February 22, 2010
Volume XXIX, Issue 9
Counting Down to This Year's P2PCMC and MSNY
The P2P & CLOUD MARKET CONFERENCE, being held on Tuesday March 9th at the Princeton Club of New York, will explore marketing strategies, business models, case studies, and future opportunities related to peer-to-peer (P2P) and cloud based commercial offerings.
Media Summit New York (MSNY), taking place on Wednesday and Thursday, March 10th-11th, at the nearby McGraw-Hill Building, is the premier international conference on media, broadband, advertising, television, cable and satellite, mobile, publishing, radio, magazines, news and print media and marketing.
Sign-up now for both the P2P & CLOUD MARKET CONFERENCE and MSNY and save $479 compared to individual delegate registration rates.
If you already plan to attend the P2P & CLOUD MARKET CONFERENCE, this means you can add MSNY for $596. Or if you already plan to attend MSNY, it means you can add the P2P & CLOUD MARKET CONFERENCE for only $120.
Either way, you can register at the deeply discounted rate of just $995 for both of these outstanding events by clicking here or calling 410-476-7964.
This cost includes the continental breakfast, conference luncheon, refreshment breaks, and VIP networking cocktail reception as well as all keynotes and panel sessions at the P2P & CLOUD MARKET CONFERENCE - in addition to all events and amenities at MSNY.
With this very attractive pre-registration combined-conference discount, you can advance your knowledge of new developments in the media marketplace and the most-cutting edge technologies that are being adopted for it.
Stream the 2010 Winter Olympics from Vancouver
Excerpted from Mobile Magazine Report by Colleen McColl
With the help of the Washington Post, we have put together some info so your laptop or smart-phone can get you all the Winter Olympics events that you want to see when they are broadcast, not just when your station has time to televise it.
Make sure that your computer has the most recent versions of AdobeFlash and Microsoft Silverlight or you will be scrambling during your broadcast. NBCOlympics.com has tons of extras to offer to keep your interest. There are many different Olympics RSS feeds arranged by topic, sport, country, or nation, and give the option of SMS or e-mail alerts. You also receive local Olympic TV listings that have been sorted according to the providers.
If a smart-phone is your choice to cover the action, you will enjoy the mobile-optimized version of the NBCOlympics site available for iPhones and BlackBerrys. There is also live streaming video available at Olympics 2Go.
Canada's best international coverage is CTVOlympics.ca (English) and RDSolympiques.ca (French). Both have 14 live streams from Canadian TV networks. They also provide live coverage of each sport from beginning to end.
BBC is offering live BBC Two streams, four web-only streams from the BBC Sport Website and there is mobile streaming on BBC Mobile.
BBC, CTV and NBC have specific contracts with the International Olympics Committee (IOC) for broadcast rights to their specific geographical regions. For you to watch direct-from-the-source international streams, you're going to have to do some searching for virtual private network (VPN) service located in your area.
For some free but ad-supported VPN services try TheFreeVPN.com site. It has a free Canadian VPN server but its only allows 250 users. A paid VPN services does offer higher bandwidth and a better connection and only about $5-$15 monthly. Just make sure that your choice doesn't have a bandwidth limit. Usage can reach its limit quickly when playing streaming videos.
Your only other choice may be independent, fan generated feeds. SopCast (app installation is required), is a good for sports coverage in general, and Ustream and Justin.tv which allow you to stream on the web.
There is also TVU Networks. It offers a web interface and requires a TVU plug-in. The TVUPlayer iPhone app is a Mac/Windows app and offers access to 900 channels worldwide with a price-tag of $4.99.
Cloudy with a Chance of Content
Silly headline for a serious subject. Smart companies are moving to a new platform for many of their business applications, and content management is one of the key benefactors.
"Cloud computing," aka hosted software services, is now more reliable, more economical, and more effective than ever. Can you benefit from moving your content management services to a hosted environment?
Learn about one use case in this special KMWorld white paper: Best Practices in Cloud Computing.
Please follow this link to download your copy now.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 We hope to see you this week at Digital Music Forum East (DMFE) in New York, NY at which we will present MUSIC IN THE CLOUD on Thursday afternoon February 25th.
Please note that this is the tenth annual DMFE, which in itself is worthy of celebrating. Event organizers Ned and Tinzar Sherman are to be heartily commended. This year's DMFE is taking place on Wednesday and Thursday, February 24th-25th, at the Jewish Heritage Museum in New York City.
This is the only event in the United States that brings together the top music, technology, and policy leaders for high-level discussions and debate, intimate meetings, and unrivaled networking about the future of digital music.
As the event organizers proclaim, "Digital Music Forum is known worldwide for the news that is made in its auditorium, the deals that get done in its hallways, and the friendships and partnerships that are forged year-after-year. Why wait by the sidelines, when you can join the event that is helping to drive the industry's future. Register Now!"
