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Facebook Leads an Effort to Lower Barriers to Internet Access

August 20, 2013 by

On Wednesday, Facebook plans to announce an effort aimed at drastically cutting the cost of delivering basic Internet services on mobile phones, particularly in developing countries, where Facebook and other tech companies need to find new users. Half a dozen of the world’s tech giants, including Samsung, Nokia, Qualcomm and Ericsson, have agreed to work with the company as partners on the initiative, which they call Internet.org.

The companies intend to accomplish their goal in part by simplifying phone applications so they run more efficiently and by improving the components of phones and networks so that they transmit more data while using less battery power.

For Mr. Zuckerberg, the formation of the coalition is yet another way in which he is trying to position himself as an industry leader. He has been speaking out more forcefully than other tech executives on topics like immigration overhaul, which the industry sees as critical to its hiring needs. With Internet.org, he is laying out a philosophy that tries to pair humanitarian goals with the profit motive.

“The Internet is such an important thing for driving humanity forward, but it’s not going to build itself,” he said in a recent interview. “Ultimately, this has to make business sense on some time frame that people can get behind.”

But the effort is also a reflection of how tech companies are trying to meet Wall Street’s demands for growth by attracting customers beyond saturated markets in the United States and Europe, even if they have to help build services and some of the infrastructure in poorer, less digitally sophisticated parts of the world.

Google, for example, began a program with phone carriers last year that offers wireless users in some developing countries free access to Gmail, search and the first page clicked through from a search’s results. Google is also reaching for the sky with Project Loon, an attempt to beam Internet access down to earth from plastic balloons floating more than 11 miles in the atmosphere.

Twitter, which is preparing to offer shares to the public in an initial stock offering, has struck its own deals with about 250 cellphone companies in more than 100 countries to offer some free Twitter access, and worked to make sure its service is easy to use on even the cheapest cellphones.

These companies have little choice but to look overseas for growth. More than half of Americans already use Facebook at least once a month, for instance, and usage in the rest of the developed world is similarly heavy. There is nearly one active cellphone for every person on earth, making expansion a challenge for carriers and phone makers.

Poorer countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America present the biggest opportunity to reach new customers — if companies can figure out how to get people there online at low cost.

The immediate goals of the new coalition are to cut the cost of providing mobile Internet services to 1 percent of its current level within five to 10 years by improving the efficiency of Internet networks and mobile phone software. The group also hopes to develop new business models that would allow phone companies to provide simple services like e-mail, search and social networks for little or no charge.

While that sounds far less exciting than, say, Google’s idea of delivering the Internet by balloon, Mr. Zuckerberg says small efforts can add up to big changes.

“No one company can really do this by itself,” he said.

Facebook is already working on techniques to reduce the average amount of data used by its Android mobile app from the current 12 megabytes a day to 1 megabyte without users noticing.

Qualcomm, whose chip technology is prevalent in advanced cellphones, has created new designs to stretch a phone’s battery life, slice the amount of data needed to transmit a video and extend the reach of mobile networks through tiny devices similar to Wi-Fi routers.

The coalition partners have also begun trying new ways of reducing the data charges paid by cellphone customers while still enabling phone makers and carriers to make money.

For example, Nokia, the Finnish cellphone maker, ran a recent experiment with Facebook and the Mexican phone carrier Telcel, in which it bundled free Facebook access with some of its Asha feature phones. Sales rose significantly, and the company decided to run similar promotions for customers of Bharti Airtel, a mobile carrier in India and Africa.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/21/technology/facebook-leads-an-effort-to-lower-barriers-to-internet-access.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

The Last Temptation of Tina Brown

August 4, 2013 by

Ms. Brown, according to staff members who were present, spoke excitedly about the potential synergies for advertisers across platforms and promised to produce a new form of magazine journalism, where digital would drive print instead of the other way around. But after a few softball questions from the staff, Peter Lauria, the company’s media reporter, braved a more skeptical one:

Given that the two publications lost more than $30 million in the previous two years, he asked, why was it a good idea to put them together? And if The Beast was on schedule to break even in 18 months, how much longer would it take now that Newsweek was part of the mix?

