Studios and networks are skittish about full Web-TV convergence. But if Flash is widely adopted on TV sets, my dream of Hulu on my plasma might come to fruition.
Make this happen!
I’ve never understood this type of thinking:
Does anyone believe Twitter will be able to sustain its current growth trajectory? Does that ever happen? Most blockbuster initiatives — Web sites, movies, books, TV shows, etc. — level off at some point.Twitter has enjoyed a nice ride over the last few months, but it will not be able to sustain its meteoric rise without establishing a higher level of user loyalty. Frankly, if Oprah can’t accomplish that, I’m not sure who can.
The TV comparison is most apt when it comes to Twitter because there’s a difference between the “popular audience” and its artificial inflation and the “natural audience” comprised of ongoing users/viewers. A popular show might crack 20 million viewers and then settle into a 10-12 million viewer groove (“Lost” is an example). That 20-million spike represented a moment in time — a false plateau generated by popularity inflation — but the 10-12 million metric represents its natural level.
Twitter hasn’t found its true groove yet, and it wouldn’t surprise me if that groove’s traffic numbers are considerably lower than what we’re seeing now.
Here’s the problem: When a company makes a dramatic shift that saves its business — something IBM did when it moved into software/services — all it warrants is an offhand mention in a four-paragraph story. Example:
Yet, when companies ignore the writing on the wall and lumber ahead with the status quo, their failings receive copious coverage. They get undue attention. Their failings inform perspective.I.B.M.’s quarterly revenue fell by 11 percent in the first quarter, but cost cuts helped limit the fall in net profit. Analysts say the company’s shift to higher-margin software and services, from hardware, has helped shield it from the worst of the global economic slowdown.
What I want is in-depth analysis of the companies that prepared for the future by making hard choices in the past. Those lessons could serve us all and shift the “universal” perspective toward a positive viewpoint.
Critics of current Red Sox - Boston Globe connections will go apoplectic over this nugget:
Previous coverage played down a Henry bailout, but I wouldn’t discount this one.Separately on Tuesday, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters that hedge fund manager John Henry was looking at taking control of the Globe as part of a deal to buy the Times Co’s stake in New England Sports Ventures.
And in regard to the inevitable “17 percenter” sniping — I don’t care one bit if the Globe plays favorites with the Red Sox. It’s the equivalent to the Globe investing in — and covering — Boston-based theater productions. It’s entertainment, not news.
If Henry sees value in the Globe, and wants to use entertainment revenue to subsidize its newsgathering efforts (notice I didn’t say “newspaper efforts”), then more power to him. Slap a big “for entertainment purposes only” disclaimer on the Globe’s sports coverage and be done with it.
Case in point: this piece from the Wall Street Journal illustrates the tricky balancing act companies need to employ when they adopt new technologies that outpace the lumbering rules of the SEC. The same issues popped up when corporate blogs emerged.
So I was thrilled to see the New York Times make Timothy Geithner’s ‘07-‘09 calendar available for all to see and investigate. I’d prefer a more robust database-driven option, but this is an excellent addition nonetheless.
On a related note, Wired had an excellent feature story in February that examined transparent data as a solution for the financial mess. Highly recommended.
For some people, myself included, teaching offers a huge rush. The trick is finding these folks and giving them proper incentive — notoriety, reputation-building, self-promotion, etc. — to participate.
A company tapping a user base also needs to apply a heavy dose of realism. The best forums are organic collections of loosely assembled people. That doesn’t change, so a business needs to resist making projections against self-motivated groups. It should build its user-generated/-driven efforts around the natural cycle of adoption-interest-departure.
There’s still serious consideration of renaming both our kids “GodBlessYouDaveRoberts.” I give it a 75% chance.Without The Steal, nothing good happens. It was the catalyst. The turnaround. The blast of gamma radiation that turned a team of beat-down dudes into the Ultimate Machine of Torment and Alleged Jack Daniels Slurping. If it doesn’t happen, we get no parade, no sunshine, no expulsion of the deeply held belief that God really wants to see us cry. Tito would probably be working the aisles at Ace Hardware.
Because fair use cannot — and should not — be formally defined, I’ve always relied on the “golden rule of excerpting”: excerpt others as you’d like to be excerpted.
