Owner of OpenTV slaps Netflix with patent lawsuit

 

By Samantha R. Selman

 

The owner of interactive television pioneer OpenTV sued Netflix Inc on Wednesday, alleging the company infringed on patents that cover technology underpinning the fast-growing Internet video sector.

Switzerland-based Kudelski SA, which owns OpenTV, said in its lawsuit that Netflix infringed on seven U.S. patents covering aspects of over-the-top TV technology (OTT), including: the use of viewer information to make recommendations; digital rights management; and video playback.

Kudelski tried for about a year to encourage Netflix to discuss licensing its patents, but the video streaming company has so far not played ball, according to the lawsuit, which was filed on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, a common venue for patent cases.

“Companies like Netflix have, in essence, stood on the shoulders of giants, largely focusing their R&D efforts on aggregating these previously patented technologies and using them to provide a rich customer experience,” Kudelski said in the complaint.

Netflix spokesman Joris Evers declined to comment.

Netflix shares fell 1.7 percent to close at $93.9785 on Wednesday.

The suit comes amid a boom in digital TV shows and movies delivered over the Internet to smart TVs, tablets and smart phones. Netflix, whose iconic red envelopes have come to symbolize the DVD delivery-by-mail market, introduced video streaming in 2007, 10 years after the company was founded, and quickly grew into a market leader.

But the market is getting crowded, and Netflix is being chased by Amazon.com Inc and Wal-Mart Stores Inc’s Vudu service, as well as streaming video website Hulu, which is owned by Walt Disney Co, News Corp and Comcast Corp.

Apple Inc, the world’s largest computer maker by market value, is also widely expected to enter the smart TV market, spurring further growth.

The Internet TV sector shares some attributes of the smartphone business, with over a decade of innovation and patents produced by companies that are no longer dominant.

Grant Moss, CEO of patent broker and advisory firm Adapt IP Ventures, expects a repeat of the recent smartphone patent wars, but on a smaller scale.

“The frequency of these cases will increase dramatically” because of recent, high-profile Internet video content distribution deals, new ways of making money in the sector and new entrants,” Moss said.

“But I don’t see the financial value of the individual cases being as significant as those in the smartphone market,” he added.

Kudelski, which has developed and acquired a range of movie and digital TV technologies over several decades, generates more than $700 million in annual revenue and employs about 3,000 people worldwide. The company is a player in streaming video by virtue of its 2010 acquisition of San Francisco-based OpenTV.

OpenTV, which began in 1996 as a joint venture between Thomson Multimedia and Sun Microsystems, develops software that helps run more than 200 million TV set-top boxes. It competes with NDS, which was acquired by Cisco Systems Inc for $5 billion in July.

Thomson Multimedia is not related to Thomson Reuters.

In May, Kudelski hired Joe Chernesky from Intellectual Ventures, a patent investment firm, to run an intellectual property unit managing a portfolio of more than 3,000 of the company’s patents. OpenTV owns more than 800 of these patents.

“We have been developing technologies for over 20 years to enable the delivery of video content and have an early and broad patent portfolio in the field,” said Chernesky. “We intend to aggressively defend our patents.”

NETFLIX PATENTS

Netflix owns 14 patents that focus mostly on technology supporting its DVD-by-mail business, such as online ordering and assembling an online movie queue. The company has one U.S. patent with claims related to video streaming, while Amazon has 22 U.S. patents with claims related to multimedia streaming, according to an early November review conducted by patent advisory and research firm Envision IP.

It usually takes several years to win approval for patents to support new technology, which is whyNetflix currently has more intellectual property backing its older business, according to Envision IP founder Maulin Shah.

Shah said Netflix has 32 pending patent applications that cover technologies to improve on-demand streaming video delivery. Netflix earlier this year also hired T.J. Angioletti, Oracle Corp’s chief intellectual property counsel, to help with its patent push.

Still, pending patents are usually of limited use in patent litigation and it is unclear whether Netflix’s applications will be approved, Shah added.

