Egypt's shut down of the Internet in response to the pro-democracy riots taking place there was not only costly to its citizens when it comes to having access to key communications, it also proved costly to the nation's economy.
Preliminary figures released Thursday by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development showed that Egypt's decision to block Internet services for five days cost the country an estimated $90 million. The OECD said the blocked telecommunications and Internet services accounted for about 3 percent to 4 percent of the country's gross domestic product, which accounted for about $18 million a day.
"The long-term impact could be greater ... as it has cut off domestic and international high-tech firms who provide services globally and will make it much more difficult in the future to attract foreign companies and assure them that the networks will remain reliable.
Read more at the National Journal
Saturday, February 5
Why Some Twitter Posts Catch On, and Some Don’t
Hashtags — the community-driven shorthand used to identify conversation themes — like “icantdateyou” and “worstpickuplines” were vastly more popular a few days ago than ones like “Egyptians” or “jan25,” a reference to Day 1 of the Egyptian protests. In just one hour last Tuesday, “icantdateyou” racked up nearly 274,000 mentions on Twitter, with posts like “icantdateyou if all you wanna do is fuss” and “icantdateyou if you look like your brother.”
A new study of hashtags offers some insight into how and why some topics become popular quickly online while others don’t.
People generally pass on the latest conversational idioms — like “cantlivewithout” or “dontyouhate” — the first few times they see them on Twitter, or they never adopt them at all, according to the study by computer scientists. The researchers analyzed the 500 most popular hashtags among more than three billion messages posted on Twitter from August 2009 to January 2010.
“Idioms are like a sugar rush,” explains Jon Kleinberg, a professor of computer science at Cornell and a co-author of the study. “You see it once, you either use it or you don’t, but the rush wears off.”
More contentious themes like politics take longer to catch on, the researchers found. People tend to wait until they have seen a more polarizing phrase — like “sarahpalin” or “hcr,” short for health care reform — four, five or six times on Twitter before posting it themselves.
Now, however, researchers at Cornell and a few other universities like Stanford are finding patterns in the way information catches on in cyberspace. Their models could be useful for politicians, social activists, news organizations, marketers, public relations teams and anyone else trying to reach their target audience — or market.
The research seems to validate the techniques that many industry experts are already using, says Sunil Gupta, a professor at the Harvard Business School who teaches digital marketing. Marketers are moving from an intrusion strategy of running ads in the middle of TV programs to a more cooperative model in which they try to stimulate discussion across social networks.
“In the traditional world, marketing used to focus on the middle part of the bell curve and reaching out to them,” Professor Gupta says. “Now, the way to reach out to the middle part is through the extreme ends of the curve.”
Read more at the New York Times
A new study of hashtags offers some insight into how and why some topics become popular quickly online while others don’t.
People generally pass on the latest conversational idioms — like “cantlivewithout” or “dontyouhate” — the first few times they see them on Twitter, or they never adopt them at all, according to the study by computer scientists. The researchers analyzed the 500 most popular hashtags among more than three billion messages posted on Twitter from August 2009 to January 2010.
“Idioms are like a sugar rush,” explains Jon Kleinberg, a professor of computer science at Cornell and a co-author of the study. “You see it once, you either use it or you don’t, but the rush wears off.”
More contentious themes like politics take longer to catch on, the researchers found. People tend to wait until they have seen a more polarizing phrase — like “sarahpalin” or “hcr,” short for health care reform — four, five or six times on Twitter before posting it themselves.
Now, however, researchers at Cornell and a few other universities like Stanford are finding patterns in the way information catches on in cyberspace. Their models could be useful for politicians, social activists, news organizations, marketers, public relations teams and anyone else trying to reach their target audience — or market.
The research seems to validate the techniques that many industry experts are already using, says Sunil Gupta, a professor at the Harvard Business School who teaches digital marketing. Marketers are moving from an intrusion strategy of running ads in the middle of TV programs to a more cooperative model in which they try to stimulate discussion across social networks.
