AR&D Reinventing Local Media

It has been a while since we checked in on the mobile or “portable” platforms as we like to call them. There have been a number of advances in the first quarter of 2010. First the numbers. Consumer’s worldwide purchased 1.21 billion mobile phones in the last 12 months. Google launched the Nexus One, Android growth continues to climb, Barnes and Noble shipped the Nook, and Apple introduced the Ipad and the Iphone 3GS – others to follow.

New smartphones are driving the increased use in mobile. Google CEO Eric Schmidt reports that their partners are selling about 60,000 Android based phones each day. At that rate the open source operating system is putting pressure on the big guys, Blackberry, Apple and Palm. In fact, Flurry estimates when Apple launched the Iphone, 1 million devices were sold in the first 74 day on the market. Motorola Droid shipped more 1.05 million devices during the same time span. Google’s Nexus One sales haven’t been so robust, selling only an estimated 135k phones in 74 days.

Apps on smartphones have grown into a powerful industry. GetJar, a neutral app store is predicting mobile apps should grow to a mind numbing $17.5 billion with the next three years. To put that into perspective, the value of the apps sold would be greater than the value of CD’s sold in 2012, estimated $13.83 billion. A growing number of Americans are using those apps to remain updated on what is going on in the world.

A recent Pew Internet Study, “Understanding the Participatory News Consumer” shows that a third of mobile users are portable news viewers. Some 80% of American adults have cell phones today, and 37% of them go online from their phones. The impact of this new mobile technology on news gathering is unmistakable. One quarter (26%) of all Americans say they get some form of news via cell phone today—that amounts to 33% of cell phone owners.

These wireless news consumers get the following types of news on their phones: Social networking is creating it’s own information stream. The study also says 51% of social users keep up with what is going on by simply having online conversations with their friends and followers.

In fact, for the first time ever Facebook has dethroned Google as the most visited website in America gathering more than 7% of the total web visits in America. Combined the two represent just over 14% of all daily web visits. For Facebook’s 400 million worldwide users, that is a 185% increase in the last year. So where is all of this going? Google thinks it’s a shift in how people will access the web in the future.

Vic Gundotra, Google’s vice president of engineering for mobile applications, told investors this week “the company has bet big on mobile”. CEO Eric Schmidt calls Google “mobile first” company, interesting coming from the world leader in search. Maybe it is because more than 10% of all searches are initiated from a mobile phone, when people are away from their desks, usually at lunch, according to web analysts Thomas Weisel Partners.

Smartphones are driving more and more people to the web, meaning mobile clicks is beginning to have an impact on the overall growth of paid clicks and online ad revenue. Now the mobile business model begins to breakthrough.

OK, we get the fact that the internet has changed the way people get their news. Now we are all developing our online strategies including Facebook pages to sign up our fans. There are a lot of you doing a very good job at attracting fans. Trust me, five or six thousand for a television station isn’t that unusual.

But now what? What do you do after you have invited all of these people to come into your online tent. If you think you can just throw news headlines and a couple videos at them during the day, with details at six and call it being social, well – you are wrong.

The latest Pew Research digs deep into internet users attitudes and found that 37% of them are using social media to participate in the news of the day.

The report states, “the advent of social media like social networking sites and blogs has helped the news become a social experience in fresh ways for consumers. People use their social networks and social networking technology to filter, assess, and react to news.”

Point being, if you use the broadcasting model to talk to these people, its not going to work. So how do you engage with your fans? Polls, discussions, coupons, quizzes, virtual gifts? None of the above?

There are new online services that you might want to check into that may help you recruit, engage and socially interact.

FanAppz, launched a professional version of its online software this week. The company says its new software Fan Appz Professional “gives any Facebook Fan Page admin the ability to create and distribute brand-specific polls, quizzes and promotions that fans can enjoy and share with their friends to extend brand awareness and drive traffic.”

I talked with Jon Siegal, CEO and founder of FanAppz and he sees what I see in companies using Facebook trying to go social. “We see this day in and day out, lots of thier posts are passive communications, so potential fans just look at it and do nothing with it. Social gives you the opportunity for engagement and conversation. It’s a higher form of communication, you create a more viral audience.”

