Joost, the online TV site developed by the creators of Skype, has been around for less than a year and it already seems as if it's time has passed. Last summer, when it debuted to an invite-only audience, passwords and invites were being auctioned off on eBay. It was the hottest thing. However, we now see that Joost has been limited by a drought of compelling programming and because the site requires users to download the video player.
Why do all that when you can go to Hulu and watch current, high-quality shows in a streaming format? No extra effort required. That's what online viewers want. It took online video so long to take off because users had so many technical issues - issues which often went beyond bandwidth. Raise your hand if you ever gave up after downloading a piece of software so you could watch some clip that a friend sent you. (Thank you. You made my case. Hands down.)
Give Joost credit. The site's innovative chat function allows fans of a show to interact. Plus, the site features the old GI Joe cartoon. Some of Joost's interactive functionalities have been picked up by Hulu, and it's doubtful Fox and NBC would have had the same foresight as the Joost guys. Ultimately, it always comes down to content and here, Joost just could not compete with Big Media. Joost doesn't have shows that are currently on the air, which is obviously a tremendous disadvantage. Even if it had been able to land cult hit Arrested Development, that would have been a big coup, but it was not to be.
Whither Joost?
Extra, Extra: State of the News Media 2008
The State of the News Media report for 2008 is out. There are several interesting findings from the annual report, including that news is shifting from a product to a service that empowers consumers and that newsrooms are perceived as innovative. That last one surprised us a bit, but since we haven't done the leg work, we trust the folks at The Project for Excellence in Journalism.
The finding that we found most intriguing is that the agenda of the news media has narrowed, not broadened. The question here is, chicken or egg? Does the media not cover a wide range of topics because it is attempting to dictate public conversation or do readers simply have a narrow focus and want stories only on a few topics (the economy, the war in Iraq, etc.)? For our money, we see the reader as the problem -- though not our readers, of course ;). There is no question that news consumers in this country have decided that they want their news from people with the same views as them, talking about the topics that are important to them. If you're conservative, you watch Fox News. If you're liberal, ... you get the idea. The bottom line is that people have a narrowing view of the world and what the news media is covering is simply a reflection of that.
This, of course, is a major problem. The importance of journalism as the Fourth Estate cannot be understated in American history. Watergate, anyone? The exchange of differing opinions and ideas is important on several levels and if we all continue to watch only the views of those like us talking about only the three stories we care about, we lose the chance to broaden our understanding of others. (Deep, huh?) This angle represents the great elephant in the room, the story that journalists seem to avoid. Though we're not the ultimate clearinghouse, we haven't seen too much written on this topic. Then again, maybe it's not one of the three stories we care about.
Loopt: Friend or Foe Finder?
A front-page story in today's Wall Street Journal discusses a new application (named Loopt) for your mobile device that can track where your contacts are at any time. Think of it as Google Maps starring your friends and family. Here's a quick video so you can see how the service works.
Now that you've seen that, are you a little creeped out? In the story, the Loopt founder even says, "It's one of those things, the more you think about it, the more ways you can figure out a creep could abuse it. I think people realize that unlike a telemarketer call, which can be annoying, a location-based service could be an actual physical safety risk." Good times! I'd like to pay an extra $4.95 a month for that.
Obviously you have to opt-in to the service, but it raises some scary issues. And as the Baroness says, "What if you're going to surprise me with something? Then I don't want to know where you are." Hmmmm...Is that a hint? Gotta go work on that, I suppose.
DVR vs. VOD: The Battle for TV Control
The Baroness and I love our DVR. We don't know anyone who has a DVR and isn't emotionally tethered to its greatness. And now comes word that DVR should be in more than one-third of homes by 2012. But is the DVR just a bridge technology?
The same story tells us that VOD will be in more than 50% of homes by 2012. Cable companies love VOD because it's worth much more to them than the $5 per month they receive for DVR. VOD also means that cable companies can supply video on the back end (just when you choose that video) and don't need to worry about putting the large hard drives into cable boxes.
