Israeli Left Mocks \'Bibi\'s Bet on Romney\'

As my colleague Alan Cowell reports, President Obama's re-election could prove to be awkward for Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, since the conservative Israeli leader “was widely perceived in Israel and the United States as having supported the Republican challenger, Mitt Romney.”

Remarks by Mr. Netanyahu, in which he seemed to chastise Mr. Obama for not taking action to defend Israel from the threat of an Iranian nuclear bomb, were used in a television ad that ran in Florida during the final weeks of the campaign. That ad was produced by a Republican political operative who has worked for the Israeli prime minister. (During the secretly recorded address Mr. Romney gave to wealthy donors in Florida this year, he boasted that consultants working for his election “work for Bibi Netanyahu in his races.”)

Several observers detected more than a little awkwardness in video of Mr. Netanyahu with the American ambassador to Israel, Daniel Shapiro, o n Wednesday, in which he seemed to force a smile as he said, “I want to congratulate President Obama on his re-election.”

Video of Israel's prime minister asking the American ambassador to pass on his congratulations to President Obama.

A former Israeli prime minister who could challenge Mr. Netanyahu in upcoming elections, Ehud Olmert, criticized what he called his rival's failed attempt to interfere in the U.S. election as “a significant breach of the basic rules governing ties between nations.”

As the Israeli news blog +972 reported, Mr. Netanyahu's political opponents on the Israeli left, gloating over the failure of “Bibi's bet on Romney,” were filled with hope that Mr. Obama might soon remind their prime minister th at he'd backed the loser. In one image passed around on Facebook by Israelis on Wednesday, with Hebrew-language dialogue added in speech bubbles to photographs of the two leaders, the imagined exchange between the two men went like this:

Mr. Obama: “Benjamin, what's up? Say, remember how much you intervened and tried influence the presidential elections here in the States?”
Mr. Netanyahu: “Yeah, why?”
Mr. Obama: “Oh, no reason.”

Eyal Brave, via Facebook A composite image posted on Facebook on Wednesday, imagining a p ost-election conversation between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.

Another image was shared by Israeli Facebook users who hoped that Mr. Obama's victory might be a harbinger of defeat for Mr. Netanyahu in the upcoming elections in Israel.

Shachar B. Cotani, via Facebook An image shared on Facebook by Israelis who are rooting for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to lose the upcoming election.

Writing in The Forward, a Jewish-American newspaper, Josh Nathan-Kazis noted that one of Mr. Netanyahu's strongest supporters, Sheldon Adelson, a major Repub lican donor, had gambled and lost even more heavily on Tuesday's elections.

It's been a tough night for Jewish political mega-donor Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino magnate who was the biggest political donor of the election cycle. Adelson and his wife had backed Mitt Romney with $20 million in donations to the pro-Romney super PAC. But his spending on failed Republican candidates went well beyond the top of the ticket.

Four additional Adelson-backed candidates lost their races tonight. In Virginia, Tim Kaine won the governorship over George Allen, whose super PAC had received $1.5 million from Adelson. In Florida, Bill Nelson won the Senate seat over Connie Mack, who Adelson had backed with $1 million. And in New Jersey, Adelson-backed Orthodox Jewish Republican Shmuley Boteach lost to Democratic incumbent Congressman Bill Pascrell.

In Florida's 18th Congressional District, Adelson-backed Republican Allen West narrowly trailed Democrat Pat rick Murphy, who was declared the winner by news organizations.

I want to play poker with Sheldon Adelson.

- Jeffrey Goldberg (@JeffreyGoldberg) 7 Nov 12

Twitter Kills the Fail Whale, One Tweet at a Time

Among the millions of messages, photos and videos people sent on Twitter Tuesday night, there was one picture people didn't see: the company's Fail Whale, a once-famous icon that showed Twitter's Web site was down.

Instead, Twitter shattered a number of records during the election as people, including the President Obama, took to the social network to share results, commentary and quote speeches.

In a post on the company's engineering blog, Twitter said people sent 31 million election-related tweets on Tuesday alone. From 8:11 p.m. to 9:11 p.m. P.S.T., Twitter processed an average 9,965 tweets per second, with a one-second peak of 15,107 tweets per second at 8:20 p.m., the company said. In 2008, by comparison, people sent just 229 Twitter messages per second on election night. That's about 43 times more election-related messages per second for this election.

