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The future of TV

By on April 30, 2013 in Society, Trends and Statistics, Web Technology & The Cloud

Variety has published a story about a new reality show called @SummerBreak.  That might not sound too interesting, but what makes this show stand out is that it will unfold over four social media platforms (Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube) and completely bypass television.

The ways in which people view and interact with television are being completely transformed.

A number of providers are broadcasting ‘online’ only programmes and YouTube and Amazon have been investing in original programming.   The CEO of Netflix, purveyor of on demand programming, has published an opinion piece which outlines a vision for the future of television.   Netflix has seen a sharp rise in its share price and has added three million new viewers so far in 2013.

The document explores the drivers for a move away from so-called ‘linear’ TV towards ‘internet TV and apps’.  Although linear TV remains popular, the steady growth of such services as BBC i-player, HBO-GO and Watch ESPN demonstrates how TV viewing habits will continue to change.   Drivers for change in television viewing include:

  • Increased internet speeds and reliability
  • Increased sales of smart TVs – eventually all TVs will have Wi-Fi and apps
  • Mobile viewing will increase
  • Internet video advertising will become personalised
  • Innovative new entrants
  • Internet TV apps will improve rapidly, just as mobile phones have done over the last 20 years

Viewers are changing

While the technology is moving forward, consumers’ behaviours are also changing.  New research from the US shows that mobile app usage reaches its daily peak between 7pm and 9pm – traditionally TV prime time.  As app usage between these times increases (rising to 50 million during these two hours) viewing figures for almost all prime time TV shows are declining.  The only shows not losing out are those with older viewers.

TV is not simply losing out to apps of course.  Alternative providers (including HBO and Netflix) continue to grow their market share.  What is known as ‘long form video’ is the fastest growing content segment for tablets.    On demand/ internet TV services facilitate what is known as ‘binge viewing’ – where viewers may watch several episodes or indeed entire series of programmes in one go.

To quote the CEO of Netflix on the future of TV…  TV, as we know it is coming to an end.

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Digital Europe – the latest figures

By on March 25, 2013 in Mobile Devices, Post, Trends and Statistics, Web Technology & The Cloud

In 1996, 66% of the world’s internet audience was based in the US.  By 2012 87% of the world’s internet audience was based outside the US.  Europe is now the world’s second largest internet audience (after Asia Pacific) with 27% of the total, putting on 7% growth in the last year.

In its latest report (Europe Digital Future in Focus) ComScore analyses the latest European statistics and trends.

Key findings

The internet

  • There are 408 million internet users in Europe
  • Russia accounts for 15% of all of Europe’s internet users
  • Italy (17%) and Russia (15%) have the fastest growth
  • Once again, the UK leads the way in user engagement with an average of just over 37 hours per user per month

Mobile and tablets

  • There are 241 million mobile devices in Europe
  • At the end of 2012 all EU5 countries had crossed the 50% smartphone penetration milestone
    • Of the EU5 countries, Germany has the most mobile devices, followed by:
      • UK
      • Italy
      • France
      • Spain
      • Almost one third of UK page views are made via mobiles or tablets
        • The European average is 20%
        • The most popular smartphone activities are:
          • Accessing personal email
          • Weather reports
          • Social networking
          • Instant messaging services
          • Search

Mobile video

The EU5 has seen rapid growth in the last 12 months

  • Mobile video has grown 162%
  • PC video grew by 5%

Search

  • Google sites account for 86% of Europe’s search engine market
  • The figures show that users are not simply using search engines – they are searching within sites such as Facebook, eBay and Amazon too

Shopping and banking

  • 146 million Europeans visited comparison shopping sites
  • The Netherlands lead the way in internet banking – 66% of all internet users accessed online banking sites.  Only 18.8% of those in Switzerland did so

Newspapers

Taking the UK as a case study, the report looks at increased reach for newspapers via video and mobile.

  • The Sun has increased its reach by 16.9%
  • The Mail Online has increased its reach by 11%

The report also features country scorecards outlining:

  • Top 20 internet sites for each country
  • Top news/information sites
  • Top retail sites
  • Top online banking sites

For more information, see the comScore website.

Dealing with mission impossible – a publishing case study

By on March 1, 2013 in Content, Corporate Environments, Digital Publishing, Management, Professional Development, Search, STM Publishing, Web Technology & The Cloud

The American Geophysical Union (AGU) disseminates scientific information in the interdisciplinary fields of geophysics.  With over 60,000 members worldwide, the AGU publishes books, research journals, newspapers and other scientific periodicals.

In 2012 the AGU announced a publishing partnership with Wiley.  And in September 2012 Freddie Quek, Director of Engineering for Wiley, was given four months to integrate the AGU content onto a single Wiley platform.  He shared his story of coping with this ‘mission impossible’ with delegates at the Association of Subscription Agents conference in London.

