Here are the most interesting articles that came across this week…
Innovation lessons from Pixar: An interview with Oscar-winning director Brad Bird
Ten days before Ratatouille won its Oscar, we sat down with Bird at the Emeryville, California, campus of Pixar, which is now a subsidiary of Disney. Bird discussed the importance, in his work, of pushing teams beyond their comfort zones, encouraging dissent, and building morale. He also explained the value of “black sheep”—restless contributors with unconventional ideas. Although stimulating the creativity of animators might seem very different from developing new product ideas or technology breakthroughs, Bird’s anecdotes should stir the imagination of innovation-minded executives in any industry.
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Strategy/Innovation/Innovation_lessons_from_Pixar_An_interview_with_Oscar-winning_director_Brad_Bird_2127?gp=1
Life on the Edge: Learning from Facebook
These edges are fertile with innovation because participation requires such a small investment in time and money. Last fall, psychologist B. J. Fogg taught a class at Stanford University in which he assigned students to develop Facebook applications. During the 10 weeks of the class, 73 students developed applications such as Kiss Me, Oregon Trail, and Secret Admirer, that have since resulted in 25 million installs and, by the end of the class, were attracting about 1 million daily, active users. These applications have generated more than $500,000 in ad revenue since September. At least three companies were formed by students in the class.
Edges not only spawn product and service innovations; they also catalyze business-model innovations. On Facebook, for example, the fragmentation of development activity made it inevitable that brokers would emerge to help entrepreneurial application developers monetize the results of their programming efforts by connecting them with advertisers. One of the most prominent of these early brokers is SocialMedia, a company formed by Seth Goldstein, a serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist who recently migrated from Silicon Alley (the infotech neighborhood of Manhattan) to Silicon Valley.
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/apr2008/id2008042_809134.htm?chan=innovation_innovation+%2B+design_innovation+strategy
How Mickey Got His Groove Back
Credit for this astounding turnaround goes to Anne Sweeney, president of Disney-ABC Television Group since 2004, who joined the company after a stint as chairwoman and C.E.O. of FX Networks. “We found there was this huge demo that was too old for Nickelodeon and too young for MTV. We realized this was an opportunity for Disney to establish itself in the lives of these kids.”Sweeney has done more than that. She has made the Disney Channel the major profit driver in the company. Ten years ago, it was a stagnating pay-TV service that programmed for the kindergarten crowd in the morning and adults at night. Nickelodeon was closing in. But in 2007, Disney’s cable networks, including ESPN and the Disney Channel (a tween powerhouse), were the fastest-growing division in the House of Mouse, boosting the company’s media-division revenue 12 percent over the previous year, to more than $9 billion, and increasing income during the same period by an astonishing 19 percent, to $3.6 billion. (And those numbers don’t include the huge ancillary revenues that the franchises generate in the $2.3 billion consumer-products division.) The Disney Channel has been adding a million viewers a month—every month—for the past five years.
http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/04/14/Disneys-Evolving-Business-Model
Silicon Valley And Hollywood: Intersecting At Content
So what will make a successful Hollywood/Silicon Valley joint venture? The one that comes with a monetization model built in. Be it advertising, or an innovative subscription model, or a new easy to use pay-for-play model. Content producers already assume the risk of content being successful or not; that's a risk they are willing to accept. What producers cannot do is also assume the risk of failed monetization of their content that does become popular. A joint venture built to aggregate eyeballs will eventually collapse, as the hits won't be able to support the failures -- and it will continue to be difficult, if not impossible, to allocate the resources necessary to create episodic hits. Media is certainly in a very transitional state, with no sustainable model for content creation and monetization online, which is becoming a necessity as more and more attention shifts to the digital medium. But you know what they say about necessity and invention...
http://blogs.mediapost.com/spin/?p=1278
The Single Currency Myth: Why The Television ‘Metric’ Is In Need Of Some Company
In my opinion we should drop the currency debate. The currency is the almighty US dollar, not Nielsen's panel-based ratings. We should embrace new metrics that shed light on some of the more pressing issues in advertising. Imagine being able to compare which news networks have the most loyal viewers as ranked by appointment viewing. Would anyone be interested in knowing what the audience turnover for a typical weeknight is on MTV and how it might compare to Comedy Central or G4? Is one network a reach vehicle and another better suited for building brand awareness? With new metrics, all these insights are possible. And we are just scratching the surface. As a start, research companies could develop metrics in the following categories:
VIEWER LOYALTY -- What separates the consistent viewer from the occasional viewer for networks and programs. Desirable loyalty figures for ESPN might be very different than desirable loyalty figures for CNN Headline News.
BEHAVIOR DRIVERS -- What appears to drive television tuning behavior? Analysis of demographics, content, channel lineup, time of day.
ROI -- What is the cost to reach a unique viewer? What is the cost to reach unique viewer for thirty minutes a day? How do those costs compare across the most watched networks? The most widely viewed dayparts? Is primetime for A18-24 really 11:00 p.m. - 1:00 a.m.?
PREDICTORS -- What is likely to be watched by a specific group of viewers when given specific options? Is a good Monday Night Football game more interesting than a playoff baseball game to males aged 18-34 or something else entirely?
http://blogs.mediapost.com/tv_board/?p=295
The Google economy
This is also one of the many factors making old-style media — and, in some cases, economic — measurement inaccurate and irrelevant. I’ve been saying that measurement by sample is useless because you can’t possibly get a big enough sample to measure all the niches; Nielsen, Comscore, and the entire industry will fail in a small-is-the-new-big economy because they can never measure and add up all the smalls. They will also fail because measuring how big a media outlet is has become almost irrelevant: An advertiser buying in Condé Nast Traveler cares how many people read the magazine because the assumption is that everyone who sees the magazine sees that ad. But online, a sponsor buying ads at the magazine’s site, Concierge.com, cares only about the specific people who saw the ad when it was served on specific pages, and so the size of the overall site is largely irrelevant except as a filter to decide where to consider buying ads or as a bragging right for the site. (This is why, when I served on committees for the Audit Bureau of Circulations in the mid ’90s, we discovered that audits of total site audience were meaningless — nobody wanted to pay for them — and all sponsors wanted audited was the serving of their own ads.)
But the pity is that ad agencies and stock analysts, reporters, and stock buyers still pay attention to these outmoded measurements and the companies that push them. That’s why GOOG went down 100 points while the company’s revenue soared 30 percent. They were selling on the wrong measurements that led to the wrong assumptions. But mere methodology won’t help. Why?
http://www.buzzmachine.com/2008/04/18/the-google-economy/
New Web-to-TV Prospects on Deck
As part of its deal with Electric Farm, NBC will show Gemini and the upcoming online zombie comedy Woke Up Dead across its different websites. As many as eight episodes of the series will also run on oldteevee as a means of driving people back to the web to watch more.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the two series will also be reformatted as seven half-hour episodes to run on TV. Perhaps sensing the sour mood after the quarterlife fiasco, Gemini and Dead aren’t going to be cutting and pasting from the net to the network. Producer Stan Rogow told THR, “If there were to be a TV show, that would be a whole different show.”
http://newteevee.com/2008/04/17/new-web-to-tv-prospects-on-deck/#more-3784
'Grand' videogame breaks record
Comparisons to other media are difficult, since "Grand Theft Auto IV" costs $60 domestically and contains dozens, if not hundreds, of hours of content, whereas the average film ticket in the U.S. last year cost $6.88 and is good for a few hours of entertainment.
Nonetheless, Take-Two will likely be crowing that the perf of its game is close to, if not above, the No. 1 film bow of all time, "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," which grossed $404 million worldwide in its first six days.
http://www.contentagenda.com/article/CA6551921.html?industryid=45173
Sony talks TV and movie downloads for PS3
"Many of you have been hearing rumblings about a video service that will allow you to download full-length TV shows and movies via PLAYSTATION Network for North America."
He goes on to say: "While I don’t have any new announcements here for the PlayStation Nation, it's already been confirmed that we'll be offering a video service for PS3 in a way that separates the service from others you've seen or used."
"Ultimately the goal of the PLAYSTATION Network service will be to break through the overwhelming clutter of digital media to give you the TV, movies and gaming content you want."
http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/news/news.phtml/14011/15035/sony-planning-ps3-movie-downloads.phtml
Ex-HBO Executive Stakes His Comeback on SlamBall
Now, Mr. Albrecht is trying for a comeback. And he's staking much of it on a bizarre, futuristic sport called SlamBall, which failed to break out in an earlier debut. With the feel of a live-action videogame, SlamBall is essentially basketball combined with rugby and trampoline gymnastics, and if Mr. Albrecht is right, it will become a phenomenon as successful and profitable as the latest sports craze, ultimate fighting.
