When I was out in Bellevue I did a lot of brainstorming sessions with all kinds of people. Some were employees of my company, others weren’t. Many had worked in startups most of their lives, but there were a few Microsoft transplants among us. Everybody contributed some great ideas and we had some productive things come out of those sessions, but what I found most interesting was the various people’s thought processes.
There were 2 main types of thought processes that I observed. The first group, we’ll call Microsofties (even though not all had MS experience) basically thought in terms of PowerPoint. They adapted their thoughts to fit the construct of a powerpoint presentation. They had great ideas, and they made sure their ideas fit within the scope of the current tools.
The other group, lacking experience in giant corporations did the opposite. It was clear that they adapted their software to fit their thought process. If the tool they were using didn’t fit their vision, they’d create their own tool to do it.
Both of these schools of thought have their advantages and disadvantages, but I was intrigued by the difference. Which way do you think?
August 22nd, 2008
It’s no secret that old media (newspapers mainly) not only hates, but is afraid of new media (blogs.) I’m focusing on the print versions here, but that’s not to say it doesn’t apply to Radio vs Podcasting, CDs vs MP3s, or anything else you want to put here.
There’s basically 2 issues to examine here:
1. Why does old media fear new media?
2. Why does old media think they are more legitimate than new media?
The fear isn’t based on the new so much as it is a fear of change. As a whole, people don’t like change. We’re creatures of habit. The biggest factor here though is change of business model. It’s a large jump to go from subscription based to ad based. It requires a whole new way of thinking about your product.
If you’ve ever taken out a newspaper ad you’ll notice 2 things right away. The ads are extremely over priced and it’s impossible to know how many people saw your ad (and in most cases even how many acted on it.) The ads are overpriced because you can’t track them. The level of thinking by newspaper ad salesmen still goes like this: “I have 100,000 subscribers, so let’s charge him for 100,000 ad views.” That’s not how it works though.
There simply isn’t as much value in a newspaper ad as there is in a Google ad. Online, I can track impressions, clicks, and sales. I can tweak it so that my online ad costs me less than $1 per sale. I’ll never get that ROI out of a newspaper ad. (yes, there’s value to branding for large corporations, but they’re not the norm here.)
That’s why newspapers are so hesitant to take their content online. Not only does it dilute the value of an actual subscription, (why pay when I can read it online?) but it also puts a hard value on their advertising. If people see that they can get an ad on the online version for less than $2.00 CPM, they’re going to expect the same rates for the print version. That’s a big discount from the $50 - $100 CPM rates that most newspapers currently charge.
Given their current staffs most major newspapers would not be able to make payroll off of a purely online publication. A shift to mostly online would mean a loss of jobs and a re-organization of most companies - and that’s why old media fears new media.
That brings us to question 2:
What makes old media legitimate?
Techdirt has a piece about old media fearing new media, but the quote it gives is more interesting. The notice to journalists refers to broadcast media as illegitimate. Why?
The most common attitude among reporters is that they are professionals and bloggers are just the bastard sons who stay in the basement when company comes over. But what gives them that status? Is it money? It can’t be because people like Scoble, Arrington, Masnick, and Calcanis all make more from blogging than most journalists do.
I think a lot of the attitude comes from the journalism degree. It’s the same sense of being better than everybody that you get with your MBA - it also comes with a journalism degree.
But the times are changing. Some of the best writers don’t have a journalism degree, and they don’t really need one. Good writing can’t be taught, it flows from within. Good reporting is the same way. It takes somebody with the drive and the inquisitive mindset to uncover good stories, you can’t learn that in a classroom.
Have you looked at a journalism program lately though? Most still reduce “internet journalism” into 1 class that meets 2 hours per week for 14 weeks. That’s 3 credit hours out of 30 devoted to the internet. That might have something to do with journalists feeling that the web isn’t important. In my college technical writing class we devoted maybe 15 minutes to ‘writing for the internet.’ It covered how to make a hyperlink and briefly mentioned that your paragraphs should be shorter than a print article because “internet readers have shorter attention spans.” That class was a joke.
Journalism degrees will eventually go away as reporting shifts away from print, but that doesn’t mean the quality will go down or that it will somehow be less “legitimate.”
