The ThinkPad X131e, which has already been sold to schools as a Windows-based laptop, is now running the Google Chrome OS, and supports Google Apps designed for education.

Lenovo’s announcement is light on specifics. I’m willing to bet some K-12 kids know their processors in this day and age, but for now, Lenovo is simply stating that the 11.6-inch Chromebook has an “Intel processor,” along with an anti-glare LED screen, USB and HDMI ports. It weighs “under four pounds.”

The $429 ThinkPad X131e isn’t being sold directly to consumers, but will be sold at volume pricing to K-12 education institutions. It will be available Feb. 26.

Since the launch of Chromebooks, Google has extolled the benefits of the lightweight, low-cost laptops in classrooms. For Lenovo, which has a long-standing relationship with the Microsoft Windows OS, it’s an interesting move. It’s not a giant leap into the Chromebook market, by any means, but Lenovo is certainly dipping its toe into new territory with the Chromebook OS for the X131e shell.

In the past year, we’ve seen several niche social media networks blow up around images, music and ideas — Instagram, Spotify and Pinterest. But what happened in the digital video space? Many mobile video start-ups entered the scene this year, yet despite the increasing demand among consumers for Web video, none of these companies could crack the code on the most critical element of digital video: Discovery. But as content multiplies at an increasing rate, 2013 will finally be the year that the future becomes clear on the next advancement in video.

• Online video consumption hits a historic inflection point, doubling in 2013
  We are at the threshold of the second digital video revolution spurred by better and more affordable hardware and connectivity. Smartphones are in the hands of nearly one billion across the globe, and tablets, or “the second television,” are blowing up. The iPad alone has climbed the ladder of adoption three times faster than the iPhone and Gartner predicts tablet sales will hit 13 million in 2012, with this number expected to triple by 2016.

  Couple the rapidly increasing penetration of tablets and smartphones with LTE connectivity, and it’s pretty much guaranteed that consumer appetite for video will grow, transforming mobile video consumption into a daily habit. This will ignite a digital video revolution that mirrors the shift from dial-up Internet to broadband. The revolution that happened on desktop years back is about to transpire on mobile, as 2G and 3G are traded up for LTE networks on smartphones. Even with its incredible user adoption, the broadband’s impact on desktop video will pale in comparison to the more accelerated mobile video craze that’s about to kick off.

  In the last three years we’ve seen about a 140 percent increase in the amount of video content viewed online. comScore’s Video Metrix from April 2009 — when total video views hit 17 billion — sharply contrasts with 40 billion videos viewed across Web on November 2012. As consumption of video continues its march from the living room and desktop to smartphones and tablets, I predict that demand, production and consumption of video will double, and video views will hit 80 billion per month by the end of 2013.

• A newcomer will challenge YouTube for the other half of video consumption
  Declining hardware and distribution costs coupled with a steady increase in consumer demand for video has provoked a huge surge in production of pro and semi-pro video. Because of this increase in more professional-grade video, we have seen a major shift in where people are going to find digital video content.

  People are still watching just as much video — but they are now looking to different sources on the Web. In the past five months there has been a 34 percent drop in the total volume of video consumed on YouTube compared with the rest of the Web. YouTube views peaked in June 2012 at 18.3 billion, but have since declined to 12 billion on November 2012. comScore’s Video Metrix measured total Web video views in June 2012 at 32.9 billion; fast-forward to November 2012 and total video views across the Web hit 40 billion. While YouTube lost about six billion views within that five-month period, the other half of Web video shot up by 13 billion. As online video fragmentation increases in 2013, so will the need for a newcomer that aggregates YouTube and the second half of the Web’s video under one roof.

• TV networks and the top content creators will be forced into unchartered distribution and economic models
  Big media has seen the rapid shift toward Web and mobile consumption, and sites like Discovery.com, Disney, MTV and CNN continue to produce more online content. Now the real challenge becomes the fight for more audience, monetization and market share. These content creators and their advertisers won’t be satisfied with the results they get within their own silos, and will start looking for a way to expand their reach while still maintaining control over their videos.

  We have seen that relying on social networks like Facebook and Twitter for viral spread is not enough. At Twitvid, we saw major brands with over five million followers post videos to Twitter and receive only a few thousand views. Even major television networks such as CBS and ABC are struggling with this issue. ABC’s Modern Family and Glee, which previously only distributed episodes to Hulu, are now opening distribution to anyone as the effort to reach viewers continues. But no one has found a sustainable combination of large audiences and ability to drive traffic and revenue back to content creators.

  In 2013, studios and networks will be eager to experiment with new disruptive models, and expect to see a new breed of startups that can cater to their desire for both large audiences and strong control over content.

• All of this will lead to a new opportunity in video discovery that resembles something more like Spotify and less like Instagram
  Digital video is currently plagued by the lack of any real means of video discovery capable of meeting the needs of a social, mobile world. I’m confident that in 2013, someone will solve video discovery through social content aggregation — not just from YouTube, but from the exploding long-tail of semi-pro video. Many have pointed to an “Instagram for video” as the cure-all for the video space’s current state of disarray. But this is much bigger than that. Instagram focuses on user-generated content, which as Socialcam and Viddy proved this year, is not the way to win in the long term. Digital video is insanely larger than just user-generated content. The long-tail of video content is where consumer eyes draw the brands, and ultimately, revenue.

  In the same way that Spotify, Instagram and Pinterest successfully solved discovery for music, pictures and ideas, new models will emerge aiming to figure out a way to tap into this massive new world of video and somehow find a way to weave it all together.

What other predictions do you see for the world of digital video in 2013? Please submit your predictions in the comment section below.

Mo is the CEO and Founder of Telly, a social video network for discovering and sharing the best videos. You can follow him on Twitter @maladham and on Telly.

Roku can finally add a few more to the list. At CES the startup is showing off six “Roku Ready” TV partners, including Coby, Harmon Kardon and Westinghouse Digital. Basically, “smart TVs” from these manufacturers are certified to work with the Roku Streaming Stick, joining Roku’s existing partners, including Hitachi and Best Buy’s Insignia brand.

