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Thursday, August 31, 2006

You tube data, Gomes from WSJ

Dr. Media. says check out this out some real data on youtube and vid on the net, we think, remember always hard to tell what's real, but Gomes did a good job scraping the site and reporting some University research. The youtube phenomen will have a significant impact on the future of video on the web as will myspace. FYI,
According to May, 2006 data from Hitwise the top five video sites are:

* YouTube: 42.94%
* MySpace Video: 24.22%
* Yahoo! Video Search: 9.58%
* MSN Video Search: 9.21%
* Google Video: 6.48%



If the data from YouTube are to believed, the world has a lot of explaining to do.

The video-sharing site doesn't make public much of the information it has about itself, such as a breakdown of the nationalities of its registered users. But it's possible to piece together that sort of information by "scraping" the site, a popular and entirely legal practice of using a computer to gather methodically all the tiny bits of public information scattered around a Web site, and then piecing them together.

I did a scrape of YouTube a month ago and found there were 5.1 million videos. By Sunday, the end of another scrape, that number had grown by about 20% to 6.1 million. Because we know how many videos have been uploaded to the site, the length of each, and how many times it has been watched (total views were 1.73 billion as of Sunday) we can do a little multiplication to find out how much time has collectively been spent watching them.

We will get to the result in due time. First, some other bits of YouTube fun -- data-crunching style. For example, the words "dance," "love," "music" and "girl" are all exceedingly popular in titles of YouTube videos.

Also, nearly 2,000 videos have "Zidane" in the title. Who at a desk anywhere on the planet didn't watch at least one head-butt video in the days after French soccer star Zinedine Zidane's meltdown in the World Cup final? For all the talk of the Internet fragmenting tastes and interests, YouTube is an example of the Web homogenizing experiences.

YouTube videos take up an estimated 45 terabytes of storage -- about 5,000 home computers' worth -- and require several million dollars' worth of bandwidth a month to transmit.

Those costs are one reason that some predict YouTube will collapse under the sheer weight of providing a haven for every teenager with a cellphone camera eager to be famous for 15 minutes of video.

An even more enterprising YouTube scraper is Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, which, equipped with a supercomputer with 400 nodes and a 10 gigabit Ethernet connection, was able to learn about all of the 500,000 or so people who bothered to create profiles for themselves at the site.

While YouTube's messaging software is rudimentary, and often doesn't work, many users nonetheless rely on it to stay in touch with each other. That gives YouTube -- and other Web locales -- some of the "social network" characteristics usually associated with the likes of MySpace. And it's another reason that established players like Yahoo and Google are ramping up their video-sharing competitors.

Johan Pouwelse, a Delft professor who helped develop a peer-to-peer, video-sharing technology at Delft called Tribler (one that he says could help YouTube cut down on bandwidth costs), reports that 70% of YouTube's registered users are American and roughly half are under 20 years of age.

The oldest active viewer apparently is geriatric1927, a 79-year old U.K. resident who sits at his PC in his study with headphones on and narrates memories of World War II. Ernie Rogers, a 23-year old from Colton, Calif., whose handle is "lamo1234," has watched more YouTube videos than anyone. Mr. Rogers claims he is on the site 24/7. And as "the YouTube rockstar," he has shared his original songs, including one called "Waste of Time."

The most devoted uploader is Christy Leigh Stewart, a 21-year-old college student who lives near Modesto, Calif., and who has so far uploaded nearly 2,000 videos. Nearly all involve Korean pop music, a passion of Ms. Stewart. Indeed, she says the main reason she spends too much time with YouTube is to drive traffic to hwaiting.net, a Korean-oriented Web site she runs with her friend Megan Hansen.

The notion of using the enormous YouTube audience for marketing other products has occurred to many people, including YouTube itself. It recently struck a deal with Paris Hilton, whose "channel," reports Prof. Pouwelse, instantly became the most popular.

Another is Marc Pearson, 24, who, as pearson101, records backyard wrestling matches: enthusiastic but low-budget versions of the fake-real matches you see on cable. Because his hometown of Stoke-on-Trent, England, is short on wrestlers, Mr. Pearson uses YouTube to attract opponents. "We used to have a lot of wrestlers around here, but not anymore, on account of all the injuries," he explains.

The YouTube juggernaut has attracted the interest of many others, including academics. Anita Elberse, a Harvard Business School professor with an interest in the digital-entertainment marketplace, said the site is a good laboratory for studying how some forms of content become popular.

Andrew M. Odlyzko, a mathematician who heads the Digital Technology Center at the University of Minnesota, has examined YouTube data, such as lists of most-viewed videos, to see whether the numbers follow a pattern familiar to statisticians, where a few of the most popular items get an especially large percentage of the traffic. They do.

