If you’ve ever seen that oft-passed-around LumaScapes slide on the display advertising landscape, you know it’s a crowded and fragmented industry. And that slide only includes a fraction of the companies operating in digital media today. (Luma Partners has seven slides more that break out players in video, gaming, commerce and other key sectors in digital.)
That growth indicates “a tremendous amount of innovation,” said Luma Partners CEO and founder Terence Kawaja. But he asked: “Is that a situation that can continue or does it need to change?”
In a presentation on digital advertising’s “state of the state” during Federated Media’s Conversational Marketing Summit Monday, he said that there are 1,400 companies featured across his company’s eight sector-specific slides. Each of those companies, or at least the bigger ones, are building their own sales teams, business development plans and technology, to each sell their own unique solution that isn’t operable with others, Kawaja continued.
While the industry wouldn’t want to quash the innovation, he floated the idea of addressing what he called the “rationalization” issue through standardization. Just like mobile technology has its Android and iOS platforms, Kawaja said, digital advertising could have its own operating system.
“Many other industries have benefited greatly by having an operating system, a common platform upon which other companies can build their tools,” he said.
Another potential solution to this problem could come through consolidation. Over the past few years, merger and acquisition activity hasn’t only picked up, it’s attracted interest from a wider group of potential buyers. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo used to be the “usual suspects” in driving M&A in online media. But as the field has become more data-driven and scientific, it’s started to include new players from marketing, technology and commerce, he said.
Facebook’s upcoming IPO, he added, will “fundamentally change this industry from the perspective of M&A, rationalization and consolidation.” Not that Facebook itself is going to quickly pick off a bunch of new companies, Kawaja said, “but just their presence, their currency, their ability to grow organically.”
In addition to rationalization, he highlighted two other key themes: big data and automation. In 2009, programmatic media buying didn’t even in exist, he noted. But, according to IDC, in 2010 companies spent $352 million on real-time bidding. By the end of 2012, that is expected to reach $1.975 million and, in 2015, it’s projected to hit about $5 billion.
As for his highly-cited Lumascape slide, Kawaja said it’s been cited in six books and a Harvard Business School case study (not to mention countless conference presentations and sales decks). It’s also received more than 350,000 views online, from people in 116 countries.
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from GigaOM http://gigaom.com/2012/05/14/does-digital-advertising-need-its-own-operating-...

We’ve made the argument before that Twitter is effectively a media entity, distributing news and entertainment and other content to millions of readers in real time — although unlike traditional media entities, Twitter does this with anyone’s content rather than content it creates in-house. So far, the company has shied away describing itself as a media company, or exercising much editorial control over what it distributes, but there are some tantalizing signs that it may be moving in that direction. Could Twitter become a media player in its own right?
One element of Twitter’s potential mission appeared on Monday with the announcement of a weekly curated email that is designed to show users content they might be interested in from elsewhere in their social graph. The email is clearly an extension of the move towards curation that Twitter made when it acquired Summify earlier this year — and it both looks and sounds an awful lot like the missives that Summify sent out with similar highlighted content, a feature the company said was one of its most popular (News.me offers a similar type of daily newsletter).
Is Twitter hiring editors and producers to curate?
The second sign of what Twitter might have in mind came last week, when a job posting started making the rounds of journalism mailing lists and Twitter streams: namely, an opening for a “sports producer” who could help curate interesting news-related content around sports events. A Twitter spokeswoman suggested that the job was just another part of the media-evangelism task force that works with the company’s various potential media partners to highlight best practices — in other words, nothing special.
Still, it’s interesting to think about what might come next: Is Twitter planning to hire other types of editors in different fields? Does it want to try and create a BuzzFeed-type of offering, where it highlights interesting content being shared by users? The company isn’t saying, but it wouldn’t be a crazy idea — as we’ve discussed before, people desperately need better filters and curation to sift through the massive streams of information that are flowing past us all day every day, and Twitter is in a perfect position to provide them. But does it want to do that, or is it happy to leave that to others?

If it really wanted to, Twitter could not only use its own algorithms to generate aggregated content in interesting ways, it could start to accumulate a suite of tools that allow users and even journalists to do the same — whether it’s something like Storify or Storyful (which has a paid-for Pro version that helps media companies verify and fact-check the content they are collecting) or another curation/discovery service like Prismatic or Percolate, or even a consumption and recommendation app like Flipboard.
Being a platform is good — but Twitter may want more
At the moment, Twitter seems to be trying to walk a tightrope of sorts between being a media entity and being a platform that is used by other media players. Being a platform or a tool is good, because it means that the company can form all kinds of valuable partnerships with traditional media entities such as broadcasters and TV networks and movie studios — the kind that Chloe Sladden, head of Twitter’s media group, has gotten a lot of attention for. But platforms don’t always generate large amounts of revenue.
