Howard Greenfield

Facebook Socializes the World's Video

2011-11-13T09:45:00.000-08:00

Do you recall the memorable lines from The Social Network:

Sean Parker: You don’t even know what the thing is yet. How big it can get, how far it can go. This is no time to take your chips down. A million dollars isn’t cool, you know what’s cool?
Eduardo Saverin: [Sarcastically] You?
Sean Parker: A billion dollars.

My latest article is about Facebook’s plunge into video with Facebook’s Zuckerberg and Netflix’ Hastings stepping out arm in arm at Facebook's F8 conference last month:

“There’s going to be an opportunity over the next five years or so,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has restated many times, “to pick any industry and rethink it in a social way.” Over 800 million users strong, and with a market cap estimated by some to be over $70 billion, Facebook
is well resourced to go where it wants.
...
So, VP EMEA Joanna Shields’ remarks to IBC delegates made perfect sense. Just two weeks before the annual F8 conference, Shields made Facebook’s direction explicit, declaring that the entire TV experience will soon be social by nature.

Her thesis, that television is better when it’s social, is based on the formula which was writ large on her PowerPoints: Social + TV = Better. Facebook’s first effort to apply that formula will be to enable ‘friends’ to contact each other and share what they’re watching. Together with its partner Netflix, Facebook sees this as new kind of viral boost to video consumption - one that Hastings said Zuckerberg envisioned doubling Netflix’s current 25 million members in the United States, Canada and Latin America. (more ...)

Photos of Apple Store, Palo Alto, October 2011

2011-10-22T08:54:00.000-07:00

@ The Palo Alto, California Apple Store

Links:

Intellicore.net founder
New York Times
Apple, Inc.

Monday afternoon, October 10, 2011

Monday evening, October 17, 2011

If cavemen had Twitter

2011-10-19T12:35:00.000-07:00

On a lighter note...

Overheard in an Andy Borowitz (avid Tweeter, and writer of the Borowitz report) interview this week:

"If cave men had twitter, we would probably not have fire because they would just twitter all night about how freezing it was."

Akamai founder article

2011-10-19T12:32:00.000-07:00

Last month's Akamai article on founder Tom Leighton is now available on my website.

You can also go directly to the PDF.

[Excerpt - "A View from the Edge", by Howard Greenfield]

In the last issue of IP Television we discussed how yesterday’s ‘dumb pipes’ are giving way to intelligent cloud services and driving a new online video brokerage.

One calling of today’s Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) is to bridge network hub and router hops to provide a seamless Internet media experience. Like sherpas - the tireless pioneers that first muscled up Everest and K2 - CDNs are today’s super-porters of new media.

The only difference is that instead of going sky-high, CDNs increasingly take their cargo wide. That is, to support services like Netflix and iTunes, they must bring high-definition and high bit-rate streams to the edge of today’s tangled networks to carry programming to mass audiences.

. . .

It goes with the territory according to Akamai Founder Tom Leighton – which is why they maintain 90,000 servers in over 1,800 locations and 70 countries. (more ...)

GigaOm Mobilize 2011 event predicts industry trends

2011-09-30T16:20:00.001-07:00

The GigaOm Mobilize 2011 event I attended in San Francisco this week captured some interesting moments in video:

Pandora CTO: We jailbroke the iPhone, love HTML5
Monetization on mobile can’t be like the web
T-Mobile EVP speaks

Just as insightful were some tid-bits from their “Future of Mobile” report. While lean on mobile media perspective, it makes up for it with a spectrum of studies in health, social location, ad-targeting, and lots of predictions such as:

Growth According to a UN & ITU study in 2010, developing countries accounted for 76 percent of the world's total mobile phones, up from 53 percent at the end of 2005. This is where new cellular adopters come from. Meanwhile, in the U.S., smartphone penetration continues to surge as people upgrade from feature phones, with Nielsen reporting this month that the 40 percent threshold has just been crossed.

Android OS Mobile devices running the Android OS currently hold 20 percent of the market, according to ABI Research, but the firm also pointed out that “no single vendor using Android (or any other OS) has been able to mount a significant challenge” to the iPad.

Tablet Prediction Through at least 2013, Apple’s combination of price and functionality will be unbeatable. But Android tablets will catch up by 2014, eventually overtaking Apple’s market share, thanks primarily to lower prices (just as it has in smartphones).

Windows 8 Prediction Microsoft will arrive far too late to attract many consumers, but by the end of 2014 it will gain a substantial foothold in the enterprise with tablets running Windows 8. Meanwhile, the iPad will continue to gain traction in high schools and higher education.

Interview with Akamai Founder Tom Leighton

2011-08-20T17:06:00.000-07:00

My IBC (9/11 issue) column will be out next month based on my conversation with Akamai Chief Scientist and co-Founder Tom Leighton. The working title is “A View from the Edge: Akamai’s Chief Sherpa Speaks”. The epigrams give it away:

"Well, we knocked the bastard off !"
-- Sir Edmund Hillary, on first climbing Mount Everest

“If you want to get at scale, high-quality and -bandwidth videos, the only way you can do it is with an edge delivery.”

-- Tom Leighton, Akamai Chief Scientist and co-Founder

Tom Leighton, Akamai Chief Scientist, co-Founder, MIT Professor

Interview excerpt, click here for audio

Special thanks to my colleague Jon Haass, Tom's MIT classmate, for the interview concept and introduction.

Fun facts from OnAlways Mobile last week

2011-05-04T18:03:00.000-07:00

Some projections from last week's OnAlways mobile event breakfast I attended at SAP headquarters in Palo Alto:

1. By 2014, 69% of all mobile traffic will be driven by video

2. YouTube content doubles every year and 35 hours of content are uploaded each minute

3. Skype has over 550 million users with 41% Y/Y growth

4. In 2012 there will be more smartphones shipped than PC’s

5. By 2009 there were more social media accounts than email accounts

And also quoted -

"There's going to be an opportunity over the next five years or so to pick any industry and rethink it in a social way." - Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook

"SuperTriple Play" - article now available

2011-03-24T16:46:00.000-07:00

The super triple play article is now available in print version of IP Television and online at:

http://www.go-associates.com/files/SuperTriplePlay-Greenfield-03-11.pdf

Despite there being content and devices galore, no coherent user experience is in sight, suggests Howard Greenfield, who explains why perfecting three-screen delivery is key to the new media market.

© 2011

Announcing "SuperTriple Play"

2011-03-21T13:27:00.000-07:00

‘Television’ as we know it is breaking out of the box. In an age of information overload and excessive choice, those content providers that can launch an efficient, elegant “super triple play” interface will thrive. Innovative, superb programming is still king. But for now, we’ve got abundant digital media – what’s missing is clear access.

