Here are the most interesting articles that came across this week…
TiVo Shifts to Help Companies It Once Threatened
During the last two weeks, there were several promising developments for TiVo, which accounts for about 4 million of the more than 20 million digital video recorders in American homes.
On Nov. 28, the company reported a smaller quarterly loss than anticipated ($8.2 million, down from $11.1 million a year ago) and the next day, the Patent and Trademark Office recognized TiVo’s patent on time-warp technology, which lets users record one program while watching another. Shares of TiVo, which started the two-week period at $5.60 on Nov. 26, hit a 52-week high of $8.53 a share on Friday, before closing at $8.20.
TiVo recently announced partnerships with NBC Universal and Carat, a media-buying agency, to provide second-by-second viewership data and demographic ratings information collected from a sample of 20,000 TiVo subscribers. Those deals underscored TiVo’s new emphasis on subscriptions and media services rather than hardware.
Tom Rogers, the chief executive of TiVo, said in an interview that its information services would be supplementing, but not replacing, its equipment business.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/technology/10tivo.html?ref=media
The New LinkedIn Platform Shows Facebook How It's Done
A social network showdown is coming. LinkedIn, which aims to track your business and professional connections, has rolled out a new developer platform and already the majority of the web press is comparing LinkedIn's efforts Facebook's platform. It's a fair comparison, but there's one key difference between the two — LinkedIn's platform is actually useful.
Where Facebook’s platform provides a proprietary programming language for developers to build applications that run inside the site (so you can send you friends a fresh pair of virtual diapers or whatever), LinkedIn has created a platform in the sense of what the word used to mean — a way of mixing, mashing, repurposing and sharing your data. Think Flickr, not Facebook.
The LinkedIn platform, known as the LinkedIn Intelligent Application Platform, consists of two parts, a way for developers to build application that run inside your LinkedIn account (via OpenSocial) and the far more useful and interesting part — ways to pull your LinkedIn data out and use it elsewhere.
http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/12/the-new-linkedi.html
The directors' cut
Any hopes that the strike of the Writers' Guild of America might end quickly are gone, baby, gone. Friday night, having promised a counter to the latest Writers' Guild proposal on new media, negotiators for the companies - the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) - returned with an ultimatum that the writers withdraw a number of their proposals unilaterally, and then walked out before the writers could formulate a reply.
To anyone other than a company publicist - and in this category one would have to include virtually all of the entertainment industry press - it has become clear that any and all indications that a reasonable and early settlement might be possible were Machiavellian good cop/bad cop charades enacted by the companies to break the writers' resolve by raising and then dashing hopes, as well as providing cover for their refusal to engage in serious negotiations.
The first month of the strike has been something of a surprise in a couple of ways. Very few people thought, in the months leading up to the strike, that the writers would have any success. Most, I think, expected them to fold quickly. Why?
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jeremy_pikser/2007/12/the_directors_cut.html
If past is prologue, innovation will change how we live, work, and play—in ways we can't even imagine today. This will happen with or without the
There are already plenty of places ready to claim production as their own (
‘Jackass’ to shake up film distribution
“Most of the content being consumed on the web has been short form,” said Mr Lesinski. “The fact that this is long form, and it’s free, makes this compelling.”
“Most people online get their stuff for free,” said David Gale, executive vice-president of new media for MTV Networks’ Music Group. “The record companies and the TV companies have figured that out. We weren’t going to buck the trend.”
Nothing terribly lucrative there, but that's not too surprising:
Nevertheless, people are experimenting with new models to change that, not by fighting piracy but by building businesses around free music. Among the smart people who are innovating in new music models, from sponsored music sites for up-and-coming bands to aggregators that are much more music-centric than the generic Baidu, is Ed Peto. This British former A&R guy, now based in
http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2007/12/china-the-futur.html
Writers Propose Independent Negotiations
Faced with the indefinite suspension of negotiations, the union representing striking Hollywood writers told its members Saturday it would try to deal directly with
The news was welcomed by the company that produces David Letterman's "Late Show," which said it hoped to broker a deal that would put the talk show host and his writers back to work.
Talks broke off Dec. 7 after the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the studios, insisted it would not bargain further unless the Writers Guild of America dropped proposals that included the authority to unionize writers on reality shows and animation projects.
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/12/16/ap4445040.html
Embrace the Edge -- or Perish
For now, we'll leave you with some bottom-line guidelines for venturing out on the edge:
• Engage. Too often, executives get intrigued with the edge and arrange field visits to explore this strange terrain. Insight rarely comes from such casual visits. Instead, executives need to identify and focus on challenging business issues to engage edge participants productively and drive real insight.
• Sustain relationships on the edge. A lot of the current effort in open innovation focuses on short-term transactions to gain access to existing resources. To get the full value of the learning that's occurring on the edge, executives need to find ways to build long-term, trust-based relationships with edge participants.
• Bring the edge to the core. In too many cases, companies set up remote outposts on the edge that become isolated and alienated from the core of the business. Senior executives need to identify challenges confronted by the core where insights from the edge can be helpful and sponsor initiatives to bring participants from both domains together around these issues.
Marketers Focus More On Global 'Tribes Than on Nationalities
Executives seeking to expand their companies' global reach long have focused on tailoring products to fit the local tastes of consumers in different countries. Increasingly, however, they also have a strong sense of the commonality of their global consumers. As the world shrinks, especially for young, Internet-savvy consumers, they must now also cater to particular subcultures of customers who share very similar outlooks, styles and aspirations despite their different nationalities and languages.
"We're seeing global tribes forming around the world that are more and more interconnected through technology," says Melanie Healey, president, Global Health and Feminine Care at Procter & Gamble,
Among these tribes: teenagers from every continent who socialize on the Internet and like the same music and fashions, working women trying to juggle careers and families, and baby boomers. "If you focus on the similarities instead of the differences [in these tribes], key business opportunities emerge," says Ms. Healey.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119723914006118687.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace
The Internet. The TV.
What's the holdup? Generally speaking, the video players are just too complicated to hook up, too expensive and too limited in what they can do. There are skeptics, too, who think Internet video players are trying to solve a problem that simply doesn't exist -- especially as cable companies enhance on-demand video services.
"The issue with these next-generation set-top boxes is they're hard to use, hard to install and the return on investment isn't particularly large because the content is available elsewhere," says Mike Volpi, CEO of
Still, tech companies can't stay away from the idea, because of the booming popularity of Internet video. In August, Internet users in the
Users watched more than a quarter of those videos on Google Inc.'s YouTube, but online video from traditional entertainment companies is exploding, too. Over the past two years, broadcasters have begun streaming nearly all of their most popular shows free with advertisements on their Web sites. (A stream doesn't allow users to keep a permanent copy of the show.) NBC alone says it streamed 50 million shows from its site during October.
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