All the Time is Prime Time
Posted on May 12, 2008
Filed Under Trends, web 2.0 |
Like every train wreck, you can see it coming but only at the point of impact does anyone really pay attention to it.
But the more significant shift can’t be blamed on the strike. In the past television season, there has been a sharp increase in time-shifting. Some of the six million are still watching, but on their own terms, thanks to TiVos and other digital video recorders, streaming video on the Internet, and cable video on demand offerings. So while overall usage of television is steady, the linear broadcasts favored by advertisers are in decline. [From In the Age of TiVo and Web Video, What Is Prime Time? - New York Times]
It’s probably unfair to say television execs are a bunch of lemmings who have no one to blame but themselves. All of the major networks minus CBS have expanded into cable and an increasing number have integrated their online offerings, as opposed to treating them as side projects. In the final equation I think this is less about a new technology, or in the case of DVRs an old technology, altering audience behavior and more about consumer attention spans and competitive activities.
It’s a fact that people watch less television today than they did even just a few years ago, and when combined with the explosion of content that is available and you have a perfect storm that results in substantially greater complexity in attracting an audience.
This complexity is also why television sitcoms have become much more targeted and are allowed a much shorter period of time to develop. The days of a Seinfeld or Cheers pulling down 15 or 20 share are gone and won’t be seen again.
Another dimension to all of this is that consumption of web-based video often happens at work, which may or may not have implications for content producers. I’d have to think that through a little before commenting. But one interesting side observation is the globalizing consequence of web-based video, which of course is not limited to a specific broadcast network and a geography.
- 30 percent of daily video consumption comes from Indians outside of India, largely from the Bay area and New York.
This international aspect represents a phenomenal opportunity for content networks to rethink the way they do advertising to appeal to new audiences online that they would never have the opportunity to reach through broadcast. In the end the big television network will prosper as new channels for delivering content create new placement opportunities for advertising.
On the production side of the business it is clear that a decade of changes in the way that television shows are developed, financed, and syndicated has resulted in a broad array of content development capabilities across every genre, meaning there is no shortage of content to pump online.
Having a broad portfolio of content and a seemingly endless opportunity to distribute content doesn’t equate to content that audiences find appealing, so if there is one thing that could be targeted as white space at this point, it would certainly be instrumentation of the player endpoints and the content itself to register user engagement and subjective qualitative aspects.
Earthquakes
Posted on May 12, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized |
Watching this video took me back to 1989… it’s amazing how time slows down in an earthquake, the Loma Prieta quake was maybe 20 seconds in duration but as is the case with today’s quake in China, it felt like 20 minutes at the time.
Organic Food Myths
Posted on May 12, 2008
Filed Under Marketing |
Here’s a sobering look at the organic food industry and what’s interesting to consider is that the myths debunked here are simply not questioned by consumers, who almost universally believe that organic food is better when in fact it appears that the only certainty about organics is that it is a reliable strategy for boosting prices.
Reading this reminded me of the power of words, in this case “organic”. I thought back to a marketing professor who asked what one word is responsible for selling more shampoo than any claim or branding exercise; the answer, “repeat”.
Like Chris Yeh, I believe one of the greatest sins we are committing globally is not throwing our weight behind GMA. Genetically modified foods are capable of boosting nutritional value, developing crops that are sustainable in parts of the world that have adverse climate conditions, don’t require pesticides or fungicides, and reduce dependencies on fertilizers that are petroleum products.
This high level of infection among organic chickens could cross-contaminate non-organic chickens processed on the same production lines. Organic farmers boast that their animals are not routinely treated with antibiotics or (for example) worming medicines. But, as a result, organic animals suffer more diseases. In 2006 an Austrian and Dutch study found that a quarter of organic pigs had pneumonia against 4 per cent of conventionally raised pigs; their piglets died twice as often.
Disease is the major reason why organic animals are only half the weight of conventionally reared animals – so organic farming is not necessarily a boon to animal welfare.
[From The great organic myths: Why organic foods are an indulgence the world can’t afford - Green Living, Environment - The Independent]
Yahoo Retake
Posted on May 11, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized |
I’ve been thinking about that Yahoo post I wrote last week and wish now that I had not written it the way I did. It was a great example of style stomping on substance and I should have wrote that post just for the purpose of venting the frustration I feel with the company and never hit the publish button.