"There are not a lot of new sports being invented," Mr. Albrecht, 55, said this week. "This was not just a sport that would be fun to watch, but it's a business that we can build."
"To the extent that there is some sort of scoreboard that people are keeping on me personally, I guess there is something at stake," he added later, "but I believe in my partners here."
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB120848112892025053.html
I Want My (Web) MTV
MTV and its sibling brands now have more than 300 sites, including some 30 media-rich broadband sites that boast video, music and lots of interactivity. And they have captured an impressive amount of traffic: Nickelodeon alone logged 1.4 billion video streams last year. MTV Networks' Internet sites attracted 90 million unique visitors worldwide in December 2007, up from 76 million the previous year, according to comScore. But the digital empire Salmi is helping to expand and turbocharge goes way beyond streaming video. MTV is now a leading creator of online virtual worlds like Neopets.com, where users' avatars can interact with virtual pets, and Pimp My Ride (named after the popular MTV show), where avatars can customize cars. MTV has also become a major player in videogaming, which is now the hottest category in all entertainment. It owns the leading casual-games site, AddictingGames.com, where simple card games, puzzles and the like can be played free of charge, and has one of the industry's hottest games—the cultural phenom Rock Band: for those of you who are videogame Luddites, Rock Band lets you and up to three friends become a "virtual" band, using video controllers that look like instruments to play along with songs you download from the Internet. Introduced in November by MTV-owned game developer Harmonix, which also created the hit Guitar Hero, Rock Band has sold a remarkable 1.8 million units, as well as 6 million downloaded songs. Fueled by Rock Band, Viacom Media Networks posted $1.1 billion in worldwide "ancillary" revenues in 2007, a figure that includes royalties earned from MTV-owned videogames.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/130290
'Surviving High School' Rises to Head of Mobile-Gaming Class
Vivendi's blockbuster IP game, "Surviving High School," now in its third iteration, gives consumers the choice of playing jocks, nerds and other iconic high school stereotypes through a script that is expanded with weekly episodic content. According to the publisher, the game has already been downloaded more than a million times, with an additional 6.5 million episodic downloads. "Customers can download new content each week," said Maria Pacheco, VP-marketing for Vivendi Games Mobile, "and as they do so they get entrenched deeper into the game." The game's popularity has spawned forums, Facebook groups and a slew of online communities embodying the kind of engagement that makes marketers drool. And while "Surviving High School" isn't currently being supported by advertising, its episodic format makes it an almost ideal vehicle for brand underwriting. The question is, will marketers get involved in these kinds of projects?
http://adage.com/madisonandvine/article?article_id=126445
Testing the Boundaries of Branded Entertainment
One-off deals have been replaced with complete commitments to TV concepts from birth. Marketer support ranges from backing premiere event parties to producing behind-the-scenes webisodes destined for both a cable channel and a brand's website. The future appears to hold even more promise. Coming soon: series production costs paid for entirely by marketers, which will collaborate with programmers like never before. "My conversations have gone through an arc, from 'I've got to get my brand in a show' to what we're seeing now: series-long partnerships" that involve many multiplatform elements, says Kevin McAuliffe, VP-branded entertainment for NBC Universal's cable assets, which include Bravo, USA Network, Sci-Fi Channel and now Oxygen.
http://adage.com/cabletv08/article?article_id=126278
Game Boy
In 1990, Bobby Kotick bought 25 percent of failing videogame maker Activision for $440,000, with financing from his mentor, casino king Steve Wynn. Since then, the company has been in nonstop-growth mode, through both internal expansion and acquisitions, and late last year, Kotick engineered his biggest deal yet—a nearly $19 billion merger with Vivendi’s game division. The prize for Activision: Blizzard Entertainment, maker of the online game World of Warcraft, which has about 10 million paying subscribers. Vivendi will own a majority stake in the merged company, to be renamed Activision Blizzard, and Kotick will run it.