DMFE is presented by Digital Media Wire (DMW), which launched in early 2000 with a simple yet compelling proposition to provide busy executives with a daily briefing of the most important news stories about the business of digital entertainment and media.
Over the years, it has become a standard in publishing and events. DMW currently owns and produces six annual conferences and publishes seven newsletters, including Digital Media Wire Daily, and runs the DMWMedia news-and-community portal. For more information, please visit: www.dmwmedia.com.
Our MUSIC IN THE CLOUD session at DMFE, which takes place at 3:55 PM on Thursday, will seek to answer strategically important questions.
In the ten years from Napster to Spotify, how have distributed computing technologies for music delivery evolved through file-sharing to peer-to-peer (P2P) downloading and streaming, and now the cloud?
What are the latest technological solutions and legal mechanisms for combating copyright infringement globally in this space? How are business models progressing and what more needs to be done to fully legitimize this distribution channel?
What kinds of marketing and promotional tactics show the most promise for profitably exploiting these uniquely consumer-based systems?
Our panelists include Nicholas Butterworth, CEO, HD Cloud; Scott Campbell, CEO, Virtually Atomic; Jeni Lee Chapman, EVP, Harris Interactive; Steve Lerner, Practice Manager, RampRate; and George Searle, CEO, LimeWire.
Nicholas Butterworth was formerly the CEO of MTV Interactive Group, a joint venture of Viacom and Liberty Media, and previously was the CEO of SonicNet, an early digital music venture that was acquired by MTV Networks. He is a Board Member of the New York New Media Association, and is President of the Digital Media Association. Nicholas is also the Executive Director of Rock the Vote.
Scott Campbell has been a pioneer of emerging digital content technologies and business models since the early 1990s. He first established Virtually Atomic in 1997 to help clients define web-based properties and turn them into tangible functional requirements and actionable business plans. Scott continues to work with clients and is an active committee member of NARAS (Grammys) Producers & Engineers Wing in NY. He also occasionally delivers training seminars for the Negotiation Institute of New York.
Jeni Lee Chapman is EVP of Global Brand and Communication Consulting at Harris Interactive. Jeni joined Harris Interactive in January 2010, bringing nearly 18 years of market research and client management experience. Prior to Harris, she was at TNS for 12 years, where she held several senior leadership positions in the Brand and Communication areas, including her role as EVP for the TNS Brand Practice.
Steve Lerner handles sourcing, business planning, and operational consulting for major media, financial, and technology companies at RampRate Sourcing Advisors. Prior to RampRate, Steve was VP of Operations and Media Technology at Speedera Networks, a profitable CDN acquired by Akamai in 2005. Steve has held a diverse set of positions at media technology companies ranging from Sonic Solutions to VDOnet.
Prior to joining LimeWire, George Searle started, acquired, led, built and sold a number of new media ventures. George formed Mediaguide as a joint venture with ASCAP, where he developed and implemented an automated tracking system to better monitor, collect, and disburse payments to rights-holders while simultaneously expanding the royalty base. George co-founded ConneXus, where he created a revolutionary service that let consumers identify and purchase music they hear on ordinary radio using only their mobile phone.
Look forward to seeing you this Thursday. Share wisely, and take care.
5 Mantras for the New Music Business
Excerpted from Billboard Business News Report by Glenn Peoples
The future of digital is access models, according to many top executives. But, there's one main problem: to trade CD and download dollars for access model dimes and nickels, music services need a level of consumer adoption well beyond what has been attained to this point. Rhapsody topped out around one million users. Napster had fewer. The next generation of services will need to do far better.
"Access models, which typically bundle the purchase of a mobile device with access to music, continue to gain ground," said Edgar Bronfman Jr. during Warner Music Group's (WMG) most recent earnings call, "supporting our view that these models will be one of the long-term drivers of digital revenue." But labels are understandably concerned about growing digital revenue while not pushing the CD off a cliff completely. And they are doubtful that free services will offer decent returns.
In addition, executives may be wary of endorsing the wrong model. "I want to make sure I don't screw up my future opportunity around interesting new models because I put free in competition with those new models," one unnamed executive told Billboard late last year.
How will businesses navigate from Point A (knowing access models are the future) to Point Z (a future with successful access models)? Let's walk through the thought process:
1. To succeed, access models need massive scale. Not just a few million users, but many tens of millions of users. Bronfman alluded to this in the earnings call. Bronfman admitted WMG cannot predict consumer reaction to access models, but acknowledged that expanding music consumption across a "vastly greater number of consumers" would be positive for the record industry.
2. The end goal of access models is higher total revenue through greater adoption. Content owners should accept lower average revenue per user (ARPU) because it is an inevitable result of massive adoption. Adding extra low-value users will add little revenue, and converting them to the paid version will be very difficult. A company like Spotify may not be able to hold a 10% conversion rate if it keeps signing up millions of low-value users of its free, ad-supported site. The more mainstream, low-value users adopt Spotify, the lower Spotify's conversion rate.