“It doesn’t really help them in lawsuits because they can’t use pending patents to counter-sue and fight back,” Shah said.

The lawsuit follows a string of negative news surrounding Netflix over the last year, including missed subscriber growth targets, an ill-fated attempt to split the DVD and streaming operations and a swooning stock price.

However, Netflix shares jumped earlier in December after the company unveiled a first-of-its-kind movie deal with Disney.

Kodak in $525 million patent deal, eyes bankruptcy end

By Richard Best

Eastman Kodak Co agreed to sell its digital imaging patents for about $525 million, a key step to bringing the photography pioneer out of bankruptcy in the first half of 2013.

The deal for the 1,100 patents allows Kodak to fulfill a condition for securing $830 million in financing.

The patent deal was reached with a consortium led by Intellectual Ventures and RPX Corp, and which includes some of the world’s biggest technology companies, which will license or acquire the patents.

Those companies are Adobe Systems Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Apple Inc, Facebook Inc, Fujifilm, Google Inc, Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, HTC Corp, Microsoft Corp, Research In Motion Ltd, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Shutterfly Inc, according to court documents.

Kodak still must sell its personalized and document-imaging businesses as part of the financing package, and also has to resolve its UK pension obligation.

Kodak said the patent deal puts it on a path to emerge from Chapter 11 in the first half of 2013.

“Our progress has accelerated over the past several weeks as we prepare to emerge as a strong, sustainable company,” said Antonio Perez, chairman and chief executive of the Rochester, New York-based company.

The patent portfolio was expected to be a major asset for Kodak when it filed for bankruptcy in January. An outside firm had estimated the patents could be worth as much as $2.6 billion.

Kodak’s patents hit the market as intellectual property values have soared and technology companies have plowed money into patent-related litigation.

For example, last year Nortel Networks sold 6,000 wireless patents in a bankruptcy auction for $4.5 billion and earlier this year Google spent $12.5 billion for patent-rich Motorola Mobility.

But Kodak’s patent auction dragged on beyond the initial expectation that it would be wrapped up in August. One patent specialist blamed those early, overly optimistic valuations, which he said encouraged Kodak’s team to set their sights too high.

“Unfortunately (Kodak management) was misled into thinking it was worth billions of dollars and it wasn’t,” said Alex Poltorak, chairman of General Patent Corp, a patent licensing firm. “I think they sold them at a very good price.”

He said after Google acquired Motorola, the search engine company no longer needed patents at any price, deflating the intellectual property market.

Kodak traces its roots to the 19th century and invented the handheld camera. But it has been unable to successfully shift to digital imaging.

It will likely be a different company when it exits bankruptcy, out of the consumer business and focused instead on providing products and services to the commercial imaging market.

The patent sale is subject to approval by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan.

The Kodak bankruptcy case is in Re: Eastman Kodak Co. et al, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York, No. 12-10202.

It’s All About Digital in the Media Business

By Richard Best

In 2013 the media Industry will be all about going digital.

Media giants will invest in web video, as marketers look to DVR-proof ads.

The media giants will jump on an explosion of original web video. With Time Warner taking a stake in web studio Maker, and game-oriented Machinima expanding and preparing for a potential IPO, we’ll see these next generation studios draw more advertising dollars and more eyeballs on Google’s YouTube. The traditional media companies will double down on efforts to deal with the fact that everything—other than sports and live events—is threatened by DVR and the explosion of other content options. And those sports costs will continue to skyrocket.

Distribution wars: content anywhere, anytime, with any model.

Consumers will benefit from an unprecedented number of companies fighting to distribute content. Joining veterans Netflix and Hulu, Amazon will push to sell its unlimited streaming “Prime” offering, Microsoft’s Xbox will expand into selling video, and Apple’s iTunes could even offer an unlimited streaming option. Even Verizon’s”Redbox Instant” and Wal-mart’s Vudu will push for a piece of the distribution pie. Next year media companies will cash in on all this competition for their content. But beyond 2013, when these players duke it out, some of them won’t make it.