I have a couple of concerns with VOD: 1) As it's currently constituted, only a limited number of episodes for a given show are available at a time. That must change. If I am giving up my DVR, I want to retain control. 2) I don't want to have to watch ads or pay for the content, and with VOD, you have to pick your poison.
I get the sense that the DVR will be surpassed by VOD in terms of usage pretty soon, but that doesn't mean DVR will go away. And if I have to, I could always buy Tivo, assuming they're still in business. You can't underestimate how great it is to be able to pause live TV. I'm not giving that up without a fight.
The Hits Just Keep on Coming: New Google Search Feature
Google rarely does anything without thinking about the ramifications, so it's interesting that the company has launched a search-within-search feature that could end up hurting print publishers.
Basically, when you search on Google for "NY Times," the search brings up the top pages and another box so you can search within the Times page without clicking through to the site. It certainly seems more convenient, but print publishers are unhappy because when you search for certain terms (jobs, real estate), ads pop up on the right for competitor sites. The ads, of course, only pop up for terms where there's real money to be made. If you search terms like sports and politics -- where there are plenty of competitors -- no ad words come up.
The one saving grace is for people to search logically. If people want jobs from the Washington Post, they are likely to search "Washington Post jobs" rather than breaking the process into two steps. When you do that, no ads words appear. It's a small but significant difference.
New Yorker Puts Papers Under the Microscope
Journalism and newspapers get The New Yorker treatment this week. The article (which we located on The Big Lead) has some crazy statistics -- The New York Times Co. has seen its stock price drop 54% since 2004 -- and brings up some good points, but too often it feels like a press release for The Huffington Post.
The article talks about blogs and does give some mention to other blogs, but HuffPost is the central theme when the reporter is not doling out miserable stats about newspapers. On the plus side, there are some incredibly insightful quotes from Rupert Murdoch, which give you an idea that the man really has vision and didn't just get to the top by putting boobs and blood into his papers.
Moreover, the article points out (correctly, I think) that the next few years will be a chaotic time in journalism. For some reason, in other new media (mobile web, for example), we understand that things are going to be in flux for a few years until a working business model emerges. In newspapers, however, we expect the transition to be quick and painless.
The Ecosystem of Old Technologies
Much of what we blog about here is about how new technology is adopted and consumed, and how that affects older technologies. I guess the folks at The New York Times have been reading because they basically took that theme and fleshed into a 15-inch story instead of ongoing blog ethos.
This article deals with how old techs evolve when they are overtaken by new techs. One source in the story even compares it to the evolution of ecosystems, a spot-on analogy. For example, the Beta VCR is often considered one of the great recent tech blunders as it failed to adapt and was overtaken by VHS. But Beta disappeared only in the consumer market. In the B2B world, Beta was often used by TV stations and, I believe, still is in some places.
What to Expect When You're Expecting To Blog
Since our job is to bring you what's happening in the world of media, we of course must bring you what happens when mainstream media outlets cover the blogosphere. The New York Times gives you everything you wanted to know about blogs but were afraid to ask. So if you were hankering to blog but wanted to know more, this article is for you.
What I would add to their list of points is that blogging is a different kind of writing. Maybe I only notice because I wrote very often for five years, but blogging has its own rhythms and tone. Those take a little while to figure out, but if you're a true card-carrying member of the blogosphere (aka you read a few blogs regularly), you will pick things up pretty quickly. Happy blogging!
Turn Back the Tech: The Atari
Welcome back to another edition of Turn Back the Tech. In case you missed the last couple of editions, you can click here or here.
There's not much to say here other than the fact that the Atari was the greatest video game system ever. I didn't even have one -- yes the Baron's mom is a bit of a technophobe -- but man, could I rock Space Invaders and Pole Position. This ad is great for so many reasons.
1. Pete Rose
2. Isn't that Don Knotts in prison? Barney Fife?
3. The sounds, the graphics, the bad TV reception at the end
Politicians Missing Out Online
With American politics at such a pivotal point, Online Spin has an interesting article on the candidates and how much they have spent online. Turns out the candidates are only spending 1% of their ad budgets online. In the case of Barack Obama, a large portion of his donations have come online and his online ad spending is still surprisingly low. The article discusses where the candidates are missing out in crafting their message through key search words. Good stuff.
I (Heart) the iPhone
I admit it -- I am in the tank for the iPhone. I had unrealistic expectations of it before its release and now that I have used it a bit (through friends and the Apple Store), I like it even more than expected. It delivers such incredible usability and is so easy to figure out. Plus, it has revolutionized the smartphone market and means that the mobile Web is no longer a distant fantasy.
Still, I can't imagine even the folks at Apple could have projected some of the usage numbers in a recent study by M:Metrics, as published in The New York Times. The most overwhelming stat? Nearly 85% of iPhone users access the mobile Web, compared to 13% of the overall mobile market in the U.S. and 58% of total smartphone owners.
More than anything else, the iPhone has kept the hardware manufacturers and the cellular companies on edge because they know if they don't do something (and quick), they will lose out on this growing market. Too often, these companies hold off on putting things out on the market because they can't figure out the right way to monetize things. That's a bad thing for us. The iPhone has kept them from f-ing around too much.
Peeking into the Vault: Magazine Opens Up Archives
Starting Thursday, Sports Illustrated, a Time Inc. property, will allow online users to search the magazine's complete archives, in what they're calling The Vault. Time has taken similar actions with archives for some of its other properties, including People, Time and Entertainment Weekly.
The article claims that this is a way for magazines to draw readers to their websites. True indeed, especially thanks to search engine traffic, but I don't see this as being so revolutionary. Will users really want to see a story about how great Dale Murphy was in May of 1986? There are plenty of things worth searching for -- I will promptly look up every Gary Smith article ever written -- but this strikes me as one of those things that sounds cool but is rarely used once it launches. On the plus side, it sounds like SI put together a high-quality reader to use on the site. And you can look at the ads. That might be the best part.
Weekend Roundup: The Baron is Back
The Baroness and I rolled back into town earlier this evening, so I had to get to the happs on what we missed in the last few days. This will be roundup style.
- Editor and Publisher released a study on the decline in circulation at the top U.S. papers in the last four years. The lowlights? The L.A. Times lost 20% of its readership and the San Francisco Chronicle lost 30%. Huge losses in such a short period of time. I could tell you more, but the E&P link doesn't work, so I couldn't get to the entire article.
- The Wall Street Journal is planning more sports and political coverage. Welcome to the party, boys!
- The Wii rocks. I gotta get me one of those. I hear they're using them for exercise in elderly homes. Nintendo must be all over that market.
- Apparently newspapers are not playing nice with Craigslist. Several years after fawning stories carried the day, the Craigslist CEO says his "journalist friends" have been told to write negative stories about them. And you wonder why people think newspapers are biased.
18-49s Get Their News From Cable
In what is no surprise to anyone, network news ratings among 18-49s have nosedived. The common perception, of course, is that the 18-49 bracket gets its news from the Internet. But what the figures in this article tell us is that the 18-49s are still watching news (at least some of them), and they're watching it on cable, not on network TV. The election may be skewing this data, but that's a post for another day.
I have to say I can't believe more isn't made of the Katie Couric situation. She was brought in to revive CBS News and the ratings have continued to tank. She's become completely irrelevant. It's just a stunning turn of events. You know, people talk about the demise of the newspaper, but the national nightly news is gone in a decade, if not sooner. Local news will survive in some form because it's becoming hyperlocal, but national network news has problems.
By the way, The Baroness and I will be heading out for a little vacay this weekend, away from the comforting protection of the Internet, so there won't be any posting until the end of the weekend.
CBS Sports Gets It Right With Online Viewing
How great is the NCAA Tournament? So great that I once got caught by my boss watching a buzzer beater and she didn't even care.
It's rare that we write about sports here. However, we're going to make an exception to recognize what CBS has done with the NCAA Tournament and online viewing. March Madness is clearly an oddity in that it has a short window with tremendous demand that continues to grow. What they've done may not be comparable to other media bigs, but it is a good blueprint to follow where applicable.
What's great about what CBS did is that they tested things over a couple of years and were flexible in their approach. Their player worked great right from the start (I got caught by the boss watching a buzzer beater at my desk) and they quickly realized that online viewership enhanced interest in the tournament rather than cannibalized it.