3. Growth through other means. Since there is a limited number of users willing to pay a premium for a streaming service, services and content owners must seek growth through means other than direct consumer payments. In other words, don't expect people to pay through discrete transactions. This is why partnerships with mobile carriers and broadband service providers will become so important. Indirect payments, made possible by bundling music services with mobile and data packages, for example, and subscriptions subsidized by promotional partners, will become preferred ways to reach the price-sensitive and borderline uninterested. Mass adoption will not be achievable otherwise.
4. Bundling music services will have to segment the market and approach different groups of consumers based on each group's willingness to pay. Most importantly, they will have to accept that some users either won't pay or won't pay much. Fine. The goal is to grow total revenue, not ARPU. But there is still potential in low-value users. A hundred users at $5 ARPU are better than ten users at $15 each.
5. The leap of faith. If access models are indeed the future, and if that future requires mass adoption by millions of low-value users, at some point labels will have to take a leap of faith. They will have to dive into streaming services, accept a lower ARPU, set a goal of signing up tens of millions of users, and maybe suffer through some near-term consequences to CD sales. Small steps marked by doubt and trepidation won't help labels reach their desired future.
For a similar point of view, read this post by Forrester analyst Mike Mulligan. "On-demand, access-based services will be the foundation stone of the 21st-century music business," he wrote. "Added to that, the majority of consumers simply have no appetite for paying for digital music, certainly not on a subscription basis. Free and subsidized services are quite simply part of the future."
Verizon to Allow Unlimited Skype Calling Over 3G
Excerpted from Engadget Report by Darren Murph
We may be way off base here, but we're pretty sure the game just got upended.
Days after AT&T appeased the masses by finally enabling 3G streaming over the iPhone's SlingPlayer app, Verizon Wireless (VZW) has delivered some gargantuan news of its own.
Starting next month, all VZW customers with smart-phones (and an accompanying data plan) will be able to make and receive unlimited Skype-to-Skype voice calls to any user in the world over its 3G network, which is something that AT&T users have been able to do since last autumn.
Let us repeat that: VZW is opening up its 3G network for limitless calling using the P2P industry's most successful service Skype.
The forthcoming Skype Mobile application will also support Skype Out calling, instant messaging (IM) between Skype users, and an ability to "remain always connected... to see friends' online presence."
Nine smart-phones will be compatible at launch, and we're guessing that more will be added in due time. Giddy yet?
Streaming Overtakes Downloadable File Sharing
Excerpted from The Local Report by Tom Sullivan
Although downloadable file sharing over the Internet continues to grow in Sweden, it is becoming dwarfed by online streaming of TV shows and films, according to a new report by the Internet company Cisco Systems.
In the wake of The Pirate Bay (TPB) court case in Sweden last year, there was a sharp drop in the numbers of Swedes sharing downloadable films and music online.
But with increasingly faster broadband Internet, more are now turning to services which offer streaming video, and eliminate the need for users to download copyrighted files and run the risk of prosecution.
"We calculate that file sharing will become less important, even though the actual numbers doing it will still increase," Henrik Bergqvist, Technical Manager at Cisco Sweden told news agency TT.
Inspired by the P2P music streaming service Spotify and the P2P video streaming site Voddler, a new service, Video Bay, by Sweden's most well known file-sharing advocates - the founders of TPB - will be unveiled in the coming months. Streaming services are lawful to watch under Swedish law.
While file sharing is expected to continue to grow at about 80% per year in the coming years, Cisco predicts that it will be overtaken by online streaming which is expected to grow at about 130% annually.
P2PTV and Mobile TV
Excerpted from Light Mobile Video Streaming Application for Google Android Report
Television via peer-to-peer (P2P) networks (P2PTV) and television on mobile devices (Mobile TV) are promising technologies for the future.
Attempts to combine the two techniques into Mobile P2PTV are discussed in scientific papers, but no real implementations have been successfully completed.
This work designs and implements a hybrid Mobile P2PTV prototype for devices running on Google Android. The prototype connects to the P2PTV application LiveShift, developed at the University of Zurich.
The prototype does not participate in the P2P network itself, but connects to a participating peer and retrieves the video data from there. It is able to perform the same functions as the peer is able to perform by remote controlling the peer. The goal is to develop a client for a Google Android phone that can connect to a running LiveShift application and control it for the reception and displaying of video channels.
The client should also be able to fetch an electronic program guide (EPG). A transmission protocol should also be designed that is used to remote control the LiveShift instance. The design proposes to break-down the problem into LiveShift, client, and transmission protocol parts.
While the LiveShift part provides a general communication interface and the logic to receive and process messages from the client, the transmission protocol is responsible for transmitting the messages and defining how LiveShift has to react on receipt.
