Today's Top Stories Twitter wants to be more than a platform for 140-word messages and is reportedly seeking partnerships with television networks to acquire high-quality video and advertising. "[P]eople familiar with the matter" told Bloomberg that Twitter has talked with Viacom (NYSE: VIA) and Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA) NBCUniversal. The deals would reportedly allow Twitter to sell advertising to accompany the video content and split the revenue with the networks. Things could happen fast, as "[o]ne or more deals could be reached by mid-May," the sources told Bloomberg, while also suggesting that this would not be the end of the line for video deals and other players could be involved in the near future. Video seems to be something that would appeal to Twitter users, who apparently chat a lot about their TV watching experiences. According to Nielsen data cited in the Bloomberg story, about a third of active Twitter users tweeted about something they watched on TV last June. This was slightly more than the 26 percent who'd used the social media site to talk about TV at the beginning of the year. Twitter and NBC are old collaborators. The two teamed up for last summer's Olympics in London, with NBC promoting its coverage and Twitter tracking its users' posts. Twitter spokesman Gabriel Stricker, Viacom spokesman Mark Jafar and NBC spokeswoman Cameron Blanchard declined to comment on the Bloomberg story. For more:
- Bloomberg carried this story Related articles:
Twitter confirms We Are Hunted buy, music app set to launch this weekend
Twitter video sharing app faces problems on launch day Read more about: NBC, Viacom
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Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) has had enough of Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) Silverlight media player and is replacing it with three HTML5 extensions--Media Source, Encrypted Media and Web Cryptography API--in an effort, it said, to smooth the video browsing experience by sublimating the need for plug-ins. Silverlight, a plug-in for Windows and OS-X browser streaming, had been positioned by Microsoft as competitive--or even a replacement for--Adobe Flash. It hasn't happened for a variety of reasons, including the difficulty involved with loading the browser into some platforms. Microsoft launched Silverlight 5 in late 2011 but has not provided a date for a release of Silverlight 6, leading some industry observers to believe it is finished with the platform. Netflix was among those questioning where Silverlight is headed. A blog post by Anthony Park, director of engineering, and Mark Watson, director of streaming standards, praised Silverlight for its "high-quality streaming experience" but tellingly added, "since Microsoft announced the end of life of Silverlight 5 in 2021, we need to find a replacement some time within the next 8 years." Reading the blog post more deeply, it appears that Netflix has been ready to make the switch for a while in an effort to improve on the cumbersome--and often impossible--Silverlight browser plug-in experience. "Over the last year, we've been collaborating with other industry leaders on three W3C initiatives which are positioned to solve this problem of playing premium video content directly in the browser without the need for browser plugins such as Silverlight. We call these, collectively, the 'HTML5 Premium Video Extensions,'" the pair wrote. Other evidence that Netflix had been planning the move for a while was a notation by the Netflix bloggers that the online video purveyor has "been working with Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) to implement support for the HTML5 Premium Video Extensions in the Chrome browser, and we've just started using this technology on the Samsung ARM-Based Chromebook." The move also might spell better things for Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) users who have been critical of Silverlight, according to a Computerworld story. "Moving to HTML5 is important to someone like Netflix, which wants to be as platform agnostic as possible," Gartner analyst Mike McGuire said in the Computerworld article. "HTML5 has matured to the point where most in the industry are moving to it." Including, now--and perhaps earlier than that--Netflix. For more:
- Netflix posted this blog entry
- and Computerworld carried this story Related articles:
Survey: Three quarters of developers planning HTML5 projects
Microsoft launches Silverlight toolkit add-on for Windows Phone Mango apps Read more about: Netflix, silverlight
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The increased presence of Internet-connected consumer electronics devices helped drive the over-the-top video market past the $8 billion revenue mark internationally in 2012, a 60 percent year-over-year growth, according to statistics compiled by ABI Research in its "OTT and Multi-screen Services Research Service." The continued growth of connected devices should push the market past $20 billion by 2015, the researchers suggested, and could threaten the existing pay TV market--or at least change the way it operates. In 2012, market leaders Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX), Hulu and Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) experienced 50 percent year-over-year growth. The growth pattern has caught the attention of content providers and could, in the end, result in a new way of looking at the content delivery business, senior analyst Michael Inouye said in an ABI press release. "The shift to digital and OTT distribution is accelerating, particularly as content providers increasingly warm up to these channels," Inouye said. "While Pay-TV services are still afforded many advantages we are approaching the proverbial fork in the road when content owners will decide if they continue down the same path or forge ahead, shaking up the primary means of media distribution as we've known it." OTT is apparently