Bits: Streaming Sites and the Rise of Shared Accounts

We were each going to use HBO Go, the network’s video Web site, to stream the show online — but not our own accounts. To gain access, one friend planned to use the login of the father of a childhood friend. Another would use his mother’s account. I had the information of a guy in New Jersey that I had once met in a Mexican restaurant.

Our behavior — sharing password information to HBO Go, Netflix, Hulu and other streaming sites and services — appears increasingly prevalent among Web-savvy people who don’t own televisions or subscribe to cable.

It’s hard to know exactly how common it is: traditional analytics firms like Nielsen and comScore can’t track it, and cultural research organizations like Pew haven’t done extensive surveying about it. An informal BuzzFeed survey, which was a partial inspiration for this column, found that several dozen people in its office used someone else’s account information for HBO Go. And based on countless anecdotes, conversations, tweets and text messages, such behavior seems to be on the rise.

“It also seems like a pretty serious problem,” wrote John Herrman, a senior editor at BuzzFeed and author of the polling report. “While our office is fairly young and not representative of HBO’s broader customer base, it is representative of a rising generation of people who 1) like watching HBO shows and 2) cannot fathom paying for them.”

Do the companies, particularly HBO, view this as especially problematic? I hesitated before asking, worried that any inquiries would prompt a crackdown, with the result that I’d become the most-hated person on the Internet.

But to the collective relief of nearly everyone I know, the companies with whom I spoke seemed to have little to no interest in curbing our sharing behavior — in part because they can’t. They have little ability to track and curtail their customers who are sharing account information, according to Jeff Cusson, senior vice president for corporate affairs at HBO. And, he said, the network doesn’t view the sharing “as a pervasive problem at this time.”

According to HBO, 6.5 million of its 30 million subscribers have signed up for HBO Go. When I asked Mr. Cusson if the network would consider figuring out a way to capture and monetize those slippery users who were piggybacking on others’ accounts, he declined to speculate on what might be possible.

“The best business approach at the time is in the business model that we currently have,” he said.

In other words, it isn’t financially viable for HBO to offer a cheaper, digital-only subscription, either sold separately or bundled to an Internet service. So, to a point, account sharing is allowed.

OTHER subscription streaming services have a different approach. Spotify, the music streaming service, does not allow two people to play songs simultaneously using the same account. A representative at Hulu says that the company’s paid subscription service, Hulu Plus, is designed for a single user and that the company doesn’t let people stream the same show to different screens at the same time. (Amazon and Netflix did not respond to requests for interviews, but both companies have similar mechanisms in place for their services, though different users on the same account can watch different programs at the same time.)

On Amazon Prime, for example, if two people try to watch the same episode of “Pretty Little Liars” using the same account, both streams will be frozen and a warning message will flash. But one user can simply watch something else until the first person is done trying to figure out who “A” is.

This feels like a missed opportunity for all these services. It’s the failure to grasp the future of television as a shared social experience online. Sure, we are all scattered around, watching all sorts of programs. But then there are moments, as in the days of old, when we are all huddled together — figuratively speaking — tuning into the same show or event at about the same time each night. These days, though, we are watching through some kind of connected device, whether it’s a smartphone, a laptop or a Web-connected television.

Nor does social viewing have to be around a big event. For example, I watched “Friday Night Lights” all winter on Netflix, along with someone I don’t know who also shares the account. Every time I log in, I can see the last episode that this mystery viewer watched — and yet there’s currently no way for us to chat about our reactions to it. That would be much more fun than bugging my other friends about plot twists and turns they saw ages ago, when the show was first broadcast.

Raw Data: Deciphering the Decline in Spanish Mobile Accounts

BERLIN — It would take the unimaginable — a major power outage, a natural disaster or a sudden, permanent loss of income — for many people to abandon their mobile phones.

That is what appears to be happening in Spain in the midst of its economic crisis. But in the country’s telecom sector, as in a Salvador Dalí painting, there may be more than meets the eye.

