News in Degrees: 1° June | Love Film | Hibu | Nest | Fancy | LeWeb London

1 June 2012

New Initiatives

The announcement of the 80 stations that will get WiFi have been announced this week, at the same time it has been tested, all suggesting that a roll out into the underground is going to be rolled out before August. If you want to find out if your station is 1 of the 80 you can see the list which ranges from busy central stations like Kings Cross and Waterloo to Elephant & Castle and Swiss Cottage.

LoveFilm has revealed that it is going HD with a number of its films now available in HD on PC, Mac, Xbox, Blu-ray, Samsung & LG  TVs but unfortunately PS3 is on the backburner whilst they figure it out. This has come after the news that they signed a deal with NBC Universal for exclusive content, once again bringing to the surface the competition faced by Netflix.

YouView has begun final stage trials in homes after several delays. The set-top box is backed by major British broadcasters and is chaired by Sir Alan Sugar. YouView have said that if this proves a success it will be in thousands of homes for broader testing in only 4 weeks.

Company Structure

The Yellow Pages is due to see a complete rebrand, renaming it ‘Hibu’ to signal its complete change to focus on a digital future, moving away from dying classified ads.

Apple has begun selling ‘Nest‘ the learning thermostat that was developed by Tony Fadell, (who was behind the original iPod and iPhone) in their retail stores in the US, for the price of $250.

Panasonic could be set to lose nearly half its staff at its Headquarters in Osaka, Japan. It will take it from 7000 to 3500 as part of a reorganisation. RIM has also announced that it will make significant cuts in its workforce, losing nearly 2000 jobs.

FremantleMedia has made a deal with the toy maker, Hasbro, for mobile gambling games based around Trivial Pursuit and Connect 4.

Industry Moves

Esther Soto, Head of Ecommerce at Dixons, has been poached by All Saints as the first Global Ecommerce Director.

Paul Wright, Chief Digital Officer of OMD UK Group, has been promoted to Chief Digital Officer at Omnicom Media Group UK. He will report to CEO Philippa Brown.

Stuart Handley, Director of Communications EMEA, Latin America and Canada at Dell, has left the computer hardware firm, to rejoin Purple Rabbit Communications, where he was previously a partner.

Neil Jones, ex-MD of Carat and recently consulting for the likes of AOL, has been appointed Commercial Chief of Johnston Press.

Richard Wallace, Editor of the Daily Mirror, has been made redundant following an overhall of the business. He has been at Trinity Mirror for 8 years. Editor of the Sunday Mirror, Tina Weaver was also made redundant.

Laurent Desegur, CTO at Zynga, has been poached for a new role as VP of Mobile Engineering at start-up Game Closure. He is the most senior hire in a team that has grown by 26 employees in 12 months.

Tess Alps, CEO of Thinkbox, will be the new Executive Chair. Chair of the board will be UKTV’s Julia Jordan.

John Browett, the ex-boss at Dixons who relocated to California for a new Retail Lead role at Apple, has recieved a £36m ‘golden hello’. He took over from Ron Johnson who left in June last year.

Peter Ridler, MD of Monsoon Accessorize, is leaving the business sparking a hunt for a new CEO.

Social Media

Fancy, the social platform similar to Pinterest, has released its iPhone and iPad apps this week, which also include social commerce that will prompt Pinterest to start looking at its own commerce opportunities.

Foursquare UK has partnered with American Express to offer location based deals for ‘Checking In’. The users’ card will be linked to the service so when they check into certain places, like Tesco, the option to add ‘deal to card’ will appear. Foursquare is aiming to really take off in the UK after large numbers of their US users were revealed as primarily using it for deals.

Facebook has made a new acquisition, this time its Face.com the facial recognition technology company based in Tel-Aviv. There is no information as to the cost yet but it is rumoured they spent between $80m and $100m.

Digital Product

According to BPI digital music sales have outdone CDs for the first time in Britain, now accounting for 55.5% of overall UK record revenues, for the first quarter of 2012.

IVIS Group has revealed that 44% of retailers in the UK are offering a click and collect service, with 77% of these offering the service on mobile as well as online. This came after an analysis of the top 50 retailers, according to turnover.

The Rest

LeWeb London 2012 has revealed its line up for the event, taking place on June 19th & 20th. Speakers will include Jamie Oliver, the celebrity chef, Kevin Systrom, from Instagram and Alexander Ljung from SoundCloud.

Only a few weeks ago the Angry Birds theme park in Finland was announced, now the UK is also getting one as a part of Sundown Adventureland which promises rides as well as children’s park activities such as swings and roundabout.

Enjoy the Jubilee Weekend.