Mediaboss Marketing

By Will Greenwald

Roku is refreshing its line of media hubswith new versions of the Roku 2 and Roku 3. The latestRoku 2 is a $69.99 puck-shaped media hub that looks indistinguishable from the previous, Editors' Choice Roku 2 at first glance. It boasts faster performance, but it also takes away the most unique and compelling feature the previous version offered: a headphone jack-equipped remote that can stream music to your ears without bothering the people around you. Unless you're on a strict budget, it isn'tall thatcompelling when compared with the more full-featured $99.99 Roku 3 or our Editors' Choice media hubs, the much less expensive $49.99Roku Streaming Stickand theAmazon Fire TV Stick.

Design The Roku 2 isa small, glossy black 3.5-inch-square puck with rounded corners and a purple fabric Roku tag sticking out of the left side. The back of the hubholds HDMI, Ethernet, and power ports, plus a microSD card slot and a pinhole Reset button. A USB port sticks out of the right side of the player. It's a significant change from the previous Roku 2, adding Ethernet for a wired network connection but removing the composite video output. Unless you have a very old television, it's a good trade.

While the Roku 2 box is effectively the same as the current Roku 3 box, its remote is a considerable step back both from the Roku 3 and its predecessor. The infrared remote is the same sort of pill-shaped wand Roku devices have used for years, and it has all of the necessary controls like a navigation pad, playback controls, and dedicated buttons for Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, Sling TV(replacing the Blockbuster button), and Rdio (replacing the M-GO button). It's about two-thirds as thick as the previous remote, and its completely matte black finish makes it abit easier to grip. It lacksthe incredibly handy headphone jack of the previous Roku 2, though,whichlet you listen to whatever you were watching with your headphones, streaming audio through the radio-based remote's wireless connection.

Since this remote is infrared, it can't stream audio, and requires direct line-of-sight with the box, while a radio remote can work through cabinet doors. The new Roku 3 keeps the radio connection and headphone jack of the previous Roku 2 and Roku 3, making it a far better controller. You can also control the Roku 2 with your smartphone or tablet with the free Roku app for iOS and Android. The app also supports text input, voice search, and streaming media from your mobile device to your HDTV over the Roku.

Roku Channel StoreRoku's interface and Channel Store have remained structurally unchanged for several product generations, but they've been creeping forward with steady additions of new channels and new features. The Roku Channel Store offers a comprehensive selection of streaming media services, with all of the major players on boardincluding Amazon Instant Video, HBO Go,Hulu Plus, Netflix, Sling TV, Vudu, and YouTube.

The most recent addition to the interface itself is the Roku Feed. It can track recently released movies and provide you with updates on when they become available on Roku through the various on-demand video services. It's a useful idea, but right now, you can only choose from a handful of titles, so it feels more like a taste of a future feature than a fully realized one. Hopefully, Roku will expand the feed to include TV shows and more movies, because for now it doesn't offer enough.

PerformanceThe new Roku 2 is significantly faster than the previous generation box, and it shows when switching between channels. I jumped between the Sling TV and Hulu Plus apps quickly, loading each service's main screen in seconds. The Roku 2 won't reliably save your state in each app so you can't truly jump rapidly between them (as opposed to leaving one and opening another quickly, to focus on the new app), but it's still a significant improvement in performance. Both the Roku 2 and Roku 3 can output video at up to 1080p.

Roku's updated $70 media hub is a functional device with loads of online services and features, but the removal of the headphone jack from the remote is too high a price to pay for the speed boost over the previous Roku 2. It was one of the more unique and compelling aspects of the older device, and without it the Roku 2's price tag doesn't seem particularly compelling next to less expensive options like Roku's own Streaming Stick and the Amazon Fire TV Stick. If you really want loads of features and fast performance with your media hub, consider the Roku 3 or Amazon Fire TVinstead. The Roku 3 has a much more functional remote, and the Amazon Fire TV offers a wealth of well-organized content in addition to plenty of apps, thanks to its Android core and Amazon Prime integration.

Link:
Roku 2 (2015)

The Safety Pins - Punk-Rock Disasters Pt. 1 (Full Album)
I #39;m Not Pretty Media Control Just Like Your Mom Negative Reaction Gimme, Gimme, Gimme Kill The Hippies Solitary Confinement Confused Climate Of Fear Superficial Love Burn Out.

By: Felopunk

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The Safety Pins - Punk-Rock Disasters Pt. 1 (Full Album) - Video

Last month, Twitter CFO Anthony Noto spoke at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, and Telecom conference. While on stage, he told the audience that Twitter has a huge opportunity to organize and distribute its content in a better way. "We have the best aggregation of real-time content," he said. "And the opportunity we have is to organize that in a better way -- in a unique way -- and then bring the best of Twitter to where people want it, when they want it, and how they want it. And we've only scratched the surface."

Last week, Twitter publicly launched Curator, a new product that lets publishers and media organizations filter and display tweets on any screen in real time. By having Twitter do the compiling, Curator gives Twitter more control over how its content gets syndicated, opening the door for potential monetization down the line. Twitter notes that "for example, you can find Tweets including #MarchMadness, from users with 100+ followers located in the US. You can then use Curator to display the best Tweets from that search into your mobile app, during a TV show broadcast, or on any screen regardless of size."

The Curator dashboard. Source: Twitter.

More control over syndication One of the things Noto pointed out at the Morgan Stanley conference was that "Best Tweets of..." articles are constantly popping up on sites like Buzzfeed and Huffington Post after big events like the Oscars or Super Bowl. He believes Twitter should have more of a hand in that content. Curator can do that.

More importantly, Curator makes it easier for publishers and media outlets to gather and organize tweets for just about any event. From a television broadcast to a concert to a sporting event, tweets are being sent out all the time. News broadcasters might use Curator to place tweets in their news ticker at the bottom of the screen.

This is all part of Twitter's effort to expand its audience, whether that audience is logged-in users or not. Even without log-ins, management believes the eyeballs it attracts to its content are worth billions. It recently started monetizing syndicated tweets, partnering with third-party apps and websites like FlipBoard to place ads in syndicated feeds. Down the line, Twitter may force ads into some uses of Curator.

Seeing what works The other benefit of Curator is that Twitter is simply providing some nice tools to filter its fire hose of data while media outlets are in charge of thinking about what their audience might want. Meanwhile, Twitter will be able to collect loads of data about what media outlets are using Curator for, and how the audience responds to it.

Twitter itself has started curating tweets around major events like the Cricket World Cup and NFL games. Management says it wants to do more of these curated timelines, and Noto believes he can ultimately monetize these curated timelines better than personal timelines. That's because the people viewing those curated timelines have expressed explicit interests.

While Curator content is hosted on a media outlet's website, Twitter will be able to find what works best and create its own curated timeline on its own website. That gives Twitter valuable content to feed directly to its users and direct visitors, and it can keep all of the ad revenue for itself.

All about the audience Twitter has no plans to charge for Curator or add premium features. Instead, it will capitalize on the additional exposure its content receives, and eventually cash in with advertisements or by migrating some curations to its own website. While many outlets already curate tweets by hand, the new tool will make it easier for outlets to gather tweets, and easier for Twitter to monetize its syndicated audience.

More here:
Twitter Inc. Helps Itself by Helping Media Companies Comb Through Tweets

GWEN IFILL: Now the latest addition to the NewsHour bookshelf, Terms of Service. Its a look at the erosion of privacy in the age of social media.

Jeffrey Brown recently talked to author Jacob Silverman at Busboys and Poets, a restaurant and bookstore chain in and around Washington.

JEFFREY BROWN: Welcome to you.

JACOB SILVERMAN, Author, Terms of Service: Thanks for having me.

JEFFREY BROWN: The case youre making and its a strong case we dont know or we dont seem to care enough about what were giving away in our digital lives.

JACOB SILVERMAN: Right.

Well, the same systems that make it so easy to communicate with one another and live these lives where were essentially all public figures now also make it very easy tosort of spy on us, to collect personal information, whether youre companies or governments or other bad actors.

And I think that a lot of people dont really realize how much is being collected on each and every one of us, that there are big data brokers out there forming dossiers on hundreds of millions of people.

JEFFREY BROWN: Theres been a lot of emphasis on government surveillance. Here, youre really pointing to what we perhaps dont know as much about, corporate surveillance.

JACOB SILVERMAN: Right.

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How can we return privacy control to social media users?

Rand Paul loves the spotlight. He just doesnt love the people who wield it.

In February, the Kentucky senator scolded CNBC anchor Kelly Evans as she tried to ask him about a bill he co-sponsored.

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You have taken an interview and youve made an interview into something where we got no useful information because you were argumentative and you started out with so many preoppositions [sic] that were incorrect, he said.

The interview continued, but Paul wasnt done with the tongue-lashing, and went back to media criticism a few minutes later.

Part of the problem is that you end up having interviews like this where the interview is so slanted and full of distortions that you dont get useful information, he said. I think this is what is bad about TV sometimes. So frankly, I think if we do this again, you need to start out with a little more objectivity going into the interview.

Clips of the interview quickly went viral as headlines blared how Rand Paul tears into, snaps, shushes and belittles the CNBC host.

Rand Paul needs to be shushed, read a headline from a piece by Joan Walsh on Salon.com. To some men, apparently, an assertive woman is out of control and needs to calm down especially if shes succeeded in upsetting his calm, she wrote.

PBS NewsHour host Gwen Ifill warned in a blog post soon after the interview that whether or not he considers questions from the press to be distorted, Paul might want to get used to concealing his irritation. That sort of viral video lives forever.

The tantrum was a rare case of Paul losing his temper on live TV, which hes made almost a second home as hes sought to build his brand ahead of his expected April 7 presidential launch. But his famed accessibility hes willing to submit to most Capitol Hill hallway interviews and even impromptu interviews on airplanes; hell hop on the phone with a junior reporter and talk to cable shouters from Bill Maher to Bill OReilly masks a relationship with the media that is anything but friendly. Reporters who cover Paul have called him thin-skinned, sensitive, wary and prickly. Others say he and his team will blame the media for his own mistakes, at some points freezing out reporters for perceived slights.

Read the rest here:
Rand Paul and the media: No love story