iPad image copyright Skylines

Napster was the first of its kind, providing music fans with easy and free access to albums and tracks and giving them a reason to avoid buying expensive CDs — the lifeblood of the music industry’s business. The ability to share files around the globe reduced the barriers to music discovery and allowed Napster users to find new artists and songs in ways never imagined. It was a truly disruptive service, and it scared the hell out of the music industry.

Instead of embracing the massive adoption of this new service, finding a solution to accommodate the changing landscape or harnessing Napster as a future platform, the music industry held onto its rigid CD-based business, prayed that file sharing would go away and eventually tore Napster down.

Today, you can draw several parallels between the music industry in the late ’90s and early 2000s and the TV industry today. Viewing habits are changing. Just like music in the early 2000s when young adults started turning away from physical media and opting for singles versus complete albums, viewers are “tuning in” very differently to movies and TV programming.

Today, if Netflix were part of a cable package, it would be one of the top viewed networks, according to a Facebook post from CEO Reed Hastings. Meanwhile, Nielsen recently reported that cable cutting is up by 150 percent since 2007, marking a significant shift in viewer behavior. Additionally, Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia is now assuming the role of Shawn Fanning by intimidating the cable companies with a disruptive service that lets viewers access broadcast programs at a much lower cost than cable packages.

But, instead of adapting to changing viewer behavior, the cable companies, Hollywood and broadcasters are holding onto old business models for dear life and calling the lawyers. Sound familiar?

Avoiding a Bad Sequel: Lessons for the TV Industry

Ignoring or fighting digital consumer behavior is a recipe for disaster — resulting in rejection faster than an unpalatable creation by a contestant on Hell’s Kitchen. It’s time for TV broadcasters, content creators and advertisers to innovate their businesses instead of maintaining existing models through threats and litigation.

First, they need to understand that their viewers are setting the rules and defining the life expectancy of their programming and services. They will decide your fate — not you. Consider the following:

• You Can’t Take Content Away: The outdated model based on controlling distribution is dying. If you force it underground — that is, “illegal streams and downloads” — you’ve lost the battle.
• Adapt or Die: The millennial generation is addicted to YouTube, on-demand and streaming services. They no longer tune in at a specific time and date, and are increasingly shying away from paying for premium cable bundles. With filmmakers and producers spending the time and resources to make great TV programing, like “Homeland,” “Girls” and “Mad Men,” delivery methods should be figured out to get these shows to viewers who won’t pay $150 per month in subscription fees.
• Open the Windows: The “distribution window” is used by Hollywood to define how long a VOD and streaming service can distribute movies and TV programming. The problem? If the window for season one of “Downton Abbey” is about to close from Netflix or your cable provider, and you haven’t watched any of the episodes, you better call in sick to work to get your fill of the Granthams and the Crawleys, or miss the entire season altogether.
• Stop Explaining Business Models: Movie and TV viewers don’t give a sh*t about business models. They just want to watch their favorite shows — whenever and wherever they choose. The music industry followed the same pattern in the early 2000s, explaining why the economics of music streaming and downloads would not support artists and the industry. Guess who won?
• Open Up to Developers: Don’t assume innovation will only come from within your organization. By tapping the developer community, you will be able to move faster and find new ways to use or distribute content, which could result in new monetization strategies. Some of the more forward-thinking media properties, including ESPN, are already doing this, allowing developers to hack ad strategies and sports data.
• Rethink Discovery: As video distribution evolves, there needs to be a corresponding evolution in how people discover new movies and TV programming. If viewers are paying hefty monthly subscriptions (which today support a lot of what they don’t watch), it is critical to provide paths to find what they really want to watch. The current TV guides embedded in our set-top boxes have to be completely rethought.
• Reinvent Measurement: We still depend on a small sample of viewers to rate the popularity of programs and we base all advertising decisions on this data. However, the technology to measure real time usage inside the TV exists today and has the potential to enable more precise measurement and better targeting of advertising.

The TV industry’s fate is as much in the hands of viewers as the next American Idol. Not only accepting, but also realizing that TV programs and movies are easily accessible via proliferating distribution channels such as Netflix and Aereo, the industry can turn the tables and find opportunities with additional platforms and options to reach viewers for their eyeballs and spending. Most importantly, cable, broadcasters and Hollywood have the opportunity to move forward and determine better and more efficient business models to thrive.

Forward-looking networks like HBO have slowly worked toward a compromise by offering specialized content that depends on the Pay-TV ecosystem. However, with cord-cutting slowly beginning to eat into cable subscriptions, the HBOs of the world need to take distribution models a step further and offer everything streaming with direct-to-consumer subscription models, or risk losing their next core audience. If TV viewers are willing to pay for subscription streaming services, then the industry needs to jump on that bandwagon.

Rewriting the Ending: To Be Continued

The nature of distributing media is evolving, and the music industry learned the hard way as it struggled to adapt to a new generation of music fans. More than 10 years after the music industry forced Napster to tear down its P2P platform, the same industry has embraced free, ad-supported services from Spotify, Rhapsody, Deezer and others. In fact, this year marked the first time that the music industry made a profit since 1999.

Instead of struggling against the Internet Age and the connected world, broadcasters, cable companies and Hollywood can capitalize on the audience’s need to enjoy what they have to offer — great TV programming. Content will always be king and the industry creates a tremendous amount of really compelling material. It just needs to keep the crime scenes to “Law & Order” and save the video star by taking a cue from music’s past.

As president of Gracenote, Stephen White has played a critical role in shaping the company into a digital entertainment leader. He spearheaded the development of Gracenote technologies for top entertainment platforms and brands, including Apple, Ford and Sony. Today, he oversees all company strategy and operations, and is responsible for growing Gracenote’s core business and vision.

