Yesterday, the Nielsen Company -- famous for its TV audience measurements -- put out a series of top 10 in 2007 lists. There are close to 30 different lists covering most-watched TV shows, DVDs, movies, etc. View them yourself (13 page PDF.) Here are some that interested me:
Among major markets, Seattle/Tacoma had the fourth highest percentage of "adults who have used the Internet to read or contribute to blogs within the past 30 days." The top market was Austin, Texas, with 15 percent of adults reading/contributing; followed by:
Among the most-purchased packaged consumer goods, measured by the "percent of homes who purchased each category within past year," fresh bread was the leader (97 percent), followed by refrigerated milk, toilet tissue, fresh eggs, cookies, ready-to-eat cereal, canned soup, chocolate candy, potato chips and batteries (86 percent).
The same list, if measured by sales instead of percentage of homes that purchased the category, is lead by carbonated soft drinks ($17.6 billion) and also includes cigarettes ($7.8 billion) and light beer ($5.1 billion).
With the exception of the bread, milk and eggs, it sounds a lot like the presumed shopping list of the stereotypical American gamer, including the batteries to keep the remote and wireless controllers charged up.
And what games were we playing? This list is based on "the percent of PC gamers playing title in the average minute." Nielsen also reports average minutes played per week, from April to November 2007.
No. 1, by a long shot, "World of Warcraft" with 0.792 percent of PC gamers playing in the average minute and 1,023 minutes played per week (I'm guessing that's per individual.)
Nielsen doesn't break out console titles, but it does give a list of the most-played platforms based on usage minutes, "a percent of all measured console minutes." Interesting to note that taken together, all the other consoles on the list (excluding the "other" category, which "consists of any other console systems found in the home") are used about as much as the PlayStation 2.
PlayStation 2, 42.2 percen;
Xbox, 13.9 percent
Xbox 360, 11.8 percent
GameCube, 7.1 percent
Wii, 5.5 percent
PlayStation 3, 2.5 percent
Other, 17.1 percent.
Sometimes I'm sure you wonder if we make this stuff up.
But I seriously got a press release today announcing that Evian spring water is available in the Internet-based world "Second Life."
In case you don't already know, Second Life is this hugely popular alter-ego existence "inhabited" by almost 8 million people around the world.
And get this: Those people "will now delight in the virtual health and beauty benefits of the world's leading brand of bottled water."
That is virtually, not literally.
Within Second Life, people will find Evian vending machines. When a person approaches the machine, a pop-up message "will appear offering to give one's skin a second life."
I'm not sure what that means, but the release goes on to say that a resident who accepts the proposal will be offered a bottle of Evian Natural Spring Water and a skin, which leads to a total transformation -- the character becomes more defined, has better texture and is lit up in a more flattering way.
"Evian has always had its hand on the pulse of what's hot. With build-it-yourself virtual worlds, fantasy lands and video games increasing in popularity, we felt that Second Life was a fitting platform for Evian to make its virtual debut," said Jeff Caswell of Evian North America. "Everyone should be able to experience the many benefits that Evian has to offer whether they're in the real world or the virtual world."
In the real world, Evian notes that these transformations are not possible after drinking Evian, but promoting wellness and a healthy lifestyle is its 2007 advertising theme. Its tagline is "The most important body of water is your own. Fill with care."
Sometimes I'm sure you wonder if we make this stuff up.
But I seriously got a press release today announcing that Evian spring water is available in the Internet-based world "Second Life."
In case you don't already know, Second Life is this hugely popular alter-ego existence "inhabited" by almost 8 million people around the world.
And get this: Those people "will now delight in the virtual health and beauty benefits of the world's leading brand of bottled water."
That is virtually, not literally.
Within Second Life, people will find Evian vending machines. When a person approaches the machine, a pop-up message "will appear offering to give one's skin a second life."
I'm not sure what that means, but the release goes on to say that a resident who accepts the proposal will be offered a bottle of Evian Natural Spring Water and a skin, which leads to a total transformation -- the character becomes more defined, has better texture and is lit up in a more flattering way.
"Evian has always had its hand on the pulse of what's hot. With build-it-yourself virtual worlds, fantasy lands and video games increasing in popularity, we felt that Second Life was a fitting platform for Evian to make its virtual debut," said Jeff Caswell of Evian North America. "Everyone should be able to experience the many benefits that Evian has to offer whether they're in the real world or the virtual world."
In the real world, Evian notes that these transformations are not possible after drinking Evian, but promoting wellness and a healthy lifestyle is its 2007 advertising theme. Its tagline is "The most important body of water is your own. Fill with care."
Getty Images announced Monday that it has launched Soundtrack, a new music licensing service.
The Seattle company has been trying to expand its services while maintaining its its photo-imaging business. New entrants entering the business are posing a threat. I wrote a story recently about how the company laid off 100 employees to accomplish its financial goals.
The music service, available at gettyimages.com/music, was developed by Getty's recent acquisition of Pump Audio. It has more than 20,000 original tracks by independent artists and bands for use in broadcast and film production, advertising and other media projects.
Jonathan Klein, CEO and co-founder of Getty Images said:
"Our customers represent a variety of industries and they want quick and easy access to digital media -- imagery, footage and music -- that can be used in a myriad of ways. When we acquired Pump Audio in June, we made a commitment to develop dynamic and nimble new music platforms and tools which meet the growing content needs of our customers. The launch of Soundtrack is just the beginning of that strategy."
If this is just the beginning of its strategy, I guess we can expect more announcements to come. Stay tuned.
Cellphones have become so essential, people would rather go without TV, but when choosing between cellphones and Internet access, the Internet wins, according to a new survey released this week.
JWT, a large U.S. advertising agency, asked about 1,000 people a number of technology questions earlier this month. The results show that cellphones and Internet access are playing a very important role in people's lives.
Asled how long people could go without Internet access, 15 percent of respondents said a day or less, 21 percent said a couple of days and 19 percent said a few days.
A lot of the findings seem to make a good business case for cellphone operators, as well as WiMax service providers such as Kirkland-based Clearwire and Sprint Nextel, which are all rolling out mobile Internet access.