“In the traditional world, marketing used to focus on the middle part of the bell curve and reaching out to them,” Professor Gupta says. “Now, the way to reach out to the middle part is through the extreme ends of the curve.”
Read more at the New York Times
TV Grows Digital Biz 14%
Television stations are slowly growing their online/digital advertising businesses. Total digital advertising sales -- display and digital video -- amounted to $1.4 billion in 2010, a 14% gain over 2009. And another 17% increase is expected this year, according to a new Borrell Associates report commissioned by the TVB.
While online ad business is improving, it still remains a small piece of a broadcast TV stations' overall business. Online revenue is now 6% of TV stations' total advertising pie, up from 3.5% in 2007.
The survey estimates more rapid online advertising growth for TV stations in later years -- 33% in 2012 and 25% in 2013. TV stations are anticipating that mobile advertising sales will make for faster growth.
Read more at Media Post
While online ad business is improving, it still remains a small piece of a broadcast TV stations' overall business. Online revenue is now 6% of TV stations' total advertising pie, up from 3.5% in 2007.
The survey estimates more rapid online advertising growth for TV stations in later years -- 33% in 2012 and 25% in 2013. TV stations are anticipating that mobile advertising sales will make for faster growth.
Read more at Media Post
Friday, February 4
NY Times Print-Ads, Circulation Slide
New York Times Co., publisher of the namesake newspaper, dropped as much as 5.9 percent after reporting a 26 percent decline in profit as print advertising and circulation revenue continued to shrink. Fourth-quarter net income fell to $67.1 million, or 44 cents a share. Revenue for the year declined 1.9 percent to $2.39 billion, the fourth straight annual decline as readers increasingly seek their news from the Web.
Read more at Bloomberg
Read more at Bloomberg
Wednesday, February 2
The Daily, a Digital-Only Newspaper
Rupert Murdoch on Wednesday pushed the send button on The Daily, a news application designed for the iPad that he hopes will position his News Corporation front and center in the digital newsstand of the future.
The Daily will be a first of its kind for tablet computers: a general interest publication that will refresh every morning and will bill customers’ credit cards each week for 99 cents or each year for $40.
It is an opportunity to try to reinvent the business model for news publishing.
With roughly 15 million iPads already sold, the pool of potential customers is not yet large enough to yield the kinds of returns that the News Corporation would need to quickly recoup its initial investment in The Daily — roughly $30 million.
Mr. Murdoch had initially planned to call it The Daily Planet, after the fictional newspaper that employed Clark Kent in the Superman comics. But DC Comics would not agree to grant the rights to use the name, said the person with knowledge of the project’s development, and the News Corporation settled for The Daily instead.
Read more at the New York Times
The Daily will be a first of its kind for tablet computers: a general interest publication that will refresh every morning and will bill customers’ credit cards each week for 99 cents or each year for $40.
It is an opportunity to try to reinvent the business model for news publishing.
With roughly 15 million iPads already sold, the pool of potential customers is not yet large enough to yield the kinds of returns that the News Corporation would need to quickly recoup its initial investment in The Daily — roughly $30 million.
Mr. Murdoch had initially planned to call it The Daily Planet, after the fictional newspaper that employed Clark Kent in the Superman comics. But DC Comics would not agree to grant the rights to use the name, said the person with knowledge of the project’s development, and the News Corporation settled for The Daily instead.
Read more at the New York Times
How Social Media Changed our World, Again
The 1970’s counter-cultural poem “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” couldn’t be further from the truth today, as we see governments shutting down social media outlets. “The Great Lie” is harder to maintain than ever before, as self-created content via social media has spread to the Middle East and worldwide. While President Mubarak and many throughout the Arab world have ruled with a strong fist, I am sure that never did he dream that the biggest threat to his rule- and possibly an actual overthrow – would come through a simple technology that people entertain themselves with, through 140-character messages.