While the tale of a print magazine embedded in a troubled media company makes for much better reading, everyone loves a listicle. So, Time has once again put out its annual countdown of the 100 “most influential people in the world, from artists and leaders to pioneers, titans and icons.”

And, as usual, global techies represent big-time on the list, including:

* Tesla and SpaceX’s Elon Musk — about whom Virgin Group’s Richard Branson wrote, “It’s a paradox that Elon is working to improve our planet at the same time he’s building spacecraft to help us leave it.”

* Instagram co-founder and CEO Kevin Systrom, who gets inexplicably feted by entertainment bon vivant Ryan Seacrest (we are down with this anyway).

* Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos (yay for Ted, who is Mr. Nice Guy, especially for Hollywood).

* Ren Zhengfei, CEO of China’s telecom giant Huawei.

* Oh-Hyun Kwon, Samsung CEO, about whom former Apple CEO John Sculley wrote, “As Samsung builds a campus in Silicon Valley, all eyes will be on Kwon to see if the CEO with a PhD from Stanford can be as successful with software as he has been with hardware.”

* Music manager and Internet talent discoverer Scooter Braun.

* Minecraft developers, Markus Persson and Jens Bergensten, whom my sons revere (and therefore are deserving of kudos!).

* OkCupid founder Sam Yagan, who is now CEO of Match.com.

* Microsoft and Apple irritant David Einhorn, who is the only hedge fund investor dude I like.

* Deservedly ubiquitous Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, whose “Lean In” is a bestseller.

* Apple design guru Jony Ive, about whom Bono noted, “Jony Ive is himself classic Apple. Brushed steel, polished glass hardware, complicated software honed to simplicity.”

* Coursera co-founders Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, who are among many in tech trying to change education.

* Chinese tech investor Kai-Fu Lee.

* Google Ideas guy Jared Cohen.

* Afghanistan entrepreneur Roya Mahboob, who gets praise from Sandberg.

* Kickstarter CEO Perry Chen, about whom “Veronica Mars” star (and user of the fundraising tool) Kristen Bell said, “There’s something so smart and magical about that idea — connecting consumers with creators and letting them vote with their own money.”

* And listicle Olympian and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, garnering a major feting from Google’s Eric Schmidt, who wrote: “Google was lucky to have her help us grow into what we became, and Yahoo is lucky to have her taking them someplace new.”

(Cover photo by Mark Seliger for Time)

Director Henry-Alex Rubin recalls Mr. Bateman half-jokingly remarking that he was making a silent movie. “There was a lot of having to sort of communicate and process the receiving of an answer without talking,” says Mr. Bateman. “It could have gone really bad with a lot of eyebrow acting.”

The revolution in communicating via text, often on tiny phone screens, is presenting filmmakers with a huge challenge: How do you show it on the big screen?

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

But, like I said, spectacular:

This feature appears to have popped up today, and there doesn’t seem to be any other details about the offer, like the number of days in advance that Newsstand buyers will get their iPad editions. I’ve asked Hearst for more information.

[UPDATE: A few more tidbits, via Hearst pr's Alexandra Carlin: She says the length of Newsstand buyers' headstart "varies", depending on publication, and that the offer applies to single copy sales as well as subs. As far as the deal's origins: "Apple suggested this initiative, and it’s a great offer they can provide to their newsstand users. We’re always working with our retail partners on unique ways to drive consumer sale and engagement."]

Right now, Hearst is the only publisher offering the option, for 22 of its titles. An Apple rep says it will be happy to let other publishers try the same thing.

This looks like the first time any publisher has tried an early digital “window” for their magazines, anywhere. Hollywood has recently warmed to the same idea when it comes to selling their movies online.

Bigger context for the tweak: Magazine publishers, who were once giddy about the prospects of selling their titles via the iPad, have sobered up.

The general consensus: Tablet editions are a nice revenue stream that in some cases brings publishers new readers, and in others helps them hang onto existing print subscribers, via online/offline bundles. But they’re not enough to save many publishers from the decline of their print businesses — a reality that Time Inc. staffers are bracing for as they get ready for long-reported and significant layoffs.

Earlier this month, Hearst Magazine boss David Carey told his employees that the company had reached 800,000 paid digital subscribers by the end of 2012. We’ll talk to him about where he goes next in a few weeks, at our D: Dive into Media conference. See you there …

Total home-entertainment spending in the U.S. inched up 0.23 percent to $18 billion, according to a report released Tuesday by Digital Entertainment Group, a trade association.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Longtime digital exec Jeff Berman is joining Hollywood production company BermanBraun as its first president.

Berman — who is no relation to BermanBraun co-founder Gail Berman — comes to the firm from the National Football League where he has been in charge of its Web, mobile, social and non-console gaming efforts. While there, he worked on several new initiatives, such as its multi-party video chat for Fantasy Football.

Several years before that, he was a top exec at social networking site Myspace, finally ending up as president of sales and marketing, where he was in charge of branded advertising, sales operations, entertainment, content and marketing. Efforts there by Berman included the now defunct Web-only series “Quarterlife,” which also had a very short life on a major network.

The Yale Law School grad was also on the board of Buddy Media, which was sold to Salesforce.com last year.

He’s an interesting person, then, for BermanBraun, which focuses on content across multiple screens, including big branded Web sites such as Wonderwall for Microsoft’s MSN and also more traditional entertainment shows. Its juicy-looking television series “Deception,” for example, is set to appear on NBC this week. It now has about 130 employees, mostly working at its Santa Monica, Calif., HQ.

