AllThingsD » Media

The Onion, Yahoo-Hulu and Android on Windows — 10 Things You Need to See on AllThingsD This Week

Eric Johnson — Sun, 12 May 2013 16:18:01 +0000

In case you missed anything, here’s a quick weekend roundup of the news that powered AllThingsD this week:

Wondering just how much your new S4 costs? Market research firm IHS pegs the cost of Samsung’s new flagship smartphone at just above $237 per unit.
It planned to do so originally, but Google will not roll out a physical credit card later this month to bolster its “Google Wallet” commerce project.
Everyone who works in Web advertising seems to be talking about the same video ad lately, and here it is: A three-minute-28-second mini-documentary from McDonald’s Canada.
The Onion is best known for its prowess at disseminating false information. But it performed an “awesome” public service this week when it explained in detail just how it got hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army.
Brace yourselves: Windows Blue is coming. Yes, Microsoft confirmed this week that an update to the “no compromise” PC-mobile hybrid OS Windows 8 is on the way.
In other Microsoft-related news, BlueStacks’ software that lets you emulate Android apps inside of Windows has been downloaded more than 10 million times. And it’s still in beta.
Mobile videogames currently cater to easily distracted players, but is there room for more thoughtful strategy games? Firaxis Games’ Sid Meier (a.k.a. the Civilization guy) says yes.
Two new iPad apps claim that they can teach children programming skills directly on the tablet. But can they? Lauren Goode puts Hopscotch and Kodable to the test.
It hasn’t made a formal bid, but Yahoo has joined the gang of companies meeting with wanna-sell execs at Hulu.
Social video startup Viddy is returning most of its Series B round to investors and moving people in and out of its board.

To stay on top of the latest, follow AllThingsD on Twitter and Facebook, and subscribe to our daily email newsletter.

LinkedIn Brings Rich Media to Profiles

Mike Isaac — Wed, 01 May 2013 15:00:17 +0000

LinkedIn on Wednesday announced that it will now allow users to add video and photos to their profile pages — essentially, a way to let users create a more visual representation of an online resume. The update will begin rolling out to members of English-speaking countries on Wednesday.

Twitter Hires Media Vet to Spearhead Canadian Office

Mike Isaac — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 18:16:28 +0000

Twitter announced on Monday that it hired Kirstine Stewart as the managing director (and, ha, the first hire) of Twitter Canada. Stewart comes from a background in media, previously serving as EVP at CBC Radio Services in Canada. She’ll be looking to build a team, beginning in Toronto.

Under New Content Boss, AOL Shutters Music Division (Likely With More to Come)

Mike Isaac — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 20:07:56 +0000

AOL has shuttered its entire Music division, the company announced on Friday, laying off the few dozen employees in a division that has faltered over the past few years.

News of the layoffs leaked on Friday afternoon, as staffers who were in attendance live-tweeted their own dismissals.

AOL joins the ranks of the major portals offloading their music divisions over the past six years. 2006 saw Microsoft’s shuttering of MSN Music, while Yahoo closed the doors on its Yahoo Music services in 2008, as well as shutting down its MusicMatch service the year prior (just three years after acquiring it in 2004 for $160 million).

AOL Music, in particular, has waned in popularity with the rise of other streaming music services like Spotify, Pandora and the like, along with a series of executive departures.

That, coupled with the entrance of AOL’s new brand group CEO Susan Lyne, makes the move not an entirely surprising one. Lyne has noted in previous interviews upon first taking the job that she’d be looking hard at AOL’s existing content properties, pointing out under-performers and deciding what to do — or not do — with them.

“If we were doing everything really well already, then I wouldn’t be here,” Lyne told AllThingsD in a previous interview.

AOL did not respond to a request for comment.

While it may be the end of AOL Music proper, I’d doubt it’s the end of entertainment for AOL. Lyne comes from a background in media, running ABC’s entertainment division in the past as well as Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. I figure this is a culling of slouching properties that’ll sting existing employees, while perhaps rethinking the way the brands approach content properties in the future.

A consolidation of sorts, methinks. (TBD on how that sort of approach will work for the company.)

So while that all makes sense, I’m sure it doesn’t do much for the employees being let go. Dan Reilly, one of the employees tweeting his layoff, summed it up quite nicely in a parting tweet:

Well, at least I found a good reason to finish off the whiskey at my desk.

— Dan Reilly (@danreilly11) April 26, 2013

Syrian Pro-Government Hackers Take Their Fight to CBS and Twitter

Arik Hesseldahl — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 15:52:18 +0000

We now know who it was that carried out the hacking attacks on the Twitter accounts of various CBS News outlets last night: The Syrian Electronic Army.

It’s a band of digital activists and hackers who support the beleaguered government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The group, which claimed credit for the attacks via a statement on its website, has a history of attacking the websites and social media accounts of various western media organizations.

On April 16, it attacked websites and some Twitter accounts belonging to NPR. Last month, it attacked the website of Human Rights Watch, as well as its Twitter account. Also in March, it breached a Twitter account belonging to the BBC. And last year it gained access to a blog belonging to Reuters, and posted a fake story, detailing a retreat by Syrian rebels that hadn’t happened.

CBS experienced at least one more attack last night after the initial one. The Verge captured images of three more tweets from the account belonging to its high-profile Sunday night magazine show “60 Minutes,” presumably sent by hijackers. Today, as of 8:15 am PT, the “60 Minutes” Twitter account and that of another CBS show, “48 Hours,” were suspended.

Matt Polevoy, a social media producer at CBS News, announced the suspension:

Update: We’ve suspended the 60 Minutes account while we investigate with Twitter.

April 20, 2013 7:59 pm via Tweetbot for iOS ReplyRetweetFavorite

@CBSMatt

Matthew Polevoy

Obviously, those messages posted did NOT come from 60 Minutes staff. This is serious matter and we’re treating it as such.

April 20, 2013 8:09 pm via Tweetbot for iOS ReplyRetweetFavorite

@CBSMatt

Matthew Polevoy

A Twitter account belonging to the Syrian Electronic Army has also been suspended, but, in what appears to be a rolling battle with Twitter, the group appears to have created a new one. It seems to be doing the same thing with Facebook, creating new accounts every time an old one is shut down. A message posted to the current Twitter account contained the following video that appeared to take credit for the attacks against CBS:

No comment yet from Twitter. Since it’s a Sunday night, it will be interesting to see if there’s any mention of the incident on “60 Minutes” tonight.

