If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em: Why Cord-Cutting Has Ceased To Be A Threat

Co--written with Jesse Redniss and originally published at TVREV.com

It’s funny how cord cutting, the industry’s biggest bogeyman can seemingly disappear as a threat overnight. Not because of any sudden victory or clever strategy play by the TV Industrial Complex, but rather, because forces have gradually realigned and what was once unthinkable is quickly becoming the status quo.

And so it’s come to pass that no matter how you want to get your TV—streaming services, apps, YouTube or the Titanium Plus All-Channel Cable Package—all options seemingly lead to the same place: your MVPD broadband provider. It’s an easier and more cost-effective solution for everyone to feed off the same ecosystem than to try and create something new. And while viewers may stray from the classic thousand-channel cable TV package, many won’t stray all that far, and many more won’t necessarily stray forever.

Rather than people permanently severing their connection to the MVPDs, what we’ll see instead is people buying alternative packages from those same MVPDs. (Sort of like how supermarket chains now sell the organic food that was once their greatest competitor.) Instead of abandoning Comcast, Time Warner, et al, consumers will turn to them to buy access to streaming services, to individual network apps and to some form of broadband-only service with a skinny bundle and short form videos.

And they’ll do it because it makes business sense for all parties involved.

What’s In It For Streaming Services and Networks

For streaming services like Netflix and Hulu, it makes sense because when they allow the MVPDs to sell their services, they also get a free sales force, a free billing and collections department, and a whole lot of free marketing support. The latter is particularly true for those streaming services likely to be featured in the MVPD’s various promotions (“Get three free months of Netflix when you sign up!”)

If you’re a network launching an OTT app, it makes sense for you to sell your app through the MVPDs too, because of the billing and collection services you won’t have to build and because you’ll have instant access to the 95 million subscribers they have in their respective databases, which, given that you’re building your audience from scratch, is going to seem like a very good deal. And while you may occasionally cannibalize your existing audience, the new Nielsen TAM service will ensure that the views you get on your OTT service will still be counted.

What’s In It For Viewers

While both streaming services and network streaming apps will also make use of services like iTunes and Roku to sell subscriptions, those services can’t offer a single bill for TV and broadband the way the MVPDs can. While this may not seem like that big a deal, if you’re looking at five or six standalone services, plus broadband, the notion of a single bill can be very compelling.

There’s also the prospect of volume discounts, e.g. sign up for six independent services and get the seventh for free. That’s compelling because the networks are unlikely to offer much of a discount on their freestanding apps— CBS All-Access is $6/month, so if you have eight similar apps, that’s $48/month, plus $10 for Netflix, $15 for HBO Now and suddenly your $73/month bill isn’t that small, especially for what you’re getting. If your MVPD can bring that number down as part of a deal that includes unlimited broadband and a landline or cell phone, that’s going to be a lot more attractive than assembling the package yourself.

What’s In It For MVPDs

The MVPDs also stand to benefit from these arrangements. They make their money off of broadband, and the more broadband subscribers they have, and the more broadband those subscribers use, the happier they are. In addition, getting subscribers into their database, even if it’s just to buy a single HBO Now subscription, gives them the opportunity to upsell those customers, get them into the ecosystem and keep them there. That’s why we’re already seeing many (if not most) of the MVPDs introduce some sort of broadband-only service aimed at Gen Z and Millennials (Comcast Stream, Verizon Go90) that bundles traditional television and short-form YouTube-based content meant for consumption on their mobile devices.

A Journey, Not A Destination

The ability to adapt to consumers at various life stages is going to be the key to the MVPD’s success. So while a single viewer in their 20s would likely only need a few subscriptions, maybe to catch up on sports or to binge, when that same viewer settles down and has kids, they’ll likely take a more extensive package to satisfy all members of the family. Again, this may not be today’s traditional cable bundle, but it will include a broad array of options, and, more importantly, bring all the players revenue that’s in line with what they’re making today, whether that revenue comes from advertising, subscriptions or one-off transactions. As we’ve seen in recent months, ad revenue seems to be remaining constant even as the number of viewers goes down, in large part because no other medium offers the same kind of reach.

The Danger Of A Monopolistic System

Before we paint too rosy a picture, it’s worth pointing out the inherent danger of the system that seems to be shaping up: it’s based on a monopoly (or at best, a duopoly) where one company seemingly holds all the cards. Or at least that last mile cord into the home. That’s never a good thing, especially when those MVPDs have traditionally led the list of “America’s Most Despised Companies.” Giving them that much power is not the best idea, but short of government intervention or technological breakthroughs that provide alternate sources of broadband connectivity, there don’t seem to be any realistic alternatives.

As the MVPDs expand the notion of what constitutes “Pay TV” and which services they’re willing to offer, the notion of “cord cutting” will fall by the wayside. Existing networks and other content providers need to adapt to this by understanding that their viewers are on a lifelong journey through the pay-TV ecosystem, with different needs and wants each step of the way. Acknowledging this, and creating options that connect with viewers at each juncture will be the key to their success in the years ahead.

Or at least until the next major shockwave hits.

VidCon – Ignore It At Your Own Risk

Originally published at TDG Research on July 23, 2015

VidCon is taking place this week in Anaheim. What started out as a convention for teenage fans of YouTube stars has turned into one of the premier events of the entertainment industry, with 21,000 attendees, and sponsors like Kia, Taco Bell, Best Buy, Panasonic, and Canon. Media executives that ignore this conference do so at their own peril.

As VidCon sponsors and attendees are figuring out, interruptive advertising is not the best way to reach Gen Z and Late Millennials. Rather, they are turning to more social-based outreach like #CreatedWith content done in conjunction with Social Video Influencers, such as the stars of YouTube, Vine, and other social video platforms.

But just how popular are these Influencers, and is their reach limited to only a small pocket of young teens enamored with them?

READ THE REST AT TDG RESEARCH

AdBlocker Blockers: Treating The Symptoms, Not The Cause

Originally published at TV[R]EV on June 22. 2015

A hot topic this past week has been the growth of new ad blocker blockers (that’s not a typo—we’re talking about software that blocks ad blockers and stops them from working.) Given the impact of ad blocking software, it’s sure to be a hot topic along the beaches of Cannes this week, particularly among ad tech types.