Oh yes, I owe you a statistic: The total time the people of the world spent watching YouTube since it started last year. The figure is -- drum roll, please -- 9,305 years!

Films That Come Over the Net Don’t Come Easy


Dr. Media says, here you go so I guess the net may not be ready for movie primetime afterall, gee shocked aren't we.





August 31, 2006
Basics

Films That Come Over the Net Don’t Come Easy

Several obstacles — meager libraries, frustrating download times, copyright issues — have hamstrung online movie offerings to date. But the biggest challenge has been what those in the industry refer to as the “last 10 feet” problem. You could download a digital copy of a movie to your computer, but you were stuck watching it on the PC.

The meager libraries are quickly filling up with titles to rent or buy. And several movie sites are even on the verge of bridging those last 10 feet.

There are a variety of ways to obtain movies online — legitimately. One approach from Vongo (www.vongo.com), for example, is a subscription movie rental service. For a monthly $9.99 fee, movie fans can watch any movie on the service on their PC’s. But the selection is limited to titles licensed by the Starz premium cable and satellite service, which owns Vongo. That means that there are typically only a few hundred full-length feature films available at any given time, mostly post-DVD release titles, like “Jackie Brown” and “Bewitched.”

Vongo’s subscription model has two additional drawbacks. You cannot purchase movies to own, and each movie has “available until” restrictions. When Starz’s license to broadcast a movie ends, so does your right to play the downloaded file.

To avoid such confusion, most movie download sites try to mimic the offerings of dwindling brick-and-mortar video stores. Typically, the online rental sites like CinemaNow (www.cinemanow.com) and Movielink (www.movielink.com) offer digitally compressed movies on a pay-per-rental basis. Customers download movies from an online catalog; rentals last for 24 hours, or you can purchase titles to keep.

While the idea sounds simple, carrying it out has been anything but. A digitally compressed movie takes at least 30 minutes to download over a high-speed cable or D.S.L. connection. If you want picture quality comparable to that of a DVD release, it can take more than an hour to download a 90-minute movie. CinemaNow also offers several titles in a crystal-clear high-definition format, but downloading these monster files is an overnight process.

In addition to the lethargic download times, the playback restrictions imposed by studios are reminiscent of the fine print on a car lease. CinemaNow’s typical rental fees for the store’s 1,000-plus library of movies range from $2.99 for older titles to $3.99 for new releases. Offerings include most of the latest major releases, matching those you would find in a video store. You have 30 days from the date of rental to watch a movie, but once you hit the start button you have just 24 hours to watch before the rental self-destructs.

If you want to download a title permanently to your hard drive, prices at CinemaNow are $9.95 to $19.95. The catch is that to adhere to Hollywood’s copyright restrictions these movies can be viewed on only three devices, all compatible with Windows Media Player, that you register with the service. You can make a backup copy of a purchase to a DVD, but that DVD will play only on the computer that was originally used to download the movie. Furthermore, not all rental movies are available for purchase — and not all movies available for purchase are available for rental.

Confused yet? If so, you should be happier with the latest CinemaNow feature, offering movies you can burn to a disc that will play on any DVD player. Intended to solve the “last 10 feet” problem, the burn-to-DVD service is still in preview or “beta” mode, but it already has a selection of over 100 titles, including “Center of the World” by Wayne Wang, the Al Pacino movie “Scent of a Woman,” and concert videos by artists like Johnny Cash and the Doors.

It took me an hour to download the $12.99 offbeat thriller “Panic.” But when it came time to burn the DVD, which CinemaNow’s software does automatically, the recording failed after 30 minutes, wasting one blank DVD. A second attempt, which took about 30 minutes, was successful.

In addition to the time investment, buyers should know that the copy-thwarting software that CinemaNow employs to make the DVD’s is not an industry standard. Consequently, some competitors warn that the discs may not play in all DVD players. But in informal tests with new and old DVD players, I encountered no problems, and the picture quality was comparable to most store-bought DVD’s.

The CinemaNow burn-to-DVD feature is a harbinger of what is to come in the next few months from other services, according to Jim Ramo, the president of Movielink. Movielink offers a similar library of mainstream films with playback restrictions that are virtually identical to those of CinemaNow. Rental prices range from $1.99 to $4.99, with download-to-own prices starting at $8.99 and going up to $19.99. Movielink differs from CinemaNow in that it does not have a section of sexually explicit films, and it offers a handful of titles in a format for new portable media players based on the Windows Ultra-Mobile PC operating system from Microsoft.

Owned by major studios — MGM, Paramount, Sony, Universal Studios, and Warner Brothers — Movielink does not yet let customers burn movies to DVD’s, but Mr. Ramo says the studios are eager to do so. Consequently, in a few months Movielink will include a burn-to-DVD option with a copy protection program called the Content Scramble System (CSS), which will require the use of special DVD’s.

