Cynopsis: DIGITAL

02/01/11

Good morning, it’s Tuesday, February 1, 2011, and this is your first early morning digital briefing.  If you would like to read this or any other Cynopsis edition online, click here. 

The rapid maturation and consolidation of the online video world continues as Kit Digital announced a deal to acquire a trio of online video infrastructure providers – New York City-based KickApps, Paris-based Kewego, and San Francisco-based Kyte, for a total of $77.2 million. (KickApps went for $44.7 million in stock, Kewego for $26.7 million in cash and stock and Kyte for $5.7 million in cash and stock.) The deals will expand and accelerate Kit’s technology and products features in the areas of social media tools, digital signage capabilities and mobile software and development features, as well as bring a number of savvy investors into the company’s fold.
 

 
A digital series based on the CliffNotes Literature Guides will be first series jointly developed by AOL, Mark Burnett and Coalition Films, new partners is a web programming agreement. Video recaps of the works of Mark Twain, William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens, among others, will be produced in 2011.
 
ABC‘s full episode Sync streaming iPad app, launched on an experimental basis last Sept., may find its way back on the App Store this week with episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, according to paidcontent. The source is comments made by ABC Digital Media VP Rick Mandler at the TVnext conference last Friday.
 
The BBC’s U.S.-focused site BBC World News America has put together a special full-hour report about the crisis in Egypt, featuring interviews, analysis and reports from correspondents on the ground in Cairo.
 
A new series premiering on HGTV in July, Run My Makeover, relies on an interactive minisite that allows users to participate in the remodeling process of a featured homeowner’s room. Users choose the lighting, flooring and paint colors they’d like to see and the entries receiving the most votes will be implemented on television.

 
A plan is underway to repurpose comments from third party sites onto users’ Facebook profile pages, reports CNET. The idea is to build a commenting system that will in turn power prominent blogs and media sites. The system may also allow users to log in using their Google, Yahoo or Twitter IDs if the participating publisher wishes to integrate them. Facebook has also expanded its Places Deals service, which identifies offers based on where users are geographically, into 5 European countries ­- The UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy.
 

 
Advertisers are making more of an effort to integrate social media campaigns into their expensive $3 million/per spot Super Bowl ads this year in an effort to build buzz around them, according to AdAge. Budweiser, for one, has posted teasers of three upcoming Bud Light ads on its Facebook page encouraging users to guess the plotlines of the creative (which were also previewed in a pair of 15-seconds spots during the AFC and NFC Championship games.)
 

 
Comcast officially closed on its acquisition of a controlling 51% share in NBC Universal, leaving GE with 49% of the company. Comcast has agreed to a litany of conditions from the FCC and DOJ designed to insure a competitive environment in the online video space, including insuring fair access of competing content providers to Comcast’s networks and taking a minority, non-voting stake in Hulu.
 
Making its first major acquisition in Europe since drastically overpaying for Bebo in 2008, AOL announced it has acquired video distribution network GoViral for $96.7 million. Goviral, whose network includes some 18k publishers across 24 verticals, will retain its offices in the UK, Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden and Spain.
 
Hearst has agreed to acquire French media conglomerate Lagardere for $887 million in a deal that involves 102 magazine titles, 50 websites and various mobile and tablet apps in 15 countries, including Women’s Day and Car and Driver in the U.S.
 
Google, which tackled such problems as the mobile truck Wi-Fi scandal last year, once again increased its spending on lobbying last year to $5.16 million, according to Lobbying Disclosure Act Database. The company, a relative newcomer in the Washington, trailed the spending of a few tech companies including Verizon ($16.75 million), AT&T ($15.39 million) and Microsoft ($6.91 million).
 
Mobile messaging and signaling infrastructure solution provider NewNet Communication Technologies acquired Traxcom Technologies, provider of secure transaction processing platforms and advanced encryption technologies. The platforms provide user payment options for a range of devices and locations including mobile phones and ATMs.
 

 
The leading smartphone operating system is now Google’s Android with a footprint of 32.9 million smartphones during Q4 2010, besting longtime leader Symbian (#2 with 31 million shipments) for the first time, according to UK-based researcher Canalys. Android grew by 615% y/y in terms of market share to capture 32.5%, followed by Symbian (30.6%) and Apple iOS (16%). Apple’s market share dropped slightly, despite shipping nearly twice the amount of iPhones as last year, from 8.7 million in 2009 to 16.2 million in 2010. RIM’s market share also dropped from 20% to 14.4%, despite shipments growing from 10.7 to 14.6 million smartphones.
 
