September 2009
31 posts
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3 Words on the Future of Content: Alternate...
The seemingly universal assumption that advertising revenue will save us, will keep art and culture online solvent, will fill the gap between VC and buy-out that most people actually consider a business, is by far the largest threat I see to the internet, moreso than telcos that think they own everything created online, more than absurd copyright lobbyists, more than politicians who actually...
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Five (Other) Ways for Facebook to Monetize.
I’m not convinced advertising or ‘gifts’ is going to do it. Advertising works best as a funding model when the only metrics are vague numbers that don’t directly indicate an action (see: Print, Radio, TV, Outdoor). Online is too measured, and effectiveness (or lack thereof) is too clear. Ambiguity is a friend to media sales. Ambiguity doesn’t fare well online,...
August 2009
42 posts
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“A generation is now coming of age that is used to being — and demands to be — in...”
– Radio Needs Video (via feedly) (via chartreuse)
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Greatest 'Hits': A Viable Pirate Myth.
[This post originally appeared on my old blog, BrokenGentleman.com, on June 28, 07]
I’ve been watching several documentaries lately on the state of copyright, onremix culture, and on the comparative bargain between rights-holders (large corporations) and the people. The problem isn’t that they are focusing on piracy, because piracy is a big issue. The problem is that piracy has been...
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Greatest 'Hits': Explaining Millennial Arrogance
[This post originally appeared on my old blog, BrokenGentleman.com, on Feb 18, 09]
This weekend, while doing some volunteering at OYP, I heard the now tired rant about my generation (the ‘millennial’ generation) and the apathy, entitlement, and arrogance that define us. I’m going to do my best to explain some of that, if not justify some of it.
The internet is likely the...
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Friday Afternoon Thought.
The fastest way to impress someone, and to offend someone, is to have a blatantly honest conversation about an uncomfortable truth.
People who value truth, honesty and insight above social comfort will be happy to learn you can be so direct with them.
People who value that comfortable safe conversation will, at the very least, share your scandalous statements.
Either way, you’ll...
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WatchInterjections One.
This is the first in what I intend to be a series of 5 page bursts, ideas explained in a fairly straightforward manner, and optimized for sharing, adapting, and improving.
For a PDF version, click here.
Interjections One focuses on an idea first suggested in an earlier post, that of reinventing clothing and merchandise for a touring band as a capsule collection. The core...
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Mininova is dead, must filter torrents →
deepr:
Nooooooooooooo
Competing with piracy is generally a better strategy than trying to legislate the rules of physical products to apply to digital products.
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“One of the problems the industry has is that the creatives can’t talk to the...”
– Colorado Students to Learn Digital From Alex Bogusky
This is such a terrific idea. Cheers to Crispin for once again flexing their innovation muscle.
(via bliptvad)
It IS great and I hope they franchise this and teach the course in every city.
You are dead in the water or forever beholden to...
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“The notion that children are essential to a new technology’s success has proved...”
– Who’s Driving Twitter’s Popularity? Not Teenagers - NYTimes.com (via chartreuse)
The ‘young people aren’t on Twitter’ argument amuses me to no end. The idea that a social technology has managed massive buzz and growth based mostly on an older market is valuable, not worrisome. ...
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McDonald's PR fail, reminiscent of Chappelle's... →
one page gives a bizarre analogy in which McDonald’s likens their presence to the fruit-bearing African baobab tree, which, like McDonald’s, is a “source of sustenance in the community.”
There is a big difference between targeting and pandering.
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everythingismedia:
My tumblarity is 41, and it’s an all-time high.
What’s odd is that I don’t feel that I’m part of the Tumbr community (i.e. I don’t quite get what’s so special about topherchris and why people talk about him). I’m just here to avoid social media douchebags that are all over twitter and facebook now.
It’s interesting that, for some reason, I do care about tumblarity. My guess...
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“For orgs, it’s not about tech, it’s about sociology.”
