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Darren Waters

Facebook's emphasis on the social

  • Darren Waters
  • 26 Feb 09, 20:02 GMT

I've just come off the phone with Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, who has been explaining a little more about the changes taking place at the social network, which are designed to "democratise" how the website behaves and operates in the future.

"Openness", "transparency" and "dialogue" were the three words he used more than any other in the course of my five-minute slot with him.

Facebook has responded quickly and boldly to what Zuckerberg himself called a "firestorm" from users after the firm had made changes to its terms of services without informing any of its users.

"We should have been communicating more broadly. Being as transparent as possible is a really valuable thing," said Mr Zuckerberg in relation to that recent controversy.

"We made a few mistakes," he admitted.

Some people might be wondering what the fuss is exactly about? After all, nobody ever reads the terms and conditions or terms of service documents on a website.

And that is part of the issue. As more and more of our lives are shifting to the network and as we hand over increasingly huge chunks of personal data to faceless websites important questions have to be asked about what happens to that information.

Social networks are becoming a mirror to not just our public lives but also to our private lives. And there is huge value in what we are reflecting on those sites - both to ourselves and to advertisers.

Organisations like Privacy International are asking the important questions about how that data is being handled and what rights we have as users once we sign up to services.

During the most recent controversy, Simon Davies from the privacybody accused Facebook of a "breach of faith".

He is now applauding the move to democratise decision-making within Facebook and calling on others to follow suit.


Rory Cellan-Jones

Will Spotify change the music biz?

  • Rory Cellan-Jones
  • 26 Feb 09, 16:17 GMT

In the last couple of days, I've talked to three people about the future of music - the head of digital at the world's biggest music label, a very wired music consumer, and an executive at a fast growing new streaming service. I asked them all the same thing - will the arrival of that new service Spotify change the music industry?

Unsurprisingly, Roberta Maley from Spotify was convinced that this was a game-changer, not just another me-too service. She did give me some new figures on its growth - 250,000 UK subscribers, 800,000 worldwide, with Sweden and Spain the biggest markets.

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But she was less forthcoming about two vital issues for the future of the company - the split between those who listen to the ad-supported service for free and those who pay for an ad-free service, and the possibility that users could listen on the move. Spotify is keen to have a "mixed economy" with new arrivals drawn in by the free service then migrating to the £9.99 per month subscription deal to avoid the ads.

Right now you only hear one thirty second advert every twenty minutes, as compared with 12 to 14 minutes per hour on commercial radio, but Spotify plans an increase to two and a half minutes per hour soon. The trick will be to have enough advertising to make some money and convince existing users it is worth upgrading to the premium service - but not enough to put off those trying out Spotify for the first time. Roberta wouldn't confirm the story that Spotify is working on an iPhone application - I understand some work has been done, but mobile music is still some way off.

Rob Wells is Senior Vice President, Digital, for Universal International - in other words he is in charge of making sure the world's biggest music business finds a way to prosper in a digital age which has so far been pretty disastrous for his industry. When we spoke over a Skype connection to Los Angeles, he seemed pretty enthusiastic about Spotify - but keen to put it in the context of a whole range of new services, such as Nokia's Comes With Music and Sky's upcoming broadband service. He says consumers are changing, "away from the per-transaction model, where they buy a body of work, and into a subscription model where they pay for access to all music. That subscription could be bundled into the cost of a mobile phone contract or a broadband connection."

He was obviously keener that Spotify users upgrade to the premium service - the labels earn a bigger share of the revenue that way - but was also hoping that a free service would wean music fans off the file-sharing habit. "The consumers are already familiar with not paying for their music when they download it off the internet. So we have to do more and more interesting deals to make them listen to music in a legitimate format where we earn revenue."

But it is Dan Moon whose views really matter. He is the very model of a modern music fan. He has put all his CDs away, and has about 30Gb of music stored on his laptop, which he streams over his wireless network to an amplifier and then to a pair of big speakers in his attic flat in London's Maida Vale. But he has also started using Spotify, mainly to explore some new music rather than listen to stuff he already knows.

