The new conventional wisdom is that sooner or later, consumers will have to start paying for some of the stuff they currently get for free on the Web.
But will they actually pay up? Here, the conventional wisdom is not so helpful. Nor are studies predicting consumer behavior.
The newest twist in Google’s quest to wring more more money out of YouTube: Ads you don’t have to look at. That’s a refreshing change of pace, no?
Here’s a good way to get your hands on scarce venture capital money: Create a start-up geared around Twitter-like “real-time” sharing and conversations. The newest entrant: Hot Potato, a buzzy start-up that’s supposed to let users converse about a particular event, whether they’re attending it in person or watching from afar. When it’s up and running, that is. The five-man crew doesn’t have users or a product just yet. But it has just raised around $1 million.
Good news (potentially) for T. Rowe Price and the other investors plowing $100 million into the revenue-free start-up: The service’s users absolutely love clicking on ads, says a new study.
Earlier this summer, Twitter was blamed for torpedoing movies like “Bruno” and “Funny Business.” Now the micromessaging service is being heralded for giving Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” a big boost. Actual evidence that Twitter has any effect at all on box office revenue is scant at best. But this is a story Hollywood is going to love anyway.
Ready to toss dirt on the old, unloved CD? You’re going to have to wait a while. Compact discs are increasingly hard to find (at least in physical stores), but someone out there keeps buying them: The ancient format still makes up the majority of music sales in the U.S. And since album-length CDs are a whole lot more lucrative for the industry than iTunes singles, expect to see the industry cling to them as long it can get away with it.
When will the online ad market finally start bouncing back? We’ve yet to see it in Q2 earnings reports from the likes of Google and Yahoo.
But one observer says it’s already here: Ad optimization firm PubMatic reports that prices for ad-network inventory it sees have increased 35 percent since the beginning of the year.
Here’s why Condé Nast is bringing in McKinsey & Co. for an emergency overhaul: The publisher’s lousy year isn’t getting any better. New numbers out today show that Condé’s September issues will be miserable across the board, with ad pages down anywhere from 17 percent to 47 percent. And that’s if you interpret the data favorably.
More love from Google for its oft-maligned YouTube unit: Last week, Google officials went out of their way to praise the video site’s progress and said it was well on its way from money pit to profit center. Today, the company gives YouTube a pat on the back via an atta-boy blog post. Not much new here, but the message is that the Google folks are feeling ever more confident about YouTube’s prospects. But not enough to actually talk about them in concrete terms.
Twitter has weighed in on the hacker who rooted through the company’s files and on the Web sites that published some of the stolen info. The short version: Don’t blame Google for our security problems; we need to use better passwords. But do be careful about publishing hacked data; we’re talking to our lawyers. “Bring it on,” says Gawker.
We’ve seen multiple studies showing a boost for Microsoft’s search share since it launched Bing a month ago, and now comScore weighs in and says the same thing. ComScore is the market mover when it comes to this stuff, so it will be interesting to see how Wall Street digests the news. My gut: Not a needle mover.
Want to get people to stick around and actually watch your dog-on-skateboard video? Try luring them with Twitter.
So says video-tracking service TubeMogul, which reports that Twitter users who click on a referral link to a Web video are likely to stay longer than people who get to the video from Facebook or Digg.
Videogame players are spending more time playing videogames than ever. But that won’t do the videogame business much good unless those players actually start buying new games again.
Are you one of those Facebook users who worries that your boss will see photos of what you did last weekend? Then you’ll like Facebook’s new privacy policy. But if you’re part of the large group of people who think that nothing is really private on the Web and that everyone should see everything you do online, then you’re really going to like Facebook’s new privacy policy.
Did you want to buy or sell a media or tech company in the last six months? Chances are you didn’t: New data from banker The Jordan, Edmiston Group say the M&A market for the first half of 2009 was nearly nonexistent, at least compared to the post-MySpace Web 2.0 heyday. One exception to the drought: A booming market for mobile companies.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
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