But even as Roku is arranging more hardware partners, it’s looking beyond the boxes and the stick.

“It’s part of a bigger strategy to integrate Roku into more hardware, and in many cases it will be the stick bundled with a smart TV,” Anthony Wood, Roku’s founder and CEO, said in an interview. “We could get to the point where Roku is integrated directly into TVs.”

Roku sees itself as not just as a set-top box maker, but as the content platform provider for a wide range of smart TVs — which is why its app offerings, or “channels,” as Roku calls them — are just as important as its hardware partners.

The company just added TWC TV, the Time Warner Cable authentication app — the first time that TWC TV is coming to a streaming device — Dish TV, Vevo, iHeart Radio, Amazon Cloud Player and Spotify to its list of 700-plus channels that already include Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, Hulu Plus, MLB.TV and Pandora. (But still no YouTube!)

Roku has also added a few more casual games to its roster. Newer Roku devices, the 2 XS and the Streaming Stick, already come with Angry Birds built in and have a motion sensor remote for these games.

Wood claims that Roku streamed more than a billion hours of video last year, making Roku the No. 1 set-top box for apps like Netflix and Hulu.

To be clear, when it comes to non-gaming set-top boxes, Apple’s “hobby” has the edge. Roku likes to point out that it splits the market 50/50 with Apple TV, but Roku has sold just under five million units, while on Apple’s last earnings call, CEO Tim Cook said the company had sold 1.3 million units in the fourth quarter, and five million for the 2012 fiscal year.

Also, Roku has put itself in a kind of awkward phase by going with the MHL standard for the Streaming Stick, an interim device that could well serve those looking for cheap TV upgrades. More MHL-certified TVs will hit the market this year. And the technology does allow for: a) wire-free charging; and b) a universal remote, two excellent features. But until this standard spreads further, the market is limited for the nifty stick.

Lastly, Roku faces another competitor on the OEM side: Google. The search giant made some embarrassing missteps in its early attempts at Google TV hardware, but it keeps throwing different devices at the wall to see what sticks, and it is working with electronics companies to have the Google TV platform installed right inside TVs — beating Roku to the punch, at least for now.

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Myriad issues have held back the new Apple TV, from complex dealings and integration with established broadcast cable providers, to hardware design and supply issues, to the necessary evolution of iOS SDKs — but we won’t be kept waiting forever. There’s every reason to expect the new product to launch in 2013. When it does, we’re likely to see massive disruption of the broadcast and gaming industries, the rise of an age of TV apps, and an even stronger leadership role for Apple in software, media, communications and consumer devices.

What will the coming Apple TV look like, and what will it mean for our industry? There’s plenty of information available to guide our speculation. Let’s imagine Christmas 2013, and the new line of Apple TV products I hope to find under my tree.

Apple TV under the Christmas tree

What will the new Apple TV be?
The new Apple TV will be defined by three key values for consumers:

1. The best way to consume broadcast TV and any online video. A seamless touch- and TV-based interface makes it simple to consume your existing cable and broadcast content, including video-on-demand (VOD) libraries and DVR features. Via iTunes, you also get instant access to mega-libraries and subscriptions from iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, not to mention YouTube. Naturally, you can also access any AirPlay-enabled videos on the Web, as well as TV apps updated with the new iOS 7 SDK.
2. The ultimate game console. The new Apple TV will be a direct assault on the game console industry, with a living-room platform that should leave Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony running scared. With a single launch, Apple will extend the iOS gaming distribution ecosystem into the living room, and invent new categories of gaming through the interaction of iOS devices with Apple TV.
3. The best way to experience all of your apps. Crucially, the new Apple TV will extend nearly every existing iOS app into being a TV app that brings the power and richness of large display surfaces to consumer computing — a task that nearly every industry titan has attempted and failed. The combination of touch and TV will ignite a new era in dual-screen software application design and development, in which it will become hard to believe that Internet software was once based solely on PCs, phones and tablets.

Fulfilling the Apple product design fetish
Everyone wants to know what the new Apple TV will look like, what it will include inside, and how it will connect all of Apple’s existing consumer and developer offerings. As usual, product packaging and design are fundamental components of Apple’s go-to-market strategy, complemented by their unique ability to leverage their existing app, content and device ecosystem.

Apple already has an ecosystem of nearly one million apps, the world’s best library of a la carte media, and hundreds of millions of device customers. In an ideal world, Apple would like to sell the majority of these customers a new device for TV. The company also needs to find new $30 billion+/year businesses to keep up its pace of growth and value creation. The key is to introduce a product franchise that defines the consumer experience, owns the extension of the app platform into the TV, and captures as many users as possible, as quickly as possible — while taking enormous share from an established, multi-hundred-billion dollar/year industry.

To do this, Apple needs a two-pronged strategy:

1. A new companion device for TV that starts at $149, attaches to nearly any existing TV, and does not require customers to buy an expensive new monitor. This is crucial for quickly establishing and maintaining platform dominance quickly, and even standalone could be a $5 billion to $10 billion opportunity.
2. A new family of ultra-thin TV monitors that bundles all of the capabilities of the companion device and includes beefed up computing power. These large-screen monitors will be a direct assault on the global TV monitor industry, a market worth hundreds of billions annually, albeit with slightly slower replacement cycles of four years versus two years for smartphones and tablets. This gives Apple that additional $30 billion+ revenue stream it needs.

Combined, these new products will radically transform the computing, media and electronics industry, and more deeply cement Apple’s role as the de facto platform for content and apps.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these products:

The new Apple TV companion
Designed with a new A7 quad-core CPU, the device will provide enough horsepower to deliver 1080p HD video and the most demanding gaming graphics; built-in front-facing sensors and camera; and enough storage for loads of games, apps, content, and recorded live TV.

The device will offer HDMI and digital audio output, a gigabit Ethernet port and built-in WiFi, as well as two Lightning ports — one for power, another for the included “co-ax dongle,” which will connect directly to most existing cable TV hookups to replace your existing cable set-top box. More on that later.

