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Innovation

Will PlayStation bring VR to the masses?

In a word, no. In the short term, Sony’s new Playstation VR (PSVR) headset will dominate sales in the console-based headset market, but this group is comprised of early adopters in a closed market. While significant, the gaming market is too small to be called a mass market, and PSVR sales to early adopters doesn’t even assure that VR will become a killer app in gaming (Kinect, anyone?). Overall, VR is in the early stages, and still seeking killer apps that can drive true mass-market adoption.

VR Headset Market in a Nutshell

The VR headset market breaks into three categories: phone-based, console-based, and PC-based. According to projections from researcher Strategy Analytics, phone-based headsets will account for 93% of overall sales in 2016, with console-based units at 6% and PC-based units at 1%.

So why are PC-based sales estimates so low? Because the GPU requirements are so high. Though some researchers put the number of VR-capable computers as high as 16 million by the end of 2016, all those aren’t owned by gamers. And other projections put the number as low as 3 million.

In contrast, the installed base of VR-capable PlayStation 4 consoles is projected to reach 53 million by the end of 2016, which is between 3-17 times larger. If Sony sells the 2.6 million PSVR units some analysts anticipate, it’s an attach rate of just 5%. Apply that to the most pessimistic estimate of VR-ready PCs owned by games, and that’s only 150,000 high-end units.

Even if PSVR sales smash projections, these are all sales to early adopters, which are essential to mass market success but an inaccurate predictor thereof. Beyond the console-based market, PSVR can’t trigger a mass market in PC sales because the installed base of VR-capable PCs is tiny. It will do little to impact phone-based VR headsets because the experience is so different; no one expects to get PSVR performance from a smartphone.

Hunt for the Missing Killer App

VR won’t achieve mass market success unless and until sufficient killer apps become available to stimulate broad-based use. Certainly, gaming may be one of them, but it’s only one, and its impact will be felt most in the console market.

HTC Vive
HTC Vive

For PC-based units like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, potential breakthrough applications will come in markets where users can afford the high-end computing requirements and expensive headset costs. Manufacturing is a great example. For example, a recent PWC survey found that 36% of all surveyed US manufacturers are either currently adopting VR, or plan to do so in the next three years. Over a third (37%) planned to adapt augmented reality technology in the same period. The two most promising applications were product design and development, and safety and manufacturing skills training.

A recent article in The Economist describes how real-estate companies in China use VR to show prospects apartments in London. The article reports that China has largely ignored VR-based gaming to focus on business applications like sales, design and education. Medicine is highly touted as another market that can benefit from the enhanced training that VR offers and and afford the costs.

Phone-based units are more for experiencing VR as opposed to heavy-duty gaming. Here the likely short-term applications are watching entertainment-based or utilty-based VR, interacting with social media and simple gaming. For example, the NBA just announced that they are streaming live games in VR for the 2106-2017 season, but only to the Samsung Gear VR headset. Facebook recently announced Carmel, a VR web browser that will enable simple VR experiences like putting you inside a car for a test drive, or shopping in a VR simulated store on Oculus devices, but also on some smartphone-based VR devices. Google’s new Daydream View will have more than 50 “experiences” by the end of 2016, and will also work with Google Play Movies, YouTube, StreetView, and Google has created VR tours of many historic locations. Whether any of these rises to the level of killer app remains to be seen.

What Does the Future Hold?
Everyone involved in VR, whether hardware or software developers, or industry analysts, are  drinking their own PR- and demo-fueled Kool-Aid, and will point to any success as proof of market viability. However, even a rudimentary analysis leads to the conclusion that even if PSVR sells 5 million units in 2016, it means very little for markets outside of console-based gaming.

No matter where you fit in—investor, software-developer, or potential buyer—you need to work hard to separate the signal from the noise. We’re in the early days of VR adoption, and success in any single market doesn’t portend mass market success. The best news is that the major hardware vendors; Facebook, HTC, Samsung, Google and Microsoft, can stay the course long enough for the technology to evolve and become affordable, and for those killer apps to emerge.

Jan Ozer (@janozer) is an experienced technologist and author who specializes in streaming media.

Innovation | Perspectives

The Weather Company’s JOURNEYfx location-based ads see the bigger picture

Geo-targeted advertising is not new, but The Weather Company has always taken its own unique path due to its ability to collect a raft of highly-specific, location-related information. Add into that a parent company, IBM, with a focus on cognitive computing and it comes as no surprise that Weather’s latest entrant into the digital ad market, JOURNEYfx, goes well beyond location to offer a smarter kind of targeting.

Think of it like this: Previously, location-based advertising was targeted based on where you’ve been—say at a coffee shop last week. Since you’d been at a coffee shop, it seems appropriate to send you ads for premium coffee spots when you are in the vicinity. However, Domenic Venuto, General Manager, Consumer Division at The Weather Company points out that “you might have just gone in once—for a sandwich.” Not only would this targeting prove ineffective for the advertiser, the ads would likely annoy the consumer, with whom The Weather Company has a particularly intimate and trust-dependent relationship.

Based upon its ability to capture, combine and analyze the vast amount of data from The Weather Company’s 87 million monthly mobile users, JOURNEYfx changes the usual targeting scenario because it is able to “understand rituals, consumers’ patterns of behavior, and the best time to market in order to influence that behavior.” Thus, those premium coffee ads are served to someone who hits the coffee shop every morning between the gym and the office. Factor in the weather and JOURNEYfx will know whether to make it an ad for an iced coffee or a pumpkin spiced latte.

In an even more compelling example, Venuto describes an automotive shopper (who research tells us has almost always decided which car they’ll by before they turn up at a showroom). Between the first party data collected (you’ve been to two car lots in the past two week) and weather-specific information (it’s going to be sunny this weekend), and the data analysis of IBM’s Watson, JOURNEYfx can predict with an 80% degree of certainty that this shopper is going to buy a car this weekend. So now’s the time to serve up ads that will influence that purchase decision.

Venuto says that “one of the many benefits of acquisition by IBM is they get our data and platform and we get the scale and capabilities of IBM.” In particular, he cites IBM’s commitment to research and its focus on cognitive computing.

