You Already Knew Parents Post on Facebook More Than Others. Now Find Out How Much (Ad Week)
New American moms post 2.5 times more status updates, 3.5 times more photos and 4.2 times more videos than nonparents, per Facebook’s internal stats. And hey, the updates work: New parents’ posts (those from moms or dads) about their babies get 37 percent more interactions from family members.
Buyers Say TV Dollars Moving to Digital (Broadcasting & Cable)
Despite what appears to be a hot scatter market for television commercials, media buyers say that the shift of advertising dollars from TV to digital is accelerating, according to a new Wall Street research report. Cowen & Co. surveyed about 50 ad buyers and says 90% of them said the shift to digital is accelerating.
LG Will Add Internet Streaming Channels To New TVs, Partner With Netflix For Global Expansion (TubeFilter)
LG is taking its smart TV game to the next level. The Korean consumer electronics manufacturer will add streaming internet channels from brands like BuzzFeed to several new LG smart TV models. LG announced and demonstrated the streaming internet channels at CES 2016.
Algorithm for isolating Facebook terrorists (Vice)
Computer scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have developed an algorithmic framework for conducting targeted surveillance of individuals within social networks while protecting the privacy of “untargeted” digital bystanders.
Rubio Hits Cruz for Deeming Snowden Leaks a ‘Public Service’ (Inside Sources)
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, calling on Americans to reject “a commander-in-chief that wants to weaken our intelligence programs,” lobbed a new attack at Republican presidential opponent Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, dinging his congressional colleague for praising the actions of National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.
THE US MUST NO LONGER ACCEPT CHINA’S DENIAL OF GOVERNMENT-SPONSORED HACKS (Huffington Post- Commentary)
China’s bitter battle to rewrite the rules of the Internet persisted in December in the historic town of Wuzhen. There, China held its second World Internet Conference. The theme was identical to 2014’s — “an interconnected world shared and governed by all” — but the context surrounding this WIC was quite different.
WHAT TO DO ABOUT BIG CABLE (Medium- Commentary)
We know that Big Cable’s plan for high-speed internet access is to squeeze us with “usage-based billing” and data caps, so as to milk ever-growing profits from their existing networks rather than invest in future-proof fiber optics. We are also seeing that Big Cable has won the war for high-capacity, 25Mbps-download-or-better wired internet.
INFORMATION POLICY 2016 (Benton- Commentary)
As we welcome the New Year, policy wonks appreciate that as the last year of a second-term president, this is a special year. That means major turnover is coming in senior posts in the Administration regardless of who wins the presidency. It also means that policy people should begin drafting their proposals for the next Administration.
The CW Eyes Stand-Alone Streaming Service (Hollywood Reporter)
The CW Network could launch a stand-alone streaming service, according to a report in Bloomberg. The network’s owners, CBS and Warner Bros., are considering a paid streaming service as a way to generate more income from the network as output deals with Netflix and Hulu near their end, the report says.
The Less Sporty Side Of E-Sports (Tech Crunch)
The e-sports industry is getting big. Really big. More people watch Twitch than CNN. Riot, Valve, Activision-Blizzard and EA all have e-sports initiatives. The largest tournaments attract tens of millions of viewers and offer multi-million dollar prize pools for the best players in games like League of Legends and Dota 2.
NBA Twitter is Changing the Way We Watch Sports (New Republic)
On the front page of NBA.com there is a section called NBA Pulse, which ranks the top three trending players on Twitter by “mentions per hour” in real-time. This prominent placement is no gimmick. No other American sports leagues put such an emphasis on the unfiltered, in the moment opinions of their players and fans.
Digital Display Ads to Overtake Search, Bringing a Reckoning for Google (Recode)
As advertising keeps flooding over from television to digital screens, this year will mark a first: More online ad dollars will go to ads that aren’t for search results than to those that are. That’s per eMarketer, which measures this sort of stuff. A Monday report claims that spending on display ads will outpace search ads in 2016.
What’s Next for Netflix (Lightreading- Commentary)
Now that Netflix has nearly the whole world in its hands, what will it do for its next act? Well, how about launching streaming service in China, for one thing? And how about investing even more heavily in original programming and hammering out more global content rights deals, for another?