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Digital Culture Links: November 17th 2010
Links for November 11th 2010 through November 17th 2010:
- The Shadow Scholar [The Chronicle of Higher Education] – A truly fascinating, albeit hugely disheartening, piece describing the inner workings of a paid student essay mill from the inside. The pseudonymous author talks candidly about her/his range and rates, as well as the sort of relationships that can form with repeat customers, who use this sort of service to pass entire degrees. It’s a huge indictment of huge chunks of the global education system, but also contains some implicit points about how to write assignments that are much harder to plagiarise. Some of the comments are well worth reading, too, although many are more about name-calling than taking the issues raised seriously.
- Riding the tube [SMH] – Profile of Natalie Tran, Australia’s most successful YouTuber, with near to a million subscribers, making a healthy living off the advertising.
- Twitter + Ping = Discovering More Music [Twitter Blog] – Now Twitter can be integrated into Apple’s Ping proto-social network, so you can share your musical likes in your Twitter stream. Ping is still at a very early, underdeveloped stage … I’m not sure what this will add for Twitter except a bunch of musical likes. For Apple, it’s a huge win since those links are pointing back to the Apple store (with integration into the new twitter, so you can click directly on the songs to purchase).
- Fox.com joins NBC, ABC and CBS by blocking Google TV [Engadget] – Google have some deals to strike with the networks very soon if Google TV is actually going to have any TV on it: “Looks like Fox has finally made a decision, following the other major networks, Hulu and several cable channels by opting to block streaming video on its website from Google TV devices. Blocking by Flash ID is the order of the day and takes simple browser workarounds out of play, so unless users want to go the PlayOn route, there’s large swaths of legitimate video on the web that’s now inaccessible.”
Digital Culture Links: November 11th 2010
Links for November 9th 2010 through November 11th 2010:
- Great Scott! Over 35 Hours of Video Uploaded Every Minute to YouTube [YouTube Blog] – “… the amount of video uploaded to YouTube to 35 hours per minute. That breaks out to 2,100 hours uploaded every 60 minutes, or 50,400 hours uploaded to YouTube every day. If we were to measure that in movie terms (assuming the average Hollywood film is around 120 minutes long), 35 hours a minute is the equivalent of over 176,000 full-length Hollywood releases every week. Another way to think about it is: if three of the major US networks were broadcasting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year for the last 60 years, they still wouldn’t have broadcast as much content as is uploaded to YouTube every 30 days.”
- Hulu Brings in the Dough: $240M of Revenue in 2010 [NewTeeVee] – “Hulu is going to make more than $240 million in revenue in 2010, the company’s CEO Jason Kilar revealed at GigaOM’s NewTeeVee Live conference today. Kilar added that Hulu generated $108 million in revenue in 2009. Hulu had 30 million users in October 2010, who watched some 260 million content streams as well as 800 million ad streams during that month. Kilar said that Hulu now has 235 content partners. The company had 352 advertising clients in Q3. “The leading source of revenue is through advertising,” said Kilar, adding that more than 40 percent of money generated with content in this industry is generated through advertising. This has led Hulu to optimize its ad experience, and Kilar showed a few new features that the company will roll out in the future. Hulu will introduce personalized advertising, addressing users by name. “
- How Conan O’Brien Beat Leno And Letterman [Fast Company] – Team CoCo rides the social media wave to ratings success: “I know what you guys are thinking: ‘Hey, it’s the guy from Twitter,'” joked Conan O’Brien, before launching into a mock-impression of his Internet fans. “Why am I doing that!” he began laughing. “Those people saved my ass! Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.” Indeed, a strong Internet following fed Conan, who debuted his new show last night on TBS, very well. Bolstered by his almost 2 million Twitter followers, a first-of-its-kind social media strategy, and an innovative digital team, Conan soared on the late-night scene with huge ratings, besting both David Letterman and arch-nemesis Jay Leno with 4.2 million viewers […]“Conan’s audience has been very vocal online, and he clearly made a smooth transition from Twitter to TBS,” said Steve Koonin, president of Turner Entertainment Networks.[…] Team Coco’s digital strategy a “brilliant launch campaign that incorporated social media better than I’ve ever seen.”
- BBC iPlayer going international next year, will be either fee- or ad-supported [Engadget] – “The BBC’s iPlayer video-on-demand service has been an unqualified success since its rollout back in 2007 and now it’s taking the next logical step in expanding its reach: it’s going global. Such is the word from John Smith, the generically named head of BBC Worldwide, who sees the international market for British shows as “under-exploited” and wants to see the iPlayer opened up beyond the Queen’s home isles. Of course, since continental Europeans and North Americans aren’t subject to the same backbreaking TV license fee, there’ll be a new commercial element to the service, though the Beeb’s bigwigs have yet to figure out if that means users will have to pay a levy or put up with some ads.”
