We’ve got .tv and soon we’ll have .mobi. Late May will see the beginning of .mobis being registered by companies with trademarks, and then general registrations in August.
Dotmobi is unique – the first top level domain dedicated to delivering the Internet to mobile devices. Scheduled for launch in May, dotmobi will revolutionise the use of the Internet on mobile devices. Dotmobi guides mobile users to made-for-mobile Internet content and services that can be accessed with confidence.
I’ve thought a few times that a cross-media world could be represented through multiple domains like .film, .dvd, .psp, .book. But then, they are all .net representations of non net devices and media channels. What you actually need is a domain name that subsumes all of the components of your cross-media world. At that address you’d have all the information about your entire franchise, with other domain names for the subsets, if you like. Possibilities are: .all, .world, .uni(verse), .ass(emble), .cme?! Any suggestions?
Nielsen Media Research teamed their research with Comcast’s to establish data on audience usage of VOD. They tested 180 households in Philadelphia during June-August last year. The key finding, for me, is that audiences are still using VOD AND scheduled TV — I don’t like using “scheduled TV” as part of the TV experience, for me, is serendipity: how about SSTV? But, back to the point. Audiences are using BOTH, not one above the other. Why? Because each has it own affordances, its own unique traits. This is what cross-media is all about: a wider range of media that audiences CHOOSE according to their availability, access, desired experience, preference…not replacing fixed media with new media and having convergent devices (in the end there can only be one convergent device!) everywhere. Here are the results, and the full report with nifty charts is downloadable here.
“This study confirms that VOD complements the traditional TV viewing experience. In addition to watching programming not available on traditional TV, customers are using VOD to learn about shows they may not have seen before or ‘catch up’ on past episodes of series they’ve missed.”
75% of households with access to VOD used it at least once during the three-month study, indicating a high VOD sampling rate. VOD users averaged 69 minutes of viewing per day.
Households that tuned to Comcast’s ON DEMAND service watched traditional television for an average of 723 minutes per day — 9% higher than all digital cable households and 38% higher than all cable households.
The VOD audience is a younger audience. 18-34 year olds comprised 37% of all VOD minutes viewed compared to 20% of all traditional television minutes. Children age 2-11 accounted for 19% of all VOD minutes, but only 9% of all traditional television minutes. In contrast, viewers over age 54 accounted for only 3% of VOD minutes compared to 30% of all traditional television minutes.
Free VOD (including shows from ad-supported cable networks, a library of movies, music programming and more) was the most sampled VOD content, viewed by about 42% of VOD homes during the survey. However, subscription VOD content (from services like HBO, Showtime and Starz) accounted for the most minutes (54%) of viewing, with VOD homes watching an average of 670 minutes of this content over the three months.
And, not only are audiences watching VOD and SSTV, they’re online for an equal amount of time too!: