Week of January 14, 2008

PMG Prediction for 2008: Video Distribution Starts To Implode

Friday, January 18, 2008

The television and movie industries will watch as the forces (both legal and illegal) that redefined the music industry come after video. Much as iMeem and Deezer impacted music, an incredibly popular web video portal will catalog and stream full length movies and television shows.

Thanks to Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and others, renting a video will be redefined, and a jaunt to Blockbuster will be increasingly replaced by simply renting a download via Amazon Unbox or viewing it via Netflix Watch Instantly.

Connecting the Internet video services to the television will make major strides and coincide with the above. Companies as diverse as Microsoft and Netflix are launching or will upgrade set-top boxes and applications to make this happen.

For more details about this and 18 other predictions, send an email to hq@pollackmedia.com and request our new media trends report--The New Media Landscape.

PMG Prediction for 2008: Facebook Will Open More

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Facebook's competition is not only MySpace but also the Internet itself. As a result, we expect Facebook to continue to use openness as a competitive advantage. This will lead to even more open systems. Facebook will focus its monetization not on selling advertising to its walled garden of a social network and its traffic, but rather on its huge database of users and their data.

For more details about this and 18 other predictions, send an email to hq@pollackmedia.com and request our new media trends report--The New Media Landscape.

PMG Prediction for 2008: Yahoo! Will Tear Down Walls

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

We predict Yahoo will make major moves in 2008 in breaking down some important walls. They are opening up their Y Go! mobile platform to external applications, which will have a huge impact based on its being open on most advanced handsets and all major carriers. We think Yahoo will go further and focus on bringing its category-leading content to users in more compelling ways to push their advertising revenue. One possible example? Making Yahoo Music free and ad-supported.

For more details about this and 18 other predictions, send an email to hq@pollackmedia.com and request our new media trends report--The New Media Landscape.

iPhone Still Cool

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Apple released a new update to its iPhone interface today, which included virtual GPS functionality via Google Maps, and a way to customize the icons on the phones home screen. At the same time, Google has created a very slick custom interface for the iPhone for its numerous services, from Google Calendar to Gmail.

MySpace Signs Child Protection Deal with 49 States

Monday, January 14, 2008

In the face of a child killing herself over online harassment on MySpace and multiple states threatening action against the site over sexual predators using the service to look for victims, MySpace has reached an agreement to address these issues with 49 states. The agreement basically covers three areas: Aggressive monitoring of content, a sex offender database, and profile enforcement (e.g. removing underage profiles and improving "friend" access limits for children). No word yet on how the other social networks will react, although Facebook released a statement saying that it was already using aggressive methods to protect its members.