Other sites are trying to lure movie fans by adding downloadable Hollywood movies to the type of free amateur clips found on sites like YouTube. Guba (www.guba.com), for example, originally offered only free video clips culled from newsgroup postings but now includes mainstream films like “V for Vendetta” for purchase at $9.99. Twenty-four-hour rentals for older films, like “Rebel Without a Cause,” can be as low as 99 cents, but there is a limited selection (mainly Sony and Warner Brothers titles).

Last week, AOL introduced its own AOL Video portal (www.aolvideo.com), combining free video fare with downloadable movies and a range of TV series, like “Wonder Woman” and “Blue’s Clues.” Backed by AOL’s owner, Time Warner, the site is quickly amassing an extensive arsenal of shows and movies as it signs up more studios and television networks. It already has movies from four Hollywood studios, including 20th Century Fox and Universal Pictures, and features ad-supported content from A&E, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, and TNT. Like YouTube and Guba, it also includes free amateur videos.

Even AOL’s download service, however, can be confusing for customers trying to figure out what is free and what is available for purchase. For example, “Wonder Woman” episodes can be viewed free as a streaming video feed, while “Blue’s Clues” shows can be downloaded to a PC but cost $1.99 each. Movies, like “Spider-Man 2,” can be bought for $9.99 but not rented or burned to DVD.

In September, AOL will introduce a “10-foot edition” of AOL Video designed to be navigated by remote control on a TV connected to a Windows Media Center PC.

The current online mainstream movie services are for Windows users only. But the superstar in digital downloads is still iTunes from Apple, whose offerings so far are limited to $1.99 TV shows and music videos for playback on iPod screens. Enlarging the picture even to computer monitor size yields a fuzzy image. On the other hand, Apple claims it has sold more than 35 million videos online, so it may not be long before iTunes realizes it has to join the downloadable movie movement.

Ultimately, what may hamper sales of downloadable movies may not be download times or trouble with DVD burning. The obstacle will be price. It is often more economical to rent DVD’s from local rental kiosks or mail-order outfits like Netflix (www.netflix.com). So for now the best way to solve the “last 10 feet” problem is still to get up off the couch.

Saturday, August 26, 2006

Precisely False vs. Approximately Right: A Reader’s Guide to Polls - New York Times

Dr Media says, good article, remember this EVERY TIME you read ANY poll report. Whether it's finacial , social, or, especially, Internet projections for ANYTHING, be forewarned. Did you ever wonder how you can get precise, measures for the Net when at least 1/3 of the people on the net lie about everything including and especially their age and sex.???




Precisely False vs. Approximately Right: A Reader’s Guide to Polls - New York Times
August 27, 2006
The Public Editor

Precisely False vs. Approximately Right: A Reader’s Guide to Polls

LAST March, the American Medical Association reported an alarming rate of binge drinking and unprotected sex among college women during spring break. The report was based on a survey of “a random sample” of 644 women and supplied a scientific-sounding “margin of error of +/– 4.00 percent.” Television, columnists and comedians embraced the racy report. The New York Times did not publish the story, but did include some of the data in a chart.

The sample, it turned out, was not random. It included only women who volunteered to answer questions — and only a quarter of them had actually ever taken a spring break trip. They hardly constituted a reliable cross section, and there is no way to calculate a margin of sampling error for such a “sample.”

The Times published a correction explaining the misrepresentation, and the news media that used the story would probably agree with what Cliff Zukin, a Rutgers authority on polls, told Mystery Pollster, a polling blog: how unfair it is to publish a story “suggesting that college students on spring break are largely drunken sluts.”

The story also threatened larger harm. Its general point was indisputable; vacationing collegians often behave recklessly. But there was a larger recklessness in the misrepresentation of the survey. Now that everyone has a phone and calls are cheap, polling organizations have blossomed, and each such example of bad polls risks undermining public confidence in good ones.

Another example surfaced last week in The Wall Street Journal. It examined a “landmark survey,” conducted for liquor retailers, claiming to show that “millions of kids” buy alcohol online. A random sample? The pollster paid the teenage respondents and included only Internet users.

Such misrepresentations help explain why The Times recently issued a seven-page paper on polling standards for editors and reporters. “Keeping poorly done survey research out of the paper is just as important as getting good survey research into the paper,” the document said.

These standards, coming just as the fall campaign heats up, provide a timely reminder of responsible journalism. But the best of intentions are not always met in practice, at The Times or in other media. The standards do not, for instance, discuss how even a punctilious poll story can be given inflated prominence. There is no reason, in any case, to limit such cautions to journalists. Readers, too, need to know something about polls — at least enough to sniff out good polls from bad. Here’s a brief guide.

