Internet & Media

Every time we hear that something has "gone viral," we assume that the whole world is paying attention. Of course, we're usually talking about a cat playing the violin or a man who can make his bottom sing the French national anthem.

This weekend, the mechanism of Twitter was used to rage against the machine. The rage, as they say, went viral.

When blogger Jeff Jarvis began to tweet his ire with brimstone and fire at the hashtag #f***youwashington, it offered a wailing wall at which many could scream their own frustrations.

Tweeters offered, for example, … Read more

Time Warner Cable said today the number of its residential cable TV subscribers shrank sequentially.

Time Warner's cable TV subscribers number 12 million after losing 130,000 customers, or 1 percent, during the second quarter, according to the company's earnings report.

In tech, we often assume that those people who have discovered that accessing TV shows and films over the Internet is cheaper and are dropping their cable subscriptions, also known as "cord cutting."

Whether cord cutting occurs because people are opting for Web-based TV is much debated. There's no question that some of the … Read more

What are all those Netflix and Hulu viewers watching, and how are they accessing that content? A new study out yesterday from Nielsen offers some answers.

Among Netflix subscribers, 53 percent watch movies, 11 percent tune into TV shows, and 36 percent catch a mixture of both. But among Hulu viewers, only 9 percent are streaming movies, 73 percent are watching TV episodes, and 18 percent grab both equally.

Those results aren't surprising since Hulu isn't exactly known for its vast movie library, focusing instead on providing current and past seasons of popular TV series. In contrast, Netflix … Read more

Sony took a loss in its fiscal first quarter due largely to the Japanese quake and to lower TV sales, forcing the company to lower its annual forecast.

For the quarter that ended June 30, the electronics giant reported today a net loss of 15.5 billion yen ($199 million), compared with a net profit of 25.7 billion yen a year ago. Revenue dropped 10 percent to 1.49 trillion yen from 1.66 trillion yen in the prior year's quarter.

The weak quarter prompted Sony to lower its forecast for the full year. For the fiscal year … Read more

Antitrust authorities at the U.S. Justice Department have submitted a second request for information on Google's plan to acquire Internet advertising company Admeld, the companies said yesterday.

The move means a new round of scrutiny, and thus more waiting, for the Admeld acquisition, reported to be for about $400 million when it was announced in June.

Google's biggest ad business is for search ads that appear next to search results, but it's been trying to expand in the domain of more traditional display ads--the graphics such as banner ads that often tout big brand names. Admeld … Read more

Apparently we were just kidding ourselves and the Internet really isn't going to send us to some digital TV Shangri-La, where all the content is free of charge, available at our fingertips, and stripped of commercial breaks.

All the signs coming out of Web TV over the past year or more tell us that the TV networks are done with their experiment with ad-supported online distribution and super low-cost content. The returns that these companies were collecting from Hulu just weren't attractive enough for them to brush off cable companies and other distribution partners.

Fox announced yesterday that … Read more

A group of 29 universities in the U.S. is banding together to bring ultra-high-speed broadband access to the communities surrounding their campuses in an effort to attract start-ups and spur innovation.

The project, called Gig.U, was announced today and aims to build world-class broadband infrastructure to attract high-tech start-ups to areas close to universities. Some of the sectors the project directors hope to target are health care, energy, and telecommunications.

Several of the universities participating in the program, including Arizona State University, Duke University, and University of Michigan, are not in a major metropolitan areas. And others, such … Read more

They said Hulu was going to save the film studios and television networks from repeating the mistakes of the music industry.

They said the video portal would help turn the Internet into a new means of distributing the most popular TV shows and movies for less money than cable and offer viewers much more control over where and when they watch.

But the latest news out of Hollywood seems to indicate that enthusiasm was misplaced, premature, or both. The most recent and most dramatic sign of this came yesterday, when the Fox Network, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., … Read more

Is the shine beginning to fade for Google+?

Google's social-networking foray saw fewer U.S. visitors last week, and those who did visit spent less time on the site on average, according to new data released today by market researcher Experian Hitwise.

Google+ had 1.79 million visits for the week ending July 23, a decrease of 3 percent compared with the previous week when the network had 1.86 million visits, Experian Hitwise reported.

The average visit was 10 percent shorter, down from 5 minutes 50 seconds to 5 minutes 15 seconds.

Google declined to comment on specifics … Read more