"Mobility represents the next big shift," says Marian Salzman, JWT's executive vice president and chief marketing officer. "Older Americans are happy to sit in the same place to go online, while younger people expect to be able to connect anywhere at any time."
In fact, 48 percent of respondents agreed with the statement: "If I cannot access the Internet when I want to, I feel like something important is missing."
A man in China dropped dead after playing online games for three days straight, according to reports from Chinese media today and this story.
The 30-something man from Guangzhou died Saturday after being rushed to the hospital from the Internet cafe, the Beijing News said. Exhaustion was given as the most probable cause.
CANCAN CHU/GETTY IMAGES
Most of the customers at this Internet cafe in China are students.
It's hard to know how much of this is real and how much is state propaganda designed to discourage Web addicts. Chinese authorities have been cracking down on Internet content and Web-surfing activities, including banning new cybercafes and limiting the time users can spend playing games online.
As for this poor guy from Guangzhou ... maybe his avatar can live on in Second Life.
Britney Spears got a ton of attention at Sunday's MTV Video Music Awards for being out of shape and performing poorly.
That was far from the case for Seattle's RealNetwork's Rhapsody digital music service, which seemed to be on top of its game at the show.
Last month, Seattle-based RealNetworks and MTV Networks, a division of Viacom, announced a wide-ranging partnership in which the two companies will market and operate the Rhapsody service together.
The unveiling event was set to take place at the video awards, where Rhapsody was supposed to get a lot of airtime, as part of the partnership that required financial and other commitments by both MTV and RealNetworks.
I missed the show (it's hard when you don't have cable), but from what MTV and RealNetworks said, it sounded as if Rhapsody pulled off a pretty unusual stunt.
At this year's show, held at Las Vegas' Palms Casino, in addition to the main awards ceremony, MTV had several guest suites, where artists such as Justin Timberlake and Timbaland, Kanye West, Fall Out Boy and the Foo Fighters played for smaller audiences.
Rhapsody focused on these shows. When the awards show went for a break, Rhapsody streamed video from the suites live for a commercial.
The Foo Fighters, in one example, said in a shot: "Hear it at Rhapsody.com."
RealNetworks
A screen shot from RealNetwork's MTV Music Video Awards commercial.
The next screen said, "Think Foo Fighters."
RealNetworks
The next image in the same commercial.
Some integration of the two services has already begun, with Urge subscribers being allowed to log in to both Urge and Real's Rhapsody service, but the main integration of the two services has yet to occur.
RealNetworks launched a new reality TV series today on the Internet with the help of Warner Bros. Digital Distribution.
The series id called "On Set, On Edge" and follows the real life of filmmaker Vanessa Parise as she films a movie called "Jack and Jill vs. The World." The movie stars Freddie Prinze Jr. and Taryn Manning.
The first three of the 20-episode series are available now, and can be found under Real's Film.com at this page. I also found a blog that claims to have a sneak preview here.
If all goes according to plan, SuperPass subscribers can watch the first five episodes, as well as video diaries and behind-the-scenes features. Two new episodes will premiere each week on SuperPass.com.
The press release also talks about how there will be a lot of online components, including a blog that follows the show and provides commentary.
When the hottest electronics gadget in years meets the world's biggest producer of counterfeit goods, it just seemed inevitable that fake iPhones would spawn.
What's surprising is that some unauthorized iPhones sold in electronics markets in China's biggest cities, according to a Chinese news story, are actually more than double the price. It's not clear to me whether the iPhones in question are real or copies. The phones are manufactured for Apple by Hon Hai Precision Industry in Shenzhen, one of the cities where shoppers can find the unauthorized gadget for sale.
The fact that at least some people in China are willing to shell out $1,170 for this device speaks to the nature of the world's largest mobile phone market. Here's a good photo comparing a real iPhone with a Chinese version on the right.
While Chinese consumers seem unwilling to pay much for software, they're obsessive over the latest hardware. To keep trend-conscious users interested, new versions of mobile phones are released every six months, a much shorter time frame than they're updated here.
By the time Apple releases its iPhone in China in 2008, perhaps the country's more advanced mobile phone users will have moved on to the next craze.
DirecTV said today that it signed a wholesale agreement with Current Group to provide high-speed Internet service over electric-power lines, according to The Wall Street Journal..
The story said DirecTV will bundle Current's broadband and voice over Internet services under the DirecTV brand.
The satellite TV company also recently announced a partnership with Kirkland-based Clearwire to bundle its wireless high-speed Internet access with DirecTV's TV service. In addition, it also resells Internet access from AT&T, Verizon Communications and Qwest Communications.
DirecTV has lined up all these partnerships to better compete with telephone and cable operators that have started to provide the quadruple play -- that means, bundling together TV, phone, wireless phone and Internet access. Obviously, it's not placing any bets on any one technology.
High-speed Internet access is not technically possible over satellite, or at least the way DirecTV provides service today.
Broadband over power lines is a fairly new technology that allows customers to plug a modem device the size of a cellphone into an electric outlet and connect a cable from their computer for Internet access.
Pearl Jam was rocking out at Lollapalooza on Sunday, per usual, this time riffing on Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" during a performance of "Daughter." Lyrics criticizing the president were cut from AT&T's Web cast of the event.
According to the Seattle band's Web site, the lyrics "George Bush, leave this world alone" and "George Bush find yourself another home" were censored.
The concert organizers did a bit of reporting to find out what the hell happened: "When asked about the missing performance, AT&T informed Lollapalooza that portions of the show were in fact missing from the Web cast, and that their content monitor had made a mistake in cutting them."
PJ was not happy:
This, of course, troubles us as artists but also as citizens concerned with the issue of censorship and the increasingly consolidated control of the media.
AT&T's actions strike at the heart of the public's concerns over the power that corporations have when it comes to determining what the public sees and hears through communications media. ...
If a company that is controlling a Web cast is cutting out bits of our performance -- not based on laws, but on their own preferences and interpretations -- fans have little choice but to watch the censored version.
What happened to us this weekend was a wake up call, and it's about something much bigger than the censorship of a rock band.
The band plans to post an uncensored version of its performance on its Web site soon.