Ad blockers are big news because the number of people using them is both huge and rapidly growing. As with most things tech-related, there are conflicting stats, but a recent study by Reuters showed that 40% of UK internet users utilize some form of ad-blocking software, while an Adobe/PageFair study conducted in the US, showed that number at 28%, with a 69% year-over-year increase. Even more troubling, 41% of the more tech-savvy 18-29 year old cohort were using ad blockers. So figure the number is somewhere between the two and factor in mobile, where Apple allows adblockers to run on iOS.

The answer, the industry hopes, is in the invention of anti-ad blockers, software that sounds as if it’s stepped right out of Dr. Suess’s Sneetches tale, that prevents the ad blockers from working. Buzz last week was around Sourcepoint, an ad blocker-blocker from ad tech vet Ben Barokas whose Sourcepoint just raised $10 million in Series A funding.

From where we’re sitting, few things could be as counterintuitive as ad blocker blockers. Forcing users to sit through ads they thought they were avoiding doesn’t exactly lead to good will. And how long till a virtual arms race breaks out as the ad blockers come up with ways to bypass the blocker-blockers, who’ll then roll out an update that stymies the blockers, and so on and so on.

The way to stop users from turning to ad blockers, to paraphrase my colleague Jesse Redniss’s recent answer to similar question, is to make ads people don’t want to avoid. And while that sounds like common sense, you’d be surprised at how difficult that is for most brands.

Or maybe you wouldn’t be.

Most of the online advertising we want to avoid is interruptive advertising: we’re online to do something in particular and we just don’t have time to listen to yet another brand’s sales pitch. The more we can avoid that sort of advertising, particularly if it pops up, rolls over or takes over the page, the better life is. Native advertising and branded content, particularly the #CreatedWith variety, are another story. Users will engage with those because (if you remember therules laid out here by Andy Marks last week) they are first and foremost entertainment. Not sales pitches.

So even if the user doesn’t want to engage with these units right away, they don’t want to block them either. This is content they might want to watch, certainly something they are not rejecting out of hand and if it interests them they will engage.

And that is how you eliminate the need for ad blockers. For as our friends in the medical field have learned, it’s far more effective to treat the cause than to treat the symptoms. Something the ad tech community ignores at its own risk.

Newfronts and Upfronts Have One Thing In Common-Data

If there was one common theme from this month’s Upfront and Newfront presentations, it is that the other guys have no idea what they’re doing. That was particularly true when it came to advertising, the raison d’etre of both events.

The MCNs and other online video providers who make up the Newfronts kept hammering home how avidly people watch commercials on their sites, given that they can’t fast forward through them or run to the kitchen for a snack. The networks, on the other hand, spent much of the Upfronts talking about fraud and “viewability,” the implication being that people may not like their 4- minute commercial pods, but at least they’re actually seeing them.

What both sides need to realize is that, by focusing on the other’s negatives, they are only hurting themselves. They’d do much better to point out the things they have in common, as those are far more valuable to advertisers.

READ THE REST AT TDGRESEARCH.COM (free registration required)

Buzzfeed Pounds It Out

Originally published at BRaVe Ventures

Buzzfeed has long been the bane of the traditional media world. The web upstart is, after all, the creator of the dreaded listicle and other slights against Western civilization. But just as Buzzfeed surprised the world (or at least that part of the world that works in media) with a recent spate of well-reported, well-conceived articles, they’re surprising a slightly different segment of that world with their unconventional take on data.

Unlike other web publishers who use data to make sure certain content only appears in front of certain audiences, Buzzfeed uses its data to fine tune its content so that it is sure to attract a specific demographic, who will then take it and share it across the web.

In order to enable this phenomenon, which puts me in mind of using certain species of wildflowers to attract butterflies, Buzzfeed has come up with a proprietary data analysis system called POUND (Process for Optimizing and Understanding Network Diffusion) a name I suspect was at created to annoy the same people who hate listicles.

What Pound does is track the path of Buzzfeed content across the various social media, providing insights as videos are shared on Twitter, texted, posted and otherwise spread across the world. By understanding these relationships (rather than just tracking them in silos on individual platforms) Buzzfeed gets a more complete view of its world and better insights into why and how its audience shares content.

This is a brilliant move in and of itself. But what makes it even more brilliant is that Buzzfeed uses it to enable the Butterfly Effect: by understanding their audiences , they can create articles and videos that will attract those audiences and not have to resort to showing different content to different users.

And that in turn enables serendipity and serendipity is the most important thing that’s missing from our hypertargeted digital world.

Serendipity means that while I may be a monarch butterfly, one day I may decide to watch a video intended for an arrowhead blue. I may wind up loving it and sharing it and learning all about something I would have missed if I’d been only been reading articles that had been targeted to me. That sort of discovery is so incredibly important and if Pound lets Buzzfeed enable it, then I’m more than willing to overlook the name.

Data can be a creativity crippler but it can also be a creativity enabler. It’s all in how we use it, all in how we interpret it. Using data as a tool to enable serendipity, which in turn rewards creativity, is a positive use for data, something we should always be aware of as we rely more and more on statistics to decide what and how we create.

The Pictures Get Even Smaller: Video Stars Take On The Movie Industry

I spent the day at BBTVCON, moderating a panel on 2nd Screen (more about that later) and attending the fascinating opening keynote by Awesomeness TV’s Chief Digital Officer, Kelly Day

We adults hear a lot about YouTube, Vine, Instagram and Snapchat stars, but their appeal is often lost on us. Day gave the audience some excellent reasons why we should rethink that and how companies like Awesomeness are rethinking the entire way movies are made.

The case study Day offered up concerned the movie Expelled, starring Vine star Cameron Dallas, a 20 year old who often appears shirtless in his Vines. Dallas’ fan base, according to Day consists mainly of 14 year old girls who idolize him as if he were the sixth member of One Direction.

Dallas’ numbers are amazing: 7.1 million Vine followers, 5.8 millionInstagram followers, 4.49 million Twitter followers, 3.2 million subscribers to his YouTube channel and 2.1 million Facebook fans.

Last fall, the Awesomeness team set out to make a feature film starring Dallas, directed by YouTube phenom Alex Goyette.

The team operated on a very compressed timeline: the movie was greenlit at the end of August, went into production about 3 weeks later, wrapped in early October, had a trailer out a month later, had its theatrical release on December 11th and was released on VOD and DVD on December 26th.

But here’s where it gets really impressive: just 12 hours after its VOD release, Expelled knocked Guardians of the Galaxy out of the number one spot on iTunes and remained in the top 10 for the next four weeks.

And while Day declined to offer up a production budget (someone asked) it’s clear the movie was made for a whole lot less than your typical Hollywood blockbuster.