Of course, this is all taking place against the backdrop of a quickening of events with regard to the U.S. and Syria, so it’s no surprise that pro-Assad hackers would seek to make a statement of some kind and get attention. And while most of our attention has been focused on Boston, there’s been a lot going on.

Last week officials from the United Kingdom told the United Nations about concerns that chemical weapons had been used by the Assad regime. And that’s important because President Obama has often referred to that as a “red line,” though he hasn’t exactly spelled out what crossing it means. Presumably, it could mean military intervention.

Also this week, the Pentagon ordered 200 people into neighboring Jordan to help that country deal with the potential use of chemical weapons, and to prevent the fighting from spilling over its borders. Separately, the U.S. said it would double the amount of nonlethal aid that is going to the rebels.

So you can see why pro-Assad sympathizers might want to get your attention right now.

Some 75,000 people have been killed in the three-year-old civil war, and many thousands more have been displaced. It has effectively become a military stalemate, and a bloody one at that.

Shuttered Ad Tech Startup Team Lands at Intel's Web TV Project

Peter Kafka — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 01:42:22 +0000

Earlier this year, we told you that advertising exchange AdBrite was shutting down and selling itself in pieces.

Now we know where one of the pieces has gone: Intel’s TV-over-the-Web project. Intel Media has picked up five members of AdBrite’s core engineering team, according to a person familiar with the move.

In what was essentially an “acqhire,” Intel grabbed AdBrite’s CTO, along with four other former employees; I’m told they will work on data and analytics projects, which will include everything from ad systems to content recommendations.

Intel Media is a small but very ambitious project from the chipmaker, which is trying to do something that tech/media heavyweights like Google and Apple have yet to attempt. Intel Media head Erik Huggers says he plans to start selling pay TV, delivered over the Internet, sometime later this year, in conjunction with an Intel-built set-top box.

In order to do that, Intel has to clear a lot of hurdles, including getting programming deals with all or most of the big TV networks. So far we haven’t heard any of them say that they’re on board, but Intel keeps insisting that it is making progress.

Here’s a highlight reel of Huggers’ interview with Walt Mossberg and myself at D: Dive Into Media earlier this year, where he first outlined his ambitions in public:

[ See post to watch video ]

Amid PC Sales Slide, All Eyes on Intel's Quarterly Results

Arik Hesseldahl — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 13:28:12 +0000

When the chipmaker Intel reports its quarterly results today after markets close in New York, no one is expecting especially good news, nor much of a positive outlook.

Intel shares have traded lower since last Thursday, when the market research firms IDC and Gartner said they had tracked one of the largest year-on-year declines in sales of personal computers since records have been kept. Intel is the largest supplier of microprocessors to PC manufacturers like Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Apple, and it’s hard to see how much good news it can possibly bring to the table today.

Analysts are expecting Intel to report a profit of 41 cents per share on sales of $12.6 billion, and missing either would be seen as more or less proving that the PC market is in a state of permanent decline. So would a weak outlook for the current quarter, for which analysts currently expect earnings of 40 cents on $12.9 billion in sales.

There are other aspects to Intel’s business. It has a healthy data center business selling chips for use in servers, but out of more than $53 billion in sales last year, $34 billion, or more than 61 percent, was in its “client,” or PC, unit, while the data center group accounted for about $10.7 billion.

In the past, Intel executives have quarreled with the analyst firms, and said it was seeing more promising conditions in emerging markets. Indeed, in prior years there has been a disconnect between the dour pronouncements of Gartner and IDC and the peppier market conditions that Intel would later describe in its financial results in places like Brazil, Indonesia and Russia. In more recent quarters, the differences between their views have narrowed.

Aside from PCs, Intel has some new ideas that it hopes will kick its data center business into a higher gear. And it certainly has higher hopes about selling more chips for use in phones and tablets, but as yet they’re only hopes. It also plans to launch a TV product later this year.

Aside from the numbers, expect some questions — and maybe even some answers, but probably nothing conclusive yet — about the search for a replacement for CEO Paul Otellini. The smart money says the choice will be an internal one (here’s a rundown on the contenders), though there’s a slim chance that Intel’s board might be in the mood to surprise everyone and name an outsider. But don’t bet any money you can’t afford to lose on that.

The More Mobile Devices You Have, the More Valuable Mobile Content Becomes

John Paczkowski — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 20:27:00 +0000

Smartphones aren’t simply transforming the manner in which media is delivered and consumed; they’re transforming its value, as well. This according to the Boston Consulting Group, which argues that mobile devices are far more than just enablers of media consumption.

In a new report, “Through the Mobile Looking Glass,” BCG notes that consumers’ perceived value of online media increases as they purchase additional mobile devices. According to the firm’s research, there is a 41 percent increase in perceived media value when consumers add a second mobile device to their collection, another 40 percent increase when they add a third, and a 30 percent increase when they add a fourth.

In other words, people with more mobile devices value the media they get through them more than those with fewer devices. Makes sense, right? You get more value out of your HBO subscription if you’re able to finish that “Game of Thrones” episode you started watching on your TV set on your iPad while commuting home from work. And if your iPad battery runs out on that trip and you can finish it on your phone? More value still, right?

It’s an interesting idea: Mobile devices can inspire people to value a product or service above and beyond what they pay for it. Is that a boon for media companies?

“The fact that consumers value media higher the more devices they have is first and foremost a reflection of the strong value consumers put on being able to consume media on devices dependent on their situation or context — PC at the desk, tablet while lounging around, or phone while on the commute, for example,” BCG senior partner David R. Dean told AllThingsD. “The challenge for media companies is to make this work seamlessly — for example, syncing where the consumer left off. Obviously, there’s also a challenge for the device guys, not least because some consumers will want to consume across different ecosystems.”

Picturelife Tackles Simple Photo Storage

Lauren Goode — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 13:00:23 +0000

My digital photo life is a mess.

I have thousands of photos scattered throughout my computer, stored on backup drives, blasted to social networks and copied in different cloud services. There are currently 3,025 photos stored on my iPhone. And let’s not forget about the pictures in iPhoto.

