In this week's round-up of the big news in technology and digital media, we look at Google+ Pages for brands, Google's efforts to encourage online brands to be mobile-friendly, The Guardian's streamlined ad platform for print and online, and superfast broadband and on-demand films. And more…
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Afternoon all,
Having used Twitter and Facebook back in 2008 to engage with grassroots surporters and crucially open up political donations to the $1-$5 supporters Obama was able to supplement the war chest with over $500 million from online. Proving he still has his finger on the social media pulse Obama has launched a Tumblr blog in the run up to next year’s elections http://bit.ly/BOTumblr asking people once more to share and get involved.
Why is he using Tumblr? Simply put it is one of the growth stories of the last couple of years having reached 75m active users globally (50% US) making over 1 billion blog posts a month across 28.5 million blogs and generating a whopping 13 billion pageviews a month (FYI it was 1.3bn pageviews a year ago) – source: Quantcast.
By the way, that puts it bigger than Wikipedia for monthly pageviews and coming from an audience a 10th of the size – pretty engaged and keen to click for more:
An interesting side note from Scott Thompson (our Digital Research Manager)- it was a tumblr blog called "We are the 99%" that became the slogan of the Occupy Wall Street movement, see the original post here from back in August
Keeping with elections, when you want to be Mayor of San Fran it makes sense to engage the tech community, here is a wonderfully random election video for Ed “fear the moustache” Lee
The other week we had Patrick Hourihan from Y! research giving us his thoughts and this week I noticed that Hitwise have released their Top 10 UK video facts, not going to lie, the video is a bit dry, but it is short and full of top facts - http://bit.ly/10UKvideofacts
Continuing our Emerging Spaces interviews, this week we have the UK MD of Vevo.com discussing the role of music sites, bands as brands and Beiber fever
As you know Siri is the new voice driven personal assistant on the iPhone4S. As well as all the homage sites that have been created with examples of great responses to questions, there are also people getting creative in other forms with it. Here is one of my favourites http://bit.ly/SiriBeer - when tweets and remote controlled cars collide
Did you know that the 7th November sees the kick off of the 2nd Internet Week Europe? Check out http://bit.ly/i-netWeek for the full line up and see where you can attend. If you are in the vicinity of the Hospital Club at 9-11am (maybe from a mega Monday night party) then pop in to my session with LinkedIn talking about the “social eco-system”. Or you can hear Paddy Whitnell on the 10th at the IAB talking about future trends.
This Monday look out for #bestweekendgoal on Twitter. Matt Jacobs will be putting Yahoo! on to Twitter with the Promoted Trend pushing people through to see the goals from the w/e..
Thanks to Lisa G for sending this one through, apparently the best day of the week to share things is a Wednesday. Another thanks to Paddy Williamson and Sam Lorum for this nugget; if you are sending out a Tweet with a link, then apparently it is best to put the link 25% of the way through the message, not at the end as is commonly done by many.
And some things shouldn’t ever be shared. Paying celebs to tweet a link for money has been happening for a while sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t – or is this just a clever, yet bizarre way to become a trending topic? My instinct is just something which went horribly wrong – when will people learn if you want to send a private message don’t use Twitter, it’s too easy to get it wrong.
Have a great w/e.
Oli.
Steve Jobs authorised biography was released this week… And if you haven't heard about it already then you probably haven't been paying much attention to the tech bloggers who have been poring over it looking for scoops, so here is a brief summary of ten themes covered in the book.)
But there are plenty of bigger stories in this week's round up of the most important digital and technology news; the biggest internet trends in the biggest internet trends report, Netflix coming to the UK, mobile innovation from Google, eBay's mobile growth, Google+Reader and Google+Blogger, and… M.C. Hammer? And more...
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A weekly round up of the big technology news, and developments in digital media. This week, we look at Google's growth, tablet users, social media users' attitudes, Facebook advertising reports, and more…
This is a snippet- read the full post.