Ms. Brown says she has no recollection of that particular meeting, but half a dozen employees who say they were present said the atmosphere immediately turned awkward. The famous editor gave no ground. The target, she said, remained 18 months.

More than two and a half years later, Ms. Brown has missed the mark. Synergies have long since slipped away. After the magazine hemorrhaged tens of millions of dollars, Barry Diller, the billionaire media mogul whose company owns both publications, publicly called the purchase of Newsweek “a mistake” and the original plan to save it “stupid.” On Saturday, the company announced that it had sold Newsweek for an undisclosed amount to the digital news company International Business Times.

It was always a quixotic project to blend a buzzy, growing Web site with the most outdated of print relics, a newsweekly. But interviews with more than two dozen former and current employees — some provided by Ms. Brown and some reached independently — suggested that she and Mr. Diller underestimated what it would take to reverse the dive of a print magazine (the two have acknowledged as much) and that there was never a credible plan to integrate the products into a better whole (an opinion they utterly contest). These people also suggest that Ms. Brown’s intensely demanding and chaotic management style, which had thrived when contained within established companies, proved a combustible combination with Newsweek’s gutted and weakened editorial and sales divisions.

Dan Lyons, Newsweek’s former technology editor, summed up the sentiment in a Facebook post when the magazine was first put up for sale: “It didn’t need to be as ugly and sad and dishonest as what’s happened under Barry and Tina.”

Ms. Brown, for her part, said that it took at least a year to assemble a team she wanted, and undoubtedly she bruised some egos along the way.

“We did a cover on the beached white male and perhaps that’s another reason for the old guard to be angry at me,” she joked during a recent interview at The Beast’s offices. But she said she had no regrets.

“It was really exhilarating,” she said. “We did great journalism.”

Ms. Brown knows great journalism, having built her reputation with her wholesale makeover of Vanity Fair and her stewardship at The New Yorker. At both magazines, she increased circulation, introduced dozens of young writers, many of whom went on to become stars, and won shelves of awards.

But, despite her reputation, she said publicly that she was happy to be away from print. “I would hate to be in the magazine world,” she told the EconWomen conference in 2008. “It’s a really tough world to have to compete in.” That was the year that Ms. Brown started working for Mr. Diller as The Daily Beast was introduced.

What pulled her back, she says, was the billionaire investor Sidney Harman — his enthusiasm, charm and generous financial resources to match — and the chance to return to long-form journalism. Although Ms. Brown does not utter the word “Talk,” her last print magazine, which ended in heartbreaking failure, she acknowledges that she missed the “rhythms” of long-form journalism and that she felt she could not do all the work she craved on the Web.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/05/business/media/the-last-temptation-of-tina-brown.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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With Fewer Stars at Yankee Stadium, Fewer Fans Are Watching

July 1, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The only thing wrong with the picture was the number of empty seats that remained visible in the stands as the game progressed — and the missing names from the Yankees’ lineup.

The attendance for the game was announced as being slightly more than 41,000, or about 9,000 short of capacity. That was a solid number for a regular-season game but not as robust as it might have been in other seasons in the Bronx, where the Yankees usually reign as the most distinguished name in American sports.

Through 41 home games this season, the Yankees have drawn nearly 106,000 fewer fans than at this point a year ago, a 6.1 percent drop that is almost twice as large as the overall decline in baseball. More than half a dozen other teams have had bigger attendance losses than the Yankees, but without exception they are teams that went from good to bad, at least for a while, or from bad to worse, or that play in cities without a notably intense fan base.

The Yankees do not fit in any of those categories, which makes their attendance falloff more intriguing. And while they also experienced a decrease in attendance the last two years, the one this season is more pronounced.

Even more sobering for the team: the television ratings for their games have plummeted. Through June 25, the ratings on their YES Network were down 40 percent to 2.52 from 4.17 at this point last season, and from 4.08, 4.50 and 4.72 in the three previous seasons, with each rating point this year representing 73,843 households.

