The company will create severeal games based on Nickelodeon and MTV shows and characters.

Chairman and CEO of MTV Networks, Judy McGrath, says:

“Social gaming is one of the biggest drivers of the explosive growth in social media – it’s fun, it’s engaging, and it’s shareable,” said Judy McGrath, Chairman and CEO of MTV Networks.  ”Social Express brings us strong experience and know-how in this burgeoning space, which we’ll supercharge with the IP and scale of Nickelodeon and other MTV Networks brands to create great new social gaming experiences for our fans and cool tools for independent developers as well.”

On a conceptual level, it will be interesting to learn if MTV Networks will head towards transmedia entertainment concepts, incorporating television programs, websites and social games to create a full-fledged integral storytelling.
Each medium will serve another purpose and like McGrath already states, Social gaming is fun and engaging, two ingredients which could add a new experience and layer to existing or new concepts.

Transmedia concepts do exists and there are great examples, for instance the Happiness Factory by Coca Cola.
The Happiness Factory is a virtual world of characters living inside a vending machine. The series lives across multiple channels, including commercials, interactive video games, and a musical soundtrack that features a variety of artists. The series provides Coca-Cola with additional revenue streams, and customers with a fun brand experience.

MTV Networks could do similar concepts based on Nickelodeon and MTV shows and characters, taking it a step further, taking the engagement of the viewers of MTV a step further.

What do you think of the potential MTV Networks has with Social Gaming?
Is the Entertainment industry perfect for transmedia concepts?

Again news for the travel industry, last week it was the rumor on a potential Google & ITA deal, now it’s Apple (increasing rivalry between them and Google) which comes with iTravel, Apple’s way of revolutionizing the travel industry.

What iTravel basically does is converging the complete travel process for the iPhone.
A complementary – thus competitive and unique – combination of iPhone hardware and software will enable travelers to search, plan and book flights, hotels, rentals and much more.
At the airport you’ll be able to handle luggage and boarding passes.

At this time, iTravel is in the patent stage, for more information on iTravel, have a look at PatentlyApple.

Two questions arise:
* What does this mean for travel marketers?
A new distribution channel might come available, because it’s Apple, will this mean a next step in disintermediation?

* Is Apple able to disrupt the travel industry, exactly because of the centralized position their device (iPhone) will have?
If Apple is able to penetrate key industries, the usage of one mighty device is in their advantage and reach.

The five game mechanics she refers to, are:
1. Collecting
2. Points
3. Feedback
4. Exchanges
5. Customization
Applying those to the context of social sites is easy to understand, it motivates. Motivation increases usage and usage increases loyalty, traffic, income and so on.

View below the aforementioned presentation:

Yesterday I found a presentation on Youtube of Amy Jo Kim, about the topic of Game Mechanics on Social sites.
Enjoy, it’s interesting.

Her approach to use game words like players instead of users is a start to see sites as games and how you can approach networks with this point of perspective.
Think of Foursquare, Gowalla etc.

What do you think of the gaming approach from a social architectual point of view?

That’s right.  Unbelievable. Even to us.  And it only cost us sweat. Making sure the copy was interesting and well written. Making sure we took a little extra time to tweet and retweet. Making sure we pushed it to Reddit and Digg. Making sure we used Facebook and Linkedin as well to disseminate our ideas to our friends and business partners.

Scroll down to the very bottom of this page and see the dynamic PR ranking.

A check three weeks ago, delivered us a marvelous sign that we are doing well with the Agora Media Group blog. After the Agora Media’s own Social Media case -> 16000% growth we pushed further in order to expand our visibility and expertise.

Corporate Blogging and an attached Social Media strategy to get our opinions and analyses out is practically the only Marketing we did to get the word out of the Agora Media Group.
Surely PageRank is not the most important metric, but what it does tell is that we’re linked back from important sites.

We achieved this by applying the Social Media Framework which we wrote about. In essence it’s about the Content, Context and Social Media Intelligence which enhances both Content and Context.

Content * Context * Social Media Intelligence = Powerful Social Media

As mentioned on Bloomberg:

“Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information, and ITA does that for travel,” said Henry Harteveldt, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. in San Francisco.

With this mission comes their advertising model, adding ITA’s will enhance the travel information they can provide users.
Increased relevance for the users means higher earnings for Google due to the higher costs which are paid by advertisers.
Google has five times more search volume than Bing has in the US, with the addition of ITA’s software, quality can increase due to the enhanced search and buying experience.
Bloomberg Businessweek reports:

With tools that help users find flight information online, ITA Software may help Google compete with travel-search features offered by Microsoft. The companies are tussling for share in the U.S. market for online travel, which generated $88.4 billion in sales last year, according to Sherman, Connecticut travel consulting firm PhoCusWright Inc.