Pearl Jam was rocking out at Lollapalooza on Sunday, per usual, this time riffing on Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" during a performance of "Daughter." Lyrics criticizing the president were cut from AT&T's Web cast of the event.
According to the Seattle band's Web site, the lyrics "George Bush, leave this world alone" and "George Bush find yourself another home" were censored.
The concert organizers did a bit of reporting to find out what the hell happened: "When asked about the missing performance, AT&T informed Lollapalooza that portions of the show were in fact missing from the Web cast, and that their content monitor had made a mistake in cutting them."
PJ was not happy:
This, of course, troubles us as artists but also as citizens concerned with the issue of censorship and the increasingly consolidated control of the media.
AT&T's actions strike at the heart of the public's concerns over the power that corporations have when it comes to determining what the public sees and hears through communications media. ...
If a company that is controlling a Web cast is cutting out bits of our performance -- not based on laws, but on their own preferences and interpretations -- fans have little choice but to watch the censored version.
What happened to us this weekend was a wake up call, and it's about something much bigger than the censorship of a rock band.
The band plans to post an uncensored version of its performance on its Web site soon.
Caroline Davis and Erik Ball checked out the lines at the Bellevue Square Apple store and found the 21st century supply chain at work. You know, the one that involves Craiglist.
One 31-year-old man said he was waiting in line to buy two of them -- one for himself and the other to sell on Craigslist.
Then there was a teenager, who said he planned to sell both iPhones he planned to purchase on Craigslist. In fact, he had already posted an ad there in the afternoon and received four calls. He said he's selling the $499 model for $800. Nice summer job.
There were stories earlier in the week, of course, of people advertising on Craigslist to wait in line for iPhone seekers -- for a fee. Two teens in the Bellevue Square line had them one better. Each said they were getting $100 to wait for "a millionaire guy" -- the boss of one of their mom's friends. Would they like one for themselves? "It'd be really cool but we would only get it if our parents got it for us," one of them said.
Corbis, the Seattle image company owned by Bill Gates, is entering the business of selling inexpensive stock photography over the Web with a new beta site called SnapVillage.
Microstock photography represents a new business model that is transforming digital media, but Corbis has come to it relatively late in the game.
Corbis said it's out to "break out of the mold" of existing microstock Web sites, making changes in the typical submission, pricing, searching and purchasing methods.
SnapVillage lets photographers set their own price for images, at $1, $5, $10, $25 or $50, and they can change picture prices any time. The site says it pays photographers a flat, non-exclusive rate of 30 percent per image or 30 cents a download for subscriptions sales.
That's right down the middle of iStockphoto's payment structure, which is 20 percent for non-exclusive sales, or up to 40 percent if iStockphoto is the sole distributor.
Comcast, the Philadelphia-based cable operator, is hiring 280 new employees throughout Washington in the next three months.
As part of the hiring, the company is planning to open a new call center in Lynnwood by July. The center, which will eventually have more than 500 employees, will be the company's state headquarters. Two other locations are in Fife and Everett.
Comcast said hiring will take place in nearly all of its Washington locations, including Bellingham, Aberdeen and Spokane. The majority of jobs available are for front-line technicians and customer care representatives and engineering and sales personnel.
The jobs are expected to help fill demand for Comcast products and services, including the company's Triple Play package, which bundles together video, high-speed Internet and phone services for one price.
The Comcast hiring could be good news for the 260 employees who got word they're being laid off from their Alltel call center jobs by the fall.
Alltel Wireless, which acquired Bellevue-based Western Wireless two years ago, said in April that it was closing an Issaquah call center and eliminating 260 jobs.
At that time, it planned to close the Sammamish facility by fall with layoffs coming in two stages -- 89 positions in June and 159 in October. In addition, 12 positions will be eliminated in Bellevue, where Alltel continues to maintain an office of former Western Wireless employees.
I found 21 jobs available in Washington on Comcast's Web site.
Perhaps if Comcast moves quickly, these employees will still be looking for work. After Alltel announced the layoffs, I received two phone calls and one e-mail from other employers eagerly trying to hire the displaced workers.
It almost seems like you can't mention RealPlayer without seeing someone wince. Too many bad memories of unnecessary software add-ons, buffering and a user interface that sometimes wasn't the most friendly.
RealNetworks is hoping to change that with a new RealPlayer, which it introduced today at the D conference in Southern California. (Release is here.) The new player will be out sometime in June.
If nothing else, the new RealPlayer is being recognized for one trait: It will let you download videos for offline viewing. The company said it will place a "download this video" button on Web sites to make it a one-click experience.
RealPlayer won't download rights-protected video, such as a movie trailer that a movie studio might want to keep control over.
The biggest part of this? YouTube. If Real makes it easy to download videos on the YouTube video sharing service, expect the new RealPlayer to become a lot less cringeworthy.
RealPlayer won't let you transfer those videos to a portable device yet. The company said it's working on that feature for future versions.
Business 2.0 columnist John Heilemann interviews John MacFarlane, the founder of Sonos, a Santa Barbara, Calif. company closely tied to Seattle's RealNetworks. The two companies are so tight, in fact, that Heilemann speculates that RealNetworks might buy Sonos one day.
Sonos makes an audio system that wirelessly beams music to speakers throughout a home. Sonos users can connect to RealNetworks' Rhapsody music service without having to go through a PC. For $10 a month, they have access to about 4 million songs to pipe through the home.
Sonos and Rhapsody are each other's killer app. MacFarlane tells me that Sonos customers use Rhapsody "more than 10 times as much as the average Rhapsody user." And, according to Rhapsody insiders, the service's churn rate among Sonos users is tiny compared with the overall figures.
Among those addicted to new music and new technology, the Sonos-Rhapsody combination wins raves so gushing they're almost too embarrassing to print.
MacFarlane tells Heilemann that he's received acquisition offers, but none was good enough to take.
Getty Images said today it has hired John McKay, the former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington, as its general counsel. McKay was one of the eight U.S. attorneys fired by the Bush administration last year, and has been pretty vocal about the incident.
McKay replaces Getty's current general counsel, Jeff Beyle, who will become a senior vice president for business development.