False Precision

Beware of decimal places. When a polling story presents data down to tenths of a percentage point, what the pollster almost always demonstrates is not precision but pretension. A recent Zogby Interactive poll, for instance, showed that the candidates for the Senate in Missouri were separated by 3.8 percentage points. Yet the stated margin of sampling error meant the difference between the candidates could be seven points. The survey would have to interview unimaginably many thousands for that zero point eight to be useful.

Experienced researchers offer a rule of thumb: rather than trust improbably precise numbers, round them off. Even better, look for whole fractions.

Sampling Error

The Times and other media accompany poll reports with a box explaining how the random sample was selected and stating the sampling error. Error is actually a misnomer. What this figure actually describes is a range of approximation.

There’s also a formula for calculating the error in comparing one survey with another. For instance, last May, a Times/CBS News survey found that 31 percent of the public approved of President Bush’s performance; in the survey published last Wednesday, the number was 36 percent. Is that a real change? Yes. After adjustment for comparative error, the approval rating has gained by at least one point.

For a typical election sample of 1,000, the error rate is plus or minus three percentage points for each candidate, meaning that a 50-50 race could actually differ by 53 to 47. But the three-point figure applies only to the entire sample. How many of those are likely voters? In the recent Connecticut primary, 40 percent of eligible Democrats voted. Even if a poll identified the likely voters perfectly, there still would be just 400 of them, and the error rate for that number would be plus or minus five points. So to win confidence, a finding would have to exceed 55 to 45.

This caution applies forcefully to conclusions about other subgroups. What could a typical survey tell about, say, college-age women? Out of a random sample of 1,000, a little more than half would be women and only about 70 would be of college age. That’s too small a subsample to support any but the most general findings.

Questions

How questions are phrased can mean wide shifts, even with wholly neutral words. Men respond poorly, for instance, to questions asking if they are “worried” about something, so careful pollsters will ask if they are “concerned.”

The classic “double negative” example came in July 1992, when a Roper poll asked, “Does it seem possible or does it seem impossible to you that the Nazi extermination of the Jews never happened?” The finding: one of every five Americans seemed to doubt that there was a Holocaust. How much did that startling finding result from the confusing question? In a follow-up survey, Roper asked a clearer question, and the number of doubters plunged from the original 22 percent to 1 percent.

Extreme questions are fine if the poll asks questions at both extremes, says Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll and author of “Polling Matters,” an authoritative 2004 book on this subject. The difference between the answers “can give us good insights into evolving social norms,” he says. “All data are interesting.”

In any case, Warren Mitofsky, head of a leading international polling company, observes that “for political surveys, most of the questions have been asked for many years, have been tested and are not the source of error.”

The order of questions is another source of potential error. That’s illustrated by questions asked by the Pew Research Center. Andrew Kohut, its president, says: “If you first ask people what they think about gay marriage, they are opposed. They vent. And if you then ask what they think about civil unions, a majority support that.”

Answers

People never wish to look uninformed and will often answer questions despite ignorance of the subject. Some 40 years into the cold war, many respondents were still saying yes, Russia is a member of NATO. That’s why, says Rob Daves, head of the American Association of Public Opinion Researchers, skillful pollsters will first ask, for new or sophisticated subjects, a scaling question like, How much do you know about this issue: a great deal, some, not at all?

Respondents also want to appear to be good citizens. When the Times/CBS News Poll asks voters if they voted in the 2004 presidential election, 73 percent say yes. Shortly after the election, however, the Census Bureau reported that only 64 percent of the eligible voters actually voted.

Jon Krosnick, an authority on polling and politics at Stanford, uses the term “satisficing” to describe behavior when a pollster calls. If people find the subject compelling, they become engaged. If not, they answer impatiently. Either way, says Kathy Frankovich, director of surveys for CBS News, “people grab the first thing that comes to mind.”

Intensity

How strongly people feel about an issue may be the most important source of poll misunderstanding. In survey after survey, half the respondents favor stronger gun controls — but don’t care nearly as much as the 10 percent who want them relaxed.

Intensity can be measured by asking a scaled question: Is the issue of abortion so important that you will cast your vote because of a candidate’s position? One of several important issues? Not important? Each added question increases the interview length, testing the respondent’s patience and the pollster’s budget. Nevertheless, on divisive issues, responsible pollsters will ask four, five, even a dozen questions, probing for true feelings.

Public opinion is not precise, and in any case it is constantly churning. Measuring it cannot hope to be precise. What readers can hope for, whether in an individual poll, a consensus from several polls or from the polling profession generally, is the truth — approximately right.

Jack Rosenthal, president of The New York Times Company Foundation, was a senior editor of The Times for 26 years. Byron Calame, the public editor, is on vacation.