– Renato Cruz Sogueco, in an post about Clay Shirky.
(This is the point. This will be the point for the forseeable future. Not technology. Behaviour.)
EDIT: Misattributed, sorry.
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Newspapers should not have comments
somethingchanged:
This amazing WSJ article that everyone’s talking about, A Manifesto for Slow Communications, has only three comments - all pretty lame ones. People are discussing it on their blogs, via Twitter, in real life. But the three comments sit there wrongly representing the success of the article, newspaper readers’ engagement, the WSJ’s “digital strategy,” and the importance of reader...
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Brand Extensions.
It’s common practice to add ancillary products to a valued, established brand. Usually this is done to expand awareness, build further points of contact, and most often, to generate more income.
This often results in crap.
I understand the importance of rushing out brand extensions into other markets. Maintaining awareness often requires a steady stream of new. But it’s less common...
Infornography →
dayofthedreamweavers:
ben:
“Infornography is a portmanteau word formed by the combination of the words “information” and “pornography”. Infornography is used to define an addiction to or an obsession with acquiring, manipulating, and sharing information. People “suffering” from infornography are generally people that greatly enjoy receiving, sending, exchanging, and digitizing information.”
...
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Bullshit.
The general stance on ‘bullshit’ (as used colloquially) is that it’s always a terrible thing. That it distracts, wastes time, is dishonest and destructive.
I disagree, and my stance on bullshit comes down to two things.
1) Bullshit is the ability to convince without proving. If you know anyone who can make a good argument, who can ‘work a room’, and who tends to...
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Micro-Survey
I’m in the midst of a conversation on ‘academic determinism’, or how your ability and interests in high school dictate the career paths available to you in most traditional organizations.
I recognize that higher level positions need to take experience into account, but for many roles, especially those focused on a skill set that literally didn’t exist five years ago, I...
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Ekin: Nike Brand Evangelists →
heyitsnoah:
Buried in this article about Nike’s digital strategy is an interesting tidbit about the company’s culture:
Ekins are official company storytellers employed to evangelise about the Nike brand and its sports technology. Before being unleashed on the world, Ekins are required to undergo an almost military-like training regime comprising a nine-day rookie camp at Nike’s headquarters in...
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Is There Value in Discussion That Stops There? →
heyitsnoah:
Over at Tumblr I posted this quote from Rob Walker about Mad Men: “At this point I think the only interesting thing about Mad Men (to me) is the disconnect between the amount of attention it gets from the media and marketing crowd, and the number of people who actually watch it.” I’ve stated publicly that I’m not crazy about the show and am always interested in places where media...
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Facebook Connect and Owning Reputation.
Anonymity is dying, and that’s probably a good thing in regards to online conversation and communication.
As more and more services switch to Facebook Connect as an authentication option, Facebook will become a very valuable arbiter of reputation. A service that will happily delete your profile if your name sounds too fake, Facebook has made no effort to hide the fact that it’s...
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Reminder re: 'Death' of Newsmedia
If journalism was even the majority of content making up traditional newsmedia, we’d be in a very different situation.
We’re not talking about the viability of journalism as a product, because the product hasn’t really been journalism for a very, very long time.
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Too Slow To Sell.
We’re reaching the point where traditional media is too slow to function as a marketing / communications channel for some creative products.
The mechanics of new media, and new modes of distribution, don’t sync with old media production schedules. A notable portion of the entertainment value, and therefore monetary value, of old media products, is in their function as a mechanism of...
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Saying and Doing.
The standard point of view seems to be that there is some sort of tension between saying and doing.
This is inherently incorrect.
Actions do speak louder than words. But words speak more precisely than actions. While we can all point to an example of the quiet Samaritan who does good without wanting credit, actions often need clarification and explanation to the accepted.
The idea that you...
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“We don’t treat all information equally. My salient fact is your irrelevant bit;...”
