You Can’t Make Abundancy Scarce
My brother sent me an email tonight after he heard, Peter Fader speak. Fader is a professor at Wharton School of business at UPenn “doing datamining - they call it marketing.” Apparently, my brother found this talk inspiring, ending his first email in our resulting exchange with:
…he made some damn good points about the subscription model. b2c already is doing ok (campfire, github, etc.), it's time for consumers to pony up. His bottom line: if facebook decided to charge you $10/month, you'd pay it. No questions asked.
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, or know me, or have listened to some of the top minds in this ‘new media’ business, you’ll be pretty easily pick out how totally my brother has drunk the kool-aid of the bass-akwards mind fuck that the ‘old media’ folks try to sell you.
First there was the stone age
Deep breath.
Let’s try to break this down: We are now in the information age. Where once the pinacle of technology was an iron sword, the new tech is information.
Our economy is based on the trade of IP, and yet, paradoxically, the internet has made information practically infinite. Therefore, attempting to make money by controlling the amount of information is doomed to fail.
Put another way: controlling the scarcity of something that isn't scarce can't work.
History is not a good guide here: The internet is a fundamental shift from anything we’ve experienced before. It’s as revolutionary as the printing press and as radical as the written word. It’s both asynchronous and instant two-way communication.
ESPN Shouldn’t Use Their Monopoly to Take Advantage of Students
- Image via Wikipedia
ESPN.com has me angrier than TIME.com right now. They've sent an email to the sports department at The Daily Orange asking them to contribute content to ESPN.com for the NCAA tournament.
I'll go ahead and quote portions of their email in two quotes. I'll break in between for analysis.
Here’s what we’re interested in:
- Cross post opinion and campus reaction/color during the NCAA Tournament in the ESPN profile space (description below). Could start with Final 4 picks.
- Send an e-mail to me and removed for privacy once you’ve posted
- Include URL of the post on ESPN.com with brief description
- Include any related URLs
Break: If you’ve read that carefully, you’ll see that ESPN is trying to crowdsource their reporting. They’re asking college journalists to write about the topic they know best, their campus, then package the content with a neat little bow, and send it off to them to be used…
Here’s what I can do with your content:
- Posts considered for the P1 box below the poll on the front of ESPN.com
- Best posts included in campus roundup file
- Best posts shared with our college basketball editor
…no where important.
BATTLE | What We Need, Is a Plan
I’ve challenged myself to battle the management at my school’s newspaper The Daily Orange with a new ‘new media’ topic every week. BATTLE look at the struggle of a college paper trying to evolve to succeed on the Internet.
My battle this week stems from a series of emails exchanged between myself, the IT staff, and the Business Director that originally stemmed from the ad department securing online sponsorship for a weekly print feature: Thirsy Thursday — a beer (mmh… beer) reviewing column.
The effort has devolved into a struggle to get the new IT staff up to speed, launch a new blog for Thirsty Thursday, and even redoing parts of the main website. My suggestions on that front were:
- decisions about web design by non-web designers is usually a poor choice.
- unilateral decisions about the structure of an editorial site by business staff is not a good move
- I'd strongly suggest that many of our design issues are centered around college publisher inadequacies.
The Way Forward
This whole process lead me to realize that what the DO needs more than anything else, is a planned approach to the Internet, which until this point, has been haphazard at best. We have no plan for forward growth, and that means that we're likely going to continue to be frustrated with each other and with our own efforts. At this point there are plenty of other colleges out there that have easily surpassed our own efforts to both make money online and leverage it as a platform.
The Internet Broke the Economy
I've noticed that I started to think that every blog post I write must be a fantastic piece of prose. Articles that don't meet the 600+ word count don't meet the cut.
Yea… I've been drinking too much of my own coolaid. Back to the shorter, more frequent posting for me. I suspect that it's more valuable in the long run.
Ofcom Website | Global Citizens and Consumers in the Internet Age
Douglas Rushkoff of NYU has completely blown my mind. It's not often that one finds a completely, world-upside-down, mind-altering … anything. But this is it.
