Raja Jasti’s Blog - Renaissance Thinking

March 30, 2009

Are tweets coyrighted?

Filed under: Internet, Media — Tags: , , — Raja @ 8:46 am

Mark Cuban, the owner of dallas mavericks, asks this question.

Here is a question for all you legal scholars out there.  Is a tweet copyrightable ?  Is a tweet copyrighted by default when its published ? Can there possibly be a fair use exception for something that is only 140 characters or less ?

I got to thinking about this when I tweeted about an NBA game.  I tweeted to the people who follow me.  While I never asked that they not distribute it to other tweeters,  i did not give anyone permission to republish my tweets in a commercial newspaper, magazine or website.

So when an ESPN.com or any other outlet republishes a tweet, have they violated copyright law ?

Is twittering the process of publishing in 140 characters or less, or is it a private communications to those that follow you ? Even if you dont block outsiders from seeing it ?

You could also extend this to Facebook. Do you own your status update ? Is it a private communications between you and friends, or is a published work ? If a newspaper or website wants to publish your status update, do they need permission first ?

I would think for copyright purposes a tweet would be same as a blog post. It is copyrightable and can be quoted without taking the permission of the tweeter.

Skype now on iphone

Filed under: Internet, Mobile — Tags: — Raja @ 8:38 am

Skype has officialy announced its iphone app at CTIA 2009.

Months after teasing us at CES with an announcement of Skype’s native VoIP client for the iPhone, the free Skype for iPhone will finally be available to download from the iTunes App Store sometime on Tuesday. We got a chance to sit down with the application’s principal engineer before the announcement was made at CTIA 2009, to see Skype for iPhone do its thing. While most of the features aren’t too surprising–Skype does want to maintain some consistency across its mobile applications, after all–there are a few capabilities that are notably missing, and a few iPhone-only perks that are refreshing to see.

This move clearly signals skype’s intention of spreading its wings wider than the desktop to mushc bigger mobile pltforms. This is a good move.

Itenernet advertising gains on TV

Filed under: Internet, Media — Tags: — Raja @ 8:29 am

IAB reports that online advertising grew faster comapred to TV.

In an upbeat report this morning, the Interactive Advertising Bureau reported that internet advertising in the U.S. grew 10.6 percent to $23.4 billion. And the $6.1 billion fourth quarter (up 2.6 percent) was the first time Internet advertising surpassed the $6 billion mark. That said, the rate of growth declined both on an annual and quarterly basis. Even the 4.5 percent sequential growth over the third quarter was the lowest since 2002 (as was the annual growth rate).

Search advertising dominated, with 46 percent of total Internet advertising market share. It also grew more than 20 percent for the year. The only category which grew as fast was rich media and video. Online video advertising grew faster than any other sub-category, with 123 percent annual growth (going from $324 million in 2007 to $724 million in 2008). Display advertising was able to eke out 8 percent growth for the year, but declined 4 percent in the fourth quarter.

The IAB also trotted out some numbers showing that Internet advertising revenues are outpacing TV advertising by some measures. The $23.4 billion in annual internet advertising spending exceeded advertising on cable TV for the first time (which was $21.4 billion), and took the No. 3 spot behind national and local TV ads ($29.8 billion) and newspaper ads ($34.4 billion).

Online journalists more optmistic than print peers

Filed under: Internet, Media — Raja @ 7:49 am

This shouldn’t surprise anyone. According to a  research report blog and online journalists are more optimistic about the future than the print and broadcast brethern.

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism released a study today that claims bloggers and journalists have an “uneasy” optimism about the future of news media on the web. But, the study says, their optimism definitely trumps that of broadcast and print employees in traditional media industries.

According to the study, most journalists who work in the online news industry believe that the internet is having a negative impact on fundamental journalistic values, including a loosening of standards (45% of respondents felt this way), increased emphasis on speed (25%), and the addition of voices from outside the traditional media institutions (31%). While there’s no doubt that the internet is changing the way journalism is conducted and delivered, I’m hesitant to think that speed and increased diversity of viewpoints from outside the industry is detrimental to journalistic integrity.