Hundreds of thousands of hopefuls have been whittled down from first auditions to second auditions from bootcamp to the judges’ houses and the first ever live eviction by the mentor of each category. Goldie is long gone, the groups have long been cobbled together and the real fun starts now. But who is most likely to win? With the wealth of social data out there sitting behind each act, there has never been a clearer indicator of who may be celebrating Xmas No1 come the 18th December.
Elemental spent the best part of their weekend capturing the social following (and subsequent uplift) of each of the X Factor contestants via their official social presence, measured from the start of Saturday's first live show, to the end of Sunday's eviction. Tough gig!
The interesting output from this is the differing volumes of following dependent on the platform (Facebook vs. Twitter) and how those followings bear no relation to the amount they have been further watched on YouTube. Frankie and his bottom scribbled conquests have picked up quite a following on Twitter (twice that of his closest rival). Craig's dramatic rendition of 'Jar of Hearts' on the live show was most watched on YouTube. The new 'Diana Vickers', Janet Devlin, is most ‘liked’ on FB. From purely from a statistical point of view, it looks like Kelly Rowland has dropped a clanger getting rid of Amelia Lily; but in the future will the judges be able to revert to more than just a gut feel, referencing live social data when making their life-changing decisions?
Whilst Elemental have looked at creating a social leaderboard, the X Factor Tracker goes one step further in using social data to predict future outcome. http://xfactortracker.com/. Unveiled at this week’s Wired conference by Professor Janet Hertz, it currently predicts Janet to win, closely followed by Misha B. The site tracks what people are saying on social media, giving each contestant a popularity score, and then predicts who's likely to be voted off whilst also giving line of sight on who is doing best each week. How long will it be before metrics such as this start to be woven into the fabric of the show itself, much like million pound drop on Channel 4?
Whilst the power of such a platform is making waves for the acts themselves, it is also a huge platform for brands. Yeo Valley, who debuted the new single of its latest creation, 'The Churned' on Saturday night’s X Factor’s opening break, creating almost as much of a buzz as the rest of the acts combined.
With over 230,000 views on YouTube and 10.8M tweet impressions accrued off the back of it trending over the weekend it has now reached the dizzying heights of No 67 in the charts. It is clear the power of TV is here to stay, but how both producers of the shows and brands navigate the interest and data generation around such peaks of curiosity is what will be really interesting going forwards.
Matthew Prentis, Associate Director, Mediavest. @mattprentis
Hundreds of thousands of hopefuls have been whittled down from first auditions to second auditions from bootcamp to the judges’ houses and the first ever live eviction by the mentor of each category. Goldie is long gone, the groups have long been cobbled together and the real fun starts now. But who is most likely to win? With the wealth of social data out there sitting behind each act, there has never been a clearer indicator of who may be celebrating Xmas No1 come the 18th December.
Elemental spent the best part of their weekend capturing the social following (and subsequent uplift) of each of the X Factor contestants via their official social presence, measured from the start of Saturday's first live show, to the end of Sunday's eviction. Tough gig!
The interesting output from this is the differing volumes of following dependent on the platform (Facebook vs. Twitter) and how those followings bear no relation to the amount they have been further watched on YouTube.
Frankie and his bottom scribbled conquests have picked up quite a following on Twitter (twice that of his closest rival). Craig's dramatic rendition of 'Jar of Hearts' on the live show was most watched on YouTube. The new 'Diana Vickers', Janet Devlin, is most ‘liked’ on FB. From purely from a statistical point of view, it looks like Kelly Rowland has dropped a clanger getting rid of Amelia Lily; but in the future will the judges be able to revert to more than just a gut feel, referencing live social data when making their life-changing decisions?