The client provides the function to watch all LiveShift channels while it is connected to a running LiveShift instance. The client can remote control LiveShift to perform the same actions as LiveShift can. The implementation is done in Java. For the client application the Android Java framework is used.
Not all stated goals have been achieved. The EPG function is working, but cannot display program details. The transmission protocol is implemented successfully and controlling LiveShift remotely works, but the display of video channels from the LiveShift network is not possible. The Android device cannot decode and display the received video data successfully. This unsolved problem can be investigated in future work on this topic.
Cloud Computing Has Media Potential
Excerpted from EDL Consulting Report
Corporate information technology (IT) is continuing a rapid trajectory to the cloud, but cloud computing seems rife with opportunities for other uses as well. In one potential use for everyday consumers, MediaPost's Video Insider predicts that many distributors of movies and other video content will begin using cloud computing.
Movement to the cloud, MediaPost suggests, is an increasingly popular idea. The increase in content it would make possible, as well as minimal storage needs for consumers, makes it a perfect development for streaming video.
However, scalability concerns regarding size and transmission of files mean that implementation might not appear until more careful planning can be undertaken. Once this sort of technology becomes viable, however, applications for consumer use are manifold.
"Having hundreds, if not thousands, of processing cores on standby that anyone can access on an as-needed basis is like having a supercomputer accessible from your home," says MediaPost.
According to the Washington Post, online video platform use is growing - nearly half of Netflix customers used the "Watch Instantly" option to view video content online last year.
Cloud Computing Could Bring Gaming 'Roaring Back'
Excerpted from Gamasutra Report by Chris Remo
Despite the game industry's recent financial hit, THQ CEO Brian Farrell believes, "Gaming can come roaring back" with emerging technologies like cloud computing, as well as the opportunities in downloadable games and the brand extension potential offered by social gaming.
Cloud computing-based gaming, by which real-time graphics are rendered remotely and streamed to the player's screen rather than generated locally by a PC or console, has not yet reached mainstream consumers, but competing firms like OnLive and Gakai are racing to get the technology into players' homes.
"We like this idea of games in the cloud," Farrell said in an IGN interview. "Why do consumers need to pay for the computing power of a dedicated console? If the consumer is comfortable with digital delivery, why doesn't that concept work where we can deliver great games and lower hardware investment in a digital world? I like that world, frankly."
Farrell acknowledged that such a world would still need to involve retail in some way, and noted that the major console hardware manufacturers may resist such a move, but he remains convinced that whatever the future may hold, the "traditional cycle of massive upgrades for graphics...is over."
"If we can get the hardware away from the TV and in the cloud and then start delivering small-to medium-sized bites for the right price point, gaming can come roaring back," he said.
He said THQ is also keeping a close eye on the "hyper-casual" world of Facebook - but not with the intention of giving up its core game business. Rather, one of THQ's plans is to use social games as brand extensions, bringing its intellectual property (IP) into the social world to broaden the company's reach. "It's just a matter of keeping that gamer engaged with your brand in each of those environments," he explained.
And THQ is already known to be increasing its focus on the downloadable game space. Earlier this month, the company said it would significantly scale down two studios and reorient them towards downloadable games, with Farrell more recently indicating Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC will be the main targeted platforms.
"There's a lot of things to like about digital. Piracy can be more effectively dealt with. Used games, which have been a huge threat to the industry, you know, can be monetized with new models. If you own it digitally, hopefully at a lower price point, everybody can win," he said.
"We're doing it obviously on Steam now with all of our PC games. If first parties allow that, we'll certainly embrace that, because if that's what gamers want, that's who we're going to serve."
Phone Game Needs No Server
Excerpted from MIT Technology Review Report by Duncan Graham-Rowe
A new augmented reality game can run on two Android phones, over 3G or Wi-Fi, without an additional server. The unique networking method used for the game could be quite useful for those working on disaster relief or in the military, where significant infrastructure isn't always available.
Multiplayer games on mobile devices like phones usually require remote servers for communication between devices and game hosting, says Roelof Kemp, a computer scientist at Vrije Universiteit, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, who co-developed the game. But the game allows phones to communicate without the cost and added complexity of maintaining this additional infrastructure, he says.
"We hope it's going to open the door for new and interesting distributed computing applications," says Kemp.
The game uses a computing middleware system, called Ibis, originally developed for high-performance, distributed computing tasks, such as image processing or astrophysics research, but which Kemp and colleagues have adapted to run on Android phones. "It allows each phone to run a lightweight communication server," says Kemp. The devices can communicate directly with the game, which is hosted on both handsets, using a 3G connection or Wi-Fi.
Known as Photoshoot, the game offers a modern-day take on the old gun-slinging shootouts of the Wild West by fusing the real world with virtual play. It's simple enough: two players walk three steps away from each other, turn and shoot. But instead of firing bullets, a player tries to shoot a photograph of his opponent, lining up the onscreen crosshairs in the camera's viewfinder with the opponent's face. Each player has up to six shots, and the first to "shoot" their opponent in the face wins.