The music industry gets its mojo back.

The music industry will be new and improved, as Apple innovates, launching “iTunes Radio,” a Spotify-like service to keep up with that fast-growing competitor. They’ll be joined by Microsoft, which will want to grow its new Xbox Music options and Google’smusic store. All these options will add up to more revenue for artists. Some of the biggest names will go rogue and keep control of their music distribution – like Taylor Swift has — to make sure people buy songs instead of just streaming for free, with lower-margin ads.

Publishing industry shakeup yields fewer, stronger players.

The book and newspaper publishing world is heading toward shakeup and consolidation. With Rupert Murdoch spinning off his publishing assets, he’ll shop for acquisitions — like the LA Times and Chicago Tribune. And on the heels of the Random House and Penguin merger, expect more publishing houses on the block, as media giants look for economies of scale in an e-book world.

100Feed: Beware of Sites Offering Online Certification

ABOUT W3SCHOOLS

Before I tell you about my personal experience with W3Schools (a company based in Norway), you should know that W3Schools.com is not affiliated with the W3C in any way. Members of the W3C have asked W3Schools to cut off any connection with their name, and they have refused to do so.

W3Schools offers courses and certificates for web development; the value of those certificates is highly debatable. No employer recognizes or respects W3Schools certificates. W3Schools has absolutely no authority over the technologies for which they claim to provide certification.

At first I believed this website would provide completely accurate information; and who would offer a certificate for $95.00 if their exams and quizzes weren’t completely accurate? The truth is, this site is completely inaccurate. Their exams are flawed. On some exams, correct answers are counted as incorrect! You can read more about this at http://w3fools.com/ where they provide proof to the above claims.

W3Schools robs you of your time and money. They do not allow their viewers to submit corrections anywhere on their site (most websites do, even my blog has this option). The truth is, if they don’t give you any type of schedule, they make you pay more than $50 for a certificate, and they don’t allow you to submit corrections, chances are they’re bad news.

MY EXPERIENCE

On January 28, 2012 I paid $95.00 for an exam that, if passed, would grant me a CSS certificate from W3Schools. W3Schools allows two attempts; if you fail the first, you have another chance to pass it. In their Terms of Service they state that only the best of the two attempts counts. One has to receive a score of at least 75% to pass. On the first attempt (January 28), I earned a failing grade of 49 correct answers out of a possible 70. Next to this on the results page was 58%, which is clearly inaccurate. On the second attempt (September 7), I earned a passing grade of 58 correct answers out of a possible 70. The percentage was again incorrect (this does not equal 78%). The results page, however, indicated I had failed the exam.

The next morning, on September 8, 2012, I sent an email to exam@w3schools.com stating this:

Dear Mr. Kai Jim Refsnes,

On September, 7, 2012, I took my second attempt at the CSS Certification exam. At the end of the seventy-question exam, it alerted me that I had “failed”. However, it says that the score required is 75%. My results showed that I earned 78% on the second attempt, which would be a passing grade if “the best of the two attempts counts”. Despite this, the results page indicates that I have failed. I paid $95.00 (USD) for the exam on January 28, 2012. Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Samantha R. Selman

He responded to my father on September 12, 2012:

Hello

I have looked into the matter of your concern, and I appreciate you contacting me regarding this matter. Your daughter participated in our CSS Certification exam on both January 28, 2012 and September 8, 2012. Her first exam attempt shows a score of 35 correct answers of a total 70. Her second attempt however; 48 of 70. Unfortunately, she only earned 68,5% on her second attempt. And a 75% score was required to pass.. The attached file you sent me has clearly been manipulted.