Given a time machine, here’s what I would have written instead, 2 posts:
1) A post dealing with the massive frustration that I and countless other Yahoo shareholders feel about the Microsoft deal gone bad.
2) I could have dug up some of my old posts on business development in big companies. The reason why big companies rarely partner successfully with smaller companies is the mismatch in both urgency and the scope that is required to make things interesting. This could be a good post if written in the context of a single company, such as Yahoo.
At any rate, I’ve had several people comment privately to me that even though I was aggressive I was substantively right on, but in the final equation that matters little because I felt wrong after reading it. I am turning off comments on this post because I did not write this for anyone to comment, this is me owning up to a mistake I made, so I’d rather that no one comment on this post (I can’t figure out how to turn off comments on a single post with IntenseDebate).
Kids and Vaccinations
Posted on May 9, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized |
The school has an “unusually high number of children” who have not been vaccinated against whooping cough, which is also known as pertussis, health officials said. California law allows parents not to have their children immunized against the sickness.
[From Whooping cough outbreak closes private school in El Sobrante]
I’ve been watching with some curiosity the trend to not have children vaccinated against diseases that are now rare but still serious (and potentially deadly). Just a few days ago I posted about the irrational paradoxes that people often demonstrate through their behaviors, this is just yet another example of this.
The people most likely to not have their children vaccinated are well educated and affluent, the same people who rail against the anti-science sentiments in Washington. The school is El Sobrante that I referenced in the above clip regarding whooping cough is a Waldorf school, not exactly a bastion of poor and uneducated parents.
The aspect of this that should be shocking is the ability of smart people to allow their children to be exposed to serious diseases just because a false sense of security is created from the rarity of such diseases. Nonetheless, these are contagious diseases that can spread rapidly through a population of unvaccinated children, who along with the elderly are always the most at-risk group.
I suspect that if parents actually witnessed the trauma of a child with the measles, whooping cough, or polio, that they might not be so cavalier as to suggest that their children don’t need immunization. I also suspect that in years to come we will see more outbreaks serious diseases among populations of unvaccinated children and that’s really heartbreaking because it is so unnecessary and diseases that were once close to eradication will rebound as a consequence.
The Centers for Disease Control reports a surge in measles outbreaks; almost all the cases are in children who never received the routine shots for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR). Vanquished diseases are rebounding thanks to growing–but groundless–fears over the safety of traditional vaccines.
[From AEI - Short Publications - Measles Madness]
Digital Hollywood
Posted on May 9, 2008
Filed Under Innovation |
I spoke on a panel at the Digital Hollywood event yesterday, an event that has grown substantially from years past which no doubt reflects the growth of technology in entertainment. Here’s a flipbook version of the conference agenda… why not a plain ‘ol PDF?
Many of the panels were focused on online advertising, viral marketing, and monetization of content, all topics that capture the imagination of Silicon Valley, however I would offer the observation that the majority of companies were not from the Valley. In fact, most of these companies, some who were doing some really interesting things, I have never heard of. I would caveat that comment by saying I would not consider myself as having an encyclopedic knowledge of startups in these spaces, but having said that, you pick up a lot of chatter in the Valley echo chamber and these are not companies you hear about.
What is going on in the world of online media and advertising is massively disruptive. Big brands, and indeed small brands, are trying to figure out the viral marketing and social advertising game, and although the results have been mixed so far the fact remains that money will flow here to the detriment of print and broadcast mediums.
That may be somewhat stating the obvious but what is not often noted is the phenomenal range of companies that are being created to exploit the intersection of generational shift, online behavior, digital content, and brand management. Also not noted is that most of these companies are not in the Valley but in places like SoCal, Boulder, and New York.
Twitterfone, Simply Perfection
Posted on May 7, 2008
Filed Under Innovation |
Twitterfone is a new service that let’s you send Twitter updates through speech recognition. You dial a number, record your tweet and hang up. It’s that simple.
My headline is a bold statement but allow me to explain why I believe that Twitterfone might in fact be a perfect application service:
- It works. I have no way of testing it against dialects, etc. but for my California english, it works flawlessly.
- Simplicity. You sign up, get a confirmation code via SMS, add your Twitter account details, and it’s ready to go. You call the number, record your tweet and hang up. It’s a 3 minute process.
