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Making (FM) Waves: How Radio Changed the World

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Making (FM) Waves: How Radio Changed the World

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A little into the immense technological and communicational changes this medium provided...

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Radio is making a comeback in a major way via podcasts and emergent platforms such as Spotify and SoundCloud. Hahae reminds us of how radio disrupted the communication industries and changed lives.
How are we are able to laugh along with radio show hosts, sing along to oldies, and listen in sober silence as traffic news announces yet another car accident along the highway? This is thanks to the development of modern radios from Edwin H. Armstrong's discovery of frequency modulation (FM) waves in 1933. Almost wherever one travels, radio waves can be captured. It is possible to experiment with the automatic station finding function on any device with an FM tuner, and explore the character of each locality through its unique broadcast culture.
The birth of broadcast
Radio was disruptive, to say the least. Media industries were drastically transformed, particularly the newspaper, telecommunication and other information industries. Before radio, the dispersal of news required time. It would take days for newspaper printing presses to complete the stages of news compilation, lithography, impression, and distribution. Only with the completion of these stages, information was disseminated, informing the public at large.

However, with radio, information could be relayed instantly to listeners. In the aftermath of Pearl Harbour, the declaration of the war on Japan was announced in real time by Franklin D. Roosevelt on December 8, 1941. It was broadcast to approximately 60 million Americans tuning in on the "wireless", as it was popularly known back then. Radio made the world smaller, gathering family and friends in the living room to listen to war updates. In 1919, the Radio Corporation of America was formed by General Electric, and with it, the birth of mass media corporations.

Radio broadcast not only news, but also entertainment. Instead of reading the newspaper for the latest updates, citizens began to use their ears to learn. The American newspaper industry panicked as they recognized "the economic threat posed by radio's increased advertising revenue, some newspapers began reducing the amount of special coverage they gave radio and removed sponsors names from program listings". However, radios became a household consumer product. In the United States today, there are two radios in existence for every American citizen. Radio's invention truly birthed the word "broadcast", meaning communication of messages to mass audiences.

Telecommunication saves lives
Before radio, important information was mostly sent through the official post. However, Morse code, one of the earliest forms of long-distance communication, was transmitted through rudimentary radio technology in the early 1900's. A crucial beneficiary of this technology was none other than the RMS Titanic. While the ship sank, radio operators Jack Phillips and Harold Bride were able to broadcast an emergency signal to anyone who possessed the technology to pick up on the waves of the sinking ship's distress calls. Fortunately, surrounding ships were able to receive these desperate messages, saving 706 of the 2208 passengers, who would have perished if not for radio technology.

Later on, the further development of radio allowed for voice communication. The advancement of radio sparked the world's first transatlantic communication, which was at once acquired and utilized by the United States Navy. FM radio technology is widely credited with speeding along messages, helping the Allied forces win World War 2 over the technologically inferior Axis powers. Radio also gave rise to the walkie-talkie, a two-way communications system that was of great aid from World War 2 until the present, commonly found in police and military units to communicate when instant communication is required. Lower grade walkie-talkies were also developed as a novelty for children, allowing them to communicate from room to room.

World's first broadcasting station!

The Netherlands holds a special place in the heart of radio's history. The world's first ever radio station broadcast from Den Haag, run by the Dutch engineer and radio pioneer Hanso Idzerda. Queen Wilhelmina was present at the 1919 Utrecht jaarbeurs (trade market) at which Idzerda first demonstrated radio broadcasting technology that was able to traverse a distance of 1200 meters. Idzerda went on to organize the first public Dutch radio broadcast in November of the same year. Unfortunately, he also had a penchant for militarily provocative actions. During the First World War, he used his technology to locate radio stations and German zeppelins. Years later, he was ultimately executed for resistance work during the Nazi occupation. In his commemoration, the VPRO radio programme Instituut Idzerda was named after him.

Although the Convenience is king
heyday of radio is a distant past, it is still used lucratively today by people for people in local and public broadcasting. In the past few years, podcasts have taken the places of our beloved radios. One can postulate that this phenomenon stems from the same reason that Netflix has been able to reach unprecedented levels of market occupancy. We have become complacent, yet busier than ever before. No longer are we willing to wait in anticipation for the clock to hit 10 pm, so we can tune in to a particular show. For better or worse, convenience has become the order of the day.
Photo by Eric Nopanen on Unsplash /Final editor: Erica Boyce
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Making (FM) Waves: How Radio Changed the World

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Radio is making a comeback in a major way via podcasts and emergent platforms such as Spotify and SoundCloud. Hahae reminds us of how radio disrupted the communication industries and changed lives. How are we are able to laugh along with radio show hosts, sing along to oldies, and listen in sober silence as traffic news announces yet another car accident along the highway?

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From Macs to iPods and apps: how Apple revolutionised technology

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From Macs to iPods and apps: how Apple revolutionised technology

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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/aug/02/macs-ipods-apps-how-apple-revolutionised-technology

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The Twitter Effect: How Social Media Changes the News Narrative

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The Twitter Effect: How Social Media Changes the News Narrative

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http://mediashift.org/2011/06/the-twitter-effect-how-social-media-changes-the-news-narrative179/

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How Technology Continues to Revolutionize the Film Industry

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How Technology Continues to Revolutionize the Film Industry

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https://blog.ozobot.com/2018/01/04/how-technology-continues-to-revolutionize-the-film-industry/

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A new survey from Juniper Research has found that OEM (original equipment manufacturer) pay solutions (such as Apple Pay and Google Pay) are on the decline in the US, with contactless card payments rising.

Their conclusion is that the window of opportunity for the large OEM distributors (e.g. Apple Pay and Google Pay) is running out. Researchers from Juniper cite recent releases of contactless card functionality from large US banks and increased consumer interest in these as the key reason for the decline. I think they are wrong. About why OEM is failing, that is.

Consider the functionality of both an OEM pay solution - like Apple Pay - and the contactless card. Both require the user to tap their device or their card against a third-party device when paying. Neither gives the person making the payment any specific advantage over the other - any perceived time advantages are purely semantic.

The in-store merchant accepting the payment derives no differential benefits to those of accepting any other kind of "chip" card-style payment. These payment methods don't allow them access to any insights that help them improve their business. For example, when a person pays with a card or a card-funded OEM mobile payment, the recipient business doesn't see any previous spending behaviour or know anything specific about the person paying. They can't use this payment method to communicate with this person in any way nor can they form any meaningful insights based on the buying behaviour of similar groups of people.
Let's compare this to e-commerce.
When you buy something online, regardless of the payment method used, the payment recipient - the merchant - automatically becomes a lot more powerful in their marketing abilities. For the most part, they have access to far more data about you and all others making purchases from them. They can, just as an example, use this combined data to offer up personalised and re-targeted advertising and send you follow-up offers and discounts on products their analysis has shown you're likely to respond favourably to. Further, all this data, with time spent on thorough analysis, gives e-retailers a shrewd advantage. Their business plans will inherently have significantly less room for error based on "guesswork" given the sheer volume of data they have to work with.

Unless you can rely on your customers using a digitally integrated loyalty card every time they shop, in-store merchants don't have nearly as many data-led advantages as their online counterparts.

There is an exception here, however. Results from 2018 found that the most popular mobile payments solution in the US was, in fact, the Starbucks app, with Walmart and Dunkin' Donuts not far behind. Due to the popularity of these payment apps, Starbucks, for example, is able to gain all the insight advantages - those listed above and many still beyond these - of an online retailer.

What are the differences between what Starbucks and the leading OEM mobile payments solutions are doing? Are people going to forsake their Starbucks app for their contactless card, following the same Juniper reported trend?
No. Here's why:
While the Starbucks app a payment app, allowing customers to pay for their purchases, this isn't why customers use it. They use it for the benefits and convenience it provides. For example, customers can pre-order their drinks to their exact specifications and pay, skipping the queue when they walk in five minutes later to collect it. Going even further beyond this benefit, the user experience of the app has been very cleverly thought out. It's simple to use and includes fun features designed to increase digital engagement and customer loyalty . Further, they can use it regardless of which device they use or who they bank with.

It's the same thing for the likes of Uber, as another example. Uber is, fundamentally, a mobile payments app (enabling you to pay for a ride). It gives customers something of value in return for payment. In this case, it's being able to easily find a taxi when you need one, and seeing it on a map as it heads towards you.

My point here is, in the longer term, it doesn't really matter whether contactless cards beat OEM mobile payments. The functionality and benefits of both are essentially the same.

The card companies and their issuing banks can't afford to feel too smug about this short term win as there are bigger challenges for them on the horizon. They have to provide the Starbucks and Uber convenience and value while being a universal payments solution for all merchants and all consumers. That's the hard part. OEM mobile payments are not remotely close to becoming that and plastic cards can't go beyond what they are - a piece of payment facilitating payment. They have no interface. The core reason people don't care if they pay with card A, B or C or their phone which is acting as a card, is because it makes no real difference to them at all.

Don't forget, the current OEM payment companies are also some of the world's biggest tech companies.

They know very well that their existing functionality simply replicates that of a contactless card and they know this isn't innovation - it doesn't solve any fundamental problems. The primary issue holding these companies back is regulation. Current payment regulations make it difficult for the likes of Apple or Google to launch a mobile payments solution that goes beyond basic functionality.

What happens when the regulations change, though? For example, what happens when regulations make it easier for these companies to connect directly to a person's bank account? In the EU, the very same regulatory changes are coming this year in the form of the second payments services directive (PSD2) .

One of the most hyped payments shake-ups, PSD2 mandates that banks must open their account APIs to allow licensed third-parties to offer direct account access to their users. Suddenly, any subscription-based company paying a third-party fee to a card company, for example, can instead make a compelling offer to their users encouraging them to connect payment direct to their account. For most users, it makes no tangible difference, but for the company taking monthly payments, it will mean potentially saving millions each year.

In India the state launched a Unified Payment Interface (UPI) standard - a government-backed system initiated to encourage digital payments. This allowed Google the ability to launch a mobile payment solution (originally called Tez) designed to challenge existing market players such as PayTM. India's UPI allowed Google the ability to have users connect directly to their bank accounts.

With features such as peer-to-peer payment, bill settling, loyalty and the ability to be used on any phone - not just Android - Google Pay in India is suddenly so much more than just an OEM mobile payment solution. Figures from October last year show that the app grew from zero to 30-million monthly active users in just over a year . Google now has a tested model which works, ready to roll out in markets that it's allowed to. They also have an e-money license from Lithuania, allowing them payment processing access across the EU .

This technically means that later this year, when they're able to under PSD2, they can launch a customised-for-Europe version of the same feature-rich and problem-solving solution which continues to grow in India.

So, while it's right that card companies and banks shouldn't be too concerned about OEM mobile payments, they way they work today, is instead what their focus should be: how do we ready ourselves for open banking and all its repercussions? Because regulatory protections, as is shown with changes designed to shake the industry up under PSD2, can only hold innovation back so long.
Payment services, to maintain long-term relevance, must serve both the consumer and the merchant.
Banks and others offering or creating new mobile payment services need to (and many are trying to) create an "all scenario" solution - the Starbucks experience for everyone. It's not just a far-off reality. It's happening already in many regions. For example, this is what Alipay in China and the Nordic banks have done in Scandinavia. They catered to both sides. Their solutions know the user and the merchants and see everything in between. They facilitate a powerful and valuable connection between consumers and merchants, meaning cards in their current form don't stand a long-term chance.

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Will Contactless Card Payments Kill OEM Mobile Payments And Does It Really Even Matter?

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A new report from Juniper Research shows a growing preference for contactless card payments vs. contactless OEM mobile payments. This piece sheds light on why neither solution solves real problems for those using them and instead, speaks to the future payment solutions that do.

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The fifth generation (5G) of technology for wireless communication is coming soon, in the next two to three years in the U.S., according to the Red Chalk Group, with similar timelines in other pioneering countries. I expect nothing less than a disruption in the media and entertainment industry.

To make the case on how the change will be transformational, think how fourth generation (4G) telecommunications brought one major change in the way we consume media. From the first to the second decade of this century when 4G was introduced, we went from a culture of downloading content on home computers to a culture of streaming on mobile devices. 4G enabled fast enough streaming capability for us to enjoy quality content like music and video on our mobile devices. So how will 5G transform media and entertainment in the next decade? The impacts can be classified into content innovation, value chain effects, and consumption effects.
Content innovation
5G will impact media consumption thanks to significant technical improvements in transmission speed, quality, and reliability, which will drive innovation in content.