My reply was this:

Mr. Refsnes,

In an email you sent to my father, you accused me of manipulating the attached file. My family and I do not appreciate your false accusations or the multiple mistakes in your website’s code that apparently have not been fixed. I witnessed the final score with my own eyes and took a snapshot of my results immediately after the exam. It showed a failed grade of 49 of a possible 70 on attempt one (the percentage is also incorrect) and a passing grade of 58 of a possible 70 on attempt two (the percentage is incorrect though). I do not blame this error on you, but I do blame it on an error in your code. I did not manipulate this snapshot; if you can access my results, I would appreciate a snapshot being emailed to me, because I can no longer access my account on your website. I look forward to your response so I can prevent my father from contacting the FTC; I do not want any problems with your company, I simply want the error in your code fixed and my truthful results emailed to me. Thank you for your time and hopefully this problem can be resolved quickly.

Sincerely,
Samantha R. Selman

I am not upset because they claim I failed. I am infuriated because they accused me of lying after I provided proof that their system says I passed! The error in the percentages make me question if the results provided are correct; but if they submit results to their customers and present their site as being completely accurate, and the results page claims I passed the test, I should receive a certificate. If it is revealed that their code is to blame for this error, I hope they will review their code and fix the problem. If it is not their code, I would at least like a refund and an apology. For me to pay $95 for an inaccurate exam and an insult is ridiculous!

WHAT TO DO AND WHERE TO GO INSTEAD

As far as certification goes, certification is not required in most cases. Facebook, Google, and Twitter do not require certification from their employees. They do, however, test them (and no, they don’t use W3Schools as their testing platform). If you have a job interview with Google and they ask you to prove that you can “code”, they won’t give you a multiple choice exam. They’ll place you in front of a computer or in front of a drawing tablet and ask you to write the code – actual code that works. W3Schools does not teach you how to do this – they teach you how to answer multiple choice questions.

If they have manipulated your results, or your results are inaccurate, you can always contact the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) and file a complaint at http://www.ic3.gov/complaint/default.aspx . If you have a story similar to mine, feel free to share in the comment section below. If W3Schools is scamming its customers, people need to know about it. No one else needs to be victimized by this company.

If you think W3Schools is the only website where you can become certified after completing courses and an exam, think again. There are many more online sources that are accurate and free. These are a few alternate sources to W3Schools that are free. Their information seems accurate, plus they don’t have sites setting up campaigns against them (which is always a good sign.)

Open Source Tutorials http://www.opensourcetutorials.com/tutorials/Client-Side-Coding/

Better Programmer (Java Certification) provides a free test and a certificate if you pass their exam. Their test is based on real code. http://www.betterprogrammer.com/

E-Learning Center (oh, did I mention it is Better Business Bureau accredited?)
http://www.e-learningcenter.com/free.htm

Opera Web Standard Curriculum
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/1-introduction-to-the-web-standards-cur/#toc

Google Code University http://code.google.com/edu/submissions/html-css-javascript/

Sitepoint http://reference.sitepoint.com/css

The actual W3C http://www.w3.org/wiki/HTML/Elements

Mozilla’s developer network https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs

100Feed: ‘We Know Your House’ Posts Photos Of Your Home To Expose Twitter Risks

By Gerry Smith

One Twitter user wrote cheerfully “I’m at home sweet home Accounts.”

“In a connected society like today, people share way too much about themselves, which has never been a good thing,” the site’s creators said in an e-mail.

“The site was created to show its really dumb to check in at home, or say you’re at home with locations enabled,” they added. “People need to understand this, whether they like it or not, and a site of this nature attracts attention and gets results.”

Though they consider their site to be a public service, the site’s creators admit they initially went too far. When it first launched, they left users’ full Twitter handles and street addresses visible. After re-launching on Thursday, the site now partially censors that information, and only displays information from the past hour before deleting it to protect the users privacy, according to its creators.

WeKnowYourHouse.com is not the only site drawing attention to the security risks of over-sharing. The website “PleaseRobMe.com” uses similar techniques, but to do the opposite: to show when you’re not at home.

Its goal is to remind users of the potential dangers of posting about being away from home by aggregating location check-ins to create a list of empty homes that could be “new opportunities” for bank robbers.

The fact that people share too much about themselves on social media isn’t new. But the possible risks of doing so generated fresh headlines last week when the daughter of PC magnate Michael Dell posted a photo of her brother on the family jet.