Here’s the thing about Vine and YouTube stars: most of them don’t translate well to movies or scripted television. But the industry doesn’t need most of them to. It just needs a small handful of them every year to keep the system humming.

And because these stars come with millions of social media followers, they have a built-in marketing team that can all but ensure the success of their projects: there are few fans as passionate as 14 year old girls. (Though in Dallas’ defense, the Village Voice offered a very positive review of both his acting and Expelled.)

That’s a huge paradigm shift, making second screen platforms into a farm system for Hollywood.

Those platforms all offer a world of data too, everything from who the fans are to where they live, what brands they like, their tastes in music and fashion — literally thousands of data points that can be used to shape everything from marketing tactics to production to storylines.

Meanwhile back on my panel, entitled “The Real Reason You Need To Care About 2nd Screen,” I was joined by Seth Shapiro, Governor of the Interactive Division of the Television Academy, John Roberts, Chief Digital Officer at Bunim-Murray, David Williams, Chief Content and Technology Strategist at Endemol Beyond and Jeff Schultz, VP of Business Development at CBS Interactive.

It was a wide ranging discussion that covered everything from why the initial round of 2nd screen apps didn’t really work (too much work for viewers, not enhancing their enjoyment of the show) to the likelihood that audiences will be watching shows like Lost and Game of Thrones fifty years from now and how that needs to be reflected in the 2nd screen experiences.

Schultz brought up some excellent points about the usefulness of discovery as part of the 2nd screen experience.

CBS owns TVGuide.com and by just looking at which new shows have been added to users Watch Lists (and which haven’t) they are able to project which new shows will succeed and which will be the first to get the axe. That’s an excellent example of how 2nd screen data is proving to be a valuable resource for the industry.

Data was the theme of the rest of the hour-long conversation, how the industry now has a feedback loop and a way to understand what audiences want and how we can use 2nd screen to learn while enhancing viewers’ enjoyment of the show.

Kudos to everyone on the panel — the feedback I’ve been getting has been universally positive and we provided many excellent examples of how 2nd screen is all about the data. Nicely done.

Originally published at www.2ndscreensociety.com on March 5, 2015.

The Ellen Selfie And Other Oscar Dos and Don’ts

Ask someone what they remember about last year’s Oscar broadcast and the one thing they’re likely to spit back at you is the Ellen selfie. Or maybe they call it the Bradley Cooper selfie, or the celebrity selfie. The one thing they won’t be calling it though, is the Samsung selfie.

Which is a shame because it was Samsung who paid for and sponsored the shot.

Samsung is just the latest in a long line of brands who missed their close-ups, who paid to sponsor or promote something and wound up getting zero credit for it.

So how can you prevent this from happening to you?

Let’s look at the Samsung example first, for it contains some excellent lessons. Samsung gave Oscar MC Ellen DeGeneres a Samsung phone to carry with her during the telecast with the understanding she’d use it to take photos and viewers at home would be impressed that a celebrity like Ellen was using a Samsung Galaxy.

Big mistake.

While Samsung executives can no doubt recognize the difference between a Galaxy and an iPhone at 50 paces, the average consumer at home can not. Providing a close-up of the phone wouldn’t have helped much either — viewers would be too busy looking to see what apps Ellen had on her home screen to notice the logo. Chances are good most viewers assumed she was carrying an iPhone anyway. (The fact that she normally does carry an iPhone didn’t help that perception either.)

So what could Samsung have done differently?

This is one case where subtlety is a no-no. They should have had Ellen mention that she was taking photos with a Samsung Galaxy. Or at the very least included #Samsung as a hashtag. That way, what’s arguably the most famous piece of #CreatedWith content would have had some Samsung branding on it.

As we wend our way through this year’s award show season, we’ve already started to get a feel for this season’s winners and losers: Nationwide was a big loser during the Super Bowl after their home safety spot #NationwideDeadKid very quickly turned into the sort of meme brands fear most. Target on the other hand, was a winner for its four-minute Imagine Dragons concert during the Grammys, the first instance of branded content advertising.


Don’t want to be a loser? Here’s some do’s and don’ts on how to approach branded awards-show promotions:

— DO make sure there is some logical tie-in between your product and the event. If not, you’re going to want to create one because the only way people are going to listen to you is if they understand why you’re there. (HINT: “Because everyone else is” is not a good answer.)

— DON’T slap your logo on a promotion that has nothing to do with your brand . People won’t see your logo and they won’t know you’re behind it. And in the unlikely event they do see your logo, they won’t know why it’s up there.

— DO make sure that the promotion is relevant to the people watching the show. A hockey themed promotion may be part of who you are, but unless it’s going to resonate with the Oscar audience, don’t go there.

— DON’T do your own thing. If you’re piggybacking off of a show’s own promotion, don’t do your own (branded) version of it. The show’s version is fun and probably has a popular celebrity attached to it. Yours doesn’t. Guess who wins.

— DO be entertaining. While that sounds super obvious, we’re always amazed how often brands assume their strategic marketing position is so compelling audience will wait with baited breath to hear it. You’re running during an award show about the movies with every star in Hollywood. You’ve got to bring your A game or go home.

— DON’T be inorganic. Nobody likes a GMOP (genetically modified online promotion.) You want to strive to feel like a part of the program, not a bolted on side show.The more organic your promotion feels, the more likely it is to resonate with fans.

Originally published at brief.promaxbda.org on February 20, 2015

The Real Winner In Tonight's Golden Globes Awards

While broadcast television and commercial cable took a hit at the Golden Globes last night, the success of shows like Transparent and House of Cards should not be seen as a sign of their impending doom: far more people watch the shows on network TV than on any of the cable or streaming services.

What the win tonight signified was the solidification (for now) of subscription cable and streaming services as a home for the sort of high quality programming that wouldn’t be able to make it on broadcast TV, shows that are never going to be mass market phenomena, but which hit a segment of the market whose influence as tastemakers provides a reason to stick with them. 

That’s a huge win in terms of getting to watch quality television without having to rely on British imports: we've never had that sort of a home base in the US before. It also opens up opportunities for many more actors, writers and producers who’d been frozen out by the reality TV wave.

Broadcast TV pays actors and writers ca lot more than cable and streaming because it has a much larger audience than those platforms do. And it’s always going to have an audience, the same way James Patterson novels have an audience: more people read Patterson’s books than whatever’s won the National Book Award, but the National Book Award winner is likely to have far more influence on both the chattering classes and the next generation of novelists. Ditto quality TV shows versus standard issue sitcoms.