marching to the beat of its own drummer. Rather than gaining more money from subscriptions--58 percent in 2012--it's going to see a wider diffusion of revenue and a drop in subscription fees to 32 percent by 2018, the researchers said. This, the report added, is "driven by a continual shift in consumer demand towards newer forms of digital content distribution." It's not as if pay TV is going to go away, added Sam Rosen, ABI practice director. "While we still see great value and strength in the Pay-TV sector we are also starting to see the pieces that will accelerate change fall into place," he said in the press release. "Whether it's Netflix expanding to International markets or ABC and CBS enhancing catch-up services the building blocks that will restructure the how, when, and where consumers view content are starting to give shape to a new media future." That future "isn't devoid of traditional media nor is it a matter of new channels necessarily winning, but rather a redistribution of wealth within the value chain," Rosen concluded. For more:
- ABI issued this press release Related articles:
TDG: TV Everywhere more than just anti-OTT
ABI: Content owners buying gear to bypass pay TV Read more about: Pay Tv
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Pay TV providers are using tried-and-true tactics like discounted premium channels to bring wandering subscribers back into their fold, according to research released by Parks Associates. Most subscribers leave pay TV services for economic reasons, in many cases lured by lower prices offered by online streaming services. Cable providers, in particular, have suffered a steady stream of subscriber losses for the last half decade, as online competitors like Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) cut into their subscriber numbers. Now, even though these defectors are not unhappy with their online experiences, they are willing to come back to their original providers for the right price, said John Barrett, director of research for Parks Associates, who is presenting his findings today in a firm-sponsored webcast. "Most people leave pay-TV services due to economic factors, and these are the main influencers bringing them back," Barrett said. "They are not dissatisfied with Internet video. In fact, many cited Netflix Watch Instantly as a very satisfying experience. These re-subscribers were simply ready to take advantage of a promotion as their own financial situation improved." Probably not surprisingly, traditional pay TV providers like Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA), Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC), DirecTV (Nasdaq: DTV) and Dish Network (Nasdaq: DISH) were gaining the most from promotions and discounts, while Verizon (NYSE: VZ) FiOS and AT&T (NYSE: T) U-verse re-subscribers "cited content-related reasons at a higher rate, slightly ahead of promotions," the press release said. "Content availability is an important consideration for TV viewers, and these promotions seem to be the final push many consumers need to jump back into the pay-TV fold," Barrett said. "At the same time, economic factors work against Internet video services. Consumers who canceled their Netflix account cited a need to save money or were responding to the company's price increases." For more:
- Parks Associates issued this press release On the Hot Seat: ACA's Polka: Small cable operators may exit pay TV business Related article:
Kagan: Pay TV subscriber growth lags behind housing market rebound Read more about: online video services, promotions
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Second screen interfaces on connected TVs should mimic what users are getting on their smartphones, George Panayotopoulos, Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) industry manager for entertainment sales, said at the PEVE Entertainment conference in London. "One of the things that Google TV learnt in its first outing was that even a WiFi keyboard is a very poor interface to interact with extremely rich and deep content," the Google exec said in a story reported by Digital TV Europe. "I think some of the devices like Xbox Glass and YouTube's own mobile app that syncs with YouTube applications on TVs are very much a reflection of that need of the users to do increasingly complicated things." There is a dual-edged sword involved here. Many users--especially young ones--are moving away from TVs altogether, which leads to something of a conundrum when determining which TVs should look more like mobile devices when those devices are already replacing the TVs. "[T]he analogy of normally a teenager having a TV in their room--that's actually decreasing somewhat--because they have a laptop, because they have mobile devices, because they have tablets and they can access the same services through those devices. It negates the need, in some cases for them to be a TV in a room," Panayotopoulos said. That teenager room, however, wasn't really the primary focus of the panel at the conference. During "Monetising the Smart Living Room," the panelists were more concerned about the primary screen, how it is being accessed and how second screen applications even relate. "Everybody knows that there is a function and a reason for us to offer second screen apps, but I don't think there's some very, very good examples of how those are being used," Amelia Gammon, chief commercial officer of Saffron Digital, said. Shazam Advertising Vice President Miles Lewis suggested one: music recognition. "We didn't set out to create an app that links to TV or TV advertising, it was the consumer that drove us to that position. It was two years ago and we suddenly realised an awful lot of people were Shazaming TV," said Lewis. For more:
- Digital TV Europe carried this story Related articles:
NPD: Second-screen apps getting scant use
Fox: Second-screen apps are 'here to stay' Read more about: Google, Connected TVs
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