“Most businesses and brands have only scratched the surface of how they communicate with their fans ” there is a huge potential for people to harness the collective passion of their followers,” says Siegal.. “Fan Appz gives customers an accessible and affordable way to spark user engagement and extend viral sharing and social competition, while delivering a compelling way for brands to solidify and monetize their relationships with fans.”

There is a free version if you want to check it out. The professional version will cost you $50 a month, but this week you can kick the tires for 7 days free of charge.

And if you are still fence about Facebook, it is projected they will make about $1.1 billion in 2010. The US population is estimated at 113 million users, up 5 million in just the last 30 days.

Companies like Zynga, an online social game company, is reported to make $100 million this year selling things like virtual FarmVille seeds and Texas Hold ‘Em chips.

48 million Facebook users are sending virtual birthday cards and gifts, buying them with real cash! A dollar goes a long way in the virtual world.

I would call Facebook a platform that needs your attention.

Technologies have always been the disrupters and the internet may be proving to be one of the biggest of all time. For more than 300 years newspapers have been a mainstay of information for Americans. Dating back to when postmaster John Campbell first published the Boston News-Letter in 1704.

Since then radio, television, online and wireless have been feeding Americans’ insatiable appetites for local and national news. In fact, news out this week from the Pew Research Center reports an overwhelming majority of Americans, 92%, are using multiple platforms to get their daily dose of news, weather and sports. Half of that number uses at least four to six platforms a day.

Here is where Pew says we stack up:

Only local and national TV news, the latter if you combine cable and network, are more popular platforms than the internet for news. And most Americans use a combination of both online and offline sources.

On a typical day:

• 78% of Americans say they get news from a local TV station.
• 73% say they get news from a national network such as CBS or cable TV station such as CNN or Fox News.
• 61% say they get some kind of news online.
• 54% say they listen to a radio news program at home or in the car.
• 50% say they read news in a local newspaper.
• 17% say they read news in a national newspaper such as the New York Times or USA Today.

Now you understand why newspapers got into the internet game early. Adapt or die. That same strategy will pay off in the personal portable device space, of smartbook devices like Kindle, Nook and Ipad. Just this week an internal memo at Conde Nast reportedly announced plans to offer Ipad versions of some of their most popular magazines: Wired, GQ, Vanity Fair The New Yorker and Glamour. It is estimated that by 2015 there will be 163 million smartbooks in users hands.

The Associated Press released plans this week to provide a new portable strategy called AP Gateway that will sell news content directly to the smartbook user, in particular Ipad. The content will be a blend of the news cooperatives print and broadcast partners and the AP’s staff journalists.

The Pew study also paints similarities among television and online users. With most online users, 57%, saying they limit their use of news website to just two to five websites. We are getting more portable and social too, with a third of the people using mobile phones to access news and 37% say they contributed, commented or posted news items on social sites, like Facebook and Twitter.

There is no question, news consumers expect multiple platforms, will seek out those that provide them, will connect with the news organizations through social networks and once there become loyal followers and participants in the news process.

Stations and newspapers that still have a limited reach in distribution channels will find themselves falling further behind and those that have chosen to wait for a more clear business model, may not recover. The shift is taking place now, time to get in the game!

And if you’re going to get into the game, how you do it matters a great deal. Read Terry’s piece next to learn about one TV station that’s doing it right for the Web.

Viewers for the NBC Today Show are in for a treat this week. The ability to catch a live, 360 degree, view of the Today Show set at the Olympic Games in Vancouver. By logging into the Today Show website you can control a 360 live view of the set, the guests, the gathered gallery and NBC technical crew.

The technology is one of kind and the brain child of Immersive Media, a Canadian based technology company. The company supplies 360 degree, full motion, interactive videos. Similar to what you see on Google maps, but with live and pre-recorded video.

The Today Show set is equipped with a high resolution , 11 lens camera. Online users can pan and tilt throughout the NBC morning show set. The unprecedented access was available during today’s broadcast and will be back online Thursday morning at 7AM Eastern.

The camera was also used for the red carpet arrival of stars at the recent Grammy Awards. Are there other uses for this emerging technology? Certainly NBC will see substantial increases in traffic to its morning show website.

For local television stations and media companies, there may be opportunities for 360 degree commercials for advertisers, interactive videos of large events and festivals.