Sunday, August 20, 2006

The YouTube Election - New York Times

Dr Media says the youtube phenom will be that anyone can produce anything to besmirch anyone's reputation at anytime, and all that person ( organization, company, etc.) can do is say it isn't true, and wait for the fall out. Those who are inclined to not believe will say no and those inclined to believe will say yes, and most importantly SPREAD the gossip meme. This is the nature of the web and until the audience for the web develops better radar, anyone can spew whatever bile they so desire, anonymously, this is called, in honor of John Kerry, "swift boating", it's a verb. Ever wonder how many spouse/partner/lover's have been dissed by ex's on the web. or turned in for tax evasion, or rolled over on dope bust, just to get even, now those are stats I'd like to see.




The YouTube Election - New York Times
August 20, 2006
Candidly Speaking

The YouTube Election

AUGUST, usually the sleepiest month in politics, has suddenly become raucous, thanks in part to YouTube, the vast videosharing Web site.

Last week, Senator George Allen, the Virginia Republican, was caught on tape at a campaign event twice calling a college student of Indian descent a “macaca,” an obscure racial slur.

The student, working for the opposing campaign, taped the comments, and the video quickly appeared on YouTube, where it rocketed to the top of the site’s most-viewed list. It then bounced from the Web to the front page of The Washington Post to cable and network television news shows. Despite two public apologies by Senator Allen, and his aides’ quick explanations for how the strange word tumbled out, political analysts rushed to downgrade Mr. Allen’s stock as a leading contender for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.

YouTube’s bite also hurt Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, who was defeated by the political upstart Ned Lamont in Connecticut’s Democratic primary earlier this month. In that contest, pro-Lamont bloggers frequently posted flattering interviews with their candidate on YouTube and unflattering video of Senator Lieberman. The Lamont campaign even hired a staffer, Tim Tagaris, to coordinate the activities of the bloggers and video bloggers.

In the real world, of course, neither Senator Lieberman nor Senator Allen is finished. Senator Lieberman, running as an independent, leads in recent polls. And Senator Allen, who said that he had meant no insult and that he did not know what macaca meant, is favored to win re-election against his Democratic opponent, James Webb. But the experience serves as a warning to politicians: Beware, the next stupid thing you say may be on YouTube.

When politicians say inappropriate things, many voters will want to know. Now they can see it for themselves on the Web.

But YouTube may be changing the political process in more profound ways, for good and perhaps not for the better, according to strategists in both parties. If campaigns resemble reality television, where any moment of a candidate’s life can be captured on film and posted on the Web, will the last shreds of authenticity be stripped from our public officials? Will candidates be pushed further into a scripted bubble? In short, will YouTube democratize politics, or destroy it?

YouTube didn’t even exist until 2005, but it now attracts some 20 million different visitors a month. In statements to the press, the company has been quick to take credit for radically altering the political ecosystem by opening up elections, allowing lesser known candidates to have a platform.

Some political analysts say that YouTube could force candidates to stop being so artificial, since they know their true personalities will come out anyway. “It will favor a kind of authenticity and directness and honesty that is frankly going to be good,” said Carter Eskew, a media consultant who worked for Senator Lieberman’s primary campaign. “People will say what they really think rather than what they think people want to hear.”

But others see a future where politicians are more vapid and risk averse than ever. Matthew Dowd, a longtime strategist for President Bush who is now a partner in a social networking Internet venture, Hot Soup, looks at the YouTube-ization of politics, and sees the death of spontaneity.

“Politicians can’t experiment with messages,” Mr. Dowd said. “They can’t get voter response. Seventy or 80 years ago, a politician could go give a speech in Des Moines and road-test some ideas and then refine it and then test it again in Milwaukee.”

He sees a future where candidates must be camera-ready before they hit the road, rather than be a work in progress. “What’s happened is that politicians now have to be perfect from Day 1,” he said. “It’s taken some richness out of the political discourse.”

Howard Wolfson, a senior adviser to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is not known for her spontaneity, agrees.

“It is a continuation of a trend in which politicians have to assume they are on live TV all the time,” Mr. Wolfson said. “You can’t get away with making an offensive or dumb remark and assume it won’t get out.”

These rules have long applied to White House contenders, but the dynamic is getting stronger and moving down the ballot. “It used to be the kind of thing that was only true for presidents,” Mr. Wolfson said. “Now with the proliferation of technology it is increasingly true for many other politicians.”

But Mr. Wolfson, who recently led an effort by the Clinton camp to reach out to liberal bloggers hostile to his boss, believes that this trend has one advantage. “It does create more accountability and more democratization of information in the process,” he said.

The explosion of instant video may also put pressure on the news media. In the old days, the Allen video would not have been available for all to see. “Imagine this happened 10 years ago,” Mr. Wolfson said. “We had video and trackers then. But you had to get it to a TV station or newspaper. You had to persuade them to run a story on it. This allows you to avoid the middleman.”