Worldwide Smartphone Market Share, Q4 2010 vs. Q4 2009
OS Vendor      Q4 ’10 Shipments  % Share  Q4 ’09 Shipments % Share     Growth
                               (millions)                           (millions)­___________________
Google                    33.3                32.9%           4.7               8.7%        615.1%
Nokia                      31.0                30.6%         23.9              44.4%         30.0%
Apple                      16.2                16.0%           8.7              16.3%         85.9%
RIM                        14.6                14.4%          10.7              20.0%        36.0%
Microsoft                  3.1                  3.1%            3.9                7.2%       -20.3%
Others                     3.0                  2.9%            1.8                3.4%        64.8%
Total                    101.2               100.0%         53.7             100.0%        88.6%                
Source: Canalys Estimates, note: Google relates to Android as well as OMS and Tapas platform variants
 
Mobile social networking will spark a huge spike in users of Voice Over-IP calling applications (Skype, Google Voice, Vonage, etc.) to nearly 139 million global users by 2014, according to researcher In-Stat, with revenues split between Europe, the Middle East and Africa (39%), Asia/Pacific (32%), North America (21%), and the rest of the world (8%). While carriers have reacted cautiously to allowing such apps on their networks, integration of popular social networking platforms and the desire to save on exorbitant overseas roaming charges when traveling have user demanding access to such applications.
 

 
KickApps CEO Alex Blum has been appointed to the new position of Global COO of KIT Digital as part of the latter’s deal to acquire the white label application developer. Kyte COO Gannon Hall will assume the role of EVP/Marketing. Both will relocate from the U.S. to KIT’s Prague headquarters.
 
Paul Volen was hired as VP/GM of SI Digital, overseeing the strategy and day-to-day business and technical management of SI.com, affiliated websites such as FanNation.com, and the SI.com mobile Web site and apps. He will report from Feb. 14 in Atlanta to Matthew Hong, SVP and GM of Sports Operations for Turner Sports.
 
Alloy Media + Marketing has tapped former CelebTV.com GM Matthew Goldfine to serve as VP/Branded Entertainment for its Alloy Digital division. Matthew will be based in Alloy’s Chicago sales office.
 
Kevin Henshaw was upped to VP/Business Development for avatar-based social networking and gaming site IMVU, based in Palo Alto, CA.
 
The Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA) announced that Tony Quin, CEO of IQ, will become the new Chairman of the Board for the society, following AgencyNet CEO Rich Lent who stepped down after 3 years as Chairman.
 

 
The Cairo offices of Al Jazeera have been shut down by the embattled Egyptian government, which is obviously unhappy about its critical coverage of the uprising. (An AP report says 6 Al Jazeera journalists are being held in custody after the raid.) But that hasn’t stopped the plucky network from releasing its reporting online under a Creative Commons license. (Creative Commons provides free tools for content creators to grant copyright permissions for their work to third party outlets.) The “Al Jazeera Creative Commons Repository” features clips of broadcast quality footage that linear and digital media outlets, blogs or third party sites are welcome to utilize to help cover the crisis, provided they simply include proper attribution. The move is a bold one considering the network will not monetarily profit from the usage of such footage. But perhaps the opportunity to provide coverage of an event that is difficult to come by otherwise can boost the goodwill of a brand that has had little success in penetrating the U.S. television market.
 

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

Later – Wayne
Wayne Karrfalt for Cynopsis: Digital
02.01.11

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JOB OPENING:  RESEARCH & MKT MGR/TV Guide/ NYC:  Manage Ad Sales wkly reprts- prform v. budget/sales, provide ntwrk hghlights of grwth & comp wins, dev & integrate concepts into mktg pres/ promo materials. [email protected] (2/8)

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SUMMER INTERNSHIP CREDITS ONLY:  WEB DVLPMNT/Bedford Hills NY: Asst Dir Tech. Learn underlining process of online video del to mult emerging platforms. Intro to Ruby & some knwlg HTML & Java Script req’d. RUBY ON RAILS EXP REQ’D. res: [email protected] (2/2)

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