With megahits like Guitar Hero, Call of Duty, and Tony Hawk’s skateboarding games, Kotick, 45, has become one of the most powerful figures in the $10 billion videogame industry (a number that counts sales of games only, not consoles). Longtime game-industry leader Electronic Arts currently has about $3.7 billion in annual sales. Once Activision closes the merger with Vivendi, the combined entity will have yearly revenue of nearly $4 billion as well. But E.A. recently made a hostile offer for Take-Two Interactive, creator of the Grand Theft Auto series, a move seen by industry observers as an attempt to stay ahead of Kotick. Moreover, some analysts question whether Activision can continue growing at such a rapid rate.
http://www.portfolio.com/executives/features/2008/04/10/Interview-With-Activision-CEO
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Monday, April 14, 2008
The Entertainment Development & Programming Weekly - April 13th Edition
Here are the most interesting articles that came across this week…
With the next round of
The message implicit in the open letter from the studios' bargaining arm, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, appeared to be that union demands going much beyond terms already ratified by two other major Hollywood guilds are out of the question.
"If our industry relies on this new framework, we can all avoid more harmful and unnecessary strikes," the AMPTP concluded in its six-paragraph statement. It left open the door for "reasonable compromises that are necessary."
http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSN0729832120080408
Set
Last week, NBC announced an arrangement with DirecTV to keep the critically-adored but seldom-watched Friday Night Lights alive. The satellite company will help foot the bill for production in exchange for the exclusive first-run rights of the show. The New York Times writes that Comcast is in similar talks with CBS about the recently-canceled
DirecTV thinks it can use Lights as a marketing tool to get the rabid fans of the show to ditch cable for satellite. Eric Shanks, DirecTV’s executive vice president for entertainment, told The Times:
“We have exclusive content around sports with the N.F.L., college basketball and Nascar,” he said. “Why can’t that same model work with entertainment? Why can’t we go out and get exclusive entertainment properties and use that as a differentiator as well?”
http://newteevee.com/2008/04/08/set-jericho-and-friday-night-lights-free/#more-3670
CBS Forms Special Ad Division for Brand Integrations
The Bennett hire and the development of the new unit are indicative of a new push in the effort to knit brands and programs in closer patterns. NBC Universal has for the last year or so trumpeted its efforts to get advertisers and the network talking earlier in the development process, all to generate ideas that tie in to particular programs, plots and characters. At CBS Television Distribution, demand for wide-ranging programs is "just becoming too voluminous for us" to handle with ad-sales executives who also sell traditional spots, said John Nogawski, president-CBS Television Distribution.
Product-integration deals drive much of the early business, Mr. Nogawski said. "We start these discussions now. Most of these concepts will be driven and budgets will be allocated over the next month. When we actually get to the upfront, the integration conversation has already happened, and then we complete the business when we do the upfront selling."
http://adage.com/madisonandvine/article?article_id=126297
Nielsen to Buy IAG Research for $225 Million
If Nielsen can't measure its way to continued dominance of an ever-shifting advertising world, perhaps it can buy its way into it. The media-measurement company today said it had agreed to purchase IAG Research, a company that measures viewer response to ads, TV shows and product placements, for $225 million.
IAG has gained notice in recent years, having signed pacts with many of Nielsen's biggest TV-network clients. In 2006, NBC signed a deal with
"We are known for our quantitative data, but more and more advertisers are looking for ways to differentiate their ad campaigns," said Susan D. Whiting, the Nielsen Co. exec VP who oversees development. At such a time, she added, "additional analytics are very important."
http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=126216
CAN'T STEAL 'THEFT'
Electronic Arts' $26 a share hostile bid for rival video game maker Take-Two Interactive could come under pressure after a report last week predicted Take-Two's upcoming release of "Grand Theft Auto IV" could post record-breaking first week sales.
Gaming analyst Mike Hickey, after reviewing pre-sales of the game, anticipated shipments and other data, predicted "GTA4" would sell 5.8 million units in the first seven days after its April 29 release - which would nearly double the current record set by "Halo 3" last year.