The thesis: The internet has turned the world on it’s head because because it destroys the traditional definition of economy: “rational actors maximizing their value through the acquisition/distribution of scarce resources.”
Links for January 9th
These are my delicious links for January 9th from 20:36 to 22:50:
- DJ Strouse - A odd, but insightful look at what the economy might be without money as the currency.
- How I want to redefine my role, and the reader's role, in the newspaper | By Daniel Victor - The start of a mobile journalist (MoJo) career.
- Transparency as a PR Principle, Not a Tactic | PBS - In the internet age, where trust is a currency, companies ought to consider transparency of business a necessity if not an obligation.
Joey's thought: If civilization has developed far enough the economy to produce at at its current rate, and enough time is freed up for people to be investing it in goods and services that aren't necessities, perhaps it's time for us to look at currencies that aren't just monetary as a means of judging our economy.
e.g. China produces a lot but isn't as trusted as US
If anyone knows a good way to get wordpress to display tumblr links instead of delicious via postalicious, lemme know!
Links for January 6th
These are my links for January 6th from 00:38 to 02:52:
- Blogging, a new journalistic genre ? | Monday Note - Pretty strong argument that blogs are a great new form of journalism.
Problem: they don't make money. Adverts don't value them and they just don't generate the pageviews an article does. - What is literacy? BuzzMachine - If online journalism is expected to work, the audience must be able to do the following:
Media literacy, then, must embrace all those activities and skills, not just reading but:
* knowing how to focus on a need for information and express that by crafting a query to find an answer;
* knowing how to judge the relevance and reliability of sources - including the PageRank-like skill of judging sources on sources;
* knowing how to create (and remix) content across all media types;
* knowing how to collaborate;
* understanding the impact of facts on perspective and perspective on opinion;
* understanding the impact of identity and anonymity;
* understanding the relationship of pieces of information that make up a larger story via links;
* understanding how to make and find corrections - On The Media: Transcript of "You Are What You Is" (November 28, 2008) - Jeff Jarvis makes a good case for convergence. The media is now a singular: no longer do jounos choose, video, print, photo, whatever. We're cross-medium.
- Twelve months of top journalism blog posts in 2008 Christopher Wink - Title says it all. It's a pretty darn good list of the top posts of last year. Worth reading through the list at least.
- HuffPo Worth $200M? Em, More Like $2M - Business news | Newser - Sounds like the $25 million dollar investment that HuffPo just got may have inflated the value of the blogging newspaper. Instead of the $100-$200 million the investment was based on, it might be worth closer to $2 million. Ouch.
- Reflections of a Newsosaur: Newspaper share value fell $64B in '08 - A look at the stock prices and market cap. of the major newspapers in 2008.
- The Turning Gate / TTG iPhone Portfolio - iphone friendly photo gallery direct from Lightroom: Cool!
- Lee Enterprises: A poster child for the ownership crisis | yelvington.com - Steve Yelvington breaks down the economic crisis for newspapers:
1. The internet means long term changes, newspapers weren't ready.
2. Global economic crisis = less adverts = less income.
3. Newspapers borrowed when the borrowing was good, and are in the same place as everyone else in this economic crisis. They debt they can't pay back.
Ooooo Shiny!
Warning: This post a rant. It is highly political, and … well, I really just want to get this off my chest.
Spurred by the continued housing crisis, turmoil in financial markets, spiking oil prices, disappearing jobs and shrinking retirement savings, the nation and its political leaders have begun to sour on the notion that the current market system [the free market] is the key to a fair, stable and efficient society.
-Americans may be losing faith in free markets - Los Angeles Times
I've blogged several times (1, 2, 3, more) in the last couple of weeks on the success of the free market in correcting downward trends in the news business. I've got a lot of faith in the law of supply and demand to eventually correct itself.
That's the keyword: eventually.
Markets don't correct themselves overnight. There is no such thing as a quick fix when it comes to economics, but it seems that the US populace has become so enamored with instant feedback that we expect everything to just happen.
-
Loading a web page: just happens.
Finding out the names of Bardgelina's twins: just happens.