Dan says he used to go to file-sharing sites when he was a teenager - but now prefers to buy his music in the form of downloads from iTunes to be sure of a quality product. He's not entirely sure whether Spotify will kill file-sharing: "If I were a heavy file-sharer, there would be a pull on the usability front. Spotify looks nice, quite pretty, while file-sharing is a bit laborious." But he says it's difficult to beat the likes of Limewire on one front: "There isn't a better model than free - with file-sharing there's no adverts either." And the fact that he can't take his Spotify music with him is another downside: "When I'm on the tube there's no Spotify. I'm quite tethered to my laptop. It's not portable."

Spotify won't change the music industry on its own - and still has to prove it can attract both a big crowd and a lot more advertisers. But, along with a host of other new services, its arrival does seem to herald a change in the way we view music. Rob Wells of Universal thinks the fact that his industry has cut deals with the likes of Spotify shows that it has turned a corner: "These new deals show that the industry is maturing, the market is maturing and consumers are willing to pay for music."

Maybe. But let's wait and see what happens with the new U2 album, "No Line on the Horizon", so important to the revenues of Universal. You can stream it on Spotify, you can pay for a CD or download - or you can go and get it from a file-sharing site for nothing. The choices music fans make will show whether an ailing industry really has found a profitable way forward.

Darren Waters

Can Xbox 360 fulfil its multimedia ambitions?

  • Darren Waters
  • 26 Feb 09, 14:29 GMT

Microsoft's Xbox project has long been seen as not just an attempt to own the console space but also to act as a Trojan horse, putting a device at the heart of the digital living room.

Xbox 360Ever since the first console launched it has come replete with multimedia features - from DVD and CD playback to sharing and extending content from Windows Media Centre and then Windows Vista PCs.

The Xbox has also been at the forefront of the digital delivery world, offering movies and video content over the network.

Today Microsoft announced a new partner to its Xbox Live service in the UK - NBC Universal movie are a welcome addition given the relatively limited range of content the service offers, particularly in comparison to the US version.

But have all the billions of dollars of investment and roll out of content partners been worth the effort?

Microsoft won't say how many movies have been downloaded in the UK over Xbox Live.

Neil Thompson, head of Xbox in the UK, told me: "We are certainly the biggest VOD service in front of the TV in the UK."

But that statement is being based on the number of users of Xbox Live in the UK and the size of the movie portfolio - and the statement doesn't include movie on demand services from Sky because Microsoft don't think they are comparable technologies.

Whatever the figure, the amount of movies going from the service to the screen is likely to be much lower than the video on demand viewings of movies on a subscription service like Sky or Virgin.

But Microsoft is a sizeable player in the European video on demand market, in part because it is a nascent sector.

Nick Thomas, an analyst with Forrester research, told me: "Xbox Live has been pretty smart and slick in building this service and developing the install base."

The difficulty for Microsoft is that the on demand video space is changing dramatically and it is facing increasing pressure from set-top boxes, web-based catch-up TV services and other network-enabled video on demand services.

Mr Thomas from Forrester said: "The onus is clearly on Virgin and Sky to see what they can do with there existing PVR user base."

According to Forrester Research, in the short and medium term, standalone OTT VOD offers will become increasingly available in Europe. OTT VOD basically means devices dedicated to delivering video on demand, such as Apple TV.

And the pressure is not just from hardware manufacturers - the BBC is working with BT to deliver a set of IPTV standards that could pave the way for future services.

Adobe is pushing the Open Screen Project and Yahoo is partnering with TV firms to bridge the divide between the network and the television.

At the moment the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are two of the best solutions to bridge the gap but they could find themselves competing with networked TVs and smarter set-top boxes that come with network connections as standard.

The BBC's deal with Virgin to deliver the iPlayer to a set-top box shows that web applications can find their way to the TV screen without too much hassle for the consumer and without forcing them to buy more hardware.

Mr Thompson said the addition of NBC Universal was a "broadening" of the range of content Xbox Live offers and another step in its evolution into the being the multimedia device of choice.

The success of incorporating Netflix onto Xbox Live in the US - with 1.5 billion minutes of TV and films streamed in just three months - shows just how crucial widening the portfolio and range of viewing options on the service is for the platform.

Yet there is still no sign of the iPlayer or catch-up TV services on Xbox Live, despite the fact the BBC's technology is now on the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii, as well as Virgin.

Mr Thompson said the iPlayer was "not on the slate" and "the question we have to ask is what is unique? A lot of people are accessing it through their PCs".

The very ubiquity of the iPlayer is perhaps making it less attractive to Microsoft.