Transmission Speed: Download speeds are bound to increase at least tenfold compared to 4G, and for true 5G standards, it could be up to 100-fold. So if an HD movie takes six minutes to download in a 4G network, with 5G it could take a handful of seconds. Also, in the era of user-generated content, photo and video upload speeds will improve, fueling social media content.

5G promises to enable close to zero latency between a streaming source and the viewer (from tens of milliseconds to less than three). The effect was well put by Juan C. Archila, Executive Vice-President of International Relations at America Movil, a global mobile network operator present in 26 countries and No. 340 in Forbes Global 2000 List: "With 5G, negligible latency will bring a new era of professional live-streaming of sports and other live events. User-generated live streams will also proliferate, although new challenges will emerge to limit violent or inappropriate content."

A 4G culture taught us to be impatient. We are willing to sacrifice quality in order to avoid waiting. That is, we are ok with a half-quality stream as long as we get our content fix, uninterrupted. With 5G, there will be less of a trade-off between quality and speed. You will be able to get HD quality video on a fast, reliable stream, with little buffering.

These dramatic improvements in speed, quality, and reliability during media consumption will lead to radical innovations in premium content, such as dedicated virtual reality sports channels and multi-player mobile games. Chris McCann from Verizon's Corporate Communications, states: "We see the distribution of high-resolution digital content and media as a tremendous opportunity for the technology."
Value chain effects
In the internet era, it is easier and less costly to distribute content, so top content creators and owners have enjoyed a favorable position in the value chain to capture profits and margins. "Content is king," many industry experts claim. But with 5G, the power will tilt back in favor of distribution. 5G providers will own the most fertile land to distribute the best content, and content providers will have to pay the price.

5G network providers will get plenty of market power, at the expense of cable broadband providers like Comcast. Expect cable providers to partner with, acquire, or be acquired by 5G mobile providers. Also, expect tech companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon to try to enter the 5G game. Already, Amazon is reportedly in talks with Dish Network to develop a 5G network.
Consumption effects
Transaction cost economics can shed a light on how consumer demand and behavior will change. Right now, streaming is preferred because of the high cost and delays from ownership. Downloading a movie can cost about $15 to $20 for an HD version. Downloading a song can cost up to $1. The economics of renting or streaming content is favorable, especially for content that we only consume once.

In terms of delays, in a culture of impatience, downloading content is on the losing end because streaming happens faster. But that will change with 5G. The time it will take to download digitally-heavy content like TV, film, or games will go down dramatically, to seconds. And viewing the downloaded version will be less subject to connectivity problems when we are on the go. Therefore, we should see a move back to downloading on mobile devices, either through online purchases or by using the download function of streaming services like Netflix or Spotify.

Looking at the economics of the industry's value chain and of consumer behavior, we can predict that 5G will lead to major content innovation, a move to live-streaming, and a come back of downloading. But this is just the tip of the iceberg and as often happens in technological transformations, there are many other impacts of 5G that cannot be foreseen, so we will just have to wait and see.

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5G: The Next Tech Disruption In Media And Entertainment Is Coming

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The fifth generation (5G) of technology for wireless communication is coming soon, in the next two to three years in the U.S., according to the Red Chalk Group, with similar timelines in other pioneering countries. I expect nothing less than a disruption in the media and entertainment industry.

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Digital Media: What Went Wrong (Published 2019)

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For years, BuzzFeed seemed to be leading the journalism industry toward a brave new future. Now that it has stumbled, the way ahead looks more old-school than ever.

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https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/printing-press

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(Image: Getty Images)

Contactless payments have jumped in popularity as fewer Irish people are using cheque books and ATMs.

People used the tap and go method of payment 30 times more than they write cheques, according to a report by the Department of Finance.

Additionally the mount of cheques written had gone down by 50% in the past five years.

An average Irish person makes nearly 240 electronic payments a year and writes only eight cheques.

There was also a "notable reduction in the amount of cash withdrawn from ATMs over this time" with the amount falling by €1,000 per year.

The value of contactless card payments has exceeded €1bn in only three months, the Irish Daily Mail reports.

Brendan Burgess of askaboutmoney.com said: "I don't use cheques anymore and I don't often get them."

The switch from cash and cheques to cards is estimated to save the economy nearly €1bn a year.

How to follow the Irish Mirror on social media

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Contactless payments jump in popularity as fewer people use chequebooks and ATMs

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Contactless payments have jumped in popularity as fewer Irish people are using cheque books and ATMs. People used the tap and go method of payment 30 times more than they write cheques, according to a report by the Department of Finance. Additionally the mount of cheques written had gone down by 50% in the past five years.

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The curious thing about disrupted industries is that very often, when you're living through them, it's hard to recognize just how monumental the changes truly are. Case in point: Media and entertainment.

The changes are rapid and the magnitude is enormous, but it's difficult to assess the scope of the revolution. And that's what makes it so exciting.

Of course, even if you're just an outside observer, you have to know the writing is on the wall: Cord-cutting is accelerating faster than expected, box office receipts have fallen to three-year lows, studio heads are scrambling, all while streaming platforms are exploding in ubiquity. Netflix, for instance, boasted an impressive 125 million subscribers worldwide as of the end of March 2018.

Meanwhile, Amazon's Prime service is now the third most popular video-streaming service behind Netflix and YouTube.

If you're an investor immersed in innovative disruption- as we very much are -some context is necessary to comprehend the scope and nature of this particular disruption.

Specifically: What happens to the studio model? What do cable companies and other incumbents need to do in order to survive and evolve? Can Disney's soon-to-be-launched streaming platform succeed? Where do upstart streaming services fit into the matrix? And how much growth can be expected from Netflix and Amazon?

Summed up: Where are we now-and where do we go from here?

It's impossible to predict with precision each of these individual questions will be answered, much less surmise how the CEOs of legacy media businesses will adapt to the new era of Internet-enabled TV and film. But there is one prediction we make with high degree of confidence: In the end, there will be massive winners, and there will be equally massive losers. Huge market share will be gained-and huge market share will lost.

If you're an investor, you essentially have two options: Sit out the revolution out and watch it unfold on the sidelines. Or enmesh yourself in the disruption and participate. As investors, we choose to participate.

Where are we now?

"History doesn't repeat itself," Mark Twain is said to have once quipped, "but it often rhymes." To get a sense of where things are headed-and where we are now-let's jump back in time.

On December 1, 1945, the first Army-Navy football game was broadcast on live television for the first time in history-except no one was really watching. In 1945, televisions had tiny screens and were almost prohibitively expensive. The RCA "Monticello," for instance, had a 10-inch screen and cost $595-approximately $8,300 in today's dollars. At the time, movie moguls pretty much laughed off the medium altogether.

"Television won't last, because people will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night," Darryl Zanuck, the founder of 20th Century Pictures, infamously predicted in 1946. Not exactly. By 1960, there were about 50 million sets in American homes. Today, according to Nielsen, about 99 percent of American homes have a television.

The point is: The current wave of digital, Internet-based streaming content disruption mirrors the introduction of the television in the 1940's.

Both disruptions radically redefined content platforms, business models, and customer habits. And perhaps predictably, both disruptions were met with cynicism by incumbent executives and spectators who simply laughed them off. Blockbuster's former CEO, Jim Keyes, told the Motley Fool in 2008 that Netflix isn't "even on the radar screen in terms of competition." By 2010, Blockbuster had gone bankrupt.

Again: History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

Now, a decade later in 2018, Netflix and other Internet-based streaming providers are on another path of disruption, and it's no longer the DVD rental businesses they're after. In their crosshairs, they have set out to capture the entire trillion-dollar Hollywood ecosystem.

In a truly disrupted vertical, incumbents get tied to old business models, fail to innovate, and let upstarts capture market share in winner-take-all dynamics. In other words, if this were a Hollywood production, the stage is being set for an all-out war for media domination.

Netflix in particular has thrown itself headfirst into disrupting established Hollywood business models by serving customers with unparalleled amount of great content for absurdly low monthly fees. They have done this not just by licensing content, but by buying and creating their own content-which they have begun to do with unprecedented scale.

In 2017, Netflix spent $6.2 billion on original and acquired programming, according to data from MoffettNathanson. In 2018, the company plans to increase content spending with a focus on global series and films. And with good reason. There's plenty of market opportunity out there. Morgan Stanley now predicts that within a decade, Netflix will grow to 300 million subscribers. The reality is, that number could be even higher.

Amidst the spending boom and the land grab for market share, Hollywood executives, who are yoked to traditional studio models of production and distribution have been left floundering. "I think there is more fear than bad blood; probably a mix of fear and envy," one film executive said of Netflix recently. "They're disrupting the industry."

So how, exactly, are Netflix and other streamers so disruptive to the modern media landscape? Let's take a closer look. It comes down to three core factors.
1. They have already have massive scale-with plenty of room for growth overseas.
As of March 2018, Netflix had 125 million subscribers. As that subscriber-base expands, especially internationally, Netflix poses even more of an existential threat to its competitors. Why? More paying subscribers infuses Netflix with more capital, which allows Netflix to then create more content. And more content means more customers, because people are drawn in to niche programming or hit movie. As BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield said in a recent research note: "While it took Netflix 10 years to reach 100 million streaming subscribers, we expect it to take only 2-1/2 years to reach the next 100 million.

The virtuous circle of more subscribers at higher prices is enabling Netflix to invest in more/better content that is attracting more subscribers who are willing to pay more per month."

For example, the upcoming release of The Irishman, a Martin Scorsese-directed film that will premier only on Netflix, has the potential to draw in scores of new customers-both domestically and internationally.

Another factor to watch closely: The growth of international and foreign language programming. Netflix has clearly dominated the American market-more than half of American adults have an account-but the opportunity abroad is what's particularly exhilarating as investors, since penetration is still modest. "What's really exciting is that the content we're producing for the world, both in English and in local languages, has proved to be very global," Ted Sarandos, Netflix chief content officer, said last last year.
2. An explosion of content-much of it customized-creating an incredible value proposition.
In 2018 alone, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said Netflix will spend over $10 billion on new content, release 80 new films, and premier an astonishing 700 new television shows. For context, the top six movie studios released 75 movies in 2017-combined. From a customer's point of view, this an unprecedented value proposition: For the price of two lattes per month, you gain access to some of highest-rated and most-watched television shows and movies on the planet.

From the industry perspective, this is what drives studio executives and networks insane: Netflix uses its war chest of capital to buy and finance new projects, often out-bidding other buyers of content and acquiring international rights. Amazon is ramping up its buying spree as well-in late 2017, Amazon spent a staggering $250 million to purchase the Lord of the Rings franchise.

Netflix, too, captured headlines when it signed Ryan Murphy, the prolific producer behind some of television's biggest hits, to a $300 million overall deal. "Netflix is not afraid to outbid competitors for shows it wants," notes Sahil Patel of Digiday. "it's buying more shows and more episodes than other streaming platforms and TV networks; it's more hands-off with creators, giving them the room to make the show they want; and its successes have put Netflix in the running for Emmy Awards with the likes of HBO, AMC Networks, broadcast networks and Hulu."

Perhaps even more importantly, though, the content isn't just created-or marketed-in a vacuum. For streamers like Netflix, mining viewing data is an essential part of the approach, and analytics play a pivotal role in not just the selection of content to produce, but how to recommend content to current and prospective customers. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings once quipped, "If the Starbucks secret is a smile when you get your latte, ours is that the website adapts to the individual's taste."
3. Distribution-who else in the media ecosystem has a direct line to 125 million paying subscribers?
Taking a step back, what are movie studios if not just middle men for content? Be it Disney or Universal, a studio's role is to create content for consumers-but they are not directly involved (at least not yet) in the distribution and sale of that content to consumers. Instead, studios are forced to distribute content through theatrical releases or platforms they don't own (like Apple's iTunes, for instance). This puts studios and other incumbents at a dramatic disadvantage in an ecosystem where their SVOD competitors can go directly to the customers, and monetize directly from their audience.

Similarly, television networks are vulnerable because their model is predicated on advertisements-in a world that increasingly eschews traditional 30-second TV ads. Theoretically, even if ABC, for instance, created a slate of great content-the content isn't actually the product that's sold to the buyer. The audience is the product: viewership is packaged and sold to advertisers.

