The death of the Soap Opera continues, Twitter demographics surprise, and Those Birds are Angry and Profitable! It's your must-know geek news!
Media:
Proctor And Gamble fairly invented the Soap Opera: and they're pretty much given up and move to Social Media. Now Social Media spawns many real-life soap operas, but I confess to some nostalgia at the continued passing of the genre.
Social Media:
The Demographics of Twitter. Some real surprises here.
Technology:
Quick estimate: in 2011 mobile traffic will equal internet traffic in 2002
Venture Capitalist putting their money where their meme is in gameification. Thats a trend I want to follow as game metaphors are really useful having been time-tested, but finding what works versus what is just game would take effort I imagine. End result – software interfaces will change . . . but right now people are throwing money at gameification, so you may want to read up on it.
Fan To Pro crush object Asus working on even more systems. I am curious as to what 'Transformer' is, as I do feel a transformable computer that goes slate or netback smoothly would be a big deal. And being Asus, I would buy it.
A look at the Chrome OS for those that can't wait . . . like us.
Video:
Let the questioning of Netflix begin, in this case by an analyst who feels it's overvalued. Netflix also got added to the S&P 500, so that is A) noteworthy, and B) probably going to subject them to more criticism. I can't say for sure how stable Netflix is (they seem to know what they're doing), but they're now in people's crosshairs, so I expect critique and concern legitimate or not.
Video Games:
Changes in staff on Final Fantasy XIV. It seems the FF titles keep running into roadblocks and changes (if they don't involve cute chibi characters). I think part of the problem may be not being sure what to do with the brand.
DeNA considering buying European Studio – I'd guess they'll do it. They probably want to try a surround strategy to their rivals . . . er Rival, Zynga.
Grand Turismo sells a ton of copies. Just so you know in case you didn't expect this – though this is good performance after the delays.
Angry Birds creater Rovio has ambitions for payment platform – along with a lot of other ambitions. This single ambition could shake up payment options (though I also sense a chance it ends badly as its too specialized and tied to their brand), but I'm also interested in how ONE game may be poised to launch a media empire.
QUESTION OF THE DAY: With Rovio's amazing success, what kind of imitators do you expect?