What Facebook's IPO filings reveal

You've probably already heard that Facebook stock will soon go public.  In order to do the IPO (Initial Public Offering, in case you're wondering), they have to file a variety of documents and reports with the SEC and the markets.  These filings offer some detailed looks into Facebook's status and operations.
  The numbers for last December indicate that there were 823 unique users (or at least user accounts), and that more than half (430 million) used Facebook through a mobile device.
   On the financial side, Facebook reported earning $3.74 billion in gross revenues for 2011 (up 88% from 2010), with $1.7 billion in operating profits before tax (and about $1 billion after).  That resulted in a very healthy profit margin of around 27%.
  Facebook seems poised to continue its push into mobile.

"We are devoting substantial resources to developing engaging mobile products and experiences for a wide range of platforms, including smartphones and feature phones. In addition, we are working across the mobile industry with operators, hardware manufacturers, operating system providers, and developers to improve the Facebook experience on mobile devices and make Facebook available to more people around the world. We believe that mobile usage is critical to maintaining user growth and engagement over the long term," the company wrote in its filing.

  The high degree of mobile use has potentially positive and negative implications for Facebook.  On the positive side, a mobile-friendly systems is a huge advantage in globalization, as mobile networks are expanding much faster than computer networks, and consumers seem much more willing to invest in "feature" phones than in PCs, in emerging markets.  And with Facebook working to embed its platform on SIM cards, Facebook access could become a standard feature of new mobile phones.  On the negative side, Facebook currently generates less advertising revenue from mobile users, as third-party advertising does not display in current mobile apps.  Some analysts are also suggesting that Facebook may have to work out some revenue-sharing with cell operators, if features like Facebook chat service displace SMS use (and revenue).
  While display advertising currently drives revenues, the IPO filings show that in-app purchases from games and other apps is a significant and rapidly increasing revenue source.

“Users are paying for premium content and features through these games and apps, and everybody is surprised by just how much money that is generating for Facebook,” commented Adrian Drury, senior consultant at Ovum.

In general, the future seems bright for Facebook.  However, one analyst cautioned that Facebook's current success is attributable, at least in part, to its focus on providing value to its users, rather than maximizing profits.  Will going public shift that focus significantly?  If it does, users may well shift to other, more user-friendly social media systems and start a spiral of decline seen recently in other media.

Sources - What Facebook's IPO filing means for the telecoms industry,  telecoms.com
Facebook files for $5B IPO, shows 425M mobile users,  Fierce Mobile Content
Facebook's SEC Filing

Opensource for Textbooks

Non-profit publisher OpenStax College is working with Rice University to develop online textbooks for introductory college classes.  The eTexts will be available for use anywhere and OpenStax thinks that their program could save students as much as $90 million over the next five years, and could capture more than ten percent of the intro text market in the U.S.
  One big difference between this program and other open texts is that OpenStax is following the traditional textbook publishing process of peer-review and heavy editing for accuracy and validity.  OpenStax, primarily funded through grants, is using the grant to hire experts to develop each textbook (rather than paying royalties for actual sales), and going through several layers of peer review in the creation of the texts.  They are also willing to incorporate materials from for-profit publishing partners when appropriate, although the costs for those materials will need to be passed on to students.  Within the next few months, introductory texts for sociology and physics classes, with biology, anatomy, and physiology texts available next fall

Students and professors will be able to download PDF versions on their computers or access the information on a mobile device. Paper editions will be sold for the cost of printing. The 600-page, full-color sociology book is expected to sell for $30 for those who want a print version -- those content with digital will pay nothing. Leading introductory sociology texts routinely cost between $60 and $120 new.

As open-source materials, textbooks can be modified by instructors, giving professors the capability to add content, shift sequence, or delete sections.  They also share the Ebook advantages of being instantly updatable, whether correcting typos, expanding chapters, or adding new chapters or supplemental materials.  These are all valuable features for users, but could be a problem for educational publishers who have exploited the captive market of required texts, and regular new editions, to keep prices high.

Taken in connection with Apple's IBooks-textbooks initiative focused on K-12 education, this could signal the start of a major shift in educational publishing industry and the markets for textbooks.

Sources - Rice University announces open-source textbooks,  Inside Higher Ed 
OpenStax College website
iBooks textbooks, Apple in Education 

edit track:  added links for OpenStax College and Apple initiative

How to Get a Freelance Gig

Susannah Breslin has a new post on Freelancing that's worth a look.  Basic thrust - be positive and assertive and keep at it.

Source - How to get a Freelance Job,  Forbes.com

Virtual Reality contact lenses in 2014?