During the last election, people on Twitter sent 1.8 million messages during Election Day, whi ch included nonelection-related Twitter messages. On Tuesday, the company said just election-related messages alone tallied 874,560 Twitter messages during a single one-minute peak.

Barack Obama's last Twitter message, which was sent just 16 hours ago, also smashed previous records, becoming the most retweeted message in history with 717,000 retweets. It simply said, “Four more years” and showed a picture of the president hugging the first lady.

As I noted on Twitter, from a media standpoint, the election coverage completely flipped, too. I remember in 2008, when social media was just being recognized by politicians and the media, Twitter was mostly used to share what was happening on television. Four years later, in a complete flip, the networks, including ABC, CBS, Fox and CNN, was citing people's tweets on live television.

In the company's blog post, Mazen Rawashdeh, vice president of of infrastructure operations engineering at Twitter, noted that t he network stayed up without a problem during the influx of messages.

“The bottom line: No matter when, where or how people use Twitter, we need to remain accessible 24/7, around the world,” Mr. Rawashdeh. ”We're hard at work delivering on that vision.”

AT&T to Increase Spending on a Big Network Expansion

Plenty of people get frustrated with their phone company, but AT&T customers may have less to complain about soon. AT&T said on Wednesday that it would increase spending on equipment and infrastructure for its phone and Internet services over the coming years, which should give customers stronger, more reliable service.

In a meeting with investors, the company said it would invest an extra $14 billion to expand its wireless and broadband services over the next three years. The increased spending will, in part, help accelerate AT&T's roll out of its fourth-generation network.

The company said it would spend $22 billion each year through 2015. In past years it has invested $17 billion to $20 billion a year in capital spending, so the additional investment is a significant boost.

“This is a major commitment to invest in 21st century communications infrastructure for the United States,” said Randall Stephenson, AT&T's chief executive, in a statement. H e said the investment would bring high-speed Internet services to millions more people in the United States.

The most obvious outcome of the increased spending will be the expansion of AT&T's 4G LTE network, which is faster and more efficient in transmitting data than its predecessor technology, 3G. The company is well behind its biggest competitor, Verizon Wireless, in building this new network: Verizon has LTE deployed in about 420 cities, whereas AT&T has LTE covering about 80 cities. AT&T said its increased spending will bring LTE to 300 million people by the end of 2014.

AT&T's announcement comes on the heels of a series of partnerships and acquisitions involving other big wireless companies. Last month, T-Mobile USA agreed to buy MetroPCS, a smaller carrier, in order to expand its business. Later, Sprint said it would take a $20.1 billion cash infusion from SoftBank of Japan in exchange for giving the Japanese carrier majority control of the company.

AT&T's investment includes expanding its broadband network, which provides the high-speed Internet service that people use in homes and offices. Its presence in broadband is small compared with cable companies like Comcast. But investing more in broadband would, incidentally, allow AT&T to improve its wireless service, because it would effectively move some smartphone users off its wireless network onto the wired one, which would make the networks less crowded, said Chetan Sharma, an independent mobile analyst.

Tero Kuittinen, an independent mobile analyst, said AT&T's new investment was a pre-emptive move to secure its position as the second biggest carrier in the United States. He said it would enable the carrier to come up with new pricing structures - for example, bundling its broadband Internet service with its wireless phone service into a package - if it needed to compete more aggressively against the smaller carriers.

“They have this possibility of so me day, if they feel any pressure from Sprint or T-Mobile, to suddenly say you get 20 percent off from your mobile bill if you buy the bundle,” Mr. Kuittinen said. “There's some anxiety over what T-Mobile and Sprint are doing.”

The additional investment will also apply to some new AT&T services, like mobile payments and wireless services inside cars. It shows that among the big American wireless companies, AT&T is the most aggressive carrier exploring new ways to make money, Mr. Sharma said.

Focus of the F.C.C. in a Second Obama Administration: More Spectrum

The direction of the Federal Communications Commission during a second Obama Administration will be decided in two places: In the chairman's office, which could have a new occupant next year, and in federal court, where cases are pending that challenge the F.C.C.'s authority over broadband service, Internet traffic and wireless data.