A few years ago, CBS began with registration for online streams of games. The big plus was the ability to watch out-of-market games. The company didn't charge the first year and had incredible viewership numbers. They did charge $19.99 more recently, but now they have gotten rid of that fee. Plus, games will no longer be blacked out locally to protect the TV interests. Revenue keeps going up and fans have great access to every game. It's shocking that the miserable NCAA has anything to do with this process.
Did You Know?
Don't know if you've seen this (and it's a wee bit outdated in a few of its figures), but it's fascinating. Watch this all the way through. It's worth it. The overall message here is very powerful. It may make you a bit uncomfortable about where the U.S. stands in relation to the world, but maybe it will kick-start us to something better. According to President Bush, of course, we're the leader in everything. I love the fact that he's blind in addition to being stupid.
Here's the site they reference at the end if you want to know more.
Most Powerful Blogs Named, Baron Miffed
The Observer in the U.K. put together its list of the 50 Most Powerful Blogs. The list goes from serious to silly, but it does not include us. Ho hum. It does include engadget, which is a great tech blog, and one we've been planning to write about. Note that the list is not The 50 Most Relevant Blogs or The 50 Blogs Run By Very Likeable and Attractive People. We're sure we would have been at least an h0norable mention on those lists.
Great way for The Observer to drive traffic to its site though. You know this thing has gotten more hits than Lindsay's latest [fill in something relevant].
Hulu Prepares for Big Rollout
We have written about how much we like Hulu (the News Corp./NBC web video site) several times in the past. Well, if you're watching TV on the web and you haven't yet checked it out, you will get the chance as the site is about to come out of private beta. In other words, you'll no longer have to register to use the site.
Part of the reason The Baroness and I enjoy Hulu so much (though we only use it on occasion) is for its incredible user-friendliness. Well, Fortune Magazine has an article detailing just how fanatical the Hulu programmers were in putting together the site. Hulu did it right in taking its time and launching the site only once things worked really well. Unfortunately, a lot of this piece is the big media folks saying, "I told you so." I guess designing a great site and being humble was a bit too much to ask.
Internet is More Trusted News Source Than Print, TV
There's a new poll out with interesting info on how much trust people have in different media. The figures are surprising. Adults tend to trust radio (first) and the Internet (second) before they trust TV and print (dead last). I think the results here may have been affected by the fact that they called the print category "press," which I would take to mean the entire media field, but maybe I'm just reading too much into this.
Look, if you readers are going to trust me that much, I appreciate it. I am, after all, The Baron. But you would trust the news from me before The New York Times? There's something screwy going on with this data. It's one thing if you think the Times or the Wall Street Journal have political leanings, as they undoubtedly do, but does that mean you trust their information less than the folks at Gothamist (a site I love)? I'm totally confused. This is like when I found that women actually pay to have someone rip their eyebrows out with hot wax.
NBC Spends Money, Explains the Obvious
NBC tells us that people who watch shows online are more likely to recall ads and more likely to watch the whole show through. I can't say this is terribly surprising on either count.
As far as the ads are concerned, when you watch an episode online, there are about three ads, maybe four if you count a pre-program sponsorship. Of course, people are going to recall those four ads better than the 13-15 that normally run during a show on TV. Plus, you can't switch channels online and since the NBC player can sometimes be shaky, I hardly even want to breathe on the computer when I'm watching The Office.
This lack of channel-surfing also means that you're more likely to stay with a show all the way through. Plus, you decided to stream that show (in theory) because you want to watch it. Viewing online has a far bigger pull side than TV, where there are so many options and occasionally you just want to be mindlessly entertained for an hour. How else to explain Are Your Smarter than a 5th Grader?
Yahoo is Serious About Finding Other Suitors
You really have to admire the folks at Yahoo. These guys have made it clear to everyone that they have no interest in being bought by Big Brother Microsoft (at least at the current price) and that they still want to compete with the Google behemoth.
