That segment of the populace will doubtless be delighted to know that starting this weekend, PGA tour events will be streamed live online, courtesy CBSSports.com and the network’s iPhone, Android and iPad apps. And for those on less-privileged platforms like Windows Phone and BlackBerry who are really hard up for golf, a mobile-adapted web player will also be available at m.dbssports.com.

This weekend’s Farmers Insurance Open is the first-ever PGA tour event for which the full network broadcast will be live-streamed online, but it won’t be the last. In fact, 18 more tour events, all part of the FedExCup series, will be streamed by CBS, and all Golf Channel and NBC telecasts will also be be streamed. NBC’s streaming start begins with the wonderfully named Waste Management Phoenix Open.

I really, really hope the PGA got extra cash for that one.

A thought occurs. On the rare occasions when I actually have watched more than 20 seconds of golf while on my way to the nearest ice hockey game, I find it almost impossible to see the ball in flight on my 42-inch high-def TV screen.

Good luck seeing that ball on your 3.5-inch iPhone or 7-inch Nexus screens.

photo credit: Stuck in Customs via photopin cc

Unfortunately, the major television network is in Australia.

News.com.au is reporting that ABC — that would be the Australian Broadcasting Network — will be featuring new Dr. Who episodes online at ABC iView a week before they are actually aired on television. Showtimes will be just hours after UK airtimes, specifically in an attempt to reduce piracy.

While piracy is wrong, an ABC spokesperson told News.com.au, “The fact that it is happening is indicative that as broadcasters we are not meeting demand for a segment of the population.”

Finally, some sense of reason from a large public broadcaster! Not only will episodes be available online, they will also be available on ABC’s iPhone apps.

This is something Americans might wish stateside network NBC had learned prior to the recent London 2012 Olympic games, in which the digital laggard broadcaster did precisely the opposite: hold all content delivery to a schedule that suited it, not the public — and certainly not the techie, affluent emerging market of cord-cutters. Which, of course, drove people to watch the Olympics online in ways which, while perhaps not exactly qualifying as piracy, certainly did not drive any revenue to NBC.

All TV is moving online.

More correctly, perhaps, all video content is moving online — which is one reason Google just shuttered its TV ad group. The sooner large American networks grasp that reality in their bones, the quicker they can disrupt themselves. It may not be comfortable, and it will not be easy. But the nastier alternative, of course, is that someone else will disrupt them.

Image credit: BBC

First of all, here’s the apology, delivered by Alex McGillivray:

… we want to apologize for the part of this story that we did mess up. The team working closely with NBC around our Olympics partnership did proactively identify a Tweet that was in violation of the Twitter Rules and encouraged them to file a support ticket with our Trust and Safety team to report the violation, as has now been reported publicly. Our Trust and Safety team did not know that part of the story and acted on the report as they would any other.

There is, however, a part that Twitter is NOT apologizing for: whether corporate emails are private information or not.

We’ve seen a lot of commentary about whether we should have considered a corporate email address to be private information. There are many individuals who may use their work email address for a variety of personal reasons — and they may not. Our Trust and Safety team does not have insight into the use of every user’s email address, and we need a policy that we can implement across all of our users in every instance.

The most important part of the email, however — and the reason why Twitter’s resident legal chief wrote the blog post — is that McGillivray states that Twitter does not actively monitor users’ content.

That’s critical, and a key point in our earlier article today, Twitter: you crossed the line. If indeed Twitter did set a precedent that it is proactively checking tweets before or as they are published, the company would open itself up to a world of legal hurt in libel, insider trading, and other lawsuits.

The Trust and Safety team does not actively monitor users’ content. In all cases, whether the user is the head of a major corporation, a celebrity, or a regular user, we require a report to be filed at our abusive users webform.

And, as McGillivray correctly states, if the company did check tweets, that would completely undermine users’ faith in the service and the company. Which is why (in addition to the fact that NBC retracted the support ticket Twitter asked them to file) the company reinstated Guy Adam’s Twitter account earlier today.

But — and I’ll repeat a point from an earlier post — having the company’s chief counsel post on this issue underscores one of Twitter’s key challenges right now: The company needs better communications strategies and involvement in potentially high-profile decisions such as canceling a journalist’s account.

That’s something Twitter won’t get until it stabilizes its communications personnel, which has seen three departures in the last six months.

Image credit: Cheezburger Network

Guy Adams, the UK journalist whose unhappy tweets about NBC’s Olympics coverage in the U.S. got him banned from Twitter, is back.

The account suspension unleashed a tsunami of condemnation for the social news network, especially since Twitter had a close relationship with NBC for covering the Olympics. Especially since, it turns, Twitter contacted NBC about the alleged infringements of the network’s terms of service.

In fact, Google News currently has almost 20,000 stories for “Twitter guy adams.”

Guy Adams broke the news himself, on Twitter, saying:

Twitter emails to tell me: "we have just received an update from the complainant retracting their original request..."

—
Guy Adams (@guyadams) July 31, 2012

and

"... Therefore your account has been unsuspended." No further explanation given, or apology offered

—
Guy Adams (@guyadams) July 31, 2012

This is good news. Someone at Twitter (and maybe NBC too) has come to their senses. Literally just a few moments before, I had published Twitter, you crossed the line, opining that …

Suspending the journalist’s account was obviously — obviously! — a horrendously stupid idea. Anyone with even the smallest amount of media sense had to know that this would blow up. That Adams’ paper would publish about it. That the technology press would pick it up. That it would become a big story.

I suppose someone at Twitter agreed.

[ update July 31 10:52 PST: Twitter has reinstated Guy Adams account ]

The assumption yesterday, unwritten but certainly thought, was that NBC had complained to Twitter. And that was bad enough, raising questions about freedom of speech and appropriate uses for Twitter, which has become a significant global communications utility, with 500 million registered users.

But today the Daily Telegraph revealed that actually, Twitter contacted NBC about the tweets, not vice versa. At least, according to a letter from NBC vice-president of communications Christopher McCloskey.

And that puts an entirely different complexion on things.

Up until now, Twitter has felt like something of a neutral party: If corporations or individuals complained about a tweet or an account, the company would investigate. And, if the terms of service had been violated or other violations found, Twitter would take action.

Source: John Koetsier

Guy Adams’ Twitter account: nothing to see here, move along folks

But it’s an entirely different matter to proactively be reviewing tweets and sending companies notifications about potential problems. Those are the actions of a publisher, not a communications utility. We’d expect to see that kind of move from a traditional movie or music industry organization, not our modern darling of geeky social news.

Bad form, Twitter. Seriously bad form.

It’s even worse when you consider that NBC and Twitter had a partnership to tell the story of London 2012 via tweets. That makes Twitter look like it has skin in this particular game … like the company was not a neutral party. Already some publications are stating quite openly that Twitter censored Adams because of the NBC partnership.

While that’s going too far based on the facts on-hand, one thing is for sure: This has really, really, really bad optics.

Suspending the journalist’s account was obviously — obviously! — a horrendously stupid idea. Anyone with even the smallest amount of media sense had to know that this would blow up. That Adams’ paper would publish about it. That the technology press would pick it up. That it would become a big story.

The smart way to deal with it was to not deal with it. The journalist in question, Guy Adams, would have continued to tweet, and most people would have continued to not notice.

But now it’s a big story, and Twitter has huge egg on its face.

Perhaps there’s a reason Twitter has lost multiple communications directors in record time.

Image credit: Nito/ShutterStock

Guy Adams is a writer for the UK news agency The Independent. He’s the paper’s L.A. correspondent, and while the biggest story in the UK is happening in London, he’s cooling his heels in Hollywood … unable to watch the Olympics live.

That was, apparently, bothersome, so he tweeted about it – quite intensively. And with attitude.

Some of it was fairly innocuous:

Matt Lauer would do well to shut up, wouldn’t he?

According to NBC’s commentary team, the Surrey countryside is full of “chateaus” #ffs!

But Adams’ biggest complaint was the now-legendary time delay between the actual opening ceremonies and NBC’s broadcast.

Say “up yours” to @nbcolympics and watch that opening ceremony here MT @edfcarrasco: we got what the people want: http://t.co/IB5epHmx

America’s left coast forced to watch Olympic ceremony on SIX HOUR time delay. Disgusting money-grabbing by @NBColympics http://t.co/bQxKCCdj

I have 1000 channels on my TV. Not one will be showing the Olympics opening ceremony live. Because NBC are utter, utter bastards.

Perhaps not all in great taste, and certainly inflamatory, but not enough to get his account shut down. Until this tweet:

The man responsible for NBC pretending the Olympics haven’t started yet is Gary Zenkel. Tell him what u think! Email: Gary.zenkel@nbcuni.com

At that, NBC complained to Twitter, and Twitter called it a violation of policy. This policy, in fact:

You may not publish or post other people’s private and confidential information, such as credit card numbers, street address or Social Security/National Identity numbers, without their express authorization and permission.

Adams has responded on his own newpaper’s website, saying that Gary Zenkel’s email address is NOT private, because Gary Zenkel‘s email address is both corporate and public, “accessible to anyone with access to Google.”

So it is private or is it public? And should Twitter have suspended the account? And, does the fact that Twitter and NBC are teaming up to present the Olympics, 140 characters at a time, have anything to do with the suspension?

Lots of questions.

But the biggest one is this: Should you really be using a service that can cancel your account and wipe out years of tweets for a single violation of rules you have probably never read?

But that’s precisely the question that Twitter execs should be hoping none of Twitter’s 500 million registered users will ask themselves.

They might have thought of that before suspending a journalist’s account.

Image credit: Petronilo G. Dangoy Jr./ShutterStock

But when it comes to website availability and uptime under crushing Olympic-sized traffic, the race has already begun.

Compuware has been tracking the performance of the top 20 Olympic news sites in countries such as the U.S., UK, Germany, and China for several months. Now that the Olympics are on and the surge of traffic is hitting, some clear front runners have emerged.

“We’re measuring both uptime and availability,” Compuware product manager Lorenz Jakober told VentureBeat. “Then we compare it to the performance of the sites a month ago, which gives us a pretty good metric on what the differences are.”

And those Aussies are definitely feeling the heat. Websites in the basket of news agencies Compuware is tracking, such as ABCnews, 9News, news.com.au, are down between 10-20 percent compared to pre-Olympic traffic:

Source: Compuware

Australian Olympic sites: red, like blood, is a bad sign

For the U.S., measured properties would include sites like NBC.com, ESPN, and Fox Sports. And paradoxically, those sites are doing better than before the Olympics.

Source: Compuware

US Olympic news sites: green is good

“It’s funny actually,” Jacoba said. “Perhaps the Olympic fever hasn’t maybe hit us yet, with the time delay.”

Or perhaps server administrators have increased capacity prior to the Olympics. That’s exactly what the Bleacher Report was doing when I spoke to the company’s vice president of engineering a few weeks ago. That site is expecting to triple ordinary web traffic, and preemptively scaled up its database layer inside Amazon’s cloud. When it comes to serving web pages, the Bleacher Report can add 50 percent more capacity in just 30 minutes.

Perhaps the French should have done something similar:

Source: Compuware

Fo the French, it’s a little comme ci, comme ça

Image credits: Compuware, fstockfoto / Shutterstock.com

Early next year, MSNBC.com will relaunch as a stand-alone site for the cable channel MSNBC. Steve Capus, president of NBC News, told the New York Times, “we will fully own our digital businesses.” The changes show that the internet’s impact on the media business is far from complete and more disruption is likely to hit the business in the future.

Comcast, the media company that owns NBC, will acquire Microsoft’s 50 percent stake in the joint venture that was born in the mid-1990s. Microsoft will receive $300 million, the Times said. Microsoft’s own stake in the cable TV channel was dissolved in 2005. One of the problems, the Times said, is that NBC felt handcuffed by the web joint venture. More of its advertisers wanted to buy ads on both its TV newscasts and web sites. But the cross-media sales were stymied because Microsoft ran the ad sales part of the business. The joint venture had to set up a special team for those sales.

MSNBC.com and its associated sites have 50 million monthly visitors, according to comScore.

Recognizing that Facebook has become the people’s broadcast network, NBC Olympics, the official broadcast partner of the IOC, has today partnered with Facebook to provide consumers with London 2012 Olympics news and other coverage on Facebook, create social media segments for television viewers, and incorporate Facebook intelligence into its coverage of the Games.

“NBC is committed to engaging fans and consumers on every platform,” NBC Olympics president Gary Zenkel said in a press release. “Social media is an important part of how fans consume and interact during the Olympics. We are thrilled to be collaborating with Facebook to serve fans as they watch and celebrate the London Olympic Games.”

As a part of the deal, the NBC Olympics Facebook Page serves as the social media home of breaking Olympics news and includes photo galleries, polls, and trivia questions. The Page also incentivizea Facebook users to “like” it for exclusive content and encourages fans to share and distribute Olympic Games content with the rest of Facebook’s more than 900 million active active users.

NBC Olympics and Facebook, through the partnership, have agreed to produce social media segments to air during television broadcasts on various NBC Universal networks. NBC will also employ a specially crafted Facebook data tool called Talk Meter to inform its viewers about the stories, results, athletes, and events that are bubbling up on the social network.

The partnership also extends to the NBCOlympics.com site, which now features a Facebook Timeline application for more widespread distribution of content. The Timeline application, once enabled, enables users to automatically share their viewing and reading behaviors on the site with their friends on Facebook.

“With the Olympic Games being one of those rare cultural moments that everyone talks about, people will watch the games on NBC and engage with their friends and favorite athletes on NBC Olympics’ Facebook page,” Facebook strategic partner manager Andy Mitchell said in a statement. “NBC’s viewers will get to see what Olympic athletes and others connected with the Games are talking about on Facebook, adding a new element to NBC Olympics’ coverage.”

Particle Code, which was a DEMO 2010 DEMOgod winner, allows developers to create a unified web experience across devices. Appcelerator is known for its Titanium tool, which is used by clients such as NBC, Zipcar, eBay and others, to power their mobile apps.

“The real story here is they were weak where we were strong, and they were strong where we were weak, so it’s a really good match,” says Benartzi.

The Particle Code-Appcelerator tie-up is happening amidst a flurry of activity on the HTML5 platform development platform front. Today, Sencha announced a $15 million investment round to boost its platform, which creates native app functionality on mobile devices such as the iPad.

“It’s a really interesting time, and I’m glad we’re part of that story, and the excitement in that space,” says Benartzi. Particle Code was launched at DEMO 2010, and Benartzi says after a transition period with Appcelerator, she’s probably going to launch her third startup, “If she can help it.”

Particle Code had previously received $3 million from Benhamou Global Ventures.

Ivi

The Seattle-based company is launching a downloadable PC application that takes a live feed from TV channels and distributes that stream, uninterrupted and without delays, to viewers worldwide 24 hours a day. Ivi is offering a 30-day free trial for the service to watch major broadcast channels including ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, The CW, PBS and other local affiliates.

The Ivi TV player transforms a computer into a television with multiple channel offerings. Users can select the channel by using a simple channel guide. The TV player can be downloaded to any Windows, Mac, or Linux computer. It will soon be available on platforms such as mobile devices, tablets and set-top boxes.

The company claims Ivi will make set-top boxes obsolete by allowing viewers to watch their TV shows anywhere, on any PC where they download the application. Todd Weaver started Ivi in 2007. He serves as chief executive.

One of the features that consumers have long wanted is a la carte TV channels. Most of the time, consumers may want only one or two channels. But they have to subscribe to a whole bundle of channels in order to get what they want. Ivi says it can enable such a la carte service.

The basic Ivi Air package contains over 25 major broadcast channels for $4.99 a month, after the 30-day free trial. More channels will be added each month for no additional costs. If you want time shifting, or digital video recording that allows you to watch a show whenever you want, you pay 99 cents a a month more.

Ivi hopes to create a bigger hole in the cable TV industry, which is losing lots of subscribers. Market researcher SNL Kagan reported that the cable TV companies lost 711,000 subscribers in the second quarter of 2010. Yankee Group said that pay-TV revenues are starting to decrease, partly due to rising cable service rates. Ivi claims that it has legal rights to run TV shows on the web and it will be paying royalties to copyright holders.

Ivi’s service does not require buffering, or a delay which occurs as a video downloads to a user’s system. You can watch the Ivi shows in any quality level you want. You can watch local content anywhere in the world. You can view New York City broadcast channels wherever you are. The company is one among many companies that are promising to disrupt the TV business. Others include Apple with Apple TV, Google with Google TV, Samsung with its TV apps, and Logitech with its upcoming Google TV set-top box.

Hulu

It comes after months of delay. NBC withdrew its video channel from YouTube last week, and also ditched Apple’s iTunes in favor of Amazon’s music service.

Hulu will be the exclusive online provider of videos from NBC and News Corp, and it will then syndicate the material to other sites, including AOL, MSN, MySpace, and Yahoo, but apparently not YouTube.

Hulu got $100 million in backing from Providence Equity Partners, and arose because of animosity from NBC and News Corp toward YouTube, in part because that site kept hosting videos containing copyrighted videos.

NBC had warmed up to YouTube last year, working with the popular video site to promote its videos, until Jeff Zucker took over NBC in February. The company then changed its tune, and filed a lawsuit against YouTube.

You can register at the site, for a trial access.

http://www.hulu.com/embed/1734