Julius Genachowski, the F.C.C. chairman since 2009, made the expansion of broadband service a priority during his tenure, but the next chairman will face formidable foes in efforts to free up more airwaves, or spectrum, for use by wireless phone companies.

Two of the biggest potential sources of repurposed spectrum are television broadcasters and the military, and neither has eagerly embraced the prospect of giving up or sharing significant swaths of their current airwaves.

Wireless companies have been clamoring for additional spectrum to accommodate data-hungry applications and devices, however, and the F.C.C. has started t he process of designing spectrum auctions that would direct some of the auction proceeds to broadcasters that turn over their licenses.

But for any company that provides telephone service, cellphone plans or Internet connections, some of the industry's biggest questions could be answered not at the commission but in court.

Telecommunications companies have challenged the F.C.C.'s authority to adopt rules governing how Internet service providers manage their networks and enforce what is known as net neutrality. Also under fire are F.C.C. rules that require big companies like AT&T and Verizon to offer use of their data networks to customers of competing companies while they are roaming out of their service area.

And small, rural phone companies are fighting the commission's right to overhaul the Universal Service Fund, which subsidizes for otherwise-uneconomical rural phone service, for use to build broadband networks.

All three cases are pending before federal appeals courts. Gigi B. Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, a consumer advocacy group, said that because the cases all dealt with next-generation communications, if the F.C.C. were to lose all three of three cases, “we could be looking at an agency that's almost irrelevant.”

F.C.C. officials say nearly all of its significant actions are challenged in court, and it wins a large majority of cases. They are confident they will prevail in the current disputes.

Commission officials say Mr. Genachowski, who has been falsely rumored to be departing imminently for more than 18 months, has no plans to depart. But outsiders note that F.C.C. chairmen rarely remain in place for more than four years; not since the Reagan administration has one done so.

James Gattuso, a senior fellow for regulatory policy at the Heritage Foundation, said the current chairman began returning the F.C.C. to “a less partisan attitude,” one that companies hope will continue under a new chairman.

The agenda at the F.C.C., an independent regulatory agency, is set by the chairman, and he depends on the 3-2 split by party of the five-member board to further his initiatives.

And it is “he” â€" so far, no woman has ever served in the top spot. That has some F.C.C. followers convinced that one of the two other Democrats on the commission - Jessica Rosenworcel and Mignon L. Clyburn â€" could get the job.

Digital Art, Globally

November 7, 2012, 3:34 pm

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Walk in a Mall, Receive a Mobile Coupon

Smart online shoppers always search the Web for a coupon before they make a purchase. RetailMeNot, one of the leading coupon Web sites, is also trying to offer coupons for mall shoppers via their cellphones.

The idea is the same as the paper coupons that people used to clip out of newspapers. But now they are delivered by RetailMeNot's new iPhone and Android apps when a shopper walks near one of hundreds of malls across the country.

RetailMeNot, which is owned by WhaleShark Media, the operator of several online coupon sites, realized that 20 percent of its traffic was coming from mobile devices, so it assumed people were searching for coupons in stores, not just when they were shopping online.

It has signed on more than 275 merchants, including Target, Macy's and J.C. Penney, and, in time for the traditional day-after-Thanksgiving start to the holiday shopping season, it will work at 500 malls.

The app uses geo-fencing, which takes a cellphone's lo cation data to send alerts when someone walks across a virtual perimeter. The notifications appear even if the app is not open. People show cashiers the coupons on their phones.

An average RetailMeNot user will see 38 coupons from 25 stores upon stepping near a mall, said John Faith, senior vice president of mobile at WhaleShark Media. The app also lets people search for coupons by store and save them and will use Apple Maps and Passbook to find nearby shops and store coupons.

For retailers, these mobile coupons are one of many experiments they are doing to figure out the best way to target consumers on their cellphones. Yet there are signs of deal fatigue. Some shoppers are growing tired of the barrage of offers, and businesses bemoan the loss of profits from giving so many discounts or do not want their coupons shared widely.

Still, Mr. Faith said more retailers were coming to terms with the fact that this was now how people shop.

“There's been a shift in merchants' attitude,” he said. Shoppers who have coupons are more likely to walk into a store or spend more on an e-commerce site, he said.