Today comes word that Yahoo is working on a deal with Time Warner involving AOL. (In case you missed my recent post on AOL, I'm trying to improve its grandma-like image.) Together the companies figure they can take on Google in the advertising arena. At this point, it seems the deal with Microsoft is still likely to happen, but you have to admire Yahoo trying to scare up as many potential suitors as it can to get Microsoft to play fair.
The Economist Backs My Play
Amen to my brothers from The Economist!
As a follow to my rant on the movie industry (even though they published their article first), The Economist has an article detailing Hollywood's on-again, off-again relationship with the Internet. I swear I read the article after my post. I swear!
Is AOL Going the Way of Ovaltine?
What do you think of when you see the letters A-O-L? Chances are you're probably shuddering at the thought of the dial-up days when you would write e-mails offline and then log on to send them. Good times.
Well, a decade later, AOL, which not surprisingly has seen its share price tank in recent years, is working on creating as many niche content sites as possible. AOL plans to launch at least a dozen in the next six months. That's wonderful. The brand has produced some great sites, especially its Fanhouse site for sports.
But wouldn't you change the name? The brand has tremendous recognition, but it's like Ovaltine wanting to reinvent itself. The name has recognition, but the first thing that comes to mind is something that was popular years ago. How about renaming their online content unit? Otherwise, all you think of with A-O-L is O-L-D.
Film Industry Flails and Fails
Thanks again to the folks over at The Big Lead for link to our last post. And for you TBL readers, The Baron would like to extend to you a hearty welcome. On to the media...
Does the movie industry want to die a slow death like their counterparts from the music biz? I don't get these film folks. They have failed to take advantage of so many new media opportunities because they're scared of some growing pains. And yes, these are the same people who fought the emergence of the VCR because they thought people would never go to the movies if they could watch at home.
When the iPod exploded, could the Hollywood guys not see that downloading movies was the next step? Shouldn't they be backing these technologies with some money to push the process?
As far as new media opportunities, it wouldn't cost the studios much to edit the clips for mobile, but they could also get a little creative and do work beyond just cutting the clips again. Put some extras out there as a way to entice consumers. We know you want to have extra features so that you can release the DVD 10 different times over a 3-year period, but you gotta give a little to get a little.
Turn Back the Tech: The Year is 1900
Thanks to our friends over at The Big Lead for the plug in today's roundup!
Welcome to another installment of Turn Back the Tech, the series in which we look at old media or technologies with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight.
We go back to December 1, 1900 and look at predictions for the 20th Century. What's incredible about this document is how accurate some of these are.
Best prediction? Lots of good ones here -- air conditioning, airplane travel, instant access to news of events around the world. My favorite, though, has got to be the one that predicts the rise of pre-cooked meals. Love those frozen pizza rolls.
Worst prediction? No cars in large cities. Apparently, we were supposed to be using subways that were "well-lit" and "well-ventilated." Ever try waiting for the subway in the summer? Well-ventilated is not the way I would choose to describe it. Well-done is more like it.
Worse prediction II? Rats were supposed to be extinct. I only mention this because the last prediction was about the subway and those two things go together like ham and sandwich.
Most fun prediction that didn't come true? Pneumatic tubes (you know, the ones used for mail in old school offices) being used for home delivery of products. The Internet's got nothing on that.
Google Wants to Know Where It Hurts
If you don't yet know why Google is going to be bigger than Microsoft ever was, here is another example. Google announced that it is launching Google Health, which will allow users to have quick access to their medical records online. What Google is great at is figuring out where there are gaps in access to information and filling in those gaps. Looks at Google Analytics, which tracks web data for free, or Google Documents, which are accessible from anywhere.
Of course, the scary part of this is the privacy issue. In 5-10 years when Google has people using all aspects of its services, from e-mail to word documents and spreadsheets to health info to search capabilities and whatever else they think of next, the company will know everything about you. And don't think they won't sell a whole lot of that information as they position themselves to dominate the advertising world. In the health arena, at least, they are bound by certain privacy laws, which should help. I just worry about a stolen laptop or a hacker.
It's a tradeoff, but having access to your medical records anytime, anywhere will have incredible value for many people. In some sense, it's surprising that we don't already have some system like this in the U.S.
