers to use applications that simultaneously present content, interactive options and data on both the touch device and an Apple TV.
This ability to broadcast separate content to a user's device and Apple TV is not new (Real Racing 2 HD Demo), but the new APIs provide another easy way for developers to implement these features. Brightcove offers this demo of how it can be used:
Lego has allied itself with Google's Chrome browser, creating a web app that lets users craft their own houses, creatures and models, and then delicately place them across the whole of Australia and New Zealand. Celebrating 50 years of pre-teen Lego architecture in the Land Down Under, you can grab a plot of land from the source, start throwing some bricks together now and share your creations on the very public map and Google+. According to the Australia's Daily Telegraph, Lego Build hopes to roll out globally through Chrome later this year, but one continent should keep us busy until Google's I/O conference kicks off later this week.
Twitter is planning to introduce its advertising products to nearly 50 more countries as it seeks additional revenue outside of the U.S., Twitter executives announced at a festival in Cannes, France, Thursday morning.
According to a Twitter spokesperson, Twitter's Promoted ads suite -- which includes Promoted Tweets, Promoted Trends and Promoted Accounts -- will roll out in Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain, Italy, Germany, France and the Netherlands later this year. Promoted ads are currently only available to marketers in the U.S., UK and Japan.
Part of the reason why the smart TV hasn’t caught on as a dominant connected device in the living room is that competing manufacturers have introduced a confusing array of technology platforms.
This has made it challenging for developers to make apps that can run on a large cross-section of these televisions.
But on Wednesday, manufacturers LG Electronics and TP Vision (which makes Philips-branded smart TV sets in a number of territories) announced the formation of the Smart TV Alliance.
The group’s mission: to create a set of open HTML-based standards so that application developers can make apps that run across smart TV brands.
The group says other Japanese manufacturers (Sony? Sharp?) are in the process of joining its alliance.
“The Smart TV Alliance creates a larger playing field which encourages developers to create more and better TV applications at the same time giving manufacturers and consumers the richest source of movies-on-demand, music services, games, social networking and more,” said said Bong-seok Kwon of LG Electronics, president of Smart TV Alliance, in a statement.
The group is making the first version of its software development kit available for free on its site.
Using the television as a primary device to connect the living room to the internet would seem like a no-brainer. But according to a study released Wednesday by the NPD Group, consumers actually seem to prefer other devices like Blu-ray players to perform that task.
According to the NPD report, 80 percent of Blu-ray users who connect their boxes to the internet actually use them to access such things as over-the-top TV programming. Only 69 percent of smart TV users who have connections do the same.
Netflix may change its model and urge UK’s media and anti-trust regulators to launch a second movie monopoly probe against BSkyB if it cannot wrestle top film rights from the News Corp outfit there by summer 2013.
The Competition Commission in May provisionally ruled that Sky Movies’ exclusive deals for six Hollywood studios’ films do not overly dominate the UK market for first pay-TV subscription window (FPTSW) movie rights.
That conclusion was a reversal of the commission’s earlier decision and was based on the recent and future arrival, since the investigation began, of IPTV movie services from Netflix itself, Lovefilm and Sky’s own upcoming Now TV service.
In its response to the conclusion, published on Wednesday, Netflix, which launched in the UK and Ireland in January, says that conclusion is “dangerous”, arguing:
“Despite the entry of Netflix and Lovefilm’s presence in the UK, Sky continues to hold a near monopsony (sic) on the acquisition of these rights.
“While Netflix intends to continue to compete vigorously against Sky for content, including FSPTW content, it remains the case that none of Sky’s competitors currently have meaningful FSPTW content from the major studios.
“If, in the upcoming year, it becomes apparent that Netflix and other Sky competitors are not able to obtain significant FSPTW rights from the major studios, this may demonstrate that continuing market dominance by Sky has resulted in Netflix having to find other routes to the acquisition of FSPTW content—other routes which avoid head to head competition with Sky for the acquisition of rights which Sky wishes to obtain in order to maintain the market position of Sky Movies.
“Netflix believes it would be irresponsible and dangerous for the CC (Competition Commission to simply conclude at this point that any AEC (adverse effect on competition) arising from the dominance of Sky in the acquisition of FSPTW rights will be offset by new competition emerging for these rights from Netflix and Lovefilm.