I've coined a new term "Super Triple Play" ©2011.

My article appears in IP Television magazine and will be available at www.go-associates soon.

Super triple play is the delivery of seamless, easy-to-access content that makes it a pleasure to surf across three different screens: TV, PC, and Mobile (i.e. smart phones and tablets). Think iPad UI.

What’s still sorely needed to get us there are:

- A uniform dashboard (user-interface) – one look-and-feel across the three displays
- Easy book-marking to smoothly glide between the same content on different devices
- Social connectivity with your online community of choice

Why Steve Jobs said "HTML5 will win"

2010-12-31T06:27:00.000-08:00

Everybody's saying it.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt calls it the next step in browsers. Apple CEO Steve Jobs says simply that "HTML5 will win."

Here are a few reasons why HTML5 enjoys continuing flavor of the month status by placing the browser in charge of video, audio or animation interactivity—no plug-ins required.

A good example deployment is the Sports Illustrated HTML5 magazine laptop/tablet (see bottom). It provides a good sketch of how print magazines are evolving into digital format.

An HTML5 canvas element now allows developers to display web page diagrams, graphics and dynamic animations in Javascript. By also supporting image caption, form validation, and the ability for users to edit the web page, HTML5 is a social media design advance.

Here are a few other explanations of why HTML5 takes the browser closer to becoming a comprehensive media-browser:

HTML5's Impact on Broadcasters (by Wes Simpson)

YouTube HTML5 Beta (YouTube)

"What HTML5 Really Means to You" (Popular Mechanics)

Adobe CTO: Wireless Bandwidth to Explode

2010-11-10T12:24:00.000-08:00

Kevin Lynch: Wireless to overtake wireline in 3 years

Speaking at Om Malik's GigaOM conference today in San Francisco, Adobe CTO, Kevin Lynch projected that wireless bandwidth will exceed wireline bandwidth in the next 3 years. “You can get 12Mbps now; you’ll be able to get 30Mbps by end of year”. He believes 100 Mbps wireless will be available on an individual basis in the next five years.

Hulu's vision of tomorrow's TV

On the same stage, Hulu CEO, Jason Kilar, announced earlier in the morning that Hulu expects to reach $240M in revenues this year (doubling 2009 bottom line). He emphasized their vision of the television of tomorrow: “Users should be able to get everything they want to see on demand”. Audiences will increasingly pick their own should be able to pick their own ads to watch and advertisers will have more and more granular details on audiences to target their ads.

Twitter: The new TV guide

Twitter partnership manager, Robin Sloan, proclaimed Twitter as the new electronic programming guide (EPG) for the television. 90 million tweets a day (!) can’t be wrong.

The Rise of Social Media - Are You Man Enough?

2010-11-06T10:14:00.000-07:00

If you haven't been exposed to the Old Spice videos this summer, watch them. They are a crack-up, and they are a case study in the tide of social media - for better or worse.

Proctor and Gamble's Old Spice TV ad campaign (16,565,792 YouTube views so far) features former NFL player Isaiah Mustaf introducing a new male body wash, then inviting the audience to respond. It became a viral success as audience members, some of them celebrities, received customized video responses to their incoming tweets and email comments.

“Super-direct, nearly-instantaneous viral marketing that costs next to nothing” is how Wired magazine described it. One character posing in front of a shower, some production props, and an online production crew was all that was needed to “record, rip, and respond to messages with a personalized video”.

Sony, Google, and Mobilize 2010 Updates

2010-09-30T21:41:00.000-07:00

It's intriguing that Sony will unveil their GoogleTV product this month.

Also, I had some interesting meetings at the Mobilze 2010 conference in San Francisco today - spoke with Nicolas Negroponte and the founder of Marvell about their new projects.

Some interesting statistics from the show:

- YouTube: 2TB of video are now created each day

- 5 Exabytes of data are created on the Web every 2 days

- Twitter: 90M tweets per day

- Facebook: 30B pieces of content shared each day

- There is now more news online than in all the world's newspapers

5 new articles finished

2010-09-17T16:51:00.000-07:00

Finishing 5 new third-party articles this month - some are announced on my website (www.go-associates.com), others to follow.

On the topic of the delivering media to the "three screens" (TV-PC-Mobile), my new piece for AV Specialist out of Middle-East/Africa is titled: It’s the platform, stupid! An excerpt from the upcoming piece is below.

[excerpt]

It’s the platform, stupid! (OCT, 2010)

5 tips from world experts on delivering video cross-platform
to the growing three-screen TV-PC-Mobile market.

Consumers will increasingly expect to pause video on their home TV set and resume it on a smart phone or PC away from home. It’s important to create video for deployment on today’s devices as well as “those we can anticipate in the near future” says Cisco’s Malachy Moynihan, VP, Video Product Strategy, “to create capabilities for interacting in ways we might not have thought about before. Recommendation and search, for example, are important to deploy across the platforms, making sure to bring some of the monetization with you.”

But what does it take to provide a compelling experience to consumers in these three different worlds? Is it about the technical requirements, the user-interface, the content rights?

Here are 5 keys to succeeding in the new cross-platform market opportunity that industry experts and thought leaders recommended to me this month.

[end excerpt]

Note that another excellent deep dive from TDG Research is available on "Containing the Costs of Multi-Screen Delivery: A Primer on Scalable Video Coding".

iPad: Contrarians and Zealots

2010-07-23T01:01:00.000-07:00

As I wrote in an article for AV Specialist (a magazine covering the Middle East and Africa) last month: Love it or hate it, the iPad defines a new device category, the tablet. Not PC, nor smart phone, it has burst onto the world stage bringing a little fun and magic in its wake. It’s affecting digital consumer patterns, but is it a game-changer, or just more hardware and clutter in our lives?

There are significant reasons why NOT to buy an iPad.

First, it’s redundant with your iPhone and laptop, according to UK’s Daily Telegraph. It doesn’t play Flash video, has no camera or USB port, and it doesn’t print! The list goes on.

But to iPad enthusiasts “it is the most amazing piece of consumer IT technology ever.” According to one email I received:

“The implications are astounding - high definition video on demand will replace TV; eBooks which will kill the printing industry; Skype access that will kill a regular phone service. The list is endless and frightening. THIS IS THE FUTURE. I bought her the 64 GB iPad and she reckons it's so intuitive that her 80-year old father has mastered it.

So who’s right?

The truth is, the iPad is new – a tablet form factor that has only been on the market since April. It is destined to be adopted globally and put to use in some creative and probably unexpected ways.