Which is awesome, because the way I see it, that lets everyone win.

Beyond The Bubble

This article first appeared in Visions, a newsletter put out by our partner Civolution

There’s an apocryphal story of how the late playwright Arthur Miller, upon hearing that Richard Nixon had won the 1972 election, expressed incredulity given that “no one I know voted for him.”

That attitude persists today inside the media and tech bubble where all too often we look at the behavior of our friends who also reside inside that bubble and decide that it’s reflective of the world at large. Unfortunately, that’s just not true and can lead to some very bad decisions. But put that behavior into the right context, and it can lead to some very prescient ones.

Inside the bubble, we take it for granted that no one actually watches linear (live) TV apart from the occasional sporting event. But the reality is that over 80% of the TV watched in the US is watched live. We don’t watch commercials, so we assume no one else does either. But TV ad revenue is actually up. It’s an article of faith that “kids” all watch TV on their iPads. But most kids, even in Europe and the US, don’t have iPads or tablets to begin with, let alone use them for watching television. Many of our friends seem to be abandoning pay TV and cutting the cord in favor of a combination of Netflix and other streaming services. But there’s scant statistical evidence that this is happening on any significant basis, and a recent Nielsen study showed that Netflix actually indexes considerably higher with high income families who maintain their top tier pay TV service.

So then here’s the catch: none of these things are true today. But they will be. Maybe not in 2013 or 2014 and maybe not all of them. But that train’s already left the station, and the trends that are happening inside the bubble now, have a very good chance of happening outside of it quite soon.

Our challenge, as an industry, is to figure out how to harness those trends and make them work to our advantage. Television is as mass a medium as it gets. While smartphones and computers can feign at attracting the young and tech-savvy, we’ve got to appeal to everyone, to grandma and grandpa, to people who don’t know an OS from an OTT. And we’ve got to do that without alienating the people on the cutting edge.

The best tool at our disposal for accomplishing this task is listening. Listening doesn’t have to mean extensive research and long costly studies. It can be as basic as taking people outside the bubble into account, thinking about what they’d want to see, whether their living rooms also contain multiple iPads, let alone multiple TVs. It’s easy to assume we know what the consumer wants because we are consumers too and why wouldn’t everyone want the same things we do? That’s fatal though and it’s a problem that’s plagued the tech industry from day one, along with its cousin, “we should build it because we can.”

Television is changing, and like most changes, it will happen slowly and then all at once. Success involves staying ahead of the change, but not too far ahead that you’re waiting for everyone else to catch up. Listen to your friends and co-workers, but listen to the people outside the bubble as well. They’re the ones who are going to make or break you. Not us.

The Not So Secret Life of the American Teenager

There’s been so much written lately about teenagers in the age of social media, so much of it patently ridiculous (e.g. I talked to my sister and her friends and thus extrapolated what all teenagers were up to) and/or posited by people who haven’t actually seen a teenager since they themselves were one, that I felt a tirade was in order. So here goes:

What’s the one constant about teenagers, of any generation, beyond the whole horniness thing? The fact that so many teens are constantly trying on new personalities and new identities just to see what it feels like or to see what fits. And so what apps they are into varies wildly from day to day, from school to school, from clique to clique and (especially) from girls to boys.

Facebook is the one constant. They may tell you they don’t really like it, don’t like seeing the dumb things people post on it, but reality check: so do most adults. And like teens, we may gripe about it, but we still use it.

Why? Because it’s its own self-contained theme park. You can chat, you can play games, you can look at pictures, listen to music, stalk old friends-- there’s a whole world of things you can do on Facebook depending on your mood. And everyone you know is on there, from Grandma to the kid you sat next to in kindergarten, so it’s got the same repellers and attractors as home. Especially if you’re 15 and undecided whether it’s comforting or mortifying that your mom “liked” your picture from soccer practice.

Apps are like teenage fashion choices. One day you’re wearing Ugg boots because they’re cool and trendy, the next day you decide they’re stupid and pretentious and want nothing to do with them. Substitute Pinterest or Twitter or Snapchat and you get the picture. And that shouldn’t be the least bit surprising: teenagers are like that, they’re capricious about pretty much everything from friends to music to the mood they’re in when they get home. And they have been like that since we invented them back in the 1950s.

So let’s stop trying to define them and assigning them a specific taste in apps. Vine is hot this month because comedians are making funny videos/hipsters are making cool artsy videos/someone was playing with it in study hall and everyone started watching/my older brother and his friends said it was cool.

Next month it’ll be something else.

Which is not to say that every teenager is doomed to spend their middle school and high school years in a permanent state of app flux. Sometimes it feels right and so you stick with it. But what that “it” is varies so widely, it’s foolish to try and define. The one thing we do know is that the next Facebook isn’t here yet. Facebook still feels like “home” and with the possible exception of Instagram and Snapchat, all the other apps are about interacting with others or about being entertained. None of them are the new Facebook, either singly or in combination.

The new Facebook won’t be here for a while: sea changes like that don’t come about very often. But when it does, don’t worry about trying to identify it: like the Supreme Court said about pornography, you’ll know it when you see it.

Heresies

Every so often it's a good exercise to examine some of the core beliefs of a company or industry and call out the ones that don't make any sense. In the short run, saying out loud what a lot of people have been thinking pisses off  those who are heavily invested in these now outmoded ideas, but in the long run, it's healthier for all involved to recalibrate.

TV Everywhere Wasn’t Worth The Battle. It sounded like a great idea at the time: you can take your television with you anywhere you go and watch it on your tablet or smartphone. The reality, however, shows a very limited number of use cases beyond sports and live events.

Because seriously, when are you going to have a half hour to an hour to watch live TV outside the house in a place where you have a decent 4G or WiFi connection?

It’s not like you’re going to leave your bedroom or living room to go down to Starbucks to spend an hour watching Game of Thrones. Sitting in the park may sound appealing, but anyone who’s ever tried to use an iPad outdoors knows it’s not a pleasant experience. Hotel rooms? Maybe, if you want to watch something off your DVR, but for most people, travel is a once or twice yearly event.

Commuting is the one use case that makes sense, but here again: (a) what percentage of Americans commute 30 minutes or more each way via public transportation, and (b) moving from cell tower to cell tower does not create an optimal condition for video reception. So even if you solve for B, A still makes it a niche product.

TV Everywhere does make sense inside the house for personal viewing: using the iPad as the bedroom or kitchen TV. But that’s it and it certainly doesn’t seem worth the amount of money the networks and the MVPDs have spent in legal battles over it.