"Thanks to recent events, I've come to appreciate even more the powerful role images play in shaping public perception," McKay said in a press release announcing the move.
Looks like Google is opening a new office in Fremont for its engineers. Up to now, the company's local sales office has been in Fremont and the engineering crowd (some 300 strong now) has been holed up in Kirkland.
Now, Google is planning to sublease about 60,000 square feet from Getty Images at the Waterside Building on North 34th Street. That's just a stone's throw from the sales office, also on the same street.
RealNetworks continues to add to its mobile business, saying today that it paid $9 million in cash for an arm of Sony that offers music downloads and streams to wireless subscribers in eight European countries.
This follows Real's September acquisition of South Korean company WiderThan, which helps carriers sell music downloads and ringback tones.
I've asked the question before and will ask it again. After years of tough battles on the PC and Web, is RealNetworks on the verge of becoming a wireless company?
RealNetworks Chief Executive Rob Glaser got some big salary awards over the past year, according to a regulatory filing by the company today. In March, the board approved a $325,000 cash bonus in addition to his $400,000 base salary.
He also received a $725,000 bonus in January related to his work on negotiating a $761 million antitrust settlement with Microsoft in 2005. That's the last of three payments totaling $2.9 million in bonuses he received because of the Microsoft deal.
Adding all of his bonuses, option awards and other compensation together, Glaser was paid $3.8 million in 2006.
I've been meaning to point out the significance of this since Tuesday. At an industry trade show, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts showed off new technology that enabled a data download speeds of 150 megabits per second, or roughly 25 times faster than today's standard cable modems.
The AP reported that the new technology is crucial because the industry is competing with a speedy new offering called a TV, as well as Verizon Communications' FiOS service, which is currently available in some areas on the Eastside.
Verizon's top speed is currently 50 megabits per second, but the network is already capable of providing 100 Mbps with what some people say unlimited potential. Comcast's current cable modem service is closer to the 6 to 8 Mbps range.
The new Comcast technology, called DOCSIS 3.0, was developed by the cable industry's research arm, Cable Television Laboratories. It bonds together four cable lines but is capable of allowing much more capacity. The laboratory said last month it expected manufacturers to begin submitting modems for certification under the standard by the end of the year.
The question is, why do we need such high capacity when people for the most part find their less than 1 Mbps connection sufficient?
The short answer is high-definition TV, which takes up a lot of bandwidth. If there are two TVs in the house watching two different HDTV channels, and someone is on the Internet, the system is going to get seriously bogged down. I thought I could actually tell you how much capacity this would require, but the numbers weren't readily at hand.
CNET writes that with cable, in particular, there's only a limited amount of bandwidth, and because HD channels use six times as much bandwidth as standard-definition channels, cable and satellite companies have been slow to roll out local HD channels to subscribers.
Regardless of how you do the math, you could conclude the cable industry is worried if Comcast is quick to show off technology that may or may not be available for at least two years.
GigaOm has a good debate going here about the facts of Tuesday's demonstration.
Getty Images said today in a filing that its senior marketing guy, Jack Sansolo, is going to retire on June 1. He's not leaving empty-handed. Sansolo will receive $275,000 in cash, which represents his salary and the bonuses he would have received. In return, he has agreed not to do anything that would be in competition with the company for six months.
Getty also gave a big promotion to Bruce Livingstone, the founder of its iStockphoto subsidiary. And it spent $1.2 million two buy two of Livingstone's companies: Web site builder Evolvs Media and independent music site Paper Thin Walls.
Update: I couldn't figure out how music applies to Getty's business model, so I asked the company what was up with these two acquisitions. A spokeswoman gave me this response: "For now, we see them as a means to explore emerging business models in these spaces that we expect to be exciting to our customers and the industry as a whole."
One of the most interesting things I've seen from Microsoft in the last year is being pitched as the latest, greatest digital advertising platform. This after Bill Gates described for an audience of advertisers this morning the decline of traditional media business models.
I reported on Photosynth last August, a photo-viewing application that combines technology from University of Washington, Microsoft Research and a Ballard startup called Seadragon Software that Microsoft acquired in late 2005.
A quick reminder of what Photosynth is: The software organizes sets of pictures of a specific thing or place, such as St. Mark's Square in Venice, Italy. It matches up elements the photos have in common and uses that information to build a rudimentary three-dimensional map of the space, calculate the position from which each picture was taken and place each in the appropriate 3-D context.
Fluid navigation allows the user to glide from photo to photo and click on a specific element, a mosaic for example, to see other photos that contain the same element. It's like viewing a nonlinear slide show: The user has the freedom to move about the space and view the pictures in any order. It's a bit closer to actually being there. You can learn more about it and check out a preview here.
"This same technology can serve as a way of surfacing an entirely new form of advertisement," Microsoft technical fellow and Live Labs boss Gary Flake told the audience at the company's Strategic Account Summit this afternoon.
We've seen the zooming technology from Seadragon incorporated with Silverlight, the new Web-based video platform Microsoft is pushing. In examples here and at the Microsoft Mix conference in Las Vegas last week, it was used to smoothly zoom in to a super-detailed advertisement or high-definition image starting from a small thumbnail. It could be used to repurpose complex print ads on the Web, company executives have said.
Flake showed a "Photosynth" environment of a commercial space -- a home fixtures store with faucets, cabinets and other hardware.
"I can work my way around the space, navigate around, take a step back," he said, demonstrating the application, which runs in a Web browser. "Maybe there's a sink over here. I can look at that."
On the left, the program displayed Web content that changed to correspond to the specific products he zoomed in on in "the store."
"We've effectively created the ability to place hyperlinks from your physical store to your online store," he said.
The application is a step toward a vision of three-dimensional Internet that Microsoft has articulated for other products, such as its Virtual Earth mapping application. Eventually, these applications could be combined to allow you to "travel" through a three-dimensional rendering of the real world to find a store -- in its actual location -- and then go shopping there.
Flake put it in the context of online virtual reality worlds such as Second Life, where people navigate a made-up world in the guise of whatever avatar they want.