The union is impacting many aspects of Weather’s business beyond advertising, which is likely to become more apparent as voice- and intelligent-assistants such as Amazon Echo become increasingly popular. Venuto says that the company is using Watson at the data level and the weather forecasting level. It is also impacting the consumer experience because Watson “allows consumers to engage with our products using natural language—which affects our consumer product strategy.”

First and foremost, Venuto says The Weather Company remains focused on providing a product that “adds value to our consumers’ lives.” It also takes a measured approach to personalization that, according to Venuto, has seen that the highest engagement for advertising across every category comes when its contextually relevant. And that, he points out, is not something every provider of location based advertising can say. “If a consumer is using your product and says ‘hey wait a minute, why do they want to know where I am?’ because it isn’t an organic fit with the app, you are going to have some problems.”

Venuto describes The Weather Company’s relationship with its consumers as being a deeply engrained part of their daily ritual: Millions of consumers grab their phones to check the weather before they even get out of bed and check in again several times a day—more if severe weather will affect them or their loved ones. A unique and highly personal category of information that allows JOURNEYfx to identify patterns in consumer behavior throughout a given day, week and year and then serve up ads that anticipate their needs.

Innovation

360 degree video pushes VR into the mainstream

National Geographic offers a 360 degree video tour of Vietnam's Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park. On a PC, users can look around by dragging using a mouse or touchscreen. On a tablet,  users can look around by moving the device itself.

Go to any conference these days, and you are bound to see some virtual reality (VR) on display. In reality (if you’ll pardon the expression), despite its massive cool factor, VR is still very much in its infancy. However, one type of VR called 360 degree video is entering the mainstream, and introducing the promise of virtual reality to the masses.

SamsungVR
Woman using a Samsung VR headset. Photo by By Nan Palmero.

Today, most VR requires an external headset from the likes of Oculus (owned by Facebook), Samsung or HTC—and the recent introduction of Sony Morpheus has the potential for impact, given the broad PlayStation user base. Google has also created an extremely low-cost headset called Google Cardboard, but we haven’t seen VR gain wide market appeal just yet. It’s still very early days, after all.

Unlike its more immersive cousin, VR, 360 degree video gives the viewer the ability to see outside the frame by dragging the picture to get a 3D-ish view of the scene. While virtual reality allows users to interact with the world around them, 360 degree video is limited to a view that circles the perspective of one camera. And though it limits the user to the role of spectator, rather than participant, it has the advantage of being much more accessible, mostly because it doesn’t require that external hardware, which makes it consumable by anyone.


And it’s catching on in a big way with the likes of Disney, Associated Press, National Geographic and the Financial Times of London creating videos. We’ve also seen 360 degree video of office tours, Jimmy Kimmel’s Emmy monologue, and even a tour of my TechCrunch colleague, Lucas Matney‘s apartment (which is pretty nice).


The whys and wherefores
So you want to be a 360 degree video star? First you’ll need a camera. These special devices range widely in price from around $200 all the way up to $60,000, and many price points and feature-sets in between. As CNET points out, you get what you pay for, and there are devices for hobbyists and professionals, as with any camera.

At $60,000, the Nokio Ozo 360 degree video camera is at the top end of the price range.
At $60,000, the Nokio Ozo 360 degree video camera is at the top end of the price range.

Once you get the camera, it’s a matter of creating the video, and there are two types it turns out, according to Gregory Potter, an analyst who covers virtual reality for SNL Kagan. The first, monoscopic, creates that kind of flat 3D effect you see in videos where you drag your mouse (or finger) to see a 3D view of the scene. The second, stereoscopic, creates a multidimensional experience that requires a VR headset to take advantage of.

Tom Vance, head of content at Jaunt, a startup that creates virtual reality content, says 360 degree video takes many forms. According to Vance, 360 degree video can be consumed in a variety of ways: everything from a 360-web experience where the viewer is clicking and dragging with their mouse, to what we he calls a “magic window” experience where viewers watch the experience on their phones without a headset and rotate the phone around to experience the 360-degree panorama. Finally, for the most robust experience, users can view the content with a VR headset—which calls for a point of distinction, he points out, as headsets include everything from the low-end experience (like with a Google cardboard) to higher end experiences that Samsung Gear VR, Oculus and HTC Vive provide.

Early days indeed
Vance believes that 360 degree video is, in its way, a stepping stone to true VR, rather than an end unto itself. He says that true 3D immersive experiences will require a VR headset to achieve. From a content and technology perspective, 360 degree video offers an introductory opportunity to learn about telling stories in the emerging medium of immersive video experiences.

But the story is just part of it. Creating the video itself also requires a new set of production skills. “VR production is hard and we are still experimenting and in a learning phase at the highest level and across the board. That is exciting and challenging,” he said. While Vance may be speaking from personal experience at Jaunt, his point could easily refer to the industry at large as well.

While 360 degree video could be a bridge to whatever comes next—as our phones and various devices catch up with the technology—it’s here now and it provides an opportunity to give consumers a peek at stuff that’s outside of the frame. That’s already pretty exciting. But as we get more comfortable wearing VR headsets and their usage becomes widespread, the quality of the content should increase dramatically and open up all kinds of possibilities for content creators, whether entertainment media, marketers or news organizations.

Innovation

Experimentation explodes the boundaries of powerful storytelling

There’s a whole lot of talk about content these days, but the bottom line is that great storytelling is what elevates mere information into the stuff of conversation, inspiration and maybe even viral sensation. The newest addition to the roster of DCN’s member’s-only gatherings—Powerful Storytelling—offered a morning filled with examples of just that. And while it was our first event to focus squarely on the more creative aspects of the business of content, it bore the hallmark of all of our events: DCN members provided candid insights into the strategies and creative process behind the content that people love.

Though the content itself, and the insights proffered, were far-ranging, one major theme emerged: the importance of experimentation. While most storytelling fundamentals remain constant, distribution channels, devices, and consumer preferences are among the many factors in near-constant flux. Certainly, that poses challenges. It also offers opportunities and the creativity the speakers highlighted showed a universal spirit of experimentation—in organizational structure, partnerships, and use of emerging tools—to better connect with consumers.

NYT_DisplacedThe day started off with Jake Silverstein, New York Times Magazine Editor-in-Chief, presenting their early forays into virtual reality. Silverstein encourages experimentation with the medium because of its ability to enable viewers to feel empathy by literally seeing through the eyes of a child refugee, for example. And while one audience member noted that virtual reality (one of the most hyped storytelling mediums du jour) lacks some of the qualities that make text so evocative such as the sense of smell or setting a larger context for a story, Silverstein emphasized that VR offers a whole new way to experience a story.

