I won't even attempt to add to the crushing mountain of news articles and blog items (not to mention twitters) on Microsoft's deal to invest $240 million for a 1.6% stake in Facebook, except to speculate that a whole lot of testosterone was excreted over the past few days as Google and Microsoft went mano-a-mano to get their hands on a tiny sliver of the hot social networking meteor.
But, Fake Steve Jobs (aka Forbes journalist Daniel Lyons) is reporting that on the heels of this insanely hyped deal, Facebook has raised an additional $500 million from two hedge funds in New York. Despite the satirical nature of the blog, this looks real.
Word up. Hot on the heels of the big investment by the Borg only a few hours ago, Facebook has now landed another $500 million from two hedge funds in New York. At the same $15 billion valuation. It is on, people. No word on which hedgetards are involved but again let me say: Faceberg, you are some kind of wonderful. I mean it. Wow. Much love.
If you are already overwhelmed by the endless coverage of Facebook, you're going to collapse under the weight of the collective frenzy that will ensue if FSJ is right.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:59 PM | Print | Comments (0)I caught up with a few senior executives at Comcast this afternoon who talked with me about the growing controversy surrounding the company's policy regarding P2P traffic. Right off the bat, they pointed to a follow-up article by Peter Svensson, the AP reporter who last week propelled Comcast's purported blockage of P2P uploads into the national spotlight.
For those of you who don't know, Svensson decided to test for himself whether isolated reports that Comcast is blocking BitTorrent uploads are true. He found that in three of four tries, his efforts to upload the Bible using BitTorrent's file-sharing application were indeed halted by Comcast's network. Following his original article, a storm of outrage erupted, sparking renewed calls for network neutrality regulations.
Svensson's follow-up article, however, retreats from the notion that Comcast "blocks" P2P uploading. Instead, Comcast "delays" P2P uploads, Svensson now writes, a nuance that the Comcast executives believe is critical. During heavy congestion, Comcast slows down P2P uploads by postponing the transaction. The system will, however, repeatedly keep trying to complete the upload until it has been completed.
Svensson writes:
The explanation is not inconsistent with the AP's tests. In one case, a BitTorrent file transfer was squelched, apparently by messages generated by Comcast, only to start 10 minutes later. Other tests were called off after around 5 minutes, while the transfers were still stifled.
Comcast is very pleased that Svensson admits that there really wasn't a blockage per se, although disagreements will surely crop up as to the definitional distinctions between a stop-and-start delay and a full-fledged blockage.
Whatever the case may be, Comcast is adamant that it has to somehow control the flow of P2P traffic on its network; otherwise, congestion and network failures will occur if the swarms consume too much capacity. "When P2P traffic comes at the point of degrading other services...we can't let those services be degraded because a small group uses a disproportionate share of bandwidth," one executive told me.
The small group in question are "seeders," people who spend a lot of time uploading content, but not a lot of time downloading content. As is widely understood by now, Comcast is very specifically focused on this group of users. Reports suggest that Comcast doesn't really mess with folks who download a lot of files (unless they do it excessively, which is another story).
Svensson experienced problems because he was uploading. If, however, he had been downloading at the same time, he likely wouldn't have experienced delays or delays to the same extent. In other words, users can download content or they can download and upload content simultaneously. The delays really kick in when the user is engaged solely in uploading content.
When I asked the Comcast folks why seeders are hit with the worst delays when, theoretically, more bandwidth is used when someone is both uploading and downloading content, they were "uncomfortable" talking about it, presumably because it might provide a roadmap for certain kinds of users to step-up their use of P2P. Speaking hypothetically, however, one executive said "we're worried about someone using an exceptional amount of bandwidth to feed the world's information."
Comcast made clear that its management of P2P is content-neutral. "This is completely content-agnostic. It's generic and fair based on contention [how many people are using the network at once]," one executive said.
I asked if Comcast is focused on uploaders because Hollywood is pressuring ISPs to do their part to nip content piracy in the bud. Nope, the executives said. It's strictly a bandwidth management issue.
I raised the issue of "reset packets" that contain spoofed IP addresses. These reset packets are like error messages and are what actually cause the P2P upload to stop and then delay. "We are working within the constraints of P2P protocol," one executive said. "The only way today that’s possible [slowing down P2P transmissions], is to work within the parameters of TCP" which dictate the use of reset packets. (As an aside, Princeton's Ed Felten suggests that using reset packets for this purpose is just bad for the Internet.)
Finally, I asked about the reported blocking by Comcast of Lotus Notes. On this point they were extremely apologetic. "It was absolutely unintentional and we had a bug in our software and it was quickly repaired."
After undergoing days of widespread drubbing for not explaining themselves very well, Comcast was very forthcoming with me and seemed sincerely interested in clearing up this mattter. It may be a little too late to yank back the hotheads for a calmer discussion of these issues, but at least Comcast is now trying to explain itself.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 3:35 PM | Print | Comments (3)The 463's Sean Garrett tipped me off to another fun poll conducted by his firm in conjunction with Zogby International. The survey of around 10,000 adults found out lots of interesting things that we probably didn't need to know in the first place, such as:
-- Around 11% of respondents said they would be "very likely" or "somewhat likely" to implant a device into their brains that enable them to use their minds to access the Internet if it could be done safely? Aside from the fact that the 463 is spinning this statistic as a low number ("only 11%" they say), who thought up this question?
--Around 25% of respondents think the Internet is a substitute for a significant other, at least for short periods of time.
On a more serious note, the poll also found an uncomfortably high but still minority level of support for government regulations that involve Internet content. Around 29% of the respondents think that TV-type indecency and obscenity regulations should be applied to the Internet and 25% think a ratings system should apply to Internet content.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 1:22 PM | Print | Comments (0)Google is pushing deeper into the TV business under a new pact with TV viewing measurement powerhouse Nielsen. Under the alliance, Nielsen will combine its demographic data sets with Google's second-by-second ad viewing measurement skills to offer advertisers more compelling information on who -- and, more importantly, who isn't -- watching TV ads.
Google has been running its ad measurement system with DBS provider EchoStar since May, pulling data out of the satellite subscribers set-tops. Advertisers seem pleased by the more accurate and comprehensive viewership reports generated by the search giant. Nielsen's participation can only enhance the value of Google's data and in a dream world all multichannel video providers would follow EchoStar's lead.
In the real world, however, Google is going to need all the luck it can get if it wants cable operators to play along. (EchoStar is not a cable operator, as the New York Times article on the alliance incorrectly suggests.)
Just ask Microsoft. The Redmond software giant has pumped billions of dollars into the U.S. cable industry since the late-1990s, all in an effort to get cable operators to deploy its interactive TV software system inside customers' set-top boxes. What has Microsoft gotten for all its money and labors? Um, not much of anything.
Why? Because cable operators like to control their suppliers and Microsoft isn't easily controlled. From the get-go Microsoft never stood a chance with cable operators because it never grasped this simple fact, this basic element of the industry's DNA. Cable operators were quite happy to take Microsoft's money and publicly made loud encouraging noises about the company.
In the end, however, nobody (by nobody I mean the big guys -- Comcast, Time Warner, Cablevision, Cox) deployed Microsoft's TV platform. It didn't help that the software sucked, at least from a cable engineer's perspective.
Google's ad-tracking system, on the other hand, obviously doesn't suck. But that doesn't matter. No cable company will let Google inside its customers set-top boxes no matter how much more ad revenue could be generated. To do so would be giving a very powerful company, with a market cap far greater than any single cable company, great leverage over a very important part of cable's business -- advertising.
Moreover, cable operators are notoriously cheap. In the extremely unlikely event that a major operator would cut a deal with Google, it would do so only under terms that might represent a new low for Google.
Barring some catastrophic event or substantial market shift that greatly weakens the U.S. cable industry, Google is going to have to develop its TV-based ad business without the help of the top cable companies.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:52 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Faced with a lengthy legal battle that could have dragged out the FCC's auction of 700 MHz spectrum, Verizon Wireless has dropped its appeal of the Commission's auction rules. In mid-September, Verizon Wireless filed suit in the U.S. Court of the Appeals for the District of Columbia over the open access requirements built into the FCC's 700 MHz spectrum auction rules.
The court, however, rejected Verizon's request to fast-track the litigation so that it gets resolved by the time the auctions start in January. The news is good for Google, and a host of non-telco parties, who lobbied for the open access provisions. The field is now clear for a very interesting auction process and all that remains is to figure out who is bidding and how much.
A recap of where some of the would-be bidders now stand:
--Google is still sitting on the fence, despite its earlier statement that it will "probably" bid for the spectrum even though the FCC didn't go far enough on open access.
--Microsoft says it has no interest.
--AT&T will bid but is scaling back on its bidding ambitions in the wake of its recent purchase of Aloha.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:04 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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