The shift toward equality is slowly happening, but as long as change threatens job security you won’t see newspapers fully embracing new media anytime soon.
August 22nd, 2008
Every day I read a new article about the RIAA suing somebody or trying to shut down something else. For once I’d just like to imagine they won everything they’re trying to do and see what the world would be like.
Let’s try an experiment. Let’s do away with all mp3s, online music stores, internet radio, music being played in oil change places, and everything else that the RIAA bitches about and see what happens.
Let’s limit music to mainstream radio and cd purchases and live concerts for a whole year and see what happens.
My guess, a lot less CD sales and empty seats at those live concerts.
August 20th, 2008
In a meeting with Susan this morning we started talking about what interests me about certain ideas, and how I judge websites to be a success. It’s something I hadn’t explicitly thought about until she asked me, but I’m pretty happy with how I answered.
For years now my friend Jeff and I have been discussing new business ideas. On a daily basis one of us comes up with an idea for a website and the other one instantly tears it apart. It’s a pretty fun game. Most of the ideas I come up with I trash, but there’s always the few that make it though.
All of my ideas that I’ve gone forward with can answer the main question:
What Problem Does This Solve?
I think that’s a good question to ask about any new website, company, or startup. You can have the coolest technology or the most creative domain name, but at the end of the day it all comes down to being useful - solving a problem.
Building something useful though doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve built something successful. After you can answer the problem question there’s still one more question to ask:
What’s the path to revenue?
Now, I measure success in a way that most people don’t. I’d rather see 100,000 users using a product than $100,000 invested in that product. I know this sounds odd seeing that I just talked about revenue, but it’s not. Investment is not revenue. The true measure of success is how well you can make a profit off of your user base. (If you don’t yet have a user base go back to question 1.)
As Dave Thomas once said, “Profit is not a dirty word.” Let’s face it, if you’ve built something useful it’s going to cost you money to run. How can you make a profit off of it?
If you can answer those two questions, then you’ve got yourself a successful company.
August 19th, 2008
Growing up in the suburbs with a 98% Caucasian population we used to joke about the “crime” of DWB, or “Driving While Black.” It’s not that we were racist, but it sure seemed like the local police were.
Luckily those times have changed and our city has grown culturally. Now they profile based on age and music genre – which is at least 2 steps up from skin color.
After 9/11 I started hearing people turn the DWB joke into FWM, for “flying while Muslim.”
As I write this I’m somewhere over the barrens of one of the Dakotas (I think it’s south) on a 747 headed to Seattle. About 3 hours ago I learned first hand that FWM was indeed a harsh reality.
We were pulling away from the gate at Detroit Metro Airport and the stewardess was just finishing up her seatbelt, oxygen mask, seat cushion speech. As she finished she leaned over and tapped a man on the shoulder and said “you need to put on your seatbelt and bring your seatback forward.
Either he’d never been on a plane before, or he was having a bad day because he said “why?” to which she replied “we have rules.” While that should have been the end of it there, he said “well, I didn’t know the rules.”
Deciding that she needed the last word, the flight attendant shot back a rude “I don’t want to hear it.” That’s when he told her that it was her job to hear it. (rude, but isn’t it?)
After a brief discussion with the head flight attendant, I saw them pick up the phone. I knew right away what that meant, and sure enough about 15 minutes later I heard “flight attendants prepare for arrival.”
We’d already left the gate so we had to wait for 20 minutes until somebody could board and remove the passenger. That wouldn’t have been a huge problem but due to fuel restrictions airlines are only putting just enough fuel to get there in the planes. Our 45 minutes of waiting had used too much gas, so we had to refuel. Doesn’t that make you feel safer when flying? If anything unexpected happens, it better not take more than 45 minutes or I guess you just fall out of the sky. Comforting.
Would this have happened if he hadn’t been Muslim? Nobody knows for sure, but I personally doubt it. It all could have been avoided with a little pleasantry on both sides. Simple customer service techniques like asking “can you” instead of saying “you need to” might have been all it took to avoid this situation – and get me to Seattle on time.
Over an hour later, we got in the air. We’re somewhere over Idaho now and instead of already having landed I’m watching Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay. I’m not sure if it’s irony or just a tragic coincidence that Harold and Kumar are also removed from a plane as terrorists. Whatever it is, it certainly supports my point about FWM.