As we’ve come to expect from Apple, the product will be offered in a sleek and slim form factor that sits easily on top of or under any existing TV. I suspect a thin horizontal bar, such as we’ve rendered here:

Apple TV Companion

Apple TV companion device specs

This design will put the device truly at the center of the living room, a compact porthole into the entire digital economy. Developers will be able to leverage the front-facing sensors and camera in the same way they build on existing iOS APIs; in fact, the new platform launch will likely include iOS 7 with support for new TV apps and Apple TV SDKs.

For existing iPhone and iPad users who already own a flat-screen TV, this new TV companion device will be a great bargain that also radically expands the value of their existing devices. This will also be a highly popular form factor for multi-monitor households, offices and even retail establishments.

The new ultra-thin Apple TV monitor
Likely coming in 46″ and 60″ models with a solid glass front and aluminum back, and stand and rear-mounting options, this ultra-thin monitor will mirror the design aesthetic of the latest iPhone and iPad.

Apple TV basic form factor

Apple TV specs

Apple TV stand options

The full capabilities of the companion device will be complemented with additional audio, video and lightning ports, storage of up to three terabytes, and, of course, gorgeous display quality (probably 4K resolution) and exceptional design for a modern environment.

How TV works on Apple TV
While Apple TV will support voice- and motion-based input for global menus and navigation, the preferred control method for basic everyday use will be either the bundled simple remote — or, more likely — new iOS 7 apps from Apple that let you control Apple TV with your iPhone and iPad.

Apple TV app and Apple TV

Apple TV app closeup

Channel surfing with the Apple TV app

Apple TV app detail and TV

With the iPhone, Apple created a simple “phone” application on top of existing telephony carrier infrastructure, improving the consumer’s user experience and creating an additional product sales opportunity for carriers. The company will take a similar approach to existing broadcast cable TV and, in so doing, put one or two major U.S. cable operators in the same privileged position that AT&T enjoyed following the iPhone launch. Around the world, cable TV distributors will battle for national sales and marketing rights for the Apple TV.

To accomplish this, Apple has likely created a new API for interacting with the IP-based cable broadcast infrastructure that providers such as Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and Time Warner Cable have been moving to for a number of years. This will enable Apple to present a consistent user experience worldwide for accessing live broadcast channels and recording content for later consumption. With program guide data, VOD metadata, and the ability to use network or local DVR APIs, the new TV app for iOS will become the simplest form we’ve ever had for watching broadcast television.

Cable companies may initially resist supporting this offering, viewing their ability to cross-promote offerings in their guide and VOD menus, and the customer relationship in general, as their provenance. This would be as misguided as the mobile carriers were who thought they could control and customize the home screens, operating systems and bundled apps of mobile phones as a strategic advantage. Smart operators will understand their role as broadband and infrastructure providers, and will continue — for now — to be the primary packagers of broadcast content with its lucrative tolls for subscription programming. For all of the hope that Apple would help to blow up existing cable packaging, for now, the company’s priority is to navigate and establish global partnerships with multi-system operators (MSOs) and multi-channel video programming distributors (MVPDs) to sell their new TV and TV companion devices.

With natural hooks into the iTunes a la carte content library, Apple will be able to combine premium cable subscription content with their on-demand library to offer users the broadest choice for video content.

Apple’s TV app in iOS 7 is also likely to take ownership of the core second-screen category for companion content to broadcast shows. Apple can easily provide rich, contextual meta-data about shows, characters and social chatter, while providing new APIs that broadcasters can use as a launching point into show- and channel-specific iOS apps. These apps will give broadcasters the greater brand control and direct consumer relationships they’ve wanted, with the added benefit of cross-promotion from within Apple’s own TV app. Because Apple TV users will be linked to a cable provider just as your iPhone is linked to a mobile operator, broadcasters will also gain a simple and seamless way to authenticate consumers into apps that offer their full slate of catch-up TV programming.

It also seems likely that AirPlay updates will include streaming from an Apple TV to your iPhone and iPad (e.g. the inverse of current AirPlay use-cases), allowing you to access and stream content from your Apple TV via your iPhone and iPad, including live television and DVR content — like the original innovation from Sling. This is presuming Apple’s deals with MSOs will include wireless streaming rights, which seems to be increasingly becoming the market standard.

Viacom Nick/Nickelodeon dual screen TV App

Nick app close-up

As with iPhones and iPads, the new devices will come with many preinstalled Apple and third-party apps; in this case likely including leading online video services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon VoD, and YouTube, as well as TV Everywhere apps such as HBO Go. More importantly, any developer will be able to build content and apps for Apple TV. Just as nearly every app you download for your iPhone is also available in a version that fits the iPad display, new iOS 7 Universal Apps will include code for deployment on Apple TV.

Apple continues its disruption of the gaming industry
Putting all of this together — the new hardware, the new APIs, the new input capabilities — adds up to nothing less than a full-frontal assault on the game console market, as Apple and iTunes become the distributor of choice for everything from casual to hardcore 3-D gaming.

While the large installed bases of industry incumbents provide some advantage, it pales in comparison to Apple’s hundreds of millions of touch-device users, millions of apps, and unparalleled catalog of a la carte media. It’s hard to imagine a scenario where Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo can win.

Apple’s iOS is already the world’s most important gaming platform in terms of new game content creation and the velocity and scale of consumer usage. With new gaming-friendly APIs for controllers and user input, complemented with local CPU, graphics and storage horsepower on the device itself, the new Apple TV is a deeply significant threat to Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft in the console market. The same is true for the multibillion dollar businesses built by Amazon, Wal-Mart, Target, Toys “R” Us, and GameStop around selling game CDs; Apple TV will be a download-only install medium, as we reach the tipping point in storage and bandwidth where it no longer makes sense to distribute games on physical media.

Some have argued that Apple and iOS aren’t for hardcore gamers — but tell that to the teenage boys playing Assassin’s Creed and Call of Duty on their iPhones and iPads. By owning the TV run-time, Apple TV will provide amazing development opportunities for the technical and creative elite and will bring a flood of innovative content creation from major game studios. For the launch of the first iPod with video, Apple brought Disney on stage to announce the availability of “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives” for download, heralding the age of a la carte television. For the Apple TV launch, Apple will stand alongside the world’s top game developers to showcase the ultimate gaming platform.