Cord Plussers Are More Common Than Cord Cutters/Nevers: A Nielsen study that came out this week confirmed something I’d suspected all along: Netflix and other OTT subscription video on demand (SVOD) services are far more popular with upper income households who use them as an add-on to their existing Titanium Level pay TV packages. Let’s call this group “Cord Plussers” as they’re looking for options beyond what their cable package offers and for $8/month each, they think it’s a steal to add on Netflix and Hulu Plus.

Never mind that the success of Netflix and Hulu is a huge fumble by the MVPDs, many of whom maintain extensive VOD libraries that could compete with Netflix and who should be enabling the kind of 7 day catch-up TV you find in Europe, but who have outsourced that function (and then some) to Hulu, Amazon and Netflix-- the price of these additional services and the value add they bring is enough for people to add them without feeling the need to drop their existing pay TV service.

As for cord nevers, we’ve been through this already, but to reiterate, it’s not that surprising that certain busy, single, tech savvy 20somethings don’t feel the need for a cable subscription: at some point, as they grow older and settle down, they probably will. That, and study after study fails to find any evidence of cord cutting outside of the anecdotal evidence offered by tech bloggers.

Another recent study showed that 18-24 year olds watch an average of 5 hours of TV online each week. What's important to note is that’s not 5 hours they chose to watch TV on their laptops instead of a big screen TV, but 5 hours they carved out to watch TV online in the absence of an actual television set. People really do like watching TV.


Twitter Is Not The Future of Second Screen. This is another seemingly obvious one: most people are not on Twitter, so why do we expect Twitter to become the dominant medium for second screen?

If you’re Fox, and (to use an extremely generous figure*) 30% of your American Idol audience is on Twitter, but 100% of that same audience can take part in a second screen poll, which one are you going to go for?

It’s a win for Fox if the 30% who are on Twitter start tweeting about the poll, but it’s crucial to remember that they are just talking to each other: the 70% who are not on Twitter will never see what they're saying.

Here's the problem: Right now, Twitter has a much larger install base than any second screen app. It's also free to implement, since the only real cost is whatever "tweet about our show" promotion the network decides to run. So in Spring 2013, the numbers work in its favor.  But that won't last for long: as second screen becomes more ubiquitous, the percentage of people using Twitter will be dwarfed by the number using second screen. If MVPDs and/or TV manufacturers go ahead and make second screen the primary program guide and remote control option, you're looking at close to a 100% adoption rate.


Second Screen Engagement Will Never Replace Marketing.  Like it’s cousin, social media, second screen TV is really good at two things: (a) making hard core fans even more hardcore by giving them an outlet for their obsession and (b) moving casual fans up a notch by fleshing out the experience.

This does not mean every hardcore fan and every casual fan: it means just a few of them.

Because really, how many shows can you be a hardcore fan of? 3? 6? In any season, there are only a handful of shows people can fully devote their energy to. Second Screen interaction can help make sure a show remains one of those handful, but that’s it: it can’t create interest where previously there was none.


Aereo Is Not Worth Worrying About. While the networks are all up in arms about Aereo, it's worth thinking about why someone would want it: while Aereo plus Netflix may be a way to replace cable for $20/month, the resulting experience is not all that desirable. Aereo has a less than ideal UI (see my review on VideoNuze) and, like Netflix, you don't get the "always on" option - you've got to make a choice every time you use it and as this piece from Nilay Patel at The Verge points out, that creates an experience that's very different than just turning on the TV and flipping the channels.

That, and the notion that Aereo plus Netflix is a perfectly good replacement for a full cable package is debatable. Lots of people still want their MTV. And ESPN and Disney and Nick and Comedy Central. So the question remains - is it worth it?

UI and content issues aside, all Aereo offers is a very basic cable package for $8/month. There's no reason the MVPDs couldn't replicate this (and then some - throw in some cable only channels) at the same price point and drive Aereo out of business. So it's all sounding like much ado about nothing. Or much ado about retrans fees, which winds up being about nothing.


TV is the one medium that has not yet been disrupted by the digital revolution... yet. That's why it's so fascinating to watch the various pieces as the industry slowly changes and important to keep track of what's a wish and what's reality.

 *Extremely generous. According to a recent Pew report, only 14% of Millennials use Twitter. And that’s use Twitter period, not "use Twitter regularly to chat about the TV show they're currently watching."

7 Things You Need To Know About Second Screen Interactions

Originally delivered in London at Screen Digests's Future of Digital Media event, this is my latest salvo in the crusade to introduce common sense to the discussion around second screen.

7 Things You Should Know About 2nd Screen Interaction from Alan Wolk

Breaking Through

As anyone who has ever turned on a television lately can attest, the main pain point in the viewing experience is navigating the increasingly Kafka-esque series of screens that pop up to prevent you from finding whatever it is you are looking for.

So it’s baffling that so many in the adtech industry seem to think that the amorphous entity known as “social TV” is the savior we’ve all been waiting for, the One True Path to improving the viewing experience. (To their credit, those actually in the TV industry seem less easily duped.)

As a founding member of the 2nd Screen Society who spends most of his days studying the industry and applying that knowledge to (shameless plug) KIT’s award-winning Social Program Guide product, here’s my somewhat educated take on what’s going on right now.

Discovery Is The Key Use Case For Any “Social” Data:  Let’s start with the fairly safe assumption that the average TV viewer’s initial concern is finding something to watch. That means the typical “social” scenario is going to go something like this: "Oh look, 10 of my friends are watching Revolution, I guess I'll watch too."

And for most viewers, that is going to be the only reason they care what their social graph is up to.

So What Viewers Need Is An App That Lets Them Change The Channel: This is the alpha and the omega of any TV-related app. Because putting down the iPad, searching for the remote, and then rechecking the iPad to see what channel number you want to go to is just not a viable option.

“Social Data” Is A Pretty Fungible Term: As our friends at Zeebox figured out, the data you get from your social graph often isn’t deep enough to make a decision. That’s when you want to see things like what most people in your zip code or age demographic are watching, along with some input from critics to help you make your decision.

Our Social Graphs Are Random And Rarely Consist Of People Whose Opinions We Care About: The average viewer only has a handful of friends whose opinions they care about period, let alone whose opinions on TV shows they trust. And it is just way too much hassle to go through 100+ friends and start ranking them. That's why knowing what your neighbors or age cohort or even fellow football fans are watching will often the most useful data point in deciding what to watch.