It shouldn’t be so hard to get all of these photos organized in one place.

That’s what Picturelife, a recently launched cloud-storage service, aims to do. Picturelife, which was created by three startup entrepreneurs, wants to be Switzerland amid fractured photo-nations. It promises to do all the photo syncing for you when you’re not looking, to and from your desktop, mobile apps and various social network accounts. It also stores video clips.

[ See post to watch video ]

It works on both Mac and Windows computers. A full-featured version of Picturelife is available for iPhone and iPad, but the mobile app for Android is a limited version. There isn’t a Windows mobile app yet.

To start, Picturelife gives you five gigabytes of cloud storage for free; after that, it costs $7 a month or $70 a year for 100GB, and $15 a month or $150 a year for 300GB.

Maybe you’re more organized than I am, and you’re thinking: I’m already pretty committed to another media-storage service, like Flickr, or SmugMug, or the popular cloud service Dropbox. Or maybe you’re content with iPhoto.

Picturelife does have a lot of the same features as similar services. It also costs more than some (though less than Dropbox). And as a “freemium” service that is charging customers, it has some new-service kinks it needs to work out.

But it offers a few features the others don’t. It performs simple imports from your other photo sources, including iPhoto, Flickr, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, SmugMug and iPhoto. It has pretty clear-cut privacy controls, which you might appreciate if you’re fed up with the way Facebook handles privacy. And it offers incentives like bonus storage space just for sharing photos with friends.

I signed up for Picturelife, selected my plan and downloaded both the Mac desktop app and the iOS mobile app. Picturelife then appeared in the top menu bar on my computer screen, and as a “droplet” icon on the desktop. Picturelife doesn’t compress photo files, and it supports RAW files, too.

The desktop app’s layout sort of mirrors iPhoto, but has a nice, modern feel to it. On the left-hand side is a list of photo categories: Timeline (photos sorted by date), Albums, Places and All Pictures. On the right are a bunch of photo thumbnails, which can be size-adjusted. While the photo thumbnails are loading, the pictures appear with cool-looking color bars.

When you first log in, Picturelife should ask you which folders you want to sync your photos from, like Pictures, Downloads, Desktop, iPhoto or iCloud Photo Stream. In my experience, Picturelife simply began indexing all of the photos that existed on my computer — including work photos, screen grabs and photos from really old backup drives.

I was a little irritated by this, because Picturelife just grabbed a bunch of photos I didn’t want there. It also led to some duplicates, which Picturelife promises to avoid. Picturelife said it has fixed a bug that caused the service to pull from certain folders — in my case, an old iPhoto folder I had stored on a backup drive — and said that users should and will be given more initial control over the onboarding process.

After uploading the photos from my computer, I set about transferring the 3,000 photos from my iPhone to Picturelife. I could do this via the Picturelife mobile app, provided I was connected to a Wi-Fi network, or by tethering my phone to the computer. Syncing via Wi-Fi would have taken a full day, whereas tethering only took about 10 minutes.

From then on, the Picturelife iPhone app automatically grabbed any new picture I took with my phone and synced it with my account. This isn’t particularly innovative: Apple’s Photo Stream does this, too, though there’s a 1,000-picture limit on the photos you can keep on your device in Photo Stream at a time. (And syncing across four products — Photo Stream, iCloud, iPhoto and iPhone — is admittedly a little confusing. At least Picturelife has one brand name.)

I also linked some of my other accounts to Picturelife to import and share photos. I did this by going first to Picturelife settings, and then to “accounts.” I connected to Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram and Twitter, but also had the option to connect to Google, Tumblr, Flickr and others. Picturelife quickly sucked up the photos from those accounts. It even imported photos in which other people tagged me on Facebook.

I liked Picturelife’s smart search function — which iPhoto doesn’t have — although it could be a bit smarter. When I searched for photos from “summer,” more than 600 photos came up that were from the past few summers. When I searched for photos from “Japan,” images from my recent trip to Japan came up. But when I searched for photos from a “New Orleans wedding,” a whopping 663 results came up, most of which were not from the wedding. Picturelife says it’s continually improving the search feature.

Sharing select photos from Picturelife to my social networks was pretty standard. Most photo services do this. But Picturelife makes privacy controls refreshingly simple. All photos are private by default. Should you decide to share a photo or an album, you can select, in the “Info” section of each photo, whether you want to send it to specific people, a group of people or a family member.

And even after you share it, if you change your mind, you can later go back and make it entirely private. I shared a photo to Twitter as part of my test, and later was able to adjust the settings so that Twitterers couldn’t see anything from the link I shared.

Picturelife’s app for iOS, like the desktop app, has viewing options for Timeline, Album and All Photos. In my experience, the app was fast and fluid, and offers some handy one-tap options like “Look for New Photos” or “Sync Entire Camera Roll.”

I did, however, encounter some minor bugs. Some of my pictures said “null” on them in my own Picturelife account, and the service misidentified the locations of some of my media in the “Places” map. And currently there isn’t an easy way to find imported video clips.

So Picturelife still has room for improvement. But I can definitely say that it has enough features to make it an appealing option for photo-happy consumers.

AppGratis Gets the Boot & WhatsApp Ain't Selling: The AllThingsD Week in Review 4/07/13 — 4/13/13

Eric Johnson — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 01:00:32 +0000

For our readers who are not inclined to constantly hit the refresh button, here’s a quick look back at the Top 10 stories that drove AllThingsD this week:

[note: this article is from February, but resurfaced this week]

For more of the week in review, you should follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Google Plans to Announce Something in Austin Next Week

Arik Hesseldahl — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 21:02:43 +0000

Google and the city of Austin, Texas, will be making what they call a “very important announcement” next week — at least, according to a batch of invitations that have been sent to reporters in the last few hours.

VentureBeat is speculating that the company will reveal the next city selected to become part of the Google Fiber project, which the search giant started in the Kansas City area last year. Or that Austin might become the home of the latest Google campus.

In case you missed it, Google’s idea with Google Fiber is to offer smoking-fast 1 gigabit broadband Internet connections — almost but not entirely unique in the US — along with pay TV service, all via its own fiber optic lines.