According to a company press release, Immersive Media is also making available a high-res 360 online video of the Haiti earthquake devastation for use by local media companies and non-profits for ongoing relief efforts. Powerful images that can help drive home the message. Pretty cool stuff!   <Link>

Don’t look now but SLR cameras are gaining ground in the professional ranks, delivering off the shelf high definition video and stills for online and on-air.

Newspapers are naturally the early adopters, after all they were already using still cameras to capture images for print. New cameras have allowed for an easier transition for print journalists for online video. No longer is there a need to spend $10 to $20 thousand on high end field cameras.

The Canon cameras are getting a lot of buzz. Canon’s EOS 5D ($2499) and the 7D ($1699) can go head to head in quality with their HD broadcast counterparts. See for yourself in this video. The Canon series camera sports an external mic input, for better audio than a typical in camera mic.

Granted there are concerns with the ability to steady a hand held camera , and limited audio quality. Valid points, but now there is a growing list of new accessories for these cameras, making more sense to put them into the field: camera stabilizers, portable LED lighting, and professional quality microphones.

Here are a couple of new shotgun microphones worth looking at that attach to the camera’s hot shoe, giving a multi-media journalist the broadcast audio quality needed in the field.

Sennheiser MKE 400 Compact Video Camera Shotgun Microphone

• $200
• Integrated Shockmount
• All Metal Construction
• Single AAA Battery Powered

Rode VideoMic Directional Shotgun Microphone

• $149
• Broadcast and studio sound quality
• Rugged reinforced ABS construction
• Intergrated shock mount
• 9 V battery operation

Need another reason to strengthen your social media initiative? How about the fact that Google, one of the biggest online players in the world, is now staking it’s claim to the stratospheric number of online users on social networks.

The search engine giant unveiled late yesterday, Google Buzz.Google Buzz will allow Gmail users to social connect, similar to Facebook, which is now 400 million fans strong worldwide and has created an online information and advertising community like no other. Google wants a piece of that pie, along with the advertising dollars that could potentially follow.

Here is a smart move by Google, there is nothing Gmail users have to do to start using Google Buzz, it will just show up on their email page when they log in over the next few days.

More impressive may be the mobile app Google has built in concert with Buzz. Google says smart phone users will be able to see friends around them on a Google map, and share comments, pictures, and videos. In other words, social geo-tracking. Just navigate to buzz.google.com on their phone. For instance – accident on the way home from work – update your social status and your friends see your update along with a map that shows where you sent the update from.

The Google Buzz mobile app is also a way of getting on the Apple Iphone. Something Apple has been trying to limit since the launch of it’s app store.

Granted this is a gift from Google for it’s Gmail users and anyone can sign up for the free mail service.The question is will there be options for media companies to connect to their users and viewers via Google Buzz, similar to Friend and Fan pages on Facebook and MySpace? That is something that is being worked out. Only personal accounts are being fired up at the moment. Something tells me this won’t be the last we hear or see of Buzz.

It does create fierce competition for Twitter, a microblog service that still has fully developed a business plan. Buzz will also give Google and incredible amount of information on location based messaging. You have to believe there is another ad platform in there somewhere, relatively untapped by other mobile companies.

Log in.. sign up.. check it out and let me know what you think. Hope to see your comments here or on our Facebook page at AR&D.

For the multi-media journalist the field is home. Its where the stories live, where the action is. Part of deploying a multi-media journalist plan in your shop must include mobility. The longer a journalist can stay in the field reporting, the more time they have building relevant content for your platforms.

So a key attribute for multi-media journalists is mobile. Anywhere – everywhere and the ability to stay and get the story and send it back, instantly!

In the old days, that could only happen with satellite or ENG trucks, and even more recent with hard line internet connections. Today its all a part of the multi-media journalist arsenal.

Two forces have joined together that has created some effective tools for the field. I’ve written about EyeFi before in our latest book, Live Local Broken News. EyeFi makes a wireless SD chip that can plug into most cameras, and wirelessly transmit files. Previously limited to only Flickr and YouTube, the company is expanding with a brand new device. The EyeFi ProX2 holds 8GB of memory, is a class 6 chip, which means its super fast in capturing standard and HD video and stills.

Here’s the cool part. Pop the chip into any camera that holds an SD card, shoot your pictures and then EyeFi wirelessly sends your images to any predetermined FTP or social media site.

Company CEO Jef Holove told me “while the original chips were made for consumers, we have found a growing contingent of professional journalists and bloggers using EyeFi. In my view .. clearly media organizations are getting smaller and need to move more quickly.”

