As government strives to keep up with the broadband age, the Senate held a hearing covering the future of television, but midway through I realized that the Senate has it all wrong. The future of TV isn’t found in deregulation, it’s found on the Internet. Read More »
Netflix has formed its own political action committee called Flixpac, and my sources indicate that the biggest issues it plans to tackle will be how to let folks share their movies on social networks and the more nuanced issues of broadband competition and network neutrality. Read More »
Next Issue Media’s newly launched digital news-stand has been called a “Netflix for magazines.” But while it may be an improvement over the current Balkanized state of the digital magazine market, does it really fit the way that people want to consume digital content now? Read More »
The massive amount of data that is emerging from connected, digital systems, is fundamentally changing everything, from Internet search to entertainment, to disease management, to energy consumption. Here’s 10 case studies that highlight the power of big data. Read More »
Silicon Valley startups may be trying to free the entertainment industry from Hollywood’s death grip. But anyone who wants to kill Hollywood deserves a history lesson in its tenacious will to survive. Screenwriter Steven E. de Souza and Scripted.com CEO Sunil Rajaraman explain why. Read More »
Netflix wants to recover from a disastrous few months by launching in the U.K. and Ireland — but the company will have to overcome many obstacles to achieve success, not least competition from broadcasters who have very different priorities from their American counterparts. Read More »
While 2011 was a busy year for the tech industry, don’t expect things to slow down in 2012. We’ve rounded up some of GigaOM’s biggest stories of the year with a bit of insight on what each will mean for 2012. Read More »
The largest companies in the world are in process of figuring out how they can incorporate public social conversations into their daily business operations. Chris Moody from social media data company Gnip explains why social media for your company is not a one-size-fits-all. Read More »
From the perspective of an ISP, making Skype calls on your iPad is far better than doing so on a MacBook Pro, while making calls via an Android handset falls in the middle when it comes to adding to the congestion of the overall network. Read More »
The launch of Amazon’s new “Kindle lending” feature means another form of content is becoming something that we rent, Netflix-style, rather than owning. But moving to a rental rather than an ownership model changes our relationship to content, and not always in a good way. Read More »
After enduring a torrid few months, Netflix is hoping to get that it can generate some positive momentum by announcing plans to launch in the U.K. and Ireland early next year — its first product launch outside the Americas. But it will face stiff competition. Read More »
Software development is always evolving and advancing, and business models and cultural norms evolve along with it. New capabilities spring up regularly, and business models can change overnight, meaning laws written to address specific concerns can fast become obsolete or, perhaps worse, hindrances to innovation. Read More »
More Must Reads
Raindance is Britain’s largest independent film festival, becoming an institution for cinephiles over the past 20 years. This year it’s decided to partner with a little-known film website run out of Poland. So what does Filmaster offer that others don’t? Read More »
What kinds of lessons can newspapers and other print publishers draw from the experience of Netflix, which has come under fire from users for trying to make the transition from its legacy DVD-rental business to online streaming? Here’s a hint: they’re not good. Read More »
Netflix is spinning off its DVD business and will call it Qwikster. The new DVD-by-mail company will start renting video games in addition to DVDs, in the process, competing with the likes of Gamestop, Amazon and others. Read More »
We want information, and we want it now, so technologists are racing to keep up. From a stealthy startup in New Mexico getting funded to Infinera providing gear that could download Netflix’s entire library in 5 seconds, the secret for our need for speed is light. Read More »
Nicolas Rapp, who just started as the director of infographics for Fortune magazine has put together this awesome chart that highlights the efficiency of the online distribution model. Amazon and Netflix are two of the most visible examples of companies that are ascendant. Read More »
Netflix is using price hikes to manage the transition of users away from the physical product and towards digital streaming. While there are some similarities between that and the newspaper business, publishers shouldn’t get their hopes up too much about copying the Netflix model. Read More »
LinkedIn has launched a plug-in that allows companies to place an “Apply with LinkedIn” button on their jobs web pages, enabling people to use their LinkedIn profiles as résumés. GigaOM was the first to report on the development of the “Apply with LinkedIn” plug-in in June. Read More »
There are so many words on the Internet, but very few are worth reading on a Sunday morning, when you could be out for brunch with friends or simply lazing around in bed. However, here are a few pieces I can recommend this weekend. Read More »
Facebook announced Thursday it has added Reed Hastings, the chairman and CEO of Netflix, to its board of directors. The addition of Hastings to Facebook’s boardroom is the latest signal of the Palo Alto, California-based social networking giant’s growing focus on the entertainment industry. Read More »
Facebook has been talking to various music services with a focus on social sharing and discovery of music. In this exclusive report, we share some of Facebook’s plans and features. Expect these announcements at its annual developer conference, likely to be held in August. Read More »
Mobile video is here to stay whether it’s chatting with friends via Skype or streaming movies from Netflix. Even Adobe’s Flash player has a place in the Apple-definedpost-PC era judging by several announcements showing application providers and chipmakers marrying various video codecs to their silicon. Read More »
EXCLUSIVE: Reed Hastings, chief executive officer and founder of online video company Netflix, has a pretty clear idea of what the future of video looks like. It needs high-speed fiber broadband, it involves sensors and it is all about click-and-watch on-demand Internet video. Read More »
Remember when social media was going to reinvent the entertainment business? Though past efforts made little headway in the social-entertainment space, announcements from Warner Home Entertainment and News Corp. suggest the space is far from dead. Here’s what companies looking to capitalize on it can learn. Read More »
With all the bad news about recent outages of Amazon Web Services and Sony’s Playstation Network, cloud-based services and the cloud industry needs to more proactively educate users to protect the “cloud” brand. Read More »
No it ain’t true. Media these days are funny. Soon I’ll be reading that Spotify is launching a space rocket.