The Spanish regulator, Comisión del Mercado de las Telecomunicaciones, said last week that 486,183 mobile phone accounts were deactivated by Spanish operators in October alone, the ninth straight month of contraction that has seen two million prepaid accounts, or 9.4 percent of the current total, taken off networks since February.

The biggest reason for the industry’s difficulties is the most obvious: Spain’s economic slowdown, highlighted by its 26.2 percent unemployment rate in October, including a jobless rate of nearly 50 percent among cellphone-conscious young consumers.

Rosalind Craven, who analyzes West European mobile operators at International Data Corp. in London, said the nine months of contracting figures reported by Telefónica’s Movistar and Vodafone Spain, the two largest mobile operators, reflected the economic challenges facing consumers.

“Because it has been going on for so long, this indicates that the reason is indeed the country’s economic distress,” she said. “People in Spain have less money and are looking to save where they can.”

From January through October, Movistar, the market leader, has deactivated 2.3 million mobile accounts. Vodafone Spain, the No.2, shut off 1.3 million accounts, according to the telecommunications commission. Conversely, Orange Spain, the No.3, has gained 124,420 customers and Yoigo, owned by TeliaSonera of Sweden, has added 412,580. Virtual operators, which are low-cost resellers, have added 1.1 million customers.

But three other developments unrelated to Spain’s slowing economy may be exaggerating signs of a telecom sector meltdown.

The first was the decision by Movistar and Vodafone this year to stop subsidizing new handsets. The cost-cutting move caused many customers to switch to Orange, Yoigo and virtual operators like Simyo, which continued to provide subsidies. Both Movistar and Vodafone have since partially reinstated subsidies.

The other influence was a decision by Telefónica and Vodafone to focus on their most lucrative clients — contract customers who pay on average about €25, or $33, each month, more than double what prepaid customers pay. Telefónica, for example, has signed up one million customers since October to a new plan called Movistar Fusión, a package of mobile, fixed and Internet flat-rate service starting at €49.99 a month.

A third, less obvious reason, may be the counting methods used by the operators, which during economic downturns have been known to purge inactive accounts more aggressively from subscriber lists. Such cullings bolster the average monthly revenue per user, the main bellwether used by investors to value operators.

Representatives for Telefónica and Vodafone declined to say if they were aggressively purging their lists. Ms. Craven, the I.D.C. analyst, said operators in Greece conducted a mass purge in 2009 as that country’s economic crisis began to worsen.

Operators generally declare accounts to be inactive when they are unused for three or six months. In good economic times, bigger customer rolls help operators claim greater market share. In bad times, the bigger lists dilute scarce earnings.

Spaniards do not appear to be abandoning their “móviles.” Cellphone penetration in Spain was 116 percent in October, and many people carry more than one SIM card. The inactive accounts being shut down, said Agustín Diaz-Pinés, an analyst at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, are likely to be extra SIM accounts.

“Undoubtedly the economic downturn plays a role here, but I don’t think many people are dropping their mobile subscriptions,” he said. “They may rather be canceling duplications, for example, the prepaid line you never use.”

Runescape Exceeds 200 Million Accounts

Runescape has become the first game in history to have over 200 million registered player accounts. That's a LOT of accounts.

A counter has been running on the game's homepage which, when the milestone was reached earlier today, marked the start of 3 days of in-game celebrations.

Speaking about the feat, Jagex CEO Mark Gerhard commented, "When the game was first released, nobody could ever have expected it would reach such high levels of popularity largely by community word of mouth. It has been an incredible journey to get to where we are today, and by continuing our tradition of constantly innovating, evolving   and lovingly crafting RuneScape we are certain to continue to break records by creating an online adventure like no other."

Since its launch in 2001, the free-to-play MMO has enticed 200 million adventurers from more than 150 countries around the world. If RuneScape were a country it would be the 5th largest population in the world, and the game’s players have clocked up in excess of 443 billion minutes of game time so far.

To celebrate this undeniably impressive achievement, Jagex has created an infographic with some mental statistics that you can check out below.

Luke Karmali is IGN's UK Editorial Assistant.  You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on IGN and on Twitter.