Cable networks, which long-relied on bundling networks, might even fare worse through this disruption. According to eMarketer, the pace of the decline is even faster than expected. In early 2018, the number of pay TV subscribers dropped 3.4% from a year earlier, the highest rate of decline since the trend of cord cutting emerged in 2010.

By owning the direct relationship between customer and content, Netflix and the other subscription-based streamers have an incredible advantage. In any business, customers go to the providers with the best value proposition-and right now, over-the-top (OTT) streaming has the best value. Netflix wouldn't dare sully the viewing experience with clunky, annoying advertisements. And because of their subscriber-based business model, they don't have to.

Now, recognizing this dynamic, some of the established studios and content providers have begun trying to build their own subscription services-and essentially become platforms of their own. In 2019, for instance, Disney plans to launch its own direct-to-consumer subscription service. Time will tell if this will work, but it's our view that it's too little too late. Yes, Disney holds the keys to lucrative properties within Pixar, Marvel, LucasFilm, etc. And launching the service with a Star Wars movie or television show will certain get some traction.

But by 2019, that "distribution ship" will likely have already sailed. Netflix and Amazon will have hundreds of millions in combined viewers, and Disney will be starting from scratch. While the Mouse House may certainly find a core audience hungry for their content, its own subscription service may not justify itself-and it would not be shocking to find Disney looking for a distribution partner in someone like Amazon, who will already has over 100 million Prime subscribers.

Looking ahead-some trends to watch:

Overall, this is how we view disruption taking place in the media landscape right now: A disruptive technology (i.e. the Internet) has arrived and the upstarts have sent the incumbents (i.e. Hollywood studios, TV networks, and cable companies) into chaos.

At the crux of the disruption lies a simple yet elegant advantage for the new upstarts: their business models are built purely on subscriptions, they do not rely on advertisers, and they go directly to their customers with their products. That model enables the disruptors to focus 100 percent of their efforts on building a library of content that their customers actually want-and continue to grow.

If you're an investor looking for opportunity, the landscape for wealth creation couldn't be more attractive. But with massive change comes massive peril.

What comes after this wave of disruption? We have some ideas. In a future column, we'll explore the role of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and virtual and augmented reality as potential disruptors to this cycle of disruption. Because that's the beauty of disruptive innovation: There's always something down the pike that seems insignificant today, but could become the standard tomorrow. As Clayton Christensen says, "No idea for a new growth business ever comes fully shaped. When it emerges, it's half-baked, and it then goes through a process of becoming fully shaped."

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The Future Of Media: Disruptions, Revolutions And The Quest For Distribution

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The curious thing about disrupted industries is that very often, when you're living through them, it's hard to recognize just how monumental the changes truly are. Case in point: Media and entertainment. The changes are rapid and the magnitude is enormous, but it's difficult to assess the scope of the revolution.

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https://www.sempl.si/en/news/10-media-trends-for-2019/

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https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/oct/07/millennials-making-a-living-from-livestreaming

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https://medium.com/the-business-of-content/how-spotifys-changing-the-production-and-marketing-of-music-34c02c5c4061

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Long before social media, and even before broadcast commercials, businesses have partnered with celebrities and high-profile stars to promote products and add credibility to their brands. Over the past decade, advancements in communication technology and digital media have sparked the rise of online influencers, democratizing the ability for brands of all sizes (and budgets) to enlist influential individuals to promote their products and services.

According to a Nielsen study, influencer marketing content delivers 11 times higher return on investment than traditional forms of digital marketing. And, as Millennial lifestyle expert Chelsea Krost explains, follower count doesn't necessarily play as big of a factor as once thought.

"We've gotten more social savvy to really understand that you can have 100,000 followers and not really generate that great of engagement, but then someone can have 10,000 followers and generate phenomenal engagement," said Krost. "So, the power isn't necessarily so much behind follower count anymore, it's really how much engagement and how much traction can you really get in the social media landscape."

The Micro-Influencer Advantage

The power of bloggers and micro-influencers, people whose follower count ranges from about 500 to 10,000, can dramatically increase a brand's presence online. These smaller influencers are effective because of their close relationships to their tight, loyal, hyper-targeted communities.

Much of the engagement and loyalty is due to their manageable following counts. This allows for strong two-way dialogue with their followers, as opposed to influencers with higher follower counts and broader audiences.

While micro-influencers can deliver value across any industry, consumer brands will often see the most value from this form of marketing. Food, fashion, hospitality and travel work well with micro-influencers because their content tends to be highly visual.

In addition to micro-influencers, there are macro-influencers, who generate content for their 50,000 to 100,000 followers. Each of these influencer groups are known to produce higher engagement because they are more accessible, cost effective and have a better understanding of the content that best resonates with their audiences.

On the other side of the equation are mega-influencers and celebrities. Mega-influencers, those with 500,000 to one million plus followers, fall right behind celebrities, who have over one million followers.

While each of these groups clearly have a high follower count, they don't necessarily have a higher engagement ratio because of their audiences' broader interests. They're also much harder to reach and more expensive to partner with.

Launching a Micro-Influencer Marketing Campaign

When exploring your influencer marketing options, it's imperative to break down the goals and objectives of your campaign. Understand which type of influencer will provide the best return to avoid wasting time and money tapping into an audience that isn't listening.

If micro-influencer marketing is the right route for your brand, the next step is finding the right micro-influencers for your specific needs. Krost recommends searching popular industry hashtags on Instagram and Twitter. Once you begin to " social listen," you'll find out which power players are curating the most engaging content relevant to you and your brand.

But, don't rush to email your potential influencers just yet. "Before you ask them for something, engage in their channel," Krost says.

Show them you're interested in their content by liking, sharing and commenting on their page, that way the influencer knows who you are before you start building a relationship. Using Instagram and Twitter direct messages is a quick, effective and personal way to reach out to potential influencers. Explain the value you will provide to them for working with your brand and, in turn, you will notice more people respond to your inquiry.

With micro-influencer marketing, compensation is also an important element to consider. There are many ways to go about payment, whether it's cold hard cash or free products or services in exchange for each post. For example, a fashion brand could ship an Instagram model a box of free clothing, or a hotel could offer a travel blogger a free stay.

For brands looking to bolster online visibility and customer engagement, investing in micro-influencer marketing can be a game-changer. Understanding your audience is key to deciding if micro-influencer marketing is right for your company, and as Krost explains, offering a different perspective to your marketing mix might be what it takes to elevate your brand.

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Why 2018 Will Be the Year of the Micro-Influencer, According to a Millennial Expert

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Long before social media, and even before broadcast commercials, businesses have partnered with celebrities and high-profile stars to promote products and add credibility to their brands. Over the past decade, advancements in communication technology and digital media have sparked the rise of online influencers, democratizing the ability for brands of all sizes (and budgets) to enlist influential individuals to promote their products and services.

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Netflix has gone through a whirlwind of changes since it began in 1997 as a DVD-by-mail service.

The company has navigated the change from DVDs to streaming to becoming a global TV network - leaving past, established competitors like Blockbuster in the dust.

But it hasn't been without hiccups along the way - remember the company's disastrous attempt to split into Netflix and Qwikster?

Jacinthe Busson, who runs the site UX Timeline, has compiled a timeline of Netflix's website changes from 1999 to the present.

Here's how its look has evolved:

In 1999, Netflix hadn't even settled into its red color scheme yet. And there was an emphasis on "Net" and "Flix" as two separate entities. The name was stylized "NetFlix," and there were things like FlixFinder - what it called its search feature.

By 2004, Netflix began to settle into its signature look, but it was still firmly in the pre-streaming era. One of its big draws: no late fees - "EVER!"

In 2008, Netflix introduced streaming - "It's easier than you think!" But streaming still didn't have many new releases.

By 2009, Netflix had introduced the "happy family" image that would continue to dominate its home page. At this point, streaming worked on TVs with devices like Roku and Xbox 360.

In 2010, streaming begins to be more than an add-on, and gets prominent real estate on the home page.

In 2011, you can see that streaming has become the main event. Also check out the Facebook integration, which subscribers did not respond favorably to.

By 2012, most people understood the concept of Netflix, and the graphic walk-through of the service was dropped from the home page. And where are the DVDs?

There wasn't much change from 2012 to 2013, but the style of the web page became sleeker.

There's also an emphasis on current big titles and new Netflix originals.

In 2014, not much changed, but the family appears a tad less like a stock image.

By 2015, there's a nifty pop-down array that lets you see things like the big hits.

In 2016, Netflix's home page featured a variety of different potential Netflix users - the images cycle through - and the company has stopped emphasizing the price point so prominently.

Currently, the site's homepage emphasizes the service's flexible cancellation policy.

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Netflix's website in 1999 looked nothing like it does today - here's how it has evolved over the years

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Netflix has gone through a whirlwind of changes since it began in 1997 as a DVD-by-mail service. The company has navigated the change from DVDs to streaming to becoming a global TV network - leaving past, established competitors like Blockbuster in the dust.

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Digital marketing trends

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The world is changing, and technology is taking the lead. Today, everything is going digital -- entertainment, health, real estate, banking and even currencies. This is, however, understandable. In North America alone, 89% of the population is online (subscription required).

With everything turning to digital, it means companies are also jumping online to market their businesses. And to survive the challenges of digital marketing, brands need to keep up with the latest trends. Successfully reaching one's target audience is no longer just putting out TV and print ads. These days, social media is the new arena of digital marketers, as 3.3 billion people are active social media users.

Notably, according to January 2018 data (subscription required), 24% of the 5,700 global marketers who were surveyed revealed that social media has been an important part of their marketing for the past five years.

To keep up with the ever-changing scene, digital marketing experts need to stay in step with the evolving tech trends. Social media marketing companies like ours work tirelessly to research consumers and what makes them engage with brands. We try to find the best online solutions that will cater to our clients' end-users' queries in the easiest and most cost-efficient way possible -- be it by developing new technology or adapting to trends.

After much research, here are the leading digital marketing trends that are paving the way in 2018.
1. Interactive Chatbots
Chatbots have been around for some time now. The technology, which combines the use of text, voice and messaging to converse directly with consumers, has been used longer than virtual reality. But this year, it's taking the spotlight.

According to a 2017 report by Grand View Research, the global chatbot market is estimated to see a compound annual growth rate of 24.3% and is projected to reach $1.25 billion by 2025. In 2017, LivePerson conducted a survey of 5,000 consumers based in six countries and found that 67% of those surveyed are using chatbots for customer support. Furthermore, 38% had positive feedback, and only 11% registered negative reactions to the technology.

Messaging applications such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp also make use of messenger bots that are customized to push out products and services. They do this not only by promoting the brands, but also providing the potential user a personalized customer service experience.

The main reason why this technology is so successful is likely that it answers the consumers' need for information quickly and accurately. Chatbots can also collect data about their users, which feeds into improving interaction with them.

Of course, much like any other technology, there are a few things to note before adopting it. Marketers should consider where to use chatbots. For example, businesses with greater Facebook engagement may want to incorporate a chatbot in their Facebook Messenger; those who have more website traffic may benefit more from website chatbots.

Nonetheless, the tech not only provides a more efficient and responsive way to deal with customers; it is also more cost-effective than hiring customer relations staff.
2. Voice Search
As more and more people are on the go, the use of voice search and voice commands is increasing. Voice assistants are empowering mobile users to access information online and do certain tasks like never before. In the U.S. alone, the use of voice assistants is expected to grow by 128.9% in 2018, compared to 2017. That's a total of 35.6 million Americans using the service at least once a month.

While the growth is positive, it is a big challenge for businesses as well. Unlike the usual online searches with pages upon pages of results, voice searches will only give the top, most related answer to a query. Businesses want to be that one result that matches a user's voice query.

What does this mean for digital marketers? It means optimizing content to suit the requirements of voice searches. Publish content that solves or answers consumers' queries. It's also important to use natural conversational language, as well as longer phrases or full sentences as keywords. This not only helps the end-user but also makes the content voice-search-friendly.
3. Integrating AI And Blockchain Technologies
Blockchain technology is already disrupting the way the world views finance and financial systems. Its power is not limited to these sectors, however. In recent years, it has already expanded to digital marketing.

Technology has allowed marketers to track where their ads are placed and ensure that real consumers, rather than automated bots, are clicking on their ads. This makes customer engagement data more reliable and makes sure brands' marketing assets are not being put to waste.

Consumers can also benefit from the transparent nature of blockchain technology, as it gives them more control over how their personal data should be used by advertisers. When consumer trust increases, the likelihood of them sharing personal information also surges. This helps marketers and companies to know them better.