Twitter Is An Odd Duck: Twitter, the usual source for “social media data” has an unusual audience that rarely reflects the demographics of the show (or anything, for that matter.) In the real world, the one where everyone's Grandma is on Facebook, nobody's Grandma is on Twitter. And unlike Facebook, Twitter's got a whole lot of hardcore haters, people who actively dislike the platform and all it stands for. It's a highly inaccurate gauge of just about anything, though the ease with which its API is accessed makes it an easy cheat.

Facebook Is A More Accurate Gauge:  Unfortunately, it’s rarely used for any sort of real-time interaction: Facebook chats are private and the nature of the platform makes its public postings more about check-ins and reviews than about real-time commentary.

Timeshifting Kills Chatter: The more we watch shows on our own schedule, the less likely it is that anyone we know is watching at the same time. The KIT Social Program Guide app has the ability to capture your friends tweets/posts/comments and display them in real time as you watch, but my suspicion is that outside of sporting and other special events, that functionality will be of limited appeal. And as discussed at length in this piece from 2011, social activity is highly dependent on the type of content being watched and rarely reflects all segments of a show’s fan base.

It’s The Data, Not the Chatter: Social chatter, regardless of the platform, is of little use to anyone. The real value is in the data that MVPDs will be able to collect from users who will have individual second screen accounts. That allows for a scenario where the entire family is watching the same show on the big screen while having individual experiences - uniquely tailored content and advertising - on the second screen. The data around who is watching what (and when) will provide better experiences for everyone from broadcasters to advertisers to viewers. It’s just a matter of who is going to take the lead in implementing a system that allows for those experiences.

Timeshifting Makes User Input More Important: When the answer to "what's on now?" becomes "everything," the most useful interface is one that helps us make decisions. This means bringing the user into the equation.

Current Discovery Models Call To Mind TiVo, Circa 2001. Remember the early days of TiVo when that service used predictive technology to proactively record shows it thought the viewer might want to watch?  It was hardly ever right and caused more amusement than anything. Yet we have not really progressed. Just last week I was reading about DirectTV's new Genie DVR whose main selling point seems to be that it will record shows for you based on what it thought you might want to watch.

Just Ask: Forgetting to involve the viewer is the fatal flaw for most all these solutions. Because no app can correctly guess what you are feeling at a particular moment based on your prior behavior. Imagine, if you will, an app that chooses your dinner for you based on your prior eating behavior and what your Facebook friends had recently eaten as well. The app would have no way of knowing what you were in the mood for on any particular night. But say it asked you for some input, like what kind of food you were in the mood for. If you said “Italian” it could spit back a half dozen viable options and even help you narrow that list down further.

Predictive Technology Without User Input Becomes Just Another Parlor Trick: Get it right and it seems like a lucky guess. Get it wrong, and clearly the app doesn’t work. But bring the user into the equation and they take part of the credit. Or the blame. It’s why magicians like to involve audience members.

It’s All About The Interface: A second screen app is going to have to primarily function as a program guide for the MVPD that releases it. (Independent second screen apps are a tough sell if what you mostly want to do is change the channel.) That interface is where the challenge is. Right now we have a system that was designed for 6 channels pressed into use for 600. We also have an industry in stasis, where no one is moving because no one has to: everyone else is all about preserving the status quo, so why take a risk and rock the boat.

The Dinosaurs Meteor Shower: Remember how the iPhone shook up the cell phone industry? That was another industry where innovation was possible but never pursued because no one could see a valid business reason for innovating. Then the iPhone came along and changed everything and everyone else was left playing catch-up. (They still are.) The same thing is going to happen in the TV industry.  Someone (and it might well be Apple) is going to come in and shake up the way we interact with our TVs, which will shake up everyone in the industry, the MVPDs in particular, and all of a sudden innovation will matter again.

Will you be ready for it?

Dear Zuck: 5 Ways To Fix Facebook (And Get Your Stock Back Up)

Dear Zuck:

It breaks my heart to see your stock tanking because investors aren’t seeing eye-to-eye on the monetization thing. Especially since, from where I’m sitting, it doesn’t seem that hard. So here’s what you do to get your stock back on track again:

1. Forget about display ads. You’re never going to fix them. Apocryphal story: The other day, I overheard my eighth-grader and his friends talking about how you should never click on Facebook ads “because they’re just spam and they might break your computer.” Clearly not accurate, but here’s the thing: most of your users share that sentiment. All those years of ads for hair replacement services, Christian singles organizations and party clowns trained us to see that space as the Facebook equivalent of junk. So when you throw a Pepsi ad in there along with the miracle diets, most of us assume it’s not a real Pepsi ad and assume it’s a come-on for free Canadian Viagra, computer viruses or worse. 
2. Stop giving away the brand pages. At the same time you were delegitimizing your display ads, you were creating a whole ecosystem around your brand pages... and giving it away for free. What’s more, you’ve trained users to believe that brand pages are the only way big brands interact on Facebook. The success of all those contests and promotions bears that out. And yet you are giving this away for free. Make them pay for it Zuck. And while you’re at it, share some of the data you collect or even just give them rights to the 500K pictures users put up during a promotion. And make them pay for that too. I know you worry about user experience and all, but seriously Marc, I doubt most of those five hundred thousand people even realize that you own the pictures they’ve posted, not the brand. 
3. Get rid of the timeline from brand pages. Timeline is a great idea. Sam Lessin is a really smart guy. But the old tabs and unique homescreen format is something you can sell to brands. Every brand manager and agency I've spoken to is freaked out by timeline and they all agree it's greatly reduced the usefulness of their Facebook presence. Beyond that, consumers don’t expect brands to have timelines: they are not our friends. Ergo, friends have timelines, brands don’t. If you want to make money off brand pages, you’ve got to make them brand friendly. 
4. Stop trying to protect us from ourselves. I get that you don’t want the news feed turning into a advertising channel. But your users are smart enough to know how to block brands whose messaging has become annoying. Most of the brand messaging in my newsfeed is harmless and of the stuff I let through, a lot of it is actually useful. Put your trust in the free marketplace of ideas theory and let us eliminate the noise ourselves. (Because one person’s noise is another person’s “like”) 
5. Innovate: Once you’ve committed to brand pages, stop treating them like the crazy uncle in the basement and make them more useful. Here’s a freebie that should be pretty simple to implement: you know how I can select how frequently I hear from a person? Give me the same options for brands, only use language that make sense for those interactions, e.g. “all updates/contests and promotions only/product news only.” That’s the sort of option that works for all three parties: you, us and them. You’ve got a whole lot of smart people working for you, I’m sure they’ll come up with lots more of these. 