Online journalists are cautiously optimistic that their publications have viable business models compared to traditional forms of media. Over 60 percent of respondents reported that their online news units were making a profit. But only four out of every ten online journalists are “very confident” that online news can find a profitable business model for journalism, and are worried about the money-making prospects of internet advertising. Roughly two-thirds of journalists surveyed predicted advertising would be the most important form of revenue for news websites in three years. That in itself might be an overly optimistic projection for online advertising revenues, which today only accounts for less than 10 percent of overall newspaper advertising dollars in the U.S., and actually showed a slight decline last year. Print advertising, however, is diving faster than anyone expected.

Internet certainly is changing the face of all the media industries. Change brings fear and uncertainity. Whie the old media is getting disrupted, the new media is struggling to find proftable revenue models. Purely advertisement based model doesn’t seem to be the answer, at least right now. Economic recession is not helping thigs either. So these are difficult times, but things should improve as media adapts to the web, mobile and other digital media technologies.

While on this topic, one of my blog readers Leo Dirr, forwarded me this interesting blog post on the blog utah stories titled ‘will newspapers survive?‘. Thanks Leo.

March 29, 2009

Video games improve eyesight

Filed under: Entertainment — Tags: — Raja @ 9:09 pm

Some US researchers say video games may improve eyesight in adults.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Adults who play a lot of action video games may be improving their eyesight, U.S. researchers said on Sunday.

They said people who used a video-game training program saw significant improvements in their ability to notice subtle differences in shades of gray, a finding that may help people who have trouble with night driving.

 Yipee! More video game time for me.

Future of Hulu and professional online video

Filed under: Entertainment, Internet, Media — Tags: , — Raja @ 8:45 pm

NewTeeVee has a post about the potential dangers lurking for the professional video content sites such as Hulu.

The music industry isn’t the only one getting ready to kill off its young. Networks have increasingly been removing content from Hulu.com and their own web sites. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia episodes disappeared in January from Hulu, and shows like The Mentalist and Big Bang Theory were removed without warning from the CBS web site last fall. Finally, there’s the continuing spat between Hulu and Boxee, with rights holders pulling the strings to block any attempt to watch their content on TV-connected devices.

And things are gonna get worse, thanks to the fear of losing ad revenue in times of declining ad budgets, according to Forrester analyst JamesMcQuivey. “We expect this situation to intensify throughout the first half of 2009, resulting in bolder content restrictions on the part of content owners and more doubt cast on the role of online TV show aggregators,” he writes in a new report titled “Preparing For The Coming Online TV Backlash” that Forrester is sharing freely with registered users.

McQuivey isn’t the only one pessimistic about big media’s response to the recession. Liz noted on Friday that Hulu risks losing support from NBC and Fox, and another report just suggested that “Online video (is) not commercially viable.”

In fact, platforms like Hulu could soon find themselves in a situation similar to their musical counterparts Imeem and Last.fm. Hulu has shown some phenomenal growth, just like streaming music platforms, but all those public service ads we’ve been seeing lately seem to suggest that their ad inventory isn’t keeping up with that. Which means we could very well see Hulu and its online competition left in the cold while big media retrenches to oldteevee.

NYT chimes in on the viability of free model for professional onlint content.

MILWAUKEE — In the last couple of years, the television industry has made a big push onto the Web, giving viewers hope that they might one day reach nirvana: every show ever made, available online for immediate free viewing.

But many in the industry are now questioning whether free is a sustainable model. And some are trying to make sure people have a reason to keep paying hefty cable bills.

Time Warner Cable, the second-largest cable operator in the country, is working with customers here to test a subscriber model for online TV viewing. Residents who pay for HBO can watch “Big Love,” “Entourage” and other programs on their computers, using special software and a personal log-in. People who are not HBO subscribers are barred from the service.

US Newspaper industry lost $7.5B last year

Filed under: Media — Tags: — Raja @ 12:50 pm

via techcrunch:

Last year was the worst on record for the U.S. newspaper industry.  Total advertising revenues (both print and online) declined 16.6 percent to $37.85 billion, according to the latest figures from the Newspaper Association of America.  That is $7.5 billion less than in 2007.  Print advertising alone declined 17.7.  Classifieds were down 29.7 percent. And even online advertising was down 1.8 percent to $3.1 billion. Newspapers are shuttering their print editions, laying off staff, or closing entirely as a result of this severe contraction in revenues bright on by the double whammy of economic recession and competition from the Web. Drilling down into the fourth quarter numbers, total advertising dollars shrank 19.74 percent, making it the tenth straight quarter in which revenues have declined, and the sixth straight quarter in which the rate of decline has been accelerating:

Wow, this is pretty brutal.