There are a few game-changing services that can help marketers effectively track marketing efforts through blockchain, making sure that every penny is being put where it's supposed to go. While this would mean additional expenses, the return on investment makes it worth the extra dollars by making sure every ad reaches the target audience.
4. Influencer Marketing
In today's world, where social media is ubiquitous, people tend to gravitate toward experiences that are authentic and real. And potential customers are more likely to believe a real person over an advertisement about how good a certain product or brand is. This is where influencers come in.

While influencer marketing can be very effective, it may also be costly. To get the most out of a business's marketing budget, marketers should choose their influencers carefully and make sure the ambassadors they use cater to and reach the right consumers. Using an effective hashtag that people can easily remember and adopt will further help the campaign.

For digital marketers to become more effective, regularly assessing and evaluating strategies should be commonplace. Taking note of the latest digital marketing technologies and trends will be the driving force for success.

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Digital Marketing Trends That Are Changing The Way We Market To Consumers

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The world is changing, and technology is taking the lead. Today, everything is going digital -- entertainment, health, real estate, banking and even currencies. This is, however, understandable. In North America alone, 89% of the population is online (subscription required). With everything turning to digital, it means companies are also jumping online to market their businesses.

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https://www.startupdonut.co.uk/news/social-ad-spend-shifts-to-instagram-from-facebook

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https://www.opendemocracy.net/jonathan-hardy/sponsored-content-is-blurring-line-between-advertising-and-editorial

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http://fortune.com/2018/04/29/viewers-cable-streaming/

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https://www.semrush.com/blog/social-media-trends-transforming-digital-media-landscape/

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Media Censorship in China

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Introduction

The Chinese government has long kept tight reins on both traditional and new media to avoid potential subversion of its authority. Its tactics often entail strict media controls using monitoring systems and firewalls, shuttering publications or websites, and jailing dissident journalists, bloggers, and activists. Google's battle with the Chinese government over internet censorship and the Norwegian Nobel Committee's awarding of the 2010 Peace Prize to jailed Chinese activist Liu Xiaobo have also increased international attention to censorship issues. At the same time, the country's burgeoning economy relies on the web for growth, and experts say the growing need for internet freedom is testing the regime's control.

Official Media Policy

China's constitution affords its citizens freedom of speech and press, but the opacity of Chinese media regulations allows authorities to crack down on news stories by claiming that they expose state secrets and endanger the country. The definition of state secrets in China remains vague, facilitating censorship of any information that authorities deem harmful [PDF] to their political or economic interests. CFR Senior Fellow Elizabeth C. Economy says the Chinese government is in a state of "schizophrenia" about media policy as it "goes back and forth, testing the line, knowing they need press freedom and the information it provides, but worried about opening the door to the type of freedoms that could lead to the regime's downfall."

The government issued in May 2010 its first white paper on the internet that focused on the concept of "internet sovereignty," requiring all internet users in China, including foreign organizations and individuals, to abide by Chinese laws and regulations. Chinese internet companies are now required to sign the " Public Pledge on Self-Regulation and Professional Ethics for China Internet Industry," which entails even stricter rules than those in the white paper, according to Jason Q. Ng, a specialist on Chinese media censorship and author of Blocked on Weibo. Since Chinese President Xi Jinping came to power, censorship of all forms of media has tightened. In February 2016, Xi announced new media policy for party and state news outlines: "All the work by the party's media must reflect the party's will, safeguard the party's authority, and safeguard the party's unity," emphasizing that state media must align themselves with the "thought, politics, and actions" of the party leadership. A China Daily essay emphasized Xi's policy, noting that "the nation's media outlets are essential to political stability."

How Free Is Chinese Media?

In 2016, Freedom House ranked China last for the second consecutive year out of sixty-five countries that represent 88 percent of the world's internet users. The France-based watchdog group Reporters Without Borders ranked China 176 out of 180 countries in its 2016 worldwide index of press freedom. Experts say Chinese media outlets usually employ their own monitors to ensure political acceptability of their content. Censorship guidelines are circulated weekly from the Communist Party's propaganda department and the government's Bureau of Internet Affairs to prominent editors and media providers.

Certain websites that the government deems potentially dangerous-like Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and some Google services-are fully blocked or temporarily "blacked out" during periods of controversy, such as the June 4 anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre or Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement protests in the fall of 2014. Specific material considered a threat to political stability is also banned, including controversial photos and video, as well as search terms. The government is particularly keen on blocking reports of issues that could incite social unrest, like official corruption, the economy, health and environmental scandals, certain religious groups, and ethnic strife. The websites of Bloomberg news service, the New York Times, and other major international publicationshave periodically been blacked out, their journalists harassed and threatened, and visa applications denied. In 2012, Bloomberg and the New York Times both ran reports on the private wealth of then Party Secretary Xi Jinping and Premier Wen Jiabao. Restrictions have been also placed on micro-blogging services, often in response to sensitive subjects like corruption, including 2012 rumors of an attempted coup in Beijing involving the disgraced former Chongqing party chief Bo Xilai. Censors are also swift to block any mention of violent incidents related to Tibet or China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region, home to the mostly Muslim Uighur minority group, and the Falun Gong spiritual movement.

The Censorship Groups

More than a dozen government bodies review and enforce laws related to information flow within, into, and out of China. The most powerful monitoring body is the Communist Party's Central Propaganda Department (CPD), which coordinates with General Administration of Press and Publication and State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television to ensure content promotes party doctrine. Ng says that the various ministries once functioned as smaller fiefdoms of control, but have recently been more consolidated under the State Council Information Office, which has taken the lead on internet monitoring.

The Chinese government employs large numbers of people to monitor and censor China's media. Experts refer to an October 2013 report in a state-run paper, the Beijing News, which said more than two million workers are responsible for reviewing internet posts using keyword searches and compiling reports for "decision makers." These so-called "public opinion analysts" are hired both by the state and private companies to constantly monitor China's internet. Additionally, the CPD gives media outlets editorial guidelines as well as directives restricting coverage of politically sensitive topics. In one high-profile incident involving the liberal Guangdong magazine Southern Weekly, government censors rewrote the paper's New Year's message from a call for reform to a tribute to the Communist Party. The move triggered mass demonstrations by the staff and general public, who demanded the resignation of the local propaganda bureau chief. While staff and censors reached a compromise that theoretically intended to relax some controls, much of the censorship remained in place.

Exerting Control

The Chinese government deploys myriad ways of censoring the internet. The Golden Shield Project, colloquially known as the Great Firewall, is the center of the government's online censorship and surveillance effort. Its methods include bandwidth throttling, keyword filtering, and blocking access to certain websites. According to Reporters Without Borders, the firewall makes large-scale use of Deep Packet Inspection technology to block access based on keyword detection. As Ng points out, the government also employs a diverse range of methods to induce journalists to censor themselves, including dismissals and demotions, libel lawsuits, fines, arrests, and forced televised confessions.

"To the degree that China's connection to the outside world matters, the digital links are deteriorating."

As of February 2017, thirty-eight journalists were imprisoned in China, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a U.S.-based watchdog on press freedom issues. In 2009, Chinese rights activist Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to eleven years in prison for advocating democratic reforms and freedom of speech in Charter 08, a 2008 statement signed by more than two thousand prominent Chinese citizens that called for political and human rights reforms and an end to one-party rule. When Liu won the Nobel Peace Prize, censors blocked the news in China. A year later, journalist Tan Zuoren was sentenced to five years in prison for drawing attention to government corruption and poor construction of school buildings that collapsed and killed thousands of children during the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan province. Early 2014 saw the government detain Gao Yu, a columnist who was jailed on accusations of leaking a Party communiqué titled Document 9.

The State Internet Information Office tightened content restrictions in 2013 and appointed a new director of a powerful internet committee led by President Xi Jinping, who assumed power in late 2012. A July 2014 directive on journalist press passes bars reporters from releasing information from interviews or press conferences on social media without permission of their employer media organizations. And in early 2015, the government cracked down on virtual private networks (VPNs), making it more difficult to access U.S. sites like Google and Facebook. "By blocking these tools, the authorities are leaving people with fewer options and are forcing most to give up on circumvention and switch to domestic services," writes Charlie Smith [pseudonym], a cofounder of FreeWeibo.com and activist website GreatFire.org. "If they can convince more internet users to use Chinese services-which they can readily censor and easily snoop on-then they have taken one further step towards cyber sovereignty." The restrictions mount on a regular basis, adds the New Yorker's Evan Osnos. "To the degree that China's connection to the outside world matters, the digital links are deteriorating," he wrote in an April 2015 article. "How many countries in 2015 have an internet connection to the world that is worse than it was a year ago?"

Foreign Media

China requires foreign correspondents to obtain permission before reporting in the country and has used this as an administrative roadblock to prevent journalists from reporting on potentially sensitive topics like corruption and, increasingly, economic and financial developments. Under Xi, the ability of foreign journalists and international news outlets to travel and access to sources have shrunk. "The hostile environment against foreign journalists is being fueled by efforts to publicly mark Western media outlets as not only biased, but part of a coordinated international effort to damage China's reputation" [PDF], according to PEN America's 2016 report on the constraints of foreign journalists reporting from China. Eighty percent of respondents in a 2014 survey conducted by the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China said their work conditions had worsened or stayed the same compared to 2013. International journalists regularly face government intimidation, surveillance, and restrictions on their reporting, writes freelance China correspondent Paul Mooney, who was denied a visa in 2013.

"Some people in China don't look at freedom of speech as an abstract ideal, but more as a means to an end."

Emily Parker,

Austin Ramzy, a China reporter for the New York Times, relocated to Taiwan in early 2014 after failing to receive his accreditation and visa. New York Times reporter Chris Buckley was reported to have been expelled in early January 2013- an incident China's foreign ministry said was a visa application suspension due to improper credentials. China observers were also notably shaken by the 2013 suspension of Bloomberg's former China correspondent, Michael Forsythe, after Bloomberg journalists accused the news agency of withholding investigative articles for fear of reprisal from Chinese authorities.

The treatment of foreign reporters has become a diplomatic issue. In response to the Arab Spring protests in early 2011, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged to continue U.S. efforts to weaken censorship [PDF] in countries with repressive governments like China and Iran. In response, Beijing warned Washington to not meddle in the internal affairs of other countries. On a December 2013 trip to Beijing, then Vice President Joe Biden pressed China publicly and privately about press freedom, directly raising the issue in talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping and meetings with U.S. journalists working in China.

U.S. Technology in China

In more recent years, China has made it exceedingly difficult for foreign technology firms to compete within the country. The websites of U.S. social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are blocked. Google, after a protracted battle with Chinese authorities over the banning of search terms, quietly gave up its fight in early 2013 by turning off a notification that alerted Chinese users of potential censorship. In late 2014, China banned Google's email service Gmail, a move that triggered a concerned response from the U.S. State Department.

In January 2015, China issued new cybersecurity regulations that would force technology firms to submit source code, undergo rigorous inspections, and adopt Chinese encryption algorithms. The move triggered an outcry from European and U.S. companies, who lobbied governmental authorities for urgent aid in reversing the implementation of new regulations. CFR Senior Fellow Adam Segal writes that "the fact that the regulations come from the central leading group, and that they seem to reflect an ideologically driven effort to control cyberspace at all levels, make it less likely that Beijing will back down."

Circumventing the Censors

Despite the systematic control of news, the Chinese public has found numerous ways to circumvent censors. Ultrasurf, Psiphon, and Freegate are popular software programs that allow Chinese users to set up proxy servers to avoid controls. While VPNs are also popular, the government crackdown on the systems have led users to devise other methods, including the insertion of new IP addresses into host files, Tor-a free software program for anonymity-or SSH tunnels, which route all internet traffic through a remote server. According to Congress, between 1 and 8 percent [PDF] of Chinese internet users use proxy servers and VPNs to get around firewalls.

Microblogging sites like Weibo have also become primary spaces for Chinese netizens to voice opinion or discuss taboo subjects. "Over the years, in a series of cat-and-mouse games, Chinese internet users have developed an extensive series of puns-both visual and homophonous-slang, acronyms, memes, and images to skirt restrictions and censors," writes Ng.