Yet the sizable drop in the number of people watching the Yankees is not reflected by the team’s performance. Battered by injuries to many of their stars, they have, for the most part, played admirably, holding on to first place until late May. Even now, while in a slump, they remain in contention with a lineup filled with castoffs and call-ups, although that could be a reason fewer people are paying attention.

In that June 21 game in the Bronx, Jayson Nix, a journeyman infielder, was playing shortstop instead of Derek Jeter, who has yet to return to action since fracturing his ankle in October. Playing third base was David Adams, an unheralded rookie filling in for Alex Rodriguez, who has yet to play this season, either, as he recovers from hip surgery in January.

No Jeter. No Rodriguez. And for that matter, no Curtis Granderson or Mark Teixeira, two other big names who were not in the lineup that night, or almost any other night this season, as they dealt with their own confounding health problems.

All of those missing boldface names, in the opinion of fans and experts alike, have translated into missing people at the ballpark and in the living room.

“The Yankees are known as a team of stars,” said Randy Levine, the team president, who acknowledged that the absence of Jeter, Rodriguez and the others was clearly having an impact “on the television side.”

“These Yankees are competitive, but they’re not the Yankees that fans have been accustomed to for the past 20 years,” said Wayne McDonnell, a professor of sports management at New York University. “Are families going to spend $500 to see Lyle Overbay at first base?”

Vince Gennaro, a consultant for several major league teams, said the Yankees were suffering from the fact that their business model differs from that of other teams — it is built on “a tradition and a history of greatness — all the things that the Yankees stand for,” Gennaro said.

“It’s not winning like the Colorado Rockies win,” he added. “It’s winning with marquee names.”

Fans interviewed at recent Yankees games pointed to what they thought were other reasons for the empty seats, most notably the high price of tickets. According to Team Marketing Report, a sports marketing publishing company, the Yankees have the second-highest average ticket price in baseball, at $51.55. Only Fenway Park, the fabled and far smaller home of the Boston Red Sox, charges more.

At another game against the Rays in late June, Tom O’Neil, a 51-year-old Yankees and Reds fan from Cincinnati, volunteered that he had paid $190 for his ticket, which was behind third base on the field level, and that he did not think it was worth the price.

“But it’s the Yankees,” he said, adding that they were the one team he thought could get away with such prices.

Then again, O’Neil and other fans took note of the expensive seats that ring the home plate area and have not seemed to be filled since the new Yankee Stadium opened in 2009.

“Behind the plate, it’s empty,” O’Neil said, exaggerating, but only a little, about seats that cost $2,500 each when the Stadium opened in 2009 and have since been cut by 50 percent or more.

“If they charged $150, maybe they could fill it,” he said.

Richard Sandomir, Ken Belson and Mary Kenney contributed reporting.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/02/sports/baseball/with-fewer-stars-at-yankee-stadium-fewer-fans-are-watching.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Media Decoder: Amazon and CBS Announce Deal on Rights to ‘Under the Dome’

February 11, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Amazon.com and the CBS Corporation on Monday announced a first-of-its-kind deal for the repeat rights to “Under the Dome,” a 13-episode television series based on the Stephen King novel of the same name.

“Under the Dome” will debut on the CBS network on June 24. Episodes of the series will be replayed for free on CBS.com, as many of the network’s shows are, but for only three days. After that point the episodes will be available exclusively on Amazon’s subscriber-only Prime Instant Video service.

Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. But the deal is the latest indication of Amazon’s ambitious plans for streaming video, which it currently provides as part of its $79 annual Amazon Prime membership.
Earlier this month Amazon announced an exclusive deal to stream seasons of the PBS hit “Downton Abbey.” And the company is in the process of commissioning half a dozen comedy pilots, some of which will be turned into full-fledged series.

Brad Beale, the director of digital video content acquisition for Amazon, said in a statement: “Adding a current season major network TV series like ‘Under the Dome’ to the Prime Instant Video library so shortly after its live airing enables us to increase our exclusive selection of great TV shows and give customers access how, when and where they want to watch it.”

Amazon and CBS noted in the news release that the “Under the Dome” novel was a best-seller, both in print and on its Kindle e-reader, when it came out in 2009.