"This is maybe properly referred to as one-and-a-half life," Flake said. "It's consistent with physical reality, but also has the ability of being combined with the Internet and the Web content that's already there."
I sat through six presentations in the digital media part of the WSA's Investment Forum and Technology Showcase today. I was surprised how often advertising-supported business models came up in the discussion. The subject was addressed early that day in a panel (see Brier Dudley's blog for a full rundown of the lively debate).
At the end of the day, panelist Bill McAleer of Voyager Capital summed it up nicely: "There's only so much advertising-supported models that can survive and thrive."
So which ones will thrive? We'll have to come back in a year or so and see what happened to the presenters. For now, here's a quick rundown of who said what:
1. Smilebox. We wrote about this startup last year. The Redmond company, started by Andrew Wright, offers the ability to create slideshows and digital greeting cards. You can insert your own video and photos and then e-mail the creation to friends and family.
Smilebox now has 30 employees and is approaching 1 million installations of its software. Helped in part by a key partnership with Hallmark, Smilebox had 700,000 unique users in April and is expecting 825,000 users this month. Smilebox's product has some good viral distribution: Wright said that 40 percent of the people who receive Smilebox greetings go on to install the software.
2. Alphabet Lane. Chief Executive Villette Nolon said her company is going after people who are remodeling their homes and need help planning and finding experts. Founded in September 2006, the Seattle company has six employees and 12 contractors. It started a private beta site in February.
Nolon is planning to refine the Seattle version of the site and then take the model to 36 cities in the next 18 to 24 months. She's hoping to be profitable by 2009 and is seeking $500,000 in angel funding.
3. Flowplay. Yet another casual online game company in Seattle. This region is the headquarters for this growing industry. Chief Executive Derrick Morton (who, no surprise, came from RealNetworks' game division) said he's getting ready to launch a closed beta in late May.
Flowplay is targeting teenagers with a site that is part social networking and part gameplay. It's hoping to run a subscription model that costs $5.99 for premium PC access or $9.99 for mobile phone access. Teens who don't have credit cards can pay for the service by putting it on their phone bill. Flowplay said it will break even at about 80,000 to 90,000 subscribers and is aiming for $27 million in sales by year four.
4. Mixpo. An online video company selling to small business owners, not the consumer space. The company helps companies embed a player in their Web sites that can show photos and video. A business owner can add and delete files from that player without having to hire a Webmaster.
President Anupam Gupta, who previously worked in Microsoft's MSN/Windows Live group, said the technology would be perfect for real estate agents, travel agents, architects and designers. About 2,000 customers are using the product, and Gupta said he envisions a business model that relies on subscriptions and partner licensing deals.
5. RIPL. The panelists seemed a little mystified by RIPL and I have to admit that I was, too. Chief Executive Bill Messing, in his first public demonstration of the product, showed how users can create their own profiles with photos and widgets that showed what iTunes songs were listened to recently. Those profiles would go out to the users' friends, who could see a slideshow of the photos, along with ads.
RIPL is an example of a trend that I call a revival of push technology - particularly the way that ads pop up on friends' computers. But Messing said that this advertising will be useful and relevant. RIPL has completed a $2 million Series A round and is opening a $1 million bridge round to Series B funding, Messing said.
6. Yodio. Chief Executive Clay Loges said he thinks that voice is the "undeveloped frontier on the Internet." The basic idea is that people can call a phone number and leave a voice recording, and then go to their computers to get that voice file and publish it. You can mash it with photos or tag it, for example.
Loges showed an example of an e-mail message that featured a person's picture and a voice recording from that person. Yodio wants to sell those voice recordings, giving a percentage to the performer and keeping the rest of the money. But who would buy these? Maybe Yodio can hook up with Sanjaya Malakar now that he's free.
Sales were up but profits down at Getty Images, based in Seattle. The digital image company reported a record $213 million in sales for the first quarter. That compares to $201 million for the same period last year. Profit was $38 million, or 63 cents a share. That's slightly down from last year's profit of $39.3 million, or 61 cents a share.
Profit was hurt by the $4.1 million in fees Getty paid for a professional review of its stock option compensation practices. The Securities and Exchange Commission is also conducting an informal review of the company's stock option grants.
At Kirkland-based HouseValues, an online real estate company, first-quarter sales were $17.8 million, down from $23.2 million in the previous year. The company swung to a $1.2 million loss, or 5 cents a share from a profit of $1.8 million, or 6 cents a share, in 2006.
HouseValues launched a new consumer real estate portal today at HomePages.com, and it's selling advertising space to real estate agents who want to promote their listings. The company had fewer customers at the end of the quarter than it did at the end of 2006.
In other news, Isilon Systems said today that Mark Schrandt has resigned as vice president of engineering. The company didn't say why Schrandt left.
Isilon Systems, a Seattle-based digital media storage company, reported a $3.8 million net loss for the first quarter of the year. That compares with a $4.5 million loss for the same period last year.
The company's sales were $21.6 million for the quarter, up from $10.4 million for the same period in 2006.
Isilon said the number of its customers has grown from 180 in March 2006 to 448 at the end of March 2007. It was the second-best quarter in terms of new customer growth in the company's history.
I sat down today with Andrew Heyward, who ran CBS News for nearly 10 years. These days, he's on the board of directors for The NewsMarket, a site that provides free video to media organizations and soon, bloggers. Heyward was meeting with Microsoft and other NewsMarket clients in downtown Seattle.
Here are some of his thoughts on the media and technology:
On how television news has changed lately:
The evening news landscape has seen radical changes, he said, with anchor turnover in all three major networks. And more than ever, television news is struggling with how to attract new audiences to the genre, and how to monetize that. Television news is a very traditional industry, he said, and now is seeing a dramatic expansion of experimentation.
"It's not yet clear what's going to emerge with the solid, substantive results traditional media has had for many years."
On how new technologies are changing television:
Television networks are streaming shows on their Web sites, which is very disruptive to the traditional model, he said. And then there's YouTube, which Heyward described as a fascinating phenomenon.
"Who would think that major media companies would have to consider their relationship with this completely democratic platform generated by the audience?" he asked. It's the ultimate iteration of power by the consumer, he said.