- Ghoulish Facebook vandals mock Australian laws [SMH] – Tribute pages to young people who have died, being ‘defaced’, but is it illegal? “Also defaced was a tribute page to Chantelle Rowe, 16, who was found dead with her parents in their Adelaide home yesterday. Inappropriate messages and doctored photographs were posted to several tribute pages for Chantelle and her family, who police believe were killed in a triple murder. A cousin, Steven Rowe, wrote about the material on Facebook: “He even sent this shit to my inbox … thats my cousin and i honestly hope some [sic] kicks your head in!” But the user responsible for the messages replied: “I won’t go to jail … i’m not in Australia, therefore I cannot break the Australian law”. Victoria Police and South Australia Police both refused to comment, arguing no offence had been committed. However, Jesssica Chantelle Cook, 22, from Queensland, received a three-month suspended jail sentence in August for posting offensive material on a Facebook tribute page…”
Digital Culture Links: October 23rd 2010
Links for October 19th 2010 through October 23rd 2010:
- Facebook Advertisers Can Glean Private Data [NYTimes.com] – So Facebook is basically leaking private data? “Online advertising offers marketers the chance to aim ads at very specific groups of people — say, golf players in Illinois who make more than $150,000 a year and vacation in Hawaii. But two recent academic papers show some potential pitfalls of such precise tailoring. Both papers focus on Facebook ads and show that in certain circumstances, advertisers — or snoops posing as advertisers — may be able to learn sensitive profile information, like a person’s sexual orientation or religion, even if the person is sharing that information only with a small circle of friends. Facebook does not share such information with advertisers. The papers come amid an intense focus on vulnerabilities in Facebook’s privacy safeguards.”
- iMovie blocks studio names in new trailers [Engadget] – iMovie 11 and the words you can’t say: “Perhaps its testament to the quality of the iMovie ’11 trailers that Apple is blocking the use of big name studios in the titles. Ironic since Apple provides templates that ape the Paramount snow-capped mountain […] and familiar Universal Studios globe. Just don’t try to enter those studio names into the title sequence — the words “Paramount” and “Universal” will be replaced with hyphens. We suspect other studios are affected as well. Hard to say if this is Apple’s doing or the studios as both are notoriously controlling. We’d laugh if only we could stop crying.”
- Big Networks Block Web Shows From Google TV [NYTimes.com] – Will Google TV suffer the unending legal battles that have besieged Google Books? “In the latest sign that Google may struggle to transform television viewing with Google TV, its new service for Internet-connected TVs, three major broadcast networks and Hulu are blocking people from using the service to watch full-length TV shows on their Web sites. Initially, people could watch the full shows on TVs and set-top boxes that use the Google TV software, which Sony and Logitech began selling this month. But as of Thursday, most of the full shows on the sites of NBC, ABC, CBS and Hulu were blocked. People could still visit the sites to read text and, in some cases, watch short vignettes, but not full shows.”
- Google’s Street View broke Canadian privacy laws [The Register] – “The Canadian privacy watchdog today said Google’s Street View fleet broke the law when it collected payload data from unsecured Wi-Fi networks. An investigation by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, one of dozens launched around the world earlier this year, also found the practice was the result of a single Google engineer’s “careless error”, as well as a wider lack of controls at the firm. In some cases, Street View cars intercepted entire emails, said Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart. […] She did not announce any punitive measures, but recommended Google should destroy the data, tighten its privacy governance processes, and improve privacy training for its employees. The investigation will be closed in February next year, subject to confirmation Google has taken those actions.”
- Facebook Vows to Fix a Flaw in Data Protection [NYTimes.com] – “When you sign up for Facebook, you enter into a bargain. You share personal information with the site, and Facebook agrees to obey your wishes when it comes to who can see what you post. At the same time, you agree that Facebook can use that data to decide what ads to show you. It is a complicated deal that many people enter into without perhaps fully understanding what will happen to their information. It also involves some trust — which is why any hint that Facebook may not be holding up its end of the bargain is sure to kick up plenty of controversy. The latest challenge to that trust came on Monday, when Facebook acknowledged that some applications on its site, including the popular game FarmVille, had improperly shared identifying information about users, and in some cases their friends, with advertisers and Web tracking companies.”
Google TV Outside the US?
After announcing the service earlier this year, Google today began the hard sell of their forthcoming Google TV platform. It has hardware and software components, with the hardware either wired into new TVs (such as the flagship Sony Internet TV) or via a connected box (like a tuner or Apple TV box), but its main innovation is what looks to be a pretty sophisticated but non-threatening interface which combines web video, broadcast tv and recorded media. While it’s not out yet, it’s worth taking a look at the Quick Tour of Google TV as it demonstrates most of the capabilities and really emphasises how an application-driven web tv experience could be something pretty impressive. Twitter, for example, have already announced their Google TV app will come bundled in the initial software.
As Google moves further and further into the domain of big media distributors, there will inevitably be something of a power struggle, as this quote from the New York Times reminds us:
Google TV has been in talks with the major networks and Hollywood studios about optimizing their Web sites for TV screens and about obtaining data about their programs for search purposes. But one executive described the relationship between Google and the networks as being at the “first date” stage.
