
Microsoft launched its latest smartphone series, titled Kin, at its “It’s Time to Share” event. Chances are, the Kin series phones are not targeted at you. Despite the marketing that reads like a walking Urban Outfitters catalog, Kin isn’t targeted at me either. Instead, Kin, formerly known as Project Pink, is really targeted at teenagers, especially younger teenagers. And that’s why Kin might just be brilliant.
Last month, when Project Pink was confirmed, we discussed whether or not this Windows Pone/Zune HD mashup was a stopgap release before Windows 7 Phone debuts this fall or if it was instead something totally different. After reading the announcements and watching Ben Parr’s hands-on video, it’s clear that Kin is something different, yet at the same time familiar.
When Microsoft acquired Danger back in 2008, it wasn’t really clear what would happen to the company. Kin, as our Co-Editor Ben noted earlier today, is the spiritual and social successor to the Sidekick. The form-factor of the Kin Two is a pretty steady evolution of the design that made the Sidekick such a success.
Even before those cloud-backup woes, the Sidekick was long past its glory days in most demographics. However, there was one group of users still fiercely addicted to their flip and type devices: teenagers. More specifically, teenagers in more urban or populous areas. Why? Because the device focussed on a central part of many a teenagers life: Texting.

However, in the age of Facebook, Twitter and 3G wireless, there’s more to being mobile than just texting. You want to be able to text, take photos, take videos and post to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other services. Sure, every smartphone on the market (and a number of feature phones too) can do that, but with Kin, Microsoft has chosen to focus its energies on making those experiences better.
For instance, take a look at some of the stand-out features of the Kin One and Kin Two:
In short, while the Sidekick succeeded because it made texting easy and central to the device, Kin could succeed because it puts sharing at the center of the device.
Because the underlying components of Kin and its OS are so similar to that of Windows Phone 7, my first thought was to worry about what kind of confusion the introduction of Kin might have on the greater Windows Phone developer community. Then it hit me: This isn’t about apps.

While Android and iPhone battle it out over developers and application libraries and other features, there exists a market of phone users that doesn’t necessarily need or benefit from having access to a huge mobile application catalog. For younger users who are beyond the needs of a feature phone but really don’t need a fully-fledged smartphone (not to mention the added expense that buying apps can entail), having apps is likely less important than having easy access to Facebook.
A key part of Kin’s success will be how well it continues to integrate with major networks and services. The desired user base won’t necessarily care if his or her phone can be a musical device or translate Klingon on the fly — just as long as they can access their photos, music files and social graph.
Like the Sidekick, Kin uses something called Kin Studio to store contacts, photos, video, bookmarks, text messages, status updates, etc. Unlike the Sidekick, accessing the data from any web browser is less of a utilitarian experience and is more fluid and within the same UI-style as the device itself.

