According to a 6-3 Supreme Court ruling this morning, Aereo – the company that allows subscribers to stream TV stations over the Internet – violates copyright law and must stop functioning as such. It’s a reversal of lower courts’ decisions, which had mostly sided with Aereo because of their business model, which culls its signals from a network of tiny antennas distributed to subscribers. It’s unclear what Aereo’s next move is now, but what’s for sure is that they still believe in their product and believe that the present cable model will be undercut in the near future. It just might not be Aereo doing that undercutting anymore.
Category: Percolate
Report: Search Driving Smaller Proportion Of Site Traffic
According to new research by sharing platform Shareaholic, search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing are driving a dwindling share of total site traffic across the Internet. Over the last six months, all top five search engines in the US drove a smaller share of overall traffic to sites that Shareaholic tracks. Conversely, there has been a spike in social referrals, suggesting that social traffic is far more valuable to websites looking to generate traffic than search engines, at the current juncture.
Withings Activité Hides Smartwatch Features Within Fashionable Body
We’ve harped on this before: one of the biggest barriers to mainstream acceptance that faces the wearables industry is fashion. People don’t want to wear clunky technology just for the sake of having the technology on their bodies. Companies have begun to recognize this – most prominently with Motorola crowdsourcing high-quality designs for its Moto 360 – and the new leader in the consumer-facing fashionable technology is Withings, whose Activité watch is a classy wearable in disguise. It features a common second dial that tracks how close the user is to their daily fitness goals, which are synced via bluetooth to the watch. The watch tracks both steps and sleep, and the watch will vibrate gently to awake the user from the lightest point in their sleep cycle. It’s a well-designed watch first that happens to have some technology built in – something users have been clamoring for for some time.
WeChat Introduces Ephemeral Messaging Feature
In what seems to be a growing trend in the messaging app space, WeChat announced new features that pull from the success of SnapChat. WeChat users will now be able to recall the message they’ve sent within two minutes by long-pressing the message and clicking ‘Unsend.’ The feature works on photos as well. The move is a big nod to the type of privacy and control that users have responded positively to on SnapChat and other apps; expect to see more similar moves like it in the near future.
Nest Acquires Dropcam
The Google-owned Nest confirmed today that it will be acquiring Dropcam, the home-monitoring startup that produces cameras to keep track of the modern home. It seems as though Nest is looking to integrate Dropcam into a complete home system, and to bring Nest onto the cloud; ultimately, Nest is adding a subscription service. It will be interesting to see where Dropcam goes from here, and how Nest – and Google – utilize the service.
Moto 360 Crowdsources Smartwatch Designs
The main criticism levied against smart wearables is the fact that none of it is actually fashionable, meaning that nobody would actually wear it. Motorola wants to solve that problem with its smartwatch, the Moto 360; it’s put out an open commission for designs on its watch, and they’ve now whittled over 1600 submissions down to 10 eye-catching designs that seem poised to break the unfortunate trend of clunky wearable tech. For pictures of the designs, click through to The Verge, above.
Twitter Will Support Gifs
Twitter announced that it’ll follow the rest of the Internet by supporting gifs on its network. It announced it with a cheeky gif of a Twitter employee uploading a gif for the first time, which received broad support across the twitter-sphere. When brands think about Twitter they often associate it with clutter and noise, but now gifs might offer a nifty way to cut through the volume with something a little more scintillating.
Google Will Unveil Connected Car Competitor This Month
The connected car is seen by many as one of the next biggest media frontiers; as cars catch up to smartphones and other connected technology, technologists will come up with innovative ways of integrating new experiences into the platform. Apple has already announced CarPlay, its attempt to craft an integrated experience, but Google announced its Open Automotive Alliance to develop a competitive model for connecting cars within the industry – and big names like Honda, Audi, and Hyundai have signed on. It’s very possible that by the end of the week we’ll have the two leading connected car systems that, going forward, will inform how we think about technology in the automotive industry.
Snapchat’s ‘Our Story’ Could Be Revenue Driver
Snapchat is releasing “Our Story,” a new feature which lets people attending the same event contribute snaps to a collective story, viewable to the public. Debuting with the Electric Daisy Carnival, Our Story is a huge development that may be a source of revenue for Snapchat as it looks to monetize events. But with location services enabled and public viewing, could “Our Story” undermine Snapchat’s core product?
Line Offers Free PSY Stickers After Watching New YouTube Single
Korean messaging service Line, which we featured in our Messaging Whitepaper, announced a new partnership with singer PSY to offer free stickers in exchange for viewing his new single on YouTube. It’s a unique marketing strategy to boost YouTube numbers for PSY, whose continued YouTube success is integral to his career in the West. Pushing Line users to the video will certainly do just that, as the messaging service’s massive userbase is enough to push the video towards virality on its own.
