Sajjad Purvez - Microsoft makes rapid gains in US online video market

Sajjad Purvez - An 800 lb gorilla that is Microsoft could be about to give Google a run for its money in the online video arena according to the latest comScore Video Metrix for February 2011.

Overall the data has a familiar ring to it, revealing that 170 million US Internet users watched online video content in the month for an average of 13.6 hours per viewer. The total audience engaged in more than 5.0 billion viewing sessions during the course of the month.

Yet again the status of Google Sites as the top online video content property, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com, was shown as they racked up 141.1 million unique viewers. Befitting its market dominance, Google Sites had the highest number of viewing sessions, 1.8 billion, and average time spent per viewer at 262 minutes, or 4.4 hours. However the stand out trend of the month was the leap into second place from seventh by Microsoft Sites with 48.8 million viewers, closely followed by Yahoo! Sites with 46.7 million viewers.

This was nearly matched by Facebook.com who experienced a step up due to the inclusion of an additional video serving location that was not previously credited. It will likely be further boosted in March and April by the addition of major brand video to the portfolio. VEVO, rumoured to launch in Europe, ranked fifth in the cluster of Google rivals with 45.9 million viewers.

By way of showing how far it has to go in absolute audience stakes OTT video supplier Hulu boasted 27.2 million viewers. Yet Hulu lacked in audience numbers it more than made up in terms of business and especially in ad views. In, all comScore calculated that Americans viewed 3.8 billion video ads in February, with Hulu generating the highest number of video ad impressions at more than 1.1 billion. Tremor Media Video Network ranked second overall (and highest among video ad networks) with 548.3 million ad views, followed by ADAP.TV on 396 million.

Users spent 1.7 billion minutes watching online video ads during the month, with again Hulu as the stand out delivering the highest duration of video ads at 454 million minutes. Video ads reached out to 42% of the US population, an average of 30 times during the month. Hulu also delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 48 over the course of the month.

By way of contrast, whereas the duration of the average online content video was 5.1 minutes, the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes long. Video ads accounted for 12.4% of all videos viewed and 1.2% of all minutes spent viewing video online.

Read more: Microsoft makes rapid gains in US online video market | News | Rapid TV News http://www.rapidtvnews.com/index.php/2011031811002/microsoft-makes-rapid-gains-in-us-online-video-market.html#ixzz1Gw4HnLpo

SAJJAD PURVEZ - Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss

Laszlo Bock of Google says its study found that a boss’s technical expertise was less important than “being accessible.

IN early 2009, statisticians inside the Googleplex here embarked on a plan code-named Project Oxygen.

Their mission was to devise something far more important to the future of Google Inc. than its next search algorithm or app.

They wanted to build better bosses.

So, as only a data-mining giant like Google can do, it began analyzing performance reviews, feedback surveys and nominations for top-manager awards. They correlated phrases, words, praise and complaints.

Later that year, the “people analytics” teams at the company produced what might be called the Eight Habits of Highly Effective Google Managers.

Now, brace yourself. Because the directives might seem so forehead-slappingly obvious — so, well, duh — it’s hard to believe that it took the mighty Google so long to figure them out:

“Have a clear vision and strategy for the team.”

“Help your employees with career development.”

“Don’t be a sissy: Be productive and results-oriented.”

The list goes on, reading like a whiteboard gag from an episode of “The Office.”

“My first reaction was, that’s it?” says Laszlo Bock, Google’s vice president for “people operations,” which is Googlespeak for human resources.

But then, Mr. Bock and his team began ranking those eight directives by importance. And this is where Project Oxygen gets interesting.

For much of its 13-year history, particularly the early years, Google has taken a pretty simple approach to management: Leave people alone. Let the engineers do their stuff. If they become stuck, they’ll ask their bosses, whose deep technical expertise propelled them into management in the first place.

But Mr. Bock’s group found was that technical expertise — the ability, say, to write computer code in your sleep — ranked dead last among Google’s big eight. What employees valued most were even-keeled bosses who made time for one-on-one meetings, who helped people puzzle through problems by asking questions, not dictating answers, and who took an interest in employees’ lives and careers.

“In the Google context, we’d always believed that to be a manager, particularly on the engineering side, you need to be as deep or deeper a technical expert than the people who work for you,” Mr. Bock says. “It turns out that that’s absolutely the least important thing. It’s important, but pales in comparison. Much more important is just making that connection and being accessible.”

Project Oxygen doesn’t fit neatly into the usual Google story line of hits (like its search engine) and misses (like the start last year of Buzz, its stab at social networking). Management is much squishier to analyze, after all, and the topic often feels a bit like golf. You can find thousands of tips and rules for how to become a better golfer, and just as many for how to become a better manager. Most of them seem to make perfect sense.

Problems start when you try to keep all those rules in your head at the same time — thus the golf cliché, “paralysis by analysis.” In management, as in golf, the greats make it all look effortless, which only adds to the sense of mystery and frustration for those who struggle to get better.

That caveat aside, Project Oxygen is noteworthy for a few reasons, according to academics and experts in this field.

H.R. has long run on gut instincts more than hard data. But a growing number of companies are trying to apply a data-driven approach to the unpredictable world of human interactions.

“Google is really at the leading edge of that,” says Todd Safferstone, managing director of the Corporate Leadership Council of the Corporate Executive Board, who has a good perch to see what H.R. executives at more than 1,000 big companies are up to.

Project Oxygen is also unusual, Mr. Safferstone says, because it is based on Google’s own data, which means that it will feel more valid to those Google employees who like to scoff at conventional wisdom.

Many companies, he explained, adopt generic management models that tell people the roughly 20 things they should do as managers, without ranking those traits by importance. Those models often suffer “a lot of organ rejection” in companies, he added, because they are not presented with any evidence that they will make a difference, nor do they prioritize what matters.

“Most companies are better at exhorting you to be a great manager, rather than telling you how to be a great manager,” Mr. Safferstone says.

courtesy: http://www.nytimes.com