Targets

By 2nd January 2013

  • Start revenue earning
  • Ensure systems ready to support entire content chain
  • Ensure system works in a familiar way for all AGU customers
  • Give AGU customers access to all licensed content

Challenges

  • 17 systems to check
  • Non-standard content formats (one publication had no page numbers; one journal had seven parts – three of which had sub-parts)
  • Over 700 special sections of content
  • What to do about unique identifiers; new ISSNs required
  • Unknown unknowns!
  • Ensuring discoverability
  • Development to start before all requirement were clear

What worked

  • Creation of a 60 day plan
  • Number one priority across the organisation – 52 people on the team
  • Sense of commitment, urgency and importance of the project
  • Rapid decision making at all levels
  • Team effort by everyone and a can-do attitude
  • Strong business lead and close cooperation

Lessons learned

  • Focus on people over process
  • Embrace the challenge
  • Break some rules
  • Be brave
  • Use your best people

Many of us will be asked to take on ‘impossible missions’ at work.  Freddie’s best advice?  Deal with it!

Broadband coverage in Europe

By on November 12, 2012 in Trends and Statistics, Web Technology & The Cloud

The European Union has published a report on broadband coverage in the EU (Europe) for 2011.

The report sets out to map progress towards the broadband coverage objectives of the Digital Agenda.  This includes ensuring all EU citizens have access to at least basic broadband coverage by 2013 and broadband speeds of at least 30 megabits per second by 2020.

The report looks at the coverage of nine broadband technologies grouped into two broad categories

  • Standard broadband
  • Next generation access (NGA)

in 29 countries (the entire EU plus Norway and Iceland).

Main findings

  • 95.7% of EU homes already have access to standard broadband
  • 50+% of EU homes already have NGA broadband available (target 100% by 2020)
  • Just over 12% of rural homes have access to NGA

Belgium, Malta, the Netherlands and the UK show 100% standard coverage as do many urban areas across the whole of the EU.  Indeed, many additional countries have already reached 95% standard coverage.   Lithuania, Bulgaria and Slovenia have seized the opportunity to overcome the deficiencies of their legacy networks by rolling out fibre coverage.

Next generation access

The Netherlands leads the table with 100% availability followed by:

  • Malta 99.3%
  • Belgium 98%
  • Luxembourg 75%
  • Portugal 74.5%
  • Bulgaria 71.4%

The report includes data tables for each of the countries studied showing total coverage and coverage by technology type.

The pdf report can be downloaded by following the link on this page.

UK government – agile and digital by default

By on April 25, 2012 in Digital Publishing, Public Policy, Web Technology & The Cloud

The UK has a tradition of excellence in public services.  However, this has not always translated into excellent online services.  The UK government is now pursuing a ‘digital first’ and ‘digital by default’ agenda which aims to design and deliver world class digital public services.

Mike Bracken is the Executive Director for the UK Government’s Digital Service, responsible for delivering ‘customer first’ digital services.  Speaking at the ‘Agenda Setters’ stream of seminars at this year’s Internet World event, he described how a transformed, agile approach to design and development is opening up online government services.

Gov.uk is the new single site for government services (replacing Direct.gov).  Currently in beta, the site provides simple, clear and fast answers and is designed with external users in mind.  An example of this customer focus can be seen in the contrasting treatment of the same information – in this case about public holidays in the UK.

On Direct.gov, this information is displayed in a table – the information is correct, it is simply not easy on the eye.  The new site answers the key question that most people searching for bank holiday information want answered – When is the next bank holiday?  It is a simple, yet revolutionary approach to delivering truly customer first information.

Key elements and principles of UK.gov

  • Digital first and digital by design
  • Users first!  The users ‘trump’ the government department(s) in all decisions
  • Digital services NOT websites
  • Less information – much of the ‘marginal’ information currently available on Direct.gov will not be transferred onto Gov.UK
  • Quick tasks and answers – for example, by answering four simple questions you can discover your maternity entitlements
  • Understand the user journey – 90% of users will come into the site via search engines, not via expensive ‘home pages’
  • Devices and mobile  - the content is designed for mobile delivery
  • Agile development – small teams are involved in iterative development.  These are not massive, long term IT projects  This approach means you can ‘fail in increments’ and do something about it
  • Learn from experience
  • Build a trusted network of partners – a contrast with previously strained relationships with large external providers.  Work with world class digital businesses

Today, the government has announced a new advisory board to help drive the next stage of Digital by Default.  Leading figures from academia, industry and retail will help the government deliver its digital transformation agenda.

 

‘The promise – and peril – of personalisation’

By on August 18, 2011 in Post, Search, Web Technology & The Cloud

One day, Eli Pariser (an online organiser) logged onto Facebook to find out what people with less liberal opinions than his own were talking about.  He couldn’t find them.  Based on his past search and click behaviour, Facebook had simply edited them out.

Since then, Pariser has gone on to write The Filter Bubble: what the internet is hiding from you.  Speaking recently at the RSA in London, he spoke about his concerns about the filters and algorithms that shape the way the internet is presented to us.  The internet, it seems, is not as ‘connective’ as he once thought it could be.