And by doing so, avoid an arbiter, however flawed, of standards. “There’s no, ‘Is this the right thing for political discourse?’ ” Mr. Dowd said. “It’s just there.”

These days journalists are concerned not just about being cut out, but about being part of the show. Reporters often suffer the wrath of bloggers in the same way politicians do. At a recent conference of political bloggers in Las Vegas, reporters more than once reminded one another to be discreet in their conversations because anything overheard was fair game for bloggers to post.

Now, as the campaign trail turns into a 24-hour live set, members of the press corps may find themselves starring on YouTube. “At least one big-time journalist will have their career or life ruined because some element of their behavior that was heretofore private will be exposed publicly,” predicted a senior adviser to a potential 2008 presidential candidate. The adviser requested that his name not be used because he did not want his personal views to be taken for his boss’s.

Then again, YouTube’s impact on politics may be exaggerated. For one, the site’s users are generally young and not highly engaged politically.

“Most social networking sites cater to younger audiences, 18 to 24,” says Michael Bassik, vice president of Internet advertising at MSHC Partners, which advises candidates on media strategies. “For the most part, it’s not political conversations taking place there.”

And maybe the Allen video wasn’t all that shocking after all.

Jeff Jarvis, author of the BuzzMachine blog and an Internet consultant to The New York Times Company, doesn’t think all that much has changed.

“Is it news that politicians say stupid things?” he asks. “Of course not.”

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

It May Be a Long Time

Dr. Media says read this, and listen, Gomes counters the post 90's web fantasy of Anderson, (hate to step on anyones toes) , but his data makes sense. Keep your hands on your wallet. Counterpoint 2, the 80- 20 rule always works in media, online gaming has not grown to the vast proportions hoped, things get old faster on the web, take porn, an endless stream is needed, tell me, what can possbly be new, afterall, you always know the end of that movie.

Gomes' point is well taken.




It May Be a Long Time
Before the Long Tail
Is Wagging the Web
July 26, 2006; Page B1

[nowides]

Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson's hot, new best seller, "The Long Tail," is causing a sensation with its eye-opening claims about the way the Web is rewriting the rules of commerce. But I've looked at some of the same data, and some more of my own, and I don't think things are changing as much as he does.

The book argues that while traditional companies are limited by shelf space to offering only a relatively small number of "hits," on the Web, they can carry a vastly bigger number of slower-selling items. These "misses," which make up the "tail" of the title, can, he says, add up to a big number -- maybe even bigger than sales of the hits.

That would be very different from the business world we know today; no wonder the book's cover promises "The New Economics of Culture and Commerce."

[discussion]1 ANDERSON'S REBUTTAL
Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson responds2 on his blog.
JOIN A DISCUSSION
What do you think? Is the "long tail" a big driver of business? Join a discussion3

Let's start this discussion where Mr. Anderson starts his book, with his discovery of what he calls a paradigm-changing statistic. In the introduction, he tells how he learns from Ecast, a music-streaming company, that 98% of its catalog gets played at least once a quarter -- much more than most would predict.

This "98 Percent Rule," as Mr. Anderson names it, suggests the remarkable prospect that no matter how much inventory you put online, someone, somewhere will show up to buy it. He writes, "Everywhere I looked the story was the same. ... The 98 Percent Rule turned out to be nearly universal."

Except it's not. Ecast told me that now, with a much bigger inventory than when Mr. Anderson spoke to them two years ago, the quarterly no-play rate has risen from 2% to 12%. March data for the 1.1 million songs of Rhapsody, another streamer, shows a 22% no-play rate; another 19% got just one or two plays.

Mr. Anderson told me in an email that he only mentioned the 98 Percent Rule to show how he first got interested in the book's overall subject, adding, "I have no idea how broadly it applies today."

In the book's main sections, Mr. Anderson writes that as things move online, sales of misses will increase -- so much so that they can equal or exceed the sales of hits. The latter is the book's showstopper proposition; it's mentioned twice on the book's jacket.

I was thus a little surprised when Mr. Anderson told me that he didn't have any examples of this actually occurring. At Netflix and Amazon, two of his biggest case studies, misses won't outsell hits for at least another decade, he said. None of these qualifications are in the book.

Mr. Anderson told me the lack of an example of misses outselling hits doesn't diminish his basic point, which he said is simply that the role of the tail "is big and getting bigger."

By Mr. Anderson's calculation, 25% of Amazon's sales are from its tail, as they involve books you can't find at a traditional retailer. But using another analysis of those numbers -- an analysis that Mr. Anderson argues isn't meaningful -- you can show that 2.7% of Amazon's titles produce a whopping 75% of its revenues. Not quite as impressive.

Another theme of the book is that "hits are starting to rule less." But when I looked online, I was surprised to see what seemed like the opposite. Ecast says 10% of its songs account for roughly 90% of its streams; monthly data from Rhapsody showed the top 10% songs getting 86% of streams.

Bloglines, the widely used blog-reading tool, lists 1.2 million blogs; real ones, not computer-generated "spam blogs." The top 10% of feeds grab 88% of all subscriptions. And 35% have no current subscribers at all -- there's clearly no 98 Percent Rule in the blogosphere.

At Apple's iTunes, one person who has seen the data -- which Apple doesn't disclose -- said sales "closely track Billboard. It's a hits business. The data tend to refute 'The Long Tail.' "

Other economists, of course, are looking into these same questions, though some seem to be reaching far more restrained conclusions. Harvard's Anita Elberse, whom Mr. Anderson said was a consultant during his two-year research project, studies the video sales market, both online and off.

She said in an email that her work to date shows a "slight shift" toward the tail. But she also noted "a rapidly increasing number of titles that never, or very rarely, sell," which suggests "it is difficult for content providers to profit from the 'tail.' "

It would be wonderful if the world as Mr. Anderson describes it were true: one where "healthy niche products" and even "outright misses" collectively could stand their ground with the culture's increasingly soulless "hits."

But while every singer-songwriter dreams from his bedroom of making a living off iTunes, few actually do, mostly because so many others have the very same idea. And to the extent that Apple is making money off iTunes, thanks go to Nelly Furtado and other hitmakers. Indeed, you can make the case that the Internet is amplifying the role of hits, even in relation to misses, not diminishing them.

So maybe Mr. Anderson really has unlocked the sort of new business rules the cover promises. I say we wait before ripping up any business plans. Let's see how the tail shakes out.

Broadband growth drives global online advertising and access spending to more than $260 billion by 2010

Broadband growth drives global online advertising and access spending to more than $260 billion by 2010
Dr. Media says, the latest from PWC, nice growth curve, huh!?

Broadband growth drives global online advertising and access spending to more than $260 billion by 2010

Posted on Aug. 07, 2006

By Kara Hartig

An increasingly competitive market and substantial investment in infrastructure will fuel expansion of broadband, boosting worldwide Internet advertising and access revenues to $265.6 billion in 2010 at a 12.9% compound annual growth rate (CAGR), according to PricewaterhouseCoopers"' Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2006–2010.

The Outlook defines the Internet advertising and access market as fees consumers pay to Internet service providers as well as online advertisers"' spending on display, classified, and paid search advertising. The market further includes spending on classified advertising from newspaper Web sites.

Asia Pacific will both grow the fastest and claim the largest spending in 2010, expanding to $110.3 billion at a 17.9% CAGR. Rising at a relatively moderate 11% CAGR to $83.4 billion in 2010, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) will lose its global lead to Asia Pacific in 2006, maintaining the second-largest position going forward. With $60.2 billion in revenues in 2010, the U.S. will represent the third-largest market, expanding at an 8.4% CAGR. Although the market in Latin America will remain small at $8.6 billion in 2010, it will boast the second-fastest regional growth of 14.6% compounded annually. With the smallest regional spending, Canada will increase at a modest 9% CAGR to $3.1 billion in 2010.

In the U.S., competition between phone and cable companies has resulted in decreasing prices and increasing speeds for broadband. These drivers, combined with desire to access high-speed applications (e.g., music, video games, movies), will boost near-term growth of broadband penetration, reaching 61.7% in 2010. Moreover, introduction of new delivery methods will continue to expand broadband"'s reach and encourage subscriber growth in the long term, with category spending reaching $30.8 billion in 2010 at a 9.6% CAGR. Although this expansion will adversely affect the dial-up market (declining to $3.8 billion in 2010 at 14.1% compounded annually), overall access spending will rise to $34.7 billion in 2010 at a 4.6% CAGR.

Online advertising revenues will also benefit from broadband expansion. Because broadband subscribers spend relatively more time online and high speeds facilitate new ad formats, mainstream advertisers will increase their online spending. Showing the fastest regional CAGR--15.2%--online advertising will make a major contribution to the overall market at $25.5 billion in 2010.

In EMEA, investment in infrastructure will facilitate reach, and government initiatives to update regulatory structure will stimulate competition and price declines. The resulting rise in total penetration to 57.6% in 2010 will boost overall access spending to $68.5 billion in 2010 at a 9.3% CAGR. With the broadband market primarily benefiting from overall drivers--mainly availability of triple-play packages and decreased prices--dial-up spending will decrease to $9.4 billion in 2010 at a decrease of 7.6% compounded annually. However, broadband"'s expansion to $56.7 billion in 2010 at a 14.7% CAGR will offset dial-up"'s loss, and further attract advertisers. Combined with increased spending on paid search, online advertising will climb to $14.9 billion in 2010 at a 21.2% CAGR.