CR_PaulsChoiceConsumer Reports Executive Director of Content Gwendolyn Bounds said that experimentation is an essential piece of the transformation the brand is currently undertaking (which begins to roll out next week with a new logo and aesthetic enhancements on both its website and in the November issue of the magazine.) She says they are trying a number of new story formats, including unique social and mobile content, and 360-degree video—one of which puts users into the driver’s seat of CR’s lauded automotive test process. Further innovations will emerge when the brand moves to a “membership” model in coming months.

In a crowded landscape, Bounds points out that content brands need to experiment in order to find the right way to make their storytelling distinct. She also said that it is important to continually test the types of content that their consumers will “give them permission to address.” In the case of Consumer Reports, an example was its “A Beautiful Death” package, which focused on the many aspects and issues surrounding consumers’ choices around end-of-life issues.

“Experimentation is critical” at Business insider, according to recently-promoted Editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell. In addition to testing out short synopsis-style recaps of long-form articles and captioning slideshows and videos on the images so they can be consumed without sound or accompanying text, she said they’ve also been playing with multiple headlines/versions of a single story. “If you have someone who says 12 different things that could be headlines, we break it out into short takes that may collectively get far more views.” And why not?  “Because a digital publication should have its own set of rules” not follow the path of television or print.

FT_FortunesKicking off his talk with images reflecting the Financial Times’ historic love of the text-dense page, Data Visualization Editor Alan Smith said he has found a great willingness from the FT and its staff to experiment with ways in which data can be transformed from mere line- and pie-charts into an in-depth storytelling medium all its own. To do so, you need to truly understand what the data is really about and then he said you can play with presentation so that “graphics take on a life of their own” and can effectively communicate far more than numbers: what those numbers really mean to those involved in the story and to those reading about it.

Certainly, one of the day’s most enthusiastic champions of experimentation was Mike Yapp, Director of Google’s YouTube in house agency, The Zoo (pictured, top). He believes that content is becoming increasingly “liquid” and that it is constantly being transformed by the users themselves. Thus, Yapp said “writers and designers need to think more like inventors” in order to create content ready-made for increasingly malleable, immersive and experiential consumer experiences.

MarsNoting that the first wave of virtual reality content innovation created experiences were just for one person, he said that future innovations will include shared VR experiences. For example, his team worked with Lockheed Martin to create a VR experience for children who collectively experienced a VR visit to Mars while riding on a school bus together. The goal was not simply to push the bounds of VR from single-user experience to one that is social, but to employ innovative storytelling to ignite the minds of children so that they can go farther than ever before.

For the Creative Director of The Independent Journal Review, Benny Johnson, experimentation drives the site’s entertaining (and often irreverent) news coverage. When asked how he gets politicians such as Marco Rubio and Lindsay Graham to participate in creating such viral hits as “How to Get Revenge with a Football” and “How to Destroy your Old Cell Phone,” Johnson said “we’re in a special time where politicians from the highest levels to local levels are experimenting with how to engage the public” and, he said, content companies should too.

Yet Johnson expressed a point that also recurred throughout the day: Technology is a storytelling tool, not an endgame. “You need to do more than express the fact that your company has the technology,” he said. It is essential to tell a story so powerful it transcends technology.

Innovation

Q&A: Ron Lamprecht on NBCUniversal’s Snapchat partnership

NBCUniversal recently made headlines after striking a content and advertising portfolio partnership with Snapchat. The partnership is part of a new digital content initiative to produce and distribute original shows for mobile and social platforms from NBCUniversal’s leading networks, franchises and personalities.

Ron Lamprecht, EVP of Business Development and Digital Distribution in the Content Distribution Group, has been tapped to lead the company’s effort. Ron offers a look inside the initiative:

Tell us about this new mobile-first original content initiative?

Lamprecht: Nobody makes premium video better than NBCUniversal. We deliver more ratings with our portfolio than any other programmer. We have the best shows, most creative storytellers and biggest personalities in entertainment, sports and news. And, as audience behavior changes and viewers expect content on their mobile and social platforms, we are adapting to deliver them the best experience. We have to make sure NBCUniversal’s content continues to appeal to all viewers no matter where they are consuming it. We are tapping into our talent and franchises and using our scale to make a meaningful and immediate impact in the digital space. This will benefit us on emerging platforms and also further promote our on-air content.

Who is producing the content and how will it be different from your current digital content?

Lamprecht: Thanks to Steve Burke’s vision and leadership, NBCUniversal’s networks now have the resources and opportunity to create new shows specifically tailored for platforms like Snapchat. We are not talking about re-purposed clips from TV shows (though those will still be created). Much of the new content will be original productions of high quality, short-form content for viewing specifically on smaller screen in a vertical format, instead of the tradition horizontal “TV” screens in our homes.

Why start with Snapchat?

Lamprecht: Snapchat has quickly become one of the most highly trafficked social networks and it is wildly popular with millennials and younger generations. It has millions of active daily users and it offers a fun and unique delivery platform for video content. We believe this is a platform where our brands can thrive while at the same time promoting and growing our network fan base. With Snapchat, we will build a best-in-class production capability for devices, and a younger demographic. We will provide immediate data on what’s working and what’s not to all the NBCUniversal brands to ensure we’re delivering the best possible experience to our consumers.

How is this content different from other popular Snapchat content?

Lamprecht: Most Snapchat content is magazine-style or user generated video. Our content will be the quality video production that audiences expect from us. And it will be groundbreaking for the industry in a number of areas. First, NBC is ahead of its peers in creating original Snapchat shows. The Voice on Snapchat will be the first ever reality competition show to expand its storytelling onto Snapchat. On the cable side, E! News is launching a unique and humorous look at all things pop culture in a new show called The Rundown. Later this fall we will have original content from The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Saturday Night Live. And we are already live with exciting and original content from the Rio Olympics, which was co-produced by Buzzfeed.

What is next?

Lamprecht: Snapchat is just the start. We are working with others—digital distributors, social media networks and traditional cable, satellite and telco distributors—to reach new content and advertising partnerships for the mobile-first digital content we are producing. There is no programming group with a more diverse and powerful lineup than NBCUniversal. As our networks are working hard to produce new content and grow our audiences, we will keep working with technology platforms and other partners to deliver the best content to our audiences.