That cloud ain't new

2010-06-11T14:13:00.000-07:00

The current trend in Cloud Computing has been a long time coming.

It is not that new, nor is it different from the age-old Sun Microsystems tag-line that "the network is the computer".

As Scott (McNealy, former Sun CEO) cracked in a recent Fortune magazine article:

“Sun has always been very early, and often way too early with a lot of our ideas. For example, in the ‘80s we were preaching that the network is the computer. Shame on us for not summing it up in one word – cloud. To sound a little Al Gore-ish we invented open source, but we went a little too aggressive over the last four years."

A highlight from 1996:

Scott jumped on stage with his usual high energy and made two proclamations:

1. "We (Sun) are about to be overwhelmed by insurmountable opportunity."
2. "In 10 years, 100 companies will buy computers and the rest of us will rent."

In the next 5 yrs. Sun went on to grow to an $18 billion company.

Or as my colleague, John Varney, points out, the concept has been around for decades, quoting John McCarthy in 1960: “…Computing may one day be organized as a public utility…”.

Walmart moves the online video market

2010-04-21T16:32:00.000-07:00

We all know Walmart is big . . .

Two million employees service 20m transactions a week at over 8,000 stores worldwide in 15 countries which generating a $405 billion in sales.

Now, with the US retail giant's acquisition of broadband entertainment provider Vudu, the effect on delivery of digital video to the masses will be significant.

Read about this trend on my website in my 5th year anniversary column (or click here to go directly to the article).

Start-ups: A Letter to the New York Times Editor & Thomas Friedman,

2010-04-21T01:21:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

To the Editor, New York Times:

Re: “Start-ups, Not Bailouts”, Op-Ed, April 4, 2010

Business and technology start-ups create jobs, but they need to be nurtured.

Thomas Friedman’s “Start-ups, Not Bailouts” piece this month hit home here in Silicon Valley where early-stage innovation teams are a way of life. Our technology incubator houses over 250 high-tech start-ups, working with 50 Venture Capital groups and another 50 global industry sponsors like Microsoft, eBay, and SingTel, inventing tomorrow’s economy.

The article’s opening “fun fact” is that nearly all new U.S. jobs are created by companies five years old or less. However, it is our experience that it takes a “nutrient rich” culture to accelerate newly formed companies who will in turn staff up their ranks.

Among our early occupants were high-tech stars PayPal, Logitech, and Google. The latter, which grew here from 6 to 60 employees, now has 10,000 people and a market cap around $175B. In the process, search technology has increased productivity for business, research, shopping and countless aspects of our daily work and home lives.

Although many say Silicon Valley has an unfair advantage with its exceptional investors, technology partners, and brainiac entrepreneurs, it is mainly about a frame of mind that doesn’t need to be limited to this area. We believe in the simple power of community.

The same basic ingredients of right resources, teamwork and ingenuity that made the US dominate business productivity in the 20th century will create the renaissance of start-ups to bootstrap the U.S. and the global economy to the next level in this 21st century.

Howard Greenfield
Executive-in-Residence, Plug and Play Tech Center, Sunnyvale, California

Saeed Amidi
President and CEO, Plug and Play Tech Center, Sunnyvale, California

Inside the iPad

2010-04-15T12:06:00.000-07:00

The early success of this new product makes you wonder what's under the cover ... here's an interesting peek inside the iPad hardware.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/04/12/business/IPAD.html

Published: April 12, 2010, New York Times
Peeking Inside the iPad

The skinny on the Apple iPad ...

2010-01-30T22:23:00.000-08:00

It's out of the box, the buzz is up, but iPad will not available until April.

So, after all the oohs, ahs, and diatribes, NY Times' Pogue, as expected, sums it up well:

"It may introduce a new category — something between phone and laptop — or it may not. And anyone who claims to know what will happen will wind up looking like a fool."

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/the-apple-ipad-first-impressions/

Pass me the Internet filter

2009-12-30T04:40:00.000-08:00

Like the 3D glasses distributed at the movies to watch Avatar, I wish I had a better way to take in the flood of information pouring over the Web each day.

The following remarks about the Internet firehose state this case well.

HARRY LIN, CEO, LOTTAY.COM:
Here's a question for you. In a world where Google, Wikipedia and Twitter can tell you almost anything almost instantly, are we smarter than we've ever been?

Say you're with a group of people and someone asks, what is daylight savings time? Someone whips out their iPhone and Googles the answer. A guy asks, Mogadishu is the capital of what country? Same thing, instant answers. Never has so much information been so easily available.

But are we smarter? Not yet. There's a gap between information and knowledge, and we're just starting to cross it. Think of the difference between a library and a librarian, school and a scholar.

One is a place with information; the other a person with knowledge. In the industry in which I work, the Internet, we're constantly asking, what's next, what will Web 3.0 bring?

For some Internet companies, that answer is knowledge. The industry is attempting to cross the gap between the library and the librarian. New search engines such as Hunch and Wolframalpha are less about matching keywords and more about knowledge discovery. You type in, "how do I find a marketing job in San Francisco?" Or, "should I move to Seattle?"

And these next-generation sites actually give you a meaningful set of answers. Today, though, we're still drowning in data. The Internet really is mostly noise. Which is why the consumer yearns for comprehension. The Internet businesses that innovate in that direction will be the next successes. By the way, Mogadishu is the capital of Somalia. In Los Angeles, I'm Harry Lin.

From "Commentary-Information Age Intelligence", Nightly Business Report,
Tuesday, November 24, 2009

SDF Conference in Santa Clara (Silicon Valley) this Friday

2009-10-28T14:58:00.000-07:00

I’m looking forward to SDForum’s Collaboration 2.0 conference this Friday and expect it will present a good insight on the future of cloud, social, and interactive computing.

The event's timely focus is on network collaboration tools that are “opening up innovative opportunities to improve productivity and combine disparate resources around the globe by working together – creating content and building engaging communities”.

The line-up consists of managers and directors from the likes of Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, and Skype, as well as a collection of early stage organizations. With VC panelists from Greylock, Charles River Partners, and others, it should unearth a lot of the key trends that will blossom into deal flow and revenue streams in the next few years.

Seeing the future of TV and Digital Media at IBC Conference in Amsterdam

2009-09-25T00:03:00.000-07:00

The International Broadcasting Conference (IBC) which I attended last week was an exciting show. You can see my video review (interview) on the show at the link below:
Access at this event is special, and I had an opportunity to meet and interview industry leaders such as Steve Canepa, IBM VP Global Media and Entertainment, Cisco CTO Ken Morse, and former Murdoch NewsCorp executive Marty Pompadur.