One of the most sophisticated travel-search features offered by Microsoft is the Farecast technology which is the basis of Bing Travel.

From the customer point of perspective it all sounds pretty logical and fine, who wouldn’t want a shorter buying journey?
Though from the B2B point of view, it’s a different story, hence my initial question.
Google would not only intermingle with the offline agents, but as well with their online equivalents, the OTAs. The ultimate “direct” supplier has signed in.
As mentioned by this analyst:

Since the GDS power both of those channels, there would most certainly be a major impact to their transaction volume for air ticket sales, which is what drives their business model.

If Google is able to kill two birds with one stone, namely further disintermediation of the travel supply chain and a higher search share from Microsoft (and others), it has a potential winner.
This will go accompanied by power shifts in both the industries (Search and Travel), how do you think they will respond?
What’s your general opinion on this possible acquisition?

Yes, what it will do at least, is shake up the TV industry and get them out of their “Walled Gardens”, and actively look for business model innovations.  Google has the potential, reach and money to penetrate the market with more than just a shake up. It will likely be cataclysmic… and they will truly launch the concept of Social and Connected TV into the Zeitgeist by 2011.

The rumour mill has once again ground out another flutter of gossip about Google going into the TV market – but still – nobody will go on record. This time it’s about when they will release their official foray into this space.

The Wall Street Journal wrote that:

Google Inc. is planning to introduce Android-based television software to developers at an event in May, according to people familiar with the matter.

Google is headhunting for developers in this space, which validates the buzz.

Android and Chrome both have substantial development communities, but it will likely take some time before investments are made from software developers – and it will come when Google can show a critical mass adaption. Until now, Yahoo Connected TV has been leading in this space, but interest in their Widget Development Kit (WDK) is rather tepid. Google TV’s future development kit (likely based on Android and Chrome),  won’t likely be wide open, but will surely be more flexible and malleable than Yahoo’s.

But other news on Google TV recently came with a report from the  Korean Herald,  who published an article about a possible marriage between the world’s leading TV manufacturer, Samsung, and Google TV. In other words, Samsung, who is already tied to Yahoo Connected TV is considering cutting another deal with Google and building CE devices with Android architecture.

Yahoo won’t be happy if this pans out – but they don’t seem to be able to develop much traction in attracting developers to this space, nor creating enough buzz about Social TV, TV Apps, Widgets etc.

Will hardware manufacturers lose their control? They might, if they don’t play ball, Google just might start producing TV’s themselves.

According to a quote from the same Korean Herald article

Chun Seung-hoon, an analyst at Eugene Investment & Securities, said Samsung’s Google TV is plausible, given that Google’s Android is an open platform. “There is no problem for Samsung to produce Google TVs,” he said. However, he said the hardware manufacturer faces the risk of losing its control over the TV market to Google, a software firm, should it make Google TVs. “This is not a good picture. I think it would be better for Samsung to expand its own platform Bada,“ he said.

Google’s perspective is from the software side, manufacturers is from the hardware perspective, and a complementary growth strategy for both sides is more plausible.

Expansion of its own mobile development platform Bada – Samsung could perhaps itself  head towards their own Social TV development and make a play for both a two screen and one screen experience.  People’s demand in the end is what will make or break a Walled Garden, in this case Bada, which already has an ample app store.

Already mentioned in one of my earlier analysis Television 2.0’s foremost challenge is… , consumer control and attention are essential in understanding the coming paradigm TV shift.

In the end, all that people want is any content at their time, on their screen when they’re in the mood. Creating a battle between open systems, from any kind of manufacturer, is a risk for growth strategies and revenue streams.

Going from the platform to the actual content consumption which will be enabled by Google Android TV, it will be interesting to see how this will develop and evolve.
On NewTeeVee, researcher Marie-José Montpetit at MIT’s Research Lab for Electronics, says that Social TV doesn’t mean a cluttering of content and widgets on the TV screen.

Google has the resources to analyse this in-depth, create understanding how the new television experience could be enhanced in appropriate ways, not a simple centralisation of different content on a screen.

There’s more than enough landscape on the next generation of TV’s to allow for optional widgets to be popped in and out, and if sized correctly,  a single screen experience can work. The widgets, from a design perspective, can and should be optional and can and should be designed to be part of the overall TV experience, if planned well. If they can get the Interactive Design down pat – getting ‘social’ on one screen can work. There are many examples of websites that have this kind of alternative.  Our blog has an optional widget for Twitter that can be pulled out and retracted quite nicely 0n the bottom right.

Here again the ultimate quest is to provide users control to gain their attention which will lead to -new- revenue models.