While the near-disaster with the Sidekick should serve as a warning for users to do their own local backups, having everything stored on the cloud makes losing a phone less painful and makes onboard memory less important. In turn, that can make phone prices come down.
While we think Kin has a lot of potential to actually make a big dent in an untapped market — think My First Smartphone — we do have some concerns.
First, price. Pricing wasn’t revealed today but we firmly believe that both the price of the device and the price of the data plan have to be affordable and below other smartphones if Kin is going to take off. Again, look at Sidekick – one reason it remained successful with younger audiences after the rest of us moved on to Android, BlackBerry or iPhone devices was because of the value you could get from the service. I loved having my Sidekick circa 2005 without a voice plan, just doing data only for something like $20 a month.
We don’t expect Verizon to offer anything that compelling, but $99 a month isn’t going to work.
Our other concern is the design of Kin One. While I understand why the shape (a cross between a compact and something from Fisher-Price) would be easy to hold and potentially easy to slip into the pants or jacket of someone with a small frame (which as one such person, I can relate to), the shape isn’t very compelling. If your target audience is teenagers who want nothing more than peer acceptance, having a lame-looking phone could make it dead-on-arrival.
We’ll have to wait until the Kin One launches to see if teenagers actually want a square-shaped phone.
As I said at the beginning of this article, you are likely not the target audience for Kin. However, we think that the device has a chance to take off with its intended audience.
Do you agree with us? What do you think of Kin? Do you think that a socially-focused smartphone with more emphasis on the social and less on the smartphone could take off with today’s teens? Let us know!
Tags: Kin, microsoft, Project Pink, sidekick, windows phone
The following guidelines were issued to Reuters’ news staffers in March 2010. You can find them in the Reuters online handbook.
We want to encourage you to use social media approaches in your journalism but we also need to make sure that you are fully aware of the risks — especially those that threaten our hard-earned reputation for independence and freedom from bias or our brand. The recommendations below offer general guidance with more detailed suggestions for managing your presence on the most popular social networks. This is a fast-changing world and you will need to exercise judgment in many areas. In framing this advice we’ve borne in mind the following principles and encourage you to think about them whenever using social media.
The Trust Principles compel us to explore all new techniques for delivering news and information to our customers: our recommendations are designed to support rather than inhibit your exploration of these important new approaches.
One of the distinguishing features of Reuters is the trust invested in the judgment of its journalists — we will continue to look to you to use your common sense in dealing with these new challenges
Accuracy, freedom from bias and integrity are fundamental to the reputation of Reuters and your ability to do your job effectively. The advent of social media changes none of this and you should do nothing that would damage our reputation for impartiality and independence. We reserve the right to change your beat or responsibilities if there are problems in this area. In the case of serious breaches, we may use our established disciplinary procedures.
The advent of social media does not change your relationship with the company that employs you — do not use social media to embarrass or disparage Thomson Reuters. Our company’s brands are important; so, too, is your personal brand. Think carefully about how what you do reflects upon you as a professional and upon us as an employer of professionals.
The distinction between the private and the professional has largely broken down online and you should assume that your professional and personal social media activity will be treated as one no matter how hard you try to keep them separate. You should also be aware that even if you make use of privacy settings, anything you post on a social media site may be made public.
While it is not practical to always apply the ‘second pair of eyes rule’ for journalists using social media, especially Twitter, in a professional capacity, you should consider that a ‘virtual second pair of eyes rule’ applies under which your manager and/or senior editors will retrospectively review your professional output.
Remember, too, that your sources, colleagues, peers, competitors and even future employers also can and will look at your output.
If you have your tweets aggregated onto reuters.com or another company property or have your blog hosted by us, we are your publisher and in some jurisdictions may even have a legal responsibility for what you have written. This makes it absolutely imperative that you remember basic rules about fairness, taste and libel. Even beyond the legal question, readers may well wonder if a mean-spirited or nasty comment is truly yours alone or if it somehow represents the view of the institution if it appears on a corporate property.
We’re in a competitive business and while the spirit of social media is collaborative we need to take care not to undermine the commercial basis of our company.
Think before you post
One of the secrets to social media’s success is how easy it has become to participate. But that also makes it easy to respond or repeat before you have thought through the consequences. Whether we think it is fair or not, other media will use your social media output as Reuters comment on topical stories. And we will play into the hands of our critics unless we take care
Avoid raising questions about your freedom from bias