Though attendance was down 7% from last year (45,547 this year), I agree with the conference press release that "the show continues to exhibit a positive image for the future of the electronic media and broadcast technology industry." The event was covered well in the follow-on report from the crack team at TVB-Europe that included the likes of industry expert Chris Forrester from RapidTV.

The themes included cross-platform delivery, IPTV, new HD developments, and 3D platforms. They showed several movies in new 3D (some which required special glasses at $100 a pop). A 15' reel from James Cameron's new Avatar (also in 3D) wowed the crowds at the big screen.

According to Google's Patrick Walker who I spoke with, 1.6B people are now online, the cost of storage has fallen 3.6M times since 1982, and YouTube gets over 350M unique visitors a month, with 20 hours of new content uploaded every minute.

As Harry Shearer (Spinal Tap star and Simpons voice actor) put it during one conference session as Spinal Tap makes its 2009 acoustic comeback - “I’ve always felt the most exciting time to be working in video is when nobody knows what the rules are. So, I’m very excited.”

Coming Soon! IPTV and Internet Video SECOND EDITION Available Sept. 2009 (Foreword by Mark Cuban)

2009-09-01T17:30:00.000-07:00

Book Acclaim: What They're Saying

“Broadcast is dying. Viewer choice is the future. Read this book by Greenfield and Simpson, two industry insiders, and get a jump-start on the technologies and business trends that will be mainstream before you know it.”
–Patrick Barry, VP Connected TV, Yahoo!

“Greenfield and Simpson’s new version of IPTV and Internet Video is a must-read for anyone working in online video services to get an understanding of the subject from Viewer, Advertiser & Publisher perspectives.”
–Keval Desai, Director, Product Management, Google TV

“Every television executive needs to have a strategy for dealing with the growth of the Internet for media delivery. Greenfield and Simpson will not only help you get your plan started, they will help you truly understand the seismic shifts that are going on today.”
–Shelly Palmer, President, National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY

“This book is an outstanding resource for convergence professionals who are racing to further monetize the ever-expanding world of broadband internet media.”
–Greg Douglass, Accenture Global Managing Director, Media and Entertainment Practice

“Taking your content to the Web? It’s Broadcasting, but not as we know it. If you’re having trouble keeping up with the changing world, relax! In this book, Howard and Wes take us through all we need to know, plainly and simply.”
–John Varney, former BBC CTO

“This is the right book at the right time. Greenfield and Simpson offer a clear and compelling overview of the emerging IPTV space that is at once an accessible introduction to the basics and a guide to thinking through issues of implementation and strategy.”
–Paul Saffo, Silicon Valley Forecaster and Consulting Associate Professor of Engineering, Stanford University

“Like DBS before it, IPTV is coming, like it or not. It’s proliferating globally, thus
broadcasters must understand the impact of this technology. IPTV & Internet Video provides a comprehensive view to this critical, emerging industry development in a single, well-conceived volume. Technology and media professionals beware: this will change your business. Authors Greenfield and Simpson get it done here, from micro to macro.”
–Jimmy Schaeffler, Chairman, Senior Research Analyst,
The Carmel Group

“From video content creators, aggregators, and distributors to IT professionals and media executives, everyone can take something from this book. The straightforward yet detailed approach arms you with the information you need to make highly informed technology and business decisions on IPTV and Internet video. A valuable tool for making sense of this rapidly evolving industry.”
–Sandy Malcolm, Executive Producer, CNN.com

“Driven by advances in digital technology, the media industry is experiencing a transformative shift in IPTV and Internet video that will change our business models, delivery platforms, and the consumer experience. It is imperative that those of us working in this rapidly evolving field have a variety of resources to help educate and guide us as we forge ahead.”
–Albert Cheng, Executive Vice President, Digital Media, Disney-ABC Television Group

“This new edition of IPTV and Internet Video brings the reader up to speed on what he needs to know. It is destined to inform and influence those responsible for navigating the next generation of video services to financial growth. It reveals the keys to how a new personalized, socialized medium will grow beyond recognition.

“The insight this book provides will be very useful to any executive who needs to oversee an IPTV network upgrade. In this single volume, all of the key terminology is defined, and the key economic drivers and pitfalls are identified and clearly explained.”
–Matt Bross, Group Chief Technology Officer, BT (British Telecom)

Excited about new articles (and my new book) coming out next month

2009-08-26T17:37:00.000-07:00

According to Google’s blog, 20 hours of new video content per minute is uploaded to YouTube—the equivalent of 100,000 feature films per week. With so many broadcasters also moving prime time programming to Internet and mobile device delivery, the televisino business landscape is changing. I’ve just completed an article on the future of online TV advertising growth for IPTV International that will be published next month. It contains an interesting interview with ABC-Disney EVP of Digital Media.

As discussed in the article, Google, which has not yet unveiled its final strategy, intends to move heavily into video delivery according to industry analyst Rob Enderle whom I also spoke to for the piece last week. As Enderle puts it, this is their goal, which is part of why they acquired so much dark fiber a couple of years ago, and “their intent is to ‘obsolete’ the existing media market across all vectors”.

I’ll publish the link to the full article next month. In addition, I've written a review for SMPTE on the state of play in Internet TV - will publish a pointer to that soon. For now, also getting excited about the launch of the Second Edition of the book I co-authored with Wes Simpson, IPTV and Internet Video—a Focal Press best-seller at NAB 2007 and 2008. More on that shortly.

TV Everywhere: Will Comcast/Time-Warner's Venture Threaten Hulu?

2009-07-31T02:25:00.000-07:00

Hulu’s 500% growth per year in streams watched is second only to YouTube’s astronomical UGC popularity. (Every minute, twenty hours of new video content is uploaded to YouTube according to the site’s blog--enough to equal 60,000 feature films a week).

CBS and its TV.com site may prove to be a competitor now that they have thrown their hat in the ring with Time-Warner and Comcast’s TV Everywhere. TV Everywhere has big names and big bucks riding on a fee-based commercial release set to include HBO, TBS, and Cinemax and many others.

But Hulu was first out of the gate with programming from likes of NBC, Paramount, Fox, and others. That, combined with low latency for play start-up, a slick UI, and new desktop version that streams shows directly to you television set, Hulu has returned its backers good market share return for its original $100 million investment in 2007.

NewTeeVee 'Television Reinvented' Conference Spotlights the Future

2008-12-04T07:34:00.000-08:00

The future of TV and the Web was really brought home last week watching the runners in this race line up at NewTeeVee’s ‘Television Re-invented’ conference held on the UC San Francisco’s Mission Bay campus. The commercial race for the so-called TV 2.0 market is on. “2009 is ‘the year’,” said Hardie Tankersley, Fox VP online content and strategy.