What should have been a 4-hour flight just turned into six because of two rude people. I haven’t been trained in airline security, but nobody on the plane actually thought this guy was a threat to our safety. The stewardess was either profiling or just being a vindictive bitch (because he clearly had the better come back) – neither of these behaviors are acceptable though.
I hate to see what he’s going through now. He was probably treated to a routine strip search while his name was being put on the do not fly list and felony charges were brought. Yeah he was a jerk, but he really doesn’t deserve what he’s probably going through. It’s safe to say he’s pretty fucked and probably won’t ever be flying again – at least not on Northwest.
August 18th, 2008
There’s a lot of companies that are failing miserably at human powered search. Venture capitalists are all too eager to throw their cash toward anybody with a good domain name and a plan to be a “google killer.” (note: start a company to cater to this cash)
Then, there’s ChaCha - human powered search that’s currently the best out there in it’s field. ChaCha is a free text message based service that lets you text a question to 242242 (which spells chacha) and receive an answer back in a few minutes.
I tried it out by sending 2 questions. The first was rather simple factual lookup:
“When is olympic womens gymnastics scheduled to shoe on tv?” You’ll notice I put “shoe” instead of “show” because I wanted to test their ability to interpret what I meant (and whether or not it was outsourced to india - it’s not.)
In about 2-3 minutes I got back this reply:
8pm-midnight(NBC) women’s gymnastics team final; simming: men’s 100 freestyle, 200 butterfly.
It also gave me a web URL to my answer: http://chacha.com/u/zokazkyc
The next question I asked was more open ended and political:
“Why did Russia invade Georgia?”
The answer: http://chacha.com/u/hygaz3cu. It’s not a real human answer, but merely a quote from an AP news article with a link to the actual article. Still, the article was pretty useful.
So, how can this company make money? It looks like their current plan is to have a desktop version with ads, and to include ads in the text messages. There seems to be a smaller revenue opportunity in going the personal assistant route. For example if somebody is searching for a price on something, offer to buy it for them. If they’re searching for a flight, book it.
Will chacha be the next Google killer? No, but it’s still a pretty neat service for settling bar bets.
Why won’t it be the next Google killer? WIFI. As more and more phones become WIFI enabled and businesses start offering WIFI there won’t be a need to text message my question to somebody else. I can just Google it - which is why these services won’t beat Google.
Still, it’s a pretty neat free service.
August 9th, 2008
A while ago I did a blog post asking < href="http://www.dotcult.com/where-are-the-fail-pictures-coming-from">where are all the fail pictures coming from?. 8 months later I still didn’t find what I was looking for in a fail pictures site. Luckily, I had the foresight to register the domain failpictures.com. The next step came natural, do what I always do when I can’t find a site that does what I want: I created one.
Over the last month or so I’ve spent a few minutes every day actually creating what I wanted in a fail pictures site, and today I’m proud to announce the beta launch of
Fail Pictures - a site dedicated to hosting, displaying, and rating fail pictures.
I’ve tried to populate it with as many of my favorites as possible, and I’ve asked a few people to upload images before launch.
It’s not just a site for browsing images though, as I hope I can turn it into a place for serving them as well. Every image is embeddable via simple HTML, and it even has a javascript fail pictures widget that will show a random image every time. It’s resizeable too! Check it out:
When I was scouring the web I noticed that many sites out there re-branded the images with their domain name on them. I don’t think it’s right to put my brand name on something that I didn’t create, so all of the pictures shown on failpictures.com will be URL free - they won’t have mine, or anybody else’s on them. If I didn’t create the image, I shouldn’t be able to tell you what to do with it, so please go ahead and download or re-use any pictures you want to.
I know this could cause some copyright trouble, as it’s almost impossible to police any user submitted content. If you see an image up there that’s yours (and you can make a good case that it is) just let me know and I’ll gladly remove it for you.
So go on over and check out fail pictures. Please rate the pictures and upload some of your own. Also, let me know of any features you’d like to see on the site. I’m working on a couple more widgets right now as well as the ability to create your own images and captions but I couldn’t wait to get the site out there.
Enjoy.
August 7th, 2008
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