A U.S. firm, Innovega, recently released information about a new display system that combines a pair of lightweight glasses with a built-in translucent screen with a pair of nanoscale-engineered contact lenses to deliver a 3-D viewing experience equivalent to watching a 240-inch TV from 10 feet away.  The contacts are there to help focus the image within the eye, which allows the glasses providing the display images to be less bulky.  The contact lenses are said to wearers to simultaneously focus on the near-eye displays and more distant objects, which permits the combination of digital content with normal viewing of the real world around users..

  As such, one DARPA spokesman indicated that the system could be used as both a full "virtual reality" display that shuts out outside images, and for augmented reality images where digital information appears to be overlaid on top of what the user would normally see.

'Instead of oversized virtual reality helmets, digital images are projected onto tiny full-color displays that are very near the eye.'

The glasses that provide the actual screen and image can be paired with smartphones, tablets, or portable game devices (in consumer versions) that would deliver the video or other images.  There are also military applications for heads-up displays for targeting or other battlefield information.

As with all of these glasses-display systems, I have to wonder how well they'd adapt to people with less than perfect vision.  Somehow, these press releases don't seem to address that.

Source - Virtual reality contact lenses that beam images directly into your eyes could be on sale in 2014,  Mail Online Science & Tech blog.

Google Tries Defining Sharing as Privacy (Updated)

Recently, Google standardized its privacy policies across all of its platforms, as well as sharing and correlating user information obtained on its various services.  In a move to quiet the howls from privacy advocates, Google researcher Jessica Staddon is releasing a research paper arguing that social media sharing of personal information helps you build a public image, which in turn helps build trust and enhances privacy.,

"[W]e present survey evidence that 'vanity' searches are associated with an important privacy need," Staddon writes. "We also present evidence compatible with the conjecture that social annotations in search support privacy by enabling better self-representation and thus more privacy-aware sharing." 

 They key to the seeming contradiction that becoming more public promotes privacy lies in defining privacy.  Staddon, while not giving a precise definition seems to equate privacy with being able to build one's own representation of their public self through social media, and that input from the social media community can help reinforce and validate that representation.  Staddon asserts that there are "huge privacy advantages" in facilitating perception, both of one's self-image as well as how they represent themselves in the community.  I'm not clear how this directly helps maintain privacy, or resolve privacy issues or problems.  Perhaps looking at how Staddon supports the argument can help.
  Staddon reports on two research studies.  The first is a small scale study which suggested a relationship between "vanity searching" one's name, and concern about one's reputation.  It's a very weak link though, based largely on the result that most of those who didn't vanity surf said they weren't concerned about their online reputation at all.  The second study was an experiment to test whether adding social annotations (likes or popularity) to an article's search result (title, snippet of text and url) had an impact on an user's interest in further engagement with the article.  Staddon reports that there were small, but statistically significant differences in a user's interest in reading the article, further looking into the topic, or bookmarking it - but no meaningful difference in whether or not a user would "share" the article with others through social media.  So where does privacy come in? 
  In the first study, Staddon seems to suggest that a concern about reputation can motivate reputation monitoring through vanity surfing, and jumps to the argument that social media can be a mechanism for reputation monitoring (not a direct finding of the study).  Even following that line of argument, the implication is that concern for privacy might drive one type of social media use, not that social media use improves privacy.
  In the second study, one social media use (aggregated social annotations) had a small impact in terms of improving further engagement, except for through social media.  This might be argued to suggest that, for some, trust in social annotations might impact engagement - but not that engagement improves trust.  Trust is tied to perception of social media annotations, and not a result of minimally heightened engagement.
  As such, neither of the studies directly indicates that social media use has positive implications for privacy, much less that "social media both facilitates reputation monitoring and trust building, both of which are compelling for privacy."  The evidence and argument provided in support of the claim that social media use promotes privacy are incomplete, indirect, and insufficient. The only real argument for improved privacy through social media lies in Staddon's example of an indirect benefit - that having more and better personal information about others could impact on an individual's likelihood of self-disclosing personal information to another.  In other words, it's basically an argument that less privacy for you might help me maintain my level of privacy. And that's not much of an argument for social media supporting privacy, either.

