Thursday News: ebooks v. games, DOJ sues DirecTV, Facebook’s growth, and Bono as ‘woman of the year’
Paypal’s New eBook Report: Consumers Are More Willing to Pay for eBooks Than Video Games – Nate Hoffelder’s take on a new report from Paypal that looks at international ebook and game buying patterns. Beyond the not-really-news that Amazon still leads in the sale of ebooks (surprise!), it seems that games are still outselling ebooks on the whole, even though the proportion varies from country to country:
The survey report also showed that in some countries consumers were more willing to buy ebooks than to buy games on in-game purchases.
Alas, while it sounds great that consumers are more willing to spend on ebooks, that doesn’t actually mena they are willing to spend _more_ than they would on games.
In fact, the average spent on games was universally higher than for ebooks. – The Digital Reader
AT&T’s DirecTV ‘Corrupted’ LA Dodgers TV Talks, DOJ Alleges in Lawsuit – Et tu, AT&T? As AT&T and Time Warner are still hoping that the FCC loses its collective mind and lets them merge, the US Department of Justice dropped a bomb on AT&T-owned DirecTV, accusing them of violating the Sherman Act by colluding with other cable/TV companies over carriage of the Dodgers channel, depriving baseball fans of televised games. Hmm, this sounds familiar . . .
The blockbuster civil lawsuit alleges that DirecTV acted as the “ringleader” of an unlawful scheme to coordinate with its pay-TV rivals, including Cox and Charter, in order to gain bargaining leverage in negotiations with Time Warner Cable, the co-owner of the Dodgers channel, SportsNet LA. . . .
In a scathing complaint filed in the US District Court for the Central District of California, the Justice Dept. accused DirecTV of orchestrating a scheme that “corrupted the Dodgers Channel carriage negotiations and the competitive process that the Sherman Act protects.” As evidence, the feds cited phone and text conversations in which senior executives at DirecTV and its rivals plotted how to coordinate their strategy in order to pressure Time Warner Cable during the negotiations. – Motherboard
Facebook Profit Soars, but Growth Concerns Emerge – Despite the likelihood that Facebook will generate more than $25 billion in revenue this year, its growth is slowing such that the company must find a new strategy to continue to grow its earnings. The good news is that means fewer new ads in your news feed; the bad news is you will get more video ads, which Facebook is hoping extends the time you spend on the site.
Yet Facebook said that it can’t maintain its current pace. Starting in the middle of next year, Facebook will stop showing users more ads in their news feed, the tactic it has been using to juice revenue growth for the past two years, the company said Wednesday. As a result, advertising growth will “come down meaningfully,” Chief Financial Officer Dave Wehner said during a call with analysts.
Facebook now expects a “much smaller contribution from this important factor going forward,” he said. He added that Facebook expects to power growth by adding more users and boosting the amount of time they spend on the social network. Video is key to that strategy. – Wall Street Journal
For First Time, Glamour’s Women Of The Year Include A Man: Bono – Because apparently great women aren’t enough, Glamour decided to give one of its “Women of the Year” awards to Bono. And – surprise! – that move generated more news headlines than it likely would have otherwise. Among the women who were honored are Simone Biles, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi (who co-founded Black Lives Matter), Nadia Murad, and “Emily Doe” (who wrote an amazing letter after being assaulted by Brock Turner):
For Glamour, the anonymous survivor wrote about what it was like to watch the world discover her story — the shock of getting a note from Vice President Joe Biden, the joy of seeing other women and girls lend their voices to her words. And the painful comments, too.
“In the very beginning of it all in 2015, one comment managed to lodge harmfully inside me: Sad. I hope my daughter never ends up like her,” Doe wrote.
“I absorbed that statement. Ends up. As if we end somewhere, as if what was done to me marked the completion of my story.” She continued:
“So now to the one who said, I hope my daughter never ends up like her, I am learning to say, I hope you end up like me, meaning, I hope you end up like me strong. I hope you end up like me proud of who I’m becoming. I hope you don’t ‘end up,’ I hope you keep going. And I hope you grow up knowing that the world will no longer stand for this. Victims are not victims, not some fragile, sorrowful aftermath. Victims are survivors, and survivors are going to be doing a hell of a lot more than surviving.” – NPR