Who will deliver the winning combination of web and television? The multi-billion dollar personalised, on-demand future hangs in the balance yet “neither side -Web or TV- can quite get there,” said Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. “Both are racing towards it.”

12.6 billion online videos were streamed over US broadband connections in September according to comScore. A respectable 145m of those came from Hulu.com, the NBC-Fox Internet Video
portal launched in 2007 with a $100m war chest.

Regarding the immediacy of web video viewing, Jason Kilar, Hulu CEO says “We’re like Starbucks, “It’s easier to consume, so people consume more of it.”

Click here to read Greenfield's full article (http://www.go-associates.com/files/IPTV_1108_P24.pdf).

Storm Looming on Media Horizon

2008-12-01T07:28:00.000-08:00

The new Blackberry Storm smartphone comes with a gigabyte of internal storage and a removable rechargeable battery. Its 3.26 inch screen display supports 65,000 colours at 184-pixel-per-inch.
“It’s the best screen on the market,” says Gizmodo gadget maven Matt Buchanan. “I think I could watch the whole of Iron Man on it.” Some have downgraded (panned) the Storm, but a new ‘touch-to-click’ interface seems to be getting a thumbs-up by trialists, some iPhone users are calling it “awesome”...

Click here to read Greenfield's full article (http://www.go-associates.com/files/Euro_1108_P27.pdf).

Watch videos of this week's O'Reilly Web 2.0 Summit now

2008-11-06T12:46:00.000-08:00

Want to latest, greatest insights on where the Internet is going in 2009?

You can freely access video coverage of this week's O'Reilly invitation-only Web 2.0 Summit via Blip.tv.

http://web20summit.blip.tv/

Discussions include the likes of Doerr, Brilliant, Ballmer, Zuckenberg, Meeker, Armstrong, Gore, etc.

New article on the Blackberry Storm

2008-11-04T10:59:00.000-08:00

There are 15 billion videos on the Web, and Television is speeding up its migration to the Internet every month. In 2009, smartphones will carry more and more prime-time and user-generated video.

My next column is on this topic and will be available here soon. It's also about the highly anticipated Storm, RIM’s newest multimedia Blackberry, that is finally coming out of stealth. Units will soon begin shipping by the thousand and will be available for everyone’s Holiday Season list.

Stay tuned and I'll have the full article available later in November.

For now, a good pre-release review go to Crackberry.com - or better yet get one for free in the big give-away ;-)

-Howard

Broadband Channels for Everyone (new Greenfield article)

2008-09-19T14:53:00.001-07:00

There is a remarkable number of new ways to express yourself online.

The advent of a “video channel for everyone” may sound far-fetched, but it is part of what’s increasingly on offer from new service providers - often for free!

Read more in my latest article called “Channels for Everyone”

Howard Greenfield keynote: 'IPTV and Internet Video - Today and Tomorrow', June 13, 2008, Bogota, Columbia

2008-07-31T15:37:00.000-07:00

Announcing the New Media Minute newsletter

2008-05-22T14:30:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the first edition of the New Media Minute Newsletter.

Fast, informative insights on how video, audio, and social networks are changing the Web.

(This first edition is on the power of doing your own Podcasting).

Stay ahead of the trends and opportunities.
Organizations today are challenged with staying apprised of the new ways video, audio, and online communications technology is combining with the Internet.

This short, to-the-point, bi-monthly newsletter provides news, trends, and practical ideas they can implement immediately. It contains current, actionable information geared toward briefing you on today’s world—a world where the Internet, Television, and Telephone are increasingly combining into new business, communications, and entertainment formats.

Syndicate the content for your community.
Click here for synidication information.

Free, fast, informative

First hand reports on trends and developments in digital media
Expert updates on critical Internet video, audio, and social media impact
Background and perspective from technology insider and writer Howard Greenfield and his team
Essential expert interviews and developments at Google, Apple, Slingbox, Wired, and others
Links to key resources

Upcoming Newsletters
The New Way to Advertise on TV
How to target your fragmenting audience over TV and Broadband

Mobile Media
(How to use new portable media devices to reach more people)

Trend Watching Deals
Why tracking the smart money pays business and career dividends

Podcasting
How the sound of your voice can change your marketing and communications

Social Media Networks
Viral videos and communities will carry your business message faster and farther

Contact us to subscribe.

Learn more about Go Associates on our website:

Talkification of the Web - Your browser is about to become a telephone

2008-05-02T13:40:00.000-07:00

The internet is set to get louder with the talkification of the web. By adding telephone functionality to HTML pages, innovative software developers are about to give your browser a voice.

It's going to change the ways we interact on the web and will create some new rules for telecoms.

Over the past decade, as digital music, video and films have become the province of anyone with an ISP, whole industries have been transformed with each click of the mouse. And so telephony, or voice, is about to follow suit. read more...

Ribbit VP Don Thorson, CEO Ted Griggs, and Howard Greenfield

TV finally debuts on the Internet

2008-03-11T21:19:00.000-07:00

Tune in for the Hulu debut tomorrow - hundreds of full length prime-time programs to click on-demand as television truly jumps the web ...

(For free!)

Great report by Shelly Palmer today.

The countdown begins hulu's site displays as I blog these notes tonight:

The Enterprise Strikes Back - New media is invading the corporate network

2008-02-19T15:19:00.000-08:00

It’s called ‘pay back’.

In the 90’s Mel Gibson movie, the good guy wants to get even. In my case, IT managers in the field wanted to give me a heads-up on what’s really going on as video, podcasts and other media continue to flood enterprise routers and servers.

Last December I wrote about the economic impact of social media invading corporate networks:

Media within the enterprise has come of age after a series of landmark multi-billion dollar acquisitions including Google buying YouTube for $1.65bn, eBay acquiring Skype for $2.6bn and News Corp's $580m purchase of MySpace. . .The IT services market will be worth nearly $1 Trillion by 2011 . . . The once separate domains of IT and media have become intertwined and now form part of this massive spend.

However, it wasn’t until I got the inside story from three IT and technology directors at Proctor and Gamble, SAP, and B2B software innovator Cincom that the gap between theory and practice became pronounced. Coming from those living this migration process on a daily basis, the insights are more dramatic—and more instructive than I could have imagined. (for the full update, read my latest column in Silicon.com (CNET) ...

Adjust your radio, America!

2008-01-24T10:19:00.001-08:00

Are radio’s finest days behind us, or will it morph into a new form?

Hybrids like FlyTunes, designed for the iPhone, will no doubt continue to be emulated on other platforms. This radio-like service rolls out this month with 20,000 download-able music channels and no monthly fees.

I learned a lot more this month talking to my colleague, Dave Van Dyke who is currently ABC Radio Networks’ Vice President, Affiliate Relations, and to radio analyst Mark Ramsey, President of hear2.0.

For my full Euromedia column click here.

The Great U.S. Wireless Auction continues...

2008-01-10T10:04:00.000-08:00

America moves from analog to digital television in 2009. It is that shift which has opened up the 700MHz wireless spectrum for auction by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) this month, heralded as one of the greatest communications auctions of all time.

The bidding has been expected to raise between $15bn and $20bn from organizations including Apple, AT&T, Cox, Google, NTT DoCoMo and Verizon. But, money aside, the auction could initiate a new era of mobile computing.

However, in one of the many ups and downs along the way, Frontline Wireless, an ambitious start-up backed by the likes of venture capital heavyweights John Doerr (KPMG) and James Barksdale (Barksdale Management), announced they are "closed for business at this time" after failing to garner enough funding to bid on the FCC wireless spectrum it needed to move forward.

For more background on the auction itself, see my December CNET column:

Tech Visions: Wireless sale of the century
$15bn band grab could spark mobile revolution…

New media is IT's next frontier

2007-11-30T10:25:00.000-08:00

Extra ... New media invades the corporate network ... Read all about it!

A new frontier is opening up as broadcast media and telecoms are swallowed whole by the internet. Audio, image data types, internet telephony and video present new challenges for CIOs responsible for corporate performance, security and productivity.

Gartner forecasts the IT services market will be worth nearly $1tr by 2011 - more than seven per cent compound annual growth, up from around $675bn in 2006. The once separate domains of IT and media have become intertwined and now form part of this massive spend.

Read more of my latest Silicon.com column with perspective from Cisco CEO John Chambers, Gartner VP & Fellow David Mitchell Smith, and managing director of BPI Improve, Neville Chamberlain.

more ...

Google Pulls Together World Class Zeitgeist

2007-10-17T09:37:00.000-07:00

Zeitgeist Is a Vision

The future of Internet communications is about Collaboration and Connection. All was explored on the Google campus last week in a thought leadership gathering of a very high order.

“Technology has created a new critical mass to collaborate and connect that hasn’t been available in history to date and is giving us new ways of doing things“ said the event’s moderator, James Fallows The Atlantic Monthly’s National Correspondent, kicking off the event.
His vision for the event published before we got there was timely and supported a wide-ranging flow of ideas and debate:

“The drivers of the changes we’ll be discussing are in many cases familiar: the endless spread of networking, the omnipresence of connections, the erosion of national borders in many ways – and their strange persistence in others; the effects on organizations and corporations of all these changes.”

Brilliant job, Mr. Fallows.

So, Question: What is Zeitgeist?

Answer 1: Zeit-geist (German term) = spirit (geist) of the time (zeit)

Answer 2: Google Zeigtgeist Partner Forum 2007 – Google’s annual event for partner discussion and industry networking among global thought leaders.

When Google throws it’s annual partner forum, the attendee list is not VIP-challenged.

Many of us at the event are not easily star-struck, but to even the most seasoned, this was a very concentrated gathering of tech, business, and government – and a true forum of ideas and zeitgeist circa October, 2007.

There we all were -- Steve Case, Esther Dyson, Al Gore in passing, and Sergey, Larry, Eric and the Google executive team all wandering in and out of seminar and session breaks.

Themes stretched from Corporation 2.0 to The Wealth of Networks, from The New Responsibility
to New Media = New Marketing. (And many more).

Sessions ranged from discussing ‘flat’ [as in Friedman’s book The World Is Flat] organizations (John Chambers, Chairman & CEO, Cisco Systems interviewed by Thomas Friedman, Foreign Affairs Columnist/Author, The New York Times) to the notion of Collaboration Delivered with David Kirkpatrick, Senior Editor, Internet & Technology, Fortune Magazine interviewing Frederick W. Smith, Chairman & CEO, FedEx Corporation and his CIO, Robert B. Carter.

The list of illustrious attendees and presenters went on and on: Craig, the Weinstein brothers, Ariana Huffington and National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell just to name a few others.

Choice Zeitgeist Quotes:

“Zeitgeist is how we connect to you . . .[Google partners]”

“We knew that by lunchtime we were going to be out of capacity …” [on Google’s first big project deliverable to Netscape]
--Omid Kordestani, Senior Vice President of Global Sales and Business Development, Google]

“Whatever can be done will be done – the question is will it be done by you or to you”
--Thomas Friedman, Foreign Affairs Columnist/Author, The New York Times [on the new digital rules for small and large business]

“We don’t focus on the competition at all…we try to get the market right 3 to 5 years out and use competition as a measure of how we’re doing.”
--John Chambers, Chairman & CEO, Cisco Systems

“People who are not supposed to collaborate, do.”
“Europe is lagging behind.”
--Maurice Levy, Chairman/CEO, Publicis Groupe [speaking on social networking innovation]

“Our fleet of wide-bodied planes are the clipper ship of the electronic age “
--Frederick W. Smith, Chairman & CEO, FedEx Corporation

“We’re going through a period moving more and more discrete sources of news – more than the narrow channels of the 60’s.”
--Former U.S. President Bill Clinton

“If you wish to go quickly, go alone
If you wish to go far, then go together.”
--Al Gore [quoting an African proverb relating to the challenges of climate change and harnessing new technology]

“Wnen I was stopped at the customs I answered about my identity that I was the ‘inventor of Wikipedia’ to which the customs officer glibly replied “Yeah, you and Al Gore”.
--Jimmy Wales, Founder, Wikipedia.org; Co-Founder/Chairman of the board, Wikia, Inc.