“For this reason, Netflix is strongly of the view that the CC should now expressly anticipate a further review in one year’s time. This would allow Ofcom and if necessary, the CC to review whether the emergence of OTT SVOD services in the UK has in fact created strong competition for Sky Movies by recruiting subscribers at the retail level, and, in particular whether this has actually resulted in erosion of Sky’s market power as an acquirer of FSPTW rights.”
The submission, Netflix’s first to the investigation which began in August 2010, is an interesting insight in to how it regards its chances of success in the UK. Effectively, Netflix is giving itself a one-year run at outbidding Sky Movies for first-run rights – if it fails, it will call for regulators’ help.
The “other routes” referred to by Netflix are not clear but could include jointly bidding for shared rights against Sky, sub-licensing from Sky or flipping from subscription to a PPV model, for which rights – like those held by Tesco-owned Blinkbox – are easier to come by.
This is also a more cautious tone than the company previously struck on its entry to the UK, when CEO Reed Hastings told paidContent in January: “We could just bid against them (Sky). We are not dependent on whatever the Competition Commission does.” Netflix has spent heavily on other UK rights and a large marketing campaign but has not disclosed sign-ups so far.
In other responses to the Competition Commission’s revised provisional conclusion, BSkyB, NBC Universal and Paramount are supportive, but the British Film Institute and Consumer Focus expressed concern and NBCU suggested competition could become even greater than the commission has finally concluded…
British Film Institute:
“The CC appears to have overturned almost five years worth of analysis with undue haste on the basis of highly speculative market forecasts.”
“The reversal of position appears to be based on assumptions about the future growth of very new entrants to the video-on-demand market. Such growth is far from guaranteed.”
“VoD services cannot be accessed by people who do not use the internet” … ”As it stands, the impact of these new services (Lovefilm, Netflix and Now TV) is very small.”
“We urge the Commission to reconsider its position.”
Consumer Focus:
“Not convinced that material changes have occurred in the market which would remedy the lack of competition”
“Does not believe that competition between providers of movie services in relation to FSPTW rights has materially changed with the entry of Netflix to the UK market”
“Not convinced that the launch of Now TV would remedy the consumer detriment.”
NBC Universal:
“The Commission may be too conservative in its assessment that SVOD OTT services of LOVEFiLM and Netflix are unlikely to become close substitutes for bundled packages of traditional pay TV in the foreseeable future.”
“The evolving pace of competition between OTT services and traditional pay TV should not be underestimated, particularly given continuing growth in the smart TV sector.”
It has been fairly obvious for a few years that the search-driven, URL-centric web would converge with the web of social objects. It is something that is driving Google’s paranoia. It is also something Facebook dreams about. However, the company most likely to capture the opportunity is Twitter, the San Francisco-based company that started life as a micro-messaging company but has now evolved into a new kind of hybrid-media platform.
Twitter has been slowly transforming itself into a post-Google information company. In past few weeks alone it has unveiled expandable tweets, hashtag-based pages and other similar innovations. These embellishments to their core messaging offering show that it is Twitter, and not Facebook, that Google has to worry about.
Twitter’s search ambitions are becoming clearer with the people it is adding to its search team. For instance, it recently hired away John Wang, a well-known engineer in the search business from LinkedIn. In addition, the company added Ruslan Belkin as a Director of Engineering, Search and Relevance. Twitter has also made its search better, or at least faster, as it noted in a blog post. They have added related queries and spelling suggestions to their search.
Offering personalized search with more relevant results, surfacing related images and videos related to the query are somewhat reminiscent of the efforts made by Google on its search offering.
But just like Google’s idea of search was very different from the search offered by web directories such as Lycos and Yahoo, Twitter too has to re-imagine the idea of search.
The answer to that question for Twitter is its “discover” function. Honestly, discover could use a lot of help and improvement. On our touch-centric and voice enabled devices of the future, the idea of search has to be less textual. So Twitter as a company needs to be making it easy for us to surface all the information.
This post was updated at 12:44p.m. to clarify that Twitter recently introduced expandable tweets, not embedded tweets.