Startup lessons

Filed under: Entrepreneurship — Raja @ 11:37 am

Josh Kopelman, a noted VC in the web space, has a nice blog post on a couple of yogisms for startups. For those of you not familiar with yogi berra, he was a baseball player who played for newyork yankees, but is better known for his funny but insightful sayings.

Here are the two that Josh quotes in his blog post.

  • If you come to a fork on the road, take it.
  • It ain’t over till it’s over.

The first one relates to being flexible and willing to change direction 180 degrees if needed. Don’t be married to your initial vision and business plan. Keep you eyes wide open and iterate like hell. There is a well known saying that a business plan becomes outdated as soon as it is written.

PayPal started out as a service to beam money through Palm Pilots, while YouTube was originally a video dating site.

The second one relates to not giving up just because there are other companies in the space. If google’s founders thought search was over and won because of altavista first and yahoo later, then there would be no google. You need to mind the competition for sure, but not get blinded by them.

I actually say it is never really over. Markets are always evolving and new opportunities keep opening up. The key is to identify and go after the right opportunities. Then focus on executing your vision rather than obsess about competition.

March 28, 2009

Lala iphone app

Filed under: Entertainment, Internet, Media — Tags: , , — Raja @ 11:16 pm

Lala, a web music startup that lets you buy and build your msuic library in the cloud, will be releasing an iphone app that streams the songs from you library on the cloud to your iphone.

While some of Apple’s traditional iPods have massive storage capacities, many people have abandoned them favor of iPhones, which offer more functionality but much less space for the money (most people have either 8GB or 16GB models). And given that these devices are also used to store applications and video files, many of us find us having to pick and choose which songs we want to carry around with us.

With Lala, you don’t have to worry about that. The app streams the songs from Lala’s servers, in much the same way Pandora does. But unlike Pandora and similar radio apps, you can chose any song from your music library whenever you want.

Unfortunately, it still may be a while before everyone can get their hands on the app. Lala says that there isn’t any concrete release date for the iPhone application, explaining that it still needs work on a number of fronts. For one, the app still has obvious bugs (some text fields don’t update correctly, and sometimes a button won’t work). But perhaps more important, it sounds like the company may still have some legal hurdles to wrangle, and it also needs to fine tune its monetization strategy. Hopefully it won’t be too long - this app would be a boon for users with large music libraries, and would also offer a huge boost to the Lala service as a whole.

Here is the video of Techcrunch’s demo of the lala iphone app:

Facebook growing up too fast?

Filed under: Internet, Technology, Trends — Tags: — Raja @ 2:18 pm

Brad Stone at NYT in his long article wonders if facebook is grwoing up too fast.

WHEN Facebook signed up its 100 millionth member last August, its employees spread out in two parks in Palo Alto, Calif., for a huge barbecue. Sometime this week, this five-year-old start-up, born in a dorm room at Harvard, expects to register its 200 millionth user.

 

The masters of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, left, and Chris Cox, preside over a five-year-old company that is nearing a milestone of 200 million users, double the number last August.

 

Facebook has helped Karen Haber of Israel find family members. The Holocaust dispersed many of her relatives around the globe.

That staggering growth rate — doubling in size in just eight months — suggests Facebook is rapidly becoming the Web’s dominant social ecosystem and an essential personal and business networking tool in much of the wired world.

MR. ZUCKERBERG hopes that being ubiquitous and useful translates to the bottom line.

Though Facebook is privately held and doesn’t publicly disclose its earnings, various press and analysts’ estimates of its 2008 revenues span from $250 million to $400 million. That range may not be enough to cover the company’s escalating expenses, and it hardly justifies some of the atmospheric valuations that have been placed on the start-up, including the $15 billion that Microsoft assigned to the company when it invested in it in 2007.

Facebook’s financial challenges aren’t unique. Popular free e-mail services like Hotmail from Microsoft and Gmail from Google have little in the way of profits to show for their vast audiences, aside from a few text ads that people rarely click on. Instant messaging networks like Microsoft Messenger and AIM from American Online are similarly popular but have never been hyperprofitable, for the simple reason that people do not want intrusive ads inserted into personal conversations.

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