One reason that it’s probably not Google Fiber is that months before Google made its formal announcement about the service, it first petitioned local regulators to allow it do so, and it was widely covered by the media. (Cable TV rights are, in most states, regulated at the city or county level.) There hasn’t been a peep about regulatory approval for Austin.

What else might it be? A new building? Maybe. There are plenty of tech companies, including Apple and Dell, with big presences in Austin. Or maybe just free Wi-Fi for a few neighborhoods. Google did that in New York City — not the whole city, mind you, just the neighborhood surrounding its massive office in the Chelsea section of Manhattan — earlier this year, and even got Mayor Bloomberg himself to show up at the announcement.

If Google Fiber it is, it may mean that Google is simply announcing its intent to start a process that will include seeking local regulatory approval. Indeed, Austin has been campaigning to be among the next cities to which Google brings its fiber pipes. Here’s a short video in support of that effort starring game developer and space tourist Richard Garriott.

(Image is of this awesome t-shirt from KONG Screenprinting in Austin.)

Apple in China: From Dissed to Darling in a Day

John Paczkowski — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 17:54:05 +0000

“We approve of what Apple said.”
– China Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei

As expected, Apple’s rare public apology to China for its allegedly unfair warranty and repair policies has proven a fast-acting and effective antidote for escalating tensions in the country. Not 24 hours after its publication, and already the country’s state-run media has eased off the vitriol and is trading mudslinging for bouquet tossing.

China’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday lauded Apple for its “conscientious” response to the country’s concerns. And government mouthpiece The People’s Daily, which just days ago had been slagging Apple for its “unparalleled arrogance,” held the company up as a model for other foreign businesses.

“The company’s apology letter has eased the situation, softening the tense relationship between Apple and the Chinese market,” the publication wrote. “Its reaction is worth respect compared with other American companies. CCTV also deserves our respect and encouragement for daring to criticize a business giant like Apple.”

“Unparalleled arrogance” to “worth respect” in a day — what a swift and thorough rapprochement. Not bad for the small price Apple paid. As I wrote early this morning:

“Apple’s apology in China cost the company very little; indeed, the changes made to its repair policies in the country were relatively minor. But what it stands to gain from such a public mea culpa from Tim Cook could be significant, extending well beyond a simple easing of tensions in Beijing.”

Adria Richards' Response, Facebook's New Ad Plan and Finding the Next Steve Jobs: The AllThingsD Week In Review 3/24/13 — 3/30/13

Eric Johnson — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 19:00:17 +0000

Photo by Asa Mathat

For our readers who are not inclined to constantly hit the refresh button, here’s a quick look back the top 10 stories that drove AllThingsD this week:

For more of the week in review, you should follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Yahoo Paid $30 Million in Cash for 18 Months of Young Summly Entrepreneur's Time

Kara Swisher — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 15:35:27 +0000

Earlier today, Yahoo said it had acquired the trendy and decidedly stylish news reading app Summly, along with its telegenic and very young entrepreneur Nick D’Aloisio.

Yahoo said it plans to close down the actual app and use the algorithmic summation technology that the 17-year-old D’Aloisio built with a small team of five, along with a major assist from Silicon Valley research institute SRI International, throughout its products.

While Yahoo did not disclose the price, several sources told me that the company paid $30 million — 90 percent in cash and 10 percent in stock — to buy the London-based Apple smartphone app.

And despite its elegant delivery, that’s a very high price, especially since Summly has been downloaded slightly less than one million times since launch — after a quick start amid much publicity over its founder — with about 90 million “summaries” read. Of course, like many such apps, it also had no monetization plan as yet.

What Yahoo is getting, though, is perhaps more valuable — the ability to put the fresh-faced D’Aloisio front and center of its noisy efforts to make consumers see Yahoo as a mobile-first company. That has been the goal of CEO Marissa Mayer, who has bought up a range of small mobile startups since she took over nine months ago and who has talked about the need for Yahoo to focus on the mobile arena above all.

Mayer met with D’Aloisio, said sources, although the deal was struck by voluble M&A head Jackie Reses.

Said one person close to the deal, about the founder: “Nick will be a great person to put in front of the media and consumers with Mayer to make Yahoo seem like it is a place that loves both entrepreneurs and mobile experiences, which in turn will presumably attract others like him.”

Having met the young man in question, who was in San Francisco in the fall on a fundraising trip, I can see the appeal. He’s both well-spoken and adorkable, as well as very adept at charming cranky media types like me by radiating with the kinetic energy of someone born in the mobile world (you can see that in full force in the video below with actor and Summly investor Stephen Fry).

Still, D’Aloisio is very young and presumably has a lot of other entrepreneurial goals and that’s why he agreed as part of the deal to only officially stay 18 months at Yahoo, multiple sources told me. In many cases, startup founders strike such short-term employment deals with big companies, agreeing to stay for a certain determined time period.

He will also remain in England, where he lives with his parents, said sources. In addition, only two of Summly’s employees will go to Yahoo with D’Aloisio.

That’s $10 million each, along with a nifty app Yahoo will not be using as is (too bad, as it would up the hip and fun factor of Yahoo’s apps by a factor of a gazillion if it were maintained).

“It works out on a lot of levels,” said another person close to the situation. “Nick is a founder that will make Mayer and Yahoo look cutting edge.”

Cue the parade of PR profiles of the young genius made millionaire, helping Yahoo become relevant again.

I have an email for comment into the always friendly D’Aloisio. But I don’t expect a reply, since he has apparently been specifically instructed by the martinets of Yahoo PR not to talk to me any longer — well, for 18 months at least! (Don’t worry, Nick, I don’t blame you and will still listen to whatever you are pitching next, since you are so dang compelling and I enjoyed using Summly!)

Until then, here’s the faboo Summly video, with the best chairs ever:

Summly Launch from Summly on Vimeo.

Facebook to Introduce Hashtags -- And That's a Double-Edged Sword for Twitter

Mike Isaac — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 20:09:20 +0000

Facebook has always wanted to edge in on Twitter’s Interest Graph.

The idea is, it’s a boon for ad dollars, as Twitter’s real-time stream taps into the immediate sentiment of the crowd. Facebook’s Friend Graph, while powerful, isn’t designed for immediacy.