The picture drew attention to how Alexa Dell often detailed her every move on Twitter, even broadcasting the exact time, date, location of her family. Her Twitter account was later shut down.

One security expert said the incident demonstrated how Twitter, in particular, raises concerns by instantly broadcasting users’ location information.

“You get that GPS location of exactly where you are,” Jason Thorsett, the director of operations at bodyguard firm Custom Protective Services, told BusinessWeek. “It’s just insane.”

100Feed: Weird Stuff From Craigslist

By Jane Zuckerberg

One can always find some pretty bizarre things for sale while surfing Craigslist. Sometimes, though, the same creepy things seem to crop up again and again in different forms. For example, there is no doubt that every week you can and will find very strange weaponry for sale, from throwing stars to swords replicated after famous movie props. But this week’s dose of weird weaponry takes it to a whole new level: framed knives wall art. A little unsettling, right? This unique decor is not quite the piece we’d pick to compliment our living rooms, but hey, to each their own. And this is just one of the nine weird Craigslist items we found for sale this week. Here are some more below!

I don’t know about you, but I would not want that above my bed.

When we think of a mini-bar we’d like in our home, we typically don’t picture it being inside a…knight’s helmet. But this is definitely a conversation piece, just really not one we want to have in our homes.

The weirdest thing we find about this ad is not the statue itself (although it’s not your average lawn ornament). It’s the fact it’s for sale for $5,000. Yes, we are dead serious. No takers? Really, that’s shocking.

For some reason we’re still surprised when we come across a seller who advertises something this strange as yard art or lawn ornaments. I mean, come on, really? Whose yard, the grim reaper?

If you don’t recognize what this is, well then thank you, you’ve just made us feel that much older. Wait, is this now being considered an antique? Oh gosh, we hope not. But seriously, of all the strange things people like to keep in their homes, why a pay phone? Do you have any idea of the amount of germs that are likely lingering on this thing?

First of all, the seller advertises this as a “pony horse statue.” Well, which is it, a pony or a horse? Okay, regardless, the gripping stare on this animal has us wondering what is possessing it. The somber-looking background in this photo doesn’t help us picture it sitting pretty at our place either. Pass.

Technically the seller is offering up three food grinders as a set, but the fact that one of them is rusty and disgusting just doesn’t have us jumping at the opportunity. Can you imagine actually using this to grind meat? It’s definitely a gnarly case of food poisoning just waiting to happen.

We can’t believe there is actually a magazine like this! “Weird New Jersey” is apparently a paranormal travel guide telling tales of legends and ghost stories…specific to New Jersey? We can’t imagine the crazy antics within these issues and to be honest, we kind of wish we could take a peek.

The seller is actually not getting rid of this gem, darn. They are just showcasing it for us, so we know why they are searching for scraps of metal. Well, now that we know it’ll be going to something like this, we’ll round up the scraps we’ve got lying around…

100Feed: ACLU Files Lawsuit Against Cyber Bullies

By Richard Best

(LAKE COUNTY, Ind.) — The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against an Indiana middle school for expelling three students who allegedly threatened to kill other classmates on Facebook. The ACLU suit says the girls’ right to free speech was violated and the use of emoticons and “LOL” showed they were only joking.

The three students, all 14-year-old girls, were expelled from Griffith Middle School in Lake County, Ind. in early February following comments they’d made on Facebook about “whom [among their classmates] they would kill, and how they would accomplish this feat, if they had the opportunity,” according to the lawsuit filed at the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Indiana.

The controversy began after school on the afternoon of Jan. 24, when one of the girls posted a Facebook status update “concerning her disdain for cutting herself while shaving her legs,” according to the court documents. The update was only visible to that particular girl’s Facebook friends. Then the three girls began commenting on the status update from their personal home computers, allegedly joking about various topics in some 70 comments that were posted in the span of two hours, according to Gavin Rose, the ACLU of Indiana attorney representing the girls.

