Sprint Nextel is already shuttering the old push-to-talk Nextel network, but it will officially shed the name when it closes its $20 billion deal with Softbank. The move sheds another piece of Sprint’s disastrous purchase of Nextel in 2005. How bad was the deal? By 2008, the company had written down nearly $30 billion related to the merger, which was pretty much the entire stock value of Nextel before the deal was announced.
[Commentary] Mobile advertising is growing rapidly. Total spend in the U.S. during the first half of this year hit $1.2 billion — a staggering 95 percent jump from last year, according to an October report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Many forecasts predict that this growth won’t slow, and I believe them. Viewing this through the prism of mobile display, it’s clear to see that critical needs are being served. Display can build brand exposure and heighten awareness. Plus, display is easy to buy. However, this is where the trouble starts. Data is hard to come by, reporting is opaque, and tonnage trumps targeting. All advertisers have to do is sign up with one of the myriad mobile ad networks and, boom! Banners go everywhere, shares of ad networks soar and everybody wins. Party like it’s 1999.
Actually, this whole thing feels like deja vu all over again. The parallels between desktop display back then and mobile display right now are downright eerie. We have to learn from the past. Because, in advertising, there’s this huge iceberg called performance. And that iceberg is even bigger in mobile. You’re dealing with more fragmentation at the publisher level (such as thousands of developer apps), significantly different form factor (smaller screens), and much higher rates of accidental clicks and incidence of spam (robo-dialers). Increasingly, businesses will want to know, “Does mobile work?” The future of mobile advertising depends on what that answer is.
[Christothoulou is the president of Marchex , a mobile advertising company]
The US cable industry, hoping to revive innovation and beat back the emergence of online video, is turning for ideas to Silicon Valley.
Leading players from Time Warner Cable to Comcast will next year set up a showpiece research center in the heart of a region that has spawned recent momentous trends, from social networking to the mobile revolution. Spearheaded by Louisville, Colorado-based CableLabs, a nonprofit research and development consortium established by the industry, the center hopes to work on projects with startups and established firms; hire engineers; and engage leading universities such as Stanford in experimenting on new tech. The cable industry is grappling with a persistently poor service reputation while fending off stiff competition from Internet-based services like Netflix Inc and Hulu.
Newspapers are demolishing their paywalls for another major event: the 2012 election.
The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) Foundation announced the creation of a $50,000 fund to support and aid active SAG-AFTRA members in their recovery from the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy. News of the emergency aid plan came one day after the Screen Actors Guild Foundation announced it had partnered with the Screen Actors Guild Motion Picture Players Welfare Fund to create a Superstorm Sandy Emergency Assistance Fund for SAG-AFTRA members. The American Federation of Television and Radio Actors Foundation Hurricane Relief Fund will be administered by the Actors Fund in New York. SAG-AFTRA members are eligible to apply for the AFTRA relief funds if they are currently active and have paid their dues through the May 2012 billing cycle. Grants of up to $1,000 will be administered by the Actors Fund through a confidential and streamlined process aimed at aiding members quickly and effectively as they rebuild and recover from the superstorm.
According to Dun & Bradstreet CIO Walt Hauck the companies that "get" big data and use it to better serve their customers will be the "haves." Those that don't might as well open a corner bookstore. "I think big data is the beginning of the 'haves' and 'have-nots',” Hauck says. "You're either going to be able to take your data, manipulate it, and understand it at scale, or you're going to follow those that do." Hauck isn't talking about the data that comes from Twitter feeds and Facebook "likes."
That grabs headlines, but the real value in big data is better understanding what you already know:
US television networks face a new challenge in covering this year's excruciatingly close presidential election: prevent closely guarded exit poll results from leaking onto Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms.
The major TV news networks agreed to shield early exit poll data suggesting who is leading in a state until the state's polls close. That means no tweeting exit polls, posting on Facebook, or re-tweeting figures reported by others. Election officials worry that leaks could discourage people from voting if they think the race in their state is already decided, depressing the vote count and distorting the results. In 1985, Congress extracted a promise from the major TV networks to refrain from using exit polls to project a winner in a particular state, or to characterize who is leading, while voting continues in that area.
Security experts warned that New Jersey's plan for e-mail-based voting was a recipe for problems, and anecdotal evidence is starting to trickle in that the system isn't working as well as organizers had hoped.
One address used to request ballots was not even accepting e-mail late Tuesday morning. And in another county, an election official responded to problems with the county e-mail system by inviting voters to send ballot requests to his personal Hotmail address. The unfolding fiasco was first spotted by Buzzfeed, which notes that a number of voters have tweeted about having their e-mails to county voting officials bounce. "Oh no! email box for Essex County Clerk's box is full. No one can email in their ballots," tweeted one New Jersey voter last night. Essex County, NJ, is in the suburbs of New York and has nearly 800,000 residents. As one of the largest counties in the state, it is evidently struggling to keep up with the demand for e-mail ballots.
Lots of things are done online, so why not voting? The technology isn't there yet for secure, online voting, computer security experts said. Between intercepted communications, the difficulty in verifying identity, and danger from hackers bent on disrupting the whole process, there are simply too many problems for online voting to be considered a viable option, the speakers said.
Social media is a significant part of the process by which voters are talking about their ballot selections, especially younger voters:
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