Parsons: “We’re trying to puzzle our way through AOL and 3rd party ad monetization – we’re working on this . . . the media has made it difficult.”
Schmidt: “Yes, but you’re in charge [of the media]!”
Parsons: “That’s the assumption.” [audience laughter]
--Eric Schmidt, Chairman/Chief Executive Officer, Google
--Richard Parsons, Chairman/Chief Executive Officer, Time Warner

“We’re in a big itchy sweater waiting for our heads to pop out. I don’t know anyone in the industry that doesn’t feel that way [re: successfully implementing digital media for business results]”
--Kim Kadlec, Global Chief Media Officer - Global Marketing Group, Johnson & Johnson

“We love the light and what comes out of that light.”
--Rich Silverstein, Co-Chairman/Creative Director, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners [on storytelling as the key to media whether the campfire or iPhone]”

“The future is not going to be about interruption…it’s about audience wanting to get involved with the brand”
--Bob Greenberg, Chairman/CEO/Global Chief Creative Officer, R/GA

“The future is bottoms up … the fact is collaborating is messy…but if we get it right we can move to a post-beaurocratic freedom of information …”
--David Cameron, Leader of the British Conservative Party

Sergey: I drive a Prius, it’s a really good car…and, for instance, I can park it on a San Francisco hill very easily.
Larry: But I’ve seen your car, and it has scratches on it.
Sergey: Well, no car is accident-proof yet. [audience laughs]
--Larry Page, Co-founder and Vice President, Products, Google --Sergey Brin, Co-founder and Vice President, Technology, Google

Hard Nosed and Heart Felt
I agree with Stewart Alsop who told me at the opening reception that this event was largely an advertising forum. However, to myself and many others it was much more. In fact, I’ve gotten some very interesting, often heart-felt responses from folks I met at the event on what the biggest take-away was for them and will try to publish some of it in my next column. For some other published reports on the event see the links below.

Wall Street Journal (by Kara Swisher, includes video)

BBC News

Times Online

New York Times

Howard to Moderate at Digital Hollywood November 1, 2007

2007-10-15T10:30:00.000-07:00

I'll be moderating an exciting panel at the end of the month at Digital Hollywood. I expect interesting insights on the combining forces of IPTV, Music, and Gaming. The panelists are first rate, and the conversation should be cutting edge.

Track III:
Personalized Video, Music & Gaming Experience - Breakthroughs in Mobile, Broadband & IPTV - Search, Widgets, Virtual Worlds, Messaging Capabilities & Advertising
David Gosen, CEO, I-play
Martin Dunsby, President and CEO, Vollee
Justin Jarvinen, founder and CEO, VerveLife
Tim Stevens, President and CEO, Doppelganger
Nicholas Reichenbach, Vice President, Bplay
Chris Brown, CEO, Metabeam Corporation
Tyler Goldman, Chief Executive Officer, Buzznet
Howard Greenfield, Industry Strategist & Columnist, Go-Associates, Moderator
For Session Description & Speaker Bios Click Here

At Google’s Partner Forum in Mountain View, California Headquarters

2007-10-11T07:31:00.000-07:00

Am attending the star-studded Google Zeitgeist 2007 event this week that I was invited to this year.

Only at an event like this could I have a chat with Steve Case (founder of AOL), Al Gore (former U.S. Vice President), and Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead. Topics from technology to business to culture to philanthropy range around the theme of Connect + Collaborate. All masterfully managed by Shanghai-based Atlantic Monthly editor James Gallows who has put a brilliant whole content flow for the presentations together.

Gala dinner in a geodesic dome last night at Shoreline Amphitheatre.

Am off to the last day for discussions between Google founders, Alan Parsons (current AOL-Time Warner CEO, Thomas Friedman (author, The World is Flat), and David Cameron, Leader of the British Conservative Party.

I’ll follow up with further views in my column next month.

My Interview with Blake Krikorian, CEO of Sling Media

2007-09-27T10:36:00.000-07:00

My interview with Sling Media CEO Blake Krikorian will be published in CNET shortly. Yesterday it was announced they would be acquired by EchoStar for $380 million. I knew there was something exciting afoot during that conversation.

Blake Krikorian, CEO Sling Media with Howard at

Sling's Foster City, California Headquarters earlier this month

Latest Go Associates / Greenfield Newsletter Now Available

2007-08-24T05:50:00.000-07:00

My latest newsletter is now available - just click here.

Article on Greenfield in Web Video Universe

2007-06-22T09:54:00.000-07:00

There was an article published today by Web Video Universe on Howard Greenfield's outlook for mobile in next few years:

5 Trends to Watch in Mobile Video

June 21, 2007
By Troy Dreier

The growth of mobile video is an inevitability, and the only question about its rise is "when," not "if." If you're wondering when cell phone video will finally find a mass audience, read this list of five trends to watch.

To get a handle on the rise of mobile video, we spoke with Howard Greenfield, an industry strategies and columnist, and the president of Go Associates, a consulting firm for digital media companies.

more ...

Virtual Chataqua - The IPTV Big Tent

2007-06-21T16:39:00.000-07:00

It's an honor being invited and participating in Chataqua online book forum to field questions and present the case for IPTV and New Media circa 2010 as I see it. I'll post some of the material here soon, but for now anyone is welcome to join for free at:

http://www.virtualchautauqua.com/

By the way, YouTube 2008 (user-gen video influence on the next year's elections) is already a hoot to follow - exhibit A: Hillary meets Sopranos:

IPTV for Beginners

2007-06-04T06:59:00.000-07:00

Though we may be nearing what Rupert Murdoch calls "the golden age of media", there's a hurdle ahead. Between today's cacophony of web-video services and the promised land of seamless interactive programming is the maturing of a little thing called IPTV.

Well, that's what I think. My new column for CNET is now online with the full editorial...

IPTV for beginners

Opinion: We have a long way to go...

By Howard Greenfield

Published: Monday 4 June 2007

Though everyone's making big predictions for IPTV's uptake, the services are still a long way off. Howard Greenfield outlines the forces which will bring this upcoming tech to life.

In an industry just beginning to understand how to slam video down broadband pipes to achieve new, improved television experiences, there's still advertising and revenue requirements to meet, still a few speed bumps before reaching the new media ecosystem.

In fact, the last time I checked, we're all still beginners here, only a short way along from the black-and-white I Love Lucy days inception of the medium.

We're all IPTV beginners here.

Huge growth is anticipated. IPTV households are expected to grow worldwide from around seven million to 48 million between now and 2019 - a 60 per cent annual growth rate over five years, according to market researcher Infonetics.

Yet between central office and broadband network to set-top and living room lurk quality issues. Scalability challenges still stand between what we have today and a smooth service reaching millions that can meet or beat the existing broadcast experience and deliver true web/TV 2.0 personalisation and interactivity.

(continued on CNET/Silicon.com)

Digital Books - 'End of the Gutenberg Supply Chain'

2007-06-02T22:22:00.000-07:00

Amazing report from BookExpo America this week.
First line says it all ("John Updike would not be pleased.").
The whole book world may not be pleased.
Read on.
-H

[excerpt]
Waxing Philosophical, Booksellers Face the Digital
By MOTOKO RICH
Published: June 4, 2007, New York Times

John Updike would not be pleased.