Part of the sales job for the media deals it strikes with broadcasters is that Twitter makes a great “second screen” experience for things like the Olympics, etc. So media conglomerates can incorporate Twitter into shows like The X Factor, and it increases the engagement between the audience and the content, and everybody wins. If Twitter were to start looking and acting too much like a media company itself — producing content or curating it in such a way that it added a lot of value — some media partners might theoretically see it as competition rather than a platform partner.
In a sense, this is the same kind of tightrope that YouTube has had to negotiate: it used to be just a carrier of content, and most of it was user-generated and of little interest to major media players — the only time they cared about YouTube was when it infringed on their copyright and they could launch a lawsuit. But then the network started creating its own channels and content, at the same time as it was trying to sell the networks and studios on its value as a place for long-form video.
Obviously, Twitter isn’t likely to suddenly start producing movies or books based on tweets, so the competitive aspect at least for TV networks is minimal (which could be why that was the first place Twitter started looking for media partnerships). But when it comes to the kind of content that newspapers and magazines are interested in, Twitter looks more like a potential competitor — especially if it gets really good at either aggregating/curating information in real time and/or recommending it.
Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr user See-ming Lee
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from GigaOM http://gigaom.com/2012/05/14/twitter-tiptoes-further-into-the-media-business/...
Youtoo, which bills itself as the world’s first Social TV Network, has just released a new Facebook app that allows users to be on TV.
Youtoo launched in 2011 and is a cable network with a social twist. Users can record their own video responses to on-air cues and see themselves on TV. Users can also post their text comments about a show for on-air inclusion.
To date, the network has broadcast more than 90,000 viewer videos. Realty TV God Mark Burnett is an investor in Youtoo and sees huge potential in bridging the gap between TV viewers and on-air content.
Youtoo already has mobile apps for iOS and Android that allow users to record 15-seconds of video and share them with the network. Now, the company is adding the ability for users to upload video directly from Facebook.
Users can respond to a question posed by the television program and Youtoo app and then record their response directly from Facebook. That response then shows up on the user’s Timeline.
If approved and scheduled to air, Youtoo will send the user a message with the date and time of their TV appearance. For users who might miss their moment in the spotlight — or want to share it with others — Youtoo also creates, air checks and recorded video of the live showing, which is shareable via Facebook.
In essence, Youtoo is kind of like Viddy or SocialCam, but with the ability to share those clips on TV.
Youtoo Technology is Coming to More Shows and Networks
Although Youtoo is available in more than 15 million cable households, CEO Chris Wyatt really sees the network and the website as a way to test new products and technologies. Youtoo then works with television producers and networks to integrate those technologies into the shows themselves.
“Youtoo is a software company that just happens to have a TV network as its testbed,” Wyatt says. The goal is to develop technology that others can then whitelabel and customize for their own uses.
This is important — because while Youtoo’s current programming structure includes shows that can benefit from direct fan interaction, the real power is with shows that can integrate the functionality at a more granular level.
Youtoo’s style of social interaction — especially with video prompts, could be a great fit for talk shows and courtroom shows. That way instead of asking users to sound off on Facebook at the end of a Judge Joe Brown segment, the announcer could also show text from viewers or video reactions.
Wyatt tells us that Youtoo’s technology — including the new Facebook app — will be powering dozens of shows this fall.
More About: Facebook, social tv, social video, viddy, youtoo For more Entertainment coverage: 
from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/05/15/youtoo-facebook-app/?utm_source=feedburner&utm...
Although the NBA Playoffs round two Lakers vs. Nuggets game earned over 2 million more social media mentions than The Voice, the latter’s season finale caused quite a large ripple in the social ocean.
People took to the socialverse last Tuesday to chat about and celebrate the reality show competition’s winner, Jermaine Paul. A former backup singer to Alicia Keys and Mary J. Blige, Paul finally earned his own celebrity bragging rights by wowing both judges and viewers.
The runners-up also performed their closing songs during the two-hour finale, and famous acts like Daryl Hall and John Oates entertained the audience alongside pop stars like Justin Bieber, who sang his new single, “Boyfriend.”
SEE ALSO: Counting Crows Singer Adam Duritz: Twitter Changed My Life
The data is compliments of our friends at Trendrr, who measure specific TV show activity (mentions, likes, check-ins) across Twitter, Facebook, GetGlue and Miso. To see daily rankings, check out Trendrr.TV.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, subjug
More About: Entertainment, infographics, Social Media, social tv, social tv charts, Trendrr, TV For more Entertainment coverage: 
from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/05/15/social-media-tv-chart-5-15/?utm_source=feedbur...
The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.
Name: GiddyUp
Quick Pitch: GiddyUp is a new way to invite friends out to brunch, drinks after work or for any impromptu event.