Such a robust burst from the gate by "GTA4" would likely send Take-Two shares soaring past the $26 bid level and pressure EA, based in Redwood City, Calif., the world No. 1 game maker, to raise it bid.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/04062008/business/cant_steal_theft_105166.htm
My TV Is Not Your TV
5. The Brand Has Changed: I don't know what network hosts most of the programs saved on my TiVo. (A rare exception is "John Adams, but that says more about what a strong brand HBO has become.) I don't have the faintest idea what time "John Adams" or most any other show airs. Why should I? Unless you're talking about a baseball game, all I need to know about a show is that it's on my TiVo screen when I want to watch it. As a result, I neither know nor care any more about the supposed qualities of NBC or the WB or any other network than I do about the supposed qualities of whatever company makes the coaxial cable Time Warner uses to bring a TV signal to my house. Content itself is becoming the brand -- and networks used to hitting me with commercials while I sat captive on the couch have to work much, much harder to get my attention. That's a monumental change for them, but for me it now seems odd that it was ever otherwise.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120716247208184015.html?mod=hpp_us_inside_today
Even so, some brand managers still aren't so sure about engagement, which is seen as a way to measure the effects of branding rather than direct sales.
"There's always been a certain level of engagement as consumers click on a banner," said Jeff Hinz, svp/director of client services at ID Media, a digital services company in
Now, engagement through online communities, video sites and other methods offers the potential to measure more. Social media companies like Slide and Bebo are adding to advertisers' branding methods with a growing list of widgets to virtually toss at consumers for further engagement. But getting advertisers to embrace them is another story.
http://www.brandweek.com/bw/news/recent_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003785890
'Project Runway' Sponsorships Could Unravel With Network Shift
The integrated sponsorship model is becoming just as big a moneymaker for reality shows as it can be with scripted series. By comparison, Bravo's second-largest reality series, "Top Chef," minted Bravo $26.8 million in ad dollars during the second and third quarters of 2007, its third season, according to TNS, with sponsors like Glad Products, Toyota Motors and Evian integrated into the proceedings. That show's bigger ad haul is largely because Bravo is able to negotiate all the "Top Chef" sponsorships in-house, as opposed to the Weinstein Co. deal with "Runway."
(Also for comparison's sake, at broadcast sibling NBC, the brand-friendly reality show "The Biggest Loser" brought in $45.6 million in ad dollars from Oct. 1 through March 31, while a top-rated scripted show like "Heroes" brought in $60.6 million in fourth-quarter 2007.)
http://adage.com/madisonandvine/article?article_id=126320
Dupri To Lead TAG-Branded Record Label
According to Dupri, Proctor & Gamble, which produces TAG body spray, approached
Neither IDJ or P&G would comment on speculation that TAG artists will be supported with up to, but not limited to, $10 million in marketing dollars, an unprecedented figure for any contemporary new artist.
http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003788354
Land Grab: Yahoo-Microsoft-AOL-MySpace Fracas
Complicating things further, Yahoo has instigated wild press speculation about an imminent deal with Time Warner’s AOL–which, through its proposed acquisition of Bebo, could provide Yahoo with a social network tie. Both of Yahoo’s logical moves are perceived as a desperate attempt to thwart or boost the price of Microsoft’s bid, which is good until April 26.
Microsoft’s unexpected move to fortify its bid by reaching out to News Corp.’s MySpace as an ally actually provides the software giant with the critical social-networking tie it also lacks. The kicker will be the equity alliances these players have with each other. Google has a $900 million Internet ad search deal in place with MySpace, which would be a critical social-networking partner to Microsoft-Yahoo. Microsoft recently paid $240 million for a 1.6% stake and a broader marketing relationship with Facebook, which values the social network rival at $15 billion. The prospects of a mind-boggling alliance of Yahoo, Microsoft, MySpace and Facebook to battle Google would be irresistible to the staunchest institutional Yahoo shareholder.
However, the most profound element in all of this is how these double-edged ties will unwind or tangle as consolidation and fluctuating valuations intensify competition.
http://blogs.mediapost.com/on_media/?p=145
ESPN Capitulates to Syndicated Video Economy
You'd have to have slept through yesterday to miss the big news that ESPN is now syndicating video clips from a cluster of its programs to AOL, its first-ever such deal. I interpret the deal as an extremely strong indicator that the "Syndicated Video Economy" (as I described this trend 3 weeks ago) is inexorable, even for the richest and most powerful video brands.
