August 20, 2009
News to Us: TV Everywhere, New Mobile SNS, Discovery App a Hit, Wale on Free Music and More
- TV Everywhere may not be anywhere until 2014 | Blog | Econsultancy - Cable television companies are getting excited about a web push to put all of their content online for subscribers. Called "TV Everywhere," the endeavor will make many television shows available online for free to customers who pay for cable on television. But getting all the major players to cooperate on this project could take quite some time.
- Washington business improvement district goes mobile | Mobile Marketer -Just in time for the area's Restaurant Week, Washington’s Golden Triangle Business Improvement District launched its new mobile Web site to help smartphone users navigate the busy area of the capital including finding places to dine.
- 3banana partakes in mobile giving using social networks | Mobile Marketer 3banana Inc. has launched a “Share to Win” contest to help nonprofit organizations spread their message and have the chance to win $10,000 in donations. The strategy behind the contest is to have nonprofit organizations use 3banana’s notepad application and spread their message virally via Twitter, Facebook and mobile email. The organization with the most votes will have a chance to win one of five prizes totaling $10,000 worth of donations.
- Smartphone Apps Fuel Business - WSJ.com -More firms are turning to apps to enhance the way customers interact with their products and services — and even boost their bottom lines. Said one expert, "People nowadays want everything to be at their fingertips, and if companies are not finding ways to provide these tools [they] will soon see drop-off from their customers."
- Orange, Vodafone Push Mobile Social Networks | mocoNews - Orange just rolled out Social Life in the UK, an aggregator that lets users post to their social networking profiles and send messages via the Orange World mobile site using one login. Meanwhile, Vodafone may soon be rolling “Vodafone People,” which organizes users’ contacts and messages across mobile and PC. And it’s not just for Vodafone users, but people on 247 networks.
- Study: Over 8 Percent Of American Households Use Mobile, E-Mail Coupons | mocoNews - The majority of shoppers still get their coupons from Sunday newspapers, but more than 8.9 million U.S. households—or just over 8 percent of the total population—receive coupons via text or e-mail, according to new stats from Scarborough Research. The typical mobile/e-mail coupon user is young (14 percent more likely to be aged 18-24, than average), educated (51 percent more likely to be a college graduate or have an advanced degree) and decidedly female.
- Discovery iPhone App an Early Hit | Contentinople - Acting on their strategy " to have as many touch points to our fans as possible," Discovery Channel released a new, free application for iPhone and iPod Touch users. It has fast become a success with more than 180,000 downloads just one day after it hit the app store.
- Jay-Z's Favorite New Rapper: Free Music Is The Future | Techdirt -
Breakout Rap star Wale was quoted as saying, "Free music is the way for the future. To get your music off the ground you've got to give it away for free at first." Now he's Jay-Z's favorite rapper and doing collaborations with every top name in the industry.
- The Real-time Web: Sifting Required | GigaOm - With the constant stream of status updates flowing on the web, it can be easy to miss the stuff we care about. Facebook and Twitter have yet to figure out how to help users easily scan the glut of news streamed in real time without missing information from earlier that they need or want to see. This influx of status updates often results in a series of disjointed conversations that lack context, making it hard to piece together and decipher what it all means.