Genius Idea: The mobile application lets party planners skip long emails and bypass lengthy event invites on social networks. Instead, Giddyup lets users send SMS invitations to their Apple and Android phone contacts.
GiddyUp is a mobile app created by friends Elliot Goldwater and John Zurbach who were looking for a better way to get friends together. Plans often were disrupted when Facebook invites would go unseen or when texts were lost.
“It really was an erosion of patience over time,” said GiddyUp co-founder Goldwater. “We got sick of text messages, emails and calling back and forth trying to get a few friends together. It’s a problem that resonated with everybody.”
Unlike other social-event platforms, GiddyUp uses the contacts list within your phone rather than integrating personal Facebook or Twitter friend lists, which are frequently incomplete. People generally carry the phone numbers of their closest friends and family, say the creators.
“We pull directly from your contacts list, which we think is your truest social network,” he said. “Those are the people you rely on, at the last minute, or on any given Friday to meet up with on a whim.”
Users may be wary about using their phone contacts within the app because of privacy concerns. However, that should be an issue, according to Goldwater. Contacts ultimately stay local to your phone and aren’t uploaded anywhere. All event information — such as your future whereabouts — are also guarded.
“All events and related data are stored safely on our database behind authorization walls,” Goldwater said. “We do not look at or parse through individual’s data.”
The simple phone interface has three tabs — Home, Create and FAQ. On the main page, users can view the events that they will attend and access the individual chat bar within the event invite. The recipients of the SMS invite do not need to download the app to access the details. However, you’ll need to download the app to access the chat feature within the invitation.

Generate a GiddyUp invite by selecting the recipients from the contact list in your Apple or Android phone. Users may include details such as location, date, time and notes.
The app launched two weeks ago after more than a year of development. The team has bootstrapped the project to this point and is now looking for investors.
GiddyUp distinguishes itself from other event-planning apps. The GiddyUp team wanted to build a platform that didn’t require extra time to sign in or download yet another app. As a startup, Goldwater wanted to make sure interested users were able to use the app without waiting for a large number of friends to sign on.
“We tried to lower the hurdles or barriers to user adoption,” Goldwater tells Mashable.
The developers also wanted to introduce the app onto the iOS and Android market at the same time. The creators noted most app developers typically devote time creating one market’s app and completely ignoring users on the other platform.
The team is focused on building their userbase. Future business models may revolve around in-app deals, contextual advertising and lending out the software for different applications in the event-planning field.
“Traditionally you think of Evite, Facebook events and Paperless Posts as the traditional medium for planning events — birthday parties, wedding showers and more formal things,” he said. “What we want to capture is everything from what’s happening later tonight, leading up and including those events.”
Image courtesy of Flickr, karramarro
Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark
The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.
More About: android, application, bizspark, iphone, Mobile For more Business coverage: 
from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/05/14/giddyup-app/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=...
NBC may have been criticised for not streaming enough Olympics Games – but, in the U.K., the BBC plans to stream all 2,500 hours of this summer’s London 2012 events (up from 1,500 in 2008), in what it’s calling “the first proper digital Olympics.”
“It’s the first time our audience gets total control,” BBC News & Knowledge GM Phil Fearnley said during a Tuesday briefing, in which executives showed products demonstrating already-announced plans to offer 24 alternate live HD streams (up from six in 2008).
“We’ve tested it every day for months,” Fearnley said. “The biggest single event we’ve ever seen was in the World Cup when England played Slovenia. Take that and double it – that’s what we’ve been planning for the Olympics.”
- A new video player built for the recently-upgraded BBC Sport website will offer rewindable live action, alerts to key alternate live moments and participant information.
- Web pages will include data-driven profiles and Twitter feeds of competing athletes and viewers’ Twitter sentiment.
- The BBC is also working on iOS and Android apps plus a mobile website.
- A standardised connected TV application will offer live and catch-up video to Sony Smart TV, PlayStation 3, Video TiVo and other platforms yet to be announced.
Much of the BBC’s digital Olympics offering is merely the result of the continuous iterative product development that the corporation undergoes. The platforms that have been built are also expected to be redeployed for upcoming live events including Euro 2012 and Wimbledon.
“You don’t need to be a genius to work out that Glastonbury [the huge annual U.K. music festival] would be a good example,” added the BBC’s product head for Sport and London 2012, Cait O’Riordan.
Aside from live, events will be available to watch via the BBC for more than the standard iPlayer catch-up window of seven days. “The IOC sets the rights window – it’s longer than seven days,” O’Riordan said.
Deltatre, Massive, Magnetic North, Adobe and Atos have been amongst the private-sector recipients of outsourcing contracts in the project.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/emp/external/player.swf
Release.