At least, not yet. As was previously reported by The Wall Street Journal, and as I’ve verified through sources of my own, Facebook plans to launch its own Linkify’d version of the hashtag, allowing users to connect common themes and trending topics around the social network by adding the simple hashtag symbol to a status update. Clicking through sends a reader down a rabbit hole of information, all connected to the hashtag being followed.

“We don’t comment on rumors and speculation,” Facebook told AllThingsD.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Facebook already hinted at something like this at its News Feed redesign event last week. Breaking up the entire feed into separate verticals — like photos, music, and the entire sharing stream instead of only some shares — was the most Twitter-y thing Facebook has done yet. I’m surprised they didn’t introduce the linked hashtags throughout the service at the News Feed event.

But drilling down on the hashtag specifically is a direct affront to Twitter, potentially dipping into Twitter’s valuable ad dollar territory.

Look at it this way: Imagine the power, Twitter would say, of an advertiser sticking an ad in a user’s face at the exact time they want to see it. If a user follows a hashtag about, say, #desserts, a company like Hostess could sell ads against anyone who searches that hashtag, sticking a promoted tweet for their delightful pink Sno-Balls in front of everyone following the hashtag. It’s a practice that’s slowly catching on for the advertisers who can understand it (but not every brand is totally up to speed on how to best advertise on Twitter).

Facebook, on the other hand, can’t tap into that trending sentiment quite as effectively. While the company does attempt to place relevant ads in the News Feed and lower-right-rail to reach its users, it would do better to let people dig deeper into trends across categories. So blatantly ripping off Twitter makes some sense here.

And Facebook has hinted that this could be a reality for the site. In January, the company debuted Graph Search, the nascent way of digging deep into Facebook by making connections through the Friend Graph. Also, Instagram has used hashtags for some time, though that seems to have grown out of the language of Twitter.

Essentially, edging in on Twitter’s advertising territory by offering a better way to connect ads to users could spell trouble for Twitter.

But there’s a glass-half-full way of looking at this.

One of Twitter’s largest issues has been its difficulty translating just how normal people are supposed to use the hashtag in the first place. When on-boarding new users, they’re faced with a litany of “at symbols” and hashtags, a language of Twitter’s own that isn’t immediately clear. Not to mention the difficulty of letting users know how to use hashtags effectively in search and discovery; right now, Twitter’s search and discovery tab has improved, but it has long been terrible.

So Facebook’s widespread adoption of this language could actually bring the lexicon to the masses, essentially introducing a billion newbies to a gnarly language — one which Twitter is still trying to figure out how to introduce to users.

Remember, Twitter: Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Just hope that this rip-off is to your advantage.

So, Why Isn't the Angry Birds Cartoon Coming to American TV?

Eric Johnson — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 19:21:47 +0000

“Literally, it’s a game-changer.”

That’s the snappy line Rovio strategist Andrew Stalbow is using to talk about the company’s forthcoming animated series, “Angry Birds Toons.” The show, first announced nearly a year ago, will be distributed primarily through an update to the Angry Birds game for smartphones and tablets.

The cartoons will also be available on Comcast’s on-demand services, Roku’s set-top boxes and Samsung’s smart TVs, and will be broadcast on TV in 12 countries — but not the U.S. — one day before each new episode comes to the apps.

Why is American broadcast TV not getting the show? It seemed like a natural fit, especially since Nickelodeon aired one of the first pre-series shorts in the run-up to Angry Birds: Space. The absence of Nick (or any other American station aimed at the younger set) from Rovio’s press release this morning was conspicuous.

Parents who would rather park Junior in front of the tube and keep the iPad for Mommy and Daddy, don’t despair. Stalbow left the door wide open for a future TV run in the States, even if initial talks didn’t result in a deal.

Andrew Stalbow

“We talked to everyone, and we’re friends with all of the different channels out there, but we needed a good place to start,” he said. “This is just the start.”

Rovio will roll out one new episode of “Angry Birds Toons” per week, with 52 of the three-minute to five-minute shorts planned so far. Unlike Netflix’s “House of Cards” episode dump, serialized installments will give players a reason to open the app more frequently over a longer period of time, and will likely expose them to new game features and cross-promotions for other games.

And even though downloads of Rovio’s games still tick up and up and up (crossing the 1.7 billion mark recently), engagement seems to be dropping: Onavo Insights estimates that active iPhone users of the original Angry Birds app dropped 22 percent in January.

After all, there are only so many ways to kill a pig.

Stalbow called the new series Rovio’s “transition from being a mobile games company to a fully-fledged entertainment company.” That’s markedly different from Cut the Rope makers ZeptoLab’s claim that “we’re a gaming company first,” in spite of a planned TV show of its own.

Stalbow said, though, that games are still the “engine driver” of Rovio’s IP.

So, what about those other games: Bad Piggies, which stars the villains from Angry Birds, and Amazing Alex, which takes place in a different world? I asked if they, too, would get the animation treatment, and again Stalbow left the possibilities open.

Stalbow said the focus right now is on the Angry Birds “classic world” (read: sorry, Bad Piggies fans), but that he expects animation to have some staying power within the company — it’s already one of the three pillars of Rovio’s new business, the other two being games and merchandise.

The first episode of “Angry Birds Toons” hits international TV on March 16, and games and on-demand services on March 17. Plus, Rovio is still working on that Angry Birds movie, now slated for a summer 2016 release.

Artificial Intelligence, Al Gore, Modern Blogging and More: Where to Find ATD at SXSW

Lauren Goode — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 19:40:47 +0000

Time again for app-flicking, party-hopping, BBQ-eating and, somewhere in between all that, panel-picking.

The interactive portion of the SXSW festival — known as “South By” to hip conference goers — kicks off Friday in Austin, Texas.

And speaking of panels, members of AllThingsD will be moderating a few key ones throughout the fest that you won’t want to miss. (We promise not to call you out if we see you hungover and sleeping in the back row. Just come.)

First off, nobody knows more about blogging than the boss, Kara Swisher, who has literally made liveblogging Yahoo’s earnings calls an award-winning venture. So on Saturday, March 9, at 12:30 pm local time, she’ll be interviewing Mr. WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, about the current state of blogging. More details here.

