Reactions to story from paidContent.org

• 

  News Bytes: May 14

  http://digitalmedianews.blogspot.com/2008/05/breaking-icahn-...
  114 days ago in Digital Media News · No authority yet

  BREAKING: Icahn To Nominate Full Yahoo Board Slate: Report; Third Point Takes Stake In MSFT, YHOO Carl Icahn has decided to fight a proxy battle with Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) and file a full board slate, Reuters is reporting, citing sources. The names of the 12 members could be announced as soon as tonight according to the report. Still not known: who’s with him and how Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) will respond to this. There’s a lot of balls in the air right now, but Icahn didn’t just spend $1 billion on Yahoo cause he’s a buy-and-hold kinda guy. Either way: the Yahoo story is back. Shares are moving up around $.60 after hours to about $27.70. Meanwhile, Third Point, the hedge fund managed by famed activist investor Dan Loeb has disclosed holdings in both Yahoo and Microsoft. The stakes aren’t large though: $194 million in Microsoft and $29 million in Yahoo (via MarketWatch) @ CBS Upfront: A Symphony Of Radio, Outdoor, Digital, And, Oh Right, TV I’m seated on in a second-tier balcony at Carnegie Hall, a location that CBS Corp (NYSE: CBS). President/CEO Les Moonves references as metaphor for “the orchestra of media offerings” the company is presenting to advertisers. Given the impact of the dismal economy and the writers strike, the company is highlighting radio, outdoor and digital to buttress the upfront’s traditional focus on TV. Late, Late Show host Craig Ferguson served as emcee after Moonves exited, and like Jimmy Kimmel at ABC’s upfront yesterday, he took a few shots at NBC (minor laugh: “I was congratulated by a homeless guy for beating Conan O’Brien in the ratings, I asked him how he knew that and he responded, ‘I’m president of NBC.’"). -- All Britney.com: Quincy Smith, president of CBS Interactive, took the stage to say he would be the one to introduce the network’s fall programming lineup. “What’s on in the fall? Whatever show you want. Anytime, anyplace any screen you want.” Smith then rattled off a set of stats meant to drive home the network’s digital strength: the network is number one season pass on iTunes, number one app on Facebook. “We have the most content online of any other network. How I Met Your Mother had 9.7 million views when Britney Spears guest-starred on the show in March. About 2.7 million views were shared. Those episodes are like liquid crack from my vantage point. We will ask Britney to be on every show we have. Coming soon: CSI: Britney. Her appearances are still melting servers.” -- Deal with LonelyGirl creators: As he left the stage, Smith briefly mentioned the network’s deal with EQAL, the creators of the YouTube hit LonelyGirl15. The partnership, while non-exclusive, gives CBS a “first look” in terms of collaborating on concepts developed by EQAL. The company will also serve as a consulting partner to CBS by helping it figure out ways of extending TV storytelling to online and mobile. And, on top of the consulting arrangement with CBS’ writers and producers, EQAL will also provide the entire technology infrastructure to host the online shows. (More details in this release) MocoNews Review With Video: AT&T’s MediaFLO Is Best Chance For Mobile TV To Take Off The just-launched AT&T (NYSE: T) Mobile TV service is so good I watched the two-hour long 1982 comedy The Toy, featuring Richard Pryor without even really realizing it. In retrospect, I can see why mobile TV has been slow to take off—images are blurry, people are pixelated and lips and actions don’t sync with the soundtrack, and there’s long waits for loading and buffering. But this new service that AT&T has launched changes that because it doesn’t stream it over the cellular network. The service makes me believe that people will eventually watch TV on their mobile phone. Last week AT&T launched Qualcomm’s (NSDQ: QCOM) MediaFlo service, which is already being offered by Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ). The service uses broadcast methods, like the TV in your living room with rabbit ears. It does not use the cellular network. So far, it’s been slow for consumers to take off, but that’s most likely because it’s offered on a limited number of handsets, and it can be argued that up until now, they’ve been less than attractive phones. The cost might be another reason, but at $15 a month, it’s doable. Video is below. (RSS readers will have to click through.) Full review at our sister site mocoNews.net… LG, Samsung Team Up In Pitch For (Yet Another) North American Mobile TV Standard South Korean handset manufacturers LG (SEO: 066570) and Samsung have agreed to work together on a mobile TV technology that they hope will become the North American standard. The idea is to combine LG’s Mobile Pedestrian Handheld (MPH) and Samsung’s A-VSB (advanced-vestigial sideband) into something acceptable to the Advanced Television Systems Committee, which is slated to pick a standard in the first half of 2009. The two hope to have the new format, which would deliver over-the-air local television, developed later this year. Release For now, North American mobile TV users are stuck in a loop between multiple standards, limited services and limited handsets, which in turn limits the chances that mobile TV will really take off here any time soon. Facebook Agonistes: Advertisers, Adults, Developers Pulling Back; Banking On Global While it looked as if Facebook might have rebounded quickly from its Beacon debacle last fall, Fortune contends the revolution is steadily losing steam. The site grew 12-fold since opening its membership to non-students in September 2006, but growth has lately hit a wall, with unique visitors hovering between 30-35 million, according to comScore (NSDQ: SCOR) numbers. Then Fortune adds its own “anecdotal evidence” to suggest interest among the older users who were key to the social net’s continued rise is starting to wane. -- Developers’ disappointment: Both Fortune and News.com point out that even developers are getting fed up with the Facebook Platform, which was opened to developers last May. Developer Jesse Farmer finds activity in the developer forum falling 27 percent over the past two months. Competition from Google (NSDQ: GOOG) OpenSocial and others are part of the reason, while News.com, keying off Farmer, says users tend to find apps like Zombie Wars more annoying than novel. But Facebook could be spurred to make modifications in the face of these challenges and turn the situation around, News.com posits. -- Social net ad spend revised downward: A turnaround in advertising is not likely to be fixed so easily. Facebook took in $145 million in revenue last year, according to eMarketer. The researcher has just revised its social net ad spend forecast downward, with Facebook expected to attract $265 million in 2008, down 12.9 percent from the earlier forecast of $305 million. By comparison, eMarketer previously anticipated MySpace advertisers to spend $850 million in the U.S. this year, but that estimate has now dropped 11.2 percent to $755 million. -- Looking abroad: As the U.S. market slows in the face of larger economic pressures, BusinessWeek finds Facebook following MySpace again, this time by shifting its concentration to other countries. Facebook is readying tools that translate the site into four additional languages: Dutch, Italian, Norwegian and Polish. Other languages, such as Chinese, will be rolled out over the next few months. Both Facebook and MySpace have said that international expansion is crucial to their respective growth. More