“We needed an exceptional leader to manage the company,” said BermanBraun co-founder Lloyd Braun, who was once a top media exec at Yahoo. “And Jeff is someone who has skillsets in a whole bunch of areas and an emotional intelligence that is as important to what we do.”

Braun said Berman would initially focus on his area of expertise — digital — but that he would become more involved in the television and movie arenas over time.

BermanBraun — which considered raising funding last year — is at an interesting juncture in its development, trying to form a new kind of independent Hollywood media company that straddles analog and digital.

Berman said he was attracted to the opportunity there.

“I had a great job, since there is nothing bigger than the NFL,” he said in an interview yesterday. “But Lloyd and Gail have an incredible vision across platforms for entertainment.”

He added that content was just at the beginning of development online, but was finally poised to explode with the popularity of tablets, smartphones, interactive TV and other such devices, as well as social and e-commerce tools.

“The mind reels, there is so much that has happened and can happen,” said Berman. “I don’t know if there is a better time to be at such a place to create these new franchises — [BermanBraun] is a laboratory, where stuff is actually working.”

HBO, which normally plays up the value of its original productions like “Game of Thrones,” says that 84 percent of its conventional TV viewing* comes from movies.

The deal, which many observers had expected, was done well in advance of a 2016 expiration date. It’s relevant primarily because it means that the movies won’t end up on digital subscription services like Netflix or Amazon.

There had been industry chatter about Universal owner Comcast taking the movies in-house to create its own Netflix-like service, or to fold it into its existing Streampix offering, but that won’t happen, either.

The next big question for movie-distribution observers is the status of Sony’s deal with Starz. BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield, among others, thinks Netflix will end up with that one, too.

We’ll have HBO President and COO Eric Kessler onstage at D: Dive into Media next month.

*That is, the stuff that people watch when HBO airs it, as opposed to on-demand plays and views via its HBO Go service.

The event looks like a pretty big deal, judging by the invitation alone. The thick card stock features a hologram flipping back-and-forth between the Disney Infinity logo and a 3-D view of the Magic Kingdom.

You can also tell it’s important based on the speakers. Presentations will be made by both John Pleasants, the co-president of Disney Interactive, and John Lasseter, the chief creative officer of the Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios. Lasseter is also the principal creative adviser for Walt Disney Imagineering.

The event will take place in Hollywood, Calif., at El Capitan Theatre, a fully restored 1926 movie house owned by the Walt Disney Company.

The unveiling of Infinity could be tied to an unannounced gaming initiative code-named “Toy Box.” Very few details are known about the secret project, but according to the New York Times, Toy Box is a console game that has “extensive mobile and online applications in which various Pixar and Disney characters will interact with one another for the first time.”

For years, Disney has aspired to do something big in the gaming space. But despite making several large investments, it has failed to gain much traction. Those investments include six console-based development studios, and in 2010, it purchased its way into social gaming with the $563 million Playdom acquisition. It also owns and manages a virtual world for children, called Club Penguin. More recently, it has been pushing into the free-to-play market around the world through smaller acquisitions and partnerships.

Despite some successes, especially on mobile with hits like Where’s My Water?, the Interactive division continues to drag down earnings. During the fiscal fourth quarter ended Sept. 29, interactive revenue for the year decreased 14 percent to $845 million, and the unit reported a loss of of $216 million.

According to sources close to the situation, Yahoo is among the companies taking a serious gander at TVGuide.com, the online entertainment listings, video and news site and mobile app.

Earlier today, Deadline Hollywood reported that its owner, Lionsgate, was in “advanced negotiations” to sell the site for about $20 million to one strategic bidder.

That’s the approximate price, my sources said too, who noted that Yahoo is only kicking the tires to determine if the site would add to its online media efforts and that such a deal is not in a final state.

But TVGuide.com is right in the wheelhouse of Yahoo’s acquisition efforts under CEO Marissa Mayer. She said the Silicon Valley Internet giant was looking at smaller purchases to round out its product line, especially in the mobile area.

Thus, its M&A point person, Jackie Reses, has been looking at “everything in the world,” according to numerous sources, across a large spectrum of arenas. TVGuide.com is in the media space, obviously — another she’s looked at is Los Angeles-based Maker Studios.

Hollywood studio Lionsgate last reported that TVGuide.com has upward of 24 million unique monthly visitors, and also has almost seven million mobile app users.

Lionsgate bought the site and television network in 2009, which also is owned in part by J.P. Morgan’s One Equity Partners.

Activision just confirmed that its big first-person shooter of the year has racked up $500 million in sales on opening day, setting a new record for the Santa Monica, Calif.-based game publisher.

That easily outguns first-day sales of Halo 4, which Microsoft said on Monday totaled $220 million. Activision’s war-themed title also easily beats last year’s blockbuster release, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, which achieved $400 million in sales within 24 hours, and about $1 billion after 16 days.

These big videogame titles are often compared to more general entertainment releases, like first-day sales at the box office, given their size and scope. The criticism of using that metric is that one game costs $60 versus the $11-or-so that it costs to go see the new “Twilight” flick. However, the counterargument is that a $60 game is much more of a commitment, and will take even the most savvy players weeks to finish, whereas a movie is snack-sized at only two hours.

Here’s Activision Blizzard’s CEO Bobby Kotick drawing the obvious Hollywood comparison:

“With first day sales of over half a billion dollars worldwide, we believe Call of Duty is the biggest entertainment launch of the year for the fourth year in a row,” Kotick said. “Life-to-date sales for the Call of Duty franchise have exceeded worldwide theatrical box office receipts for “Harry Potter” and “Star Wars,” the two most successful movie franchises of all time.”