Later that afternoon, AllThingsD’s other boss, Walt Mossberg, will interview former vice president and New York Times bestselling author Al Gore about his new book, “The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change” — described as “a frank and clear-eyed assessment of the emerging forces that are reshaping our world.” That panel takes place at 3:30 pm local time.

Early risers, reporters who snoop and sources who snitch should add Peter Kafka’s panel to the calendar: At 9:30 am Saturday, he’ll be joined by panelists Ed Lee of Bloomberg News, Greg Galant of MuckRack and Joe Ciarallo of Salesforce.com (formerly of Buddy Media) to discuss the shifting dynamics between reporter and source in the age of social media. Here are the details on Peter’s panel.

And on Monday, March 11, I’ll be moderating a panel on artificial intelligence — think robots, “smart” calendars and natural-language search apps — with Dror Oren, executive director at SRI International; Raj Singh, founder of Tempo AI; and Nadav Gur, co-founder and CEO of Desti. That panel takes place at 3:30 pm.

And, of course, if you see us elsewhere — at the Mailbox/Dropbox/Highlight cocktail hour Sunday, at the Path/Spotify/A-Grade party that same night, at the Funny or Die + Team Coco’s Comedy Climax Party on Monday, or just hanging around the GroupMe Grill — come say hello.

(Feature art courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.)

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Artificial Intelligence, Al Gore, Modern Blogging and More: Where to Find ATD at SXSW

Matter Accelerator Announces First Class of Media Startups

Eric Johnson — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 14:30:47 +0000

Matter, an accelerator centered around for-profit media entrepreneurship, announced today the first six startups that will receive a $50,000 investment and three months of mentorship in San Francisco. The startups are: YouTube analytics platform ChannelMeter, news discovery app InkFold, citizen watchdog-journalism project OpenWatch, text-to-audio newsreader SpokenLayer, video playlist builder/broadcaster Station Creator, and “interactive storytelling” project Zeega. Matter’s partners and backers include the Knight Foundation, KQED and PRX. Its CEO, Corey Ford, spoke with AllThingsD in December about those partners and the accelerator’s goals.

Raising the Bar for Better TV Sound

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 23:06:02 +0000

If there’s one piece of technology in your home that’s still too frustrating to master, it’s a sound system for the television. People who don’t want to hire an expert to set up high-end speakers around the living room or go through the hassle of doing it themselves often settle for using the TV’s speakers.

The Sonos Playbar aims to bring high-quality sound to a TV without a complicated setup. I’ve been testing this $699 one-piece speaker system in my living room for the past week while watching a variety of shows and a few movies, and I’ll be sorry to send it back.

The $699 Sonos Playbar can work as a one-device sound system or can be used with additional Sonos speakers. The 12-pound device can be wall-mounted above or below the TV.

Alone, the Playbar produced a rich, smooth, powerful sound — even without its volume cranked up. But its winning attribute is the ability to loop TV audio into other Sonos speakers and choose what speakers play the audio. That’s because all of the company’s devices wirelessly communicate with one another, creating a multi-speaker sound experience without all the wiring.

The whole system can be controlled using a remote-control app that runs on Apple and Android devices, including phones and tablets. In short, the Sonos system is delightfully easy. Competing products exist, but many cost twice as much or require an add-on subwoofer for enhanced sound. And they don’t work with an entire system, like Sonos.

The Playbar marks Sonos’s first real foray into the TV arena. Since its debut about seven years ago, the company has focused on seamlessly piping digital music throughout many rooms. Like its predecessors, the Playbar is a cinch to set up and can play music from a computer or from Internet radio stations.

A system like this doesn’t come cheap. The Playbar costs more than some TVs and the newest models of its related speakers, the Play:3 and Play:5, cost $299 and $399, respectively. A pair of Play:3 speakers are the only Sonos components that will work with the Playbar to provide true surround sound.

And in some homes, like mine, the Playbar won’t be a perfect fit in the living room. My TV is in an armoire and the 3-foot-wide device couldn’t sit in the shelving below the TV. I ended up resting it on two half-opened drawers at the bottom.

Still, two of the Playbar’s features will be a cause for high fives. They are Night Sound and Speech Enhancement, and both are turned on using the free Sonos app. Night Sound lets parents with sleeping babies watch movies without fear of an action scene suddenly making it sound like the living room exploded. A simple message explains its function when you turn this on: “At lower volumes, quiet sounds will be enhanced and loud sounds will be suppressed.”

Using the Sonos app for iOS or Android devices, people can choose to hear the same audio in different rooms of the house.

Speech Enhancement was a particular favorite in my house, where we feel like we’re losing our hearing because we can’t understand the dialogue in some TV shows. For example, throughout this third season of PBS’s “Downton Abbey,” my husband and I were constantly cranking up the volume or rewinding the recorded show to catch the dowager countess’s zingers. And we use a basic surround-sound system in our living room. Watching the same show with Speech Enhancement made Dame Maggie Smith’s character’s words louder than the background music and other sound in a scene, so we didn’t have to strain to hear.

The Playbar is handsomely designed and it blended in well with my TV, even on the two opened drawers. It can be stood on its thin, 3-inch edge or laid on its wider, 5.5-inch edge without affecting the sound. It can be wall mounted above or below the TV. Keep in mind, though, that the Playbar weighs nearly 12 pounds.

I set up the Playbar by plugging in just two cords: An optical audio cable, supplied by Sonos, and its power cord. A Sonos representative said most TVs made within roughly the past seven years will work with this.

The Playbar also needs to connect to a router and though my router isn’t far from my TV, I couldn’t connect my Playbar to it using the included Ethernet cable. Instead, I used a Sonos Bridge, which costs $49, to wirelessly connect the Playbar to my router. I also set up a Sonos Play:3 speaker in my living room so I could see how it worked with the Playbar.

Using the Sonos app on my Android phone, I followed the steps to set up the Bridge and Playbar by pressing buttons on each device. Each took less than a minute. The app walked me through programming my remote to work with the Playbar. I use TiVo, and by following a few steps to test the remote, like pressing Mute three times, I quickly got my TiVo remote set up to control the Playbar volume as well as TV functions and TiVo commands.

But the Play:3 speaker didn’t obey my TiVo remote. To control its volume, I had to adjust it using a button on the small speaker, or use the Sonos app, which I tested on an iPad and Android phone. A Sonos representative said this is deliberate so if someone has a Play:3 set up in the kitchen and a person watching TV suddenly cranks up the volume, the kitchen speaker isn’t blaring sound.