Social media allows people to force government to face their version of truth, whether they like it or not. New media today will result in the open – We see images today of protestors with hand held cameras surely for Youtube, and we remember the images a few months ago of the protests in Iran – Similar visuals only 30 years ago which would have very likely never reached the Western World
Social media has shown its potential with the simplicity of online and wireless access by individuals with passion, energy, and a just cause. Perhaps state run media in many countries will also follow the lead of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez who joined Twitter a few months ago, and invited Cuban head Fidel Castro to join him on Twitter. He had previously called Twitter a potential “tool of terror” – but maybe he has realized that it can be used as his tool of terror.
Read more here
Social media allows people to force government to face their version of truth, whether they like it or not. New media today will result in the open – We see images today of protestors with hand held cameras surely for Youtube, and we remember the images a few months ago of the protests in Iran – Similar visuals only 30 years ago which would have very likely never reached the Western World
Social media has shown its potential with the simplicity of online and wireless access by individuals with passion, energy, and a just cause. Perhaps state run media in many countries will also follow the lead of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez who joined Twitter a few months ago, and invited Cuban head Fidel Castro to join him on Twitter. He had previously called Twitter a potential “tool of terror” – but maybe he has realized that it can be used as his tool of terror.
Read more here
Are Twitter, Facebook The Founding Fathers of the 21st Century?
Facebook, Twitter and their peers undoubtedly revolutionized the way the world communicates, and have already proved integral in precipitating popular unrest in oppressive nations, like Tunisia, where Twitter most recently helped take down longtime leader Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.
Clearly these trends have certain governments shaking in their proverbial boots, which explains why Mubarak ordered Internet provers across his country to hit the “kill switch” to shut down Facebook and Twitter.
Though the revolution succeeded in expanding freedom here—and inspired similar movements the world over—the “universal” democratic ideals inherent in the colonial rebellion were never fully realized, a fact made clear by colonialism in Africa and, more recently, the continued denial of equal rights for LGBT people.
In that light, the men and women behind social media are more than just entrepreneurs. They are the 21st centuries answer to the Founding Fathers—MySpace, I suppose, would be a “founding grandfather”—by giving new life to three-century-old ideals.
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone this week wrote a blog post called “The Tweets Must Flow,” in which he insisted, “Our goal is to instantly connect people everywhere to what is most meaningful to them. For this to happen, freedom of expression is essential.”
Read more here
Clearly these trends have certain governments shaking in their proverbial boots, which explains why Mubarak ordered Internet provers across his country to hit the “kill switch” to shut down Facebook and Twitter.
Though the revolution succeeded in expanding freedom here—and inspired similar movements the world over—the “universal” democratic ideals inherent in the colonial rebellion were never fully realized, a fact made clear by colonialism in Africa and, more recently, the continued denial of equal rights for LGBT people.
In that light, the men and women behind social media are more than just entrepreneurs. They are the 21st centuries answer to the Founding Fathers—MySpace, I suppose, would be a “founding grandfather”—by giving new life to three-century-old ideals.
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone this week wrote a blog post called “The Tweets Must Flow,” in which he insisted, “Our goal is to instantly connect people everywhere to what is most meaningful to them. For this to happen, freedom of expression is essential.”
Read more here
NYT: iPhone is "Game Changer"
Here is a short video about how the New York Times is covering the crisis in Egypt. Mention is made of new developments at the Times including the use of the Apple iPhone 4 for video news gathering which is "a huge game changer."
Tuesday, February 1
U.S. Smartphone Race
In the heated battle among smartphone platforms, it's a virtual three-way tie for U.S. market share among the big three: Apple's iOS, Research in Motion's BlackBerry OS and Android. With Android surging, BlackBerry dropping and Apple holding steady, the trio is knotted with about 28% share each as of December, according to new data from Nielsen.
