How do you get the most out of collaborative teams? It helps if you can quantify their performance and provide feedback to workers. At GigaOM’s Net:Work 2011, executives from LiveOps and Rypple said measurement was key to improving collaboration between teams of contract workers and experts. Read more »
Thanks to global connectivity and networking sites like LinkedIn, workers now have more ability to take charge of their professional lives than ever before. At GigaOM’s Net:Work conference, LinkedIn SVP Deep Nishar highlighted how it’s trying to provide tools to make users more productive and successful. Read more »
OnLive is taking another big step in its evolution, with the launch of apps for mobile phones and handsets to make any device a gaming device. Users can now play high-quality games on devices with a fraction of the processing power included in high-end gaming PCs. Read more »
Comcast’s Neil Smit is taking the title of CEO for the company’s cable operations, 18 months after joining the company. In that time, Smit has led an improvement in the company’s customer service, while also ramping up product development and improving customer retention. Read more »
Verizon is working on a streaming subscription service that could compete directly against online players like Netflix and Hulu Plus. The service would allow Verizon to deliver video to customers that don’t live within its current FiOS footprint, and could be another competitive blow to Netflix. Read more »
The numbers are in, and Major League Gaming’s Pro Circuit championship tournament proved to be one of the biggest eSports events ever streamed on the Internet. The tournament boasted record number of concurrent streams and hours of video viewed for the eSports league. Read more »
Many cable operators are considering new pricing for broadband services that would link the amount of data their subscribers consume with the amount they pay. But Comcast isn’t one of them, as it doesn’t want to “nickel-and-dime” customers of its highest-growth service. Read more »
Cox Communications is making live TV available on the iPad, with the release of a new app that lets subscribers watch shows in their homes. The Cox TV Connect app makes it the latest pay TV operator to extend its service to new devices. Read more »
The new Xbox Live update launching tomorrow is the start of a rollout of lots of new content partners on the platform. But the big innovation will be allowing them to be navigated from a unified search mechanism powered by Microsoft’s Bing. Read more »
YouTube introduced a new homepage Thursday that puts more of a focus on personalization and social features, highlighting the content that’s most relevant to its users. But it does a poor job of showing off all the new content that YouTube is investing heavily in. Read more »
Fanhattan is trying to make it easier for users to discover content available on mobile, and soon connected TV devices. With that in mind, it has added videos from new content sources, including movies from Crackle and TV shows from PBS and Lifetime. Read more »
Just a few days after one social TV startup hit the dead pool, another is raising new funding. Miso announced Thursday that it’s raised a $4 million financing round led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from existing investors Google Ventures and Hearst Interactive Media. Read more »
Streaming services like Netflix and Hulu are attracting more eyeballs every month, stealing attention away from traditional TV. But cable providers could soon fight back, by basing their pricing on how much a given user streams every month. That would effectively raise prices for streaming services. Read more »
Getty Images has amassed a library of more than 800,000 video files for licensing. Now it’s adding some newsy and fact-based clips from content partners like Bloomberg, the American Museum of Natural History, MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, Barcroft Media and Boston public broadcaster WGBH. Read more »
Brightcove isn’t just about video distribution anymore. It’s providing a new, cloud-based approach to creating mobile apps for iOS and Android devices. The new App Cloud product could provide a helpful new revenue stream, just as Brightcove is preparing for an IPO. Read more »
Verizon is taking a big step toward making its FiOS TV service available through connected devices, with the launch of a new app for Microsoft’s Xbox Live next month. But the new app will be missing a lot of the most popular networks and shows. Read more »
There had been some concern that Hulu would see some of its audience disappear due to Fox’s requirement for TV Everywhere-type authentication. But Hulu’s audience over the first few months of the new TV season has remained largely intact, and was actually up in October. Read more »
Social TV startup BeeTV is shutting down and putting its assets up for auction, CEO Yaniv Solnik informed us in an email Monday morning. Included in the sale is some patented recommendation engine technology designed to help viewers find new content. Read more »
Consumers are using their mobile devices to figure out what to watch next, and a growing number of apps are being built to provide recommendations and help them learn what’s on TV at any given time. We’ve listed five of our favorites. Read more »
Fans of All My Children and One Life to Live got a dose of bad news today, as Prospect Park is abandoning plans to bring those shows back to life online. The news comes as the production company was unable to make such a plan profitable. Read more »