So take this for what it is: the semi-informed ramblings of someone who has no idea what’re really driving your decisions beyond what he reads in the trade press. If you like what you read though, you can always friend me and we’ll take it from there.

Why #NBCFail is #Doomed

This ran on Digiday last week and stirred up more than a bit of controversy. 

It sure sucks to be NBC this week. The Peacock Network is at the center of yet another Twitter-centric firestorm around a relatively minor First World Problem that’s got the cable-free utopians in yet another uproar.

Granted, not showing the opening ceremony in real time online or on Bravo was a bit of a miscalculation. But it’s certainly not the disaster of apocalyptic proportion the Occupy TV types are making it out to be. It was a business decision. And while I get that no one else you graduated with from Vassar has cable, between 80 percent to 90 percent of Americans do, so NBC really isn’t all that worried about the 2 to 5 percent that don’t. No matter how much you tweet about it.

They (and the rest of the TV industry) actually do get that change is coming. It’s just that right now, it’s not profitable for them to radically overhaul their business models to reflect that change. Which brings up another thing the #HowMuchWouldYouPayForHBO and #NBCFail crowds seem to be blissfully oblivious of, which is how the TV business actually works.

So lets start with one of Occupy TV’s big pain points: NBC had the temerity to require users to authenticate with a valid cable subscription in order to watch the live stream of the Olympics online. But in England, the BBC was giving it away for free! You know what else the Brits can do? Go to a doctor and have the government pay for it. They’ve got socialized medicine and socialized television. The BBC is run by the government*. It’s like PBS with a sense of humor and a Democratic Congress in power.

NBC has shareholders, profits and the knowledge that most people in the U.S. circa 2012 have cable subscriptions. NBC also needs to sell the entire NBC line-up to the various MVPDs (Multichannel Video Platform Distributors, i.e., what we call cable companies nowadays so the telcos and satellite providers feel included). That’s a big part of their income. The MVPDs know the networks are trying to get the most money out of them while making them take every channel they offer, so they are looking for any chance to push back at NBC for that. The MVPDs also know that Internet viewing is cutting into their audience, so they want NBC to make viewers authenticate, because then being a Time-Warner subscriber has added value.

The other thing you need to watch video online is an Internet connection. But guess who owns all the best Internet connections? Your MVPDs. They also own most of the Internet connections, thanks to the double- and triple-play packages they sell. So right off the bat, they can make it expensive for you to cut the cord by charging you more for an Internet connection than for an Internet + TV connection.

And if that doesn’t work, there’s plan B: bandwidth caps. That can make it very expensive to watch TV online, especially if you are a heavy user. Then again, cutting the cord really isn’t that much of a cost-cutting measure. It’s a political/ethical statement about how much you don’t like the current state of pay television. It’s also why analyst Rich Greenfield is spot on when he says that the first successful virtual MVPD is going to be a premium experience, where viewers pay more for a
beautiful, intuitive interface, true “TV Everywhere” functionality and a host of other features the MVPDs have been too slow in developing.

This will be what shocks the MVPDs into action and gets them to make much-needed changes — not the adolescent whining of Occupy TVers who’ve recently suffered the double indignities of not being able to watch either “Game of Thrones” or the Olympics in real time because they don’t have cable subscriptions.

And those Sudanese refugees thought they had it rough.

UPDATE: NBC released a whole bunch of stats to the Wall Street Journal. Seems they are having the best Olympics ever, with record-setting ratings and may actually wind up making money, rather than losing millions as was reported originally.

*Okay, it's technically funded by licensing fees, but the government has oversight on the network, which does not have to answer to shareholders the way NBC does.

Why We Won't Have A Virtual MSO in 2012

There’s been a lot of noise this week around an article (registration required) by noted analyst Rich Greenfield claiming that 2012 will see the launch of an internet-based MSO (multi-system operator, e.g. a large pay TV provider like Comcast or Time-Warner.)

It’s an interesting argument, one that all but guarantees a lot of buzz since so many would like to see it happen, but I’m just not seeing it.

Greenfield’s argument is that virtual MSOs will be considerably cheaper and more user friendly:

 (V)irtual MSO pricing to the consumer will be substantially lower, subscribers will receive a significantly better user-interface/navigation across a wide-array of IP-enabled devices in the home and service will be accessible anywhere in the US, rather than being stuck in a certain region.

I’ll buy the user interface argument… maybe-- existing pay TV operators are putting a lot of time and effort into improving that experience precisely because they know it’s an area they are weak on. 

But price? That’s where I have trouble with his logic.

You see most people in the U.S. have their broadband and television service from the same provider (looking at Comcast’s subscriber figures, it seems that somewhere around 70% of its TV customers also get their internet from Comcast.) The advantage to this is that the providers discount the cost if you choose both services, with an even deeper discount if you get phone service thrown in (the “Triple Play” deal.)

So for Greenfield’s virtual MSO to work, I’d have to drop the TV part of my bundle, which automatically raises my monthly cost for my newly unbundled internet. At which point I am at the mercy of my internet provider, who, in the face of heavy amounts of streaming by TV viewers, will likely institute bandwidth usage caps and charge me every time I go over my limit. Which, if I’m a fairly heavy TV viewer, or part of a family, is a likely option. (Pay TV operators like Time Warner and Verizon are not going to give up the money they make on TV subscriptions without figuring out a way to get it back on internet fees.)

So there go all my savings.

 In return, I may get a nicer interface, but I lose out on picture quality and on the number of channels I’m getting – the virtual MSO is likely to start out with a very scaled-down package and may not get ESPN or other sports networks to sign up. (Live sports being a common reason people have for not giving up their pay TV subscriptions.) In addition, I have a new stressor each month: am I going over my allotted bandwidth amount

If you're a single person who doesn't watch a lot of TV, this new set-up will be perfect for you and may indeed allow you to send a message to Big Cable.. But for a family, where each member has a completely different set of channels they watch, sending that message is going to prove to costly and inconvenient.

There's also the technophobe factor: for a lot of people installing something like a Roku box and having that be the sole source of a TV signal is a serious source of anxiety. Having an actual "cable guy" come in, install the set top box, explain how the remote works and how to program the DVR is a real source of comfort to many and one of the existing pay TV provider's big advantages.