With the Playbar, Sonos adds to its long tradition of smart, elegant devices that really work without driving you mad during setup. If you can shell out the cash for this TV enhancement, it won’t disappoint.

Email Katie at katie.boehret@wsj.com.

With Beats, Jimmy Iovine -- Not Facebook -- Will Tell You What Music You Want

Mike Isaac — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 02:00:53 +0000

“There’s an ocean of music out there,” said iconic engineer, record producer and Beats CEO Jimmy Iovine. “And there’s absolutely no curation for it.”

This is a familiar pitch from Iovine, who comes from the “old school” of the music industry. It’s the tastemaker school of thought; labels, producers and music vets know what the public wants to listen to before the public even knows itself.

But, as Iovine discussed at our D: Dive Into Media conference on Tuesday, times have obviously changed. The compact disc happened. Napster happened. Spotify, iTunes, Facebook happened. Essentially, technological change happened.

While times have indeed changed, Iovine doesn’t think the old ways are entirely dead. His proof positive comes in the form of Beats, the massively popular line of high-end headphones that he’s managed to sell at a premium to millions of kids who were once satisfied with low-grade, Apple-produced earbuds.

He has managed to turn the tides of the headphone hardware industry with his ways, and believes he can do it again with his forthcoming Beats music subscription service.

The main sell? Just what he has always been able to do well: Curation. Iovine plans to blend a mix of human music curators alongside smart algorithms to serve up a better way to listen to music. A “guide” that doesn’t have to be used to listen, but one that Iovine believes we’re better off using.

Who can’t do this sort of thing, according to Iovine? All the players that are currently trying to.

“Everyone … really struggles to get the absolute right kind of music for where you’re going,” he said onstage in conversation with Walt Mossberg. “Apple knows a lot about your music taste. Google knows a lot. Facebook. But no one is using it to curate.”

Indeed, the major pitch from tech companies over the last few years has been the power of technology blended with social; we’ll be better served by the recommendations of friends and automated algorithms, both smarter than the tastemakers of the past.

Obviously, Jimmy isn’t down with that.

“Who doesn’t know what song comes next is your best friend on Facebook,” Iovine said. “When you put that record on, you don’t want somebody guessing … somebody has gotta be interacting, building real music and serving it up for you.”

Can Iovine upend the music industry yet again? There are many subscription services in the space, and aside from the smart, curated “guides,” Iovine’s Beats service doesn’t sound terribly different from the existing players.

But for now, Iovine is playing it close to the chest. He’ll let you know when he’s ready for us to start listening.

Here are highlights from the session:

[ See post to watch video ]

And here is the complete session:

[ See post to watch video ]

How Should You Watch Netflix's Original Programming? However You Want.

Mike Isaac — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 23:53:31 +0000

Netflix’s first foray into original programming with “House of Cards” has turned heads in the media industry for a number of reasons. The two-season deal cost Netflix $100 million bucks. Netflix isn’t releasing its own metrics on “ratings.” And perhaps the biggest deal of all: Netflix released the entire first season of “House of Cards” all at once. And it’s freaking everyone out.

How do we shift from a weekly, episodic model of watching television shows to this? Is Netflix promoting bingeing?

No, it’s not, according to Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos at our D: Dive Into Media conference. It’s promoting whatever sort of watching habits you prefer.

“We’re starting a different style of water cooler,” Sarandos said. “The rules of it are different. There’s no extra points for binge-watching. It’s 100 percent about consumer choice.”

To say it’s a change in business as usual is an understatement. As noted by Mitchell Hurwitz — creator of the cult-hit show “Arrested Development,” which is next in line for a Netflix original content reboot — it acts against many of the constraints and best industry practices. Actors are usually locked into five-year-plus contracts, which restricts their movements and ability to commit to other projects simultaneously. Viewers aren’t always in sync with one another, as some will binge and some will space it out. And forget about ratings — something that Sarandos won’t even discuss.

But Hurwitz and Will Arnett — who plays G.O.B. Bluth, the hilarious and oft-maligned magician in “Arrested Development’”s dysfunctional Bluth family — embrace the staggered form, claiming it gives them creative liberties that they wouldn’t have been able to take otherwise.

It allows, for instance, the particular level of nuance and in-jokery that “Arrested Development” is known for, able to be appreciated upon repeat viewings by anyone, no matter at what point they discovered the show itself. To that point, Hurwitz and Arnett pointed to the success of “Arrested Development” on Hulu and DVD release in particular.

Thus, Netflix’s model of wide, single-season release seemed a better fit for shows like “Arrested Development” and “House of Cards” in particular.

“Netflix subscribers are right at the core of those who would watch ‘Arrested Development,’” Arnett said. “All of the little nuances of ‘Arrested Development’ were not for the kind of viewer who wants to come home after a long day of work and turn on the TV,” Hurwitz added.

So, ultimately, their argument goes, the medium is apt for the message. The question is, can Sarandos scale that to other shows which perhaps aren’t as playful with form and substance as, say, an “Arrested Development” or a “House of Cards” deigns to be?

Who knows? Sarandos maintains that Netflix is trying to “evolve television” rather than destroy it, so perhaps we’ll be used to this release mechanism in a few years if the method takes off. And Sarandos is playing the part of a true believer (at least, as long as those unknown engagement metrics and viewing numbers stay high).

“We created an international content brand on Netflix,” Sarandos said. “But, over time, it won’t be as novel, for sure.”

[ See post to watch video ]

Why Twitter Dropped Close to $90 Million on Bluefin Labs

Mike Isaac — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:58:23 +0000

Twitter just paid a lot of money for Bluefin Labs (around $90 million, we hear), a social analytics startup that marries two key streams of data to Twitter in its pitch to advertisers: What’s happening on TV, and what’s happening on Twitter.

That price alone lets us know how important Bluefin is to Twitter, a burgeoning media company. But Bluefin’s demo at our D: Dive Into Media conference on Tuesday gave better insight into exactly why Twitter was willing to spend that much on its largest acquisition to date.