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared on NBCUniversal's corporate site.
Innovation

Twitter looks to live streaming to spur growth

Twitter has been dealing with sluggish user growth for some time. As such, over the last year, since it brought back Jack Dorsey as CEO, the company has been experimenting with various ways to solve this sticky problem. One idea has involved signing some high-profile live streaming deals—including the NFL, CBSN and Bloomberg—and streaming content directly on Twitter.

Twitter understands its loyal user base loves to talk about politics, sports and the stock market. It is betting that by streaming content from these different content owners, it can attract new audience that hadn’t used it before who will presumably also join the conversation—at least that’s the theory. The fact is, however, that Twitter is not exactly the first place you think of to watch a football game or get stock reports from Bloomberg, but it is hoping to change that perception, and in the process begin to grow that stagnant user base.

What’s the strategy here?
On its face, it could be difficult to tease out the end game here. If everyone who uses Twitter is already talking about live events on the network, how is streaming content directly going to give them any additional lift?

It certainly a question that baffles Dan Rayburn, an analyst at Frost and Sullivan, who has been covering the streaming media market for years. “Obviously they have a strategy, but I don’t know what it is. I don’t get it. Twitter isn’t a place people think of for long form content,” he said. In Rayburn’s view, simply getting a deal to stream content won’t necessarily achieve the desired goal. “Just because they license content doesn’t mean people will go to see it,” he asserted.

Twitter obviously has a different spin, seeing live-streaming video as a strong adjunct to the real-time nature of Twitter. “In the past, the conversation has happened on a separate screen from the event itself. What we’re doing now through live-streaming video, both in Twitter and Periscope, is bringing the event and the conversation together on a single surface,” Twitter wrote in its Q1 2016 letter to shareholders (pdf) last April.

Meanwhile, the company has continued to expand its partnerships, announcing deals with 120 Sports, Campus Insiders, Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League and the Pac-12 Networks, in addition to the other previously announced partnerships.

Still an experiment
Twitter admits these are early days and it’s still tinkering with the best ways to deliver the live streaming content. In fact, in June it purchased Magic Pony, a startup that uses machine learning and visual processing technology to improve image delivery, especially on mobile. Twitter is hoping it can incorporate the technology into its streaming system to help deliver higher-quality streaming video at lower bandwidth, and in the process, improve the mobile viewing experience. This is particularly important because Twitter sees cord cutters and people on the go as prime candidates to access this new streaming content.

One of Twitter’s early streaming partners, CBSN decided to experiment with simultaneous streaming of the Democrat and Republican conventions on its site and Twitter. Christy Tanner, SVP and GM of CBS News Digital says the results were quite good with the network reporting a record 13.85 million streams during the two conventions. Although she didn’t break out the numbers, she did say broadcasting in both places resulted in a larger audience. “We did not see cannibalization by simultaneously streaming on Twitter and we were happy to reach a wider audience to create a deeper connection between our coverage and the voice of the audience,” she said.

Unfortunately, beyond that nobody is really talking about how Twitter plans to measure the success of the new content. “How do you judge the success [of live streaming] for Twitter. You can’t unless you have analytics they provide and if they don’t, we’re just left scratching our heads,” says analyst Rayburn.

Regardless, for Twitter, this is clearly part of a larger plan to solve the entrenched audience growth problem that has dogged the company for some time. In the process, it hopes to transform the business and revenue via advertising, but streaming live content alone is no guarantee of financial success, and only time will tell if the strategy is sound or not.

Innovation

The Washington Post, The Associated Press and LA Times get an assist from Artificial Intelligence

Robots aren’t taking over the media (yet) but Artificial Intelligence and automation are lending a helping hand.

The challenges of running a profitable media company have resulted in a “streamlining” of these organizations, often requiring staff reductions that create holes in coverage, particularly in areas that require domain expertise or a nuanced interpretation. What if there was a way to free up the increasingly valuable reporters from some of their tedious or time-consuming tasks to focus on telling complex stories or digging into subjects deeply? Enter Artificial Intelligence (AI) for journalism. An increasing number of media companies are employing robot journalists—or, more accurately, artificially intelligent algorithms adept at analyzing data and writing serviceable prose – to do just that. (Fusion’s Kevin Roose does a terrific job explaining how it works.)

Here are some of the ways AI is making its mark on journalism:

The Associated Press, working with Automated Insights and Zacks Investment Research, automatically generates almost 4,000 stories about U.S. corporate earnings each quarter—about twelve times what AP reporters and editors previously created. For a small fraction of these stories, editors add “the human touch” to provide more nuanced interpretations.

More recently, the AP added sports reporting to its automated journalistic endeavors. The move allowed the company to expand its coverage of Minor League Baseball (and could offer similar possibilities for other sports coverage). AP baseball editors and reporters worked with Automated Insights to configure the Wordsmith platform to ensure that it would follow AP standards for baseball coverage.

The Washington Post is also taking a crack at automated journalism, developing its own proprietary artificial intelligence tool, “Heliograf,” which automatically generates brief, multi-sentence updates. The Washington Post will roll it out to report key information from the 2016 Rio Olympics, including results of medal events. Heliograf, which will continue to be developed by Post engineers to enhance storytelling for large-scale projects, will also be leveraged for data-driven coverage of major news events, including the U.S. election. This technology can process a combination of different data sources, such as crime and real estate numbers, customize stories depending on individual user actions, and help look for anomalies in data to alert journalists to a potential story—all of which The Washington Post plans to leverage as it further develops Heliograf’s utility.

Algorithmic journalism is not limited to sports and finance, however. One of the longest-running robo-journalists in the game is Quakebot, which was written by Los Angeles Times Writer Ken Scwenkie. According to Business Insider, Quakebot is an automated system that resides on the Los Angeles Times’s servers, which receives emails from the US Geological Survey, runs that data through an information checklist, and then determines if it’s newsworthy based on the magnitude. It then parses out content from the email and inputs it into the Los Angeles Times’s content management system. Posts are structured using a formula based on previous posts.