What we are likely to see is a scaled-down, internet-only subscription service from one (if not all) the major pay TV providers, a service that is heavy on the VOD content and is delivered via Xbox, PS3, Roku, Boxee and similar devices.

It will basically serve as an option for cord-cutters who don’t want to totally abandon live TV while allowing pay TV operators to sell their newly expanded VOD offerings to people outside their current geographic zone. And maybe take a bite out of Netflix while they're at it.

Verizon has already started down this path: anyone with a valid credit card can buy or rent their FlexView movies via Xbox or via their iPad app. So it's only a matter of time before everyone else gets on board.

These new services may well prove popular with consumers who don’t watch a whole lot of broadcast television but still want to be able to see the local news. They’ll compete with Netflix and Amazon and other movie providers (or they may be Netflix or Amazon) rather than Comcast and DirectTV– either way though, calling them “virtual MSOs” is quite a stretch.

Though it does make for good headlines.

The Value of a Check-In

The other day I went into Modell's, a local sporting goods chain, and saved myself $10 because I'd checked-in on FourSquare.

It's a great deal (you save $10 on any purchase over $40) that I've already taken advantage of several times. And while I don't mind letting people know I'm at Modell's, I would never have bothered to check-in without the discount.

Because even if I was hyper-competitive about the gaming aspects of FourSquare, I'm never going to be mayor of a store I visit about four or five times a year.

So what's in it for me? Ten bucks.

I got to wondering at what price point I would have decided that checking-in wasn't worth the hassle. (And it's still a hassle: GPS isn't all that fine-tuned in places like New York, where any given block may have 30 different places to check-in, and it's a crap shoot whether the place you're at shows up at the top of the list.)

So what's my limit? One dollar - probably not worth it. Five? Maybe.

And that's a question every business and broadcaster needs to be asking themselves: what's your customer's breaking point?

I say broadcaster because checking-in to TV shows has become the meme-du-jour. And right now other than cute little badges, there's usually not a whole lot in it for the viewer. (This deal between a local Atlanta TV station and GetGlue, being a good example thereof.)

Broadcasters can't really issue their own coupons, but there's nothing to stop them from setting up a deal with a sponsor: check-in to The Office on NBC and unlock a $2 coupon from McDonald's. Details can even be appended to McDonald's on-air TV commercial, and the user's social network friends can see that they checked into The Office and got a $2 coupon courtesy of McDonald's.

Another option, something that can happen on the second screen, is to use the check-in to unlock exclusive content: outtakes, interviews, previews. That's a tougher sell than a two-dollar coupon, as it will only appeal to the show's most ardent fans. But there are times you want to reward your most ardent fans.

Contests and promotions are another option: check-in to our show and you're entered into a contest to win a Hawaiian vacation. The more you check-in, the more chances you have to win. Tried and true and not overly inspired, but it works. People like entering contests.

Those are a few ways broadcasters can help the audience make the leap from physical check-ins to media-based check-ins, especially once the novelty wear off.

It's all about remembering to answer "what's in it for me?"

I Have Seen The Future And It Is Called BetterFacebook

BetterFacebook is an extension for Chrome and Safari that does a number of things, most notably add the Circle functionality of GooglePlus to Facebook.

So every post, photo, link, etc., comes with the easily accessible choice of which Friend Lists to publish it to.

Now granted it is a bit of a hassle to go back through your contacts and assign them all to different lists, but my immediate impression was surprise at how many more circles I had on Facebook. Which isn't all that surprising: the only people on G+ now are people I know through work, so the circles I've created basically rely on how well I know them.

With Facebook, I've got a much broader range of circles since my "friend" list on there includes family members, childhood, college and neighborhood friends, etc.

Having set this up, it's easy to see the huge functionality gains inherent in being able to address distinct groups. For instance, this morning New Jersey Transit was having another of its frequent delays. I could have sent out a check-in from the station to my "local friends" circle - people who would actually be interested in knowing the trains were running behind schedule.

It's easy to see two things happening as a result:

1. I rely less on specialized platforms - if I can target all my activity to the people who might care about that information, I have less need for specialized check in services around things like food, television, etc.  I also wind up posting more, since I don't have to wrestle with those "does everyone on Facebook really need to know this?" thoughts. (Clearly there are many people who don't wrestle with these thoughts, but I suspect they are often victims of the "Hide" button.)

2. Brands gain the ability to really "slice and dice" their messaging by putting their fans into groups based on previous behavior, location and/or opt-in preferences. This makes their messaging feel a lot less generic and a lot less like spam. (For the most part... let's be real: lots of lazy brands will still spam their fans)

These behaviors may happen on Google Plus or on Facebook or both. But check out BetterFacebook if you want to see what the future could look like.

You can always uninstall it.

Repeating the Mistakes of the Past

> A Few Reflections on Month One of GooglePlus:

• It took Facebook years to even become a blip on MySpace's radar, but too many already seem to want instant results- from G+, as if 100 million people should have already dropped one for the other.

• The exclusivity behind the initial launch was genius, especially for the tech/media crowd it was aimed at. Not only did it factor in connectedness, but also gave them a new hip club to hang at, now that the whole B&T crowd had overtaken Facebook and high school buddies didn't care about the latest release from Zynga

•Like Twitter circa 2007, it's easy to forget there are people on who do have lives outside of work. Hence, every time I see a kid or pet photo or restaurant tip on G+, they seemed to go unnoticed, while a new Chrome extension... Wow

•Speaking of Chrome, if you weren't using it before, you probably are now. Big winner from the G+ buzz

•The twittererti don't seem to get why they're still having the same issues now that they've become Pluserati, e.g., the inability to have conversations, the inability to manage their streams, the inability to take a 15 minute break between public posts, etc.

•They are still trying to sound surprised they have so many followers, with classic posts asking people why they were following them, as if the fans were a rowdy bunch of paparazzi who kept trying to photograph them while they were eating lunch.

• Its fascinating to watch the platform develop as users settle in. Sort of like a prairie town or new suburban subdivision (The Willows at GooglePlus), they're developing their own unwritten laws about use, etiquette, and interactions. (And when the non-tech/media crowds come on, those rules will change once again.)

•Google seems to be listening, or at least they say they are, which is worlds away from the paternalistic tone of the other platform.

• The spammers found their way on pretty quickly and it seems there are already sites promising to add thousands of people to your circles everyday!! along with Em-El-Em schemes to make you rich QUICK!

• And once all that happens, make way for Justin Bieber...

You can view/comment on the original version of this at Google+