To achieve this, iOS 7 will likely support APIs for interacting with and connecting to third-party game controllers via Bluetooth and possibly RF — as well classic gaming handhelds, steering wheels, guns and any other devices that suit the needs of gameplay.

Multi-user gameplay scenario (Call of Duty) with iPads and a traditional handheld controller

The use cases for gaming are mind-boggling, especially when you bring together geographically dispersed users for collaborative games like massive multiplayer online games. Imagine playing Call of Duty Massive with a gorgeous 60-inch display: &ou’re using a standard controller for first-person shooter play, a friend next to you manages ops from the iPad controller, and a few more friends watch along from their iPhones while they’re riding the bus. Another friend receives a push notification alerting them to a crisis that could use their help — they look away from what they’re watching on TV and jump into the game from their tablet. If killing games aren’t your cup of tea, other options span “edutainment” games, basic single-user games, and even the mundane but always enjoyable family game of Monopoly, with the board rendered with real-time updates on the TV rather than the coffee table.

Which leads us to the third and key value proposition of the new Apple TV:

It’s all about the apps
While Apple TV makes a strong case with its broadcast TV and gaming capabilities, its ultimate killer app will be, appropriately, the app ecosystem it will offer, as millions of iOS apps extend onto the television display surface. I’ve written about this more extensively elsewhere, but the basic idea is that we’re moving into a software world where more and more applications combine a touch device with a TV display surface. That’s a huge reason why consumers will cheer for Apple TV — they’re already embedded in the Apple ecosystem, and so are all of their favorite apps and content. Bringing the familiarity and integration of these platforms together will give Apple a red carpet into the living room, and again revolutionize the world of software to offer value far beyond the consumer experiences of today.

Consider an important (and often expensive) task that we all face many times in our lives — buying a car. How can the Apple TV platform and its broader platforms help make buying a car a better experience? Let’s use BMW — always an innovator in the customer experience — as an example. You find and download the BMW app from the App Store to your iPad (while in the background, the same app is installed on your iPhone). When you open the app, it detects that you have an Apple TV, and asks your permission to display views onto your TV.

BMW dual-screen TV app experience

BMW dual-screen TV app experience

You begin with a quick view of models, and narrow down to the latest midsize sedans, watch the marketing video on your TV, then decide to take the car configurator for a spin. As you’re taken through each area of customization, your TV updates with visual displays of your choices in that section; if you want to learn more about a feature, a quick touch invokes an HD video on your TV. As you make choices on your iPad, the car you’re building takes shape in a picture-perfect rendition on the TV screen in front of you. Once you’re done, you can have the app geolocate your nearest dealer and schedule a test drive. On arrival at the dealership, your geolocation triggers a push notification to a sales associate who greets you by name before handing you the keys to the car.

Every app in our lives will benefit from the connection of phone, tablet and TV, and for this reason Apple TV will become an essential consumer platform. The critical point to understand is that Apple TV is not just about television and games — it’s about us all figuring out how to make the best use of the large displays in our lives.

Technically, there are still a number of key problems Apple needs to solve in iOS 7 regarding how apps discover and get user permission to AirPlay on Apple TV, but these are the kinds of user experience problems that Apple is renowned for addressing. Expect an overhaul of AirPlay protocols and user experience in iOS 7, not to mention many of the new APIs and capabilities that I’ve described above.

The new Apple TV offer for consumers and developers
We look forward to the day that Apple’s new product and developer pages look something like these:

Apple.com product marketing pages

Apple.com developer SDK pages

This is already the direction in which things seem to be moving. For brands, media publishers and app developers, it’s never too early to reenvision their apps and consumer user experiences for Apple’s latest revolution in the way we live.

You can watch and explore all of the images and more in this New Apple TV image gallery.

Jeremy Allaire is the founder, chairman and CEO of Brightcove, a leading provider of cloud platforms for distributing media and apps, with a suite of platform APIs, SDKs and Web services aimed at Web and app developers and the businesses they help to drive.

It used to be easy — if you were paid to create it for either a movie theater or a TV network, it was professional and premium. And everything else was crap. Then along came the Internet and YouTube and upended the apple cart. Just as with music and magazines, suddenly anyone with a camera could upload whatever they wanted and (potentially) reach an audience.

In the early days of YouTube, very little could even charitably be called professional content. Cats riding skateboards, babbling babies and ladies sharing odd comestibles drove millions of views, but could hardly be called premium. In fact, the industry (and YouTube) called this stuff “User Generated Content” or UGC. But it didn’t take long for “professional video creators” — folks who’d actually received checks from media companies — to try their hand at original Web video. And it wasn’t just a hobby, either. Individuals and networks — including my own company, Revision3 — tried to turn a user-generated miasma into a professional, premium and profitable kingdom.

Unlike cats and babies, early efforts from some of the pioneering creators — including Shay Carl, iJustine and Phil DeFranco — developed new ways to talk to audiences and grow viewers. Over time, they layered traditional TV principles, including scheduling, repeating segments and good-looking video and audio, on top of the new media they were creating.

Then a little more than a year ago, YouTube upped the ante with its “channels” project, where it invested more than $100 million dollars in an effort to bring a variety of successful creators from traditional film and TV to their platform. At the same time, it began encouraging traditional rights-holders to upload their existing shows and movies for sale or rent.

So, today we have a variety of content on YouTube: Pre-existing material from traditional, linear TV and film production companies and networks. New properties, some narrative, some non-fiction, but produced by those with a background, or training, in traditional media. New episodic content that has little in common with traditional models. Music videos from established stars and everyone else with an instrument and a camera. And, of course, a steady stream of one-off videos of cats, babies and more.

So, what’s professional? What’s premium? Before I answer that, let’s agree on what makes someone a professional video creator. Fundamentally, a professional video creator is someone who is looking to make money from their endeavors, rather than simply doing it for fun. If you’re in it for profit, and someone’s written you a check for it, then you’re a pro. It works for the NCAA, and it works for me.