Google's chairman, Eric Schmidt, said in early 2014 that encryption could help the company penetrate China. But such steps experienced a setback in March 2014 when authorities cracked down on social networking app WeChat (known as Weixin in China), deleting prominent, politically liberal accounts. Soon thereafter, the government announced new regulations on "instant messaging tools" aimed at mobile chat applications such as WeChat, which has more than 750 million users and was increasingly seen as replacing Weibo as a platform for popular dissent that could skirt censors. CFR's Economy says that the internet has increasingly become a means for Chinese citizens to ensure official accountability and rule of law, noting the growing importance of social network sites as a political force inside China despite government restrictions.

China had roughly 731 million internet users in 2017. Although there have been vocal calls for total press freedom in China, some experts point to a more nuanced discussion of the ways in which the internet is revolutionizing the Chinese media landscape and a society that is demanding more information. "Some people in China don't look at freedom of speech as an abstract ideal, but more as a means to an end," writes author Emily Parker. Rather, the fight for free expression fits into a larger context of burgeoning citizen attention to other, more pertinent social campaigns like environmental degradation, social inequality, and corruption-issues for which they use the internet and media as a means of disseminating information, says Ng.

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China's central government has cracked down on press freedom as the country expands its international influence, but in the internet age, many of its citizens hunger for a free flow of information.

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Hungary's Media Law

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BUDAPEST (Reuters) - On June 21, 2011 Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban made a first appearance in what would become a regular slot on MR1 radio's news show.

The appearance in itself was nothing extraordinary, but the manner in which it came about and the way it was conducted point to a relationship between Hungary's government and its state-financed media that the European Union has censured as too close, a charge Hungary denies.

Several employees at MR1 say they were putting together the next morning's news program when, to their surprise, they heard an on-air announcement that Orban would be their guest. They tore up the schedule and rewrote it to accommodate the prime minister.

They did not know it at the time, but a new relationship was unfolding between the government and the media, which under EU law must be independent of political influence.

According to the accounts of dozens of media insiders interviewed by Reuters, Orban's Fidesz party has extended its influence across the state-financed media. Current and former journalists say Orban's press chief determines what issues will be raised in interviews with the prime minister. They say executives have created a culture that discourages tough questioning and employees who dissent are moved aside.

Hungary's government denies exerting pressure on the media and says it meets EU standards on media freedom.

In response to questions from Reuters, European Commissioner Neelie Kroes said she considered it "a shame", however, that Hungary had not fully implemented EU recommendations to ensure media independence. Hungary, for instance, rejected an EU recommendation to change the way it appointed members of a new media watchdog to ensure the body was free from political interference.

"The respect of media freedom and pluralism as common values of democratic societies is especially critical before elections that are to take place soon in Hungary," Kroes said.

Hungary votes in a parliamentary election on April 6. Opinion polls point to a win for Orban's party.

ROUTINE

Reuters has found no evidence that Orban has personally stifled media scrutiny of his government. Interviews with former and current state media employees suggest it is those around the prime minister who have sought to shape how the government is portrayed, aided by a culture of self-censorship in the media and a regulatory framework that has eroded media independence.

In his June 21 radio interview, Orban spoke about a cut in public debt, financed in part by a nationalization of private pension fund assets that had alarmed markets and investors. The interview took an unusual course - at no point did the show's anchor challenge the prime minister's answers or pose any questions about the risks arising from the nationalization, a transcript posted on Orban's website shows.

At the end of the interview, after Orban had evaluated Hungary's six-month presidency of the European Union, which was about to end, the anchor rejoined: "It may then be joyful for every Hungarian that his country's prestige is growing in the world?"

"We just gave (Orban) air time to speak his mind," the show's production manager at the time, Fruzsina Molnar, told Reuters in an interview for this article. Molnar no longer works at the station.

Requests for an interview with the show's anchor were referred to a spokeswoman, who did not reply to detailed questions from Reuters. Top executives at the station also declined to answer questions.

Soon after the June 21 appearance, Orban's press team requested that the radio interview become a regular event, several people familiar with the matter said. Orban now appears on the show every other Friday.

Orban's appearances have settled into a routine, according to journalists who have worked on the MR1 news show. All topics to be covered are agreed in advance, and the prime minister is never surprised with tough questions, they say.

Press chief Bertalan Havasi usually proposes a list of subjects in an email on Wednesday, the sources said. In the next 24 hours, he hashes out with the editors what subjects to cover on Friday and what to skip.

Havasi, in reply to questions from Reuters, said his office has always acted in accordance with the press freedom clauses in the constitution. The constitution guarantees media freedom while the media law, which deals with the practical details, says authorities must not interfere with the media.

Responding to Reuters questions about the government's interaction with state-financed radio, government spokesman Ferenc Kumin said: "Public media is independent of the government."

"When the Prime Minister gives interviews, to which media outlets is always a matter of individual consideration. Placing the interview, setting its subject and its questions are up to the media organizations conducting the interview," Kumin said.

Reuters also sent questions to senior executives at the organization that groups together Hungary's state-financed media, MTVA. They declined to comment. An MTVA spokeswoman said there was no link between the government and the editing process at MTVA media outlets.

The deference with which state media treat Orban is not without precedent. Ferenc Gyurcsany, the Socialist prime minister from 2004 until 2009, also gave regular radio interviews in which he fielded gentle questions. Gyurcsany told Reuters it was customary for program makers to give his aides advance notice of the topics that would be covered. But Gyurcsany added: "It would never come to my mind to dictate what to be asked or to put pressure in any way on public media and on how they prepare for these interviews."

What makes Orban's government different, say campaigners for press freedom, is that Orban's Fidesz party has used its majority in parliament to push through rules that weaken state financed media as an independent institution in a way that has not happened before. The campaigners say that Orban's government has put in place a system that stifles the ability of journalists to hold his government to account.

MEDIA LAW

Soon after Orban's Fidesz party came to power in 2010, the Fidesz-dominated parliament adopted new media legislation. Changes included a requirement that all media register with the state and that their output should be "balanced", of "relevance to the citizens of Hungary" and "respect human dignity". It also weakened protection of journalists' sources. Penalties for breaking the rules included fines, suspension, or being shut down.

Enforcing these new rules was a new watchdog, the Media Council. Its composition is decided by parliament. Because Orban's Fidesz party has a two-thirds majority in parliament, the council is made up exclusively of Fidesz appointees.

In another change, all state media and news production was bundled together in one organization - MTVA - whose leader is the leader of the Media Council.

According to critics of the legislation, including the European Parliament and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the cumulative effect of these changes was to jeopardize media freedom.

In effect, they said, appointees of the ruling party had been granted power over the media to enforce a set of rules that were framed so vaguely that they could be interpreted however the appointees saw fit.

Hungary's parliament subsequently amended some parts of the legislation, including on the protection of journalists' sources, but critics say fundamental problems remain. Chief among them, they say, is the risk of political bias in the Media Council because appointments to the council are made by a parliament that can be dominated by one party.

The OSCE's media freedom representative, Dunja Mijatovic, told Reuters there was still "cause for great concern. That's what I still think. If left unchanged (the media laws package) could seriously restrict media pluralism in the long term."

In July 2013 the European Parliament adopted a resolution saying it was concerned that Hungary's public service broadcasting was controlled by a centralized system that took decisions without public scrutiny. Hungary's government called the resolution an "unfair political judgment".

CHANGES

As Hungary's media laws changed after Orban became prime minister in 2010, there was also a clear-out of staff in state media. Many senior executives and hundreds of staffers were removed, union representatives said. Several of those who lost their jobs say they believe they were fired because they had been critical of Orban's Fidesz party. They said they were told by station managers that their jobs were being cut as part of a reorganization. Contacted by Reuters, MTVA did not comment.

Bela Varadi was an anchor on a state television news show. He was the first member of Hungary's Roma minority to hold such a job, which he called a dream come true. He said he quit because he was appalled at the new regime.

When he anchored the show, he said he would write his own script and save it on a shared computer system at the station. He said that on many occasions, when he opened his script again as the show went on air, he found it had been edited to make it more government-friendly.

"Edited and approved versions of the news items were changed as well," said Varadi, who now lives in Britain. "Sometimes we only found out when we printed the script and set out to do the voiceovers."

An MTVA spokeswoman did not reply to questions about Varadi's allegations and about the circumstances of his leaving the station.

Until December 2010, Attila Mong anchored state radio's morning show, the same program where Orban is now a regular guest. When parliament passed the media law, Mong protested with a one-minute silence on air. He was reprimanded and removed from duty indefinitely. His contract expired the following year.

"Political pressure was always a fact of life in public media," said Mong, now an investigative reporter with the non-profit news site www.atlatszo.hu. "But there were always pockets of professionalism, islands of freedom. That is what changed now. There is no island. One party controls the system now."

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cyclical consumer goods and services (trbc)

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How Hungary's government shaped public media to its mould

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BUDAPEST (Reuters) - On June 21, 2011 Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban made a first appearance in what would become a regular slot on MR1 radio's news show.

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India Proposes Chinese-Style Internet Censorship

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/technology/india-internet-censorship.html

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IMAGE: Blogtrepreneur (CC BY)

Officially, social networks are spaces for people to share mutual interests, opinions, photographs, thoughts: a means for us to express ourselves, comment on events, upload a photo or write something without having to surmount the entry barriers posed by the traditional media. That inclusive approach, which means that theoretically anyone with internet access and a basic understanding of it could open an account and communicate with the world, explains the success of the social networks, an unprecedented phenomenon in the use of technology to spread the word.

That said, after a period of exponential growth that has attracted billions of people around the globe, comes a second phase, characterized by the use of governments to control the social networks. We now know, thanks to the investigations carried out by special prosecutor Robert Mueller, that Donald Trump's assault on the White House was aided by Russia and that he showed Facebook how its very own tools could be used for electoral ends and is now its biggest advertiser.

In China, the social networks are under permanent government surveillance and have become a tool for social control at the service of the state: critics of the regime will find themselves harassed by pro-government trolls, blocked or removed from them and isolated from family and friends. Governments in Ecuador, the Philippines, India, Malta, Mexico, Turkey, Venezuela or Vietnam, to name just a few, have created armies of state-sponsored trolls to defend certain positions or to fight others.

In Uganda, a tax on social media has prompted widespread protest: the amount, around five cents a day, is a significant amount for many people in this impoverished East African nation, and equally importantly, imposes governmental control over the social networks that some people have tried to avoid by using VPNs that the authorities are now trying to ban.

Egypt's military dictatorship has just passed a new law giving the state powers to close down social network accounts, blogs or pages with more than five thousand followerson the basis that they are effectively media outlets. They can also be fined if they print "fake" news or "spread alarm". The very tools that played an important role in the Arab Spring are now being used by the authorities to prevent further social protest.

Governments around the world have realized the power of the social networks and are not only trying to control them, but are intensifying their efforts to use them for their own ends in ways that bypass any legal constraints. We face a new international order, a new geopolitics where governments with unlimited powers are able to add the social networks to their other means of crushing dissent: social networks at the service of populist politics.

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How social media are increasingly coming under government control

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Officially, social networks are spaces for people to share mutual interests, opinions, photographs, thoughts: a means for us to express ourselves, comment on events, upload a photo or write something without having to surmount the entry barriers posed by the traditional media.

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https://www.cineuropa.org/en/newsdetail/304426

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https://towardsdatascience.com/impact-of-data-and-analytics-on-social-media-in-2018-595a3bd4fb60

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https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/12/tinder-changed-dating/578698/

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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/22/social-media-election-facebook-filter-bubbles

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Twitter - @Kuela Digital:
In the words of best selling author, Jay Baer (@JayBaer) content is fire, social media is the gasoline. Are you making proper use of social media for your business today? #SocialMedia #Marketing

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Black market, psych-ops and all you Zombies !

Facebook is now a vast digital wasteland of the rotting and the fake. What was once an Eden for people across the world to connect with each other and share ideas has now become a Dopamine pumping digital prison, where people spend billions of hours of clock time mugging up psychologically targeted advertisements and irritating fake news, the likes of which can even sabotage elections in democratic countries. As evident from the Zuck hearings held recently, the US Senate, as well as the people don't even know how Facebook works, or they don't care at all. They just don't seem to get the notion that goes " If you are not paying, you are the product". At this point of our existence, the fine frontier in between business and exploitation, between security and fraud, between order and chaos has blurred together into one hell of an armada, hauling the strangely robot-like CEO to DC where he was met with gazes full of suspicion, resentment, and disgust.

That was long overdue and he had it coming.

Then comes the algorithms.