ESPN is one such brand. In 2007 it generated 1.2 billion video views from its own site, placing it in the top 10 of all sites. In January '08, ESPN generated 81 million views according to comScore, ranking it #9. And much of ESPN's broadband video (aside from what it shows exclusively on ESPN360, its online subscription service) is essentially re-purposed from on-air, likely making the margins on ESPN's online efforts insanely profitable.
http://www.videonuze.com/blogs/?2008-04-09/ESPN-Capitulates-to-Syndicated-Video-Economy/&id=969
Here, you see an example of a particular mode of games analysis which has become more wide-spread in our program through the years: Rather than writing an ideological critique which stressed the limits of the original text (or in this case, of games a medium), Weisse engages in a thought experiment -- first, comparing the game Just Cause to what he sees as a more rewarding media experience, Persepolis, and then imagining how games as a medium might be able to more fully realize what he sees as lacking in the text under examination. This is a mode of analysis which doesn't simply point out limitations but also imagines alternative possibilities; it doesn't just accept the text as given but rather writes beyond the ending of the text, reconstructs an alternative version of it to show what might be missing in the original. We've found that these kinds of thought experiments can generate more concrete discussions and may become the spring board for more creative interventions. In a space like Gambit, which is involved in developing playable prototypes which stretch the games medium, this ability to move between current examples and alternative versions can be a springboard for design activities. It represents one way that we can blur the lines between theory and practice.
http://henryjenkins.org/2008/04/persepolis_the_video_game.html
MySpace Gets International TV Deal
MySpaceTV has signed a partnership with ShineReveille International for international distribution of its programming via television, DVD, and merchandise. ShineReveille is the new sales and distribution arm of Shine Group’s merged indie production companies.
MySpace said in a press release, issued from MIPTV in
http://newteevee.com/2008/04/10/myspace-gets-international-tv-deal/
Monday, April 7, 2008
The Entertainment Development & Programming Weekly - April 6th Edition
Here are the most interesting articles that came across this week…
STATUS STORIES
However, while well-known, storied and very visible STATUS SYMBOLS will dominate consumer societies for years to come, they will face increasing competition from STATUS STORIES:
STATUS STORIES: As more brands (have to) go niche and therefore tell stories that aren't known to the masses, and as experiences and non-consumption-related expenditures take over from physical (and more visible) status symbols, consumers will increasingly have to tell each other stories to achieve a status dividend from their purchases. Expect a shift from brands telling a story, to brands helping consumers tell status-yielding stories to other consumers.
http://www.trendwatching.com/trends/statusstories.htm
Apple passes Wal-Mart, now #1 music retailer in US
It has been a dizzying climb for Apple, which only managed to pass Amazon to become the number three music retailer in June 2007. The biggest surprise is Amazon's drop to the number four slot, which might be explained by consumers using iTunes, Wal-Mart, and Best Buy gift cards to buy music after the holiday season—and those gift cards certainly helped propel Apple to the number-one position.
For the music industry, there is a dark side to Apple's ascension to the top of the charts. Buying patterns for digital downloads are different, as customers are far more likely to cherry pick a favorite track or two from an album than purchase the whole thing. In contrast, brick-and-mortar sales are predominantly high-margin CDs. For 2007, that translated into a 10 percent decline in overall music spending according to the NPD Group, and it's a trend that's expected to continue for the foreseeable future.
Overall, paid downloads accounted for almost 30 percent of all music sold in January, a number that would have been unthinkable just a few short years ago. With the Big Four labels throwing off the DRM shackles and experimenting with new delivery models like Last.fm's free streaming service, the future looks bright for digital music distribution.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080402-apple-passes-wal-mart-now-1-music-retailer-in-us.html
Wired 2008 Business Trends
Sure, there's bad news out there, what with the panicky Fed and people whispering the R-word. But somehow, the wired world continues to churn out smart, useful, occasionally game-changing ideas.
From the rise in instant manufacturing to the growth of open-source business models, these trends show that innovation can bloom even in a grim economic climate.
Here's a look at nine trends driving business in 2008 — and a deeper explanation of the surprising secrets to Apple's success.
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-04/bz_opensource
Post-Strike, Networks Revamp Pilot Season
And because the strike delayed the development season by many weeks, the networks have had an even greater incentive to cut through the typical bureaucracy, speeding up the casting process, making quicker decisions on scripts, and planning in advance to sell shows internationally and on the Web.