HomicideLAIt is interesting to note the LA Times also uses its own brand of automated journalism for The Homicide Report, which tracks every homicide victim in LA County. This sort of approach (visualized data journalism) is particularly suited to the algorithmic approach in that analyzing huge (and possibly constantly growing or changing) data sets is a massive undertaking. With solid structure and oversight, these can be reliably created, updated and presented in a dynamic visual way by leveraging AI.

The momentum for automated journalism has been building for years now and is definitely picking up steam. The New York Times reports that Tronc, Hearst, Bonnier, Gannett and the Weather Channel use automation to do everything from streamlining video production to analyzing and summarizing text and finding photographs and video clips to go with it. And, in an April memo to Bloomberg’s staff, Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait announced that the news organization is creating a 10-person team to determine how automation can be used throughout the company’s portfolio of editorial products.

As Dr. Andreas Graefe, author of the Tow Center for Journalism report “Guide to Automated Journalism” noted, automated journalism is particularly useful in generating routine news stories for repetitive topics for which clean, accurate, and structured data are available. He also outlines the potential for algorithms to generate large volumes of news quickly, potentially in multiple angles and personalized for reader preference.

But, as the report points out, there are limitations to automation that must be carefully considered as more organizations use artificial intelligence to augment their journalism. Given many of the current implementations reliance on data, the quality of that data is paramount. And, as Micklethwait points out in his memo, “one irony of automation is that it is only as good as humans make it.” That, of course, extends to the media organizations that deploy algorithmic approaches, which must balance efficiency, transparency, and the consumer demands of more information, faster—but who also love a good read.

Innovation | Perspectives

Culture wars: Preserving digital content on the blockchain

Free press, free speech, and personal privacy are essential to an open, free, and prosperous society. On one hand, journalists and authors must be able to communicate privately and anonymously. On the other hand, they must be able to speak freely and securely without fear of repercussion. In both cases, they must be able to support what they do. Online censorship, the hacking of large institutions and civil society, systematic piracy and data fracking, and Edward Snowden’s revelations of mass and targeted surveillance have driven people of well-established democracies to seek anonymous, encrypted, and monetizable communications through blockchain technologies. These tools enable them to disguise their identities and scramble their messages in transit and in storage so that only authorized persons may access them in exchange for cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin.

Governments that wish to repress the truth will find the blockchain significantly more challenging to stifle than the Internet for several reasons. First, journalists and photographers could use public key infrastructure (PKI) to encrypt information and conceal their identity from would-be censors and attackers. Second, governments could not destroy or alter information recorded on the blockchain; therefore, citizens could use it to hold their leaders accountable for their actions. Third, where governments starve honest journalism of funding, journalists—particularly stringers in the most dangerous parts of the world—could raise funds on the blockchain, casting a wider net for news directors and investors who preferred to remain anonymous.

For example, veteran Chinese journalists could try one of the distributed peer-to-peer crowdfunding platforms such as Koinify, Lighthouse, or Swarm that use PKI to protect the identities of sender and recipient better than Internet-only systems. Another great blockchain tool is the free mobile app GetGems, which both guards and monetizes instant messaging through bitcoin. Users can send all sorts of files securely, with GetGems functioning like private email, not just SMS.[i] These apps are just the beginning of what is possible to thwart censors and pirates.

Another solution is a distributed platform for filing stories in an immutable ledger that makes the ledger unique, such as what Factom aims to accomplish in the developing world. Reporters could purchase entry credits—rights to create entries on Factom’s ledger. As with the bitcoin ledger, everyone would get the same copy, and anyone could add to it but no one could alter entries once they were filed. Factom has a “commit/reveal commitment” scheme that serves as an anticensorship mechanism: servers in China, for example, couldn’t prevent the filing of an otherwise valid entry because of its content. If the reporter had attached an entry credit to the filing, then it would get recorded. A government could identify certain entries as offensive but couldn’t delete or block them as the Chinese government has done on Wikipedia. If an official court were to order a change in the ledger, an officer of the court could make a new entry to reflect the ruling, but the history would remain for all to see.[ii]

A third solution is distributed peer-to-peer microblogging that doesn’t go through centralized servers. Stephen Pair, CEO of BitPay, described how to reinvent Twitter or Facebook so that users controlled their own data. “Instead of having just one company like Facebook, you might have many companies tying into this common database [the blockchain] and participating in building their own unique user experiences. Some of those companies might ask you for or might require certain information to be shared with them so that they could monetize that. But as a user, you would have full control over what information you’re sharing with that company.”[iii] There is Twister, a Twitter clone in terms of feel and functionality that leverages the free software implementations of Bitcoin and BitTorrent protocols and deploys cryptography end to end so that no government can spy on users’ communications.[iv]

Through the lens of blockchain technologies, journalists and authors see the contours of a world that protects, cherishes, and rewards their efforts fairly. All of us should care. We are a species that survives by its ideas, not by its instincts. We all benefit when cultural industries thrive and when the content creators themselves can make a living. Moreover, these are the bellwethers of our economy—they reveal faster than nearly any other industry how both producers and consumers will adopt and then adapt a technology to their lives. Every business executive and government official has much to learn from them about the new era of the digital age.

AlexDonDon and Alex Tapscott are co-authors of the book Blockchain Revolution: How the technology behind Bitcoin is changing money, business and the world (Penguin, May 2016). Don Tapscott, CEO of The Tapscott Group, is one of the world’s leading authorities on the impact of technology on business and society. He has authored over 15 books including Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything which has been translated into over 25 languages. His son, Alex Tapscott, is the CEO and Founder of Northwest Passage Ventures, a VC firm that invests in companies in the blockchain market. For seven years in the Canadian and U.S. Capital markets, Alex has worked tirelessly to help entrepreneurs realize their goals, raising hundreds of millions of dollars in critical growth capital and providing sound advice and counsel.

blockchainrevolution

[i]       GetGems.org, September 2, 2015; http://getgems.org/.
[ii]      “Factom: Business Processes Secured by Immutable Audit Trails on the Blockchain,” www.factom.org/faq.
[iii]     Interview with Stephen Pair, June 11, 2015.
[iv]     Miguel Freitas. About Twister. http://twister.net.co/?page_id=16.
Innovation | Video

Publishers push the envelope at political conventions

The conventions will be live-streamed. And live-streamed some more.