The birth and rise of Facebook is the creation myth of our information era. Newsfeed seemed nice at first. The rate and the quality of the posts were staggeringly refreshing and entertaining, and on a collective scale, people scrolled miles down their touch screens, wanting more and more, hopelessly addicted to the way information was put before their eyes. With each millimeter we collectively scrolled, Facebook's deep learning algorithms collected more and more data about our information consumption patterns, and learned the way we intake data - and sorted out that beyond all the complexities of a 4 billion-year-old evolutionary product, our species is freaking addicted, and that our dopamine centers put up impressive thunderstorms whenever we scroll through the newsfeed - and their algorithms could pick up the surges in our hormones.

Our hormones became the input vectors for their training phase, and their neurons got backpropagated across the layers again and again until they became the perfect tools for a 21st-century digital terrorist.

Facebook is no more the silly hot-girl-voting site which trended inside Harvard once in an eventful fall; it has become the default connection channel for billions of people. There is too much at stake.

A mechanical, monotonous newsfeed.

Slowly but surely, our newsfeeds got invaded and eaten up by money-hungry algorithms, converting its raw organic beauty to a preposterous race to dominate and monetize our gazes and scrolls. The algorithm-curated, lifeless, ad-driven updates at the top of the page started to become spiritless day by day. But instead of people abandoning the social network, it did something terribly astonishing- thanks to the network effect- it started to backpropagate our human neural patterns. It was transmigration from machine intelligence to human intelligence, algorithms training people instead of the opposite. We got schooled and taught what was worth our time. It was the very first step in converting us to data-processors, addicted to profitable presentations of big data. With each scroll, the algorithms trained us what to consume, how much to consume and when to consume. Slowly, we all became the information-hungry zombies Facebook wanted- wandering in this digital wasteland, addicted to data with an ever-quenching thirst to consume more and more until our thumbs physically disintegrate from scrolling for too long. The amount of addicting data overloaded the logic center of our brains that was responsible for asking the question - "What tangible utility do I gain from each of these scrolls I make?"

It was at this stage Facebook grew into what it was always supposed to be. From a social network to a prison where people spammed each other, where people wasted their entire lives staring at other people's life. The algorithms slowly programmed the users into exhibitionists begging for likes and psychopaths filled with egos.

Once it got an upper hand in wrongly convincing us about the worth of information we ingested- it gave rise to an entirely new era.

It could make us believe whatever it wanted. It could make us believe that Global warming was a Chinese conspiracy and Trump is a good president. Lies such as Earth is flat. Vaccines are bad. Earth is the center of the Solar system. The flat earth society started to send out pseudo-scientific statements to thousands of its followers with just one click. Facebook could collectively fool millions of people and couldn't be held accountable for. There were no regulations whatsoever. It contributed so much toward making humanity dumber; in such scales that its ill- effects outweighs its contributions.

Facebook became an ill-informed mass hallucination driven by biased algorithms that favored whites over blacks. Being a billion dollar industry, it chose to ignore the terrible human bias of the programmers entering its bloodstream. Instead of us determining the worth of information- so that we could decide what to intake and what not to, we got wined and dined by these algorithms to rearrange our neural information pathways, where Facebook's algorithms trained us to do their bidding by changing our perspectives and narratives about what we should see and spend our time on. Billions of Dollars were spent to inject habit loops into our brain's neural pathways- and soon, everyone began waking up with phones in their hands, staring at the red notification dots. The dopamine center of our brains got programmed around these little red dots, captivating our attention. Soon, no notification was needed to get people online. People started doing it on their own. It was machines programming humans so that they could in turn increase Facebook's advertising revenue.

This happened all the while making us think that we are the decision makers in choosing what data to believe and what not to. Those algorithms were successful in providing us with the illusion of choice.

The fake motto.

Facebook's user base has become a wasteland to which algorithms unloads shit- and Facebook basically gets paid for it.

Facebook wants to know where people spend their time on. It was recently exposed that they collected call logs, message details, and other user meta-data to determine how people spend their time. They partnered with a company named Onavo to launch an app-lock called Bolt App Lock, which secretly monitored other app activities to know which other apps could be taking attention away from Facebook. Facebook even collects data on people who haven't yet signed up. It looks like a disgusting wormhole whose mouth is sucking in all the creativity and originality from our world.

Facebook's Moto is misleading.

If it really wanted to connect people, why it's activities suspiciously suggest that they want people online 24 x 7 x 365, shut off from the world, staring into a screen whole day; spying on them when they use real phones or messages or even other apps to call each other? Why does Facebook really hate people communicating via other mediums?

It doesn't want to connect the world. Period.

It wants people to connect only through Facebook, and it abuses your relationship by making your data wide open to compromise.

All you Zombies.

It is true that Facebook has accelerated and promoted the process of idea exchange and creativity showcasing, but it has crossed a forbidden line. It doesn't want healthy, creative people on it- that would backfire on their monetization plans because creative people don't want to be psychologically targeted. Facebook wants zombies and average people; those who are addicted to other people's photos and life. It wants people who are vulnerable to its ads. It needs people to be hopelessly depended on their systems to be in touch with family and friends. It needs users as guinea pigs, to run psych ops on them to maximize their revenue. It needs the power to turn your day upside down with a little tweak in your newsfeed. It needs the power more than it needs money. It has grown so powerful and eccentric that it can start calling its users "ad-consumers" and not human beings. Facebook's algorithms treat us all like robots trained and destined to consume their ads-and all their functionalities they boast about "connecting the world" are mysteriously designed and executed around this basic psychology- "how to make them see more ads."

It is narcissistic to such levels that the founder had to write down bulletin points below the topic "How Facebook is good" and learn it by heart, in case senate decides to slut-shame Facebook. Their Moto is not to deliver value to the user, but to increase its stock price by confining users by its malignant algorithmic design designing us back. For Facebook, the probability of a user seeing more ads increases linearly with the time they spend on the site. So by doing everything in their power, they lure the users into a world of impressive facades and frauds, where every like and share, every interaction, every login and every swipe, were generating immense revenue for the behemoth. But like any systems, their machine learning algorithms were designed much away from human values and were driven by greed and trouble. Instead of transcending humanity, Facebook became a medium for fake news and psych ops.

An offline version of Facebook ready for Black Market.

Millions of applications have already siphoned off your Facebook data. When Facebook returns user data to app developers worldwide as a result to their Graph API Queries, Facebook returns the necessary data with a profile_id variable, which is a unique Facebook key used to uniquely identify each user. These unique "primary keys" can be used to merge multiple databases together from multiple developers, which are kept in separate servers Facebook has virtually no access to. These can be fused together to merge and recreate an offline version of the Facebook database, and it would be valuated at billions. Safety and privacy is just a gangland myth.

There is no reset button.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

If you liked this article, you can clap 50 times so that it will reach more people, thereby spreading the knowledge to others, so we can help bombard humanity with ideas and stories that matter and help transform everyone a little, everytime they read.

At WeHUBS Innovations, we always try to ponder the infinite with technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality and Computer Vision. For collaborations and other enquiries , please visit wehubs.com. We would like to work with you on amazing ideas. Connect with us on Facebook. We are listening.

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Black market, psych-ops and all you Zombies ! Facebook is now a vast digital wasteland of the rotting and the fake. What was once an Eden for people across the world to connect with each other and share ideas has now become a Dopamine pumping digital prison, where people spend billions of hours of clock time mugging up psychologically targeted advertisements and irritating fake news, the likes of which can even sabotage elections in democratic countries.

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bTV Новините

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Добре дошли на новия btvnovinite.bg. Направихме няколко подобрения, за да бъде употребата на предпочитания от Вас новинарски сайт още по-лесна.

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Улеснихме достъпа до съдържанието през мобилни устройства.

Най-важните новини от деня, както и новините от последните минути - на новата начална страница може да намирате по-лесно и повече от съдържанието, което знаем, че харесвате.

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Благодарим ви за доверието и приятно ползване!

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Аз, репортерът - мястото, където най-важна е твоята гледна точка

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Добре дошли на новия btvnovinite.bg. Направихме няколко подобрения, за да бъде употребата на предпочитания от Вас новинарски сайт още по-лесна. Опростихме и олекотихме навигацията, така че новият btvnovinite.bg да дава бърз, интуитивен и пряк достъп до най-важните акценти от деня, представени от най-авторитетната новинарска редакция в България.

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https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/self-checkout-cashiers-retail-jobs-technology-1.5020299

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Putting you in the picture: yes, you can earn a living on Instagram

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It's not just Kim Kardashian who rakes it in from the photo-sharing app. Meet the 'micro influencers', a new breed of ordinary people who charge £300 a post, with some earning six figures a year

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HuffPost: The End Of Citizen Journalism?

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HuffPost: The End Of Citizen Journalism?

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For tens of thousands of HuffPost unpaid contributors, January 18 was Black Thursday. On this day, they awoke to read a shocking announcement by HuffPost editor-in-chief Lydia Polgreen. HuffPost, the site built by this army of contributors, would no longer post their unpaid content.

That's gratitude for you. This vanquished army of writers had been partly responsible for the Guardian once naming HuffPost the most powerful blog in the world. They produced a daily stream of news, entertainment, business and human interest posts that ultimately helped turn HuffPost into a content factory purchased by AOL for $315 million in 2011.

HuffPost embodied the era of digital disruption, when gatekeepers of the content economy retreated and legacy editorial models collapsed. Launched in 2005 by Arianna Huffington and three partners, including Andrew Breitbart, the site found an instant niche as the anti-Drudge. In 2012 it won a Pulitzer Prize, the first web-only news site to clinch such an honor.

Even so, its unpaid contributors model raised questions about the future of journalism. The gurus of the new media economy - remember Clay Shirky and Jeff Jarvis? - believed web audiences would never again tolerate legacy gatekeepers. Working for nothing and aggregating other journalists' work was part of the new digital order.

In fact, some of the hardest-hitting journalism by competitors like Business Insider, BuzzFeed and Vice Media is the product of strong input by editors and traditional tools of investigative reporting. Ironically, it's legacy media that has lately been turning to the contributor model. The Los Angeles Times recently hired Lewis Dvorkin, architect of Forbes' contributor platform, to build out a similar publishing model for that newspaper ( Forbes includes paid and unpaid contributors).

New HuffPost editor-in-chief Polgreen, a 15-year veteran of the New York Times, said she will direct a more focused beam of stories across existing verticals, plus two new sections, "Opinion" and "Personal," written by paid contributors.

As she put it in her January 18 post: "Open platforms that once seemed radically democratizing now threaten, with the tsunami of false information we all face daily, to undermine democracy. When everyone has a megaphone, no one can be heard. Our hope is that by listening carefully through all the noise, we can find the voices that need to be heard and elevate them for all of you."

Memo to Clay Shirky and Jeff Jarvis: The gatekeepers are back.

After six years as Chief Content Officer at Guggenheim Partners, I recently left Wall Street to work on a biography of Harry Guggenheim. Prior to that I was a Senior Wri...

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HuffPost: The End Of Citizen Journalism?

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For tens of thousands of HuffPost unpaid contributors, January 18 was Black Thursday. On this day, they awoke to read a shocking announcement by HuffPost editor-in-chief Lydia Polgreen. HuffPost, the site built by this army of contributors, would no longer post their unpaid content. That's gratitude for you.

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Hold social networks responsible for child self-harm, says NSPCC

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Proposals backed by Ruth Moss, whose daughter killed herself after seeing suicide images

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https://www.deseretnews.com/article/865586914/Prosumption-Why-just-about-everybody-unwittingly-works-for-free.html

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https://www.facebook.com/anita.batista.31/posts/2012813212120203

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https://creatingthefutureofnews.com/predicting-media-landscape-lies-ahead-2018/

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjYwv4i4Xb0

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https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2018/01/22/disruption-future-media-already-happening/

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2017/12/18/the-future-of-communication-is-already-here/#5adb90c25c93

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All the hype in technology these days is around ML, AI/deep learning, self-driving cars, blockchain, AR/VR and other shiny new things. However, there is one area of technology that has been silently evolving and gaining momentum recently: communications. Comms no longer simply consists of things like PSTN, SIP or conference software and hardware. Its rise over time has been fueled by things like smartphones, social apps, productivity/collaboration apps, gaming and, more broadly, millennials. Even the big four tech giants -- Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon -- have caught up to this and are spearheading some keys efforts in the field of communications. In this article, I'll specifically talk about an area of comms that has been gaining momentum: WebRTC.