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from GigaOM http://paidcontent.org/2012/05/15/bbcolympics/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medi...
http://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F46454344&auto_play=false&show_artwork=true&color=ff3500
Phil Fearnley isn’t sure which will be the most used of the “four screens” identified for delivering Olympics coverage this summer – Web, mobile, tablet or connected TV.
But the BBC News & Knowledge general manager is promising a buzzphrase right on-message with London games organisers themselves – “legacy”.
“We don’t know how people are going to consume it, but we’re going to make sure they get the best possible experience they can,” Fearnley told paidContent, after showing off BBC Sport’s Olympics web video player, data feeds, connected TV services and mobile apps.
“We believe that connected TVs will be a really big part of the future. We have delivered on Red Button services for years, sporting events have been a big part of that – we get 10 to 13 million unique users a week on Red Button services.”
Fearnley refused, when asked, to elaborate on digital Olympics costs incurred by the BBC, which has faced funding cuts after years of budget envy from commercial rivals.
Instead, he promised developments would have “legacy” – a term plucked right from the playbook of London’s own Olympic organisers, who have been building costly sporting stadia, during public spending cutbacks, to last.
“We never share cost figures,” Fearnley said. “We have value-for-money in mind for our license payers. We are making sure the things that we do can be used way beyond the Olympic Games.
“We delivered the Sport (website) refresh six months before. We delivered our streaming services so we can do Wimbledon, F1 and the Diamond Jubilee post-Olympics, making sure that legacy gets to our audience as soon as we possibly can.”
On Tuesday, he told a briefing: ”Much like the velodrome and the aquatics centre, that were built with lasting legacy at their core, we have built our online experience to leave a lasting digital legacy for our audiences.”
A mixture of earlier incremental product innovation and Olympics-specific new builds, the corporation’s online games platforms will later be re-deployed on other sporting events and music concerts like the Glastonbury festival.
For the new products which are being brought to the table, the 2012 Olympic Games is a dry run for far smaller use cases to come.
Coupled with this year’s Jubilee coverage, Auntie believes it must fulfil its remit to galvanise the nation. All in all, 2012 is a very big year for the BBC, as well as for Britain.
“Do I feel pressured?,” Fearnley asked paidContent. “I feel comforted by the team we’ve got here. This is the most comprehensive testing we’ve ever done at Online, we’ve very confident.”
“It’s the first time our audience gets total control,” Fearnley said during Tuesday’s briefing.
“We’ve tested it every day for months. The biggest single event we’ve ever seen was in the World Cup when England played Slovenia. Take that and double it – that’s what we’ve been planning for the Olympics.”
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from GigaOM http://paidcontent.org/2012/05/15/philfearnley/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_med...

Here at TUAW on the tipline, we have heard no end of complaints about MobileMe. Some days, it seems like every other tip is about how much of a mess MobileMe email is. Which is probably why Apple is finally shutting the service down in a month or so, transitioning over to the new iCloud instead. But as TidBITS notes, MobileMe users will still be able to use their email addresses even after the service is gone: All you'll have to do is follow the instructions on the transitions page to set an option on the main site, and then you'll be able to keep accessing your MobileMe email even after the transition.
My advice? Unless you're thrilled with MobileMe, it's time to move on to one of the many great free email services, of which Gmail is my first recommendation. Yes, changing your email address is a pain, and there are probably some of you out there on so many lists and services that you'll stick with MobileMe as long as you can. But if you want my advice, use this opportunity to get out while you can. Good luck! How to keep MobileMe mail working after iCloud turns it off originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 14 May 2012 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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from TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog http://www.tuaw.com/2012/05/14/how-to-keep-mobileme-mail-working-after-icloud...
MrSeb writes "A group of American researchers from MIT, Indiana University, and Tufts University, led by Erin Treacy Solovey, have developed Brainput — a system that can detect when your brain is trying to multitask, and offload some of that workload to a computer. Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), which is basically a portable, poor man's version of fMRI, Brainput measures the activity of your brain. This data is analyzed, and if Brainput detects that you're multitasking, the software kicks in and helps you out. In the case of the Brainput research paper (PDF), Solovey and her team set up a maze with two remotely controlled robots. The operator, equipped with fNIRS headgear, has to navigate both robots through the maze simultaneously, constantly switching back and forth between them. When Brainput detects that the driver is multitasking, it tells the robots to use their own sensors to help with navigation. Overall, with Brainput turned on, operator performance improved — and yet they didn't generally notice that the robots were partially autonomous. Moving forward, Solovey wants to investigate other cognitive states that can be reliably detected using fNIRS. Imagine a computer that increases the size of buttons and text when you're tired, or a video game that slows down when you're stressed. Your Xbox might detect that you're in the mood for fighting games, and change its splash screen accordingly. Eventually, computer interfaces might completely remold themselves to your mental state." Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
from Slashdot http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/05/14/1458256/brainput-boosts-your-brai...
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