The 2016 Republican and Democratic national conventions are upon us, and with publishers and broadcasters trying out numerous avenues for coverage and commentary — it’s set to go down in history. Publishers are trying a mix of Facebook Live, Snapchat, bots and even pop-up podcasts to stand apart from the media scrum. And they have even more competition from delegates, attendees and protesters who can use their own smartphones to report from the scene live.

Live Streams Everywhere
Google is the official partner of the RNC, which means that YouTube is live-streaming the convention on a device near you. The live stream includes a 360-degree immersive experience — and it apparently also caused a fleet of angry, hateful commenting on YouTube before YouTube disabled chat on the convention’s live stream. That sort of hate present in Trump’s campaign had already prompted Apple and HP to pull away from offering financial and hardware support during the RNC. When Google and Facebook decided to stay, it showed a split among tech companies.

Twitter, meanwhile, has partnered with CBS News to live stream CBSN’s coverage of both the RNC and the DNC. If Twitter is the fastest way to discover and discuss politics, then it’s natural for the platform to also live stream the political conventions so that users can “experience democracy in action,” Anthony Noto, Twitter’s chief financial officer, explained in a statement.

As Mike Isaac of the New York Time pointed out, the microblogging platform, unlike YouTube, had the foresight to moderate the live stream of tweets at the RNC. But being a partner of CBS means that Twitter — which has come under scrutiny and criticism recently for its lack of product focus — has to acquiesce some control to the news broadcaster. For example, when CBSN interrupted coverage of the RNC to live stream a press conference about recent police shootings in Baton Rouge.

It’s not ideal for Twitter’s end of the partnership, but it does offer a certain amount of authority to CBSN, especially amidst ongoing tension between publishers and platforms regarding who has control over the news. And given the huge deals Facebook has sealed with publishers, some outlets, including C-SPAN, will stream their convention coverage on Facebook Live. Considering recent breaking news events unfolding on Facebook Live, there’s no doubt users are expecting to watch convention antics (and the protests outside) unfold on Facebook as well.

Snapchat Filters and Bots
But live streams aren’t the only alternative to traditional broadcasts this political season. For the first time, the RNC is also on Snapchat, and publishers such as The Daily Show With Trevor Noah and Gawker are also utilizing the mobile platform to give fresh, insider takes to a younger audience. Judging from their alerts on Facebook and Twitter, numerous reporters are doing the same. And Snapchat is ready for it all, offering filters like “Protest Cam” and “My Hot Take” during the conventions.

And if the estimated 1,500 media outlets credentialed for the DNC weren’t enough to cover the convention, BuzzFeed and the Washington Post are adding reporting bots to the mix. BuzzFeed’s BuzzBot is an automated chatbot for Facebook’s Messenger app. Users can interact with the bot and answer multiple-choice questions about this year’s conventions, thereby freeing BuzzFeed’s reporters on the ground to secure more strategic interviews, such as with politicians.

“Man-on-the-street reporting is a notoriously time-consuming and unreliable form of journalism that has been practiced traditionally for many years,” BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith told Poynter’s Benjamin Mullin. “And I think you can potentially use [bots] to get a little more scale and get the texture of the event — getting reactions in the way that reporters always do.”

The Post’s bot, on the other hand, is all about allowing owners of Alexa-enabled devices like Amazon Echo and Fire TV to get “real-time election updates” at the command of their voices, according to the Washington Post’s press announcement.

And what about audio? Jumping on the popularity of podcasts, Marketplace is presenting a pop-up, breaking news podcast devoted entirely to this year’s conventions.

The New York Times’ Declan Walsh, formerly based in Pakistan and now in Egypt, is also covering this year’s conventions in a new series called “Abroad in America,” offering a foreign correspondent’s eye to events. Indeed, with the volatility that’s erupted in American politics this year, many journalists who are covering the conventions have trained as if they are headed to combat.

One thing is certain — this year’s conventions will push publishers to try everything they can to differentiate themselves, and reach new audiences.

Innovation | Video

Forecasting the future of mobile video with The Weather Company

If mobile is “eating the world” (to borrow from milestone presentation given by mobile analyst and authority Benedict Evans), then mobile video is crushing it, already accounting for the lion’s share of views and shares across social media networks. By 2020, tech giant Cisco forecasts it would take the average consumer more than 5 million years to watch the amount of video that will cross the global Internet to all the networks and platforms people prefer (mobile, web and tablet and wearables, to name a few).

Sensing a seismic shift in how people will want to access and experience breaking news about weather and related topics The Weather Company, an IBM Business, is betting on mobile video ­content — even going so far as to ensure the cameras in the studio film in both horizontal and vertical formats (depending on the platform). The effort — and expense — has paid off, with the company wrapping up its best quarter ever with 1.1 billion across all platforms. Significantly, the second quarter saw the company’s digital video team alone garner 340M mobile video views (which represents 30% YOY growth) and generate 640M Facebook video views, over double the compound annual growth rate over the past 12 months.

Mobile analyst at MobileGroove Peggy Anne Salz caught up with Greg Gilderman, Senior Executive Producer at The Weather Company, to discuss how he made the fit between the medium and the message, and learn his top tips for companies eager to make their mark with compelling video content.

You launched your first mobile morning show, The Lift in October 2015, and launched a second mobile show, The Ari Effect, in June. Obviously, you’ve observed that your viewers have an appetite for this type of snackable video content. What else have you learned about your audience?

Throughout, we have been able ask and answer new questions around video consumption across devices. What makes a person complete watching a video? What makes them want to watch multiple videos? How do we tell a story when people are watching with sound off? And, finally, how do we use those insights to create terrific narratives, even if those narratives are only 35 seconds packed with really great information and amazing footage. Our insights allow us to be really aggressive in finding the footage our viewers appreciate.

We’ve learned how powerful and important compelling visual content is. But that’s just a part of it. We’re also seeing how people like to connect and engage with video content — and we see that consumers like to connect with a human being whom they find credible, likeable, and smart. Ari Sarsalari, who hosts The Ari Effect, is a young, severe weather expert who’s really able to really dive in and give in-depth explanations at a very high level. This combined with visually driven, short form video content, is the approach we see works.

And we’re pleasantly surprised to find that people are not just watching videos several times a day – beginning with the first thing in the morning. We also have a large audience watching in the evenings and on weekend mornings. The audience might be not quite the size it is on a Monday morning, but we are finding we need to think a lot about what we produce for Saturday mornings, which is really significant since most news organizations aren’t really having to look beyond prime time.