Your Facebook profile, Twitter stream or personal blog give clues to your political and other affiliations and you should take care about what you reveal. A determined critic can soon build up a picture of your preferences by analysing your links, those that you follow, your ‘friends’, blogroll and endless other indicators. We all leave an ‘online footprint’ whenever we use the Web and you need to think about whether your footprint might create perceptions of a bias toward or against a particular group.
Be transparent
We’re in the transparency business and we encourage you to be open about who you are.
If you use social networks for both professional and private activity then use separate accounts
Many of you are using social networks like Facebook or Twitter both as part of your newsgathering and as part of your personal social networking. In the online world private and professional are increasingly intertwined but we do expect you to maintain a professional face at all times in your work for us and this extends to your use of social media. Put simply, we’re expecting you to apply standards to your professional use of social media that will probably differ to those you would use for your personal activity. For this reason we recommend that you set up separate profiles for your professional and private activity. This is not to say that we recommend that you strip out all personal content from your professional streams, but that you should think carefully about what personal content would be appropriate.
Seek the permission of your manager before setting up a professional presence on a social networking site
Twitter is a “micro-blogging” system that lets users send out short 140-character posts to the Internet.
Twitter may be used sometimes to post information and images of interest to our clients that are not available elsewhere. We will sometimes need to retransmit such material, or refer to it in text stories. Before using such content, please refer to “Picking up from Twitter and social media” in the section The Essentials of Reuters sourcing.
There are several ways in which Reuters News journalists are using Twitter to micro-blog as part of their professional duties:
1. If you wish to use Twitter as part of your professional role you should seek the permission of your line manager.
2. If you are using Twitter professionally you should use the word ‘Reuters’ in the name of your stream or somewhere else on the page.
3. The Trust Principles apply to Twitter — you should do nothing that compromises them.
4. Micro-blogging and use of social media tend to blur the distinction between professional and personal lives: when using Twitter or social media in a professional capacity you should aim to be personable but not to include irrelevant material about your personal life.
The short-form nature of Twitter means it is fast and well-suited to certain tasks including the live-blogging of events. It will not always be possible or even desirable to find someone to double-check your content.
Where practical you should ask someone to check content of Twitter posts. If there is no one to check then you should satisfy yourself that your posts conform to the Trust Principles. Be aware, however, that Reuters Twitter streams will and must be reviewed by an editor – not necessarily in real time or before publication, but eventually and regularly.
The same rules apply as for personal blogging — you should make it clear that you a) work for Reuters News; b) any views expressed do not represent those of your employer; and c) you say nothing that would damage the reputation of Reuters News or TR.
As with blogging within Reuters News, you should make sure that if you have hard news content that it is broken first via the wire. Don’t scoop the wire. NB this does not apply if you are ‘retweeting’ (re-publishing) someone else’s scoop.
If a correction is required, a new tweet that begins “CORRECTION:…” should be published.
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• Social media policies at corporations, news organizations and nonprofits
JD Lasica works with major companies and nonprofits on social media strategies. See his business profile, contact JD or leave a comment.
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We’ve all wondered, since its inception, how and when Twitter would make money. The answer comes tomorrow. Twitter will be releasing its new advertising platform, consisting of promoted tweets.
TechCrunch started the rumor mill, which has since been confirmed as true. Look for promoted tweets to start appearing in Twitter search results on Tuesday, with a slowly-but-surely rollout style into your main feed soon after.
Advertising Age is reporting some more depth on the story, and gives us a look into the thought processes behind the sponsored tweets as well.
Users will be able to re-tweet the advertisement, which will be found at the top of the search results page. In case you’re wondering, yes, the ads will be very akin to Google AdWords. Ads will appear based upon search keywords, but the interactive model should prove interesting, as an even more immediate feedback model is available with Twitter.
Starbucks, Bravo and Virgin America will start the sponsored tweets campaign. These companies are a perfect fit, according to Twitter Chief Operating Officer Dick Costolo. When you take a company that is already active in conversation over Twitter, the sponsored tweets idea is a logical step.
Twitter is claiming to be taking its time with the new model. There is no profit goal set for the first year, but rather the focus is on the user experience. Ads will be sold on a CPM basis, but the company is already looking at a performance-based pricing strategy as well.
It will be interesting to see whether Twitter is able to keep the user experience the same, while still promoting a rollout of a product this large. Our bet is on some pushback from the Twittersphere, but the end result looks promising.
What are your thoughts? How likely are you to jump into conversation about or the retweeting of an advertisement?
Original title and link for this post: Twitter releases new advertising platform: promoted tweets.

Music discovery/tagging app Shazam became a hit with listening audiences via their iPhone app, then followed suit with a smattering of apps on other platforms. Shazam now hopes to do it again on the iPad, this time with the intention of attracting and capitalizing on a television-viewing audience.
In an interview with The New York Times, Shazam CEO Andrew Fisher explains that the iPad app is designed to encourage users to tag music in TV shows and commercials, sometimes with extra goodies. Shazam users who tag HBO’s How to Make It in America, for instance, will gain access to show extras like interviews with the cast.
Fisher indicates that encouraging television tagging behavior is part of the company’s next step to put “more emphasis on browsability and discoverability,” and that “‘every large media company has expressed interest in a similar promotion.”
Eventually we could see the “tagging for rewards” strategy applied to advertisements. For example, users could tag songs in commercials to unlock coupons for those products.
With Shazam’s base of millions of mobile users, it seems like a logical next step for the company to try to own the living room. We think it’s a prescient application of their music tagging strategy and one that aligns with how we’re already consuming media in our homes.

A survey of 1,000 U.S. consumers showed that more of us than ever before are choosing to watch TV shows on websites such as Hulu rather than on a TV. For younger folks, a full 83% said they watched some, most or all of their TV programming online.
This study, which was conducted by consumer electronics shopping site Retrevo, shows that the majority of Americans — 64%, according to the survey results — get at least some of their TV content online. Eight percent of the total said they watched most of their TV shows online, and 5% said they only watched television programs on the Internet.
For people under 25, almost a quarter of respondents said they watched most of their TV shows online, and 6% said they only watched TV online.

Another interesting demographic breakdown shows that men are more likely than women to forsake the television set in favor of the computer monitor. Seventeen percent of male respondents, as opposed to 9% of female respondents, said they watch most or all of their TV shows online.
When asked what would prompt a switch from cable or satellite TV to online-only programming, folks talked about their current cable and satellite providers and about the kinds of programming currently available online.
Around 43% of respondents said they had considered canceling their service or had actually canceled; those in that group who chose not to cancel did so because they couldn’t get their favorite shows online. As far as shows go, respondents said that premium channel programming, live sports and HD options were important factors in deciding whether to switch from cable/satellite to online-only TV.

The survey concludes that “online TV viewership is on the rise, and people are tired of high-priced programming[...] With the advent of Internet-capable TVs (starting to appear on the market) and the dissatisfaction with satellite and cable service (at least with the hefty monthly bills), we will likely see increasing attraction toward online offerings in the years to come.”
What do you think of this trend? How much television programming do you watch online, if any? Do you think piracy — be it through consumer video sites or torrent sites for premium shows or live-streaming sites for sports events — plays as important a role as legal sites such as Hulu? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Tags: hulu, television, tv

Popular music streaming service Last.fm has just implemented a major change in service, announcing today that they are aborting on-demand streaming and instead directing listeners to new music partners MOG, Spotify, The Hype Machine, We7 and VEVO.
Beginning today, Last.fm users will notice new beta track pages that offer up song previews and additional links to partner services where they can go to stream tracks in their entirety.
The new strategy means that Last.fm will primarily focus on music discovery, a strategy similar to one that Google adopted last year, though Last.fm seems particularly focused on their recommendation engine.
On that front, Last.fm writes, “Our scrobbling data shows that, for some time now, people have been using multiple music services and devices, then coming back to their Last.fm profiles to answer the question ‘what should I hear next?’ and to see / show off all their listening united in one place.”
The crux of the matter, however, is buried a bit deeper in their blog post on the reworked “beta” offering (quoted content bolded for emphasis only):
“These changes also mean that we are retiring our own on-demand track streaming, which we’ve run for the last two years in the US, UK, and Germany … We feel strongly that we can better fulfill our core mission by instead connecting our users to services in the ecosystem that, unlike us, focus primarily on a jukebox-in-the-sky streaming experience.”
While the end of on-demand streaming is a huge departure from Last.fm’s original mission, it does appear as if their partners are better equipped to stream on-demand tracks, especially given the associated legal and monetary challenges. The question remains: Can Last.fm remain relevant as just a music discovery service?