- Amazingly viral. There are two aspects of the way this service is designed that make it incredibly viral. The first is really just the way Twitter is designed, the tweets include a status line indicating what client the user is using. The second is more important, for every Twitterfone tweet the service includes a tinyurl link back to the Twitterfone page that include an audio recording of your tweet. So basically, every tweet is an opportunity to acquire a new customer because of the high leverage factor (I am one Twitterfone user but 600 followers see my Twitterfone tweets and all get a link back to Twitterfone). Say I send 15 tweets a day using Twitterfone, multiplied by the number of followers I have and that is 8,700 impressions each day I am generating.
- It’s compact. The core service engine has to be robust but this is a solved problem (i.e. call centers). The user experience does not require significant feature buildout and aside from adding languages and dialects, there’s not a lot that they have to do.
- Monetization potential. Given the demographics and the mobile-centric nature of the service, along with the traffic growth they could generate in a very short period of time, this is a natural for advertising… a legitimate advertising model, not the “advertising because we couldn’t think of any other way to make money” kind.
- The WOW Moment. Every product and service has a moment in the first 60 seconds of use that an impression is formed which will shape all future interactions. This is the WOW Moment and it’s binary, you either have it or you don’t.
Anonymity at the WaPo
Posted on May 6, 2008
Filed Under Interesting Stuff |
I like Brady quite a bit, I met him down at the WeMedia event in Miami. Smart guy and pretty well tuned to the requirements to win in online. Having said that, I’ll give up my right to be anonymous when the WaPo gives up it’s right to quote anonymous sources.
Brady, executive editor of The Washington Post’s online division, said during a panel discussion at the Digital Hollywood conference here that he would like to see a technology that could identify people who violate site standards–and if need be–automatically kick them off for good.
[From Washingtonpost.com wants identities of readers who post comments | Tech news blog - CNET News.com]
Rocket Man
Posted on May 6, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized |
Crikey who wouldn’t want one of these jet pack personal helicopters?
Social Software Inbox
Posted on May 6, 2008
Filed Under Interesting Stuff |
“It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”
- Sir Winston Churchill
Whenever I complain about email I am reminded of that quote from the eminently quotable Sir Winston Churchill. Think about it for a second, what would you do without email? The power of email lies in it’s complete pervasiveness and total interoperability, which is far more than anything one could say about any other communication tool except the telephone.
Having said that, the inbox is certainly not without faults. I don’t think anyone would ever say that they don’t get enough email or that it’s even close to be efficient for high volumes. Products have been promised for this but I doubt it’s anything that is solvable within the current email model. Sam Lawrence notices that a lot of social software seems destined for the same problems that plague email, overload:
Even the people who develop email software like Microsoft, Google and IBM know that the inbox sucks. We don’t need a new email inbox we need something completely new. The problem is that Social Software seems to headed into the same problems as email and we certainly don’t need another dump zone.
[From Go Big Always - We need a social software inbox]
It’s hard to disagree with Sam but at the same time to throw the “baby out with the bath water” would be equally hazardous. Part of the solution will be found in our human ability to adapt and filter, which at the end of the day outstrips any software by light years, and the other part will be enhancing the venerable inbox with social graph features the serve to collapse down all the networks we participate in.
FriendFeed has done this to some degree and while it is not email it is also not a stretch to consider that email is just another lifestream that can get pumped into FriendFeed based on predetermined qualifiers. Companies like Xobni are working on unlocking the social graph that is represented in everyone’s inbox, something that a great many of us are anxious to do.
Bringing application function to the lowly email is something else that is really interesting. I’m tempted to say this would be like the old Firedrop stuff or even Zimbra’s email widgets, but I think it’s something different, maybe adding semantic tags and/or microformats with handler apps to email messages. I saw the potential for this when I upgraded to Leopard and saw how email, ical, and address book could be integrated at the message level by simply interpreting that “next wednesday” meant a date that was a week from this wednesday in ical, or that a phone number in a message could be added to the address book with a simple drop down. It’s startling how much you come to rely on this functionality when you have it.
So while Sam isn’t wrong in suggesting that the inbox paradigm is wrong for social software, I think the answer is found in enhancing the social features in email and building interoperability to non-email systems. Inboxes are here to stay, let’s figure out how to get the most of them, I say.
keep looking »-
About
My name is Jeff Nolan and I write Venture Chronicles. These are my thoughts on technology, innovation, management, public policy and pretty much anything else that I find interesting.
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