Whilst Elemental have looked at creating a social leaderboard, the X Factor Tracker goes one step further in using social data to predict future outcome http://bit.ly/pf5rq8 Unveiled at this week’s Wired conference by Professor Janet Hertz, it currently predicts Janet to win, closely followed by Misha B. The site tracks what people are saying on social media, giving each contestant a popularity score, and then predicts who's likely to be voted off whilst also giving line of sight on who is doing best each week. How long will it be before metrics such as this start to be woven into the fabric of the show itself, much like million pound drop on Channel 4?
Whilst the power of such a platform is making waves for the acts themselves, it is also a huge platform for brands. Yeo Valley, who debuted the new single of its latest creation, 'The Churned' on Saturday night’s X Factor’s opening break, creating almost as much of a buzz as the rest of the acts combined.
Over 230,000 views on YouTube and 10.8M tweet impressions were accrued off the back of it trending over the weekend and it has now reached the dizzying heights of No 67 in the charts. It is clear the power of TV is here to stay, but how both producers of the shows and brands navigate the interest and data generation around such peaks of curiosity is what will be really interesting going forwards.
Matthew Prentis, Associate Director, Mediavest. @mattprentis
The German Independent Centre for Privacy Protections (ULD) in Schleswig-Holstein has demanded that local websites remove their Facebook ‘like’ buttons before the end of September because it is against the German data protection law. If companies use the ‘like’ button after the end of September they will face fines of up to €50,000. It is still unclear whether the fine will apply only to websites published within the particular German state or to all websites accessible within the country.
The ULD claims that the ‘like’ button illegally puts together a profile of users’ web habits, whether they clicked the button or not. This plug in tracks users for up to 2 years, recording their interactions with web pages and what they do on all visited pages. This content and traffic data are transferred to Facebook’s servers in the US.
Dr. Thilo Weichert, head of ULD, said Facebook probably uses the data for advertising purposes and provides website owners an analysis of user traffic. Facebook insists it does not use those logs to target ads, and says it currently has no plans to do so. “The only time ‘Like’ button information is associated with a particular person is when you are signed into Facebook and click”, said Sjogreen (Head of Facebook).
As social share buttons like "tweet this" or "like" help businesses gain recognition and traffic that can result in leads or direct sales, companies operating in Schleswig-Holstein will be at a disadvantage. This is not just a restraint of trade but also potentially threatens the economy.
Facebook agreed for the first time to work with the German government on a voluntary code of conduct aimed at protecting the privacy of social network users. They assured a fast reaction and assessment of ULD’s analysis (9th of September).
It may be that all of this is little more than a storm in a teacup. Schleswig Holstein, after all, is only one of Germany’s 16 states, and with a population of only 2,8 million, very much the smallest of these. Even local government offices have expressed some doubt as to the enforceability of the fines and are waiting for a test case. They have not removed their own ‘like’ buttons.
Starcom MediaVest will continue to monitor the situation but does not think that clients should act at this time.
MediaVest is committed to understanding communities in order to develop opportunities for our clients. Earlier in the year, I posted a series of articles about communities and such opportunities. This month, a summary of these posts appear in Admap, titled '10 Trends in Community Engagement'.
You can find a copy of the article in pdf format here. Right click to save it. Otherwise, read on.
Reproduced with permission of Admap
Starcom MediaVest Group, London
Communities are vital for our wellbeing, identities and everyday lives. They help us to find out about jobs, holidays and what brands to buy; we use them to meet people who share our own interests; and they provide us with people who become our friends and even lifelong partners. Examples of communities include those based around local interests, the workplace, professions, organisations (such as churches, charities, and pressure groups), hobbies, and life stages and life events.
Yet, communities are very different from a hundred years ago. Once centred around neighbourhoods, we now tend to choose the people with whom we want to associate. In this sense, our communities now centre upon us as individuals. Each group of people with whom a person regularly communicates forms a network. Together, these networks form a person's personal community, which we consider much more private than our neighbourhoods once did.
This means it is imperative that brand owners earn the right to intervene in and engage with communities. This article provides brand owners with ten community trends they need to know about in order to do this.