"There's much more thought being given up front to whether there are opportunities to create digital worlds around some of these shows to help create awareness ahead of time," says Gary Newman, chairman of News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox Television. News Corp. also owns Dow Jones & Co., the publisher of The Wall Street Journal.
NBC has led the charge in picking up a number of shows without pilots. "My Own Worst Enemy," won its acceptance largely because Christian Slater is in the starring role. Fox Broadcasting Co. decided to forgo a pilot for its new series "Dollhouse" by "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" creator Joss Whedon, opting to invest money instead in building the elaborate, life-size dollhouse that will be the show's set. For its murder-mystery "Harper's
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB120692540745275735.html?mod=dist_smartbrief
10 Social Networking Trends
Aki Spicer has released a presentation he has made on ten social media trends. Lots of smart thinking and detail, pity about the use of the $100 laptop early on.
And if you need to cut and paste something into a presentation this afternoon, here you go:
1 Social graphs
2 Social shopping
3 Portability
4 Lifestreaming
5 Crowdsourcing
6 Continuous partial attention
7 Privacy protection
8 Open social
9 Virtuality
10 Measurement 2.0
http://www.psfk.com/2008/04/10-social-networking-trends.html
MySpace music venture to take on iTunes
MySpace executives approached the music labels about a possible joint venture several months ago, talking about how to capitalize on its already strong music platform, which attracted about 68 million people in February, according to online measurement firm ComScore Media Metrix. The site also hired Fred Davis, founding partner of
"In many ways, it is an unprecedented foray into music on the Web," said one person familiar with the deal. "Now, you have music discovery happening in some places, and music consumption happening somewhere else, and the non-recording aspects of music, such as ticket purchases and merchandising, happening even elsewhere. MySpace Music is going to aggregate all those disparate activities."
MySpace Music would combine free and paid services. Music streams and music videos would be free to users, but carry advertising. Downloads, ring tones and ring-back tones would be sold.
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-myspace3apr03,1,1646549.story
Viacom Gets Vertical
MTV Networks said last year that it would invest more than $500 million in developing its gaming business over the next two years. It also secured an exclusive deal with Jerry Bruckheimer in December to develop videogames. What can we expect from that business in the next 12 months?
Our gaming business we've split into four categories. The first is games media and that's things like Game Trailer, which is all about information about games or video about games. Then we have casual games, which is Addicting Games, Shockwave plus some of the Nickelodeon properties. Very simple flash-based games, which is a huge category for us. AddictingGames.com is the most trafficked Web site of all our 300-plus Web sites. Then we have console games, with "Rock Band" kind of leading the charge there. And there are probably some Bruckheimer games in the console area. And our fourth category is virtual worlds, and we now have 11 virtual worlds.
For each of those, it's very much a vertical entertainment strategy. We've really gone after certain types of verticals, even in the casual gaming area. There's Addicting Games [for] teen boys, and Shockwave, which is parents and moms. What's coming is more of that. We haven't done a lot in teen girls. So we're looking at what we should do in the teen girl space.
http://www.forbes.com/business/2008/03/28/internet-advertising-salmi-biz-media-cx_lh_0327mtv.html
How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong
Apple's successes in the years since Jobs' return — iMac, iPod, iPhone — suggest an alternate vision to the worker-is-always-right school of management. In
Likewise, Robert Sutton's 2007 book, The No Asshole Rule, spoke out against workplace tyrants but made an exception for Jobs: "He inspires astounding effort and creativity from his people," Sutton wrote. A Silicon Valley insider once told Sutton that he had seen Jobs demean many people and make some of them cry. But, the insider added, "He was almost always right."
"Steve proves that it's OK to be an asshole," says Guy Kawasaki, Apple's former chief evangelist. "I can't relate to the way he does things, but it's not his problem. It's mine. He just has a different OS."
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-04/bz_apple?currentPage=all
Microsoft Unveils Web Series Slate
The company unveiled an ambitious slate of original programming created for its multiple Web platforms, including the MSN portal, MSNBC.com and Xbox Live before a group of agency and marketing executives at its first ever Digital Showcase held at the Director's Guild Theater in New York. During the event, executives emphasized the company's commitment to producing highly targeted, large scale Web series, which facilitate integrated advertising opportunities.