What about professional video? First, I think it’s created by a “professional” as defined above, but it’s more than that. I think professional video is defined by the following characteristics:

• Your video product is more than just a one-off (unless you’re making music videos, but that’s a different ball of corn)
• You’re releasing related, or episodic, videos on a set schedule — i. e. daily, weekly, monthly — not just tossing something out when you feel like it
• You’ve built up an audience of subscribers who want to watch what you do
• You’re actually making money from your efforts

That’s it. Note that I’ve made no distinctions about quality of production, quality of content, format or background and training of the creators. The key elements to me are whether you can create something repeatedly on a schedule, and whether you can build a community, or audience, of people who will come back and watch regularly. This definition excludes things like “David at the Dentist” and “Charlie Bit My Finger” — although even these can be turned into repeatable shows. But it includes Hank and John Green talking to each other in the Vlog Brothers, all the “Let’s Play” practitioners who have audience and repeatability, vloggers, makeup tips and more.

So that’s professional video. What’s premium? From where I sit, it’s the same thing. If you’re making something people want to watch, you’re getting paid for it, you’re releasing on a schedule, and your audio and video are reasonably high-quality, then it’s premium, too. The fact that you’re getting paid means that you’re getting a premium for your video efforts (as long as that premium is greater than zero).

Web video is a new medium. There are hundreds of thousands of creators getting checks from YouTube every month. Those who have built passionate audiences and can create on a schedule are professionals, making premium content. And advertisers who ignore this unique connection to their fans are missing out on a powerful — and professional — place to introduce brands to a passionate audience.

The photo-sharing service killed off some of its Twitter functionality on Wednesday morning, altering the way Instagram displays pictures in the Twitter stream. And not in a good way.

In a strictly business sense, the move is a no-brainer. Twitter is far and away the largest competitor to Facebook, now the parent company to Instagram. However ruthless, you can’t fault Instagram honcho Kevin Systrom for the move — just like we couldn’t fault Twitter for snipping Instagram’s “find your friends” feature back in July.

But Instagram isn’t positioning the move as a slap in Twitter’s face — which, in part, it is. Instead, Systrom says it’s more about Instagram putting more emphasis on its Web presence, which until recently has been lacking.

“We want to direct users to where the content lives originally,” Systrom said at the LeWeb conference in Paris on Wednesday. “Where do you go to interact with [an Instagram] image? We want that to be Instagram.com because that’s a better user experience.”

That’s totally fair. Instagram has every right to send folks to its own site.

But riddle me this, Mr. Systrom: Instagram exports photos to other platforms, too. Namely, Tumblr, Foursquare and Path.

When asked about this, Systrom gave what amounted to a non-answer: “We get a lot of traffic from Tumblr, and I would also say that the large majority of our photos are actually shared to Facebook and to Twitter. So this is more of a one-off trying to figure out specifically with our Twitter integration what it should look like. And we’ve just decided that right now what makes sense is to direct users to our new mobile interface.”

In other words, Instagram is doing this because it can.

It’s almost funny how passive-aggressive both companies have been in their dealings with one another. Instagram’s statement from the “find your friends” snafu read like so: “Twitter no longer allows its users to access this information in Instagram via the Twitter API. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

Twitter isn’t innocent here, either. The company posted its own faux non-combative affront to Instagram on Wednesday: “Users are experiencing issues with viewing Instagram photos on Twitter. … This is due to Instagram disabling its Twitter cards integration, and as a result, photos are being displayed using a pre-cards experience. So, when users click on Tweets with an Instagram link, photos appear cropped.”

Look, I get it. Instagram wants its users to make Instagram.com and Facebook.com the place to see photos. Not Twitter, which has seen great user engagement benefits from Instagram photos appearing in the Twitter stream. And Twitter doesn’t want Instagram to benefit from its valuable interest graph.

But neither company is addressing the elephant in the room. This is also about eliminating any competitive advantage one platform has over another. No more free riding on the coattails of the other. This is business. This is Sun Tzu. This is war.

My proposal: Take the gloves off. Pull a Larry Ellison and make no bones about your moves, cutthroat or otherwise. Put it out there for all to see.

We may not like what you’re doing, but we’d at least respect you for being upfront about it.

Update: Here’s a clip on the topic from the Wall Street Journal’s “Digits” show today.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121206/instagram-youre-at-war-with-twitter-just-admit-it/feed/ 7 http://allthingsd.com/20121129/facebooks-new-terms-treat-zynga-like-most-other-game-developers/ http://allthingsd.com/20121129/facebooks-new-terms-treat-zynga-like-most-other-game-developers/#comments Thu, 29 Nov 2012 22:02:46 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=273963 Facebook and Zynga said today that they have revised a two-year-old contract, which will make the two companies’ relationship way less complicated.

The deal was originally agreed to in May 2010, and was partially disclosed when Zynga went public. The terms of the new agreement, which were disclosed in separate filings by Facebook and Zynga, are a lot less onerous for Zynga. It will also free up Facebook to make its own games, if it chooses.

The main points are:

• Zynga will no longer be separately obligated to display Facebook ad units or implement Facebook credits on any Zynga game pages.
• Facebook will no longer be the exclusive social platform for Zynga, allowing it to launch games first on mobile or its own Zynga.com platform (although the games will have to launch shortly after on Facebook).
• Certain provisions related to Web and mobile growth targets and schedules will no longer be applicable, and Facebook will no longer be prohibited from developing its own games. Further, Zynga’s right to cross-promote between games on the Facebook Web site will be governed by Facebook’s standard terms of service.

I’m hearing that the new contract was negotiated between Facebook’s Dan Rose and Zynga’s new Chief Revenue Officer Barry Cottle.

In a statement, Cottle said: “Zynga’s mission is to connect the world through games. In order to do this, Zynga is focused on building enduring relationships with consumers across all platforms from Facebook and Zynga.com on the web to tablets and mobile. Our amended agreement with Facebook continues our long and successful partnership while also allowing us the flexibility to ensure the universal availability of our products and services.”

After reading the documents, it is clear that the new amendments are a reflection of how much the social gaming landscape has changed over the past two years.