The conversation then turned to which of their classmates they’d like to kill, but Rose says that because the girls peppered their comments with smiley-face emoticons and Internet expressions like “LOL” indicating laughter, they should not have been taken seriously by the school.

“It was done so in an entirely jestful fashion, as exemplified by the fact that when you are serious about something, you don’t follow it up with ‘LOL,’” Rose told ABC News.

The lawsuit alleges that no one, including the girls, mentioned the Facebook conversation at school the next day, but that on the day after that, the mother of one of the girls’ classmates showed a printed transcript to school administrators. The girls were each called to the school administrator’s office and suspended for 10 days “with recommendation to expel.”

Following their suspension, the school held a formal expulsion hearing, where the three girls and their parents were present. An “expulsion examiner” reviewed the facts and ultimately recommended that the girls should be expelled, according to court documents. The girls will be allowed to return to the school district in the fall as ninth graders, but will miss the rest of their eighth grade school year.

Griffith Middle School principal Edward Skaggs told ABC News that the school would not comment on the case, and directed inquiries to the district’s legal representatives.

The school has 21 days to respond to the plaintiffs’ lawsuit.

According to Rose, one of the students named by the girls in their conversation submitted a letter to the expulsion examiner, saying that he didn’t think the girls should be kicked out of school, and that he’d understood what they’d meant.

“It was the type of conversation that every eighth grader has had with their friends,” said Rose, but with the growth of social media, “these personal conversations are suddenly available to school administrators.”

The school’s right to control speech that didn’t take place on school grounds depends on whether the girls’ conversation presented a “material and substantial disruption,” according to Ruthann Robbson, a constitutional law expert and professor at the City University of New York School of Law.

While the school has a reason to be concerned about death threats given the spate of suicides connected to online bullying, Robbson says the off-campus nature of the girls’ conversation makes it tough to determine whether they presented a substantial disruption at school, particularly given recent cases that have favored the protected speech of students, not a school’s right to curtail it.

100Feed: Teens on Facebook More Likely to Abuse Drugs and Alcohol

By Richard Best

A new survey suggest that teens in the United States who use social networking sites and watch “suggestive” TV shows are more likely to use drugs and alcohol than teens who have little to no exposure to this type of media.

With the survey making note of “social networking sites”, this will obviously imply that the use of Facebook was the main area of study since Facebook is the world’s most popular social networking site.

According to HealthDay.com, the survey included more than 1,000 youths from around the nation aged 12 to 17 and about half of their parents. On a typical day, about 70 percent of teens said they used social networking sites.

Social network users were five times more likely to report using tobacco (10 percent versus 2 percent), three times more likely to say they used alcohol (26 percent versus 9 percent) and twice as likely to admit using marijuana (13 percent versus 7 percent).

Facebook not the cause, just an association

The survey is quick to point out that the findings are not suggesting that Facebook is the cause of teen drinking and smoking, only that the use of alcohol and tobacco by teens on Facebook is elevated above teens who are not using the social networking site.

Other finds from the survey:

• Nearly one in five children reported being cyber-bullied, meaning someone had posted mean or embarrassing things about them on a social networking site. Teens who have been cyber-bullied are more than twice as likely to use tobacco, alcohol and marijuana.
• Teens whose parents don’t “agree completely” with each other on what to say to their teen about drug use are more than three times more likely to use marijuana than teens whose parents agree completely on what to say about drug use.
• Teens whose parents do not agree completely with each other on what to say to their teen about drinking alcohol are twice as likely to use alcohol than teens whose parents agree.

100Feed: Parents On Facebook To Blame For Stock Price Woes, Analyst Says

By Samantha R. Selman

It was another poor showing for Facebook last week as its stock price hit a new low Friday, dispiriting shareholders already frustrated by lower-than-anticpated profits. Billions in shareholder value was erased as the market value of Mark Zuckerberg’s flagship fell to nearly half of the $104 billion target set in May when the company went public, the Mercury Newsreports.
But as theories abound over what exactly ails the social networking behemoth, one analyst blames an unexpected group: parents.
“Kids are spending less time on Facebook, as their Parents are also now on the Facebook,” Trip Chowdry, managing director of equity research at Global Equities Research, LLC, wrote in an email to CNN. “It is a psychological reality, that after a certain age, kids are less inclined to hangout where their Parents are.”