than 60 percent of Facebook’s 110 million global users are outside the U.S, while 30 percent of MySpace’s 117 million members are registered in other countries. Icahn Watch: Yahoo Shareholders Wait For The Next Move What are Yahoo shareholders doing today? They’re hitting reload on their browsers every second looking for some word on what Carl Icahn plans to do with his reported 50 million-share stake. Don’t bother looking to the market for clues, as it has none. After rallying hard yesterday, the stock ticked up this morning, before dipping into the red, and now it’s up again. Ostensibly, the question is whether Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) is still interested in buying Yahoo; supposedly, Icahn has received no indication that it is. Microsoft is up too, so not what you’d expect if it was all “game on.” But does it make sense that Icahn would spend $1 billion on Yahoo shares and then look into the question of whether Microsoft would buy them for a higher price? Could Icahn have designs on Yahoo that aren’t tied to affecting a sale? Given the company’s performance and its glacial pace of avoiding oncoming glaciers, this is the kind of company he might go after anyway. -- Damaged goods: It’s said that Microsoft didn’t go the hostile route because of the damage it would do to Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO). So, would Icahn launching a proxy fight as a, er, proxy for Microsoft work any better. MarketWatch quotes analyst George Askew of Stifel Nicolaus & Company saying not: “...you may win the battle but what you ultimately win will be so damaged that it wasn’t worth fighting for. We believe this is why Microsoft didn’t pursue a proxy battle, and we don’t think the software giant’s view will change with Carl Icahn doing the dirty work.” -- The Google card?: Quoted in the same article Jefferies & Co. analyst Youssef Squali suggests Yahoo could once again bring up its poison pill ad deal with Google (NSDQ: GOOG), should Icahn and Microsoft make another advance. Maybe. But how many times can you keep bluffing all-in before you get called down? The fact that Yahoo had nothing announced post-Microsoft and Google execs have already cooled on it, certainly reduces the potency of this move. Virgin Mobile Confirms Talks With SK Telecom A day after sticking with “no comment” as a response, Virgin Mobile USA finally admits the news we broke last week—it’s in discussions with SK Telecom (NYSE: SKM). Rafat first reported last Thursday that Virgin Mobile USA was in talks with SK Telecom on possible scenarios, including a merger with Helio, the MVNO now controlled by SK Telecom. Despite other reports that followed suit, SK Telecom called the news “groundless” rumors and said it wasn’t in any kind of talks with Virgin Mobile USA (NYSE: VM). So much for that. We continue to cover the story more closely on sister site mocoNews.net. Earnings: Sony Quarterly Revs Down 6.5 Percent; Games Revs Fall But Higher Profits Seen Another characteristically all-over-the-map earnings announcement from Sony (NYSE: SNE), which reported quarterly revenue of $19.5 billion, a decline of 6.5 percent. Operating loss narrowed to $47 million and net income, helped by various investment gains, came to a profit of $290 million ($.28 per share). The core electronics business saw a dip of 5.4 percent, while the games business slid 6.4 percent to $2.6 billion. However, as is the case with Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and the XBox, they’re at that stage of the cycle where revenue from negative-margin boxes is being replaced with revenue from high-margin game titles, so as the total top-line is falling, the company predicts high profits from the unit in the coming year. Release (.pdf) Forrester: Get More Ads in Online TV, Stat TV networks need to amp up advertising in their online streaming, and do it fast, says Forrester analyst James McQuivey in a new, very savvy research report. He posits that online streaming of TV-like content is only going to increase, so networks should start setting expectations for more advertising now in order to avoid a backlash later. McQuivey says that since hit TV shows can get a 50 percent premium on online CPMs vs. broadcast, they should just go ahead and sell those spots (we’ll see if it’s quite that easy once the dust settles on this week’s upfronts). Online ads can also be required viewing, unable to be skipped over, he notes. Plus they stand out more because there aren’t too many other ads cluttering viewer’s experience (until his advice takes hold, that is). New Hulu Metrics; site has served 15 million uniques over the past month — up from 5 million during its first public month, and 100,000 Hulu vids have been posted to 12,000 different sites. (Silicon Alley Insider) Dish Taking Mobile Slooooooow Even though Dish Network is testing mobile TV transmission equipment this summer, don’t hold your breath for the service to arrive any time soon. On its earnings call today, Dish chairman Charlie Ergen and vice chairman Carl Vogel made it abundantly clear they are in no rush — and they want to enlist some partners before they do anything. According to Mutichannel News, Vogel said: “We’re a long, long, long way from building anything out. We’re a long, long, long way from deciding who our partners will be and when, but we do think it is a valuable piece of spectrum that gives us an opportunity to have numerous strategic discussions that will provide an asset that’s additive to the business we already have.” YouTube Lets Advertisers Target "About-to-Go-Viral" Videos San Bruno, Calif. - Google's (NASD: GOOG) YouTube has introduced a new advertising product called "buzz targeting," which allows advertisers to target videos that are expected to "go viral." The company created an algorithm that "determines which YouTube partner videos are quickly becoming popular on the site and about to go viral. The algorithm looks at several factors, such as acceleration of views, favorites, and ratings activity, and then allows advertisers to target their ads specifically to these videos on YouTube." Analysis: Freesat Proves Popular Online in the UK The launch of Freesat, the free satellite TV service provided by the BBC and ITV in the UK, proved popular with online consumers during its launch week. UK Internet traffic to http://www.freesat.co.uk/, the service’s online homepage, increased by 627% between the weeks ending May 3rd and May 10th, while UK Internet searches for the term ‘freesat’ increased by 752% over the same period, making it the fastest moving search term in the UK last week. Media Content-Distribution Model in Decline A few years ago, media moguls like Rupert Murdoch and Sumner Redstone touted the benefits of content and distribution "synergy." That strategy appears to be falling out of favor as the digital age shifts the balance of power. Distribution "used to be a monopoly," say industry experts. LG and SAMSUNG are teaming up to fight QUALCOMM and protect their interests in mobile TV. Qualcomm’s MediaFLO has been gaining momentum lately due to contracts with AT&T and VERIZON, the top wireless providers in the United States. LG and Samsung will need to fight a bitter lobbying battle in Washington in order to make their ATSC-M/H standard in the U.S. This move comes roughly three years too late for the South Korean manufacturers. Sony Video Games Unexpectedly Turn Profitable Sony is forecasting its operating income will rise 20% this year, beating estimates, as the games division that makes PlayStation 3 consoles turns profitable. The company says operating profit will climb to $4.3 billion in year ending March 2009, some 13% higher than estimated.
• 