UPDATE: 
It turns out that privacy regulators in the EU don't like Google's plan to consolidate privacy statements and user information across its many platforms, in order to begin compiling more detailed user profiles.
Privacy policy in Europe is different from US concerns, and is focused more on sharing or revealing personal information to others. 
  Google argues that it only plans on using the aggregated personal information internally, to improve its personalization and recommendations, and to better target advertising. However, there seems to be no way for users to opt out of the new privacy policy, or prevent aggregation, short of signing out and using multiple accounts.
  In the meantime, some members of Congress are asking the Federal Trade Commission if the new policy violates an early anti-trust settlement in which Google promised to obtain the express consent of users before sharing their information.
  I think Google wants to make the case that all of the separate services are still part of Google, and thus there is no outside sharing.  I'm not so sure that the Courts will agree, but they might.


Sources -  Google Study: Social Media Enhances Privacy,  Information Week Security
Vanity or Privacy? Social Media as a Facilitator of Privacy and Trust, Jessica Staddon, Google
Google, EU Spar Over Privacy Changes,  Online Media Daily

edit log -  Updated with EU/US privacy concerns, 6 Feb 2012

International Broadcasters go Online

The last week has seen announcements from two of the largest European broadcasters that they were making a major push into IPTV.
   Sky TV, a major UK pay TV and satellite service, said it would soon launch a new internet TV service, aimed at reaching those British households not already subscribing to their service.  The new service will be accessible from multiple platforms, and will initially offer movies on a video-on-demand platform, with sports and entertainment options to be added later.  In the early movies-on-demand phase, it will compete in the UK with Amazon subsidiary Lovefilm and the new Netflix UK service.
  German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle DW) also announced its plans to develop a new online presence, as well as an all-English language channel.  The new DW website is designed to function as a multilingual, multimedia news and information portal.

"The new website encompasses everything that DW has to offer - articles, audio, video and interactive content," said Deutsche Welle Director General Erik Bettermann. "dw.de is a source of reliable information from Germany and high-quality journalistic content in 30 languages. A refreshing color concept and modern design give the site a friendly face."

The new English language channel will be broadcast to North America, Africa, Asia, and Australia, and will integrate a strong news emphasis along with increased use of programming from German public broadcasters ARD and ZDF.  It will most likely show up as a cable/satellite channel offering, as well as a streaming service.

Sources - Sky will launch an internet based TV service in the UK in the first half of 2012,  Engadget
New TV Program, Website from DW,  Mediacaster

Go Digital, Young Magazine

New research from GfK MRI's iPanel suggests that table owners are highly interested in reading digital magazines.  (The iPanel consists of individuals who own tablets and/or eBook readers).  Overall, more than 70% of the sample expressed an interest in reading digital magazines on their devices.  Interestingly, interest was higher for younger and male users - 85% of males 18-34 (77% of all males) vs. 78% of females 18-34 (68% of all females).

Risa Becker, senior vice president of research for GfK MRI, observed: “The fact that younger men who own tablets are interested in reading digital magazines bodes well for digital magazine advertisers, since this demographic has been historically hard to reach.”

   The research also found that most tablet owners who had read a digital magazine in the last month had done so through an app (65%), while 47% accessed magazine content through the magazines website, and 37% read a stand-alone digital version.  (The percentages add to more than 100% because some tablet owners read more than 1 magazine in that time period, and accessed them via different methods).
  The research also revealed an interest in reading back issues - about one in five people who read a digital magazine also read back issues of the same title.

Source - Digital Magazines Popular, Men Hold Edge,  Online Media Daily

Content and Value

  One indicator of the continuing "content is king" meme is the movement of a number of major Internet firms into the content business.
  Major social media services are working to integrate media content into their social media platforms.  Facebook is making deals to stream movies and music concerts through its service.  Twitter is making sponsored deals with high-profile figures to create Tweet streams at big events like the Consumer Electronics Show.
  In the last year, Google has made significant moves into content services, with the addition of the Google Music cloud service, and the addition of content sales and rentals to the Android Marketplace.  Google's YouTube operations have not been ignored, with Google spending $200 miliion (so far) to acquire high quality, high demand, content, and content creators, to supplement the user-generated videos on YouTube.  Google's been working with US studios on a movie rental service. Outside the U.S., they've made deals to stream movies and sporting events.
  Amazon is making the move from just selling books to publishing them.  Amazon's Kindle books service has encouraged and provided a market for self-published works since its introduction, but Amazon took the move into content further with the creation of its own publishing house, releasing titles in both print and online editions.  Apple's followed suit in promoting self-publishing, even to the extent of offering a free iPublisher software tool to facilitate book creation.
  In addition, numerous traditional and new media outlets that started as content aggregators and distributors are making deals to create new content for their services.  This started long ago with pay TV and cable channels, but in the last year, AOL purchased the Huffington Post collection of blogs to boost its original content offerings, and Netflix is commissioning original series for its streaming service.  And, as noted briefly earlier, YouTube is pushing professional-quality content, with new dedicated channels and investment in production houses.