But Microsoft has a number of advantages over set top box firms, Mr Thomas told me. It has a built-in user base - primarily gamers - and it has a box which can be constantly upgraded through software.

"The ability to upgrade the black box is crucial as this is a fast moving market," he said.

And Mr Thompson hinted the evolution of the Xbox 360 will continue in the coming 12 months.

Darren Waters

Is Flash lighting the way for future media?

  • Darren Waters
  • 26 Feb 09, 10:10 GMT

So how many of you have been playing QuakeLive over the last few days? Given that tens thousands of people have been waiting in virtual queues to play the game I would say a fair few.

Quake LiveThe relaunch of a 10-year-old video game inside a web browser is not just a chance to wallow in some nostalgia, but also a strong pointer to the direction in which the video games industry is heading, and a potential herald of the future of rich internet media on many types of devices.

Accessible, with a low barrier to entry, both for the developers and gamers, and above all delivered digitally - QuakeLive is at the phalanx of a growing wave of web-only games.

Raph Koster. Pic by Duncan Davidson/O'Reilly MediaRaph Koster, the highly-regarded creator of Ultima Online and a respected games commentator, knows a thing or two about the industry and changes that are afoot.

"We are rapidly approaching a place where you can deliver gaming experiences in the browser comparable to consoles a generation or two ago," he tells me.

Inside the browser games are now throwing about a few thousands polygons on screen, using texture maps for increased detail, and shaders for more realistic lighting.

And behind this development is the rise and rise of an application that could one day monopolise the gaming, browsing and connected media world: Flash.

"The ubiquity of Flash is driving these developments. It's installed on about 98 to 99% of all computers, what means there is a virtual army of developers working on Flash.

"There are far more flash developers than there are game developers."

He added: "Flash is the new console. I call it the next, next-generation."

Flash has become the defacto standard for the vast majority of web media content and is beginning to be deployed on almost every computer device in circulation from computers, to smartphones, consoles and set-top boxes.

Adobe, the creator of Flash, is aggressively pushing the standard and has formed the Open Screen Project in order to deliver rich internet experiences across almost any device.

Mr Koster says: "Adobe wants to be the default rendering layer for everything from a phone's user interace, to cable channel selection and the actual content.

"Given their dominance in other areas and the quantity of content being produced they are in very, very strong position. Others have noticed, which is why Microsoft is pushing Silverlight hard."

He adds: "This is a battle outside of games that has lot of impact on games."

For the games industry in the short to medium term it means a continued explosion in the growth of casual gaming and an increasing sophistication around browser game experiences.

"Right now Flash is rendering in high-end 2D, equivalent to games like Diablo (from 1997)," says Mr Koster.

"There are a few 3D engines out there - Papervision, Alternativa and Away3D - and they are developing rapidly.

"They are surprisingly good and are all built on top of Flash."

Games like QuakeLive, says Mr Koster, are delivering the "eye candy" for browser games, which can persuade the mainstream gamer to take a look.

"One of the significant lessons of the last few years that some people knew and that others had to learn the hard way is that it's not about texture mapping and polygons.

"It's not just about graphics. The games industry is littered with the corpses of pretty games that didn't play well."

Flash and browser games are enabling start-ups to dip a toe into the industry and overturn the traditional business model.

Mr Koster says: "Boxed games require a massive infrastructure around retail, marketing and guaranteed day one sales.

"Web distribution is about marketing to hundreds of millions of people and getting a percentage of them to pay and betting more will pay."

Mr Koster says there is a gradual recognition among large publishers, developers and the console hardware markers that the boxed retail model is not where they want to be.

"Many factors are pushing that; it is a hit driven business and so day one has to be good, because day two never as good as day one."

This model pushes the industry towards more sequels because they have a guaranteed pre-sold audience.

It is that stifling business model that is leading the games industry to explore avenues such as browser games, as well as services such as Xbox Live Arcade and Nintendo's Virtual Console.

Well-known games publisher Atari has committed itself to 90% digital distribution within a few years while Valve's Steam delivery platform is signing up big names at an impressive rate, with Final Fantasy creator Square Enix and Everquest developer Sony Online among the new names on the roster.

The shift to the network - both in terms of delivery of content and at the end of point of the experience itself - is touching every aspect of the media industry and for video gamers it means a lot more fun in a browser near you soon.

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