Saturday, March 28, 2009
Weekend Update, 3.28.09
Another week into challenging times, and the theme for Weekend Update is undoubtedly cost-saving, with a healthy dose of revenue-seeking.
On the revenue-seeking side, BoomTown’s Twitter Business Plan Count-Up hasn’t yielded any real keepers yet. There is a real contender, though–since Jennifer Aniston so publicly broke up with her boyfriend John Mayer on account of his Twitter “addiction,” BoomTown suggests offering “Twitter rehab” for those not willing to lose their relationships just yet.
In Silicon Valley, it’s hard to believe that not everyone follows each shiny new thing on the Web, tracks OS versions as intently as the storyline for “Battlestar Galactica” and remains jacked-in pretty much 24/7. But it’s been known to happen.
Now that Sony’s old guard has taken what was once a strong electronics and gaming brand and run it into the ground, the company’s new guard is circling back to resurrect it. This morning the company announced a management overhaul that will see CEO Howard Stringer succeed Ryoji Chubachi as president and assume responsibility for Sony’s key electronics division.
“What has become of the Sony known for its technology?” Japanese Economy, Trade and Industry Minister and former Sony employee Akira Amari asked in October of 2006. “I hope it will solve its problems soon to quickly recover its brand image reputed for technological prowess.” If Amari can recall when that was Sony’s image, he has a good memory. Because Sony lost its dominant position in consumer electronics to rivals in Japan, South Korea and the U.S. long ago and has yet to regain it. And nowhere is that more apparent than in the the company’s videogame division.
“We have big plans for the digital television business,” Canon CEO Fujio Mitarai said at a Canon exhibition in 2005. And with a new technology called surface-conduction electron-emitter display, and plans to use it to transform the lowly TV into a “multifunction information device,” Canon seemed well poised to execute them. At the time, anyway. 
Not only is iTunes the world’s largest music retailer, it’s apparently also the world’s most popular online TV store. This according to proprietor Apple, which said today that iTunes has sold some 200 million TV episodes.
It’s been two years since the $1.65 billion acquisition and Google has yet to truly monetize YouTube. And while Google CEO Eric Schmidt insists the company has the “luxury of time” as it searches for ways to recoup its investment in the popular video site, it’s clear the issue is gradually becoming more pressing. “We’re waiting for the innovations,” he said recently. “The innovation will come. We know it will come. We know it’s there.” Could the “it” to which Schmidt refers be the new e-commerce platform YouTube is launching?
How do you persuade TV viewers to watch advertisements when the DVR has accustomed them to skip through them? That’s the dilemma facing television and cable networks today, one that’s so far defied a solution. But perhaps not for much longer.
Looks like Netflix’s video-streaming business is developing quite nicely. On Tuesday the DVD-by-mail pioneer said it has signed deals with CBS and Walt Disney that will add some of those networks’ most popular shows to the Netflix streaming library. 
The Apple rumor mill has such a hair trigger, that even passing mention of an unreleased product can set it into yammering motion. As happened today after Digg founder Kevin Rose offered up some purported insider information about the focus of Apple’s “Let’s Rock” media event in San Francisco next Tuesday.