Let's look at some of the things that have contributed to it and those that can fuel further momentum in the near future.
The Demise Of Plug-In-Based Communications
Adobe Flash was synonymous with video plug-in for over a decade. It enabled things like collaborative and interactive audio/video streaming and screen share, and these have been gaining momentum over the last few years.

However, Steve Jobs' famous " Thoughts on Flash" article became a turning point in the demise of Flash. HTML 5 was eventually widely adopted, which led to WebRTC replacing Flash as a better free plug-in alternative. An initiative by Google, WebRTC has been implemented in most popular browsers (Chrome, FF, Opera and Safari), resulting in direct browser-to-browser communication in real time without the need for any plug-ins.

In fact, WebRTC can be used to connect any mobile/tablet/browser to any other endpoint, with the underlying WebRTC engine taking care of network inconsistencies. As of today, WebRTC has almost completely replaced Flash for real-time communications, and several sectors have taken advantage of the technology.
Machine Learning And AI
Video communication is expensive, and even though bandwidth has gotten cheaper in recent times, the demand for it has increased manifold. However, companies are pursuing interesting optimizations using ML in image processing, and it could be just a matter of time before it is applied to real-time communication. The bottom line is that you send fewer bits across the wire and the receiver reconstructs some of the information using ML algorithms so that you still have the same quality of experience as before (or even better) at lower bandwidth consumption. This makes video comms more attractive to the cost-conscious user.
Online Learning
The risk of losing jobs to automation is real, and it has already been happening the last few decades when large-scale manufacturing units replaced people with machines. This is only going to get worse, and people will eventually need to upgrade their skills in order to stay employed. Massive online open courses (MOOCs) and Learning Management Systems (LMS) have picked up steam in the last few years, making education more affordable and easily available. Learning as a whole has evolved from brick-and-mortar institutions that offer degrees to individuals who simply want to upgrade their skills. Along with this comes the need for the educators and students to interact online frequently, and WebRTC makes this simpler by enabling this natively on browsers and mobile devices.
Health Care
As video communications become more secure and HIPAA-compliant, adoption by health care has been increasing. Health care has been going online steadily in the recent past with patients consulting with their doctors remotely. It can now be done directly from a patient's smartphone or tablet, which is very convenient, especially for elderly patients who do not have to drive to a doctor's office for every visit but still better than just a phone consultation.
Social Media
Another area that has been fueling the rise of WebRTC is social media. Apps like WhatsApp, FB messenger, Snapchat and HouseParty (full disclosure: HouseParty and Esurance are Tokbox customers) use WebRTC and have sparked a communication craze lately, with millennials spending enormous amounts of time each day on these apps. And most of these apps have been following a trend: They start with text messaging and then audio/video calling gets added on top to keep the app relevant and increase user engagement.
Customer Support
Amazon is one of the biggest tech (e-commerce and cloud) companies in the world, but one of the things that sets it apart from the rest is its customer service. So much so to the point where it decided to integrate a customer support app for its Kindle tablets. Intuit has a customer support app for its TurboTax application to handle a high volume of in-bounds during tax season. Esurance allows customers to file claims remotely via a mobile phone, thus speeding up the entire process of filing a claim and appraisal. This list goes on and on for pretty much any company that really cares about its customer support and has taken advantage of WebRTC to achieve real-time video/audio communication with its customers.

While these are some of the areas that are contributing to the rise of real-time communication thanks to WebRTC, there are many more that I have not mentioned. As previously mentioned, this space is not as sexy as ML/AI or AR/VR, but it has been gaining momentum over the last few years, and competition in this space has picked up. We will only continue to see this trend, and it is not unreasonable to predict a future where video communication becomes ubiquitous.

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The Future Of Communication Is Already Here

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All the hype in technology these days is around ML, AI/deep learning, self-driving cars, blockchain, AR/VR and other shiny new things. However, there is one area of technology that has been silently evolving and gaining momentum recently: communications. Comms no longer simply consists of things like PSTN, SIP or conference software and hardware.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzSzkAuKPe0

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It seems obvious that virtual reality can have multiple applications. Obviously, most know that VR is popular in the gaming community. But there are applications of this technology that could be used to train and even save lives in the future.

We asked members of the ForbesTechnology Council how we can expect virtual reality to be used in the immediate term. The answers all pointed to solutions that could help us as early as this year and in even greater ways in the near future.
1. Virtual Shops
2. Real Estate

Real estate is a multitrillion-dollar market. There is a huge opportunity to use virtual reality in home builder design centers, real estate marketplace, applications that suggest home upgrade opportunities, interior designing, neighborhood virtual tours, rental websites, and DIY applications. Usage of VR in real estate can significantly reduce operational cost and improve quality in leads. - Pavan Gorakavi, NetSPI
3. Health Care Industry 4. Dangerous Jobs 5. Training To Create VR Content 6. Education
Virtual reality integration into education has a lot of potential to bring any curriculum to life. VR is a limitless tool that allows for immersion into a new environment, and if utilized correctly, it can expose students to things that would not be possible otherwise. From elementary schools to universities to technical schools, VR has emerged as an attractive avenue to deliver content that gives way to an immersive learning experience. - Alexandro Pando, Xyrupt
7. Emergency Response 8. Distraction Simulation
Virtual reality is a new and innovative way to gain insight into complex concerns. It might be useful if virtual reality were used to simulate distraction and muscle movement changes while texting and driving. Distracted driving accidents continue to rise, and we must find ways to raise awareness to the dangers of distracted driving. The technology can show the devasting effects to the end user. - Maria Clemens, Management and Network Services
9. New Hire Training 10. Exercise
I'd be excited to see more immersive exercise experiences. I bicycle as a hobby but rarely on a stationary bike since the scenery doesn't change. It would be great to cycle through the French countrysides or on the streets of Amsterdam and really get to see the views all around. It doubles as a vacation temptation and could even provide some education if you wanted to have a tour guide. - Luke Wallace, Bottle Rocket

Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only, fee-based organization comprised of leading CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Find out if you qualify at forbestech...

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10 Ways VR Will Change Life In The Near Future

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All around the world, people watched the Vietnam War, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the two Gulf Wars unfold in front of them on their TV screens.

For most of us, television news has been a constant in our lifetime - something we turn to when the big news breaks.

But, for the first time since the introduction of television news in 1940, the dominance of the nightly TV news bulletin is being challenged by a serious competitor: online news.

A 2017 report by the Pew Research Center found the gap between the share of Americans who get their news from TV and those who get their news online is narrowing - rapidly.

While half the population still often gets their news from television, 43% of Americans now say they regularly engage with online news sources. To put this in perspective, in 2016, the gap between television (57%) and online (38%) news sources was 19 points.

The trend toward digital news content takes on greater significance when you consider the generational gap, with millennials twice as likely as their parents to get their news online.
The Business Model Of TV News Is Changing
There's been much speculation about the end of newspapers as mastheads go digital, but the reality is that online content is also killing off commercial TV news.

The business model of commercial television news centers on the fact that the editorial content is funded by advertising shown during the commercial breaks. The news content is technically free for the consumer. Instead, the cost to the viewer is dull and often annoying advertising.

One of the biggest disruptions to the nightly news broadcasts was the introduction of 24/7 cable news broadcasting in the '80s, with the arrival of CNN and the Financial News Network, which merged with CNBC.

Since then, people in the United States (and many other developed countries) have shown an appetite for consumer-funded news content. For example, American adults over 18 years old spent more than 72 billion minutes consuming news in 2016, according to the Nielsen Ratings Service.

But thirst for more user-paid content hasn't only given rise to new media platforms; it also impacts delivery methods used to connect consumers with the information that matters to them.
Are Online News Subscriptions The Future Of News?
Subscription media services, such as Spotify and Netflix, are conditioning a whole new generation to pay a small fee for quality content.

According to Deloitte Global , 50% of adults in developed countries will have at least two online-only media subscriptions by the end of 2018, rising to four by 2020.

Not only do we know that online subscription-based delivery models are where the future of media consumption is being fought, but we also know that the prevailing form of that media is video.

According to Cisco , video will soon represent around 82% of total consumer web traffic by 2021, up from 73% in 2016. Growth has been spurred by proliferation in, and adoption of, video streaming services.

Cisco also cited rapid consumer transition from traditional broadcast networks to IP-delivered TV experiences as a key driver, highlighting the subsequent impact on traditional pay-TV service providers.
From Broadcast To Microcast: News Services Struggle To Adapt
With this shifting landscape in mind, it's no surprise that a research report from the Reuters Institute, " The Future of Online News Video," found 79% of the world's senior digital news leaders are investing more in online news video. But, it's not all smooth sailing.

The extensive report emphasized the current struggles many news organizations and broadcasters are having when pivoting to meet the online news video revolution.

"Most news organisations are in an experimental phase; they are nervous about the significant investment required, the difficulty of scaling video, and the uncertain path to commercial return," stated the report.

So, how exactly can news networks thrive on burgeoning demand for online video content, as well as increasingly tailored consumption expectations from viewers, at scale (without buckling under the strain)?

Enter AI-enabled news-as-a-service. Artificial intelligence (AI) is the future of news.
Using Artificial Intelligence To Deliver Hyper-Personalized News
I believe that the new era of news will be hyper-personalized content, curated by a trained algorithm that learns your preferences over time.

If you're a sports fan, I predict AI will soon be able to instantly collate all the latest video content from the weekend's matches, automatically compile the specific highlights it knows you want to see, and deliver a completely customized video to your designated device. For the news industry, production costs are minuscule, the number of hyper-personalized video streams infinitely scalable and the consumer experience hyper-targeted. Who wouldn't be willing to pay for this type of hyper-personalized subscription service?

If this is indeed the future of digital news video, then the funding model will most certainly involve new consumption-based micro-payments to news broadcasters. It's certainly something we're invested in helping realize with our video virtualization technology.

AI and automation are already being used in newsrooms across the world to deliver content faster, at scale, with less cost.

Many journalists use AI-generated smart templates to produce "commodity news," such as reports on finance markets and company earnings (see Bloomberg's Project Cyborg initiative , as reported on Poynter.org).

The Associated Press is also leading the news industry when it comes to embracing software to automate copy creation for investment and sports coverage, dramatically increasing the number of write-ups produced. The Associated Press is also at the forefront of exploring automation and AI to surface political data to enable better, faster election reporting.

When it comes to video, broadcasters like RTVE and the BBC are already investigating ways that AI and machine learning can automate the production of news packages, sports highlight packages and the connection of content to viewer preferences through data mining techniques. AI can even be applied to detect, and potentially create, fake video news.

As John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, penned in his recent piece " The Future of News" : "News is an industry in transition, not in decline. It is re-emerging as something more digital, more personalized, more automated, more paid for."

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The Future Of News Is Artificial Intelligence

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All around the world, people watched the Vietnam War, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the two Gulf Wars unfold in front of them on their TV screens. For most of us, television news has been a constant in our lifetime - something we turn to when the big news breaks.

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https://www.compelo.com/amazon-future/

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Image credit: Iain Masterton | Getty Images

7 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Ever since the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the resulting backlash from the media about the negative effects of social media on our lives, users have been flocking from Facebook in droves. In fact, according to Pew Research as much as 40 percent of U.S. users have taken a break -- sometimes for weeks on end -- from checking their account.
Related: When You Say You Need to Quit Social Media Everyone Rolls Their Eyes
Not only are these users concerned about corporations' misuse of their data, but they're tired of watching other people's life highlight reels. Those highlights often come across as a fabricated reality that makes many of us doubt our own life choices and compare our achievements and happiness to others'.

Cyberbullying has become a growing concern among teens, as well, and studies have found that excessive use of social media can generate "Facebook depression." If you've ever felt a pang of envy seeing an old college friend climb Machu Picchu or meet for drinks in a Paris nightclub, you can most likely relate.

Your own life, stuck behind a computer, starts to seem inadequate, even if you tell yourself that it's not reality you're seeing. Then there are the endless posts about people's babies, photos of what everyone is eating and mundane daily activities documented for the world to see.

This panorama is occurring amid general frustration with untargeted, unscrupulous social media and people who have a thousand "friends," the majority of whom they'll never meet. The result is that the prospects of social media seem to be changing fast. And that's a good thing, because it means that a new generation of social networks is cropping up to offer a different value proposition --one meant to be more personal and real.
Related: Why These People and Brands Are Fed Up With Facebook
The future is niche.

