Amazon Prime Needs More Digital Benefits
15 Feb 2012 12:29am GMT Bloomberg has "three people familiar with the matter" reporting that Amazon has fewer than half as many Amazon Prime subscribers as analysts thought. Prime is a $79-per-year program that offers two-day shipping on all orders, as well as streaming digital video. Analysts thought it had 10 million or more subscribers, but Bloomberg's sources say it's more like 3 to 5 million. Sponsor That's a bummer for Amazon analysts and investors, who were already let down by its quarterly earnings miss...
How Developers Are Shaping the Future of Music
15 Feb 2012 12:15am GMT That the music industry has radically changed in the last decade is a serious understatement, if not too cliche to mention. Technology has altered everything from the creation and distribution of recorded music, upending retailers, studios and business models across the industry. But it's not all bad news. Music isn't dying so much as evolving, and the landscape is already beginning to look quite different. Not long ago, the professional music industry involved a complex but fixed set of...
Zynga's Success Depends On Play
15 Feb 2012 12:10am GMT Today Zynga announced its fourth quarter earnings and 2011 financial results. Zynga now makes the top five games played on Facebook. Its non-GAAP earnings per share were five cents, or $37.1 million for the quarter. But even though it had a 59% gain in sales, it posted a loss for the period. If Zynga is going to succeed, FarmVille has to lose its super uncool factor. And "play" must become a completely mainstream behavior that's as acceptable as buying $30 t-shirts at Urban Outfitters. "We...
It's PingFederate 6.6 Versus "Identity as a Service"
15 Feb 2012 12:00am GMT It's a demonstrated fact that as cloud application users find themselves logging on more and more often, they tend to oversimplify their passwords in an effort to avoid writing them all down someplace. It doesn't help that many IT shops' first course of action is to standardize identity around social networks such as Facebook, making these public repositories into the lynchpins of private networks' security strategies. This morning's rollout by Ping Identity of a new point release for its...
When Will Apple Peak?
14 Feb 2012 11:30pm GMT Apple shares set another all-time high today, closing above $509 for the first time ever. The sky's the limit, it seems, as expectations build around Apple's new iPad, due next month, and on the heels of a crazy record holiday quarter. And here's an amazing thing: Even with Apple's size and momentum, there's still plenty of room left for growth. In its most important markets - mobile phones and personal computers - Apple is still being dramatically outsold by competitors. That in mind, it's...