BPN 1721: Crowd funding in Holland: 128 million euros in 2015

The sum of 128 million was raised in crowdfunding in The Netherlands, a doubling from the previous year (63 million). This is the result of research by the consultancy Douw & Koren. In total in 2015 more than 3,500 projects were crowdfunded, of which 1208 enterprises, 856 creative projects, 1247 social projects and 374 consumer loans. Entrepreneurs received on average 90.000 euros, creatives and community projects took an average 11. 000 euros and consumer loans averaged 4700 euros. 

Further growth of crowdfunding 
Crowdfunding continued to grow last year for its fourth year in a row. But will 2016 the year of truth for crowdfunding in The Netherlands. The survey of Douw & Koren identifies four opportunities for further growth. 

1. Entrepreneurs and investors 
Entrepreneurs and investors are familiar with crowdfunding. However  entrepreneurs should gain more insight into the possibilities of crowdfunding, which crowdfunding platform suits them and how crowdfunding can be combined with other forms of financing. Potential investors often do not know that it is possible to invest through crowdfunding in modest amounts. 

2. Transparency crowdfunding platforms 
After a period of growth in the number of platforms crowd funding, the consolidation has set in. The hype and the market growth is over, while there is a demand for professionalism and transparency. 

3. Real cooperation financiers 
Banks are using crowd funding as a supplementary form of financing. Crowdfunding platforms, in turn, talk about the role of the bank as a complementary lender.  But requests for loans  from the bank by entrepreneurs is still small. The same applies to the number of entrepreneurs who combine crowdfunding with bank financing. So proper SME financing should be promoted. 

4. Transparency vs. over-regulation 
The Ministries of Economic Affairs and Finance, as well as Dutch regulatory authority Authority Financial Market (AFM) see crowdfunding as a relevant form of financing. But the practical effect of regulation can make or break crowdfunding. Thus, the AFM has recently announced that anyone who is willing to invest through crowdfunding  should be tested on knowledge, experience and ability, regardless of the level of investment. This is a solid measure that increases the threshold to invest through crowdfunding. This test should contribute to greater transparency of platforms. 

Project funding for cultural and social promoters and organizations 
Last year more cultural and social organizations have turned to crowdfunding. Koren: "Consumers prefer to invest in a particular project. Crowdfunding is also increasingly being used for public projects such as a hospital, playground or festival in the city.

BPN 1720: Dutch content related stats over 2015

Spotify 
Spotify is the most widely used music service in the Netherlands. Nearly five million people used the service in 2015, according to research under 2900 Dutch people. Only 8 percent of respondents say that they are not familiar with the service. After Spotify Apple's iTunes is the most used service. Other commonly used streaming services to compete with Spotify are Soundcloud (11 percent), Apple Music (6 percent) and Deezer (5 percent). Also five percent of respondents use Napster. Spotify, Deezer and Napster have become known due to the collaboration of services with telecom operators KPN, T-Mobile and Vodafone. (Telecompaper) 

11 million YouTube users 
Nearly eight in ten Dutch have in 2015 made use of YouTube, which equates to 11 million users. Only 3 percent of the Dutch YouTube do not know. Over a quarter of the Dutch have used one or more times RTL XL, roughly four million users. The service is known to a vast majority of the Dutch. Other video services like Vimeo, Popcornflix and Viewster have less users in the Netherlands. Between 200,000 (Viewster) and 800 000 (Vimeo) Dutch used these services in 2015. The illegal service Popcorn was used by two million Dutch. (Telecompaper) 

4.7 million Dutch use Dropbox in 2015 
One third of the Dutch (34%) indicate that they have used in the past year Dropbox, which equates to approximately 4.7 million Dutch. This Dropbox scores the highest of the seven measured online storage services. In the period July to November 2015, 1750 Dutch were consulted on storage services. Dropbox also stands alongside Google Drive (26%) and iCloud (25%) in the top three. Both these services are separately accounted for 3.5 million users. (Teleompaper) 

Access to Dutch government sites 
In 2015 the Dutch logged over 200 million times onto governmental sites with their DigiD codes. Compared to 2013, this doubled and was up more than 21% in 2014. DigiD is expected to be available on a smartphone app in the second half of 2016. 

Books
In 2015, for the first time since 2008 book sales have increased to 39 million books. In 2008 47,7 million books were sold, decreasing from there year by year. In 2015 for the first time in years, there was an increase of 4,8 per cent over against book sales in 2014. Financially, there was a total turn-over of 498,4 million euro, 3,5 per cent more than in 2014. (CPNB)

Libraries
In 2015 more than 72 million paper books were lent and another 1.6 million books in digital form. Most books in libraries were loaned to young readers. 46 percent of the 100 most borrowed books from 2015 were written for children. (CPNB)

5 x streaming book and magazine services 
1. Bol.com researches
2. Bruna's Bliyoo introduced
3. Elly's choice expands
4. Mofibo coming
5. Library lendings
(Boekblad listings) 

Delayed TV 
The Netherlands is more delayed start watching TV. The proportion of delayed viewing as part of total viewing increased from five to 6.1 per cent. In 2014 the Dutch state broadcast NPO scored a delayed rate of 3.9, going up to 6.2 in 2015. RTL went from 5.4 to 6 per cent and SBS grew a fraction of 7.2 to 7.3 percent. SBS registers the highest percentage watching delayed TV. (research SKO) 

Online video viewing time 
Dutch looked in 2015 an average of 190 minutes per day watching television. That is 4.8% less than in 2014, due to the lack of major events like the World Cup or the Olympics. The Dutch spend more time with video-on-demand via the TV and video streams online. From January 1, 2016 officially keeps track of how long and how often the public looks to online video. (SKO) 