  Google reaches all-time high

  http://www.dmueller.com/2008/05/15/search-engines/google-rea...
  114 days ago in Dominik Mueller · Authority: 38

  Online competitive intelligence service Hitwise yesterday released the latest U.S. search statistics for April 2008. It announced that Google hit an all-time high, accounting for 67.90% of all U.S. searches. This marks a 0.65% increase over March this year and a 2.64% increase over April 2007. Microsoft and Yahoo, on the other hand, hit new lows: Microsoft’s MSN search engine accounted for only 6.26% (down 1.51% since April 2007), Yahoo for 20.28% (down 0.45%) of all U.S. searches. Ask.com ranks fourth with 4.17% (up from 3.69% one year ago). Since monthly statistics can vary significantly for several reasons, I find the yearly stats far more interesting and relevant when it comes to comparing past to present. One also has to note that Hitwise only included AOL among the “other” search engines, which accounted for the remaining 1.39% in searches. I don’t know AOL’s real share, but this looks a bit low to me. Still, an overall trend should be obvious, namely that Google has continued to grow and both Microsoft and Yahoo saw their share in web searches decline in the United States throughout the last 12 months. Now that Carl Icahn decided to start a proxy battle with Yahoo in order to unseat the company’s board of directors and to possibly go back to Microsoft to sell Yahoo for $33 a share, we’re still waiting for Microsoft’s response to Icahn’s decision. The search stats above make it apparent, however, that MSFT and YHOO both could profit from a cooperation in web search and online ads. Copyright (C) 2003-2008 Dominik Mueller. All rights reserved. SedoPro - Parking for Domain Professionals Google reaches all-time high

Advertise on Technorati

Advertise on Technorati