Mobile Industry News 11/20/09

Quattro Wireless' daily take on interesting and important news for the mobile industry. See something today that we missed? Post it in the comments or send it our way on twitter @intheq

Sony Unveils Its Answer to Apple's iTunes
Silicon Alley Insider
Kenji Hall / Business Week: Sony Unveils Its Answer to Apple's iTunes  —  The tech giant will launch an online store selling music, movies, books, and other downloadable applications for mobile products  —  Sony (SNE) is taking a page from Apple's playbook (AAPL)....
 
Twitter COO Dick Costolo: Revenue is on and advertising is coming soon
VentureBeat
Twitter COO Dick Costolo is on-stage at TechCrunch’s Real-Time CrunchUp. I’m taking some notes as we go.
The big takeaways are that Twitter is making more than $4 million a year, but won’t specify how much and that’s through the recent data-sharing deals with Microsoft and Google.
Next, Twitter is going to roll out advertising soon and Costolo claims that people will “love it” because it will be original and in the flow of Twitter conversation.
Twitter is also on track to roll out paid commercial accounts by year-end.

Time Spent Viewing Video on Social Networking Sites Up 98% Year-Over-Year In October
Nielsen Wire
Facebook is Top Social Networking Destination by Video Streams for the 2nd Month in a Row in October
Time spent viewing video on social networking sites increased 98 percent year-over-year, from 503.8 million minutes in October 2008 to 999.4 million minutes in October 2009, according to Nielsen. In conjunction, the number of online video streams viewed on social networking and blog sites increased 45 percent year-over-year, from 240.8 million streams in October 2008 to 349.5 million in October 2009.

Wal-Mart Launches iGoDigital Product Recommendations App
Mobile Marketing Watch
Wal-Mart designed a new app for the iPhone and iTouch that focuses on electronic product recommendations. Already a big hit in the mobile space, with a successful m-commerce site that had 1.58 million unique monthly visitiors in August, accoding to the The Neilsen Co., the new app highlights the power of providing the consumer utility on the go, and the concept of useful mobile marketing.
 
MMA Redefines Mobile Marketing
Mobile Marketing Magazine
The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) has announced what it describes as “a significant revision” to the definition of Mobile Marketing.
The MMA’s new definition runs as follows: Mobile Marketing is a set of practices that enables organizations to communicate and engage with their audience in an interactive and relevant manner through any mobile device or network.
According to the MMA, the crux of the new definition lies in two parts of its taxonomy. The first is that the “set of practices” includes “activities, institutions, processes, industry players, standards, advertising and media, direct response, promotions, relationship management, CRM, customer services, loyalty, social marketing, and all the many faces and facets of marketing.”