On personal news channels:
These days, Heyward said, people have seemingly infinite content available to them on the Web. They can create their own news environment, culling together news and video clips that they want to see. The role of editor has been usurped by the consumer, he said.
He called the practice "disaggregation," where news stories are now consumed as segments.
"Think about the Internet and the mouse compared to cable and the remote control," he said. "You're not at anybody's mercy anymore."
On changing economic models:
Heyward said his daughter uses the Craigslist classified site to find real estate and job leads. It's an appropriate example of how younger Web users are ignoring the traditional classified advertisement that has kept newspaper companies afloat for decades, he said.
"I'm not sure she's ever looked at a classified ad in the paper," he said. "I'm sure she hasn't."
What he misses about CBS News:
Heyward liked the camaraderie and the culture of friends and colleagues. But other than that, he said he's enjoying his new life as consultant. He said he can now look at the traditional and digital media industries with more perspective. It's hard to keep an eye on the map when both hands are gripping the steering wheel, he said.
"It's nice to be able to take a step back," he said. "You can see the broader picture."
Seattle-based news site Newsvine unveiled its new site today, one that uses technology its team has spent months building.
Now, users can customize the Newsvine page by adding modules, the company said in a blog posting announcing the change. The site will also automatically detect a user's location (based on IP address) and offer local news and weather information.
The home page will now host any RSS feed, and a new version of the site is available for those extra-wide computer monitors out there.
The company also said it will soon debut a new politics feature that's election related.
Isilon Systems said venture capitalist Matt McIlwain resigned from its board yesterday, including his positions on the board's audit and compensation committees. Regulatory filing is here.
Isilon spokesman Jay Wampold said it was fairly standard for venture capitalists to get on the boards of early-stage companies that they fund and then leave as the company matures. Isilon had a $109 million public offering in December.
McIlwain is a managing director at Madrona Venture Group, an early investor that owns about 16 percent of Isilon shares.
Isilon announced a customer win yesterday. The company will provide storage for NBC Universal's media programming, including television shows, movies and news. NBC Universal will also use Isilon when it covers the 2008 Olympic Games.
Amazon.com is planning to launch a music download store in May, according to Billboard. The article implies that Amazon wants its store to sell unprotected MP3 files that don't come with the digital rights rules that accompany songs sold by other stores.
Amazon had planned to launch a digital music subscription service and its own handheld player, according to the article, but dropped those plans last year.
The trend is clearly moving away from digital rights restrictions on songs. EMI Group said earlier this month it would begin selling songs on Apple's iTunes store that were free of restrictions. But they'll cost $1.29 compared with iTunes' normal 99-cent fee.
Seattle-based thePlatform said today its technology will be manage and distribute content for the new online video venture forged among News Corp., NBC Universal and Comcast.
In the deal, Comcast's Comcast.net and Fancast.com sites will serve as key places for News Corp. and NBC Universal's online video venture. Comcast will also provide non-exclusive content for U.S. distribution on NBC Universal and News Corp's site from Comcast Networks, including E!, Style, G4, Versus and Golf Channel. It will also become the venture's first non-equity content provider.
thePlatform is a Comcast subsidiary, which provides broadband and mobile video publishing solutions.
Earlier this month, Kim Peterson wrote about how thePlatform was unveiling new tools that let companies create customized video players for Web sites and cellphones.
With the new software, thePlatform stepped out from its behind-the-scenes role of managing the plumbing of online video to offering an array of online video players for businesses to use on their own sites. The players can be customized down to the color and theme.
NBC Universal and News Corp.'s video site will launch this summer with full-length TV programming, clips and movies from more than a dozen networks and two major film studios. The content will be distributed on some of the Web sites, such as AOL, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo!
In a securities filing today, Getty Images said it found backdated stock option grants. The company will restate its earnings going back to fiscal 1998.
At issue is between $28 million and $32 million in non-cash compensation costs.
The digital image company is being investigated by federal regulators for backdating, the practice of falsifying the date it granted stock options to boost profit when the recipient cashes them in.
Getty was hit with two shareholder lawsuits last month related to the backdated options.
YellowPages.com, owned by AT&T, said it is opening a Seattle office.
The opening corresponds with analyst expectations that online advertising in directories will increase as more people turn to the Internet rather than a phone book for numbers and addresses. In fact, online directory ads are expected to increase by 31 percent in the next four years, according to the Kelsey Group, an analyst firm.
The company expects the Seattle office to open on April 23, with as many as 30 employees who will be signing up local advertisers.
Seattle and Denver are among the company's first offices to be opened west of the Mississippi, following new offices in Philadelphia, New York City, Boston and others.
YellowPages.com said Seattle was selected because a large percentage of people who use its site are from there.
YellowPages.com had more than 1 billion network searches last year.
CBS is releasing some of its previously aired television shows to AOL and Microsoft's MSN, and reportedly wants to keep 90 percent of the advertising revenue from those shows, according to the WSJ.
People will reportedly be able to watch the shows free. Shows include "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and "NCIS."
Steve Davis is stepping down as chief executive of Corbis.
Now that Corbis CEO Steve Davis is going to spend more time writing, it's a good time to check out his blog, Creativity 2.0.
So far, he has been exploring a variety of topics related to digital media, including the rights of creators, the role of Google in archiving, Yahoo! and censorship in China and more.
It's hard to imagine a more wide-ranging career than the one Davis has had, from resettling refugees to learning Chinese language and law, advocating civil rights for gays and lesbians, working as an intellectual property lawyer and leading the private company of the richest person in the world.
He told me that a transformative moment in his life happened just out of college during a visit to a refugee camp in Thailand as Cambodians were fleeing from the Killing Fields. That inspired a fundamental interest in social justice, he said.
Now his career is coming full circle, but he resists the notion of "giving back." "I actually hate that expression," he said. "It suggest you've been taking all along."
Davis said he's thinking more about how to address the big problems of our time, such as climate change and global health. When he applies his full creativity to philanthropy, the results will be worth watching.
Corbis, the Seattle image company founded by Bill Gates, said today that Chief Executive Steve Davis will step down to go to the "public service and philanthropic world." A spot at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, perhaps?