On Monday, Microsoft claimed that Halo 4 beat box office releases like “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2” and the “The Avengers” — based on day-one sales in the U.S. Halo 4 is sold exclusively on Microsoft’s Xbox, whereas Activision’s Call of Duty sells across the Xbox, PlayStation 3 and, two days from now, Nintendo’s Wii U.

Metacritic, which aggregates videogame reviews from various game publications, gave Microsoft’s Halo 4 an impressively high score of 91, based on 37 reviews, compared to Call of Duty: Black Ops II, which received an 84, based on 48 scores.

Perhaps it is entirely no surprise that HBO’s Lena Dunham — whose frankly sexual cable television series “Girls” is a huge hit — has caused a wave of controversy with a new campaign video urging the reelection of President Barack Obama.

It’s titled “Your First Time,” and Dunham — in her typical ironically clever hipster tone — coyly talks about voting as if you were losing your virginity.

Says Dunham in the video: “My first time voting was amazing. It was this line in the sand — before, I was a girl, now I was a woman. I went to the polling station, I pulled back the curtain, I voted for Barack Obama.”

To be fair, this is much less racy than any five minutes of “Girls,” but you can see the problem for some.

Thus, since it was released via the Obama campaign, the edgy video has been decried by conservatives in no uncertain terms, such as this posting on Twitter from John Nolte, editor at large at Breitbart News.

Here is his tweet, which was like many:

How could a president with two, young blossoming daughters release an ad as disgusting as this –> youtube.com/watch?v=o6G3nw…

— John Nolte(@NolteNC) October 25, 2012

Oddly enough, the conservatives’ most beloved President — Ronald Reagan — once made a pretty similar joke: “I know what it’s like to pull the Republican lever for the first time, because I used to be a Democrat myself, and I can tell you it only hurts for a minute and then it feels just great.”

Dunham, who is now tweeting from an international vacation, does not seem to care much what anyone thinks, as you can see from her reaction tweet below:

It tickles me to no end that while my twitter feed was blowing up with conservative hate I was literally hanging out in a pile of bisexuals.

— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) October 26, 2012

Here’s the Dunham video, so judge for yourself:

I am also adding Hollywood writer/director Joss Whedon’s pretty caustic spoof about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and zombies, which will surely bring a second round of criticism:

It’s pretty epic.

Enjoy:

DreamWorks Animation, the Hollywood studio that has made such movies as “Shrek,” has promoted Lincoln Wallen to be its new CTO.

“Lincoln is an exceptional executive and brilliant technologist whose contributions to DreamWorks Animation have already been monumental,” said DreamWorks Animation’s CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg in a statement.

Wallen had been DreamWorks’ head of animation technology, having joined the company in 2008 as head of research and development. Previously, he was CTO at Electronic Arts.

Wallen replaces former CTO Ed Leonard, who is now running a mobile app effort called Ptch, incubated at DreamWorks.

And one of the top director candidates is well-regarded Hollywood exec Peter Chernin, said several sources.

He is an obvious choice, having been a top exec at News Corp. for many years. Since he left in mid-2009, Chernin has forged a successful film and television career, producing such hits as “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” and “New Girl.”

But, unlike many media execs, he has also focused on garnering much deeper digital experience.

Chernin was key to the formation of the Hulu premium online service, for example, and is also a board member of the Pandora streaming music service. He has also been making digital and media investments in Asia.

(And, interestingly, although apropos of nothing, Chernin’s former boss, Rupert Murdoch, has become an avid tweeter, too.)

Sources said Chernin has not decided if he even wants such a board seat, and Twitter management is still only in the early stages of its board effort, presumably to replace Flipboard’s Mike McCue.

The entrepreneur left the board earlier this year, after it was clear that his social media app and Twitter were on a collision course (or an acquisition one, depending how you looked at it).

But the addition of a media-savvy director — or even two — also makes sense in the context of the past year of Twitter’s evolution.

The brainchild of Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams and Biz Stone, Twitter first began as a microblogging social network.

While it did attract a lot of attention due to its celebrity tweeters — such as actor Ashton Kutcher and famebot Kim Kardashian — the management and board of Twitter is largely tech-centric in experience.

But, more recently, the service has taken its shape as a consumption-based media company, where some 40 percent of its user base read and consume content rather than create it. That is to say, they watch, but they don’t tweet.

Such a strategic direction is a natural extension for bringing in more advertising spending from outside partners, especially big media companies that have both the eyeballs and dollars that the company is hoping to attract.

Twitter is now commonly used throughout the media space in a variety of roles, from branding to audience-gauging, and also sometimes even as a plot device.

(That said, you won’t catch CEO Dick Costolo outright admitting Twitter’s media-company status; he still wants the Silicon Valley cred of being valued as a technology giant first.)

A Twitter spokesman declined to comment on any effort to bring in new directors; Chernin has not yet responded to a query for comment.

But that was January! Now Murdoch’s 20th Century Fox studio has cut a deal to sell and rent its movies and TV shows via the search giant’s YouTube and Google Play portals.

The announcement means Google has agreements with all of the major Hollywood studios. That brings the company to parity with competitors like Apple and Amazon, and it may be more symbolic than anything, since none of the digital outlets have been significant revenue generators for the studios so far.

But Fox is hoping to change that with a new digital sales push. It is cutting the price for new movies like “Prometheus” to $15 from its usual $20, and offering them earlier than it has in the past: You can buy the movie today, three weeks before it will appear on discs and pay-TV operators’ video-on-demand stores.