But it’s also the mobile medium, which means it’s a two-way conversation from the get-go. How do you “listen” to viewer feedback and funnel it back into the content?

We listen and learn from audience comments. But I also think editors and producers everywhere need to be a little bit careful about how much weight they give to consumer comments. It’s important to remember that, generally speaking, only a tiny portion of the audience is actually going to comment or take the time to write feedback.

However, their behavior can tell us a ton. For example, we present our stories in a vertical stack as a playlist, and how people react to stories in their positions helps us make decisions around that content. So, if we see a story performing off the charts, it’s a signal to us to focus attention there and perhaps get an interview with someone who’s on the ground, or just get additional footage.

Footage is at the core of what allows you to grab audience attention and advances of augmented and virtual reality coming to mobile and offer a way to excite and engage. What is your opinion of these technologies and where do they fit in your overall mobile and social strategy?

When we think about crafting a story – and keeping viewers engaged – we start with riveting footage and run the voice, or text or captions underneath it. We’re excited about the technologies you mentioned and we have already started posting 360 videos to Facebook. We’re in the early stages and we’re lucky to have a fairly large Facebook audience. Right now we’re testing the waters, and we’re also investing in it for some of our long-form production. For example, we’re doing an investigative story about a polluted body of water and we actually found a diver who can, with the right equipment, literally dive into it. For the viewer it’s really going to interesting to see what this looks like on the inside, and we’re going to be excited to see the response.

We’ve just seen Vine videos extend past the 6-second limit, and there is a lot of discussion about the appropriate length for short-form content. What is your advice to content companies trying to find the right answer for themselves and their audiences?

I can share what our approach is, but I’m not certain it’s right for everyone. The low-cost of entry means content creation is democratized – and that is a great story. But we’re also seeing that the mass audience gravitates to where there is a differentiated level of quality. It’s why we are moving in the direction of more original reporting, more exclusive footage and more reporters doing things like 360, which is not easy to produce or edit. All this takes thinking about how you tell a story, and not just through up a cool video for the sake of having a cool video. All of this takes resources.

The more we’ve invested and made an effort to increase the quality of our video journalism, even if it’s for lighter stories, the better results we’ve seen. But we’ve also made sure we think about all the pieces, all steps in the process, in order to reach and engage the audience. This includes making it possible for our article writers and our video producers work together so there isn’t a situation where a video is a distinct unit from the text reporters.

It’s also important to ‘think’ video primarily and not as an adjunct to writing. This was a really big step, one that some text-based organizations still need to think of. If an organization is thinking “Well, the main story is a text story and then we’ll figure out how to make a video for it” – then that organization is probably a little late to the game because the audience interest in the article will peak and by the time the video team has made it, the moment’s been missed.

As you point out, it’s about getting the writers and the video makers together in the same news meeting and letting them generate ideas together. But it’s also about technology, isn’t it?

We think in terms of mobile and social first. It’s also why the cameras in the mobile studio are set up to film video in both horizontal and vertical formats. Mobile and social first is the way the world is and what our audience demands. Take people in their early 20s. Have they ever really turned their phone sideways to watch video except when they are forced to? Probably not. Does it mean TVs in the living room will be vertical? Probably not – but maybe. In any case, we built the studio with vertical in mind. Our app is not vertical yet, but we’re thinking in terms of vertically orienting everything. And we built a studio recognizing that trying tell people to turn their phone on its side to view video is like fighting gravity.

Peggy Anne Salz is the Content Marketing Strategist and Chief Analyst of Mobile Groove, a top 50 influential technology site providing custom research to the global mobile industry and consulting to tech startups. She is a frequent contributor to Forbes on the topic of mobile marketing, engagement and apps. Her work also regularly appears in a range of publications from Venture Beat to Harvard Business Review. Peggy is a top 30 Mobile Marketing influencer and a nine-time author based in Europe. Follow her @peggyanne.

Innovation | Perspectives

The internet of things race

The Internet of Things (IoT) continues to build traction and gain ground as the leading force in connected ingenuity. Nowhere was this more apparent than at TU-Automotive Detroit 2016, a recent automotive industry expo and conference that centered on the connected car.

The leading enterprises in the tech and auto industry showcased their concept platforms and concept cars all geared toward accessing more and better data while driving. Though participation was international, the show could be seen as the pinnacle of an American ideal – with each user’s vehicle representing their autonomy as an individual and all available cloud-based data as new horsepower to help drive their daily lives.

With each new device and implementation, IoT continues to fire users’ imaginations and build momentum, but there has been a dynamic shift in IoT, one which lends not only speed but also trajectory. Perhaps we are even defining a destination – from high-velocity data to useful and user-friendly information, all by applying greater context.

Context is King
Recently, Google introduced the new Android Awareness API, which brings together all of the data drawn from the sensors on mobile devices to provide the clearest picture of the user. The API will offer data from seven signals including time, location, places, beacons, headphones, activity, and yes, weather.

What the API offers is the “next big thing” in IoT – contextual relevance.

Now content publishers and their advertisers continuously strive to find new ways to offer just the information users need when they need it, all driven by greater temporal and geographic resolution. With better practices for aggregating and parsing available data, we can now not only tell where users are, we can tell how fast they are traveling. We can tell based on their rate of travel whether they are walking, biking, or driving and even build a sense of what they are doing and where they might be going. Needless to say, this information goes a long way toward delivering on that objective:

If the user is driving on the highway between New Jersey and New York, it may be relevant to tell them about the road closure 25 miles away. Much more relevant than if they are walking down the street in Minneapolis. If it happens to be cold and flurrying snow, we might want to remind them about hot coffee available in the next ten miles.

What we are moving toward is a generation of user-friendly devices that provide information on a predictive basis. Publishers and advertisers can provide content relevant to not only where the user is but also where she is headed, which cuts out the static of unnecessary data and creates a better experience.

Forward Looking Solutions
At the TU-Automotive Detroit show, AccuWeather demoed a concept with NNG for a state-of-the-art connected car with AccuWeather’s MinuteCast Along A Route™. The map-based minute-by-minute forecast shows forecasts with Superior Accuracy for every step of their trip. This new level of personalization will help users make decisions about when to keep driving and when to take breaks to avoid severe weather – saving time, keeping users safer, and providing an extra level of peace of mind.