Gary Shenk
On July 1, Davis will be replaced by Gary Shenk, who has been serving as company president. Davis will continue to be an adviser to Corbis.
Before joining Corbis in 2003, Shenk was the founder and general manager of an arm of Universal Studios that oversaw media licensing. According to Corbis, Shenk brokered deals between studios and talent agencies and helped establish new formats for licensing.
Seattle-based Widevine Technologies said today it has included Adobe's Flash format into its copy protection technology corral. That means Widevine can protect Flash-based video in addition to other formats.
Several years ago, Widevine made encryption software for video delivered over the Internet. It was a little too early to the game, however, and re-engineered its product for the more traditional cable and satellite operators. Now, it sounds like the market has caught up to Widevine's vision.
Widevine says its copy-protection system is used by video retailers and three television networks for delivering Internet video to PCs and other devices.
Avenue A | Razorfish, the Seattle-based online marketing agency, was featured in the New York Times's Real Estate section today for having an innovative office building in Manhattan.
"Some potential tenants might have seen the C-shaped layout and imposing central staircase in a block of space at 1440 Broadway in Midtown Manhattan as design drawbacks. But Avenue A | Razorfish, an interactive marketing and technology services company, took the space and used those elements to create a modern, communal feeling."
Avenue A, a division of aQuantive, merged with Razorfish, a Web development business, in 2004. The story said they consolidated operations at 1440 Broadway from three separate locations in Lower Manhattan.
"With a client list that includes Victoria's Secret and the Ford Motor Company, it turned the 80,000-square-foot, three-story space into what seems like a group of neighborhoods with a town square at the center."
With the open floor plan, everyone's productivity skyrocketed, one exec said.
You may have had a chance to see this office before. The company encourages communication through other methods as well, most notably on the site Flickr, where photos are uploaded under the tag "AARF."
Suitors are reportedly lining up to woo DoubleClick, the digital advertising company, and that could be good news for Seattle's aQuantive, said Jefferies & Co. analyst Youssef Squali in a note last week, according to PaidContent. A sale could cause a ripple effect that leads to acquisitions of aQuantive and others in the industry, the note said.
Our political blogger David Postman brought up an interesting tidbit Friday about how MySpace will be holding a presidential primary Jan.1 and 2, before any of the official state primaries.
Users will be asked to vote for their favorite candidate (TechCrunch's Michael Arrington points out that MySpace has more members than Mexico has residents).
MySpace also launched an "Impact" section, which features bios on all the candidates and their stand on issues. It's pretty comprehensive and, in fact, it's hard to think of another user friendly site at this early in the game (traditional "voter pamphlets" are far from being out). The Impact site highlights a monthly category. Right now, the topic is "Environmentalism."
Postman does a good job pointing out that the site has some 65 million monthly U.S. visitors, 85 percent f whom are of voting age. Also, MySpace users 18 and up are three times more likely to interact online with a public official or candidate.
TechCrunch thinks the move would be even more interesting if made on Facebook (but aren't a higher proportion of those users more likely to be under 18?).
Apple said today it has sold 100 million iPods since the first model came out in late 2001. The company also said that there are about 4,000 accessories made specifically for the iPod and that 70 percent of 2007-model cars in the U.S. offer iPod connections.
Technorati has issued its "State of the Live Web" report today with a few bits of interesting data and observations. The highlights:
-More than 120,000 blogs are created every day. Unfortunately, as many as 7,000 spam blogs are also created each day.
-37 percent of all blog posts are in Japanese, compared with 36 percent in English. The third most popular language is Chinese, with 8 percent of posts, and 3 percent of posts are in Italian.
-Technorati tracks about 70 million blogs.
I wondered what would become of A9 after chief Udi Manber left for Google last year. Things weren't looking good as of October, when Amazon scaled back some of A9.com's key features. On Alexa's chart, you can see a corresponding traffic drop for that time period.
These days, is the company paying any attention to its beleaguered search engine?
Major League Baseball is going to sell online video advertisements and charge people subscription fees to view live games over the Internet. Usually, companies pick one or the other, offering ad-free subscription models or showing free content subsidized by advertisements. It's rare to make customers pay a subscription and then show advertising on top of that.
"I think it's being greedy," digital media analyst Phil Leigh told Investors Business Daily. "But the professional leagues are pretty accustomed to getting what they want."
MLB has a not-so-pretty history with local companies when it comes to showing games online. The league and Microsoft's MSN cut short a multimillion dollar contract in 2005 to show games on personal computers. Microsoft had reportedly agreed to pay a hefty $40 billion over two years in the deal.
RealNetworks ended its three-year contract with the league in 2003, saying that less than 2 percent of the company's revenue that year was from Major League Baseball sales, and that getting out of the business would save the company $5 million in 2004.
After two years of work, the online newspaper Crosscut Seattle launched today. Founded by David Brewster, the founding editor of the Seattle Weekly and a former Seattle Times columnist, the site describes itself as "an online daily newspaper for the Pacific Northwest."
Brewster writes on the site that Crosscut is an answer to a gap in quality local news.
"Readers and advertisers were flowing to Web products, so let's stop lamenting about declines in certain kinds of journalism and get with the sunrise part of the news industry," he writes.
Armed with a clever slogan, "news of the great nearby," Crosscut's debut issue is a robust mix of local news that links heavily to the Seattle Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and other newspapers. Readers are able to post comments to every story. There isn't a whole lot yet in terms of advertising, which is understandable at this point.
I broke the news about Brewster's venture last September in an article about online journalism. My guess is that Brewster is hoping to expand Crosscut to other cities in the future, depending on how Crosscut Seattle fares.
In light of my earlier post on how phones are increasingly capable of playing music and being used as a standalone music player, this article in the Wall Street Journal today is interesting.
It reported that compact-disc sales for the first three months of this year plunged 20 percent from a year earlier.
One reason, the Journal said, is that music stores are closing, including Tower Records. In fact, one statistic really stood out -- about 800 music stores, including Tower's 89 locations, closed in 2006 alone.
What's more, the downward spiral is moving faster than the rise of sales of digital downloads.