1 UNDERSTAND WHY COMMUNITIES ARE IMPORTANT
Brand owners earn the right to intervene in communities by being resources, facilitators and enablers. They need to deliver on four reasons why communities are important to people.
Feelings of belonging and security we get from membership
Impact. We like to feel we make a difference and we like others to have positive impacts upon us.
Fulfilment of goals and needs, which include security, adventure, information and knowledge acquisition, acceptance, expression, control, and achievement.
Shared emotional connection. The more we interact with other people, the more likely we are to feel close to them.
2 TARGET HIGHLY CONNECTED PEOPLE
Once these things are understood, brand owners need to think about how they can maximise word-of-mouth in communities. Brand owners can do this by targeting influential people, who also have a large number of networks within their communities. High in ‘bridging capital’, they tend to be more extrovert, educated, communicative and informed and, therefore, more able to influence, and make brand-related ideas and information relevant. They form around 9% of the UK adult population. To best identify influential people, brand owners must: identify the number of networks a person has within their personal community; what they communicate about; how often they communicate about it; what media they use to communicate about it; and how many networks are involved.
3 OBSERVE THE DYNAMICS WITHIN COMMUNITIES
Members who are most able to structure a community form a core. These are the most influential and will often be gatekeepers to communities for brands. There are members who regularly communicate with other members and others who dip into conversations. Often these are newcomers to a community who become ‘old timers’ through increasing participation. Brand owners can look at how newcomers become ‘old timers’ to help them intervene in communities, but should also target core members because of their influence. Brand owners can enable newcomers to develop their participation in the core interest of the group, and help existing members develop their knowledge and skills.
4 PEOPLE ARE LOOKING FOR BRANDS LIKE THEM
People have what anthropologists call ‘homophily’, which means ‘love for the same’. We intentionally seek out people and communities who are similar to us socio-demographically and according to our social and cultural interests, needs and experiences. This means people and the communities in which they participate look for brands like them. When they are like them, they are more likely to connect with them, see their value, and use them as resources and to maintain connections. This means brand owners need to understand community members’ values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviours upfront, and connect them with the brand. If the brand were a person, what would his or her personality, passions and interests be?
5 COMMUNITIES ARE PARTLY BASED ON RECIPROCITY
Communities have a dimension of utility to them. Someone who wants to become part of a community needs to provide something of value in order to get something back. This means that brand owners need to answer, ‘What's in it for us?’ They have to work hard to earn their place, and be generous in what they give that may then be shared. Research SMG conducted across 27 brand pages on Facebook found sharing to be an excellent measure of brand consideration and preference, with 75% of people who share branded content preferring that brand over similar brands.
6 DELIVER TO SHIFTING LIFE STAGES
People experience different events according to their life stage. Single people in their 20s tend to have larger and more diverse networks. Leaving home, going to university, meeting new people, and starting a career are examples of where brands can facilitate this life stage. Marriage and early parenthood often necessitate high levels of commitment to family. Moving house, changing job or career and having children are opportunities for brands to facilitate this life stage. Retirees tend to have smaller networks because retirement tends to remove major spheres of non-kin contacts. Opportunities for brands include helping retirees to take advantage of the free time opened up to them.
7 COMMUNITIES ARE 'ALWAYS ON', BUT DON'T SWAMP PEOPLE
How people use new communication tools such as Facebook, Twitter and mobile phones means they are able to communicate 24/7. People expect other people to respond quickly, and they expect the same of brands. Brand owners can take advantage of ‘always on’ by providing content to maintain communication between people. However, people do not want to feel swamped by brands. One study looked at over 2,600 of the most liked Facebook pages and their posts-per-day rates. It found that brands that posted more than once a day tended to have fewer likes. The researchers found the optimum level to be three times a week. However, these are only averages, and posting frequency will change according to the brand, its characteristics and wants of its Facebook ‘fans’, and what the brand owners want to achieve.
