Posts Tagged ‘internet’

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The Growing Market For Online Shows

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

Although the market for internet shows declined during the recession, it is now attracting increasing amounts of sponsorship and advertising.

  • Interest in Web-based shows has waxed and waned in recent years, but it’s now on the rise again. As people continue to spend more time online, traffic for these types of shows is expected to increase.
  • The new faith in these programs comes from the realization that online shows won’t replace TV shows anytime in the near future, but they can provide an alternative viewing experience with different standards.
  • Many funding deals for these shows come from increasingly popular branded entertainment deals, where a company sponsors a show in return for having its brand somehow incorporated into the show itself.

Facts & Figures

  • An estimated 86% of users in the United States watch at least one online video per month.
  • Last month, YouTube put up $5 million in grants for online producers.
  • Commercials for professionally-produced internet shows cost $15-$35 per thousand views; banner ads cost $5-$15 per thousand views.

Best Quote

“I often think of my daily business life as a guy running a cable network in the early 1980s. There is, no matter how you slice it, a timeline for any new industry to grow.” –Rob Barnett, Chief Executive, My Damn Channel

Media Outlets Are Betting On Tumblr

Friday, August 13th, 2010

Many media companies are using Tumblr to reach out to their readerships.

  • Tumblr is considered the new hot social networking tool, and many media outlets are hoping it will become the next big thing.
  • Although Tumblr’s audience is currently much smaller than Twitter’s or Facebook’s, the companies that have chosen Tumblr think that the audience will expand greatly in the near future.
  • Tumblr’s greatest asset is the way in which it allows users to create a page that reflects their personality.

Facts & Figures

  • Tumblr currently has 6.6 million users.
  • An estimated 25,ooo new Tumblr accounts are created daily.
  • The company recently raised $5 million in venture capital.

Best Quote

“Going back 20 years, publications like Rolling Stone didn’t interact with readers except for letters to the editor. One of the realizations that cultural leaders and publishers have had is that there is a lot of expertise, wisdom and ideas in their readership.” –James E. Katz, professor of communications, Rutgers University

Internet Browsing Taken To A Personal Level

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

A company called [x+1] Inc. is making strides towards the destruction of anonymity on the Web.

  • [x+1] Inc. collects data from users and sells it to companies that use the information that then targets products to specific customers.
  • According to a survey conducted by The Wall Street Journal, [x+1] Inc.’s data is not always completely accurate, but it was able to find out quite a bit of information about the test users, including where they lived.
  • Although this is a troubling infringement of privacy on its own, there is an added threat: the more bits of information a program or company gathers on you, the easier it becomes to narrow you down to a specific person, destroying your anonymity entirely.

Facts & Figures

  • Clients pay from $30,000-$200,000 per month for [x+1] Inc.’s services.
  • According to [x+1] Inc., the company is capable of absorbing thousands of details about a user in just a fifth of a second.
  • 33 “bits” of information are required to accurately determine a person’s identity, where each piece of information is assigned a value in “bits” (your gender is worth just one bit, your ZIP code or birthdate many more). [x+1] Inc.’s analysis of one of the WSJ’s test users yielded 26.5 bits, or enough to narrow his identity down to one of 64 people in the entire world.

Best Quote

“We never don’t know anything about someone.” –John Nardone, chief executive, [x+1] Inc.

Competition Between Two Power Search Engines Intensifies

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

As the search engine Bing accumulates more users, Google attempts to adopt some of their new features.

  • Google has long held the majority of users in the search engine market, but its percentage is now dropping, while Bing’s and Yahoo’s ia rising.
  • Google has favored a simple, no-frills approach to searching, but now, faced with Bing’s breadth of new features, it is rethinking that strategy, going so far as to imitate Bing in some areas.
  • Although Bing still has only a fraction of Google’s audience, we’re likely to see the competition between the two search engines ramp up even more in the future.

Facts & Figures

  • Google handles 62.6% of all internet searches; Bing only handles 12.7%. However, Bing’s percentage has increased from only 8% when the search engine was first introduced.
  • Over the last 12 months, Microsoft’s online services division suffered losses of $2.36 billion on revenue of $2.2. billion.
  • Google made 500 adjustments to its search algorithm in the past year alone.

Best Quote

“There is a cold war going on. Clearly, you can see how Bing’s competition is forcing Google to try and catch up in some places.” –Sandeep Aggarwal, Senior Internet and Software Analyst, Caris & Company

On Amazon, E-Book Sales Surpass Hardcovers

Monday, July 26th, 2010

The convenience of the skinny Kindle sways more customers.

  • Sales of the Kindle, Amazon.com’s digital book reader, have skyrocketed and Amazon reports that it is now selling more electronic books than hardcover editions.
  • In order to compete with other e-readers made by Apple and Sony, Amazon slashed the price of the Kindle almost in half - a move that increased sales even further.
  • The growing popularity of the e-book boosted Amazon stock, reversing a steady decline since the recession.