Companies recognised that there was money to be made in helping people sort through enormous data torrents.  This led to a focus on ‘relevance’ as manifested in, for example, Amazon’s ‘if you liked this, you might like that’ concept.  And these filter algorithms do more than that.  They can make inferences from seemingly unrelated data and are responsible for creating a ‘web of one’ in which results are no longer ‘universal’ but rather based on our own search history.  This ‘filter bubble’ feeds our human confirmation bias by presenting to us the world as we already see it.

The problem is that in our personal bubble views, we don’t know what we are missing. It is relatively easy to know the editorial or political slant of a newspaper but not the unseen filters of social media.  And this matters when social media is driving approximately 50% of the traffic to online news sites.  It’s easy for challenging stories to be lost from view amongst the stream of ‘likes’.

We need to move on from narrow relevance and be challenged in our world view.  It’s not easy to achieve this but the first stage is to be aware – and to make others aware – that this filter bubble exists.

Travelling on the technology curve

By on August 12, 2011 in Post, Trends and Statistics, Web Technology & The Cloud

The theory of how new ideas, innovations and technology are spread is something we should be well aware of.  In our own organisations, we know it pays to identify those who are ‘early adopters’ or members of the ‘early majority’ – and who are influential.   And we also know that sometimes it’s as unhelpful to be too far ahead of the curve as it is to be behind it.

This week, ReadWriteWeb reports on the latest changes to Gartner’s HypeCycle.  HypeCycle seeks to map technological innovations along a timeline from ‘technology trigger’ and through key stages including the ‘peak of inflated expectations’(!) to the ‘plateau of productivity’, when innovation can be seen to be truly impactful and has been adopted by 20-30% of the potential audience.  The latest additions to the service include ‘big data’ and ‘gamification’.

Technologies may follow the curve, but each travels at a different speed.  HypeCycle places eBook readers beyond any disillusionment and at the beginning of the ‘slope of enlightenment’ and big data climbing up towards the ‘peak’ (and likely to do so quite rapidly).

You can view images and read the reseach summary here.

 

Facing up to the cybersecurity challenge

By on June 20, 2011 in Information Security, Mobile Devices, Web Technology & The Cloud

In the latest issue of McKinsey Quarterly James Kaplan identifies a perfect storm of factors that are conspiring to make cybersecurity a major business challenge.

  • Stakeholders expect more ‘openness’.  Increased demands for mobile/smartphone access present new types of security threats
  • More corporate value is to be found online – making it a more attractive target for cybercriminals
  • Interconnected supply chains making extended networks vulnerable to weak links in the chain
  • Increasingly sophisticated cybercriminals and malware

Organisations need a new mindset to tackle cybersecurity challenges. This includes moving from a focus of ‘protecting the perimeter’ to identifying, and protecting, their most valuable intellectual assets.  Most critical of all is to acknowledge that cybersecurity is at best a constant battle rather than a one-off problem that can be tackled and ‘solved’.

 

 

Man vs. machine for $500

By on February 25, 2011 in Post, Web Technology & The Cloud

Jeopardy is a long-running US quiz show that gives contestants an ‘answer’ to which they must respond with the appropriate ‘question’.  Each round will have a range of questions of increasing difficulty (and of increasing prize money value).  It’s enjoyable to play along if you find yourself sitting in a US hotel room at around tea-time with 30 minutes or so to spare, although the US-centric nature of some of the topics might put some of us at a disadvantage.  Well, that’s my story at least.

Earlier this month (February 2011) Jeopardy’s greatest champions returned to the studio to take on a new contestant – IBM’s Watson.  Over three years in the development, Watson was created for this specific purpose, although the lessons learned from the project go way beyond ‘how to win a quiz show’.   Watson needed more than to simply have access to millions of ‘facts’.  He needed to be able to master puns, humour, allusions, slang and nuance, and weigh the probability of each potential correct ‘question’ being correct before buzzing in. 

This article, published on McKinsey Quarterly, tells the story of the complexities of the development stage.  The article takes just one ‘answer and question’ as an example.  In a round called ‘Diplomatic Relations’ Watson must dissect and respond to this:

“Of the four countries the United States does not have diplomatic relations with, the one is the farthest north.”

In order to answer this correctly, and more quickly than any other contestant, Watson needs to perform many functions, ranging from identfying the ‘type’ of question (is it a historical fact or a limerick for example?); working out the grammar of the clue (nouns, verbs etc); working out what ‘country’ refers to (country music?!); before going on to identify potential countries and geographic locations.

This YouTube video shows Watson taking on the champions, displays lists of his alternative potential answers (some of which are very entertaining) and shows some footage of the early stages in IBM’s development of Watson.

Keeping up to date

By on October 18, 2010 in Digital Publishing, Events, Mobile Devices, Post, Social Media, Web Technology & The Cloud

Phil Bradley’s presentation at Internet Librarian International had audience members in a tweeting and note taking frenzy.  He explained how he uses a range of tools to help him keep up with new technologies and how he uses social networking tools to share his knowledge and insight with his networks.

He then went on to share his latest discoveries, highlighting tools that can help us perform a range of tasks from file conversion; checking website availability; password security checking; wordcloud generation and much more.  Phil has been sharing his presentations via Slideshare since 2006.  This presentation (‘What Phil has found’) is, of course, available there too.