Twitter and Nielsen pair up to publish new "social TV" ratings

Nielsen Holdings NV, the television viewership measurement company, said on Monday it will partner with Twitter to publish a new set of ratings that measure chatter on Twitter about TV programming.
The new measurement, dubbed the "Nielsen Twitter TV Rating," seeks to tap into the stream of viewer commentary and armchair musings generated on "second screens" - the smartphones and tablets perched on Twitter users' laps while they watch, say, Monday Night Football or the latest episode of "Homeland" on their TVs.
The new ratings, to be launched next fall, arrive at a moment when media and advertising industry executives say they are observing a shift in TV viewing habits that include the rise of "second screen" use.
But significant questions remain for advertisers over how best to interpret the data and whether a Twitter ratings system is meaningful at all.
In September, Nielsen ratings showed that TV viewership for Viacom Inc's MTV Video Music Awards, which coincided with the Democratic National Convention, plummeted by more than 50 percent from a year ago. Yet social media chatter tripled, according to the research firm Trendrr.
Brad Adgate, an analyst at Horizon Media, said advertisers will view the Twitter ratings as a useful layer of information about a show's popularity, but it is "not going to be close to the currency" of existing ratings metrics.
"It lets producers and creative directors know if the storyline is working, like a huge focus group," Adgate said. "But I don't think you can translate comments to ratings for a show. Right now I think the bark right now is bigger than its bite."
The new ratings will measure the number of people discussing a show on Twitter, as well as those who are exposed to the chatter, to provide the "precise size of the audience and effect of social TV to TV programming," Nielsen said.
"As the experience of TV viewing continues to evolve, our TV partners have consistently asked for one common benchmark from which to measure the engagement of their programming," Chloe Sladden, Twitter's vice president of media, said in a post on the company blog on Monday. "This new metric is intended to answer that request, and to act as a complement and companion to the Nielsen TV rating."
Mark Burnett, executive producer of NBC's hit "The Voice," argued that advertisers should value programs that can attract a high level of social media engagement from viewers. Deeply embedded social media elements, such as live Twitter polls, were critical in driving "The Voice" to the top of the Tuesday night ratings among viewers between 18 to 49, Burnett said.
"If you're an advertiser, wouldn't you want to know whether people are watching this show passively or if they're actively engaged in the viewing experience?" Burnett said. "Five years from now this will make traditional television ratings seem archaic."
For Twitter, the partnership with a recognized measurement company like Nielsen emphatically punctuates a year-long effort by its media division to bring second-screen usage into the mainstream.
Twitter's convergence with television has been on display during sporting and major news events, which have provided some of the biggest viewership moments for both broadcasters and the social media company.
During the Summer Olympics in London, Twitter set up a page for the event that displayed photos from inside an event venue or athletes' tweets to complement what was being broadcast on NBC. Advertisers like Procter & Gamble Co, for instance, which advertised heavily during the Games, tried to bridge the two mediums by airing an ad on TV, then sending out a tweet soliciting viewer feedback about the ad.
As news organizations tallied votes on election night in the United States on November 6, worldwide Twitter chatter hit a peak of more than 327,000 per minute, the company said this month.

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Florida man sentenced to 10 years in "hackerazzi" case

A Florida man who pleaded guilty to hacking into the email accounts of celebrities to gain access to nude photos and private information was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a federal judge in Los Angeles on Monday.
Former office clerk Christopher Chaney, 36, said before the trial that he hacked into the accounts of film star Scarlett Johansson and other celebrities because he was addicted to spying on their personal lives.
Prosecutors said Chaney illegally gained access to email accounts of more than 50 people in the entertainment industry, including Johansson, actress Mila Kunis, and singers Christina Aguilera and Renee Olstead from November 2010 to October 2011.
Chaney, who was initially charged with 28 counts related to hacking, struck a plea deal with prosecutors in March to nine felony counts, including wiretapping and unauthorized access to protected computers.
"I don't know what else to say except I'm sorry," Chaney said during his sentencing. "This will never happen again."
Chaney was ordered to pay $66,179 in restitution to victims.
Prosecutors recommended a 71-month prison for Chaney, who faced a maximum sentence of 60 years.
TEARFUL JOHANSSON
Prosecutors said Chaney leaked some of the private photos to two celebrity gossip websites and a hacker.
Johansson said the photos, which show her topless, were taken for her then-husband, actor Ryan Reynolds.
In a video statement shown in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, a tearful Johansson said she was "truly humiliated and embarrassed" when the photos appeared online, asking Judge S. James Otero to come down hard on Chaney.
Prosecutors said Chaney also stalked two unnamed Florida women online, one since 1999 when she was 13 years old.
Chaney, a native of Jacksonville, Florida, was arrested in October 2011 after an 11-month FBI investigation dubbed "Operation Hackerazzi" and he continued hacking after investigators initially seized his personal computers.
Shortly after his arrest, Chaney told a Florida television station that his hacking of celebrity email accounts started as curiosity and later he became "addicted."
"I was almost relieved months ago when they came in and took my computer ... because I didn't know how to stop," he said.

