More than 600,000 iPhone 4 Pre-Orders Placed on First Day

More than 600,000 iPhone 4 Pre-Orders Placed on First Day

Apple has released an official statement regarding iPhone 4 pre-orders, confirming that more than 600,000 orders for the new phone were placed with Apple and its carrier partners.

Apple claimed that this was “the largest number of pre-orders [it] has ever taken in a single day” and the company has apologized to customers who either had problems or were unable to place a pre-order because of the overwhelming demand on both Apple and AT&T’s servers.

As we noted earlier today, the initial batch of iPhone 4 devices may already be sold out, at least as far as AT&T and Apple online stores are concerned. While the iPhone 4 will be released in stores on June 24, 2010, shipping dates at Apple.com are now set for July 2, 2010.

Here is Apple’s statement in its entirety:

“Yesterday Apple and its carrier partners took pre-orders for more than 600,000 of Apple’s new iPhone 4. It was the largest number of pre-orders Apple has ever taken in a single day and was far higher than we anticipated, resulting in many order and approval system malfunctions. Many customers were turned away or abandoned the process in frustration. We apologize to everyone who encountered difficulties, and hope that they will try again or visit an Apple or carrier store once the iPhone 4 is in stock.”

This aligns with AT&T’s statement earlier today that iPhone 4 pre-orders were 10 times higher than those for the iPhone 3GS.

Were you able to pre-order an iPhone 4 for launch day?



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Tags: apple, iphone, iphone 4, pre-orders


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Twitter Rolls Out New Ads in Trending Topics Section

Twitter Rolls Out New Ads in Trending Topics Section

As we speculated last week, Twitter is, indeed, experimenting with trending topics as ad space.

This is all part of Promoted Tweets, the company’s new ad platform aimed at increasing brands’ interaction with fans — and increasing Twitter’s revenues, too.

These promoted trends are rumored to sell for tens of thousands of dollars. When a user clicks on the trending ad, he is directed to a search results page with the advertiser’s promoted tweet listed at the top. In this case, the promoted trend is from Toy Story, the first customer for trend-related advertising.

Some of the promoted tweets for this ad read, “‘To infinity and beyond’! Toy Story 3 hits theaters Friday, June 18. Did you get your tickets yet?” and “Exclusive clip for our Tweeps! DJ Pogo presents a remix of the original classic before Toy Story 3 is out on 6/18.” Both contain links as calls to action, of course.

Here’s what the ads look like in action:

Of course, Twitter COO Dick Costolo insists these promoted tweets aren’t ads. But after checking out these tweets and their content, including links, an ad by any other name still smells like an ad to us.

Still, it’s not intrusive or offensive, and it encourages people to interact on their own terms and as much or as little as they choose. What’s your opinion of promoted trends?

[hat tip: hornOKplease]



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Tags: ads, Promoted Tweets, trending topics, twitter


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Report predicts online advertising spending will increase by $10 Billion in next 4 years

Report predicts online advertising spending will increase by $10 Billion in next 4 years

PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has put out a report saying that online advertising will become the second largest advertising medium in the US after television within the next 4 years, and will increase by over $10 billion in that same timeframe.

According to the New York Times, the report says that online advertising will increase from $24.2 billion in 2009 to $34.4 billion in 2014 to overtake newspapers which will continue to lose ad revenue over the next 4 years (big surprise right?) to fall from $24.82 billion in 2009 to $22.3 billion in 2014.

PwC says that  interactive media, video and email will increase to $6.6 billion in 2014 from $4.7 billion in 2009, with mobile advertising going from only $414 million in 2009 to $1.6 billion in 2014. Honestly, we believe that both of these 2014 numbers actually seem on the low side, as we believe both markets are ready to simply explode, but the PwC is probably thinking that the cycles for advertisers are going to take longer to switch over to these mediums. But still, only $1.6 billion in mobile advertising in 2014? This especially seems low as not only are smartphones selling like hotcakes, but both Google and Apple now have fully-featured mobile advertising platforms, and both companies are very trusted, so spending should increase rapidly for both.

The full report should be available today from PwC.

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Original title and link for this post: Report predicts online advertising spending will increase by $10 Billion in next 4 years

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The creator of Google News on how journalism will change in the next 5 years

The creator of Google News on how journalism will change in the next 5 years

I just watched a rather long but fascinating interview with Google News’ creator Krishna Bharat at the IJ-7 “innovation journalism” conference at Stanford University.

Bharat openly discusses where the Google News concept stemmed from, the role Google News currently it plays in modern day journalism and towards the end of his fireside chat, how he envisages journalism to change over the next 5 years.

You can watch the video in its entirety below but it was the latter point on how professional journalism would develop over the next few years that particularly interested me.

Bharat is convinced professional journalism is here to stay and while understandably unsure as to how things will develop, he briefly lists a number of points he believes will take shape over the course of the next few years. FYI none involves the death of professional journalism, or paying for it either for that matter.

  1. Clarity over the role of every journalistic organisation.
    Bharat believes publications will become more focused, specialised. News organisations will be known for a particular subject or specialism – whether it be topic or locality.
  2. Use of social networks much more than today.
    While most blogs and news organisations are beginning to use social networks on some level, Bharat believes this will be much more widespread in coming years.
  3. Efficient Packaging and Payment
    Allowing people to easily opt into reading something, easy retrieval of articles and the ability to pay for content in a much more efficient manner than we are currently able to. This seems to imply Bharat believes paying for content to be part and parcel of the future of online journalism.
  4. 4. Smarter Ads
    Ads that understand the audience better and market the right type of products to the reader.
  5. Interesting new ways of packaging
    A little vague but essentially a way to “stream” content from a variety of different publishers based on the subject the reader is interested in. From my perspective this would seem like a more advanced Google Reader, possibly more along the lines of lazyfeed?

I’d agree with all the above but would add two more:

  1. Use of third party readers and aggregation tools will continue to soar. This will mean continued difficulties monetizing content that is read elsewhere, and will also likely mean continued trend in “headline” scanning.
  2. Apps. Whether they’re web apps, tablet/iPad or mobile/iPhone apps – apps will dominate. Publishers will hope that  readers will choose to use the publishers apps to read their content, and for publishers who choose to paywall their content – that might be true. For news organisations who rather openly distribute their content for free, we’ll probably see third party ‘reader’ or aggregation apps dominate.

What are your thoughts?

Full video below:

Original title and link for this post: The creator of Google News on how journalism will change in the next 5 years

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Some Reasons More People Aren’t Using Check-in Services

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheNextWeb/~3/gzx4Mb8_VRs/

In addition to revealing a number of bugs in Foursquare, Gowalla and Brightkite, a recent report by crowdsourced bug testing service uTest on social location services included some survey questions about the check-in space in general. One of the more interesting questions asked was “What most prevents you from using check-in services more frequently?” Here is what the responses were:

What is most interesting about these responses (and keep in mind, they only asked 300 people, who since they are volunteering to bug test software are at least probably more technically savvy than the average user), are the top three answers. Notice something? None of those three really have anything to do with the services themselves.

Privacy & security fears

The first is a simply fear of displaying where you are and where you’ve been to other people. Unless Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite and other services turn into completely private (i.e. no friends allowed) services – which of course isn’t going to happen – then there will always be that fear, at least to some extent. So really, all these services can do is to take all precautions they can and build trust – i.e. there really isn’t much they can do about this except to keep a tight ship and hope more people will come around to the idea of sharing location.

My friends don’t use check-in services

The second response is again to a certain degree out of these services’ control. While they obviously want to more people to sign up, none of them has reached a scale where when anyone signs up, they are going to find their real life friends, as they currently do on Facebook. This is an important distinction – unlike other types of social media where connecting with total strangers isn’t really that strange (i.e. Twitter), with location services, most users almost require that most, if not all of the people they share their location with are someone that they at least know. So until location services as a whole have more scale, this problem will continue.

I don’t have a smartphone

The third reason that respondents gave to this question is completely out of the control of these services. There is simply no way that they can get smartphones into more people’s hands – they aren’t Google or Apple or Microsoft, and even those companies can subsidize phones, they rely on the mobile carriers to do that. However, once these phones do get into the hands of more users, social location services are very likely going to be strong beneficiaries.

Conclusions

The final two problems: “deals and badges don’t appeal to me” and “not easy to use” do, however, go to the core of these services’ value proposition, and if these responses were higher on the list, these services would have something to worry about, but they seem to be more of outliers than main concerns (thought that doesn’t mean that services shouldn’t improve these aspects). As we said above, this is a small survey from what are probably early adopters, but it would be very interesting indeed if a larger market research firm did a much larger and statistically viable survey asking this same question.

So what’s the moral of this story? The moral is that the environment for social location services simply hasn’t reached its peak yet, and is being slowed by privacy fears (Facebook’s issues certainly haven’t helped) and scale and smartphone adoption that will both take some more time to really heat up this space.

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Original title and link for this post: Some Reasons More People Aren’t Using Check-in Services

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iPhone 4 simlockvrij in buitenland

iPhone 4 simlockvrij in buitenland

Na een update van Apple Store blijkt dat de iPhone 4 in Frankrijk en het Verenigd Koninkrijk simlockvrij te verkrijgen is.

In Duitsland wordt de telefoon door T-Mobile aangeboden en is het niet mogelijk om de iPhone simlockvrij aan te schaffen. In de VS en Japan is de telefoon eveneens in combinatie met een abonnement te bestellen. Ook blijkt de iPhone 3GS, voorheen alleen verkrijgbaar met 16 of 32 GB, voortaan als budgetmodel met een capaciteit van slechts 8 GB verkocht gaat worden.

De Apple Store ging vanochtend offline om de site gereed te maken voor de pre-order van de iPhone 4. Opvallend aan de bestelpagina’s voor Duitsland, de Verenigde Staten, Frankrijk, Japan en het Verenigd Koninkrijk is dat alleen de zwarte versie van de iPhone 4 te bestellen is. De witte versie wordt nog niet aangeboden door Apple.

In de Nederlandse App Store is vandaag ook een wijziging doorgevoerd. Er is namelijk een pagina toegevoegd waarop de features van de iPhone 4 te vinden zijn. Bestellen kan nog niet, wanneer dit wel kan is nog niet duidelijk. In Nederland en België zal de nieuwe iPhone 4 vanaf juli leverbaar zijn.

De Franse prijzen voor een iPhone 4:
iPhone 3GS 8 GB: 519 euro
iPhone 4 16 GB: 629 euro
iPhone 4 32 GB: 739 euro

De Britse prijzen voor een iPhone 4:
iPhone 3GS 8 GB: 419 pond

iPhone 4 16 GB: 499 pond

iPhone 4 32 GB: 599 pond

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How the World Is Spending Its Time Online [STATS]

How the World Is Spending Its Time Online [STATS]

So… whatca doin’ over there on that laptop, denizens of the world? Well, according to a new study from Nielsen showing Internet usage in April 2010, 22% of the time, you’re engaging with social media.

Yeah, 22% might not seem like a mammoth percentage, but you have to take into account the fact that this finding is on a global scale. Also, a few more telling takeaways from the report:

  • Currently, three quarters of Internet users worldwide visit a social network or blog when they go online — that’s a 24% increase over last year.
  • Joe Average (the international version) spends 66% more time on these sites than he did a year ago — for example, your average user spent 6 hours on these sites in April 2010, while last year he spent 3 hours, 31 minutes.
  • Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia make an appearance among the world’s most popular brands.