Back when the contract was first signed, Facebook needed Zynga to help transition all developers on the platform over to Credits, which required everyone to give Facebook a 30 percent cut of all revenue. It’s now clear that the more important priority is for both Facebook and Zynga to be successful, which means less restrictive terms.

And while Zynga will be required to make any social game it launches available on Facebook concurrently, or shortly following, another launch, there are some exceptions: Provisions around gambling for real money, games in China and Japan, and mobile games due to technical limitations.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121129/facebooks-new-terms-treat-zynga-like-most-other-game-developers/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121129/now-its-a-race-comscore-adds-up-web-mobile-and-app-eyeballs-for-the-first-time/ http://allthingsd.com/20121129/now-its-a-race-comscore-adds-up-web-mobile-and-app-eyeballs-for-the-first-time/#comments Thu, 29 Nov 2012 14:42:51 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=273770 Big news for Web publishers whose users are increasingly visiting them on their phones: They’re going to start getting credit for those eyeballs, via a new scoring system from comScore.

How much that credit is worth is an open and important question for Web publishers. Because right now most of them have to offer advertisers a very steep discount on mobile eyeballs — as much as 80 percent off of desktop rates.

But addressing that problem will take some time, and at the very least this is an important first step.

And for some sites and services that exist predominantly on mobile sites, the new comScore ratings are going to be a big help. Because they’ll help them justify their pitch — hey, we may not be that big on the Web, but we’re huge on phones — to advertisers.

It’s also a nice reality check for the many app start-ups that are happy to tell you how many downloads they have, but don’t want to talk about how many people use them.

On to the new rankings, which comScore is calling its “Multi Platform” listings. They attempt to track visitors to Web sites, mobile sites and mobile apps, and then combine those tallies without duplicating visits, for a true sense of a publisher’s monthly traffic.

That is: If you visited Facebook on your iPhone app in November, you’ll count as a single unique user; if you also came to the site via your PC in November, Facebook’s unique user count won’t go up.

A few takeaways from the new rankings — you can see a Top 30 list here:

• Most of the top players on the Web are still the top players once you add in their mobile audiences. And Google, of course, is still the biggest. But many publishers are now much bigger, and that’s enough to move them up a slot or two. It’s a big deal for Facebook, for instance, to move from No. 4 to No. 3, passing by Microsoft, which used to be No. 2.
• The new rankings definitely boost some big players with very big mobile audiences: Note the huge leaps for ESPN and Pandora, with the latter cracking the Top 30 list for the first time. Twitter’s argument that it’s very much a mobile company gets additional credence here, too, since the new rankings bump its total audience up by more than 50 percent.
• Note that these rankings are only for the U.S., so it’s possible that some sites would see their scores shoot even higher when you factor in countries where phones are more common than PCs.

And here’s another interesting way to look at the new data — a list of the sites that saw the biggest percentage increase from mobile (click chart to enlarge):

Cooliris, by the way, is a native app on many Android devices, which accounts for the huge spike there. And Zynga’s rise is likely a bit overstated, since most of its real Web traffic gets assigned to Facebook, which is where most of its users encounter the service.

But there are lots of other good nuggets in there. Yesterday, for instance, Groupon’s embattled Andrew Mason said that his company has seen a huge uptake on phones; comScore says he’s right.

(Image courtesy of Shutterstock/Mikhail Pogosov)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121129/now-its-a-race-comscore-adds-up-web-mobile-and-app-eyeballs-for-the-first-time/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121126/the-galaxy-camera-a-better-android-based-camera-but-a-big-commitment-%e2%80%a8/ http://allthingsd.com/20121126/the-galaxy-camera-a-better-android-based-camera-but-a-big-commitment-%e2%80%a8/#comments Mon, 26 Nov 2012 14:00:46 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=272182 Would you pay $500 dollars for a high-quality digital camera that’s always connected to the Internet? What if it meant paying another wireless bill or monthly fee?

With its new Android-based Galaxy Camera, Samsung is gambling that Web-crazed consumers will want to take on these commitments for the chance to share photos whenever they want.

The idea of marrying a Google Android mobile operating system with a digital camera is not entirely new. Nikon has done it, Polaroid plans to do it, and now Samsung has introduced this camera.

The Samsung Galaxy Camera has some distinct advantages over its main competitor, the $300 Nikon Coolpix S800c. It has better hardware and is running the newest Android OS, Jelly Bean. And the Nikon is Wi-Fi-only. While testing it (here’s my review of that camera), I wasn’t able to share many photos on the spot. Most times, I’d wait until I was back home or at a hotel before I would share the photos via Gmail, or to Instagram or Facebook.



While testing the Galaxy, I’ve been able to share my photos at any time — even when I didn’t have access to Wi-Fi. And the camera shares photos quickly when it connects to AT&T’s 4G network (which is HSPA+, not LTE).   



But there are three key things to consider with this camera. For one, it’s relatively big. Another detractor is price: It sells for $499.99, although AT&T is currently offering the camera for $399.99 if you also buy any Samsung Galaxy smartphone — yes, a second device — with a two-year contract.



If you want the constant connectivity, you’ll have to sign up for an AT&T data plan, or add another line to your existing AT&T plan. You can pay an additional $10 a month on top of your AT&T mobile plan to share between one gigabyte and 20GB of data, or you can opt in to a separate “data connect” plan that can range from $15 to $50 to share between 250 megabytes and 5GB of data.

And in case you’re wondering: The camera does not act as a phone.

There’s also a plan activation fee of $35.

 So, unless you’re already an AT&T customer on a mobile share plan, you can expect to pay at least a $15 monthly fee to use this camera, plus a fee just to get it connected. While consumers are pretty accustomed to these costs when it comes to smartphones, they’re new to cameras. 


Some consumers might even wonder why they’d need such a high-priced Android camera when some newer smartphones, like the iPhone 5, the HTC Evo 4G, the Samsung Galaxy S III and the Galaxy Note II, have pretty good eight-megapixel cameras.



With all that said, if you’re still interested in buying the Galaxy Camera — it’s an impressive camera, one that does take better photos than a lot of smartphone cameras.