Holove knows about the downsizing in American media, and sees the EyeFi as another way citizen journalists can supply content to media companies.

“We can leverage ways to level the hurt”, Holove says. “There are plenty of folks that are supplied with cameras that can now send images from the field. There is a necessity for media organizations to leverage the masses for video clips and stills. Media companies quickly need to figure out how we leverage and fact control the information coming in.”

Holove points to CNN’s IReport as a clear indication that the tipping point in user generated content has occurred, and the off the shelf tools like EyeFi is help making it happen.

So here’s the tech stuff. The EyeFi ProX2 runs on the standard 802.11N wireless network, it can also run ad hoc, meaning you can save wirelessly to your computer instead.

It has an endless memory mode, allowing it to delete images as you shoot new ones, and is twice as fast as the original cards. Everything under the hood on this card has been rebuilt. Cost is $149 and can be pre-ordered from the company website.

What? No wireless hotspot available! There is a solution for that too. Enter the wireless mobile hotspot. A little box you can carry in your pocket or car, allowing an instant internet connection. A couple of companies make them Novatel and Sierra Wireless.

Novatel makes the MiFi, which gives you as much as 4G speed, where available, Sprint and Verizon Wireless sell them, along with a $59 monthly fee. Sprint will give you one with a two year contract.

For roughly $200 your multi-media journalist can send you instantaneous images to your website from the field, and transmit video clips while driving to the next breaking story. Do that in a satellite truck.

The speculation for Apple’s newest device has been playing out for months on the web, while the technology giant remained deftly quiet, until today.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs was beside himself at the announcement: “It’s very thin and you can change the background screen and personalize it any way you want. We built in a great address book, have a great maps application with Google built in. What this device does is extraordinary. You can browse the web with it. It’s the best web experience you’ve ever had. It’s way better than a laptop, way better then a phone. You can turn it any way you want. To see the whole page is phenomenal.”

Apple is known for being a game changer, first with with the Itunes store and music, then with the Iphone and mobile applications, now with the iPad.

Electronic readers have been around for years. Apple knew if they just released another e-reader, it would most likely fail or at best fall in line with all of the other e-reader devices. While (the device) is impressive and has the usual Apple allure, look closer and you will see this Apple is less about technology and more about launching a new medium.

Today’s announcement is much bigger. Apple has once again created a platform for content, not just from traditional publishers, but for anyone – yes crowdsourcing. Its a page right out of the Iphone App Store play book. Supply a free platform development kit and stand back and watch hundreds of thousands develop and post.

Apple has a history of taking an industry in decline, like the recording industry, creating a device that re-energizes interest, and make a great deal of money form it. The new iPad is following along those lines.

This same strategy that lead to more than 100,ooo apps for the Iphone and revenue of more than $1 billion dollars. Apple’s take 30%, helping to double Apple’s overall revenue in 2009.

They did it with Itunes too, selling more than 6 billion songs so far, at a time when the recording industry was in a death spiral from declining sales and pirated music.

The publishing industry is looking for a silver bullet that might pull them out of a multi-year slide, but already publishers are making the error of a “if we print it they will come” mentality.

McGraw-Hill’s CEO Terry McGraw told CNBC, “We have worked with Apple for quite a while. And the Tablet is going to be based on the iPhone operating system and so it will be transferable. So what you are going to be able to do now — we have a consortium of e-books. And we have 95% of all our materials that are in e-book format on that one. So now with the tablet you’re going to open up the higher education market, the professional market. The tablet is going to be just really terrific.”

Granted publishers will save in printing costs, but that doesn’t necessarily mean revenue growth.

The iPad now opens the publishing, broadcast, entertainment, and journalism industries open to anyone that has content to offer. Legacy may get a company in the door, but it will be the publications that offer better quality and value that will flourish in this new medium. Did people quit reading books and magazines because they were no longer relevant or because they could read better coverage online? Does a poorly produced newscast suddenly generate new viewers in high definition, or amplify the shortcomings?

The iPad goes on sale immediately and ships in 60-90 days. The device will be available in multiple memory sizes (just like the iPhone), beginning with a 16GB model and on up to 64GB. The pricetag, surprisingly, begins at just $499 for the 16GB version and runs to $699 for the 64GB version. 3G models will cost you $829.