Google and Microsoft had large presences at BookExpo America. [

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times]

“This could replace the entire supply chain that has been in existence since Gutenberg,” --Jason Epstein, the former editorial director of Random House on the Espresso Book Machine

(continued - click here)

New Articles & Video

2006-12-15T12:42:00.000-08:00

Three new published articles that I've written* have been posted on my website, and a video and audio of a recent Silicon Valley industry panel session** I moderated.

*Articles
About the Long Tail
The New Broadband Market Space
IPTV Portal Power 2007
Tomorrow's Internet Video Is Here
Bono & New Media Empire
New 2.2B$ VC Buys Into Forbes

**Panel
INDUSTRY EXPERT PANEL: PORTABLE, MOBILE VIDEO:
November 2, 2006, San Jose, California (Streaming Media West)
Learn about the future of video on cell phones and iPODs as viewed by executives from Napster, Palm, MobiTV, and mSpot, moderated by Howard Greenfield.

Watch the video, or hear the audio. NEW!

WHAT: Panel Session: “Going Mobile: Is Portable Media Finally Here? (# B302)
WHEN: Thursday, November 2, 2006, 11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
WHERE: San Jose McEnery Convention Center, Silicon Valley, California

More updates coming soon . . .

Message In A Cookie

2006-08-31T16:15:00.000-07:00

[Back to Go Associates website]

Vast. Really Vast.

This great message was in my fortune cookie today at the local Chinese restaurant (true story, forsooth):

Today's fortune cookie message.

The reason it resonated is that the groundwork is being laid for a new order. The growth takes a sizeable step each week. Painstaking to track, but progress that will manifest as roots deepen. The only embellishment that occurred to me is all our business may be about to assume vast proportions, not just mine.

What's the big deal? Why all the fortune telling? Three little nudges this week:

1) An eBay-Skype-Google Alliance is bringing "click to call" internet phone commerce to the web. Om's article title "Google, eBay Play Nice Over Skype" says it all. Good coverage.

2) According to some, Apple Computer and Silicon Valley are angling at redmondia, empire of the north. Apple welcomed a new board member this month: Eric Schmidt, CEO Google. Does Microsoft feel another shiver as the plates under the earth shift a little further? John Markoff's analysis provides all the skinny.

3) Video on cell phones and iPods is coming fast. So say the bullish crystal-ball-meisters at In-Stat. There will be 50 million portable media players in use globally by 2008, and as much as 10% of US wireless subscribers will be adopters by 2009 according to the analyst group.

Don't Panic. Just Scream.

On a lighter note, that quintessential vision of information anxiety, Munch's classic painting "The Scream" was recovered after its theft from an Oslo museum in broad daylight two years ago this month.

[from New York Times AUG 31, 2006]

"We are open for Champagne tonight to anyone who wants to come by and celebrate," said Knut Forsberg, the chairman of Blomqvist Fine Arts, which served as Munch's main gallery during his lifetime. By 9 p.m. more than 300 guests had accepted the offer.

Art lovers and public officials said they were relieved not only by the paintings' recovery but also by the relative lack of damage. Last year, the tabloid newspaper Dagbladet had quoted underworld sources as saying, "The paintings are burned up."

Iver Stensrud, the assistant chief of the Oslo police, said today, "I have seen the pictures myself, and as for damages, they are far from what we really could have feared."

Don't anybody panic!

(The Scream is secure.)

We're All Amateurs Now (Content Producers)

2006-08-23T11:43:00.000-07:00

[Back to Go Associates website]

At Digital Hollywood meets Silicon Valley forum last week (http://www.digitalhollywood.com/BuildingBlocks.html) , some great quips and zeit geist as you might expect like this one from Google about video influx to the Internet:

“We just want to get to the point where you will put video on your website as a default behavior” said Peter Chane, Senior Product Manager for Google Video, speaking recently at the Digital Hollywood Building Blocks conference in Silicon Valley. “We support unlimited uploads” said Chane, “we have people that come with carloads of video and we find ways to work with them.”

For more, look for my upcoming feature September 2006 article for IPTV magazine, released for the IBC issue (Amsterdam, September 7-12, http://www.ibc.org).

AlwaysOn: Conference at the Cutting Edge

2006-07-28T07:16:00.000-07:00

[Silicon Valley, Stanford, and Global Convergence Technologies]

[Back to Go Associates website]

This week, I attended Tony Perkins' intelligently crafted AlwaysOn conference event which featured luminaries across the industry postulating the biggest trends ahead for the Internet, Media, and Communications. It was a great chance to get a pulse from speakers and attendees alike on what's ahead. I had some good conversations with Firefox founder Blake Ross, Stanford futurist Paul Saffo, Google Director of Research, Peter Norvig and many others. If you were tuned in to the AlwaysOn website, you watched as it was being streamed live. If you didn't, good news! They are creating an archive for future viewing. It should be online shortly.

[Photo: Chad Hurley, CEO, YouTube on panel moderated by & Wall Street Journal's Kara Swisher]

On Broadband Social Networking: "People are very visual, they like to see other people's stuff. Even if it's Timmy beating up Bobby -- part of the appeal driving these social network sites and creates a place for advertisers." --Web Advertising Executive

On the Future of Telecommunications: "My prediction is that in 10 years time all the global telephone calls will be free" --Attendee from India

AlwaysOn was capped by a suprise enthusisatic interview with Woz (Apple co-founder and inventor of the Apple II, Steve Wozniak) that spanned the computer revolution past, present and future.

More on this soon...

Web & Wireless Video Ratings (!) - 08/06 article

2006-07-12T21:58:00.000-07:00

[Back to Go Associates website]

Look for my new column in Euromedia Magazine this month:

"The New Measure of Money in Media: Web & Wireless
(Have You Checked Your Ratings?)"

It includes a look at the new Internet and wireless Nielsen Ratings, and some thoughts Tony Perkins (AlwaysOn Editor-in-Chief) shared with me. Am looking forward to his AlwaysOn conference at Stanford later this month.

Excerpts:
...
This year Nielsen will measure Internet video streaming and develop software to monitor mobile phones and PC’s.
...
I am just fascinated, however, with the economics of TV-land audience mindshare. And that’s changing as content continues to flood over from conventional broadcasting to broadband and wireless portable platforms.

How do we know it’s changing? Because the media and broadcast industries have their own barometers, and they are giving us new readings...
...
“The real center of gravity is the consumer” says newsletter pundit Esther Dyson. What she means is the consumer is now in control of programming at home, and on the go for their laptop, iPod, and mobile phone.
...
“Advertisers in the dawn of the Google era are addicted to very specific ad placement analytics” says AlwaysOn editor Tony Perkins (creator of Red Herring magazine) . . .