Among the new series to come out of MSN's Branded Entertainment group are In Need Of Repair, a male-aimed home improvement series featuring a pair of sophomoric, mostly inept hosts; and The Men's Room, an instructional fashion series geared for 20-something men who are averse to reading magazines such as GQ and Details. Also in the works are Seven Secrets About…, a light look at the secrets of pop culture icons such as Justin Timberlake; 50 Greatest, a spoof of the multiple pop culture list shows common to VH1 and other cable networks; and What on Earth is Going On?, a channel/series aimed at raising social consciousness.
http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/recent_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003785474
NBC to Revive a Mainstay of Early TV
“Kings” is a pilot for a potential series, meaning that its performance in the ratings and with critics will help determine if it joins the NBC schedule with regular episodes. The cast will include Ian McShane, perhaps best known as the profane Al Swearengen on the HBO series “Deadwood,” and a young Australian actor, Christopher Egan.
If the network decides to order episodes of “Kings,” Liberty Mutual will have 30 days to exercise a right of first refusal to become “the key partner in the series,” said Michael Sheehan, chief executive at Hill, Holliday, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies.
The sponsorship agreement, for undisclosed terms, will extend from NBC to a sibling cable network,
The Liberty Mutual site serves as a showcase for the campaign and is also home to short video films, most of them made for Liberty Mutual, that computer users can watch.
Life on the Edge: Learning from Facebook
Edges not only spawn product and service innovations; they also catalyze business-model innovations. On Facebook, for example, the fragmentation of development activity made it inevitable that brokers would emerge to help entrepreneurial application developers monetize the results of their programming efforts by connecting them with advertisers. One of the most prominent of these early brokers is SocialMedia, a company formed by Seth Goldstein, a serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist who recently migrated from Silicon Alley (the infotech neighborhood of
Goldstein sees a massive shift in the online world of communications and advertising, shaped by social network sites like Facebook, as applications provide a new context for placement of relevant advertisements. Rather than placing an online ad on a page of static content, why not place it in an application at appropriate points within a sequence of user actions? To take it further, why not make the entire application a promotion for a product or service?
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/apr2008/id2008042_809134.htm
Networks lose out to cable during writers' strike
The major TV networks are just now crawling out from the wreckage of the three-month writers' strike, returning new episodes of favorite shows.
But Nielsen figures for the first three months of 2008, when most top network series were off the air, show the damage: Four of the five top networks are down from last year, some sharply, while 20 of the top 25 cable networks were up, 10 by double-digit percentages.
"Cable always benefits when networks are out for the count," says analyst Shari Anne Brill at ad-buyer Carat
Overall TV viewership levels remained flat during the strike, suggesting viewers didn't abandon television to read books or surf the Web, as some polls suggested. Instead, the absence of fresh episodes "led viewers to search for alternatives, and the source of the alternatives invariably was cable," Brill says.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2008-04-01-networks-writers-strike_N.htm
Trust in Peers Trumps the "A-List," Study Finds
This meme got kicked around in the 'sphere a few weeks back when Duncan Watts released some research that contradicts Malcolm Gladwell's theory outlined in The Tipping Point. Today, however, there's new data that to me may just reveal that
Mediapost reports that a new study from Pollara found that people who engage in social networks and communities put far more trust in friends and family who are online than in popular bloggers, or strangers with 10,000 MySpace "friends." Nearly 80% said they were very or somewhat more likely to consider buying products recommended by real-world friends and family, while only 23% reported being very or somewhat likely to consider a product pushed by "well-known bloggers."
http://www.micropersuasion.com/2008/04/trust-in-peers.html
Nielsen Stumbles Over Network Metrics: Bad Omen For New Digital Measures?
Giving some 20 small networks -- which Nielsen didn't name -- higher than normal coverage area, allows those networks to sell more viewers to advertisers.
Nielsen said: "Our field procedures, which require manual assessment of channels received, were not followed in all cases in DBS homes."
Manual assessment? Definitely a problem of analog dimensions.
Nielsen also says it can't keep up with the many new networks on satellite distributors: "Given the rapid growth and the increase in the number of packages and channels available, this process no longer provides the necessary level of reliability to accurately define household channel receivability."
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