In April, Facebook surpassed the 900 million active-user mark. But while the number of users that engaged the site at least once a month continued to grow in the first quarter of 2011, the growth rate is noticeably slowing down. However, Facebook isn’t the the only company struggling. Social games superstar Zynga, music streaming site Pandora and daily deal website Groupon are all currently trading below their public offering price. Collectively, investors have lost $39 billion since those companies — including Facebook — went public, CNBC reports.

So can Facebook redeem itself in the eyes of the America’s youth? Probably not, according to Chowdry. “FB may be cool again for the Younger people, if FB bans Parents from FB, but that is impossible,” he wrote in the email. Instead, Chowdry predicts users will find a new place to “hangout.” In February, the Associated Press reported that many teens, fed up with friend requests from parents, uncles and grandparents, have begun to rely more heavily on Twitter for their social networking needs.

“I love twitter, it’s the only thing I have to myself … cause my parents don’t have one,” Britteny Praznik, a 17-year-old who lives outside Milwaukee, was quoted as tweeting. Twitter accounts are more anonymous than Facebook profiles; they are easy to use, and the 140 character limit is similar in length to the average text message, the Associated Press notes. In addition, the more fluid set-up and ability to easily manage several accounts makes it easier to avoid people some would rather not interact with in their digital space.

100Feed: Facebook Is The New Email

By Samantha R. Selman

After five years on Facebook, Maxine Guttmann, 15, has lost interest in the site. She visits Facebook less frequently than ever — mostly to instant message with friends — and while she updates her Tumblr blog daily, it’s been “weeks” since she’s shared on Facebook.

“When I was little, Facebook was the coolest thing to do. And I as got older, it got stupider and I have more commitments,” said Guttmann, a rising junior in New York City. “On Tumblr, I feel like I can post all the stuff I’m interested in. On Facebook, not all my friends are interested in the same stuff I am. And a lot aren’t even my close friends anymore.”
Amid doubts following Facebook’s disappointing public offering, teens have been a bright spot for the social network. Co-founder Mark Zuckerberg might not have figured out how to maintain ad revenue momentum or adapt to cellphones, but with 93 percent of 12- to 17-year-old social media users on Facebook, it’s long been assumed this young army of digital natives would build a solid foundation for Facebook.

That foundation is looking shaky. For teens, Facebook has become the equivalent of Microsoft Outlook or AOL Instant Messenger, experts say: It has evolved from a hot hangout, to a practical and dull tool for chatting about homework or catching up with faraway friends. Bored, overwhelmed by huge friend groups and exhausted by the digital popularity contests Facebook fosters, many teens are taking refuge in social services such as Tumblr and Twitter.

Facebook is “the teenage version of email,” said Danah Boyd, an assistant researcher at New York University specializing in youth and social media. “What’s so interesting about Facebook is that it’s not interesting to [teens]. That’s a big challenge for Facebook — not because people won’t use it, but when they’re not passionate about it, you see a very different kind of user behavior than when someone is passionate about a service.”

Teens are less likely than their parents and grandparents to browse Facebook in a given month. Sixty-six percent of 12- to 17-year-olds visited Facebook in May this year, compared to 69 percent of web users between 55- and 64-years-old, and 71 percent of all Americans online, according to comScore, a digital analytics company. Other social media sites are chipping away at the time teens spend on the world’s largest social network. Though Facebook is still by far the most popular site among teens, 12- to 17-year-olds spent 77 percent of their social networking time on Zuckerberg’s site in May 2012, while the average user dedicates 85 percent of her online socializing to browsing Facebook, comScore data show.