Social media isn't going to disappear. In fact, almost 42 percent of the world's population has at least one social media account, according to new reports from We Are Social and Hootsuite. But, "the new social" doesn't aim to target everybody anymore. Instead, the future is niche, as more networks arise to unite people who share a common interest -- be they neighbors, parents, women, shoppers, entrepreneurs or members of any other group.

Despite their latest efforts to curb the reach of brands and marketers, traditional social networks have become less about people. They've failed their users by selling their data to advertisers, causing a wide range of adverse and long-term side effects.

As a business owner, you need to be aware of these changes and adapt your content to keep up with these trends, especially as new social platforms become more user-oriented than their predecessors.

It's time to return to the personal touch.

In this context, any social media platform that provides its users with a more personal experience is more likely to gain a place in their lives. This new wave of social media is ready to capture the attention of internet users and, as these media grow, they will open new business opportunities for marketers and advertisers.

A new women-only social network, FindSisterhood, for instance, allows users to discuss personal issues from entirely anonymous accounts. The platform encourages women to ask any question, with no barriers. That feature makes this social network a goldmine of valuable insights for marketers.

"The special thing about our app is that it's an anonymous social network for women only," says founder Ana Pompa Alarcón Rawls. "We use one-way cryptographic to make every single post and comment untraceable. No one, including our team, will ever know who posted what."

Anonymity is what allows users to be candid, and that could prove to be very fruitful for businesses. Let's say your company wants to know more about the lifestyle of your target market. Simply ask the right questions and you'll get all the information you need, to build an effective marketing strategy. The social platform also uses sentiment analysis for content analytics. So, you can track hot topics in a specific geographical area and the reactions those topics generate.

For example, when moms from a particular New York neighborhood talk about the difficulty of juggling work and childcare, that information could benefit a local daycare business, which could then address these concerns to capture the attention of its target audience. This is the kind of valuable information that could help you to build highly personalized content for your target audience.

Keep it neighborly.

Businesses can find potential customers with NextDoor, a safe platform where users can easily exchange information with their neighbors. It's an effective way to keep up with everything that's going on in a given neighborhood. Since the app uses geographical location to display posts from other users in the area, it's a goldmine for finding people nearby.

Marketers may find this app difficult to monetize at the beginning because the platform checks all addresses before accepting an account, through a procedure similar to the one used by Google My Business. Moreover, business pages aren't available in all countries for now.

However, there is an option for users to recommend businesses they have had positive experiences with, and considering that many users ask questions that are typical for a newcomer to a neighborhood, such as where to find the best tailor or family-friendly restaurant, there are plenty of opportunities to get word-of-mouth advertising, which can steer dozens of customers to a business.

Once businesses gain a foothold, they can track discussions in the neighborhood and identify the topics that generate engagement in the area. The platform can also be used to drive targeted traffic to websites or blogs and raise awareness on specific topics related to the community.

Small communities perform better.

One of social media's biggest problems is size (it matters). Every minute, Facebook registers around 300,000 status updates and half a million comments, according to a data roundup published by Zephoria Marketing. Every second, 6,000 new tweets are registered on Twitter.

Many internet users are looking for smaller platforms, for more authentic interactions with their friends, families and followers.Users want platforms that have no algorithms in place to filter information and that have a higher purpose than just a place where users can chat and share viral videos.

Care2 is such a place. It's a community of around 30 million members. That's eight times less than the size of Facebook in the United States but that doesn't necessarily make it less powerful as a marketing tool. Care2 users are looking for ways to change the world for the better. Its main topics are petitions, causes and healthy living. Care2 also promotes brands willing to support causes and get involved in the lives of their communities.

The platform opens up a different kind of business opportunity for brands looking to connect with members using those people's core values. The intent is to make things more personal, which is exactly what internet users are looking for when they switch rom the giants to smaller social media.

Businesses must provide a curated experience.

As you migrate from Facebook to niche social media, be sure to align your message with the new expectations of your audience. Come up with a fresh approach that will allow you to strike up user-centered conversations, without alienating or annoying that audience.
Related: Facebook's Relationship Status With the Public Is 'It's Complicated': What Mark Zuckerberg Needs to Do to Get the Thumbs Up
The future of social media lies in one-on-one conversations with your fans and followers, exchanges in which they not only want to take part but take the lead. The less intrusive you are as a business, the higher your chances will be of building a substantial community around your brand, getting new leads and increasing conversions.

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The Future of Social Media Platforms and Ways in Which Businesses Can Utilize Them

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7 min read Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Ever since the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the resulting backlash from the media about the negative effects of social media on our lives, users have been flocking from Facebook in droves. In fact, according to Pew Research as much as 40 percent of U.S.

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Technology, Education and the Work of the Future: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBs-TBebSFg

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What’s the Future of Media and Entertainment? We asked 8 experts.

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To say media is changing would be the understatement of the year. Media has been undergoing a major digital disruption, and it's nowhere near complete. Traditional media is making way for organic media; Silicon Valley is turning into the new Hollywood; and new types of technology like Augmented and Virtual Reality are entering the mainstream as content platforms. There's a lot of innovation happening that will define the future of media and a lot that will fall behind. That being said, what can we expect to happen in media in the next 5 years? To help answer this question, we asked a range of experts where they think the future of media and entertainment are going. Their backgrounds include content creators, industry execs, and academics studying this field.

Their responses, edited slightly for clarity and length, are below.

PLATFORMS

Rob Kramer

Co-Founder and CEO, PurposeLab

"I think we're going to see content companies benefit from VR and AR. We're going to see digital-native experiences broadly impact how entertainment and media companies think of themselves because still in 2017, they think of themselves traditionally. Platform-agnostic is important relative to content. You have to be multiplatform."

Founded in 2009, PurposeLab develops UX-relevant consumer platforms that align with a targeted business model by leveraging next-generation UI features. PurposeLab has worked with brands and influencers to create engaging, long-lasting platforms. They have been extremely successful and innovative over the last months with platforms developed for Tyler, The Creator and the money-maker Kardashian sisters.

Larry Fitzgibbon

CEO and Co-Founder, Tastemade

"In terms of entertainment, some of what you see happening that's having success on these big platforms is a little bit more utilitarian. It's people learning how to do straightforward things or tips or tricks. That's been a good approach in terms of building audience. But companies like ours, we certainly want to inform people and turn them onto cool new things, but we also want to entertain them. That's why last month people spent about 2,000 years watching Tastemade. That's real engagement. I think if you're going to get that kind of engagement, you have to focus on not just teaching your audience something, but really giving them that escape that they're looking for to really entertain and turn them on to new things."

Tastemade is a mobile-first content distribution platform with an exclusive focus on travel and food. Tastemade engages with 200 million monthly active users and generates more than 2 billion monthly views across its ecosystem, from YouTube to Facebook, Snapchat, Apple TV, Spotify, and its native mobile apps. The company's content distinguishes itself through high production quality at relatively low cost. Tastemade has raised over $80 million from established investors like Comcast Ventures, Goldman Sachs, RedPoint Ventures, and Scripps Interactive Networks.

Kym Nelson

SVP of Sales, Twitch

"I think that we've seen over the last several years that people want to watch content that they want to watch and they want to be the masters of their own content universe, per se. They obviously want things on demand. They record content so they can watch it when they want to. But I think what we're seeing at Twitch is this removal of any kind of filter between the content that they're watching and the viewer. What we've noticed is that because our content is live, unedited, and unscripted, it's very genuine. So I think the future is going to continue to develop content that people can truly relate to and also where they have access to the talent and the celebrities."

Twitch is a live streaming platform that was acquired by Amazon in 2014 for a price close to 1bn USD. Creators can live stream themselves and popular creators can get paid to do so. It is content created by fans for fans. Twitch has one of the highest levels of engagement with consumers watching about 106 minutes per day, second only to Netflix. They are mostly known for content focusing on gameplay and eSports, but Twitch has expanded its categories and is even showing TV show marathons. As eSports and live streaming continue to grow, Twitch becomes a more valuable commodity for Amazon.

MUSIC

Shanna Jade

Head of Brand Strategy, Stem Disintermedia

"I think that the playing field is going to continue to become leveled. We talk a lot about how major label artists still have a pretty big stake of the Top 10 on Billboard and the top positions on playlists. I think that as we move to a more democratized content ecosystem, we'll see more and more independent artists such as Chance the Rapper breaking through and putting their stake in the ground and showing that artists can do the work independently. It's just different than the formula that we're used to."

Stem is a platform built to track and organize revenue streams for artists and teams, upload content, and manage smart contracts. Co-founder and CEO Milana Rabkin related it to a Venmo for Apple and Spotify. Founded in 2015, Stem has raised $12.5 million from Upfront Ventures and Evolution Media. With the ever-increasing number of distribution platforms, creators, and payment plans, Stem is seeking to organize the legal aspects of the music space by uniting the cross-platform business models into a single workflow.

Matthew Adell

Chief Digital Officer, Native Instruments

"What's exciting about music and media today is that they can only make money if people love what's being created because they have to return to it many times in order for real revenue to be generated. I think that it's pushing a lot of media products out of the market place that don't actually meet people's needs. I actually think part of "peak TV" phenomenon is that people are streaming content and the producers of the programming can really understand the value it brings to people's lives."

Native Instruments is a software and hardware audio company designed to innovate the DJing experience. In March 2017, they acquired MetaPop, where Matthew was Founder and CEO. MetaPop used proprietary technology to search the web and create an index of bootleg remixes and mashups for individual artists. Essentially, it allowed fans to remix music legally and lets the original creators monetize all the remixes of their work. In addition, this platform let brands identify and target their most influential brand ambassadors.

Alex White

Head of Next Big Sound, Pandora

"We've been in this streaming world for a long time and I think that mainstream consumers are recognizing that this is the way of the future in terms of consumption. I think you'll see a lot more streaming, but that also changes all sorts of distribution and financing mechanisms. There's a lot more crowdfunding coming around and alternative ways for artists to get their music out there. But I still think that distribution is not the scare element. I think that discovery, marketing, and breaking through is going to be the real challenge and artists need a team around them to navigate and help them stand out from the crowd."

Next Big Sound is a music data analytics company that Pandora acquired in 2015. The platform combs through big data of multiple social media, distribution platforms, and web outlets to inform marketing and sales decisions. They also use a patented algorithm to track popular music and make predictions about the success of an artist's upcoming album. It takes the guesswork out of marketing and brings the music industry to the 21st century.

CONTENT CREATORS

Jessie Kahnweiler

Showrunner "The Skinny", Hulu

"I think it's an amazing time to be an artist and to be working in television. The opportunities really feel limitless. Now when I have an idea for a show, there's so many different places it could go. It could even go to, 'I'm going to raise the money myself and shoot it.' You have HBO, you have Kickstarter, and you have everything in between. It really feels like there's not really any excuse not to make my stuff."

Jessie Kahnweiler is an actor, writer, director, and YouTube personality based in Los Angeles. Her work has been featured in several publications, including The New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter, BuzzFeed, IndieWIRE, and The Huffington Post. Jessie began her most recent project, The Skinny, as a Kickstarter campaign and then partnered with Refinery29 to create a 6-episode web series. It was picked up by Hulu and is currently in development as one of their original programs.

Neil Landau

Associate Director of Screenwriting for Television, UCLA

"I predict that within the next 5-10 years, TV with commercials that is programmed into time slots is going to go away. I just can't see it sustaining, because the younger generation and most people under 40 don't even watch television. They watch their laptops and they watch stuff on their phones. My prediction is we're going to go into an all on-demand and all-subscription world for those who have means. For those who don't, there will still be options available, but it will just be sponsored content with maybe just a bumper ad on the front and back or a product placement. They'll find ways without having to interrupt us every 10 or 15 minutes because I think once you watch something without commercials, it's really hard to go back."

Neil is the associate director of screenwriting at UCLA TFT. He has been in the entertainment industry as a screenwriter, producer, and script consultant for over 25 years. His credits include The Magnificent Seven, Doogie Howser, M.D., and The Young and the Restless. Neil is also a best-selling author. In his latest book, TV Outside the Box: Trailblazing in the Digital Television Revolution, Neil analyzes the influx of over-the-top content and streaming services and what they mean for the new media landscape.For more related content, check out our Transforming Hollywood 8 videos!

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What's the Future of Media and Entertainment? We asked 8 experts.

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To say media is changing would be the understatement of the year. Media has been undergoing a major digital disruption, and it's nowhere near complete.