It measures 5.07 x 2.79 x .75 of an inch, and weighs 11 ounces. Its all-white body has a curve on the right side that’s covered with etched plastic for a better grip, and it feels solid.



It’s also chunky, due in part to the large lens pocket on the front of the camera. It felt heavy in my purse and in my coat pocket. It didn’t fit in some smaller clutch purses, and it definitely wasn’t fitting in the pocket of my jeans. Samsung explains it size by saying that the camera basically crams two high-end gadgets into one. 



The Galaxy Camera has a powerful, quad-core processor, a large 16-megapixel image sensor and a 23-millimeter wide-angle lens. It has an attractive, 4.8-inch HD touchscreen display. On the top, there’s a dial for controlling the 21x zoom — which also doubles as a volume control button. Otherwise, there are no dials on the camera, keeping it refreshingly simple. 




Its home screen looks just like the home screen of an Android smartphone — including icons for apps like email, Google Maps, a Web browser and the Google Play store. I was able to easily download apps for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

When you tap the camera icon, you can opt to shoot pictures in Auto mode, Smart mode or Expert mode, the latter of which offers some manual settings (like ISO, shutter speed or aperture priority). Auto mode includes a variety of fun photo filters. There’s also a one-tap video-recording button for capturing HD video.

In most situations, excluding some low-light settings or scenes with a lot of movement, the camera took amazingly crisp and vibrant photos. 

And the option to share those photos right away was admittedly pretty convenient.

When I was out in Boston one night, I was able to take a good picture in the dark of the exterior of Fenway Park, and quickly post it online for my boss (who happens to be a rabid Red Sox fan). Over Thanksgiving dinner, I took pictures of a couple and their dog for a potential Christmas-card cover, and sent them the ones they liked on the spot. I shared photos via Instagram.

A photo taken with the Samsung Galaxy Camera



I also used the camera to check email, browse Twitter and navigate an unfamiliar area using Google Maps. 

It was almost enough to make me ditch my smartphone some nights — except, of course, I couldn’t receive or send text messages or make phone calls with the camera. So I still carried around both devices, and mainly pulled the camera out when I wanted to capture a really good-quality photo. 


In my experience, battery life on the Galaxy Camera wasn’t great. I had to charge it once every couple days, and I was using it intermittently. Samsung doesn’t have an official claim for battery life. The battery life of standard point-and-shoots is usually measured by how many shots you can take per charge. When you add a full mobile OS to the camera and allow for apps and Web browsing, it gets a bit tricky.



Fortunately, as with Android smartphones, you can see which apps are running in the background, or put the camera into either “Airplane” or “smart network” mode to conserve power. 


The Samsung Galaxy Camera is the best Android-based camera that’s currently available, but consumers should weigh the cost commitment that comes with being always connected.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121126/the-galaxy-camera-a-better-android-based-camera-but-a-big-commitment-%e2%80%a8/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20121123/how-ibm-is-watching-how-you-shop-online/ http://allthingsd.com/20121123/how-ibm-is-watching-how-you-shop-online/#comments Fri, 23 Nov 2012 23:16:43 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=272279 Starting yesterday and continuing into today, computing giant IBM has been putting out quick reports on the state of online shopping.

Apparently, this is now a officially a thing, so here are some stats taken from the latest snapshot as of 3 pm ET, because we just know you’re not shopping on a tablet, you’re on the edge of your seat waiting to hear about how many others are:

• Online sales are up 20 percent for this same time period over Black Friday 2011.

• The number of consumers using a mobile device to visit a retailer’s site is at 28 percent, up from 18.1 percent in 2011.
• The number of consumers using their mobile device to make a purchase is 14.3 percent, up from 10.3 percent in 2011.
• Shoppers using the iPad led to more retail purchases more often per visit than other mobile devices, with conversion rates reaching 4.2 percent, higher than all other mobile devices.
• Shoppers referred from social networks like Facebook and Twitter generated 0.18 percent of all online sales on Black Friday.

So, you might be wondering how IBM gets all this info. It’s all part of its strategic play in the world of big data, essentially helping companies make more sense of the huge troves of data they’ve gathered that were previously being ignored. Smarter Commerce is the area of IBM devoted to helping retailers better understand that data so they can come up with improved ideas concerning how to sell more stuff.

Where they gather that data is the IBM Benchmark. It’s a cloud-based digital analytics platform that soaks up digital information about how consumers respond to different ways of selling things online, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all year long, from 500 different online retailers. IBM won’t name them — they joined the network under condition of anonymity — but Big Blue says the companies that participate include about half of the companies named on the Internet Retailer Top 100 list. A lot of the technology comes from Coremetrics and Unica, acquisitions IBM made in 2010.

Last year, I talked about all this with Craig Hayman, IBM’s VP of the WebSphere, Application and Integration Middleware Software Division of the IBM Software Group. One quote from that conversation sticks out in my memory; it bears repeating here:

“If you think about consumers, and you think about the amount of technology that they have at their hands, to reach out to read reviews and talk to friends and families, they’re incredibly empowered. There’s not one purchase decision that they make that is not impacted by some element of social networks. What does that do to the companies that have to deal with that by offering the best products and services, and you see companies are struggling to do that: To make the right offer at the right time with the right price. When they do it well, we all talk about how it went well; and when they do it badly, we talk about how annoying it was.”

Now you know. Not only are retailers and your credit card companies watching you shop, so is IBM.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121123/how-ibm-is-watching-how-you-shop-online/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121121/with-site-badges-debut-mobile-first-instagram-is-catching-up-to-the-web/ http://allthingsd.com/20121121/with-site-badges-debut-mobile-first-instagram-is-catching-up-to-the-web/#comments Wed, 21 Nov 2012 18:00:03 +0000 Mike Isaac http://allthingsd.com/?p=271732 Building on the momentum of its Web profiles launch earlier this month, Instagram announced Wednesday the rollout of badges, small icons that users can post to promote their Instagram pages.

They’ll certainly look familiar. Instagram badges are essentially a short bit of code that Web masters can embed into their sites, displaying an icon that leads back to a specific Web profile.

