Twitter a broadcast medium?

9 June 2009

As reported on the BBC News web site: Micro-blogging service Twitter remains the preserve of a few, despite the hype surrounding it, according to research.
Just 10% of Twitter users generate more than 90% of the content, a Harvard study of 300,000 users found.

Estimates suggest it now has more than 10 million users and is growing faster than any other social network.
However, the Harvard team found that more than half of all people using Twitter updated their page less than once every 74 days.
And most people only ever “tweet” once during their lifetime, the researchers found.

“Based on the numbers, Twitter is certainly not a service where everyone who has seen it has instantly loved it,” said Bill Heil, a graduate from Harvard Business School who carried out the work.

On a typical online social network, he said, the top 10% of users accounted for 30% of all production.
“This implies that Twitter’s resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network,” the team wrote in a blog post.

Twitter is a social networking website where people can post messages of up to 140 characters – known as tweets – that can be seen by other users who subscribe to their feed.
Its growth has been described as “explosive” and it has become the poster child of social networking sites, particularly among media companies.

Recent figures from research firm Nielsen Online show that visitors to the site increased by 1,382%, from 475,000 to seven million, between February 2008 and February 2009. It is thought to have grown beyond 10 million in the past 4 months.

By comparison, Facebook – one of the most popular social networking sites by number of visitors – has 200 million active users and grew by 228% during the same period.

Research by Nielsen also suggests that many people give the service a try, but rarely or never return.
Earlier this year, the firm found that more than 60% of US Twitter users failed to return the following month.
“The Harvard data says very, very few people tweet and the Nielsen data says very, very few people listen consistently,” said Mr Heil.

The Harvard study took a snapshot of 300,542 users in May 2009. As well as usage patterns it looked in detail at gender differences.
For example, it found that men had 15% more followers than women despite there being slightly more females users of Twitter than males.
It also showed that an average man was almost twice as likely to follow another man than a woman, despite the reverse being true on other social networks.
“The sort of content that drives men to look at women on other social networks does not exist on Twitter,” said Mr Heil.
“By that I mean pictures, extended articles and biographical information.”
However, said Mr Heil, the most striking result was that so few people used the service to publish information, preferring instead to be passive consumers.
For example, the median number of lifetime tweets per user is one.
“Twitter is a broadcast medium rather than an intimate conversation with friends,” he said.
“It looks like a few people are creating content for a few people to read and share.”
Some “super users” can have thousands or even hundreds of thousands of followers.

The service bills itself as a way to “communicate and stay connected” with “friends, family and co-workers”.
“The Twitter management need to decide if this is a problem,” said Mr Heil.
“And if they decide it is, how they will tweak Twitter to become more acceptable to the average user?”

EBU appoints new Director-General

8 June 2009

Following an international search, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) announced the appointment of Ingrid Deltenre to succeed Jean Réveillon as its Director General.

Ms Deltenre is expected to take up the post at the beginning of 2010.

“Ms. Deltenre is a high-calibre professional who will be a great asset to the EBU. Her strengths and open approach will serve all EBU’s Members, and public service media in today’s competitive environment,” said the EBU President, Jean-Paul Philippot (RTBF/Belgium).

“Under Ingrid Deltenre’s leadership the EBU will help Members to overcome the technical, editorial and financial challenges of the digital age and the current economic climate. She will pursue the EBU internal reforms launched under Jean Réveillon’s leadership”, added the President.

Jean Réveillon became chief executive of the EBU on 1 February 2004. He decided not to seek an extension to his six-year mandate, which ends on 31 January 2010.

VOA expands broadcasting to war-torn Pakistan border region

8 June 2009

Deewa Radio, the Voice of America’s (VOA) popular Pashto service broadcast to the war-torn Pakistan- Afghanistan border region, is expanding to nine hours daily starting Saturday, June 6, 2009.

“The time is right to add three more hours to Deewa’s original programming,” said Steve Redisch, VOA’s executive editor. “Deewa is often the only source of accurate news and information for the millions of people living in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) and elsewhere. They rely on us daily for basic information.”

Created in October 2006, Deewa is aimed at an estimated 40 million Pashto-speaking people in Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan, including the NWFP where some 2.5 million people have been displaced as Pakistani military battle Taliban fighters. Deewa also reaches Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Balochistan.

Along with news, Deewa provides information about health, shelter, food, social issues, education, science and culture. The program reaches people in the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps and elsewhere. Up to 300 people routinely call in to Deewa during shows.

“Deewa is full of information,” said Syed Inam Rahman of the Centre for Media and Communications, International Islamic University of Islamabad, Pakistan. Rahman estimated the majority of people in Charsadda and Peshawar districts listened to Deewa regularly.

The newest block of programs will focus on news and current affairs, including regional and international news, reports from a network of more than 20 local free-lance journalists, segments on Muslims in America and on youth, a world press round-up and interviews with significant personalities.

The second hour will be a topical call-in show featuring a wide variety of issues affecting those in the targeted region. The final hour will be a repeat of the previous day’s morning call-in show, until July 4, when it will become a live news and current affairs program.

Deewa Radio is distributed on shortwave, FM, and by the Internet at www.VOANews.com/Deewa.

beeTV bags €5.6 million to personalize TV content

5 June 2009

As reported by Tornado Insider, Italy-based beeTV, a provider of a personalized entry system for television viewers, has raised €5.6 million in a Series B round of funding. The investment was led by Italian VC firm Innogest. The deal will fund the company’s growth, including plans to invest in sales and expand its penetration into the US and Asian markets. Erik Lumer, founder of Bubblegum and Graphvine, will join beeTV board on behalf of Innogest.

beeTV was founded in 2006 in an aim to deal with the stunning range of content currently offered on TV. The company believes that number of choices actually restricts viewers rather than improves their TV experience. Subscribers must sift through the vast amount of content available on their platform in order to choose what they ultimately would like to watch. Meanwhile, preferences seem to change depending on the time of the day, context, and mood of the viewer. According to beeTV, solutions such as channel surfing and electronic program guides fail to please subscribers as the choices are presented in an inherently bland, impersonal and time-consuming manner.

beeTV has chosen a different approach. The company offers subscribers their own so-called ‘Personal Content Channel’ or PCC, which is placed in their set-top box (be it IPTV, cable, satellite, mobile or DTT), their mobile phones and their PC. The device identifies the subscriber, searches all available content sources, including broadcast TV, subscription TV, VoD, SVoD, PPV, and PVR/Catch-up and uses a contextual matching algorithm to decide on the relevancy of content to the subscriber. The PCC then pushes the relevant content through a personalized ‘channel’, while anticipating the viewer’s desires by taking into account context, schedule, behavior, and even mood.

The white-labeled PCC is designed to serve TV, mobile and PC screens. Providers can integrate all three screen PCC’s or choose a combination that best fits their own marketing and distribution needs. The company launched the beeSTBox product (for TV) in September 2008, and the beeWEB (for PC) and beeMOBILE in March of this year.