8 EXPLOIT THE GEOGRAPHICAL SPREAD OF COMMUNITIES
People use new communication technologies to maintain geographically distributed networks that may otherwise collapse. People can stay in touch through online social network services while they are at work or on the move, and people can move across the world whilst still being able to maintain their communities. Brand owners are also able to take advantage of personal communities to disperse brand messages across distance. Facebook is an obvious medium for this, and brands such as More Th>n, Tetley, BlackBerry and Hovis have taken advantage.
9 SHARED CONTENT AND EXPERIENCES CONNECTS DISTANT COMMUNITIES
Despite the use of Facebook and the like to maintain geographically spread networks, distance is not conducive to the maintenance of relationships. Research shows that up to three-quarters of people's contacts live within 30 miles of each other, and friendships tend to be less personal and less rich as distance increases. Brand owners can aid communication, and enhance closeness and ties across geographically separated people by providing content and experiences that can be shared. In so doing, they are able to become more integral to people's lives. Content on Facebook and YouTube are obvious examples, but so is gifting via apps.
10 COMMUNITIES CAN CENTRE ON PARTICULAR BRANDS.
Brand communities' raison d'être is to focus upon a particular brand or branded product in order to benefit it and, in many cases, celebrate it. They are most likely to form around a brand with a strong image and rich history. Sometimes they openly oppose brand owners' decisions. When this happens, they create significant control problems. Brand communities are more useful to brand owners when used for customer retention, rather than acquisition, because research shows existing customers are more likely to have an already existing positive relationship with the brand and will help to create a lively, successful community.
Dr Steve Smith is head of thought leadership at Starcom MediaVest Group, London. He's a behavioural research expert with 15 years’ experience studying social trends and emerging behaviour around new media and technologies.
Reproduced with permission of Admap, "the world's primary source of strategies for effective advertising, marketing and research". To subscribe, visit www.warc.com/admap ©Copyright Admap
Our weekly round up of the big news in media technology and digital media.
After the iPhone 4S announcement last Tuesday, we took a look at the reaction in terms of the different types of people who were disappointed with the lack of "iPhone 5", and those who were actually buying smartphones today. (It was interesting to see Apple announce a million pre-oprders within 24 hours (compared to the 600,000 in the same timeframe after the iPhone 4 announcement last year.)
Tomorrow will see the launch of the iPhone 4S itself, as well as the availability of iOS5 to download — which will bring a number of new features, not just to the iPhone 4S, but the iPad, iPhone 4 and 3GS as well. These include iCloud (and new iTunes features— with UK availability yet to be announced), message "notification centre", iMessage (similar to BlackBerry's BBM, but for the Apple platform), and a Reminders application (ie. to-do lists.)
Of particular note in terms of the impact on media behaviours;
The Reader mode should be of particular interest to advertisers; while the benefit to users is clear (particularly the ability to tie together articles that run across multiple pages into a single page), the benefit to publishers is less so (if their site design — and advertising — is swept aside.)
But the one group do stand to benefit from this are application developers. If iPhone and iPad users are less likely to see display advertising on websites, then in-app advertising (including Apple's iAds) will become more appealing.
However, the latest Apple innovations were overshadowed by the news of Steve Jobs' death last week. Much of the technology world is still reeling from the news, and there are still scores of tributes and stories being shared. From the two companies he led (Apple and Pixar), to tributes from some of his fiercest competitors
Even Samsung and Google reportedly cancelled the launch of the latest Android handset, saying in a statement that "We believe this is not the right time to announce a new product as the world expresses tribute to Steve Jobs’s passing.
As a driving force in the development of the modern computer, from the earliest days of the graphical user interface, through the smartphone and touchscreen explosion and early steps into voice control, his influence on the industry will undoubtedly be missed by many.
A new ComScore report from the US says that web traffic from smartphones and tablets are now driving nearly 7% of all digital traffic — with iPads driving even more than iPhones. So the importance of these platforms is growing — not just in terms of mobile devices, but as alternatives to PCs.
"At long last" (as the New York times put it), Facebook have announced their iPad application; a free download, designed to create an "immersive and fun" experience.
TechCrunch reports that the a will also bring application discovery to the mobile platform — seeing a friend post a Words with Friends, tapping the link could open up the Words with Friends iPad application (if you had installed it already), or open it in the App Store (if you hadn't.) The feature is also being added to the mobile version, with plans to do the same for Android applications (which TechCrunch says is in the works.)
Facebook and Apple are reported to have been caught up in negotiations for some time, following Apple's launch last year of its "Ping" social network for music, which was planned to be integrated with Facebook.
The app, it turns out, had become the hostage of a tense negotiation between Facebook and Apple executives for a deal to further integrate Facebook into the next version of Apple’s operating system, iOS 5.
The latest wave of negotiations have presumably been around how in-app transactions would be dealt with; Apple insist on a 30% cut of in-app purchases, while Facebook are standardising around Facebook Credits as their platform's currency — where Facebook take a 30% cut of every transaction. Obviously, it would be tricky for both to take their cut of any transactions taking place within the Facebook iPad/iPhone application.
BusinessInsider.com reports that Apple appear to have won; while Facebook are bringing Facebook Credits and Applications to the mobile web, within the iOS App Facebook Credits will not be accepted.
On the publisher side, The Guardian is launching an iPad application of their own, priced at £9.99 a month (following a 3 month free trial, sponsored by Channel 4), with NMA.com reporting that is is expected to launch this week, with free access budled into print editions
The Guardian have put together a promotional video about their iPad application and its place within a broader shift to digital media. As editor Alan Rusbridger explains;
"We are not going to be scrambling to update it every minute or every hour— we will do that on the browser […] This is going to be a different kind of read, a bit more reflective."
(A bit more like a newspaper then?)
The video goes on to talk about the column and grid-based design (again, a familiar concept…), and the way interactivity will add to the advertising opportunities. Worth a watch.
As expected, the Independent is to launch a paywall for non-UK readers, expected next week. Citing the pressure from the BBC, creating a need to make a distinction between UK and foreign visitors, the main target will be readers in the US and Canada.
Announcing a major step in their ambitions to turn the Xbox 360 into a true media centre for the living room, Microsoft have announced a wide range of "entertainment leaders" who, through the Xbox 360 games console, will "transform TV."
A key difference between Microsoft's console and competitors from Nintendo and Sony is the lack of a web browser on the Xbox 360 — meaning that Microsoft effectively act as gatekeepers to online content on the console. So while the BBC iPlayer has been available for some time on the PlayStation 3 and Wii, negotiations around bringing it to the Xbox 360 have been held up by conflicts between the companies' policies (Microsoft insisting that additional content be exclusive to Xbox Live! subscribers, while the BBC insists that access to BBC content be available to all.)
BBC, Channel 4, Channel 5, LoveFilm and Blinkbox have all been announced as UK partners (but no ITV), while Sky TV has been available to those who subscribe to both Sky and Xbox Live! for some time.
In this week's round up of the big stories in digital media and tech, Amazon launch their Kindle tablet, lots of news about Facebook, and new ways to advertise in online video.
Last week, Amazon announced the launch of a new set of Kindle devices; a refreshed (and cheaper) "basic" model with a touch-screen alternative, and the Kindle Fire; a $199 tablet which is already being hailed as an iPad killer.
While it isn't the first device to spark these sorts of headlines, it is probably the first that will actually set the tablet market alight. Compared to the $499 iPad base model (and many similarly-priced competitors), the Fire comes in at a completely different price bracket. With a novel "split browser" (sharing the job between the device itself and Amazon's EC2 cloud servers), built on Google's Android platform (although devoid of any Android branding or applications), and featuring Amazon's "Special Offers" (ie. advertising, which can be removed for a fee), this appears to have a number of interesting implications for the online media, and we will be having a closer look at what it means later in the week.