Because marketers are eager to pitch to teens, who have disposable incomes and still-malleable shopping habits, younger users are a critical part of Facebook’s sales pitch to advertisers bankrolling Zuckerberg’s operation, experts say. 

“Any network that doesn’t figure out how to engage teens and keep them engaged is going to lose out in the next five to 10 years,” said Brian Solis, an analyst with the Altimeter Group, a research firm. “Facebook is enamored, or should be, with this group because it’s the key to Facebook’s future relevance. If they can find ways to keep teens engaged, they can keep brands engaged.”

Teens said they regularly use Facebook’s chat functionalities, yet save their best sharing for other sites. Creative status updates and personal musings are sent to Tumblr and Twitter, which allow users a degree of anonymity and the flexibility to connect with people who share their interests, rather than their location or homeroom.

Courtney Knowles, director of “Love is Louder”, a youth-focused campaign aimed at countering bullying and depression, observes that teens will share whitewashed versions of themselves on Facebook. It’s on Tumblr that the truth comes out, she said. After Facebook, Tumblr is the second most popular social networking site among teens, according to comScore. And the share of teens on Twitter doubled between 2009 and 2011 to 16 percent, a study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project shows. “The shift we’ve seen is, ‘I have a Facebook log-in and I see pictures of my friends, but Tumblr is where I spend all my time’,” said Boyd.
The sheer size of Facebook’s userbase, nearly 1 billion strong, has made it the high school cafeteria of social networks, while sites like Twitter and Tumblr have become the basement rec-room to which only a select few gain admission. Parents, notably, are excluded.

For Brandon Kaplowitz, 17, a rising senior from New Jersey, Facebook was once a “crucial way of connecting with people.” Now, he and his friends “are tiring of it.” “Facebook is supposed to be a database of who you know, but you don’t know most of those people,” said Kaplowitz. “I feel like the whole experience of Facebook has been diluted by the fact that you’re no longer connecting with friends because you have random posts from people you don’t know filling up your wall.”

Analysts blame parents for teens’ shift away from Facebook, but moms and dads, take heart: Teens’ friends are driving them crazy, too. Facebook has become an added source of drama in young people’s lives and some have shifted to more niche, anonymous social venues to escape the arguments, hurt feelings, and gossip that play out on Facebook. Passing notes in class has given way to wall posts that can be seen by thousands.

Facebook “was very annoying and I really didn’t like the social pressures of it,” said Meghan Waitzer, 17, a rising senior in Toronto who temporarily deactivated her Facebook account. “I hate the idea that when you go to school, you’re popular or not popular there, and then it continues when you get home with the ‘likes,’ comments and everything … You post a photo and just wait to see if people ‘like’ it. It’s very stressful. It shouldn’t be, but it is.”

Some teens are so desperate to be seen by their Facebook friends and rack up “likes” that they’ve developed a homegrown “mythology” for how to game Facebook’s ranking system to get the most attention, said Boyd. According to their logic, users hankering for more eyeballs will get better placement in Facebook’s News Feed if they post lots of photos, pepper status updates with brand names, and share at specific times during the day. Part of Twitter’s appeal is that the real-time feed includes all updates, from everybody, teens say.

And though stereotyped as a generation of over-sharers, teens are wary of what personal information is online and said Facebook’s privacy settings have made the site into a liability. They’ve sanitized what they share to ensure it’s savory for Facebook’s diverse crowd, and 70 percent have set up their profiles to hide information from their parents, a McAfee study found.
Yet many teens still find they constantly have to police their profiles for inappropriate comments or photos posted by their friends, which can be a headache to remove.

“What we see with teens establishing a presence on other social networks … is the desire to have the benefits of Facebook but avoid some of the risk,” said Alice Marwick, a social media researcher at Microsoft Researcher. “Because Facebook is set up to spread content through the network by default, it allows for different types of slippages.”

Much in the way adults cope with the hassle of email, teens are supplementing Facebook with more intimate forms of communication that cut out the junk. But they can’t quite quit the social network altogether. “I think if I deleted my Facebook page people would think I died,” said Waitzer.