Digital sales of individual songs this year have risen 54 percent from a year earlier, to 173.4 million units, according to Nielsen SoundScan. But that's not offsetting the 20 percent decline from a year ago in CD sales to 81.5 million units. (To me, the figures look better for digital sales, but it must be falling short of filling the gap because songs are purchased individually, whereas CDs are music purchased in bundles.)
I was just talking to a mobile digital music executive about this same topic Tuesday. He argued that overall music sales -- including ringtones, wallpapers and other mobile or online goods -- do offset the decrease of CD sales.
The WSJ covered that aspect, too, and apparently that is not the case.
It reported that even when sales of ringtones, subscription services and other "ancillary" goods are included, sales are still down 9 percent.
The WSJ did note, however, that some recording executives have questioned that figure, provided by a recent report by Pali Research.
Executives at InfoSpace commented today on a shareholder's concern that the Bellevue company needed to cut costs and return capital in its large war chest to shareholders.
Last week, Sandell Asset Management asked InfoSpace to immediately return $300 million of cash, cut $15 million in costs and hire a financial adviser to evaluate the potential sale of the company in whole or in part. Then, it said it was going to nominate three directors at the 2007 annual shareholder meeting.
In a document filed with the SEC, Jim Voelker, chairman and CEO of InfoSpace, had this to say:
We are always interested in the views of our shareholders and appreciate those expressed by Sandell Asset Management in our conversations with them. We look forward to continuing our dialogue. Our board and management team are mindful of the mandate to deliver high performance and shareholder returns. We regularly review the company's business plan and the value inherent in that plan -- and will take a measured and decisive approach to continuing to do what we believe is in the best interests of all shareholders.
InfoSpace said it will also present recommendations regarding Sandell's nominees for directors in its proxy statement, which will be filed with the SEC and mailed to all shareholders.
InfoSpace has had difficult times after it was notified last year that its biggest mobile customer, Cingular Wireless, would be going directly to the music labels for content, rather than using InfoSpace's services. That caused InfoSpace to rethink its mobile strategy and lay off 250 employees to cut costs.
Today, InfoSpace is again more focused on its online portals, like Dogpile, and its mobile infrastructure business, such as search.
The stock fell 44 cents today, or 1.75 percent, to close at $24.70. Despite all the turmoil, that's only $3.69 below its high of $28.39 for the year.
Earlier this week (second item), one of InfoSpace's shareholders sent a letter to the Bellevue company expressing concern over cost controls and the lack of capital return to shareholders from InfoSpace's large cash balance.
And on Thursday, Sandell Asset Management notified InfoSpace that it will nominate three "highly qualified independent candidates" directors at the 2007 annual shareholder meeting.
In its first request, Sandell asked InfoSpace to immediately return $300 million of cash, cut $15 million in costs and hire a financial adviser to evaluate the potential sale of the company in whole or in part.
InfoSpace has had difficult times after it was notified last year by its biggest mobile customer, Cingular Wireless, that it would be going directly to the music labels for content, rather than using InfoSpace. That caused InfoSpace to rethink its mobile strategy, and lay off 250 employees to cut costs.
Today, InfoSpace is again more focused on its online portals, like Dogpile, and its mobile infrastructure business, such as search.
The question of how Getty Images will respond to emerging competition from user-generated content was answered in part today with -- surprise! -- another acquisition.
Getty bought Scoopt, a 2-year-old Glasgow, Scotland, company that specializes in citizen photojournalism. The purchase price was not disclosed. Scoopt allows anyone with a camera to capture images and sell them on its Web site.
In one of the more famous examples, a bystander shot a picture of the Manhattan plane crash that killed New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle last October. The photos, e-mailed to Scoopt, eventually made their way onto the front page of The Times of London.
Getty said it will invest in technology upgrades and release news, sports and entertainment images from Scoopt that meets its editorial standards. I just tried looking up the most popular images on Scoopt's site today, and it's mighty slow.
Also interesting that Getty noted the need to "apply rigorous standards" to "validate the authenticity" of some of the works, many of which are coming from non-professionals wielding camera phones.
The voluntary code of ethics says: "Scoopt will always endeavour to protect you, but we can only do this if you tell us the whole truth about everything you submit."
Photographers who submit imagery to Scoopt retain copyright, but grant the company a 12-month exclusive license. Photographers get 40 percent of the royalties.
Two people in Washington state have been sued by the Recording Industry Association of America for illegally downloading copyrighted music over the Internet.
The copyright infringement suits were filed in Seattle and Tacoma after the RIAA obtained the names of the individuals from their Internet service providers. The suit names a woman from Tenino and a man from Redmond, among more than two dozen lawsuits filed around the country, including three in Oregon.
The RIAA said the music was distributed using P2P services such as LimeWire. Record companies filed a lawsuit against the operators of LimeWire last fall, but the service continues to be available, calling itself "the fastest P2P file sharing program on the planet."
LimeWire's Web site notes the difference between legal and illegal file sharing using its service:
"LimeWire is legal software, but it is illegal for you to use LimeWire to share copyrighted files without permission."
In late 2005, Seattle-based Shared Media Licensing signed a deal with LimeWire and London's Magnatune record label to distribute works by Magnatune artists.
Here's a story looking at different views on P2P file sharing.
Jupitermedia said today talks with prospective buyer Getty Images have stopped, sending its stock falling toward Pluto.
Connecticut-based Jupitermedia shares are down around 17 percent to $7.19.
Last week, Getty outlined a strategy around building entertainment content following its acquisition of WireImage. Jupitermedia is a little different, in that it is mostly a low-cost stock image bank that occassionally competes with Getty. Analysts thought a buyout would have strengthened Getty's position.
The biggest competitor to Kirkland-based Inrix, which uses road censors and car locators to predict traffic patterns, was officially acquired today by Navteq, a provider of digital maps.
Navteq said it paid $177 million for Traffic.com, which also provides traffic information. The acquisition is pending approval by stockholders of Traffic.com.
Previously, Inrix commissioned a study by Frost & Sullivan to determine whether Traffic.com or Inrix provided more accurate traffic data.