In 2010, Western Europe will claim the largest spending, rising to $66.1 billion at a 9.9% CAGR. Growing the fastest, Central and Eastern Europe will reach $14.6 billion in 2010 at a 17.1% CAGR. By country, the U.K. will boast the largest market with $16.1 billion in 2010, expanding at a 13.4% CAGR. Germany ($14.1 billion) and France ($9.2 billion) will follow with respective growth of 10.3% and 10% compounded annually. Meanwhile, Russia will represent the fourth-largest market, expanding the fastest at an 18.6% CAGR to $9 billion in 2010.

In Asia Pacific, deregulation of the industry, combined with substantial development of infrastructure, will drive access spending from $44.7 billion in 2005 to $100.4 billion in 2010 at a 17.6% CAGR. By category, broadband will continue its worldwide lead, representing the majority of regional contribution. Fueled by government initiatives and carriers"' investment, the sector will reach $86.8 billion in 2010 at a 21.3% CAGR. Rapid expansion of broadband will further contribute to growth of online advertising, rising at a 21.7% CAGR to $9.9 billion in 2010. Although increasing at a relatively moderate 3.2% CAGR to $13.7 billion in 2010, dial-up will further advance the market.

The People"'s Republic of China (PRC) will primarily fuel global spending dominance of Asia Pacific. Accounting for 81% of regional growth during the forecast period, PRC spending will climb to $73.5 billion in 2010 at a 25.4% CAGR. With the second-largest spending, Japan will contribute $16.7 billion in 2010, followed by South Korea at $8.6 billion.

In Latin America, dial-up will continue to make the predominant contribution to the market, increasing to $4.5 billion in 2010 at an 8.5% CAGR. However, an improving economy has finally made broadband available in most countries, resulting in the sector"'s swift rise at a 24.9% CAGR to $3.6 billion in 2010. Broadband growth will also fuel increased spending on online advertising, rising to $512 million in 2010 at a 23.1% CAGR. Additionally, foreign and domestic investors"' development of infrastructure will boost landline penetration and further encourage overall subscribership, driving total access spending (96% of the regional market) to $8.1 billion in 2010 at a 14.2% CAGR.

By country, Brazil will have the largest market, reaching $3.9 billion in 2010 at a 14.7% CAGR. Argentina and Mexico will contribute the next-largest spending at $1.8 billion apiece, with respective growth of 13.2% and 17.3% compounded annually.

In Canada, competition between cable and phone companies, combined with increasing speeds, will drive the broadband market, reaching $2.2 billion in 2010 at a 10.2% CAGR. Broadband expansion will also boost online advertising, rising at an 18.8% CAGR to $821 million in 2010. Because market maturity will slow overall subscriber growth, overall access spending will rise at a relatively moderate 6.4% CAGR to $2.3 billion in 2010.

Monday, August 14, 2006

WSJ.com - Fox to Sell Movies, TV Shows For Windows Download

As Dr Media said when Fox bought myspace, it will become the marketing arm Fox, TV, Movies, Games, magazines, etc. Here's the 1st salvo.




WSJ.com - Fox to Sell Movies, TV Shows For Windows Download Fox to Sell Movies, TV Show

Fox to Sell Movies, TV Shows
For Windows Download

Associated Press
August 14, 2006 12:09 p.m.

News Corp.'s Fox is making its movie and television content available for download on Microsoft Corp.'s Windows devices.

The company said Monday it will tap into a platform it currently uses to sell videogames and let visitors buy movies and TV shows that they can download for computer playback and transfer to devices running Windows Media Player technology. Movies will sell for about $20 and TV shows for $1.99 an episode.

Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store already sells some Fox television shows for $1.99 apiece, but those can only be played on the company's iPod devices or on a computer.

Movies available for Windows in October will include "X-Men: The Last Stand," "Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties," "The Omen" and "Thank You for Smoking." Availability through Fox's Direct2Drive service will be concurrent with the DVD release.

Also, Direct2Drive will make available Fox's "24" and "Prison Break" and FX's "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" within 24 hours of each episode's broadcast.

The movies and TV shows from Twentieth Century Fox will carry copy protection, limiting playback to two Windows computers, each supporting one portable device. Sales will be limited to the U.S.

Direct2Drive is a service offered by IGN Entertainment Inc., which News Corp. bought last year for $650 million. Over the next year, video sales will come to other Fox sites as well, including the popular online hangout MySpace.com.

Mickie Rosen, general manager for entertainment at Fox Interactive Media, said each site will likely use the Direct2Drive technology but offer a different user experience and different movies and shows, the offerings tailored to the site's audience.

Earlier this year, Fox made available free and for-sale downloads of "24" on MySpace. It also sold about 200,000 audio and video clips of performances at AmericanIdol.com.

Copyright © 2006 Associated Press

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