Three-and-a-half years after Microsoft proposed a $44 billion takeover of Yahoo, the software giant will take another look at Yahoo’s financials. Since then, Yahoo’s stock price has been cut in half. But does a cheaper Yahoo mean a better value for Microsoft? Read more »
TiVo has spent the last several years losing subscribers, dropping to mid-2000s customer levels in the second quarter. But the DVR maker might finally be showing some positive momentum, reporting 117,000 net new customers in its third-quarter earnings report. Read more »
YouTube continues to grow the number of videos its viewers watch, with now more than 3.5 billion served up every day. That number wasn’t part of any formal release, but was part of a presentation given by YouTube VP of global sales Lucas Watson this month. Read more »
Microsoft has acquired video search specialist VideoSurf, reportedly paying upwards of $70 million for the Silicon Valley startup. The software giant plans to integrate the VideoSurf technology into its Xbox Live platform, providing more granular data about what’s happening on-screen. Read more »
Netflix announced a $400 million sale of stock and convertible bonds on Monday, but a closer look at its balance sheet doesn’t bode well for the streaming video provider. It’s committed billions to content license deals but has just $366 million in cash and short-term investments. Read more »
Comcast is hoping to drive more broadband usage this holiday season. The cable company is giving new customers of its upper-tier broadband services a new Xfinity Wireless Gateway, which combines a cable modem, WiFi router and voice-over-IP adaptor all in one box. Read more »
After a few months in private beta, social video recommendations site Matcha.tv has publicly launched with new features, including the ability to help users organize and keep track of the TV shows and movies they love. It’s also added Comcast’s XfinityTV.com as a content partner. Read more »
Netflix has scored a big coup in bringing back one of the most critically acclaimed TV comedies of the past decade. Variety reported that Netflix has finalized a deal with 20th Century Fox Television and Imagine Television to create new episodes of Arrested Development. Read more »
Revision3 rolled out a new, HTML5-based video player to standardize its user experience across web browsers and on mobile and connected devices. At the same time, it made a strategic decision to phase out support of Flash and throw more development resources behind HTML5 instead. Read more »
The eSports market might finally have reached its tipping point, thanks to broadband connectivity and the ability to live stream tournaments online. And its Super Bowl moment might happen this weekend, as Major League Gaming live streams the final tournament of its pro season. Read more »
It was just two months ago that Palo Alto-based startup Klip released a mobile app for shooting videos on your iPhone and sharing them with friends. Now, just a few months later, the startup is going back for another $8 million in a Series B round. Read more »
How bad are things for Hollywood’s UltraViolet initiative right now? So bad that Warner Bros., the studio behind Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2, is giving away coupon codes for the movie to Apple’s iTunes store to placate unhappy customers. Read more »
Startup Vidyard has raised $1.65 million in an effort to grow its platform for enterprise video distribution. The company hopes to take on existing companies like Brightcove and Ooyala as a way to manage, measure and monetize videos that businesses put on the Internet. Read more »
Roku is expanding beyond the U.S. market, with its streaming boxes going on sale in Canada and the U.K. beginning in early 2012. That will add millions of new potential customers for Roku, and could help Netflix gain adoption in those international markets as well. Read more »
Nielsen reports that the amount of time spent viewing video online is growing faster than the number of viewers tuning in. In other words, those viewers have begun checking in to online streams and sticking around for ever-longer periods of time over the last few years. Read more »
Video discovery startup Fanhattan rolled out a new iPhone app that will allow users to search and navigate TV shows and movies that are available on the device. The release follows Fanhattan’s launch of an app for the iPad, which was introduced earlier this year. Read more »
ClipSync Moments gives viewers the ability to share videos with friends on social networks. But instead of sharing a link to the entire video and having their friends search for the part it refers to, ClipSync attaches comments to a specific moment in time. Read more »
Video ad network YuMe confirmed it has raised $12 million in funding led by Samsung Ventures and Translink Capital. The funding comes as the startup looks to expand from serving up ads on web video to serving up ads on connected TV platforms. Read more »
Sony could be the latest company to try taking on the cable industry with an over-the-top video service. The CE manufacturer is in talks with media companies about launching a TV-like service that would be delivered to its PlayStation 3 game console and other connected devices. Read more »
Fandor has been called the Netflix for indie movies, providing users access to a number of independent and foreign films they can’t find anywhere else. Now it’s taking another page out of the Netflix playbook, by building apps for connected devices, including Roku set-top boxes. Read more »