Fox will market “Prometheus” hard at every digital outlet it can find, including those run by Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Sony. But people familiar with the studio’s plans say it is counting on a significant assist from Google, which means you’re likely to see prominent ads for the movie on YouTube and on other Google properties. (News Corp. also owns this Web site.)

Okay. So what about the whole piracy thing? Neither Google or News Corp. officials are commenting about a rapprochement.

But last month Google did announce that it would start making it harder for pirate sites to show up in its search results, a move that drew praise from both the movie and music industries.

Perhaps that, combined with a need to shore up a flagging DVD business, was enough to change Murdoch’s mind. If so, the detente could have an impact on his other dealings with Google’s entertainment ventures, like Google TV and its Google Fiber project, both of which News Corp. has yet to support.

Alternate theory: Murdoch has simply been overwhelmed by Sergey Brin’s Google Glass specs, which he labled “genius,” after a Fashion Week event this month.

Want to hear more? We’re happy to oblige: We’ll be hosting our second edition of the event next February.

Like our first event, we’ll use the Dive conference to highlight a story we cover at AllThingsD every day — the way the media business responds to technology’s threats and opportunities — by letting you meet some of the industry’s most powerful and fascinating leaders.

You’ll also learn about new players that will have a big impact in the months and years to come. And like every All Things Digital event, you’ll get all of this via our trademark interviews: Unscripted, uncensored and thought-provoking.

The setting is awfully compelling, too: We’re coming back to the excellent Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, perched above the Pacific, about an hour south of Los Angeles. It’s a great way to spend a night and a day.

We’ll be announcing speakers throughout the fall, but here’s a sampling of what we’ve got planned:

Michael Lynton is CEO of Sony Entertainment Inc., a new post which gives him control of Sony’s movie studio, its music label and its powerful Sony/ATV music publishing joint venture. Each of those businesses faces very different prospects, and we’ll talk about all of them, in one of Lynton’s first appearances since taking the job last spring.

David Carey became president of Hearst Magazines in 2010, and since then he has pushed the publisher aggressively into digital apps and editions for iPads, Kindles and other platforms. But he’s also insistent on keeping the magazine industry’s core bundle of content plus ads intact, and he’ll explain why.

Nikesh Arora is senior vice president and chief business officer at Google, which means he’s in charge of all revenue at Google (2011 total: $38 billion), which means he may be the most powerful person in the advertising industry. We’ll have lots of questions for him.

Dan Rose is vice president of partnerships at Facebook, a big job that makes him the man to see for every media company trying to figure out how to work with the social network and its 955 million users. We’ll ask him what publishers, movie studios, TV networks and music labels are asking for, and what Facebook can deliver.

On behalf of Walt Mossberg, Kara Swisher and the rest of the AllThingsD staff, I’d like to invite you to join us Feb. 11 and 12.

Last week’s Republican Convention provided perhaps the most entertaining — albeit, not on purpose — political social meme on the Web, with Hollywood actor Clint Eastwood’s odd performance with an empty chair.

That quickly set off an instant flood of pictures posted on Twitter of people chastising their chairs — dubbed, of course, #Eastwooding.

And also the very funny Twitter account @invisibleobama, who had a nice Labor Day tip for us all:

On this Labor Day, take a moment to remember that today is the last day it’s appropriate to wear invisible seersucker anything.

— Invisible Obama (@InvisibleObama) September 3, 2012

Even President Barack Obama’s tweet-staff got into it by posting the photo below, with the caption: “This seat’s taken.”

This seat’s taken. OFA.BO/c2gbfi, twitter.com/BarackObama/st…

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 31, 2012

Now that we are done making fun of inanimate objects, it will be interesting to see what pops up online this coming week at the Democratic Convention, which officially starts tomorrow in Charlotte, N.C.

Obviously, there are Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr links from the main convention homepage, but there is also a share page in which users are being asked to fill-in-the-tweet: “I nominate Barack Obama Because …”

No surprise, the tweets are uniformly upbeat — and likely vetted — which is what you get with socially engineered social media.

Which is why what happens without the manipulations of the message-makers and political pros — that unexpected moment of reality just made for the medium — will be much more interesting to see as the week goes on.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has written a book on challenges facing women in the workplace that is expected to be published next year by Knopf.

Titled “Lean In,” the book is not a memoir, but a “call to action” with a lot of research and data, laced with anecdotes of the experience of one of Silicon Valley’s most high-profile female executives and also many other women.

“I believe that the world would be a better place if half our institutions were run by women, and half our homes were run by men,” said Sandberg in an email to me earlier this week. “The book contains practical advice for women — and the men who want to help them — on how to lean in and close the gap.”

Juggling leadership roles and family has been a central topic of Sandberg’s in numerous speeches she has given in recent years.

Among the key themes she has outlined — most prominently in a TEDTalk in 2010, which is embedded below — is the lack of progress for women in top positions and the loss to society when half the population holds only one-fifth of the top jobs across key industries.

The title comes from her advice in these speeches for women to lean in to their work rather than lean back, as many tend to do for a variety of reasons at key points in their careers.

In the speeches, Sandberg — who worked in a high-ranking job at Google and also did a stint in government at the Treasury Department in the Clinton administration — also advised women not to “leave before you leave” a job.

In one speech, she said:

“So, my heartfelt message is: Don’t leave before you leave. Don’t lean back, lean in. Keep your foot on the gas pedal until the day you have to make a decision. That’s the only way to ensure you even have a decision to make.”

The book’s publication, largely due to Sandberg’s prominence, is likely to reignite a heated debate over the longstanding issue about women and work. That includes in tech, where there are still a paucity of female CEOs, board members and venture capitalists.