Apps/Widgets have been said to be the new Cash Cow generators for the digitized ubiquity, the syndication of content and the consumption of it. If Google and the industry will be able to go forth in the evolution of television and the experience, conventional revenue models could be proven not to be the only valid ones.

What do you think, will Google be able to get movement in this cumbersome sector?

It describes in detail what Apple how Apple is planning to revolutionize the current ticketing process, plus enhancing the event experience itself.
For further details, have a look at the article on PatentlyApple.com.

For me, two immediate questions arise.

Is Apple trying to smartly achieve a kind of All-you-need-is-the-iPhone state?
By centralizing processes and ascribing them to this device, a powerfull influence is created for the iPhone. Surely iTunes and it’s music is part of this move, but the centralized modus for the iPhone can of course be expanded to many other purposes as well.

Secondly, based on Porter’s Five Forces model, what will the impact be if Apple enters this business?
It certainly will put emphasis on the entry of a new player and the threat of substitute products/services. The patent refers to giving access to live recordings of the concert which visitors just attended or access to exclusive interviews. Who wouldn’t want this? It’s all additional and easy to access content, this will have consequences for other ticketing businesses who can’t offer this.
iTunes is a platform used by many, the bargaining power of customers will increase due to its innovative approach, raising the current intensity amongst existing players to outsmart Apple and “conventional” ticketing business.

Do you think the iPhone becomes the all-in-one-device?
If this will happen, how do you see the future or developments of the ticketing industry?

I’m interested in seeing if and how they will differentiate the iPhone and iPad application in comparison to their television application. The iPhone screen isn’t too big, this might devaluate the watching experience. Maybe the focus of the iPhone application has a more social focus, whereas the iPad is a great substitution for the television screen?

What do you think the distinction between television, mobile and tablet will be?

For those who don’t know Boxee, check out this video taken from their website:

Important details of the ad platform are (taken from Techcrunch):

* As we previously described, the new system serves up ads based on keywords in Twitter search queries.
* Promoted Tweets will appear at the top of the search results page, with small text indicating they were sponsored. The Times piece notes that companies could use this to combat negative tweets (they can place a positive tweet at the top of the page)
* A Promoted Tweet isn’t guaranteed to stay afloat for a long time — if the tweet isn’t tracking well in terms of replies, clicks, and a number of other metrics Twitter is calling “resonance”, it will be pulled, and the advertiser won’t pay for it.
* One ad will be shown at a time
* Initial ad partners include Best Buy, Virgin America, Starbucks, and Bravo
* Advertisers will be paying on a CPM basis initially, with plans to adjust the model once Twitter can better gauge how people are engaging with Promoted Tweets

I do think the time is here for Twitter to -at least try- to monetize micro-blogging as a communication/social-media channel, but I’m not too thrilled, like the COO, about the way tweets and streams are being monetized.
To be honest I don’t know what I expected, only not this search-engine like ad-model.
Just as with Search Engine Advertising, the model is based on keywords. Unfortunately, keywords are ambiguous which can add noise in the understanding of the intention by the user.
Of course this will be less because other users can interact/comment on a tweet in real-time, creating faster some sort of context around the keyword.

Imagine the following two scenario’s:
* If an user complains about a brand and searches for other tweets to read other opinions or interact, are users really awaiting for an ad of that brand or do they want attention from that brand?
* Now the other way around, when someone raves about a brand, from the brand point of perspective, don’t they want to empower these users instead of showing an ad?
In both cases, the purpose of ads and communication between users and brand are not matching and the touch-poins can be utilized much better.

Is an ad-based revenue model even possible/relevant in the micro-blogging environment?

I do think other revenue models are more qualitative and do match intentions better without over-commercialising communication streams and therefore are less bothering and interrupting the user experience.

The quest for a suitable revenue model goes on, it will be interesting to see what reactions are?

Interesting are the release dates of both the iPad and iAd.
April 3rd is the official launch of the iPad, only for days later is the supposed launch of iAd.
This could well mean that there are -any kind of- ties between iAd, iPad and the iPhone.

A mobile advertising platform means serving location based ads, adding contextual relevancy to the ads, creating a second generation of proximity marketing.
In the same article by MediaPost, it points out that Google has won patents on technologies that serve dynamically ads based upon one’s location.

All that can be concluded from this is that the battle between Apple and Google is by far not over. It makes it only more interesting, competitiveness raises and accelerates innovation and developments which only benefits the users.

Let’s wait and see what happens next week. A counter-attack on Google’s AdMob acquisition and development is bound to come, a possible launch in close relation to the iPad makes it more impacting.

What do you think of a possible mobile ad platform by Apple?