9 soldiers dying in Iraq Afghanistan (oh right, we already forgot about that war): just happens.
Global warming doesn't just happen.
The energyoil deficit doesn't just happen.
The Presidency eroding constitutional rights of the Congress, the Judiciary, the Press, and the People, doesn't just happen.
An economic recession doesn't just happen.
A robust economy doesn't just happen.
This society, that so needs instant gratification, needs to learn that there are limits to what technology provides.
-
Just because the cell phone lets us say "I'll just call you," instead of planning ahead,
Just because you can text message, twitter, facebook status, IM, or blog,
Just because you can find, meet, date, engage, online,
Just because we can watch live pictures of our tanks rolling across foreign boarders,
It doesn't mean that technology has solved all the world's problems. Our country, our society, has a system in place that works. Yes, the system needs to be changed from time to time, we've done it a lot. But do we need to abandon our Constitution, our economic policies, our way of life just because there are bad times?
The free market works. It goes in cycles of good and bad times, but it works. It's natural. Please, please, just because we've allowed our government to abandon its system, don't think the economy needs to change. It's not worth it! It's not right!
STOP with the ADD! The grass is not always greener, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Try not to pick up every shiny object that comes your way, sometimes, it's a chainsaw.
Getty, Meet Free Market.
Yahoo and Getty Images said Tuesday that they have entered into a partnership under which Getty editors will comb Flickr in search of interesting images. They will then invite photographers to participate in the program and ensure that their images have the proper releases to be licensed legally. Those who are included in the program will get paid at the same rates that Getty pays photographers who are under contract with the company.
-Great Photo on Flickr? Getty Images Might Pay You For It - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog
Finally, a good reason to use flickr, perhaps even pay for a pro account!
While flickr has always been cool from a technology front, I've never really been encouraged to use it. In part, because I'm afraid my images might get stolen, and in part because I was never too keen on the 200 image maximum.
Now, from the unlikely source of Getty, who also runs iStockPhoto, Flickr has become a stock image site. iStockPhoto is very controversial because it does not pay photographers royalties and charges little for a purchase. Yet:
Getty also runs a site called iStockPhoto, where amateurs contribute photos that the company markets at lower rates. The photos on Flickr are of sufficent quality to demand higher prices, Mr. Klein said.
It seems that there is something to be said for the free market. iStockPhoto offers an inferior product. Here's the market correcting itself.
“Because the imagery is not shot for commercial services, there is more authenticity,” Mr. Klein said. “Advertisers are looking for authenticity.”
Newspapers Selling Off Assets
Tribune, meanwhile, told its employees Wednesday that it hoped to wring more value out of its "underutilized" real estate in Chicago and Los Angeles, extending an asset-selling program Tribune is pursuing to service a $13 billion debt load, much of which it took on from going private.
-Washington Times - In 'survival mode,' newspapers slashing jobs
Fantastic, the newspaper industry is in freefall. Selling assets just to cover your own costs is not a winning strategy. (I know, I played Railroad Tycoon ;) )
Looks like the Tribune Co. is especially in trouble.
Inside Saudi Arabia. – By Nicholas Schmidle – Slate Magazine
At his home in Riyadh, his family kept a Filipino cook, driver, and maid who washed his briefs. "I don't know how to cook or to clean my clothes," he told me. "So, whenever I am in the United States, I just wear my underwear once … and then throw them away."
Inside Saudi Arabia. - By Nicholas Schmidle - Slate Magazine
What a great quote to pull out in a brief article about the state of social progression in Saudi Arabia. The article is short, but worth a read to get an idea of what a modern, islamist, monarchy is like.
On the Economy, 70% Disapprove of Bush – washingtonpost.com
Summary of Poll Results
Public disapproval of the way President Bush is handling the nation's economy has hit a new high in Washington Post-ABC News polling, and his overall favorability rating remains near an all-time low.
In a poll that confirms what most of us already know… the economy is doing poorly and the Bush Administration is not doing any better.