We’ve seen ample proof of the burgeoning popularity of social media in the past — just two months ago, Nielsen reported similar growth — and it makes sense. Facebook has been giving Google a run for its money when it comes to traffic, and YouTube recently surpassed two billion views per day.

We’ll have to see how social media usage shakes out as Facebook continues to accrue users, and YouTube dips its toe into the newsfeed business in an attempt to become a legit news source.

In the meantime, check out a few more highlights from the study:

  • Brazil boasts the largest percentage of Internet users visiting a social network –- 86%
  • Australians spend the most time on social networking sites: an average of 7 hours and 19 minutes in April — the U.S. and Italy came in second and third with six and a half hours each.
  • Facebook has the greatest share of the market in Italy in April 2010, garnering two-thirds of the active unique audience in April 2010. Australia, the U.S. and the UK came in on Italy’s heels with more than 60% of active users visiting the site.

How much time do you spend on social networking sites? Has your hunger for social media contributed to this global increase?

image courtesy of iStockphoto, ugurkoban



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Reviews: Australia, Facebook, Google, Internet, Twitter, Wikipedia, YouTube, iStockphoto

Tags: facebook, Google, News, social media, wikipedia


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CHART OF THE DAY: Print Misses The Ad Recovery

CHART OF THE DAY: Print Misses The Ad Recovery

While the ad market overall has recovered from the depths of the recession, the ad market for print publications remains depressed.

Newspapers and magazines are still seeing significant drops on a year-over-year basis in advertising, as this chart from Alan Mutter at Reflections of a Newsosaur makes clear.

Advertisers are skipping print because, "they see no reason to rush back to newspapers, where ad prices are high and audience response ordinarily cannot be quantified as easily as it can on Google Analytics (which also happens to be free)," Mutter writes.

He also says, "The ongoing contraction in newspaper advertising – coming on top of a 40% sales skid in the two years ended on Dec. 31, 2009 – adds further support to the thesis that the industry is suffering from major structural changes in the media market that will not reverse fully in even the best of economic circumstances."

chart of teh day, ad sales performance by medium

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Google TV Explained In 141 Seconds (GOOG)

Google TV Explained In 141 Seconds (GOOG)

Google published a video explaining its forthcoming Google TV product earlier today.

The video doesn't tell us much we didn't know already: Google TV, available both from a set-top box and built-in to select televisions from Sony, will provide new ways to search for and record existing television content, as well as allowing people to display online content on their televisions.

The product looks fine, as far as we can tell, but the video itself is pretty underwhelming. It is narrated in a PSA-like monotone, and is thin on detail. As ever with Google, it's difficult to tell whether the company thinks this is an important new business or just another side project.

At least some people think Google is on to something big here. If so, it needs to do a lot more to sell the idea:

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RIM's Now Testing Its BlackBerry iPad and BlackBerry iPhone

Silicon Alley Insider

jim balsillie surprised tbi

RIM's once dominant position in the smartphone market is slipping away, and the company now seems to be perpetually in "us, too" mode.

So it's no surprise to hear that the company is testing its iPad-like tablet, along with another crack at an iPhone-like phone.

Stuart Weinberg and Phred Dvorak, WSJ:

RIM is testing a touch-screen smartphone with a slide-out keyboard, according to people familiar with the device. The phone runs on a new version of the BlackBerry operating system and works much like an iPhone, letting users swipe through screens and expand images with their fingers, these people say. It also has a universal search bar that lets users scour all the phone's data and some data online as well, these people say.

RIM is also experimenting with a tablet device to serve as a larger-screen companion to its BlackBerry phone, say people familiar with RIM's plans. That device, which is in an early stage of development, will connect to cellular networks via a BlackBerry phone, these people say. It could come out as soon as the end of the year, these people say.

So the RIMPad connects to the network by tethering to the RIMphone.  Well, if nothing else, perhaps this will force Apple/AT&T to finally allow tethering with the iPad and iPhone.

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