Don’t steal their stuff. Don’t steal their hook. Don’t steal their photos. Don’t steal their value. Rather, point to stories, recommend material, and inspire people to visit the site.
Note: I cross-posted this at the Innovation in Journalism group I run on LinkedIn.
The offerings were always paltry, but back in ‘96 Geocities helped me take my first baby steps into HTML and Web content development.
Fun related post: Whatever Happened to the Top 15 Web Properties of April, 1999?
AOL’s focus is interesting because it takes a long-discussed idea — what if Google got into original content? — and tests it. Consider this passage from the Business Week piece:
Owning a popular destination that’s built to divert traffic to subsidiary properties is a huge asset (as Yahoo knows). The challenge for AOL, Yahoo and other popular sites with perception issues is to manage their own expectations: there’s value in that traffic — and more than enough advertising dollars to create a strong business — but they have to fight the urge to overestimate the future. Web-based content businesses need to be lean, efficient and small(er).… AOL comes to this game with substantial advantages, thanks to its daily gusher of traffic. Its sites still get more than 100 million unique visitors each month; around one-third of that traffic hits the home page. And its e-mail and instant messaging services still are widely used. MediaGlow CEO Bill Wilson disclosed through a spokeswoman that around 40% of MediaGlow’s traffic comes from AOL’s home page and other sites in the AOL network.
DVD players and discs are on a natural downward trajectory, but instead of innovating with digital-only delivery and subscription/advertising models, entrenched companies are resorting to lawsuits to “save” their on-the-wane products. Does this ever work?
Thirty is too many. Twenty is too many. In fact, one more staffer than is absolutely necessary is too many. Businesses — and this is a business — are built from the bottom up. You simply cannot go into an initiative with a goal of supporting X number of people.… the investors were not comfortable with several aspects of the business, including the amount of staff, thinking that 30 was too many.
Updated 4/21/09 12:30 p.m.
In a new column, Mark Penn of the Wall Street Journal casts a mildly-interested eye toward the “profession” of blogging. The Journal will undoubtedly froth up the…
Put another way: Content is everything. Container is irrelevant.“When I say I’ll be an editor in chief, it won’t be that you’re an editor in chief of a magazine or a Web site,” she explains, almost exasperated by the question. “It’ll be, you’re the editor in chief of this title. And under the title lives this point of view, this sound, this excitement. The definition of magazine will change. Now it’s 100 pages of pretty paper. In the future, your magazine will be that paper, but also digital content that has the same voice, the video component. It will be more.” [Emphasis included in original post.]
Despite the phrasing of the letter, newspaper folks will be well served if they separate self-entitlement from the industry’s plight. That “vital public service” Kerry speaks of could be covered by another media entity; it’s not the sole domain of newspapers.In his letter, addressed to “the Boston Globe family,” Kerry voiced his commitment to the industry and to ensuring that the “vital public service newspapers provide does not disappear.
I’m all for crowdsourcing — and I have no problem with frivolous efforts like the I Can Has Cheezburger book (that site kills me) — but if blog owners are getting significant advances based on other peoples’ work, shouldn’t a rev share be in place? It doesn’t need to be extensive or complicated: set aside a chunk of the advance — 30% perhaps? That leaves 70% for the “owners” — then add up the total number of submissions included in the final work, figure out the percentage each submission represents, and cut a check based on that percentage. The prospect of money could also expedite the rights process.Tracking down the owners of user-submitted materials to obtain publishing rights can be daunting, said Doree Shafrir, one of the creators behind “Love, Mom,” which was built from a blog called Postcards From Yo Momma that collected humorous e-mail and instant-message conversations between women and their adult children. When Ms. Shafrir and Jessica Grose, the co-creator, signed a book contract with Hyperion to publish a collection of their best tales, it told them they had to secure permissions from both the contributors and their mothers. “We were freaking out for a few days because if we hadn’t gotten the forms back, we wouldn’t have gotten the book. That was a little scary,” said Ms. Shafrir.
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One of the 10 best opening paragraphs I’ve ever read (but only relevant if you’re a Sox fan and Remy is in your living room 162 times per year).
This Boston.com article focuses is on vinyl reissues and Record Store Day, but it also aptly hits all the high points in the collector-souvenir-technology ecosystem:
