Hooray for Hollywood. According to a new study by KPMG, television and movie viewers have never had it better. A report by the consulting company found that the overwhelming majority of well-known movies and television shows are available legally to U.S. viewers through online services such as Amazon Prime, Netflix and Hulu. The study found that fully 94 percent of popular titles were legally available through one channel or another. The study also pointed out that these legal services provide high-quality viewing, which is generally not true of illegal services. Maybe it is possible to compete with free? After all, sellers of bottled water have done well vis-à-vis tap water by offering products that are high-quality, reasonably priced, convenient and ubiquitous.
There’s an app for that too. Entertainers, celebrities and others who are popular with the teen-age and young-adult demographics are increasingly choosing to promote themselves on mobile app-based social networks, or so-called “chat apps,” rather than through Facebook or Twitter, where it can be hard to stand out amidst the sheer volume of posts. These new chat apps, including Line, Kik, Snapchat, WeChat and Viber, allow for more direct engagement with followers. For example, when Paul McCartney and his band recently headed to Japan, he used Line to interact with fans, personally responding to inquiries and offering a free pack of stickers featuring cartooned images of himself.
Hipster’s paradise. Here at Socially Aware, we’ve taken a keen interest in Ello, the incredibly hip new social media platform that is generating a big buzz in the tech community. Indeed, some have dubbed Ello the “anti-Facebook,” because it does not sell ads based on user data, does not require users to use their real names and has a business model that relies on users to pay for premium features that they select. It is also invitation-only, further sparking interest in the new platform. Ello’s founders say they are aiming the network at artists, designers and programmers – not at the whole universe. They also report that Ello is doubling in size every three or four days. Will Ello become the next big thing? Will consumer concerns regarding online privacy fuel the growth of alternative platforms such as Ello and, in the search space, DuckDuckGo, services that purport to provide greater privacy protections for users?