“This whole thing is about taking common sense and making it scale and making it quantative,” Deb Roy, co-founder of Bluefin, said at the conference. “If you can take [our analytics service] and not just do it about [one event like] the Super Bowl but do it for all TV shows … now you have this comprehensive view into how TV is driving engagement.”

Example: Bluefin drills down into specific moments on television, be they advertisements, actual shows or what have you. And Roy says it can grab a larger, more representative slice of the Twitter users tweeting about a specific moment than, say, a hashtag can (as many people may be talking about an event without using a hashtag).

From there, Bluefin runs what’s called an affinity analysis, which lets the company figure out “preexisting affinities between TV program audiences and brands.” Moreover, Bluefin can flesh out a profile of a particular Twitter user tweeting in a specific moment, based on that person’s tweeting history.

That’s crucial, and now it can be part of Twitter’s way of marrying data to its ad-sales pitch, and can make a more compelling case to the brands to spend more on social advertising, directing brands to the best times and places to run said ads.

In other words, Twitter can say “a promoted tweet about brand X may work great during this time slot, directed to these users, according to all this Bluefin data we’ve compiled.”

It’s the same thing TV pitchmen and women have been doing for years, only with loads more research, studies and time behind them. Twitter’s battle for ad dollars when competing with the tried and true hasn’t been easy, as it hasn’t exactly had a robust analytics service to back up the company’s claims of importance based on “word of mouth and social influence,” as Roy puts it.

So perhaps it was a crucial buy for Twitter in the quest to flesh out its advertising platform. But was it $90 million dollars crucial?

We’ll see when we finally get a chance to look at Twitter’s balance sheet. Perhaps in 2014.

[ See post to watch video ]

Google's Biz Chief: 50 Percent of Ads Will Go Online in the Next Five Years

Mike Isaac — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 20:33:17 +0000

Ads are part of the very fabric of our society, and have been for years. But ad execs want to stick with what works: It’s why the bulk of today’s industry ad budgets are still pointed at traditional mediums like television, print and the like.

Not for long, according to Google SVP and chief business officer Nikesh Arora, in conversation at the D: Dive Into Media conference on Tuesday.

“There’s currently about $800 billion in the global advertising market today. That’s a very large number, but online advertising accounts for less than $100 billion of that number,” Arora said. “There is a reasonable probability that over 50 percent of advertising goes online in the next five years.”

Ambitious, to say the least. We’ve been stuck in the same model for the better part of the past century, and companies like Google have spent the last decade trying to convince the ad industry that, yes, the Web can indeed make you money. That’s exactly what YouTube’s Robert Kyncl has been pitching with the online video arm of Google and its channels initiative, not to mention Google’s other potential ad businesses (which have indeed been successful).

Funny, considering Arora wasn’t about to say what online advertising would look like 10 years from now. He just knows that whatever it’ll look like, it’s going to be successful.

He gave a bit of insight into how it’ll get there though. “The big tipping point we’re waiting for is Internet connected televisions,” Arora said. “We’re waiting for things going from ‘nice-to-have’ to ‘must-have.’” So basically, when his company can get that whole Google TV thing to take off — or perhaps others in the space wanting to do the same — we’ll see the tides of change begin to shift.

Check back with you in five years, Nikesh.

[ See post to watch video ]

Google, Hollywood and Drama, Drama, Drama

Mike Isaac — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 20:15:46 +0000

Hollywood is about drama. It’s about suspense, it’s about intrigue. I think our relationship with Hollywood is similar.

– Google Senior Vice President and Chief Business Officer Nikesh Arora on Google and the entertainment industry, in conversation at D: Dive Into Media

Facebook's Rose: Content Discovery Has Always Been Social, and It Always Will Be

John Paczkowski — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 17:27:54 +0000

Facebook likes to think of itself as a gateway to the huge markets that have arisen around the social graphs of its users. There’s no arguing with that. Facebook’s audience is a massive one, and there’s obvious value in reaching it. The question is, how do companies do that, and do it effectively? As VP of partnerships at Facebook, Dan Rose is charged with convincing media companies that Facebook’s audience is one worth reaching, and then delivering on that promise. Not always a sure thing, as Facebook’s high-profile falling out with General Motors last year shows.

During a wide-ranging interview at D: Dive Into Media, Rose talked about how Facebook views media, and how media should view Facebook.

“Facebook is primarily two core pillars — identity and sharing,” Rose said, adding that both pillars are part of Facebook’s media pitch.

“From an identity perspective, so much of who we are and how we identify ourselves comes from what we read and what we watch,” Rose continued. “So our identity platform can’t be complete without media being part of it. Similarly, the sharing piece can’t be complete without status updates about news stories, music friends are listening to, updates about movies people are seeing.”

The high-level principle driving this is the idea of finding the perfect balance between great user experience and delivering audience to platform partners.

“At its core, what we’re really striving to do is find the perfect equilibrium from a great user experience and a strong platform that developers and partners will continue to invest in,” Rose said. “… We need to keep the news feed interesting, and one of the ways we do that is through media.”

At the same time, however, Rose said Facebook must “honor” content, and presumably appetite for audience and buzz that’s ever-present behind it.

“We think it’s our job to honor content,” Rose said. “Media content deserves to be honored and respected in the news feed. For example, we recently increased the size of images from media partners. That’s more engaging for users, and for partners it’s great, because click-throughs and engagement increased.”

Media content also deserves to be consumed, says Rose. And here, too, Facebook plays a big role, and hopes to play an even bigger one in the future.

“How did you hear about ‘Downton Abbey’?” Rose asked. “I discovered it on Facebook. I kept seeing it pop up in my news feed. The simple fact is most of us find the TV shows we enjoy by listening to suggestions from our friends. That’s the primary discovery mechanism for content right now. Imagine a future, though, in which you turn on the TV and see a feed of all the shows your friends watch. We think that’s a very compelling idea. Content discovery always has been and always will be social.”

Additional Notes From the Session

On mobile: “So many things are unlocked on mobile. You don’t bring your computer to a restaurant or a party.”
On Zynga: “I don’t think we walked away from Zynga at all. They built a large and successful business on our platform. … We still spend a lot of time with Zynga.”
On Instagram: In the past, Facebook acquired small companies for talent, with Instagram being the first company it bought for the product. However, Rose said that more deals for product and technologies are likely.

[ See post to watch video ]