Speaking of debate, publishing such a book — or being seen as doing anything not related directly to Facebook’s business — at such a dicey time for the company is sure to attract some negative attention for Sandberg and possibly Facebook.

That’s especially true after its botched public offering, which has been followed by a deep drop in the stock to half its initial IPO price and worries about its core business growth.

To be fair, the ideas in “Lean In” have been developed over many years and Sandberg has long noted that the discussion of these issues is too important to wait.

Sandberg said she finished the book well before Facebook’s recent tumultuous IPO and on her own time.

She added that she would eventually promote it on her own vacation time, too, and that all her profits will go to charities that support women. But Sandberg did not volunteer the advance she got paid for “Lean In.”

Along with that possible (and inevitable) why-aren’t-you-fixing-the-stock criticism, penning such a book might also further encourage persistent rumors that Sandberg will eventually leave Facebook, including to pursue a political office.

Not true, said Sandberg, who said firmly that she plans to stay put at Facebook as the No. 2 exec to co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He has apparently known about the book project since its beginning and has encouraged it.

To complete the book — which is now being edited — Sandberg worked with a full-time writer, Nell Scovell, as well as a researcher, Marianne Cooper.

Scovell, a journalist and longtime television writer in Hollywood, started helping Sandberg with her speeches about two years ago. Cooper is a sociologist at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University and is the author of the forthcoming University of California Press book, “Cut Adrift: Families in Insecure Times.”

Until the book is out, here’s a taste of what Sandberg has had to say so far on women and leadership at both her TEDTalk in December of 2010 and also at a commencement speech at Barnard College last May:

So, no news there, really. What would have been more interesting is if one of HBO’s digital competitors — say, Netflix — or someone who was contemplating becoming a competitor — say, Google or Apple — had been bidding for the rights. But I’m told that didn’t happen here.

The deal does have one interesting wrinkle for digital-media watchers. Fox (which, like this site, is owned by News Corp.) and HBO officials say the deal includes a “softening” of the “electronic sell-through” window.

In real-world terms: Previous HBO contracts meant that Fox — or other studios — couldn’t sell or rent their movies electronically while HBO was running them for the first time. Now, Fox will have the ability sell its stuff — but not rent it — on iTunes, Amazon, etc., at the same time the titles show up on HBO. (HBO and Fox had already agreed to a deal that solved a different windowing problem for Apple’s iCloud locker.)

I’m told the new terms will also apply to movies covered by the existing pact. So, while you currently can’t get “X Men: First Class” from iTunes, because it’s in its first HBO run, you should be able to get it soon.

Does that really matter? Hard to say: To date, the market for digital sales and rentals has been pretty meager compared to the old DVD business. But if that market does end up getting bigger, it’s a new revenue stream for the Fox guys. And presumably for other studios as well — an HBO executive says the company is in talks with its corporate cousins at Warner Bros.

It’s also another encouraging sign that media owners and distributors are closing up some of those weird rights gaps that make zero sense to consumers.

A new survey from the magazine places the Netflix streaming service sixth in user satisfaction, behind, well, just about everybody: Walmart’s Vudu, Apple’s iTunes, Amazon’s Instant and Prime offerings, and Hulu. The big ding against Netflix: It doesn’t have a selection of stuff people want to see.

Anyone who follows digital video will see the obvious asterisk that should come with the ranking: It compares apples and oranges.

Netflix is a subscription video-on-demand service, which means it gets a much smaller selection of titles (particularly movies), than a la carte rental services like Vudu and iTunes. It’s like complaining that the Endless Shrimp special at Red Lobster doesn’t include snow crab legs. Different things, different economics, different prices.

But most people don’t follow digital video — they just want to watch stuff. And carping about selection is not a new critique — it’s the one you hear anecdotally from lots of people who use or have used Netflix (kids are a different story).

Hastings could rectify this, at a minimum, by adding a la carte rentals in addition to his subscription offerings. But he’s remained ardently opposed to the idea, for whatever reason.

Near-term, this won’t be as problematic for Hastings as the disappointing growth guidance he offered up Tuesday afternoon, which led to yesterday’s stock dive. And I personally stopped taking Consumer Reports that seriously in March, when they warned that the new iPad could kinda maybe get not exactly hot but sort of tepid. But for lots of people, Consumer Reports is still Consumer Reports, and their word — or at least word of their word — carries lots of weight.

Small consolation prize for Netflix: Consumer Reports thinks the company’s original DVD-by-mail business — the “old fogey discs” business, in Hastings’s words — is the best disc rental service. But that’s the business Hastings has decided to let fall away.

Update: The Consumer Reports reps who sent me a preview of their article have now asked me to pull the screenshot of their ratings graphic, which they don’t want republished beyond their magazine and Web site. That’s frustrating, but I’ll do my best to replicate the important stuff here:

Streaming services (name/reader score):

1. Vudu/76
2. iTunes/75
3. Amazon Instant/74
4. Amazon Prime/70
5. Hulu/70
6. Netflix/69
7. Video-on-demand channels/68
8. Hulu Plus/66

Disc rentals:

1. Netflix/78
2. Independent stores/77
3. Redbox/77
4. Blockbuster/71
5. Blockbuster Express/69
6. Blockbuster Total Access/68

Even though videogames are becoming one of America’s biggest pastimes, and compete alongside movies and TV for our free time, game creators don’t exactly get hounded by the paparazzi.

A new project called Critical Path is trying to change that by raising the profiles of some of the videogame industry’s most influential designers.

After two years of filming, Critical Path is launching an online archive of video interviews with the industry’s superstars, including Richard Hilleman (pictured right), the producer of Madden and Tiger Woods Golf; Will Wright, a game designer for The Sims and Spore; and Todd Howard, a game director for The Elder Scrolls series.