I mentioned last week that Spotify were requiring all new users to have a Facebook account, following the launch of the new Spotify Facebook application. Figures from InsideFacebook.com indicate that since the F8 Developer Conference, Spotify has added 1 million users of its Facebook application. Similar growth has been seen by Rdio (a music service with a similar application), while SoundCloud, iHeartRadio, and Deezer have all lost Daily Active Users — none of whom are yet using Facebook's social features.
It looks like a powerful argument in favour of using the socially-connected applications, and it will be interesting to see whether we will see similar reactions outside of the music apps.
Following a number of complaints around privacy concerns (some of which were mentioned here last week), Facebook are being audited by Irish privacy regulators, facing similar investigations in Australia, and the FTC in the US is considering an investigation.
A new Facebook metric for brands is expected to be announced tomorrow. SocialBakers.com describes the changes
People Talking About is one of four metrics Facebook will measure on all Facebook Pages. The metric should be available from tomorrow, and it represents the number of people that are talking about the page, sharing content from the page and further interacting with the page, thus creating stories. Its basically a metric of active fans.
The interesting point is that unlike the existing metrics, this new metric looks outside of the number of "likes", comments and views of your brands' Page and into wider Facebook conversations.
Meanwhile, Facebook have introduced a new ad unit— named "expandable", but unlike the familiar rich media expandable units, the Facebook ad will "expand" to show the number of likes and comments an ad has received.
From October 31st, "Discussions" tabs will be removed from Pages. Facebook say
We've found that the best way to encourage conversation and feedback is through posts and comments on your Wall. We've removed these tabs for now as we work on tools to help you moderate and filter content.
Users of Discussions tabs have found them difficult to moderate (as they lack the API and tools that Pages offer), and are often abused. (Also, they had the snag that banning a user from posting to a Page didn't stop them from posting in the Discussion tab.)
Making it easier for advertisers to appear in YouTube content, Google have launched AdWords for Video. Bringing their auction-based advertising system to video content, using the same interface as existing search and display ads, this is likely to build interest in video advertising, simplifying the process and opening up Google's "TrueView" advertising formats (which use a "cost per view" quality measure- ads that get more views become more efficient to buy, similar to search advertisings "Quality Score.")
This should make it easy for new advertisers to get involved in the video marketplace, while surpressing low-quality advertising from their platform.
Meanwhile, AOL and VivaKi are partnering in a project to identify new advertising formats for online video. This follows on from The Pool (VivaKi's research into new video advertising models) in the US, which resulted in the "choose a pre-roll" Ad Selector model (currently in the field in the UK.)
By the time you read this, you will probably know about Apple's event this afternoon (6pm UK time- as I write), where they are expected to announce the latest iPhone and launch iOS 5 and iCloud.
As there has also been a new iPod Nano around this time of year for the last few years, it seems likely that a new Nano model will also be announced (perhaps with WiFi to access iTunes in the iCloud?) — although those who were expecting the iPhone to follow a similar pattern (with previous new models released in July for the last three years) have been waiting longer than expected. (Meanwhile this week, Microsoft has killed off the Zune, its dedicated MP3 player, as it is focussing on Windows Phone for their mobile music and video strategy. Might this mean an iPod-Touch-challenging Windows Phone that isn't a phone?)
Given that iPhone 4 users will be at most 15 months into (probably) a 2 year contract, it seems likely that the new handset will be a relatively minor upgrade (ie. an iPhone 4s aimed at first-time smartphone buyers or those migrating from other smartphone platforms, rather than an all-new iPhone 5), but that the more interesting news will be about the new iOS 5 software. With some interesting rumours about speech recognition and an artificial intelligence "Assistant", as well as what is already known about iOS 5 features (such as iCloud, iTunes Sync and integration with Twitter), we expect to have a deeper run-down once the news is out.