According to executives involved, some networks want Google to share revenue from the ads that it overlays on videos. Some want Google to weed out illegal Internet sources of their shows and make sure that their marquee programs still stand out on a service that potentially levels the playing field for all makers of video.
The struggle for our TV screens will reach new heights, and even the Apple TV box looks positively safe and conservative in comparison. Given the ongoing war between corporate copyright owners and unauthorised downloaders, Google TV seems like a fertile battleground since the experience of watching either streaming tv or unauthorised downloads may be very similar (with the absence of ads for unauthorised downloads being potentially the only meaningful difference).
For those of us outside the US, the question of international versions of this service is a thorny one. For each and every country, Google will have to negotiate new relationships with the existing broadcasters. Indeed, the analogue-era tradition of cutting the globe into national zones for the purposes of media distribution looks even more arbitrary than ever as the web and television edge even closer together. Certainly, there is the potential for the tyranny of digital distance to really throw a spanner in Google’s no doubt global aspirations for Google TV, but looking through Australian eyes, the service would definitely be welcomed by viewers. Indeed, if Google negotiate carefully, they can probably win the support of the networks, too, who are all seeking to profit on catch-up tv services. From ABC’s iView to Plus7, Nine’s FixPlay, Ten’s Full Episodes and Video site and even SBS’s developing catch-up service all the Australian national broadcasters have presences online from which viewers can stream full episodes. With some minor tweaks, most of these services could easily be optimised for Google’s TV platform.
Digital Culture Links: October 4th 2010
Links for September 30th 2010 through October 4th 2010:
- The Short Lifespan of a Tweet: Retweets Only Happen Within the First Hour [Read Write Web] – Interesting stats on the lifespan of a tweet: “For some, Twitter is a social network and for others it is just a broadcast medium. Judging from the latest data from social media analytics and monitoring service Sysomos, for the majority of users, Twitter is indeed mostly a broadcast medium. After analyzing over 1.2 billion tweets, the Sysomos team found that only 29% of tweets actually produce a reaction – that is, a reply or a retweet. According to Sysomos, just 6% of all tweets are retweeted and these retweets have a very short lifespan. Virtually all retweets happen within the first hour after the original tweet. If you are looking to get retweeted and nobody picks your tweet up within the first hour, chances are that nobody ever will. Only 1.63% of all retweets happen in the second hour and a minuscule 0.94% in the third hour. The same is true for @replies, too; 97% of all replies happen within the first hour.”
- MP in strife over Overland Facebook slur [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] – “A Victorian Liberal MP has used Facebook to attack the state’s Police Chief Commissioner, Simon Overland. Upper House backbencher Bernie Finn yesterday wrote he was “dreaming of when Victoria will have a real police officer as Chief Commissioner”. The post labelled Mr Overland and his predecessor, Christine Nixon, as “political appointees” who have “proven themselves incompetent in the areas of law enforcement and community protection”. Asked by a Facebook follower when Victoria might have a “real copper running the show”, Mr Finn replies: “after November 27…”, which is the date of Victoria’s looming state election.”
- Can companies ignore social media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube? [BBC News] – Beware or harness? “Once upon a time companies could afford to be rude. Unhappy customers would grumble to a few friends, withdraw their custom, but there was little else they could do. Today, they still tell their friends, but they do it online, using social media websites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Take the Canadian folk singer, Dave Carroll. After nine months of complaining he had had enough. United Airlines baggage handlers had damaged his $3,500 guitar, but the airline refused to pay compensation and its customer service agents were less than courteous. So he made a music video about the experience and on 6 July 2009 posted it on YouTube. Within three days it had been watched half a million times; by mid-August it had reached five million. United had a massive public relations crisis at its hands, not least as thousands of other unhappy customers now came forward to vent their frustration. These days one witty Tweet, one clever blog post, one devastating video …”
- Twitter Now Getting More Traffic Than MySpace [Mashable] – “Twitter’s number of monthly unique visitors finally surpassed that of MySpace in August. Though it ranked third among social networking sites, Twitter ranked #50 in the list of top 50 properties overall. The numbers were crunched by the marketing research firm comScore. Twitter’s (Twitter) lead over MySpace (MySpace) was marginal — 96 million versus 95 million — but the trend over time paints a prettier picture of the microblogging service. Between August 2009 and August 2010, Twitter grew 76% while MySpace dropped 17%.”
- U.S. single digital music sales flat this year: Nielsen [Reuters] – I wonder how this compares to the rise of micropayments for App purchases? “The rapid rise of single digital music sales has stalled in the United States, the world’s biggest and most important market, with sales in the first half of 2010 flat compared with a year before. According to research group Nielsen, digital sales for single track downloads were flat in the U.S. market after a 13 percent increase from 2008 to 2009 and 28 percent growth from 2007 to 2008. When combined with the growth in digital album sales, overall digital music sales were up over 5 percent in the U.S. Major music companies such as Vivendi’s Universal Music and EMI have pinned their hopes on boosting legal digital sales to counter online piracy and the collapse in CD sales.”
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