Kindle is in trouble.

Technology is forcing change, and giving consumers choices. Mass media should take notice, “the medium is the message”.

When this email hit my inbox from Livestream I had to give it a second look. The headline, “Livestream Launches Free iPhone Service, Delivers ‘One Click’ Live Streaming to the IPhone”. This one I had to see.

Streaming video to the web has been around for a few years, first an expensive task, but now free with ad support. The process: you run your audio and video through an encoder, send it up to a streaming server and down to all of the web users in the universe.

I’m here to tell you all of that has changed. With as little as an internet connected laptop, a camera and microphone, you can now stream not only online but to the 6.4 million Iphone users out there. See I told you, this was special.

Here’s how it works. Follow the link to the company’s website www.livestream.com/procaster, the new Procaster software greets you to download. Not only for PC, but Mac as well. (Good thing because I recently switched, but that’s another story). A simple sign-up and download, and as advertised, your are streaming. The streaming menu gives you a setup option to stream to Iphone, as well as an embed option to place the streaming content on your website, blog or even social media page.

When you sign up with Livestream your user name also serves as your Livestream channel, available to view on Livestream online network, or with a $350 monthly fee seen only privately and without ads served from Livestream servers.

I think this is pretty significant and here’s why. As we move into the continuous news cycle, serving multiple platforms, we will find that not every story deserves a live truck. And lets face it most stations don’t have enough live trucks and staff to stream multiple locations throughout the day. Until now.

Livestream’s announcement states “Livestream is the first to offer a turn-key streaming service that uses the new H.264 HTTP live streaming functionality included in the native QuickTime player that Apple has pre-installed on the iPhone. This means that Livestream producers do not need to obtain iPhone App Store approval to launch their own iPhone live streaming channel, nor do their viewers need to install any application. Streams are viewed using the iPhone’s Safari browser.

“A key breakthrough is that the service doesn’t require any proprietary player or application to be installed on the iPhone. Producers are free to integrate the iPhone live stream with their own website, iPhone portal or iPhone application using the API provided” explained Livestream CEO and co-founder Max Haot.

With this new development from Livestream, one multimedia journalist can setup and stream any story from the field, online and onto Iphone and Itouch mobile devices instantly.

I checked it out and it works. I used my webcam from my Mac Book Pro, launched Livestream Pro, clicked one button and I was streaming. Then to my Iphone I pulled up the Livestream Iphone website iphone.livestream.com and there it was, the same streaming video that I was seeing on my desktop. Awesome!

I write a little about gadgets. I own my share, and then some. So when I heard the latest news about a world effort to unite phone chargers, I was interested, to say the least. Don’t get me wrong this isn’t about joining all phone charges together to compare amps and ohms and kilocycles. It’s about ONE… One charger, the big cheese, the daddy – Oh! , the Pièce de résistance.

Imagine one charger for all mobile phones on the planet. No more digging through the box at the Marriott Courtyard searching for the cord that, please..please, fits my phone. I know, it’s almost too much to bare.

In the last few days the International Telecommunication Union, or ITU , announced in Copenhagen it backs the idea of a Universal Charging Solution, or UCS to most of us.  One size fits all for all future mobile phones regardless of make or model. The mini-USB is the ITU choice, currently used by most Blackberry, HTC and Motorola phones. One rather larger player in the mobile phone industry is missing in all of this – Apple. But with a worldwide standard on the horizon look for the change.

Not only will the “do I have the right connector” issue disappear, but so will the carbon footprint. According to the ITU, energy efficiency is another advantage.

Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (TSB), Malcolm Johnson said: “This is a significant step in reducing the environmental impact of mobile charging, which also has the benefit of making mobile phone use more straightforward. Universal chargers are a commonsense solution that I look forward to seeing in other areas.”

Standardization of the solution within ITU was completed by Study Group 5 – Environment and Climate Change, and will hasten broad adoption by industry. Based on the Micro-USB interface, UCS chargers will also include a 4-star or higher efficiency rating – up to three times more energy-efficient than an unrated charger.

What does this mean to those in the media world?  Just ask your multimedia journalist.  Reducing the amount of stuff a journalist needs to take into the field  creates efficiency, and helps remove just one more obstacle.

I salute the ITU for its forward thinking, but to be honest before today, I never heard of them.