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Massachusetts fines Morgan Stanley over Facebook IPO

 Morgan Stanley , the lead underwriter for Facebook Inc's initial public offering, will pay a $5 million fine to Massachusetts for violating securities laws governing how investment research can be distributed.
Massachusetts' top securities regulator, William Galvin, charged on Monday that a top Morgan Stanley banker had improperly coached Facebook on how to disclose sensitive financial information selectively, perpetuating what he calls "an unlevel playing field" between Wall Street and Main Street.
Morgan Stanley has faced criticism since Facebook went public in May for revealing revised earnings and revenue forecasts to select clients before the media company's $16 billion initial public offering.
This is the first time a case stemming from Morgan Stanley's handling of the Facebook offering has been settled.
Facebook had privately told Wall Street research analysts about softer forecasts because of less robust mobile revenues. A top Morgan Stanley banker coached Facebook executives on how to get the message out, Galvin said.
A Morgan Stanley spokeswoman said on Monday the company is "pleased to have reached a settlement" and that it is "committed to robust compliance with both the letter and the spirit of all applicable regulations and laws." The company neither admitted nor denied any wrongdoing.
Galvin, who has been aggressive in policing how research is distributed on Wall Street ever since investment banks reached a global settlement in 2003, said the bank violated that settlement. He fined Citigroup $2 million over similar charges in late October.
"The conduct at Morgan Stanley was more egregious," he said in an interview explaining the amount of the fine. "With it we will get their attention and begin to take steps in restoring some confidence for retail investors to invest."
Galvin also said that his months-long investigation into the Facebook IPO is far from over and that he continues to review the other banks involved. Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan also acted as underwriters. The underwriting fee for all underwriters was reported to be $176 million at the time, or 1.1 percent of the proceeds.
As lead underwriter, Morgan Stanley took in $68 million in fees from the IPO, according to a Thomson Reuters estimate.
Massachusetts did not name the Morgan Stanley banker in its documents but personal information detailed in the matter suggest it is Michael Grimes, a top technology banker who was instrumental in the Facebook IPO.
The report says the unnamed banker joined Morgan Stanley in 1995 and became a managing director in 1998, dates that correlate with Grimes' career at the firm. It also says the banker works in Morgan Stanley's Menlo Park, California, office, where Grimes also works.
Grimes did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and was not accused of any wrongdoing by name.
The state said the banker helped a Facebook executive release new information and then guided the executive on how to speak with Wall Street analysts about it. The banker, Galvin said, rehearsed with Facebook's Treasurer and wrote the bulk of the script Facebook's Treasurer used when calling the research analysts.
A number of Wall Street analysts cut their growth estimates for Facebook in the days before the IPO after the company filed an amended prospectus.
Facebook's treasurer then quickly called a number for Wall Street analysts providing even more information.
The banker "was not allowed to call research analysts himself, so he did everything he could to ensure research analysts received new revenue numbers which they then provided to institutional investors," Galvin said.
Galvin's consent order also says that the banker spoke with company lawyers and then to Facebook's chief financial officer about how to prove an update "without creating the appearance of not providing the underlying trend information to all investors."
The banker and all others involved with the matter at Morgan Stanley are still employed by the company, a person familiar with the matter said.
Retail investors were not given any similar information, Galvin said, saying this case illustrates how institutional investors often have an edge over retail investors.