Google has announced a major update to Google docs that sees it launch a new drawing app and a number of significant improvements to its other apps.
Google has revamped its document editor to bring almost real time edits as other editors make changes – think Google Wave or Google’s recent acquisition Etherpad. Sidebar chat has also become part of the app making it possible discuss documents as you edit away with your colleagues.
Formatting on the new Google docs is better than ever and will mean “better import/export fidelity, a revamped comment system, real margins and tab stops, and improved image layout within documents.”

With the new spreadsheets editor, Google says that “you’ll see significant speed and performance improvements — spreadsheets load faster, are more responsive and scroll more seamlessly.”
A new formula has also been added, along with cell editing, auto-complete, drag and drop columns, and simpler navigation between sheets.
Real-time collaboration also finds its way into this app with sidebar chat and the ability to see which cell each person is editing.
Last but not least, Google has introduced a new standalone drawings editor that lets you work in real time on flow charts, designs, diagrams and other graphics. We’re off to try this now but on first glance, this looks like it has potential – particularly being able to discuss the process in real time.

The drawings editor will be available later today, and the rest over the next few days. To try them out, click “New version” at the top of any spreadsheet or go to the ‘Document Settings’ page and select ‘New version of Google documents.’
And finally, the customary video demo for your viewing pleasure:
Via TC via Google Docs Blog
Original title and link for this post: Google Announces “A New Google Docs”
Please bear with us, we’re updating.
Microsoft have unveiled two new phones aimed at capturing the social networking crowd – the Kin One and the Kin Two.
The Kin One is small, egg shaped and features a full QWERTY keyboard, 5MP camera and will utilise Zune to play media on the device. The Kin Two is a larger handset that boasts a wider screen with an 8MP camera that is able to capture HD video and has integrated 8GB of storage.
The Kin devices will incorporate a clever new feature called “Loop”. Loop pulls a users real-time social networking feed, showing you your favourite people’s status updates, news feeds and notices from other social networks.
Kin Spot is a way for handset owners to share what is happening in their world, letting them concentrate on the people they wish to share their content and updates with instead of choosing a specific application to do so. With Spot, Kin users can share videos, photos, webpages, status updates and even text messages by dragging them to the “Spot” on the phones screen, all automatically geotagged to include the users whereabouts at that time.
All uploaded content is stored in the Cloud by way of the Kin Studio. Everything that the user creates using their Kin phone is automatically available online and is accessible from any internet browser. Instead of having to syncronise your photos and videos with an online service, Kin Studio safely stores your media and presents them via a visual timeline making them easy to view and also to share with friends.
As well as backing up all your media, Kin Studio also backs up text messages, call history and phone contacts, chronologically populating an online “journal” so you can view all of the content created around a specific day in your life.
There is no word on the name of the mobile operating system that powers Kin but Microsoft are quick to point out that this is a completely different offering from Windows Phone 7. Instead of being a smartphone with hundreds of different applications at your disposal, the Kin One and Kin Two exist to keep you in constant contact with friends whilst your on the move, sharing photos, videos and status updates on the go without an app store in sight.
Original title and link for this post: Microsoft Phones To Be Called Kin One and Kin Two


Google CEO Eric Schmidt has confirmed that his company is developing a tablet device based on the Android operating system, according to friends that spoke to the executive at a recent event in Los Angeles. The New York Times reports that Google has “been working with several hardware manufacturers,” and “hopes to make its own apps marketplace available for new slate-like devices.”
Although Google is yet to publicly confirm such a device, many signs point to its likely launch. For starters, Google has been rumored to be developing a slate device with HTC – the same company it brought Nexus One to market with – since January. Moreover, the company has already announced plans for an ebook store expected to launch within the next few months.
It’s also clear that Google has plans for Android that go way beyond phones. There’s already an Android-powered car on the way, as well as plans for what’s being called “Google TV.” While Chrome OS for netbooks is also expected by year-end (and there are rumored Chrome tablets too), an Android tablet now seems all but publicly confirmed by Google.
Are you excited about the prospects of such a device? Let us know in the comments.
[img credit: gizmodo]
Tags: android, apple, Google, ipad, Tablet