What all of this shows is that good content drives demand, and has significant value.  The push for more original content also reflects the increasingly competitive marketplace at work - having unique content is a competitive advantage to be exploited.

Source -  Content is Dead -- Long Live Content,  OnlineVideo Insider

The Pac-12's Digital Networks

Pac-12 Enterprises, a subsidiary of the Pac-12 college conference, is planning to launch a series of new sports networks that will showcase their teams.  The new channels will not directly compete with the existing Fox and ESPN game packages, but will be aligned with TV network coverage.  The plan is to use the new networks to enable the conference to distribute many more events.  They plan on featuring hundreds of live athletic events, as well as other original programming from the 12 campuses.  The network looks to be hopping on the "TV Everywhere" bandwagon, offering streaming, mobile device access, and social TV capabilities.

“We have an exciting opportunity to create a meaningful and lasting digital media platform to enrich our fans connection to the Pac-12 Conference,"stated Pac-12 Enterprises President Gary Stevenson.

The plan is for the new networks to launch this August in time for the 2012/2013 college sports seasons.

Source - Pac-12 Aligns Digital Nets With TV, Aufhauser Named Digital GM,  MediaDailyNews

News from the WiFi front

There's been a couple of news stories this week dealing with advances in WiFi technology.

A new technology called WiGig hopes to provide a complement to basic WiFi, at least for certain types of data sharing.  WiGig will use  a much higher set of frequencies, in a part of the frequency spectrum that is currently underutilized.  Using the 60GHz band, rather than the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands currently used by WiFi (and a lot of other devices), will allow WiGig to transfer data at much higher speeds - up to 7Gbps compared to WiFi top speeds of 100 Mbps.  The trade-off is that the WiGig signal doesn't go as far - about  5 meters instead of WiFi's 25 meter range.  But there's an advantage to the short range - there's less likelihood that there will be interference from other devices.
  Samples of WiGig chip sets are being tested and evaluated by a number of equipment manufacturers, and WiGig-enabled devices are expected to start showing up later this year in notebooks and tablets.  Mark Grodzinsky, VP of marketing for Wilocity (supplier of WiGig chips), envisions one application

"You can imagine an Ultrabook that you put on your desk, and you've got a dock that`s got connections to high-performance storage and a high-definition monitor."

Ali Sadri, head of the WiGig Alliance and Director of Intel's Mobile Wireless Group, also sees major benefits in using WiGig to complement WiFi for companies and other organizations.

"They can say: `All of the infrastructure access technologies are going to be 2.4 or 5 Gig. All of the peer-to-peer (P2P) applications and display applications will go over WiGig... I think there`s a huge opportunity for IT to clean up the mess, perhaps even disallowing 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz from being used for P2P applications."

Another possible application for WiGig's high speeds is the transmission of high bandwidth applications, such as HDTV, or even 3-D 1080p HD video.  In testing by Panasonic, WiGig was able to transfer a compressed 30-minute HD video in about 10 seconds.  This opens the way for wireless connectivity of TV sets and related devices.

On the video production end, other technologies are being developed to use the 60MHz band for HD and 3-D HD signals to be transmitted over longer distances (up to 500 meters).  The GigaLink HD system offered by Renaissance Electronics and subsidiary HXI is designed specifically for the HD and 3D-HD motion picture, television, and broadcast industries.  The system can transmit uncompressed raw HD video at 1.485 Gbps with a range of about 500 meters.  A dual-channel model transmit signals from two independent HD cameras, or a single 3-D HD raw feed, in perfect synchronization.
  The potential on the production side is tremendous - live ENG without the need to string cables back to the truck, placing HD cameras in remote locations, enabling camera movement without having to worry about dragging cables.
  For those of you wondering why GigaLink HD has a 500 meter range while WiGig has a 5 meter range - the main reason is power.  WiGig needs to be light and be able to rely on tablet or laptop power supplies.  The increased power needs for GigaLink HD result in transmitters and receivers that weigh about 11 pounds each, which is clearly not optimal (or even viable) for mobile consumer devices.

What these both suggest is that the higher speeds available in the higher frequency bands (like the 60MHz band) are enabling greater use of wireless systems for HD video, and whatever new standards emerge.

Sources -  WiGig: More than WiFi on Steroids,  Digital Producer Magazine
High Bandwidth Wireless for HD and 3D/HD Digital Video Cameras,  Audio Video Producer