Consumers respond to social media symbols on TV: report
It's well-established that the second screen phenomenon is real, and there's plenty of reason to believe that social media and television are a perfect match.
But just how well do social media-oriented calls to action on television actually work? According to consulting firm Accenture, they work pretty well.
Mad Men season premiere sparks big social chatter
A mere decade ago, the water cooler was still the ideal place to discuss the movie you saw over the weekend or the TV show you watched last night. But with the rise of social media, the water cooler is, for many viewers, online.
When it comes to talking about the latest happenings on the big screen and the small screen, connected devices are creating an entirely new dynamic, one in which viewers talk about the content they're consuming with large audiences in real-time.
SOPA blackouts to go on, even if bill is dead (for now)
Parts of the internet will go black tomorrow. From Wikipedia and Reddit to the Cheezburger network and Major League Gaming, numerous highly-trafficked web properties say they'll shut down to protest the SOPA legislation that would make the internet far less free in the name of fighting piracy.
Even Google is going to be making a statement using its homepage.
The blackouts are going on despite the fact that SOPA is effectively dead -- for the time being.
Yahoo partners on animated sci-fi series
Is Yahoo a media company, or a technology company? It's a question the company has long struggled with.
If you look at the recent appointment of former PayPal president Scott Thompson as CEO, you might suspect that Yahoo is aiming to be a technology company once again.
After all, Thompson was once PayPal's CTO, a VP of technology solutions at a Visa subsidiary and a CIO at Barclays.
But the fact that Thompson is a technologist doesn't mean that Yahoo is ditching its Hollywood connection, cemented during Terry Semel's reign, either. In fact, it's upping the ante with a deal that will see it distributing exclusively a new animated sci-fi series.
SOPA: the sad but honest truth
The fight against SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, may be one of the most important fights ever waged on the internet. It threatens to change the course of the web's development, and not for the better.
Given the impact this dark and misguided legislation would have on the internet economy, it's no surprise that many are coming together to do what they can to ensure it doesn't become law.
The media is starting to pay attention, and SOPA supporters like GoDaddy are seeing that such support comes at a cost. These things provide some hope that SOPA will be defeated.
Unfortunately, however, the discussion about SOPA is incomplete.
Apple launches 'season pass' option for TV shows
iTunes is perhaps the best friend of countless music fans. It's easy to forget about the days in which you had to purchase an entire CD just to get one song, now thanks to Apple's service, millions of consumers today buy their music à la carte.
That's not to say that Apple and its record label partners don't want consumers to purchase albums.
To that end, Apple has for some time offered a 'Complete My Album' option that allows iTunes users that have purchased an individual track from an album to purchase the entirealbum at a discounted price.
Nielsen looks at social media and television
Television and social media are a match made in Hollywood. Sites like Facebook and Twitter are virtual watercoolers, and when something happens on television, you'll increasingly find that the conversation is taking place online.
This, for obvious reasons, creates numerous opportunities for the creators and distributors of television programming, and many television networks, producers and personalities are actively tapping into social media.
Will Amazon move aggressively into content?
Amazon may be the internet's dominant ecommerce company, but its ambitions extend well beyond retail.
It has fast become a key player in a market that is expected to become very large -- cloud infrastructure -- and now it appears to be making some moves into content which could be harbingers of things to come.
Download 'Hurt Locker' on BitTorrent? That might really hurt
The Hurt Locker won six Oscars earlier this year, and if its producers have their way, it will also be a big winner in court.
U.S. Copyright Group, a company operated by a group of intellectual property attorneys, has been retained by Voltage Pictures, which financed The Hurt Locker, to file a lawsuit targeting potentially tens of thousands of individuals who downloaded the film via BitTorrent. Ouch.
Conan O'Brien turns to Twitter post-Tonight Show
Want to break into Hollywood? Getting recognized via social media isn't the worst way to go about it. I recently wrote about Sh*t My Dad Says, which is going from Twitter to the small screen, with William Shatner no less.
But social media may also be a great way to break away from Hollywood. Case in point: former Tonight Show host Conan O'Brien