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ARM security improvement to speed mobile e-commerce

British chip designer ARM Holdings and its partners Gemalto and Giesecke & Devrient have launched a new security standard for smartphones that can speed up e-commerce transactions.
Trustonic, a joint venture between the companies formed in April, said the security standard could be built into every level of a device, from the chip through the operating system to applications.
Ben Cade, Trustonic's chief executive, said it would eliminate the need for third-party devices, like bank card readers and secure ID tags, and enable content to be shared easily between devices.
He said the technology could reduce the time needed for an e-commerce transaction on a smartphone to seven seconds from the two and a half minutes typical today.
"It will enable us to trust our smart connected devices to protect us as they deliver essential services and innovative user experiences," he said.
Security is becoming increasingly important for smartphone users as more operations move from PCs to mobile devices.
Trustonic has signed up partners ranging from chipmakers NVIDIA and Samsung Electronics to payments company Mastercard and content provider 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, Cade said.

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Online shopping to breathe new life into run-down sheds

Owners of run-down warehouses on the edge of European cities could be sitting on goldmines because online shopping will force firms to seek distribution sites closer to customers who think speedy delivery is the norm.
In an increasingly fierce market where the likes of Amazon and Tesco pledge next-day or same-day delivery in specific time slots, warehouse rents could rise 40 percent over the next decade, property consultant CBRE said.
"Your industrial estate (near heavily populated areas) is the high street of the future," said Jonathan Holland, senior manager of Legal & General Property's industrial fund, which has 770 million pounds ($1.25 billion) under management.
"We are very much looking at owning warehouses around major conurbations."
Some 43 percent of European Union citizens shop online, the European Commission said in February, up from 26 percent six years ago. They were expected to fuel a 12-15 percent growth in online sales across the region over the next five years, Forrester Research predicted.
Meanwhile, falling sales in austerity-hit Britain have forced retail property values down 28 percent since end-2007, data from Investment Property Databank showed. Values in euro zone countries fell 5 percent over the same period, CBRE said.
The yield, or annual rent as a percentage of the property value, on an industrial warehouse in a good location in Europe was 7.8 percent at the end of September compared with 5.8 percent for offices and 5.2 percent for shops, CBRE said.
Industrial yields depend more on lease length and the financial strength of the tenant than location, compared with offices or shops, and would "edge downwards" where demand from retailers was strong, CBRE said.
Retailers currently favor large sites in locations away from big population centers but with good transport links.
Amazon's huge warehouses include sites in Dunfermline, Scotland and Rheinberg, Germany while Marks & Spencer will open a warehouse the size of 11 soccer fields in Castle Donington, Leicestershire, next year.
That is changing, said Amaury Gariel, managing director of CBRE's European industrial logistics team.
Places such as Croydon, 16 kilometers south of central London, strewn with empty office blocks and suffering high unemployment, and Créteil, a scruffy suburb 19 km southeast of Paris, are examples of areas that could be targeted as they are close to major highways and large local workforces, Gariel said.
Warehouse rents at such sites could rise 20-40 percent over the next decade, he said, citing the greatest demand in areas near the biggest European cities such as Amsterdam, London and Paris for sites that have typically been used by mail delivery firms and food distributors.
A tendency by governments to prioritize such areas for homes would squeeze supply and push prices higher, he said.
Retailers and property investors are at "a tipping point" in waking up to the changing real estate map for distribution points in Europe, Holland said.
Amazon is on the hunt for about 20 sheds close to British cities while Asda and Tesco are opening so-called 'dark stores' - distribution centers which look like supermarkets on the inside but are closed to customers - across Britain.
Industrial developer Prologis has bought a significant number of such sites near large towns and cities, such as Milton Keynes in Britain and Hannover in Germany, to meet future demand, European president Philip Dunne told Reuters.
Retailers face obsolescence unless they recognize how the type of property they rent needs to change, Gariel said.
"We are on the first page of the story regarding new ways to distribute goods. What happens if retailers do not recognize it? Just look at what happened to the fax and the telegram.