It’s no different from the millions of little Twitter bird icons you see pasted up across the entire Web, or perhaps the Tumblr T’s and Pinterest P’s. In short, a badge is an attractive hotlink anchored to your photo spread.

Yes, it’s teensy and incremental. But that’s only the case because icons like these are ubiquitous across the Web, a mainstay of brand promotion. Once you’ve got your social promotional aspects — like a Facebook business page — up and running, the next step is to link to it with badges like these. And millions of people are already doing it with their other social accounts.

Funny thing is, Instagram is building out its network in a way atypical of the Facebooks and Twitters of the world — it is basically working in reverse.

Think about it. Instagram came to prominence via the iPhone and (eventually) Android, growing to upward of 100 million users without ever having an actual Web presence. Only two weeks ago did the company roll out Web profiles so that users could share their photo repositories from the desktop. That’s the complete opposite of the growth trajectory of every Internet company of the past decade. (Though some may argue that this could become the norm.)

Also of note: Instagram’s announcement comes published on the site’s business blog. Obviously, the most likely candidates to use badge icons will be those with their own Web sites, and those are usually the folks with something to sell.

My hunch is that with the debut of badges, combined with Web profiles, Instagram is laying out a more traditional way for brands to take advantage of the app going forward. Companies are already having a tough time figuring out the best way to maintain their Facebook and Twitter presences; to extend that maintenance to Instagram in a familiar, Web-centric way could cut down on some confusion on the business end.

The big question here will be how many visitors Instagram’s Web profiles will see over time. It is a mobile-centric app, after all, so conditioning people to treat it as a Web site as well may not be so simple. And that’s the exact opposite direction of Facebook users’ movements now, as we’re seeing desktop views migrate to mobile en masse.

Badges are available on the site’s business blog beginning Wednesday.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121121/with-site-badges-debut-mobile-first-instagram-is-catching-up-to-the-web/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20121109/own-your-code-facebooks-engineering-shift-tackles-the-problem-of-mobile/ http://allthingsd.com/20121109/own-your-code-facebooks-engineering-shift-tackles-the-problem-of-mobile/#comments Fri, 09 Nov 2012 16:04:07 +0000 Mike Isaac http://allthingsd.com/?p=267888
The global shift from desktop to mobile came on like a bomb. And no one — not even Facebook — was truly prepared.

Now, as the lion’s share of the social giant’s user base accesses the site via mobile devices, Facebook has undergone a major internal organizational shift, retooling product workflows to better focus on the phone.

Engineering teams are morphing. Software cycles are being rejiggered. It’s a materialization of the company’s newest mantra: “Mobile first.“

The Old Days

Facebook has taken flak for its mobile strategy for some time. Its smartphone apps, for example, were sluggish and underperforming compared to others like Twitter.

Some of the blame for these deficiencies is placed on a technology bet Facebook made years ago, making HTML5 a key component of its mobile strategy. Put simply, HTML5 is a coding language that can handle some of today’s more taxing Web features. And Facebook’s apps were built with heavy use of HTML5.

Using a language like HTML5 has its benefits. For one, it let Facebook spread much faster. Any phone with a Web browser can access Facebook’s mobile site, which the company spent much of its effort refining early on.

Not to mention that many of today’s engineers grew up using Web-based languages back in the early dot-com days. That makes it much easier to recruit talent for Facebook’s ever-growing engineering team.

But as we’ve moved toward a “native” world of smartphone app development, the classic Web-centric engineering emphasis is harder to maintain. “Pushing” a piece of new code live to the desktop and mobile Web is a much faster process than making changes to a native iOS or Android application. For native apps, there is a mandatory review of app changes from Apple’s App Store. And with every change made to an app, that means users need to download a new update to the app.

Previously, Facebook split dealing with these problems in two. Desktop coders were part of one group, while the mobile apps teams were separate. In fact, as product manager Dirk Stoop told me, the native iOS and Android apps were so small in the early days, only a handful of people were responsible for maintaining the iOS and Android applications — two of the most-downloaded apps in the entire world.

This wasn’t enough. Facebook’s Web-centric culture didn’t translate over to native app development the same way. Something had to change.

A Different Framework

The Facebook product structure of today looks very different than it did before. Teams are separated across the company by product rather than platform.

So, for example, the Facebook Messenger group, led by Facebook veteran Peter Deng, is one team composed of desktop, mobile and native engineers who create features for every place that this product appears. This is the same for Photos, the team which Stoop leads.

Both of those teams, you may recall, produce standalone apps outside of the proper “Facebook” native application. This, Deng tells me, is part of a strategy focusing on improving these products faster, essentially making each app a “testing ground” for the main Facebook app. If the team sees increased use in a specific feature in the standalone app, for example, that feature could be integrated into the main app.

Timing is also a focus. To shift the “push-whenever” mentality of a Web-focused coder, Facebook has put all new code updates into staggered release cycles.

Deng’s team, for instance, updates the iOS Messenger app every six weeks, like clockwork. This gives the team a better sense of deadlines and timing, while minimizing the amount of updates users need to download. Desktop coders still push more frequently, but are now relegated to doing so twice a day.

Perhaps the most drastic change is philosophical. Product managers want teams to “own their code,” to put more intention and responsibility behind any changes they make.

“This is about understanding that there is some level of permanence in the code you ship,” product manager Michael Sharon told me. “This is educating our people about quality.”

End Game

Facebook talks a big game. But is this shift actually going to benefit users?

Deng and his fellow product managers believe so. In a recent update, two of the most popular features from Messenger and Camera were integrated into the Facebook main iOS app. The idea is, Facebook’s app will get better, faster and stronger with the modular approach.

Not every timed release will be groundbreaking. Most have included bug fixes and optimizations, while others include better feature additions. It’s less about revamping the application and more about getting into a timing groove.

Ultimately, Facebook hopes the shift will pay off in the masses being happier with their mobile experience, unlike the old days when the native apps were built heavily with HTML5. Ideally, that makes for a more engaged, more active Facebook user.

That’ll let the engineering team rest a bit easier. At least until the next product cycle begins.

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