Think of it as akin to “Inside the Actors Studio,” but instead of Dave Chappelle or Billy Crystal opining about their profession, it’s game leaders who are chatting about the art, philosophy, politics and psychology of videogames. Like the James Lipton-hosted show, the interviews don’t include any clips of the actual work, but instead keep the focus on the people and what they say.

There have been several efforts recently to help recognize how videogames have contributed to pop culture and to present the games as something larger, including an exhibit called “The Art of Video Games” at the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum.

The Critical Path site was created by Los Angeles-based Artifact, which specializes in documentary films. Recent credits include “Behind the Wall: The Making of Skyrim” for Bethesda Softworks, and the HBO documentary feature “Koran By Heart.” The studio hopes to turn the dozens of clips it has archived into a documentary film, once it gets the funding.

Here’s the trailer for the project:

The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of changing their views to fit the facts, they try to change the facts to fit their views.

– Kim Dotcom, in an open letter to Hollywood, written from house arrest in New Zealand

Sailesh wondered aloud, “How much time do we have for any of these?” “How many of them can coexist?” and “Do we really need them?” My answers were, respectively: “A lot.” “Many of them.” and “No, but we want them.” That dinner discussion prompted some observations that I am outlining here, and I invite you to share your own observations in the comments below.

In a nutshell, the Internet has evolved from being a need-driven utility medium with only a handful of winners to a discovery-driven entertainment medium with room for multiple winners. The necessary and sufficient conditions for this evolution are now in place — broadband, real names and tablets are the three horsemen of this New New Web. As consumers, entrepreneurs and investors, we should get used to the fact that the online economy is increasingly blurring with the offline economy, and in the limit, that distinction will disappear. As a result, just as in the real world, the Web of entertainment will be much bigger than the Web of utility.

A Theory of Human Motivation
One framework for understanding the consumer Internet is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which Abraham Maslow put forward as a way of explaining human behavior at large. The core premise is that once our basic needs of food, shelter, safety and belonging are satisfied, we tend to focus on things that are related to creativity, entertainment, education and self-improvement. A key aspect of this framework is that it’s sequential: Unless the basic needs are met, one cannot focus on other things. As an example, a study in 2011 showed that humans who are hungry will spend more on food and less on non-food items compared to those who are not hungry. Using this framework, we can see how consumer adoption of the Web has evolved over the last 20 years, and why all of the ingredients are only now in place for consumers to use the Web for what Maslow called “self-actualization” — a pursuit of one’s full potential, driven by desire, not by necessity.

1992-2012: Web of Need
Between the AOL IPO in 1992 and the Facebook IPO last month, the Internet has largely been in the business of satisfying basic consumer needs. In 1995, the year Netscape went public and made the internet accessible to the masses, I was a young product manager for a consumer Internet company called Global Village Communication. We were a newly minted public company and our hottest product was a “high speed” fax/modem with a speed of 33.6 kbps. Back then, using the Internet as a consumer or making a living off it as a business was rather difficult, and sometimes simply frustrating. In the subsequent years the basic needs of access, browser, email, search and identity were solved by companies such as AOL, Comcast, Netscape, Yahoo, Google, LinkedIn and Facebook.

2012-?: Web of Want
Today, the billion users on Facebook have reached the apex of Maslow’s hierarchy on the web. All of our basic needs have been satisfied. Now we are in pursuit of self-actualization. It is no surprise that on the Web, we are now open to playing games (Zynga, Angry Birds), watching video (YouTube, Hulu), listening to music (Pandora, Spotify), expressing our creativity (Instagram, Twitter, Draw Something), window shopping (Pinterest, Gojee*) and pursuing education (Khan Academy, Empowered*).

The Web Is Becoming Like TV
How do we make sense out of a Web where multiple providers coexist, serving groups of people who share a similar desire? Turns out we already have a very good model for understanding how this can work: Television. Specifically, cable television. The Web is becoming like TV, with hundreds of networks or “channels” that are programmed to serve content to an audience with similar desires and demographics. Pinterest, ShoeDazzle, Joyous and Alt12* programmed for young, affluent women; Machinima, Kixeye and Kabam programmed for mostly male gamers; Gojee* for food enthusiasts; Triposo* for travellers; GAINFitness* for fitness fans and so on.

In this new new Web, an important ingredient to success is a clear understanding of the identity of your users to ensure that you are programming to that user’s interests. The good news is that unlike TV, the Web has a feedback loop. Everything can be measured and as a result the path from concept to success can be more capital efficient by measuring what type of programming is working every step of the way — it’s unlikely that the new new Web will ever produce a Waterworld.

Why Now? Broadband, Real Names & Tablets
As my partner Doug Pepper recently wrote, a key question when evaluating a new opportunity is to ask “Why Now?” Certainly, companies like AOL, Yahoo and Myspace have tried before to program the Web to cater to interests of specific audiences. What’s different now? Three things: Broadband, real names and tablets.

The impact of broadband is obvious; we don’t need or want anything on a slow Web. With broadband penetration at 26 percent in industrialized countries and 3G penetration at about 15 percent of the world’s population, we are just reaching critical mass of nearly 1B users on the fast Web.

Real names are more interesting. In 1993, the New Yorker ran the now famous cartoon; “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” This succinctly captured the state of the anonymous Web at the time. Reid Hoffman and Mark Zuckerberg changed that forever. Do we find Q&A on Quora to be more credible than Yahoo! Answers, celebrity profiles on Twitter more engaging than Myspace and pins on Pinterest more relevant than recommendations on early AOL chatrooms? I certainly do, and that is largely because Quora, Twitter and Pinterest take advantage of real names. Real names are blurring the distinction between online and offline behavior.