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Long-lived bats offer clues on diseases, aging

The bat, a reservoir for viruses like Ebola, SARS and Nipah, has for decades stumped scientists trying to figure out how it is immune to many deadly bugs but a recent study into its genes may finally shed some light, scientists said on Friday.
Studying the DNA of two distant bat species, the scientists discovered how genes dealing with the bats' immune system had undergone the most rapid change.
This may explain why they are relatively free of disease and live exceptionally long lives compared with other mammals of similar size, such as the rat, said Professor Lin-Fa Wang, an infectious disease expert at the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore who led the multi-centre study.
"We are not saying bats never get sick or never get infections. What we are saying is they handle infections a lot better," Wang said in a telephone interview.
What was missing from both species of bats was a gene segment known to trigger extreme, and potentially fatal, immune reactions to infections, called the cytokine storm.
Cytokine storms end up killing not only offending viruses in the body, but the host's own cells and tissues too.
"Viruses rarely kill the host. The killing comes from the host's immune response. So it looks like what bats are doing is depress the inflammation (cytokine storm). If we can learn that, we can design drugs to minimize the inflammation damage and control viral infection," Wang said.
The study, which saw the participation of researchers from China, Denmark, Australia and the United States, was published on Friday in the journal Science.
Compared with other mammals of similar size, bats live a long time, with lifespans of between 20 and 40 years. Rats live between 2 and 3 years, on average.
IMMUNE GENES LINKED TO FLIGHT
Interestingly, Wang and his colleagues found that the highly evolved genes that give bats their superior immune system also enable them to fly.
Out of more than 5,000 types of mammals on the planet, bats are the only one capable of sustained flight and some species can fly more than 1,000 km in a single night.
Such intense physical exertion is known to produce toxic "free radicals" that cause tissue damage and it is these same genes that give the bat the ability to repair itself, Wang said.
"What we found was the genes that evolved fastest were genes involved in repairing DNA damage. That makes sense ... because when you fly, metabolism goes up and it generates free radicals that are toxic to cells," Wang said.
"Because bats fly, they (would have had) to evolve and adapt ... to get genes that can repair DNA damage."
Wang said we have much to learn from the bat, which has evolved to avoid disease and live exceptionally long lives.
"Cancer, ageing and infectious disease, these are the three major areas of concern for people," he said.
"We have studied rats for 150 years to understand how to do better in these three areas. Now we have a system, the bat, that has done very well in evolution. We can learn from the bat. With modern techniques, we can design new drugs to slow down the ageing process, treat cancer, fight infections.

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Spectrum Pharma's blood cancer drug meets goal in mid-stage trial

 Spectrum Pharmaceuticals Inc said a mid-stage trial of its experimental blood cancer drug met the main goal of shrinking tumors.
The drug, belinostat, was tested in patients with relapsed/refractory peripheral T-Cell (PTCL) lymphoma, who have failed at least one therapy.
The biotechnology company said it expects to file a marketing application with U.S. health regulators by mid-2013, and expects a review date in 2014.
Belinostat was granted orphan-drug status and fast-track status by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for PTCL.
Spectrum's shares, which have fallen about 22 percent in the last year, closed at $11.30 on the Nasdaq on Thursday.

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Perennial Flu Vaccine Gets Closer

Every fall, you need a new flu shot. That's because today's vaccines train your immune system to recognize specific strains of flu—identified by two proteins on the virus's coat: hemagglutinin and neuraminidase. That's where the 'H' and 'N' come from in H1N1.
Problem is, those proteins are a moving target—they mutate quickly. Once they do, your immune system can't recognize them. And you've got something like the 2009 swine flu, a strain the flu shot never primed us to fight.
To make a more universal vaccine that would work year after year, researchers focused on a smaller, more stable protein called M2. In human strains, the protein has hardly changed since the 1930s.
Researchers engineered an M2 vaccine, and gave it to mice. Then they exposed the mice to lethal doses of human, swine and bird flus. All the vaccinated mice survived—their unlucky counterparts did not. The research appears in the journal Molecular Therapy. [Min-Chul Kim et al., Viruslike particles containing multiple M2 extracellular domains confer improved cross protection against various subtypes of influenza virus]
A good seasonal flu vaccine will still beat the M2 vaccine. But if the M2 gives us insurance against a surprise strain, well, it might be worth a shot.