The game was developed in response to the Android Developers Challenge 2, launched by Google to encourage the development of innovative applications for its Android phones. Consequently, the game was designed to use data fusion, bringing together many different aspects of the device's hardware in order to combine the gameplay with real events in the world.
The accelerometers and digital compass built into Android phones allow the game-- distributed on both phones--to act like the referee, making sure each player has taken three steps and doesn't turn too soon. "And to evaluate if it was a hit or a miss, we use a face-detection algorithm," says Kemp. This works even if the face is partly obscured by the other player holding their phone in front of it, he says.
Even the process of pairing the two devices is novel, says Nicholas Palmer, who developed the game with Kemp and colleagues Thilo Kielman and Henri Bal. The pairing process takes place before the game begins. First, one phone generates a bar code that encodes the phone's IP address. This bar code is displayed on the phone's screen. The other player then uses their phone to take a picture of the bar code--in essence, scanning in the IP address of the phone. "This pairs the two phones," says Palmer.
While these sorts of innovations help to extend augmented reality into the mobile gaming arena, the real innovation here is the communication system.
"There are a lot of situations where you would want to start interactions quickly between phones and mobile devices," says Morris Sloman, a Professor of Distributed Computing at Imperial College London, in the UK. Such a system could be particularly useful for military operations. Currently, there is a trend toward using Internet-enabled phones in the military, but ideally phones could communicate with each other even in areas where there is no infrastructure. Such a system would also be useful in disaster relief efforts, when infrastructure has been destroyed.
But Sloman questions whether a commercial system will be reliable if a Wi-Fi connection is not available. "In Europe, many service providers will not allow incoming data connections on their 3G networks." Although outgoing transmissions are allowed, incoming data usually has to go through the network's secure servers, he says. Palmer and Kemp accept that there may be issues with different network providers.
Photoshoot will be presented at the Mobile Opportunistic Networking workshop in Pisa, Italy, next week, and should be available to the public in the next couple of months. But in the long run, the hope is that its underlying ad hoc network capabilities will find broader use, says Palmer.
There are other possible ways to allow mobile devices to pair and connect, such as the protocols Bonjour and Universal PnP, says Blair MacIntyre, director of the Augmented Environments Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. And similarly, the iPhone app Bump allows pairing and information exchange between multiple devices on an ad hoc basis, just by bumping them together, he says.
However, Bump still relies upon remote servers, says Kemp. And both Bonjour and UPnP only work within a single Wi-Fi access point.
Cloud Computing for Everyone
Excerpted from Cloud Computing Journal Report by Bill McColl
In computing, big revolutions happen whenever a new technology comes along that enables everyone to do something that could previously only be done by a small number of technology experts, or only by those with tons of money and technical talent. Personal computing (Microsoft, Apple), Publishing (Adobe), Search (Google), Video (YouTube), News/Journalism (blogs) are all examples of this kind of disruptive revolutionary change. What's the next big game changer? In a word - Apps! We are about to move to an era in which everyone will be able to build their own apps - business apps, web apps, financial apps, etc.
Until recently, when we thought about business applications, we thought about the kinds of big software systems sold by SAP, IBM, Oracle, and the like. In practice, much of what keeps businesses going is the vast numbers of "small apps" developed by hundreds of millions of business professionals around the world, using tools such as Microsoft Excel. These are "do-it-yourself (DIY) Apps" and they're becoming more and more common, as business professionals bypass the delays and complexity they, rightly or wrongly, have come to associate with information technology (IT) departments and "enterprise software" solutions.
In the web world it's the same, the iPhone AppStore has changed how we think about the "software industry". Is that student in his dorm room, developing his iPhone app for sale, really part of the software industry? It's like asking whether someone who uploads a funny video to YouTube is part of the entertainment industry. DIY videos, DIY iPhone apps, DIY Excel business apps - the trend is clear, more and more people will be writing apps in the future. Which means that it has to get much, much easier!
Why can't an individual portfolio trader in the rural midwest compete with Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms? Why can't an individual in an enterprise quickly develop a real-time app to track some live data that's key to what they're working on. Why are there 100 small companies created solely to analyze the Twitter stream in different ways. Why can't I do that myself? Same for blogs, news, sensors, financial market data, clickstreams, etc.
In the past, the answer was simple. Those with the need for an app didn't have the scalable server, network, and storage infrastructure to do it themselves. They also didn't have the teams of programmers required. Today, the first "reason" is rapidly disappearing, as cloud vendors provide all that commodity iron at hourly rates. To eliminate the second reason, we need new tools that enable non-programmers to develop powerful apps themselves. Excel is a great starting point, as it's already used by more than one hundred million business professionals to generate DIY apps of all kinds. So at least we have a proof of concept - use Excel! But Excel has no elastic scalability, no real-time capability, and no parallel processing of the kind required to handle the "Big Data" challenges now spreading throughout business, web, finance and government.