– Information Addiction : The Frontal Cortex (via notesandlinks) (via dayofthedreamweavers)
Hiding the new in the familiar is one of the best ways to build a connection with someone.
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Addendum to Adbusters Post.
I can’t help but laugh at a magazine which states, again and again, that our consumer business model is irreparably broken, targeting specifically at students (Phrases include: ‘Your university is a police state’, ‘Ask your prof: Are we selling off our natural capital and calling it income?’) while more or less declaring that everyone in a position to actually make...
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Iteration and Evolution vs Stagnation and...
Everything is better if it’s iterative. Iterations inherently indicate that a concept or campaign is open to evolution, rather than revolutionary change.
Revolution always sounds great, but it only makes sense if you find yourself in a situation where what you’re doing is broken beyond repair. Revolution is sexy, and marketable. It also only makes sense if you are being held to an...
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Tumblr; Adaptation to Platform.
Initially, I saw my switch from the blogger platform to tumblr as indicative of a personal evolution. Now I’m wondering if the shift isn’t personal, but instead an adaptation to the realities of publishing online, rather than treating it as a version of publishing in print.
My initial experience with blogs heavily mirrored my experience with zines. Word-focused, static,...
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“If your favorite show stops running for months at a time, is it still a viable...”
– Media News: TV Show’s Not On, but the Site Is Up - Advertising Age (via brandpluscontent)
“Top advertisers for “Chuck” in 2009 include Sprint Nextel, Verizon Communications, General Motors, General Electric and Honda Motor Co., according to TNS Media Intelligence. Between Sept. 2008 and May 2009,...
“Last week, Pepsi in China announced a partnership with Qun Yin Culture and...”
– Contagious News Article (via interestingsnippets) (via brandpluscontent)
Further blurring of the gap between creative product and content marketing.
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“Services are not offered for free at all. There is an exchange of value between...”
– Brad Burnham, Union Square Ventures
Chris and Malcolm are both wrong
(via fred-wilson)
(via blakewhitman)
(via mikehudack) (via brandpluscontent)
This is indicative of a greater problem that most industries are facing - the idea that massive change means that none of the old rules, not matter...
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Real World Implications of the Twitter DDoS...
About a year ago, on an older, uglier blog, I wrote about the disruptive potential of nationalised botnets, in relation to the Russian / Georgian conflict.
And now, outlets are reporting that yesterday’s Twitter and Facebook outages are related to the same conflict, in an attempt to silence an outspoken Georgian blogger.
The question has to be asked, at which point is this an act of war?...
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With Consumer Behavior and Consumption Evolving,... →
brandpluscontent:
High engagement levels translate into high satisfaction for viewers, high brand recall for advertisers, a greater inclination for consumers to seek product information, and potentially more money for publishers. According to the study:
- 27 percent of respondents who remembered seeing an ad searched for more information about the product featured after watching high engagement...
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I dream of a world...
Where everyone involved in marketing, communications, publicity or promotions, on either side, realizes that measuring pre-determined objectives is not a matter of determining success, at least not in the early stages of any campaign.
Metrics can prove success over time, and should be used as such. But starting from day one, they are useful to refine, adapt, and improve strategies and plans.
...
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Voltron and the Social Media Super-Presence
A few weeks back, I compared platform independent strategy to Voltron. Unsurprisingly, this resonated with the Tumblr community in some small way.
Earlier today, I realized Voltron is actually the best metaphor for the social web. Or at least the most awesome.
Everyone who is active on the social web is, for all intents and purposes, a Voltron analogue. We’re complete identities built...
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Utopianism will ruin the Internet.
It’s easy to see why utopianism has always hovered around the online world.
I’m firm in my belief that the internet is the most disruptive thing that has ever been created. If the written word hacked the essence of humanity irreversibly by allowing an idea or narrative to be expressed and shared without direct human to human contact, the internet scaled that up a level, removing...