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Spectrum Pharma's blood cancer drug meets trial goal

 Spectrum Pharmaceuticals Inc said a mid-stage trial of its experimental blood cancer drug met the main goal of reducing the size of tumors.
The biotechnology company's shares, which have fallen about 22 percent over the past 12 months, were up about 3 percent at $11.60 in morning trade on the Nasdaq and touched a high of $11.75 .
The drug, belinostat, was tested in patients with relapsed or refractory peripheral T-Cell lymphoma (PTCL), and who had failed to respond to at least one therapy.
The company said it expects to file a marketing application with U.S. health regulators by mid-2013, and expects a review date in 2014.
The trial was conducted under a special protocol assessment that provides a company with a written agreement that the design of the study and analysis of the data are adequate to support a marketing application with the U.S. health regulator.
Spectrum markets another drug to treat PTCL, named Folotyn, which it obtained as part of its acquisition of cancer drugmaker Allos Therapeutics earlier this year.
MLV & Co analyst George Zavoico said Folotyn and belinostat have different mechanisms of action, and having two drugs for the same indication could be useful in cases of relapsed patients who develop resistance to one of them.
PTCL consists of a group of aggressive blood cancers that develop from T-cells, a class of white blood cells.

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Mother loses UK legal fight to stop son's cancer radiotherapy

LONDON (Reuters) - A mother in Britain, who was so desperate to stop her cancer-stricken son having to undergo conventional medical treatment that she went into hiding with him, lost a court battle on Friday to prevent him receiving radiotherapy.
The case of Sally Roberts, 37, a New Zealander living in Brighton, southern England, and the plight of her seven-year-old son has made headlines in Britain.
Roberts wants to try alternative treatments first, including immunotherapy and photodynamic therapy for her son Neon. She has been told the boy needs treatment fast but fears the side-effects of conventional medicine.
Doctors treating the boy had warned that without radiotherapy he could die within three months
Judge David Bodey told the High Court in London the life-saving radiotherapy treatment could start against the mother's wishes, the Press Association reported.
"The mother has been through a terrible time. This sort of thing is every parent's nightmare," the judge said.
"But I am worried that her judgment has gone awry on the question of the seriousness of the threat which Neon faces."
The story of the sick blue-eyed blonde boy came to public attention earlier this month when Roberts prompted a nationwide police hunt by going into hiding with Neon for four days to stop him from undergoing the treatment.
The mother's relentless battle in court also cast a light on the dilemmas parents can face when dealing with the illness of a loved one, considering the short-term and long-term risks of a treatment and handling conflicting medical information available at the click of a mouse.
Roberts said in court she had researched on the Internet her son's condition - a fast-growing, high-grade brain tumor called medulloblastoma - and sought advice from specialists around the world because she did not trust British experts.
She feared radiotherapy would stunt the boy's growth, reduce his IQ, damage his thyroid and potentially leave him infertile.
Earlier this week, a judge ruled that Neon could undergo emergency surgery to remove a tumor which had resisted an initial operation in October, despite opposition from his mother, who found he appeared to be recovering after what she said was a "heartbreaking" stay in hospital.
"EXPERIMENTAL AND UNPROVEN"
Surgeons said Neon's operation on Wednesday had been successful but that radiotherapy was needed to ensure no residual tumor was left behind.
Neon's father Ben, who lives in London and is separated from Roberts, has sided with his son's doctors.
But his wife suggested exploring several alternative treatments, including immunotherapy, which mainly consists of stimulating the body's immune system to fight cancerous cells, and photodynamic therapy, which uses a photosensitizing agent and a source of light to kill malignant cells.
The hospital treating Neon slammed "experimental and unproven" methods which entered "unchartered territory". The hospital, which cannot be named, also questioned the credentials of some of the private specialists contacted by Roberts's team.
The court heard that at least one of these could not even correctly spell medulloblastoma.
Radiotherapy is used to prevent cancer from spreading or striking back after surgery but it can damage nerve tissue and healthy brain cells.
Long-term side effects tend to be more common in children, whose nervous systems are still developing.

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