Facts & Figures

  • Amazon has sold 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books
  • Amazon will probably sell 3.7 million Kindles this year

Best Quote

“We’ve reached a tipping point with the new price of Kindle. Amazon.com customers now purchase more Kindle books than hardcover books — astonishing when you consider that we’ve been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months.” – Jeff Bezos, Chief Executive of Amazon.com

Early Exhaustion In Online Journalism Careers

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

The Internet has turned many news outlets into frenzies of über-competitive racing to break even the smallest tidbits of news, and many young journalists can’t handle the pressure.

  • The Internet has changed the way journalism works, and now many young people who envisioned trips to exotic locales to capture groundbreaking stories are instead tasked with sitting at their computers and watching for the smallest pieces of information to publish.
  • Editors now foster competitiveness by posting the most-viewed articles on their sites and even calculating paychecks based on how many clicks a writer’s articles have gotten.
  • These conditions have led to increased turnover at news outlets like Gawker and Politico, with many young journalists leaving quickly because they’re exhausted.

Facts & Figures

  • The top editors at Politico wake up as early as 4:30 am on workdays (a typical newspaper workday is from 10 am to 7 pm).
  • Out of a staff of just 70 reporters and editors, about a dozen of Politico’s employees quit in the first half of this year.
  • An entry-level reporting job at Politico can pay as much as $40,000 per year.

Best Quote

“At a paper, your only real stress point is in the evening when you’re actually sitting there on deadline, trying to file. Now at any point in the day starting at 5 in the morning, there can be that same level of intensity and pressure to get something out.” – Jim VandeHei, Politico’s Executive Editor

Using Social Media To Nonprofits’ Advantage

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

Nonprofits are learning that the interactive and communicative elements of fund-raising are essential for raising money with social media.

  • On Facebook, direct fund-raising has proven to be unsuccessful.
  • Nonprofits raise more money when donors can engage in the philanthropy (through dialogue and games, for example) rather than direct solicitations.
  • Establishing relationships between Facebook users and real-world outcomes has led to more people donating to a cause.
  • Zynga (the largest game developer on Facebook) has partnered with Water.org and Huntington’s Disease Society of America (HDSA) and has raised more than $130,000 for the causes.

Facts & Figures

  • 61.1% of nonprofits reported little to no results when fund-raising through social media.
  • More than 235,000 nonprofits are on Facebook, but a relatively small number of them have donor funds.

Dealing with Questionable Content

Monday, July 19th, 2010

Workers who screen websites for explicit content are increasingly in demand, but many companies are failing to provide these employees with adequate psychiatric care.

  • Internet content reviewers, people who police popular websites in order to identify and remove inappropriate content, are being hired in ever greater numbers.
  • Although these jobs are in high demand, they do not pay well, and many companies that hire internet content reviewers don’t guarantee them psychiatric help in order to deal with the hundreds of graphic and disturbing images they see every day.
  • The psychiatrists who have interviewed these workers have concluded that many of them have been psychologically affected by their jobs. These findings are troubling, especially considering that companies want to hire ever more screeners, young people are often attracted to the work, and the jobs are being increasingly outsourced.

Facts and Figures

  • At one company, Telecommunications on Demand, 50 internet content reviewers examine a combined average of 20 million images per week.
  • These employees are paid $8-$12 per hour.

Best Quote

“You have 20-year-old kids who get hired to do content review, and who get excited because they think they are going to see adult porn. They have no idea that some of the despicable and illegal images they will see can haunt them for the rest of their lives.” – Hemanshu Nigam, Former chief security officer at MySpace

Luxury Sites Replace Luxury Stores

Friday, July 16th, 2010

In a struggling economy, online shopping might replace even the highest high-end stores.

  • In the wake of the recession, luxury stores are forced to sell merchandise on the web.
  • Selling clothes online, though less atmospheric than a downtown boutique, allows profits to go directly to the company by cutting out the costs of a store.
  • Technology’s infinite possibilities has increased the number of high-end online stores, allowing boutiques to make their websites seem as impressive and exclusive as their boutique.

Facts & Figures

  • In 2009, when the worldwide luxury-goods industry fell 8%, luxury sales online were forecast to grow 20%

Best Quote

“These brands are finally taking the plunge to establish an online retail presence. The recession forced these manufacturers to realize they needed to look for revenue wherever they could.” – Jeffrey Max, Chief Executive, Venda E-Commerce Sites

Internet History 101

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

lolcats-101.png

We here at TILE don’t condone LOLcats. We think they’re stupid and annoying. But somehow this illustrated legend of how they came to be is still fascinating: onlineeducation.org/lolcats

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