Next month Cloudscale will be commercially launching the Cloudcel platform, a real-time, massively parallel cloud platform for Big Data Apps. Usable in minutes by anyone who can use Excel, Cloudcel enables non-programmers to simply and quickly develop powerful new DIY Apps on massive data sets and live data streams.
Cloud computing really is a game changer. It provides an infrastructure on which it is now possible for hundreds of millions of non-programmers to become serious app developers. That sounds like a bit of a revolution!
24% of Internet Users Are Social Gamers
Excerpted from Digital Media Wire Report by Mark Hefflinger
More than 24% of US and UK Internet users say they play social games regularly, making for a total of approximately 100 million social games players across the two countries, according to a survey conducted by Information Solutions Group on behalf of social games publisher PopCap Games.
Among nearly 5,000 respondents, more than 1,200 said they play games on social networking sites and platforms at least once a week.
The survey found that 55% of all social gamers are female and 45% are male. The average age of social gamers is 43; 46% of US social gamers are 50 or older, while just 6% are 21 or younger.
The vast majority (95%) of social gamers player multiple times per week, with 64% saying they play at least once a day; 61% said their average gaming sessions lasts more than half an hour.
Surprisingly, just 17% of UK social gamers and 28% of their US counterparts cite "connect with others" as their most popular motivation for playing.
"Fun and excitement" was the most popular reason (53%), while "stress relief" (45%), "competitive spirit" (43%) and "mental workout" (32%) were also cited by respondents.
Facebook was the most popular destination for social gaming, cited by 83% of social gamers, followed by MySpace (24%), Bebo (7%) and Friendster (5%).
Should Media Companies Look to the Cloud?
Excerpted from Video Insider Report by Matt Berry
Last year, high-profile online video platform (OVP) announcements were everywhere. Think Netflix's streaming partnerships, Best Buy's partnership with CinemaNow, and Disney's Keychest. All of the initiatives were designed to securely bring content to an assortment of different connected devices.
With these big video announcements, we keep hearing the unavoidable buzz term "cloud computing" again and again.
Obviously, video storage and delivery can be complicated and expensive. So it's not surprising that media companies are considering cloud as a way to expand their businesses and save money. Let's briefly explore cloud, and whether or not it's a prudent solution for media companies.
Cloud computing, also commonly called Software as a Service (SaaS), can refer to different things, but basically it means applications that reside on the Internet instead of on your computer.
The first, and perhaps most obvious, thing to evaluate when considering cloud is this: Internet access is required to get any data or media stored inside the cloud. If you don't have access to the Internet or your connection goes down, you can't reach the content or data. There are also inherent security concerns, though media is often as exposed on local servers as it is online.
At the moment, the cloud decision really turns on scalability, more specifically on the current business model that governs companies in the SaaS remote storage space.
Cloud companies traditionally charge on a byte in/byte out fee - so for large, tier-one media companies like movie studios, a storage cloud service does not scale.
A concrete example of this: If Studio A has a copy of "Harry Potter" that it wants syndicated onto the Internet, then it will have to transmit a huge file (50 gigabytes or more) to the transcode cloud. The finished product is a file that is 200 megabytes. Because Studio A is being charged a byte IN charge, this would not scale due to the size/cost ratio of the incoming file.
On the flip side, Studio A could pay the cloud vendor that is doing the transcoding to avoid the byte IN fee, and then be exposed only to the byte OUT fee. That arrangement scales much better, but storage fees have hovered around 50 cents per gigabyte per month.
So, let's do the math and see if this makes sense for Studio A. The company has a digitized master library with 50Mbit content roughly 50 terabytes in size - which comes to somewhere around $20,000-30,000 per month for storage costs alone. Those fees would eliminate the savings generated by dropping the byte IN model.
In other words, companies in the storage/transcoding business will need to rethink their models before they can sell services to tier-one media companies.
That said, the ability to scale web services across many processors in the cloud has huge potential in the short term, without changing the models. This is why you are seeing great advancements in virtualization and newer intelligent load-balancing systems directed at dynamically driven services.
In general there is a huge future for this technology, and that's why nationally-based hosting services are tooling up to offer cloud-based "computing." Having hundreds, if not thousands, of processing cores on standby that anyone can access on an as-needed basis is like having a supercomputer accessible from your home.
Expect cloud-based computing to continue to grow and become more prominent as more devices allow users to connect from anywhere and everywhere. It's not quite there yet, but as with media delivery itself, these business models will mature to serve market needs.
Depending on your application of the technology, cloud computing can have significant benefits. I expect cloud to continue to grow, and become more prominent, as the business model matures.