Use of Adblockers
A quarter of the Dutch (23%) used adblockers on one or multiple devices. Usually that's on their laptop or computer. Only 7% have a commercial filter installed on their smartphone or tablet. (GfK) 

Digital music

NVPI, the trade association of the Dutch entertainment industry, representing most of the Music Companies, publishers of Audiovisual Content on Digital Media and Online publishers of Games and other Interactive Software, estimates that revenues for the music market in the Netherlands have increased with at least 10% in 2015. For the first time the digital market for downloads and streams overtook with 52% the sales of music on physical media (48%). (NVPI)

David Bowie telecom-pop pioneer

David Bowie and his tour caravan already used e-mail in 1983. The tour management used five Tandy Model 100 to communicate between the roadies, David Bowie and the main office. http://bit.ly/1Y4jgwN 

BPN 1719: Flemish VTR Teletekst service ceases

The Flemish Radio and Television Organization (VRT), the Flemish/Dutch lingual part of the state sponsored BRT, will stop with the broadcasting of teletext in phases. The number of people using teletext, is decreasing in recent years, in Belgium. Only the subtitling of television programs via teletext will be continued.

VTR Teletekst service was launched on May 8, 1980 by the BRT. In 2005, 800,000 people watched the teletext pages of the VRT daily. In 2009 this figure had decreased to only 599.388 people per day in 2013 the figure was further halved to around 295.381 Flemings per day. In 2014 there were 123.709 unique visitors, according to the annual report of the VRT.

 The private Flemish news channel VTM launched its teletext on February 1, 1996. On October 31, 2014 the service was abolished. The functions were taken over by the website vtm.be and the VTM app. The subtitle function on page 888 remained available.

Turning point

After 35 years of teletext services are on a turning point. With the introduction of internet in the nineties teletext services were integrated in the websites of broadcasting companies. But now the teletext function has been taken over by apps. The BBC teletext service Ceefax is already defunct since 2012. Yet teletext services in France and Germany are still in operation. The popularity, however, of teletext is decreasing by the use of connected televisions, set-up boxes, but especially by consulting tablets and smartphones.

When will Dutch Teletekst stop?

In the Netherlands Teletekst service of the state sponsored broadcast company NOS is still pretty popular. The service was launched on April 1, 1980 with 700 consumers, who could receive teletext on their television. When commercial television was allowed in The Netherlands in 1989 teletext services were part and parcel of their broadcasts, but they never were competition for the NOS Teletekst service. With the introduction of internet the NOS Teletekst service was integrated on the Digital City web side and on the NOS broadcasting company in January 1994. In 2000 2,8 million people used the service daily, but from that point onwards the audience decreased to 2,5 million users of teletext on television. Another 2,5 million people consumed teletext on their computer, mobile or tablet. By 2014 the total figure was down to 3,5 million Teletekst users. Will the NOS Teletekst be still alive by 2020?

BPN 1718: Twitter moving from micro to medium blog

The technology site Recode once again spreads the news that the Twitter management is considering expanding the length of the messages from 140 digits to 10.000 digits. Supposedly this should help its profitability. But will expanding tweets beyond average length help?

On March 21, 2006, Jack Dorsey launched twitter. It looked almost as if it happened by accident. The word tweet was not invented yet nor retweet. But it was a clean editorial formula: a message scrambled in 140 characters. Later on a space for media assets was added, limiting the message even more in characters.

The limit of 140 characters looks like it was chosen arbitrarily. However, the reasoning behind was, that the message should fit into the SMS format. The message asked for literary excellence and/or literary economy with abbreviations, leaving out punctuation and diacritical signs (much to the chagrin of the French). The limit of 140 characters has looked comfortable as hardly no real proposal has been put forward for a smaller amount of characters. Yes in India several text services have been proposed, ranging from 60 characters to 120 characters.

Twitter was introduced in the social media field when other media were there already such as Blogger (1999), LinkedIN (2003)and Facebook (2004). And in this company Twitter had the unique selling point of a micro-blog. It was however less interactive as Blogger and LinkedIN.

Now Twitter wants to expand its length to 10.000 characters or roughly to 4,5 pages text. So what is new in comparison to Blogger and other blogs? They do not have a limit of 10.000 characters, but vary from short messages above 140 characters to postings longer than 10.000 characters.  And most blog postings are not longer than one page, roughly 2500 characters.

Besides, how can extended TWRRT improve on lay-outs of the present blog software and especially Wordpress. Twitter will also like to incorporate text, photographs, drawings and small movies in the lay-out of 10.000 characters.

What USP in text and lay-out will Twitter bring? So far it can only result in a playing field for text, photographs, drawings and small movies, as long as the limit of 10.000 characters will not be succeeded.

The argument that people have been asking for extension of the character limit is a crazy argument. What will be the request after that Twitter has gone from 140 to 10.000 characters. The demand will be exponentially, going from 10.000 to 100.000 characters. And no one will view such tweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeets.

Twitter can bring a differentiated service by adding two levels:

a.                   Present tweet of max. 140 characters, to be filled with text and a thumb illustration;

b.                  Lead of max. 500 characters being the introduction of the article, message; if you cant make your point in 500 characters, you will not do so in 10.000 characters.

c.                   Article of max. 10.000 characters, to be filled with text, photographs, drawings and small movies.

This format also contains a business proposal, whereby the article will have to be paid for the author or the reader at a viewing fee set by the author.

Oepss, 510 words!

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