Man I love spaghetti westerns.  Just watched a rather good one the other day, actually.  But even more than old westerns, I love new technology, and in today’s social news roundup we’ve got a whole dang’ wagon full of new tech.  So let’s start with the Good.

The Good:

Pay Per Channel TV?

Thanks to an antitrust lawsuit filed by Cablevision against the media titan Viacom, paying for bundled television packages may become a thing of the past.  Don’t get too excited, though.  Cablevision’s claim against Viacom is about enforcing a carriage agreement signed in December, so much isn’t likely to change in the industry immediately.

Still, the legal precedent of an antitrust judgment could open the floodgates for a pay-per-channel type of system sometime in the future – a service that consumers, set-top box manufacturers, and internet television providers have all been very enthusiastic about for some time.

LinkedIn Success Follows Market Upswing

LinkedIn, once thought to be the underdog in social media, is beating all expectations. In an environment where most social media companies are facing difficulties in the stock market, LinkedIn is thriving, with it’s stock currently at an all time high. Known to many as “the professional social network”, it has become a vital tool for many businesses. LinkedIn has three main sources of revenue, ads, its talent-solutions business, and premium consumer subscriptions. All three of these areas continue to grow quickly.

As the economy recovers, businesses are using these tools for recruiting, and professionals looking for work are finding LinkedIn extremely valuable, as they seek to grow their network. Their recent push into publishing and content aggregation could make it an even more important tool for businesses and professionals moving forward.

The Future Is Here (And Facebook & Google Are Fighting Over it

The little known entity-graph named Graph Search has already been available to select Facebook users for about a month, and unlike a normal search function, a search on Graph Search connects users to social resources, such as people and places.  Though sites like Wikipedia are indexing resources Facebook’s using for this tool, Facebook is hoping to utilize their users as a real-life version of Google’s Web Crawler.  This would turn every user into their own resource with their own level of input.

Google has already announced their own version of Graph, so expect to hear more as these applications are further developed.

Google Glass Cutting Critics

Google Glass seems like it is going to be a massive hit. Though it won’t be released until late this year around the holidays, an Ebay auction for a pair had been driven up to $15,900, more than 10 times the headset’s $1,500 asking price. Google hasn’t announced who made the list of early-adopters yet, but its clear that those early-adopters will have the choice of wearing the latest, cutting edge technology, or padding their wallets.

The Bad

Pirates Have Taken To The Streams

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According to NPD’s annual music study, the number of peer-to-peer music sharing declined 17% between 2011 and 2012. The NPD attributes these losses to the rise of free Internet streaming services like Spotify and R-dio, although the company didn’t provide numbers to compare how the streaming medium is growing.

Last year was a year of progress for the music industry, which has been battling digital piracy for over a decade. Free and legal Internet streaming services don’t have users concerned over malware and sheer convenience seems to be a large factor in why

Groupon’s Losing Gusto

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An underwhelming fourth quarter financial report for Groupon caused the company’s stock to take a beating. Analysts had expected higher revenues, and a greater earnings per share, but the group discount company fell far short of those goals.  Some speculate that this will result in the ouster of current CEO Andrew Mason, who was retained last year after it was leaked that board members at Groupon were discussing whether or not to fire him.

& The Ugly

EA Embracing Pay to Play

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EA is putting micro-transactions into all of its future games, saying “We’re building into all of our games the ability to pay for things along the way, either to get to a higher level, to buy a new character, to buy a truck, a gun, whatever it might be.” With its new focus on increasing micro-transaction revenue, EA has decided to bring the entire operation in-house. With console titles typically priced at $59.99, we’ll have to wait and see how consumers react to being asked to pull out their wallets while playing EA games, when they may have just put it away after buying the game.

Pandora Needs To Pay Bills Too

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Pandora users who enjoy the streaming radio service on their mobile devices may soon be listening to dead air, as the company is instituting a 40 hours per month limit.  However, this only affects users of its mobile applications.  Pandora is required to pay royalties for every track played, so the goal of offering free music must somehow be balanced with monetizing the platform in order to pay for it. So users who reach the cap will be offered several pricing options, asking them to pay to play further.

To keep up with this and much more news, don’t forget to watch us live and online on the Morning NewsDesk Show with Kristin Feledy.

 photo credit: icopythat via photopin cc

 photo credit: icopythat via photopin cc

 photo credit: icopythat via photopin cc