CBS announced last November that it had ordered the series. Steven Spielberg‘s Amblin Television is producing the series.

Streaming services like Netflix and Amazon are mostly known for carrying past seasons of series, so the timeliness of the “Under the Dome” deal is noteworthy. For CBS, the arrangement is a way to offset some of the costs of the series and potentially attract new viewers to the television airings of the episodes.

Scott Koondel, the chief corporate content licensing officer for CBS, noted in a statement that the deal protects the three-day period of time when traditional television ratings are calculated for advertisers. This period is known as “C3.”

“With this innovative agreement, we’re giving fans more options to watch and stay current with this serialized series, and doing so in a way that protects the television network’s C3 advertising window,” Mr.
Koondel said.

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/11/amazon-and-cbs-announce-deal-on-rights-to-under-the-dome/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Top Executives End Opposition to Higher Taxes

December 12, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Before Tuesday’s about-face, the Business Roundtable had insisted that the White House extend Bush-era tax cuts to taxpayers of all income brackets, but the executives’ resistance crumbled as pressure builds to find a compromise for the fiscal impasse in Washington before the end of the year.

“We recognize that part of the solution has to be tax increases,” David M. Cote, chief executive of Honeywell, said on a conference call with reporters. “That’s the only thing that allows a reasonable compromise to be reached.”

Even as the Fortune 500 leaders announced their shift, the White House continued to work behind the scenes to woo some of Wall Street’s most powerful financiers — a group that had largely abandoned President Obama in his bid for a second term after supporting him in 2008.

After seeking out corporate leaders from industrial companies last month, the White House has intensified outreach to Wall Street in December.

On Wednesday, several hedge fund managers, including Daniel Och, the billionaire founder of Och-Ziff Capital Management, will meet with Valerie Jarrett, a top adviser to the president, and members of the White House economic team.

Last Monday, White House officials sat down with a more than half a dozen top bankers and financiers, including Gary D. Cohn, president of Goldman Sachs, and Greg Fleming, head of wealth management at Morgan Stanley.

The differing strategies — highly public meetings with corporate America and private arm-twisting with Wall Street — both appear to be aimed at winning popular support for higher taxes on the wealthy. The trade-offs being roundly fought over in Washington, like what government programs may be cut and which entitlements may be spared, are less important in this effort to muster highly compensated chieftains whose support for tax increases will provide cover for Congressional Republicans wary of being seen as too quick to compromise on higher tax rates.

What’s more, the political symbolism of some of the wealthiest Americans’ saying they support higher taxes on the rich takes a bit of the sting out of the idea of raising rates, for both Democrats and Republicans. Indeed, by appealing to both camps and enlisting their support, President Obama hopes to neutralize potential critics, according to allies of the president on Wall Street.

President Obama’s supporters cited the example of Frederick W. Smith, the chief executive of FedEx. Last week, Mr. Smith signaled he was not angered by higher tax rates for the wealthiest individuals, a centerpiece of President Obama’s plan to reduce the deficit and a key sticking point for Republicans in Congress.

“If people who didn’t support the president believe the president is acting reasonably, they’re going to put pressure on the other side,” said Marc Lasry, a longtime supporter of the president who runs Avenue Capital. “You need both sides to be reasonable.”

For example, Mr. Lasry invited the real estate tycoon Barry Sternlicht, a onetime Obama supporter who raised money for Mitt Romney in the last election cycle, to the White House last week. Mr. Lasry, who has $13 billion under management, including $1.3 billion of his own money, is among a small group of Wall Street figures who stuck with the president before the election, even as those like Mr. Sternlicht deserted him.

This core group met with President Obama on Nov. 16, and included Tony James, president of the Blackstone Group, as well as Roger Altman, a Democratic stalwart who is executive chairman of Evercore Partners, and Robert Wolf, a longtime UBS executive who recently began his own firm, 32 Advisors.

Also in attendance were Blair W. Effron, co-founder of Centerview Partners, and Mark T. Gallogly, a Blackstone veteran who founded Centerbridge Partners in 2005.

Catherine Rampell contributed reporting.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/12/business/top-executives-end-opposition-to-higher-taxes.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,