Those figures are for all smartphone owners. But looking just at people who bought devices in the last six months highlights Android's momentum -- the Google mobile operating system accounts for 43% of recent purchases compared to 26% for Apple and 20% for BlackBerry.
In the U.S., nearly one-third (31%) of all mobile users owned smartphones at the end of 2010, according to Nielsen. But its latest report spotlights how high-end phones are proving especially popular among ethnic and racial groups. In that vein, 45% of both Hispanics and Asian/Pacific Islanders use smartphones, as do one-third of African-Americans. That contrasts with only 27% of white mobile users.
The iPhone is clearly the device of choice among Asian/Pacific Islanders, with a 36% share. The Apple device is also the top smartphone among Hispanics and whites, with a 29% share of each group, just ahead of BlackBerry, at 27% for both. Nearly one-third (31%) of African-Americans own a BlackBerry, with Android and "other" smartphone platforms close behind at 27% each.
Nielsen has previously predicted smartphone penetration in the U.S. will surpass 50% among mobile users by the end of 2011. But even with high growth, it would take a big jump to get there from 31% at the end of 2010. That compares to about 20% penetration a year ago.
Read more here
Those figures are for all smartphone owners. But looking just at people who bought devices in the last six months highlights Android's momentum -- the Google mobile operating system accounts for 43% of recent purchases compared to 26% for Apple and 20% for BlackBerry.
In the U.S., nearly one-third (31%) of all mobile users owned smartphones at the end of 2010, according to Nielsen. But its latest report spotlights how high-end phones are proving especially popular among ethnic and racial groups. In that vein, 45% of both Hispanics and Asian/Pacific Islanders use smartphones, as do one-third of African-Americans. That contrasts with only 27% of white mobile users.
The iPhone is clearly the device of choice among Asian/Pacific Islanders, with a 36% share. The Apple device is also the top smartphone among Hispanics and whites, with a 29% share of each group, just ahead of BlackBerry, at 27% for both. Nearly one-third (31%) of African-Americans own a BlackBerry, with Android and "other" smartphone platforms close behind at 27% each.
Nielsen has previously predicted smartphone penetration in the U.S. will surpass 50% among mobile users by the end of 2011. But even with high growth, it would take a big jump to get there from 31% at the end of 2010. That compares to about 20% penetration a year ago.
Read more here
U.S. E-Book Sales: $2.7 Billion In 2013
Falling prices and new business models will help U.S. e-book unit sales to grow from an estimated $313 million in 2009 to $2.7 billion in 2013, according to a new Yankee Group forecast. The research firm predicts e-book revenue will even outpace mobile app sales, expected to rise from $834 million to $1.6 billion over the same period in the U.S.
A separate Gartner forecast last week appeared more bullish, predicting mobile app sales worldwide will triple to $15.1 billion in 2011 from $5.2 billion last year.
Read more at Media Post
A separate Gartner forecast last week appeared more bullish, predicting mobile app sales worldwide will triple to $15.1 billion in 2011 from $5.2 billion last year.
Read more at Media Post
Sunday, January 30
My Amazon Kindle Single publishing experiment
Amazon on Wednesday launched its Kindle Single store. With the Kindle Single store, Amazon is calling on authors, domain experts and other folks to contribute. Meanwhile, Kindle singles are priced from 99 cents to $4.99, a range that encourages purchases. Journalists don’t know their return on investment to their employers and leave themselves vulnerable. Just like technology managers, content folks have business alignment issues. At the very least, a little business model knowledge can prepare you for the day when you’re on your own. In the end, we’re all freelancers.
Read more here
Read more here
More Kids Can Work Smartphones Than Can Tie Their Own Shoes
Nearly one out of every five kids (19 percent) around the world aged 2-5 are able to operate a smartphone application. Compare that to the number that can tie his or her own shoelaces -- just nine percent -- and you see how the development of tech skills are quickly outpacing more traditional life skills in today's youth.
Read more at The Atlantic
Read more at The Atlantic
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