Daniel Ek, co-founder, Spotify in a tweet this morning categorically denied that his company has any negotiations underway to stream movies in addition to music, as reported
For all its growth, the e-book market has been stillborn in one major way: methods in which to monetize. But recent news that a Spanish company called 24Symbols went into beta on a an e-book service shows that digital publishing could finally be evolving. Read More »
It’s a pretty easy argument to make that Wi-Fi has been the single most important technology in the connected-home marketplace for the past decade, but that doesn’t mean it’s always the most optimal option for connecting the home. Here’s what else is out there. Read More »
You think mobile data demand is big today, with 94 million smartphone shipped this year and 5 billion mobile subscribers? Well Cisco says it’s going to get a lot bigger by 2015, with worldwide mobile data traffic set to reach 6.3 exabytes per month. Read More »
Apple and Google both made moves at the top, raising questions about the future of both companies. The FCC signed off on Comcast’s bid for NBC. And the daily deals business heated up this week with LivingSocial flexing its muscles while Google launched a Groupon clone. Read More »
A fight between Comcast and Level 3 may be simple commercial disagreement over how much traffic Level 3 will send Comcast now that Level 3 is the content delivery network for Netflix, but many believe the spat has the potential to change how the web works. Read More »
Skype is on an engineering hiring binge. From mobile developers to web gurus, the Internet telephony company wants them all, especially in Silicon Valley, as it tries to expand its agenda from being a mere desktop client to the dial tone of the 21st century. Read More »
Level 3, the middle-mile Internet provider and the newly crowned content delivery network for Netflix, has accused Comcast of violating the tenants of network neutrality as the cable company seeks an additional payment to deliver content from Level 3 to its subscribers. Read More »
You’d think the need for copious amount of bandwidth would drive up prices. And yet, the price of Internet bandwidth continues to fall. Telegeography shows prices for the IP transit are declining as traffic volumes grow more than 60 percent annually. Read More »
In another major shift in the world of online video, more and more people are choosing to take advantage of broadband access by cutting the cable that connects them to their TVs and switching to streaming and downloadable video options such as Hulu, Netflix and iTunes. Read More »
GigaOM TV rock-tobered this month, delivering a bevy of videos that will engage, entertain and quite possibly inspire. From business insights and optimal work habits, to cutting-edge inventions, see what you may have missed. Read More »
Now television broadcasters are blocking Google TV from getting access to the content broadcasters put online to make sure they don’t lose advertising dollars. But the cat is out of the bag. All information is nothing more than bits on one network — the Internet. Read More »
Apple has started selling iPads in non-Apple stores. Demand for iPhone 4 is at an all-time high, and the newly updated iPod touches are flying off the shelf. Add AppleTV to the mix, and you can see Apple on verge of a blockbuster quarter. Read More »
Now that Netflix has an app on the iPad and the iPhone, it could make a push into the Android ecosystem based on job postings that have cropped up. An Android app could expand Netflix’s audience base even further, especially on new Android-based tablets. Read More »
At the of 2009, Pandora had 43 million listeners. On April 1, 2010 that number had grown to 50 million. In less than three months, it has added 10 million new listeners. What’s behind Pandora’s growth? Hint, it is not the browser. Instead look elsewhere. Read More »
BookRenter.com, a textbook rental service for students, has landed a big fish for its board: the startup said today that Netflix co-founder and former CEO Mark Randolph has joined as a director. BookRenter called the addition of Randolph an endorsement of its Netflix-style service for textbooks. Read More »
Customer satisfaction with the top 40 U.S. online retailers during the holiday season was higher than it ever has been before, according to a newly released survey. Amazon set a new high on ForeSee’s index, scoring 87 of 100, with Netflix one point behind. Read More »
Like an old sports injury, the rumor of Amazon buying Netflix seems to flare up once every few months. The recurring rumors have always proven false. But this time, it would be smart of Amazon to take them seriously. Read More »
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings shed a little light on the actual costs of streaming, speaking at the NewTeeVee Live conference today in San Francisco, and put to lie the idea that ISPs are suffering from higher costs to deliver video to end users. … Read More »
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