About a third of RetailMeNot's coupons are submitted by consumers. The rest come from retailers, who can submit them free or pay for better placement, which about 15 percent do. The new app provides a way for retailers to reach shoppers on their phones, Mr. Faith said.

“Everyday holiday shoppers aren't going to download every retailer's app,” he said.

RetailMeNot is also expanding into new types of stores, like fast-food restaurants. It has a new Facebook app and updated its Web site so shoppers can search for types of items, like e-readers or running shoes, instead of just searching by retailer.

Walk in a Mall, Receive a Mobile Coupon

Smart online shoppers always search the Web for a coupon before they make a purchase. RetailMeNot, one of the leading coupon Web sites, is also trying to offer coupons for mall shoppers via their cellphones.

The idea is the same as the paper coupons that people used to clip out of newspapers. But now they are delivered by RetailMeNot's new iPhone and Android apps when a shopper walks near one of hundreds of malls across the country.

RetailMeNot, which is owned by WhaleShark Media, the operator of several online coupon sites, realized that 20 percent of its traffic was coming from mobile devices, so it assumed people were searching for coupons in stores, not just when they were shopping online.

It has signed on more than 275 merchants, including Target, Macy's and J.C. Penney, and, in time for the traditional day-after-Thanksgiving start to the holiday shopping season, it will work at 500 malls.

The app uses geo-fencing, which takes a cellphone's lo cation data to send alerts when someone walks across a virtual perimeter. The notifications appear even if the app is not open. People show cashiers the coupons on their phones.

An average RetailMeNot user will see 38 coupons from 25 stores upon stepping near a mall, said John Faith, senior vice president of mobile at WhaleShark Media. The app also lets people search for coupons by store and save them and will use Apple Maps and Passbook to find nearby shops and store coupons.

For retailers, these mobile coupons are one of many experiments they are doing to figure out the best way to target consumers on their cellphones. Yet there are signs of deal fatigue. Some shoppers are growing tired of the barrage of offers, and businesses bemoan the loss of profits from giving so many discounts or do not want their coupons shared widely.

Still, Mr. Faith said more retailers were coming to terms with the fact that this was now how people shop.

“There's been a shift in merchants' attitude,” he said. Shoppers who have coupons are more likely to walk into a store or spend more on an e-commerce site, he said.

About a third of RetailMeNot's coupons are submitted by consumers. The rest come from retailers, who can submit them free or pay for better placement, which about 15 percent do. The new app provides a way for retailers to reach shoppers on their phones, Mr. Faith said.

“Everyday holiday shoppers aren't going to download every retailer's app,” he said.

RetailMeNot is also expanding into new types of stores, like fast-food restaurants. It has a new Facebook app and updated its Web site so shoppers can search for types of items, like e-readers or running shoes, instead of just searching by retailer.

Daily Report: The \'Smart Device\' Future

The smartphone is now a developed market. The tablet is newer, but is clearly catching on with consumers as more companies create products to compete with the iPad.

So at this stage, how are tech analysts looking at the market? Gartner predicts that 1.2 billion “smart devices” will be sold next year, up 50 percent from this year. (To savor that number, here is this fact from Gartner: 821 million smart devices - smartphones and tablets - have been sold in 2012. That's about 70 percent of all devices sold to consumers in 2012.)

Horace Dediu, who writes some of the smartest analysis of the mobile market on his Asymco blog, is starting to think about the late adopters of smartphones. He notes that comScore has declared that half the cellphones in use in the United States are smartphones. He thinks the fast conversion of late adopters to smartphones will continue. He writes:

The data shows that there are as many first-time smartphone adoptions in late 2012 as there were in late 2010. Or, the new-to-smart users are joining ecosystems just as quickly when penetration is 50 percent as when it was 20 percent. An encouraging situation when considering the opportunity space above 50 percent. The “S-curve” has not reached an inflection point.

He also points out that Android adoption is flattening while Apple devices are still selling at the same pace.

On Monday, Mary Meeker, the technology analyst who is now a Kleiner Perkins partner, made a presentation that predicted that by the middle of next year the number of smart devices in use would surpass PCs.

Henry Blodget, the former analyst who runs the Business Insider blog, notes that the iPad Mini is catching on quickly. He thinks that the smaller, 7-inch screen size will be popular. It may pressure Apple's profit margins, but it may become the de facto size of a tablet.