Perhaps this explains why Microsoft is dragging its feet bringing Twitch onto the Xbox one – it seems as though they’re waiting until they can introduce their competing online video programming platform. They’re hoping to introduce the Steven Spielberg-produced Halo TV series, but it’s all taking a bit longer than anticipated. They’re trying to introduce live action series, in addition to Twitch-like integration, and it’s been slow to get off the ground. Whether it is actually successful, in light of such a saturated space, will be interesting to see.
Category: Percolate
Facebook Upgrades Messenger
In 2013, messaging apps became a hot topic in the mobile sphere, but there is still no hands-down dominant service in the U.S. Facebook upgraded its offering in the text messaging space by revamping the two-year-old Messenger app, adding free calls and stickers, following the lead of Asian messaging leaders Line, Kakao Talk and WeChat. The service also added real-time statuses to allow users to tell if their friends are online or on mobile, and phone number-based messaging to allow connections to non-Facebook users. While Messenger might not be as full-featured as its Asian counterparts, don’t write it off just yet, as Facebook’s 1.2 billion active users could serve as a starter user base for the service to become as dominant a player in mobile messaging as it is in online social messaging.
2013: The Connected Year
According to ABI Research, 2013 was a year of increased connection, across media, platforms, and rooms. In the living room, there were 282.6 million set-top boxes sold, a 3.2% year over year increase, while mobile subscriptions, broadband subscribers, and wireless connectivity sets were up 5.8%, 6.1%, and 8.2% respectively. As well, smartphone sales were up 34.8%. The connected world is only continuing to develop, but if this trends report is any indication, we’re quickly hurtling towards a world of connected people, devices, and nations.
Breaking Bad Spinoff Airs On Netflix
In another big win for the streaming service, the Breaking Bad spinoff titled “Better Call Saul” will air digitally, on Netflix, exclusively in Europe and Latin America. In the United States, the show will be posted online shortly after it airs on AMC. The move is in line with the show’s founder, Vince Gillian, who has said on multiple occasions that Netflix is responsible for saving Breaking Bad in its early seasons while it was struggling to gain wide-spread attention. It’s also a big win for Netflix, who are continuously looking for legs up over competitors Amazon Instant Video.
Twitter Experiments With “Nearby” Tweets
Twitter’s improvements in 2013 aren’t limited to making the service more friendly to mass advertisers. The company has begun testing a feature that generates a timeline of “nearby” tweets. Some users are already seeing it on their mobile devices, but the function has not rolled out to all users yet. The “nearby” feed displays a map with the user’s current location, and a feed of tweets, with each tweet’s location indicated on the map as well. This addition to Twitter could be just what it needs, giving users a way to prioritize and sort through millions of tweets. It could also be an opportunity for savvy marketers to respond quickly to feedback from their area, or to gain foot traffic in brick and mortar stores.
Brands Tackle Snapchat’s Discovery Problem
Snapchat is more brand-friendly than many assume. While content is made available for 24 hours at best through Snapchat Stories and there are no paid reach opportunities, the limited nature of the platform fosters exclusive. The 1:1 messaging creates an unparalleled intimacy as users feel like they are receiving a private message, unlike a Facebook status which could be seen by the world.
The main issue will be discovery given the rudimentary search functionality. Some brands have become very savvy about leveraging Snapchat exclusives to grow a user base and doing so through other media platforms. Take Acura, for example, which introduced its NSX prototype in a 6 second video to the first 100 people who added them or 16 Handles which uses the service to deliver exclusive coupon offers.
Google Lets Advertisers Buy In Real Time
Google debuted a new way of buying ads based on viewability in real time, across its Display network. What this means, in practical terms, is that advertisers can target purchases based upon data about where their ad has been seen. The product works through a system called Active View, that leverages an algorithmic review of publisher websites to place ads in places where they are likely to be viewed; advertisers thereafter only pay for the ads measured as viewable according to the IAB/3MS standard: 50% of the ad visible on the page for one second or longer. We’ve seen the industry question CTR as a proxy for engagement for awareness campaigns which may move in favor of verified exposures. While we are quite a ways out, look to see if eye-tracking will be supplant viewability as a true metric of attention. Companies like Sticky think so.
Introducing: Instagram Direct
In a secretive event held today Instagram announced one of the biggest technical developments in the company’s history. Called Instagram Direct, the technology gives users ways to share moments with smaller groups of people – not just their followers. It’s essentially a form of direct messaging Instagram pictures to individuals, or specific people. Only those people that you follow can send you pictures or videos directly, but there will be an inbox for those who don’t follow you where you’ll have to accept the image before you can see it; not surprisingly, Instagram recommends against accepting such unsolicited images. The move seems like a pretty obvious catch-up to Twitter DM and Snapchat, so whether users actually make the shift to using Instagram Direct – as opposed to these other, pre-existing apps – will be interesting to watch.
Free Spotify Streaming Coming To Android And iOS
On the heels of Spotify’s controversy regarding royalties and artist payouts, the music streaming service has announced a new, free version of the app for mobile platforms that functions as shuffle-only. In other words, Spotify has released a direct competitor to Pandora and iTunes Radio for mobile devices – you can shuffle your own music, your own playlists, and playlists from people you follow, but you won’t be able to listen to songs in an order that you choose. It seems, at this point, like a simple volume play, as the company looks to increase its listenership across platforms so as to eventually convince them to pay for subscriptions. Whether it can compete with the already-established radio app ecosystem will, in large part, determine the success of the new system.
Qualcomm’s AllSeen Alliance Unifies Internet Of Things
The power of the internet of things is that these objects can talk to each other. In the connected home, your lightbulbs turn off because they are aware that the door has shut or your oven just received a cooking instructions from a recipe you saw on TV. The power is in the connectivity which has long been a promise of the future of the home, albeit a mostly unrealized one.
Enter the AllSeen Alliance. The consortium, spearheaded by Qualcomm, aims to create an open framework that lets device communicate to one another. The beauty of the Alliance is that it is device agnostic and works across various forms of communication, whether they be bluetooth, NFC, wifi or Zigbee. With a large player like Qualcomm in the mix, expect some serious advancements in the connected home space in the coming year.