Yes, that's my summary of the poll results :)
The Economics of the Iraqi War
This article, raises an interesting point that I'd like to extrapolate on. The article argues this:
The U.S. government has spent "more than half-a-trillion dollars" in support of the war effort, while that money could be spent on pressing needs in this country, he said.
Economy Sagging Due to Iraq War? - TIME
The article goes on to present poll results stating that 68% of the American people think that withdrawing from Iraq would help the countries economic troubles. The argument is fairly convincing. Especially considering that the US annual budget is now over $3 trillion, and the US GDP is now $13.13 trillion.
The point is well made that this war has had significant negative impact on the US economy. This is the point that I'd like to dwell on.
Historically, wars have been good for the US economy. They've sparked economic mobilization, technological advances, and increased economic output. Now, I'm not sure if this holds true for the Vietnam War (I suspect it does, but I cannot find anything to back it up). It certainly holds true for:
- The Revolutionary War
- The War of 1812
- The Civil War
- World War I
- World War II
- The Korean War
- The Gulf War
If it is to be believed that the Iraqi War has actually harmed the US economy, then I think that it is remarkable in that it is the first. It's also important examine why that has happened. These factors would be invaluable in assessing the worth, or even the status, of a war. One might even make a case for economics determining the 'correctness' of a war in the future.
iStock Reveals Revenue, Photographer Payouts | Underexposed – CNET News.com
In a forum posting Tuesday, iStockphoto head honcho Bruce Livingstone said the Getty Images subsidiary had 2007 revenue of $71.9 million, and it paid $20.9 million to those who contributed the imagery it licenses.
iStock reveals revenue, photographer payouts | Underexposed - CNET News.com
The first interesting thing here is that iStockPhoto pays out roughly 29% of what they make on sales – that's pretty much as suspected. That $71.9mil number though is kind of scary. That's a lot of money to making on royalty free sales. It means that it's revenue lost out of a lot of pro's pockets.
Canon Loses SLR Share, as Nikon Surges | Underexposed – CNET News.com
Just a word of: Go Nikon!
Canon loses SLR share, as Nikon surges | Underexposed - CNET News.com
US Plans Finance System Overhaul
Leave it the BBC to break this new first: the US Treasury Dept. is going to try to avoid a recession/depression.
Starbucks Announces Sweeping Changes – New York Times
Starbucks Announces Sweeping Changes - New York Times
I'm not a coffee drinker, but this sounds like good news overall. Starbuck's is, while a huge conglomerate, a fairly friendly company IMHO (in my humble opinion). These changes sound good to me. Besides – what's the downside to more free stuff?
The New Austerity – What’s Next 2008 – TIME
Fantastic short article on why the economy is in the shitter.
Random News Related to Italy
Troubled Italian carrier Alitalia has agreed to be bought by rival Air France for a cut-price 138m euros(£106m:$215m) in a move to save the state airline.
BBC: Alitalia accepts Air France offerNot that this has to do with anything that I normally blog about†. Just that I find it interesting that Alitalia, which I flew to Italy last week, offered great service. Aside from a hiccup at Milan Airport which was no fault of theirs, their service completely satisfactory. I suppose I was surprised to learn that they are struggling financially so much.† side note: huh. never really thought about that before. I blog. I'm a blogger. Interesting.I sort of hate people who call themselves bloggers. Sounds very… pretentious. Ah well, nothing to be done I suppose.
A Global Need for Grain That Farms Can’t Fill – New York Times
“Everyone wants to eat like an American on this globe,” said Daniel W. Basse of the AgResource Company, a Chicago consultancy. “But if they do, we’re going to need another two or three globes to grow it all.”
A Global Need for Grain That Farms Can’t Fill - New York Times
Notice how the price of food has gone up recently – it's all because the price of grain, worldwide has gone up. Third world countries are now able to afford better food (e.g. bread), which leads to increased demand. Supply hasn't compensated; world stockpiles of grain are at an all time low, and prices have doubled. Great if you're a farmer, sucks for the rest of us.
I have personally seen a loaf of bread at the local supermarket go from £0.70 to £0.90 to £1.20 over the past month and a half. That's nearly double for the same loaf of bread.
