July 7, 2011
Categories: News you can Use, Technologies . . Author: MyMotorways . Comments: Leave a comment
MySpace Sale Update –
Pop star Justin Timberlake is part of a group that said Wednesday it will buy MySpace from News Corp., a bid to add some cool to a social network that has been losing it for some time. 
Timberlake will become a part owner and play “a major role in developing the creative direction and strategy for the company moving forward,” according to Specific Media, the company that he will partner with.
The deal is for $35 million, mostly in Specific Media stock, according to a person familiar with the matter. The deal values MySpace at a fraction of what News Corp. paid for the site six years ago and paves the way for the layoff of about half of the 500 workers, the person said. As part of the exchange, News Corp. will receive a private equity stake in Specific Media.
MySpace: FOR SALE?
An inside source at MySpace disclosed to news sources that over a third of its staff is to be cut in the coming days. At the same time, MySpace may be sold (there are currently 2 bidders) and News Corp is trying to get this deal done by Thursday (!) to make quarter end. News Corp wants $100 Million (really), but realistically, the bids will be much lower.
Stay tuned…! In other news…
Over 150 members of staff will be shed this week — according to these insider sources — although the timing has yet to be confirmed with a statement from the company, which is so far not saying anything.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise, with nearly half of its staff being let go earlier on this year. 
Though MySpace is not used by the very vast majority of the Generation Y nowadays, the memories of ‘once was’ will resonate through this entire demographic.
It is hard to think of a time without Facebook, but there was. MySpace filled that gap — with flashing animated GIFs as wallpapers and nothing but user generated content; without the need for definitive expression or linear articulation.
News Corporation acquired a sinking ship when it bought it in the first place. But the Generation Y have since said their short goodbyes to the network in favour of more business-oriented and structured sites — particularly Facebook and LinkedIn.
Death of a Threat: Netflix CEO Joins Facebook Board… It Matters (NFLX)
Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX) was under some worries before when Facebook announced that it was going to get into video delivery of selected movies. In a SWOT analysis, the Facebook issue always fell under the O and the T as opportunity and threat alike. This no longer appears to be a threat. Facebook has announced today that Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix will join the Facebook board of directors.
MarketWatch has a full backgrounder on the news here. Facebook is obviously gearing up its team for an upcoming IPO. It is one of our Top 17 IPOs To Watch in 2011.
Why this matters is complex, yet simple enough. There was a thought that it is only natural for Facebook to get into digital distribution of films. The outfit has even announced some limited streaming deals already.
If Facebook wanted to get deep into the video distribution business, it has hundreds of millions accounts already. The movie studios have already shown over and that they are all just about willing to take the arms-dealer business model and deal with anyone who will pay under a contract to deliver movies.
The only real difference is over who gets the new releases first. For Facebook to get into the video delivery business, all it has to do is to buy more bandwidth. Still, partnering with Netflix is a no-cost or low-cost solution that could come with extremely high margins.
Big Blackberry App Producer Bails
Seesmic might have the sweetest Twitter app for Blackberry, but the Blackberry’s appeal isn’t sweet enough. Seesmic is discontinuing support for its Blackberry app on June 30.
Research in Motion, the company that makes the Blackberry, is going through a rough spot right now. But things must be pretty bad if Seesmic bailing. This is Seesmic, folks! They’ll build an app for any platform, evenWindows Phone 7.
The truth is that startups can only support so many mobile platforms. Other mobile developers might be feeling the same pressure to drop Blackberry or never create an app for it in the first place. Seesmic is definitely not alone in its assessment of the platform. Mobile Roadie recently concluded the same thing: the Blackberry is too hard to develop for and engagement is low.
What are Seesmic Blackberry users to do? On its blog, the company encourages “those effected by this change to try out Seesmic for Android, iOS and Windows Phone 7.” In other words, get a new phone.
Taco Bell’s behavioral puzzle – “We haven’t even been able to give away the food, never mind figure out how to sell it online”
Speaking to a group of Northwestern University marketing students, Yum! Brands Chief Public Affairs Officer Jonathan Blum shared the story of recent Taco Bell promotion flop that shows the difficulty the chain has had turning social media into a viable business model. Said Blum: “We haven’t even been able to give away the food, never mind figure out how to sell it online.”
Over the course of a year, the number of friends on Taco Bell’s Facebook page rocketed from 500,000 to 6 million fans. Sounds great. Then, in the middle of an ongoing unflattering lawsuit about the quality of its beef, Taco Bell decided to offer those 6 million fans a free taco — no strings attached. They didn’t need to buy anything. They were already Facebook fans, which means they had already paid the very minor costs of “liking” Taco Bell. It was an offer from a company that Blum says wanted to tell its fans, hey, come and get a free taco.
Two hundred thousand people did. Almost 97 percent on passed on free grub they supposedly “liked.”
Cases like that explain why the bulk of Taco Bell’s marketing budget goes to television (and some radio) ads. Social media remains a small part of the budget because the company hasn’t figured out how, in Blum’s words, to use it to “make the cash register ring.”
Inside Facebook’s Next Billion Dollar Business
Facebook’s road to becoming a $100 billion company is to infect every sector of the internet with its social graph, letting other companies build and expand their business on top of it and taking a toll in exchange for that.
Facebook is now number one in display advertising, which is a $2 billion business for them.
