Category Archives: Facebook
Why “Cord Nevers” Don’t Worry Me
The latest study to put the television business in a tizzy is a study from TDG that shows the number of “Pay TV refugees” — users who have broadband but not TV– growing from 9.5% to 12.5% over the past 2 years. Particular attention is being paid to “cord nevers” — people (usually in their 20s) who have never had a cable subscription. The easy conclusion is that because this generation grew up with a wide array of online video options, they are going to abandon TV en masse and that it’s just a matter of time until pay TV dies. Not so fast… The problem with making sweeping generalizations about generations and their behavior is that the generalizers forget that the behavior often has more to do with life stage than with birth year. Millennials switch jobs and careers a lot because they’re in their 20s and people in their 20s have always switched jobs and careers a lot: they’re unburdened by families … Continue reading
Still Not My Friend
I was at a conference the other day and much to my dismay, I heard an entire panel of what seemed to be reasonably smart people repeating the old canard about location based advertising and how great the world will be once it’s up and running. Not at all. I remember reading a piece by Robert Scoble about 4 or 5 years ago where he waxed enthusiastically about a scenario where he’s walking down the street in his hometown of Half Moon Bay at lunchtime, receiving text messages with offers from every restaurant serving lunch. And all I could think was “this is the seventh ring of hell.” Users, guys. Users. So easy to forget, yet so critical to the success of whatever it is you want to do. So, to use an example from someone on stage at this panel: I am walking down the street and pass a pub where I have had dinner before. The pub texts … Continue reading
Flies With Honey: How Network Operators Plan To Keep Their Audience
Verizon FIOS announced plans today to upgrade the speeds they offer residential customers (although keeping with tradition, the feature greeted registered users as a splash page which, when clicked on, lead to a dead page. Note to FIOS: you put up the splash page last, after you’ve got the other pages working. Sort of like a door.) Websites missteps aside, what’s really significant about that announcement is that it’s just another step in the network operators plan to stop users from cutting cords. Because Verizon’s pricing makes it more expensive to get high-speed Internet service as a stand-alone product versus as part of a bundle that includes TV and phone service. (FierceCable has the price of a 50/20 service only as $140/month. I pay less than that for 50/20 internet plus the comes-with-HBO-and-Showtime TV package and phone service. I remember when I was signing up that it wound up being cheaper to get a landline phone thrown in.) That’s how … Continue reading
The VOD Wars
While social TV seems to be garnering the bulk of the buzz these days, the real action is happening in Video on Demand or VOD. VOD was once treated as the ugly stepsister of the industry, with most operators regarding it as a promotional vehicle (hence the proliferation of 5-minute “Making of X” videos on most On Demand channels.) Purchasing broadcast rights from the studios was costly, VOD technology was very unstable and prone to mid-broadcast meltdowns, and, with the ubiquity of DVD rental services, there was very little demand for On Demand. Until, of course, there was. Reed Hasting and his board seem just as stunned as the rest of the industry by the rapid growth of Netflix streaming video. The fact that consumers, a notoriously technophobic lot, would actually figure out how to hook up a third-party device (laptops, PlayStations, Roku boxes and the like) and use them to stream movies over WiFi to their television sets was … Continue reading
Changing Behaviors Around TV: What’s Next?
As the convergence of the TV and Interwebs moves ahead, there are still a number of behaviors the industry must figure out how to change, solve for or live with. To wit: TV Is Not A Solitary Activity: whether it’s a group of college roommates or the more traditional family unit, few people have their own personal TVs. That makes recommendation engines a bigger challenge than the kool-aid drinkers let on. Figuring out an easy way for the system to understand who is in the room is going to be one of the biggest UX challenges of our time. Because it’s not just knowing that Dad is in the room and showing him shows he might want to watch. It’s knowing that dad and 8-year old Betty are in the room and figuring out which shows the two of them might want to watch. Or knowing that Betty is the one actually watching TV and Dad is just there keeping … Continue reading
2011: The Year That Was (Part 1)
The ersatz Chinese proverb “May you live in interesting times” comes to mind when trying to find a way to sum up the wild ride that social media and social television have taken us on this year. The entire industry seemed to be in constant motion and keeping up with the multitude of peaks and valleys has become a full time job– mine. So after eleven plus months of watching all this very very closely, here’s my take on where we are, early December 2011. Twitter: What’s The Next Act? Twitter seems to be in the least secure position of any of the major platforms. On a macro level, it’s never been able to move beyond being a 140 character broadcast medium. It’s incredibly polarizing: people seem to either love it or hate it in a way you don’t see with other social networks. Twitter’s popularity also creates problems: the more people tweeting, the less likely it is that you’ll see … Continue reading
The Obligatory Post-F8 Post: They’re Doing It For The Kids
WHAT’S IMPORTANT: The new features are too advanced to be readily adopted by the Boomer demographic that dominates Facebook. But they’re innovative enough to make Facebook relevant again for their kids. FEATURE-BY-FEATURE: Music Sharing: Not as seamless as you might think: Facebook’s pitch to Spotify, Rdio et al is that they’ll get them more paid subscribers (for which they will likely get some sort of commission.) That means that users actually have to download the app their friend is listening to and have it open. While Facebook prompts for this, it’s a hassle, and the whole notion of synchronized listening that Zuck was going on about in his keynote is bunk: songs start playing at the beginning, not at the point where your friend is. Or was, as the case may be, since if you can find it on someone’s news feed, you can listen to it. Nonetheless, this is going to be a very appealing feature for high school … Continue reading