In this connected car concept, we can tell not only where the user is but also make educated guesses about where the user is going and how fast they are traveling based on changing locations. That way we can provide warnings on dense fog or slowed traffic 50 miles away – warnings which would not be useful to someone making a ten-mile crawl into a metropolitan area for their morning commute.

Of course cars offer a pretty flashy context for this concept. However, the same idea of greater temporal and geographic resolution can be applied to other implementations, such as wearables. Each device has the opportunity to add its own unique information to the overall visibility into the user’s actions, often provided directly by the user:

If a user is wearing her brand new Samsung Gear Fit 2, she is able to track her activity on a regular basis and volunteers that information. The user is also getting regular forecasts and alerts from AccuWeather, so we know what kind of exercise she’s interested in and can help her stay out of the rain while doing it.

Of course, with all this data anonymously aggregated these connected devices are opening new possibilities for big data driven studies, like the one we did with Withings which correlates weather and levels of activity for major cities across the world.

Reaching the Goal for Publishers
Users may be daunted by this rush of new data that’s being collected; Enterprises could be similarly stunned by the sudden range of feedback that can be collected and correlated by users to the publishers and device manufacturers. While there are serious considerations such as balancing user experience vs. user privacy (AccuWeather addresses this by anonymizing all user data), you need to keep moving forward so that you don’t miss out on massive opportunity.

Whether your content is news and entertainment or transactionally based, the same principles of knowing your customer better, providing your content or service in a more relevant way, and building stronger relationships and opportunities for you and potential advertisers apply.

Each new form factor and device seems to present a new set of available data. Google valued whether the user was wearing head phones enough to make it one of the seven parameters for its Awareness API, which is logical since it says something about what the user is doing and how they can be approached. Particularly relevant information since voice command is opening up new types of IoT implementations an innovators like AccuWeather partner SoundHound are making that possible for just about any connected device.

With the proliferation of IoT devices, comes the challenge of coding your content for so many platforms. But what could be viewed as audience fragmentation is really a broad opening up of a ubiquitous global audience that can build a relationship with a savvy brand that is able to consistently deliver valuable content with context that would have been unthinkable ten years ago.

Whether your audience is wearing your data on their wrists, around their necks like headphones, or listening and interacting through speakers, you will have a better idea than ever of what they need and how and when to deliver it to them.

Of course, a trusted brand and quality content will always stay in style. You can already find the world’s most trusted, accurate forecasts from big weather data leader AccuWeather just by looking at your smart TV app, glancing at your refrigerator display, or talking to your wireless speaker. Or smart home center. The data has become as plentiful and varied as the people who use it and the possibilities are enormous.

smallDMIn David’s role as Vice President of Digital Media, Emerging Platforms, he is responsible for AccuWeather Inc.’s suite of universally-accessible mobile and connected products within the emerging platforms marketplace. He spearheads the integration of current and new weather data sets within emerging platforms – including smartphones, tablets, connected TVs and appliances, wearable devices, smart cars, and smart homes.

Innovation | Revenue

CBS Interactive Advanced Media bulks up its vertical subscription strategy with TrainerPass

CBS Interactive Advanced Media has tapped into a market ripe for reinvention: the home video fitness industry–though “home” might be a misnomer given the fact that mobile increasingly dominates video and consumption. CBSi Advanced Media just debuted TrainerPass, which features hundreds of workouts from fitness pros, which is offering via website access and on iOS and Android Apps.

“It’s an interesting time for fitness,” says David Katz, Vice President and General Manager of CBS Interactive Advanced Media. “Home fitness was dominated by a huge DVD market for a time, but that’s fading away and nothing has replaced it.” Though there have certainly been web-based forays into this market, Katz feels confident that TrainerPass is the first to aggregate such a large variety of trainers’ content in one place.

According to Katz, cross-platform delivery was a given because of the way mobile has effected users’ behaviors and expectations of anytime anywhere content access. He points out that users won’t just want to access content from home or hotel room — certain types of technique-oriented content, for example, may prompt them to review a short video at the gym or before heading out on a bike ride.

Another distinctive aspect of TrainerPass is that it highlights interaction. Features include direct messaging that trainers can use to react quickly and respond to user needs and requests. While not every trainer who has signed on will feel that audience interaction is essential to their content offering, Katz looks forward to seeing how the opportunity to connect with audiences impacts different trainers’ engagement level and popularity. “It’s quite possible that one who hustles and listens and hears their fans and delivers what they want may even be more successful than better known trainers who aren’t as engaged.”

And while CBSi Advanced Media is enthusiastic about any trainer bringing their own audience to the platform, Katz is confident that, given his company’s reach as the eighth most trafficked brand online, they will be able to deliver significant audiences to all those participating. He notes that creating an offering like this one under the larger CBS umbrella has the added advantage of allowing him to “leverage all of the great technology, learning and experience that happens within this company all of the time across our disparate sites and services from CNET to CBS’ College Sports Live to CBS All Access.”

myworkoutsOne key component of this is in helping to develop a business model around a specific content vertical. TrainerPass offers two types of memberships so subscribers can sample a variety of workouts across disciplines or dive deeper into the complete workout libraries of individual trainers. The FlexPass subscription ($4.99 per month) features access to more than 100 videos from multiple celebrity trainers and workout programs, including yoga, Pilates, kickboxing, boot camp and barre, allowing users to discover the program that fits them best. The Trainer’s Pass subscription (starting at $6.99 per month) offers complete access to a specific trainer’s workout library, as well as nutrition tips and more.

TrainerPass, which is built on CBS Interactive Advanced Media’s suite of digital product offerings, gives trainers the flexibility to manage their content and subscription pricing and interact with their followers through videos, blog posts, and social media integration. Trainers can continuously add new content to their libraries to help followers keep their workout routines fresh—all with the support of CBSi’s customer services team.

Katz foresees the TrainerPass model being emulated for a variety of different verticals. Next up:  identifying areas that “may or may not have an existing audience, whose business model has been disrupted or in which there’s not yet a fully-developed digital business model” and then leveraging the technological and publishing acumen at CBSi to create new interest-based offerings that meet the needs of consumers and foster the growth of the digital content marketplace.

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