Finally, the tablet, the last necessary and sufficient piece that fuels the “Web of want.” The PC is perfect for the “Web of need” — when we need something, we can search for it, since we know what we are looking for. Searching is a “lean-forward” experience, typing into our PC, either at work or at the home office. The Web over the last decade has been optimized for this lean-forward search experience — everything from SEO to Web site design to keyword shortcuts in popular browsers makes that efficient. However, smartphones and tablets allow us to move to a “lean-back” experience, flipping through screens using our fingers, often in our living rooms and bedrooms, on the train or at the coffee shop. Tablets make discovery easy and fun, just like flipping channels on TV at leisure. These discoveries prompt us to want things we didn’t think we needed.

Early Signs
This thesis is easy to postulate, but is there any evidence that users are looking to the Web as anything more than a productivity platform? As has been reported, mobile devices now make up 20 percent of all U.S. Web traffic, and this usage peaks in the evening hours, presumably when people are away from their office. Analysis from Flurry* shows that cumulative time spent on mobile apps is closing in on TV. We certainly don’t seem to be using the Web only when we need something.

Economy of Need Versus Want
The economy of Want is different from the economy of Need. We humans tend to spend a lot more time and money on things we want compared to things we need. For example, Americans spend more than five hours a day on leisure and sports (including TV), compared to about three hours spent on eating, drinking and managing household activities. Another difference is that when it comes to satisfying our needs, we tend to settle on one provider and give that one all of our business. Think about how many companies provide us with electricity, water, milk, broadband access, search, email and identity. The Need economy is a winner-take-all market, with one or two companies dominating each need. However, when it comes to providing for our wants, we are open to being served by multiple providers. Think about how many different providers are behind the TV channels we watch, restaurants we visit, destinations we travel to and movies we watch. The Want economy can support multiple winners, each with a sizeable business. Instagram, Path, Pinterest, ShoeDazzle, BeachMint, Angry Birds, CityVille, Kixeye, Kabam, Machinima and Maker Studios can all coexist.

Investing in the Web of Want
The chart below shows that over a long term (including a global recession) an index of luxury stocks (companies such as LVMH, Burberry, BMW, Porsche, Nordstrom) outperforms an index of utility stocks (companies such as Con Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric that offer services we all need). The same applies to an index of media stocks (companies such as CBS, Comcast, News Corp., Time Warner, Viacom) which outperforms both the utilities and the broader stock market. Of course, higher returns come with higher volatility — Nordstrom’s beta is 1.6 and CBS’ beta is 2.2, compared to 0.29 for PG&E. It is this volatility that has cast investing in the Want business as a career-ending move in Silicon Valley for the past 20-plus years. As the Web evolves from serving our needs to satisfying our wants and, in turn, becomes a much larger economy, sitting on the sidelines of the Web of Want may not be an option.

Let’s Not Kill Hollywood
With a billion users looking for self-actualization and with the widespread adoption of broadband, real names and tablets, the Web is poised to become the medium for creativity, education, entertainment, fashion and the pursuit of happiness. As the offline world shows, large, profitable companies can be built that cater to these desires. Entrepreneurs and investors looking to succeed in the new new Web can learn quite a few lessons from our friends in the luxury and entertainment businesses, which have been managing profitable “want” businesses for decades. The fusion of computer science, design, data, low friction and the massive scale of the Internet can result in something that is better than what either Silicon Valley or Hollywood can do alone. It is no wonder that the team that came to this conclusion before anyone else is now managing the most valuable company in the world.

Epilogue
When we go see a movie or splurge on a resort vacation, we don’t stop using electricity, brushing our teeth or checking our email. The Web of Want is not a replacement for the Web of Need, it is an addition. Many of the Internet companies that satisfied our needs in the last 20 or more years of the Web are here to stay. In fact, they will become more entrenched and stable, with low beta, just like the utilities in the offline world. Microsoft has a beta of exactly 1.0 — it is no more volatile than the overall stock market. And for those longing for the days of “real computer science” on the Web, do not despair. Just keep an eye on Rocket Science and Google X Labs — there is plenty of hard-core engineering ahead.

Disclosures: * indicates an InterWest portfolio company. Google Finance was used for all of the stock charts and beta references.

Keval Desai is a Partner at InterWest, where he focuses on investments in early-stage companies that cater to the needs and wants of consumers. He started his career in Silicon Valley in 1991 as a software engineer. He has been a mentor and investor in AngelPad since inception. You can follow him @kevaldesai.

Without further ado, here’s one of the more controversial interviews of the 10th D: All Things Digital conference — Hollywood super-agent Ari Emanuel unplugged.

Actually, he is usually a very live wire, which the crowd at the event did not get to see burning hot until the very end, in a testy exchange with The Verge’s Josh Topolsky.

This exchange caused some level of debate online over Emanuel’s brusque manner, including some cursing. But — however riveting it is to watch their argument devolve from initially like a funny wrestling match to really pissed-off — there’s a lot more to the interview to pay mind to.

Emanuel — who co-heads William Morris Endeavor, one of Hollywood’s most important talent agencies — talked about a range of issues, from a recent investment by private equity firm Silver Lake to spur more digital initiatives, to the state of the entertainment industry, to crowdfunding movies.

But it was the topic of intellectual property piracy that got Emanuel’s content-loving juices flowing, taking particular aim at Google for not doing enough to filter out stolen copyright-protected material.

Here’s the video of the full interview: