

Social networking apps moved up the same number of steps in the rankings to the No. The category moved up to the third most popular type of app last year, after being ranked seventh in 2012. App Annie, an analytics company that monitors app rankings, found music app revenue jumped 77 percent last year from 2012, in a review of app data.

Music apps pumped up the volume - and dollars - in 2013Īn influx of new music apps may be raising the competition, but they're raising money as well. But in the long term, can Apple sustain its community of loyal users without becoming a more transparent organization? And can Bloomberg really emerge as âœthe worldâ™s most influential news organizationâ without going social? Bloomberg is determined to reinvent the news business. Both came to save ailing industries, ripe for innovation: Apple reinvented the music industry and the Smart Phone market. Secrecy, compliance, top-down hierarchies, rigid communication policies, and walled gardens are characteristics that may be somewhat outdated in this era, and yet they seem to be the very cornerstones of Appleâ™s and Bloombergâ™s success as the two firms thrive as the surprise champions of their respective categories. Apple and Bloomberg, in some ways, are the antidotes to a marketplace that â" propelled by the forces of the Social Web â" is becoming increasingly atomized, hyper-distributed, open, and transparent.

Apple, as a company, does not engage, and Bloomberg even discourages its employees to engage. Bloomberg is buying attention to open up new sources of revenue, Apple might be selling it.The two brands have one last trait in common: They are not really embracing social media, to put it mildly. Appleâ™s âœterminals,â on the other hand, are its iTunes store and its user interfaces, and the recent patent application indicates that the company might explore the exploitation of attention generated through these properties. And both have a strong brand to extend â" and to lose.With the acquisition of BusinessWeek, Bloombergâ™s strategic trajectory is clear: Owning a proprietary technology platform (it sold 300,000 terminals to date), the company is looking for ways to reach more potential buyers (and sell premium services). Both are distributing content to raise demand for their products. Both Apple and Blooomberg create value by heavily relying on network effects within an ecosystem that they tightly control. Both have strong communities driven by the Three Câ™s of Communities-connectivity, content, and context-and both are wondering which of these parameters they can exploit more aggressively without jeopardizing the integrity of the community that is the foundation of their business. Because this technology would be embedded in the innermost core of the device, the ads could appear on the screen at any time, no matter what one is doing.â As Stross points out, other brands went down this path before and utterly failed, and he is stunned that Apple, if it is serious about this technology, seems to be willing to risk its reputation of consumer-friendly âœcool.âOne story can be read in the context of the other: Bloomberg and Apple not only share a zealously rigid culture and a âœwalled gardenâ business model based on selling high-grade packages at a premium price they are also both media companies. The technology can freeze the device until the user clicks a button or answers a test question to demonstrate that he or she has dutifully noticed the commercial message.
#Quicktime player download for android for free#
A few pages later, Digital Domain columnist Randall Stross reveals Appleâ™s pending patent application for a new advertising pop-up technology that forces users of devices and web sites to acknowledge the reception of the commercial message.What Apple calls âœenforcement routineâ is basically a radical ad-based model that offers consumers to use Appleâ™s products and services for free or at a discount if they âœwatch ads they may not want to watch.â Stross writes: âœIts distinctive feature is a design that doesnâ™t simply invite a user to pay attention to an ad-it also compels attention.

One is Bloomberg, the financial data juggernaut that has enough cash to aspire to become âœthe worldâ™s most influential news organization.â The company has placed its bets on the acquisition of the venerable BusinessWeek, trusting that it will broaden its reach into a mainstream business audience. Reading the business section of yesterday's New York Times, you couldn't help but notice the juxtaposition of two seemingly different companies, which, at second glance, have more in common that you might think. Apple, Bloomberg: Two media brands in the social era