PlayFirst Debuts Game-Changing Facebook Connect
PlayFirst, a leading publisher of emotionally engaging interactive entertainment, revealed today that "Diner Dash 5: BOOM!" is the first PC/Mac download game to integrate a viral Facebook Connect power-up feature. For the first time ever, "Diner Dash 5: BOOM"! allows players of the download game to gift Flo's SuperSneakers to their friends on Facebook. The Super Sneakers give recipients a fun and distinct advantage in the fast-paced world of "Diner Dash 5: BOOM!," which marks the fifth anniversary of the award-winning, best-selling Diner Dash series.
"Playing games is an incredibly popular activity on Facebook, and is even more fun when played with friends," said Facebook Platform Manager Gareth Davis. "We look forward to PlayFirst's 'Diner Dash 5: BOOM!' with Facebook Connect, enabling players to connect with each other in a new social game experience."
"Diner Dash 5: BOOM!" launched on February 18th, with a special commemorative edition for $19.99 on PlayFirst.com. The standard edition of "Diner Dash 5: BOOM!" will launch in approximately two weeks on PlayFirst.com for $6.99. Both versions are integrated with Facebook Connect.
"'Diner Dash 5: BOOM!' marks the first new Diner Dash title in over two years, during which time social gaming has exploded," said Mari Baker, President & CEO of PlayFirst. "Integrating Facebook Connect enables customers to share their passion for Diner Dash with their friends and to get a cool power-up - Flo is practically a blur on the screen she is moving so fast!"
In addition to Flo's Super Sneakers, players can involve their friends on Facebook in their "Diner Dash 5: BOOM!" game play by sharing and comparing high scores and trophies they earn on Facebook. Diner Dash 5: BOOM! players can also connect with one another, exchange strategy tips and information, and proudly display pictures of their customized restaurant on their profile. Diner Dash aficionados can become an official Diner Dash Fan on Facebook (facebook.com/dinerdash) and follow Diner Dash and Flo on Twitter (twitter.com/PlayFirst).
Since the debut of the franchise in 2004, the Diner Dash series has been downloaded more than 550 million times across the globe, making it one of the most popular and recognizable gaming franchises of all time. Diner Dash has been successful on multiple platforms including mobile, iPhone, Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, WiiWare, and Nintendo DS. With the launch of "Diner Dash 5: BOOM!," PlayFirst is marking its commitment to growing its presence in the social gaming space.
More Cash for Hot New Cloud Start-Up VMOps
Excerpted from GigaOM Report by Om Malik
When it comes to cloud computing, the big discussion these days is around private clouds. Large companies are trying to figure out a way to build their own, sometimes seeking help from VMware, Cisco Systems and others. Even Microsoft views this as the next big technology oil field and has developed Azure to profit from it. Of course, on the other side are upstarts - many of them - that want to sell their own solutions to potential buyers.
Two-year-old start-up VMOps of Cupertino, CA has developed software that in essence allows companies to deploy an equivalent of Amazon's elastic computing (EC2) service using commodity hardware to build its own private cloud.
VMOps was started by Sheng Liang, former VP of Engineering at SEVEN Networks. Liang also sold his application firewall company, Teros Networks, to Citrix, and worked on the team that developed the Java Virtual Machine.
VMOps has two main products: VMOps Cloud Management Server and VMOps Multitenant Hypervisor. And according to my sources, it's getting a lot of attention from potential customers, which include mid-tier telecom companies such as XO Communications and Tata Communications. Others are also said to be kicking the tires on its products.
This early traction helps to explain why the company is in the process of closing a $11 million Series B round, which was apparently led by Index Ventures and includes investments from previous investors Satish Dharmraj of Redpoint Ventures and Nexus Venture Partners.
Index Ventures' is the new investor in this round, with Mike Volpi, formerly of Joost and Cisco, leading a $6.5 million infusion as part of it. I wonder if Volpi's old carrier connections are helping open doors for the company at telcos and data centers. VMOps is said to have raised a total of $17.6 million in prior two rounds of funding.
One thing is for sure: That pile of cash gives VMOps enough cushion to fine-tune its offering as it starts to compete with the likes of VMware's vCloud and Eucalyptus, for this is going to be a fiercely contested marketplace. Eucalyptus, which raised $5.5 million in April 2009, is using its open source roots to find a role for itself. VMOps, on the other hand, is betting that its Swiss approach to virtual machines and operating systems is going to give it a leg up, especially against the deep-pocketed VMware.
The Pirate Bay Founder in New Venture
Excerpted from MCV Report by Ben Parfitt
Peter Sunde's Flattr aims to use social networking to make cash for creative amateurs.
One of the founders of controversial BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay (TPB) has lifted the lid on a brand new venture named Flattr that hopes to make money for a wide range of creative hopefuls.
Members of Flattr will pay a minimum monthly subscription fee of 2 euros, though they will be able to pay more if they choose.
Web users will then be able to integrate a Flattr button on their site similar to those currently seen for the likes of Digg and Twitter. At the end of each month subscription revenues will then be shared among all those who have received Flattr button referrals.
"The money you pay each month will be spread evenly among the buttons you click in a month," Sunde told the BBC.
"That way you have control over your monthly spending on content, and you can rather help many people than just a few. We want to encourage people to share money as well as content.
"I wanted to find a one-click way to pay for content. I wanted it to be based on the idea that different people have different financial situations It's a test to see if this might be a working method for real micro-payments."
Sunde will take a 10% cut of the revenues, though he says that he hopes to lower this as the system's popularity increases.
"We're not really in this for becoming rich," he added. "We're doing it to change things and help people get money they never got before."
Flattr is currently in a closed trial beta but hopes to open up to all by the end of next month. The official website can be found here.
File Sharer Makes Last Ditch Plea to Slash $675,000 Damages Award
Excerpted from Daily Examiner Report by Wendy Davis
Boston grad student Joel Tenenbaum is arguing in new legal papers that the $675,000 damage award against him for sharing 30 tracks on Kazaa should be reduced because the most he could have cost the record labels totaled $21, or 70% of the 99-cent purchase price on iTunes.
"The plaintiffs say, by including these songs in his share folder, Tenenbaum distributed them to millions of people, causing the record companies 'incalculable' damages," Tenenbaum argues in his latest papers. "This is completely false hyperbole. Not a single person who downloaded these songs using Kazaa would have been impeded from obtaining them had Tenenbaum blocked access to his share folder."
The federal copyright statute provides for damages ranging from $750 to $150,000 per infringement, but Tenenbaum - much like another high-profile defendant, Jammie Thomas-Rasset - has argued that those damages are disproportionate to any harm they might have caused the record industry.
US District Court Judge Nancy Gertner in Boston could decide the matter on Tuesday. It's not clear how she's leaning, but her counterpart in Minnesota, US District Court Judge Michael Davis, recently slashed damages against Thomas-Rasset from $1.92 million to $54,000.
The labels oppose Tenenbaum's request, arguing that judges have no authority to reduce damage awards.
Clearly, many record labels' revenues have plummeted since file sharing emerged more than 10 years ago. And it's virtually certain that file sharing accounts for at least some drop-off in revenue. But some file sharers surely wouldn't have paid for music in any event. At the same time, other web users might start out as file sharers, but then turn into paying fans.
Either way, the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) attempt to hold individual users like Tenenbaum and Thomas-Rasset accountable for the industry's woes did nothing to reverse the record labels' revenue decrease.
In late 2008 the RIAA said it would end its five-year litigation campaign - an effort that targeted at more than 18,000 individuals suspected of file sharing - but that cases in the pipeline would continue. Unfortunately for Tenenbaum, he was among the unlucky few facing litigation at the time.
The RIAA would do better devoting its energy to developing new business models than continuing a legal battle that, if successful, would bankrupt a grad student while doing nothing to increase the industry's revenues.
Coming Events of Interest
10th Annual Digital Music Forum - February 24th-25th in New York, NY. The only event in the United States that brings together the top music, technology, and policy leaders for high-level discussions and debate, intimate meetings, and unrivaled networking about the future of digital music.
Cloud Computing eSeminar - February 25th at 1:00 PM US ET online. Learn how solution providers can effectively achieve high-margin, recurring revenue; get started quickly to capture nascent markets; and maintain a high level of control over SaaS offerings for a long-lasting, profitable stake in the cloud economy.
P2P & CLOUD MARKET CONFERENCE - March 9th in New York, NY. Strategies to fulfill the multi-billion dollar revenue potential of the P2P and cloud computing channel for the distribution of entertainment content. Case studies of sponsorships, cross-promotion, interactive advertising, and exciting new hybrid business models.
Media Summit New York - March 10th-11th in New York, NY. MSNY is the premier international conference on media, broadband, advertising, television, cable & satellite, mobile, publishing, radio, magazines, news & print media, and marketing.
DDEX Open Meeting & Workshop - March 11th-12th in Paris, France. The open meeting features an update on DDEX's standards, case studies on implementations, and an explanation of DDEX's work-plan for 2010, and the workshop focuses on "Identification Standards and Metadata in the Music Industry," and is being held with the assistance of CISAC and IFPI.
Cloud Computing Congress - March 16 in London, England. A practical guide on cloud computing for business - the value proposition, and the impact on the IT function. Building and managing applications in the cloud - how to manage and control applications and resources in the cloud environment. Security, testing and management of cloud infrastructures.
Cloud Expo - April 19th-21st in New York, NY. Co-located with the 8th international Virtualization Conference & Expo at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City with more than 5,000 delegates and over 100 sponsors and exhibitors participating in the conference.
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