Facebook is the enabler of social games, which is now a multibillion dollar industry, and takes a cut through advertising and credits.
Facebook is staffing up and partnering with Amazon to drive commerce through Facebook.
But the next big endeavor is music, Giga Om says in a report revealing Facebook’s upcoming big social music service.
Here’s how it will look, according to Giga Om: your Facebook homepage will include a Music tab leading to a Music Dashboard where you will be able to listen to music and see what music your friends are listening to.
Facebook will partner with Spotify but also other services to provide the service. There have long been talks of some kind of big partnership between Spotify and Facebook when it launches in the US, but it seems that it’s only a small part of a much broader endeavor to build a huge social music service.
The goal is to do for music what it did for games: use its social graph to help Facebook users discover music and help music startups get users.
At eG8 Forum, Mark Zuckerberg said he thought the next industry to get disrupted by social, after games, would be music, and then movies.
It’s not clear if and how Facebook can make money directly from music. Facebook can take a 30% cut off social games because virtual goods have zero marginal costs. By contrast songs streamed over the internet (at least legally) have high licensing costs; indeed, most internet streaming businesses have unprofitable unit economics. It doesn’t seem likely that internet music startups can afford to pay yet another tollmaster.
However, a music dashboard would get Facebook users to stay on Facebook.com all through the day if that’s where they stream music from, and so they would see a lot more ads.
Also, it’s a nice swipe at Apple if their music service ends up rocking and being really good, given how undewhelming Apple’s own social music service Ping has been. The rivalry between Apple and Facebook is heating up in a big way with Apple integrating Twitter deeply into iOS and Facebook trying to bypass Apple’s app store with an app platform based on HTML5.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-social-music-2011-6#ixzz1PuM8YvF5
Citizen Kane Gets the Digital Treatment
Warner Home video will bring Citizen Kane to Blu-ray, iTunes, On Demand, Vudu and Amazon Instant Video on Sept. 13. Rosebud has never looked so beautiful.
The Hollywood Reporter makes it clear that this is not the average re-release or even digital restoration; Warner Bros. went back to the source to make the high-definition release look as good as possible.
Janet Wilson, an imaging colorist at Warner Bros. said in a statement, “The source for most of the picture was a 4K scan from a 1941 composite fine grain positive master … The work to re-create the original look of the film and to clean up the effects of aging was a painstaking, frame-by-frame process.”
The film consistently tops historical best-of lists compiled by film historians and the American Film Institute named it the number-one film of all time. Directed by Orson Welles (who also co-wrote and starred in it), the film chronicles the life of Charles Foster Kane, a thinly veiled film a clef for William Randolph Hearst.
It’s telling that Warner Bros. is undertaking such an extensive restoration, while also planning on releasing the film across lower-resolution digital services. This is part of a broader strategy employed by Warner Bros. and the other major home video groups to make catalog and new release titles available on as many platforms as possible, while still reserving Blu-ray for pristine presentation and extra features.
Amazon.com is accepting pre-orders for the collector’s edition of Citizen Kane, which will include HBO’s RKO 281, the documentary The Battle Over Citizen Kane, and all the extra features from the 60th anniversary DVD release.
Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Home Video
Facebook IPO scheduled for first Quarter of 2012
Facebook is preparing itself for an IPO that could easily top $100 billion, according to a new report.
At $100 billion, Facebook’s impending IPO would be one of the largest in history, quadrupling Google’s $23 billion IPO in 2004.
CNBC says the social networking giant is likely to go public during the first quarter of 2012, less than nine months from now. That falls in line with a May 2012 deadline when Facebook will be required to publicly report its financial information, regardless of whether it’s a private or public company.
The $100 billion valuation isn’t a surprise — there were reports last month that Facebook’s IPO could easily top $100 billion, thanks to huge consumer and investor appeal. In fact, if LinkedIn’s stellar IPO is any indication, Facebook’s valuation could hit the stratosphere the day it hits the public markets.
Goldman Sachs is in the driver’s seat to underwrite the IPO, thanks to its $450 million investment in Facebookearlier this year. Facebook and Goldman might want to hurry, though: The social network’s growth is apparently slowing down.
New Sony Vita Portable Game Device
The highlight of Sony’s press conference at the annual E3 gaming conference was the release of details on pricing and software support for its upcoming handheld gaming system. Many details about the new Sony handheld’s specs were released when the system was first announced in January under the code name NGP (Next Generation Platform). The system received its official name at E3, the PlayStation Vita, named either for the Latin word for “life” or my favorite brand of pickled herring.
Two versions of the Vita are planned for release before the end of the year, a Wi-Fi only model priced at $249 and a Wi-Fi plus 3G version priced at $299. The proud announcement that 3G service in the U.S. would be provided exclusively by AT&T provoked some chuckles from the assembled audience of journalists, many of whom were probably struggling to get a cellular signal at that very moment on their iPhones. Pricing for the 3G service wasn’t announced.
The PS Vita boasts a 5-inch OLED display that looked handsome during system demos, but the main attraction based on gameplay is clearly the versatility of system control options. The Vita boasts a touchscreen, two analog thumb controllers, a touch-sensitive rear control surface, standard PSP directional control and PlayStation four-button control pad, plus six-access tilt sensitivity. There are two cameras, front and back, allowing augmented reality gaming and potentially video chat, though details on communication features are still unknown.
studio systems group 