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Do you agree with this statement by Jim Zemlin, the Executive Director of Linux Foundation, who
claims that mobile telecoms companies ought to offer netbooks for nothing in order to gain profit
through multi-year subscriptions alongside sales from their respective application stores. There
is a snag, however, as Windows-powered netbooks are significantly more costly to give away for
free, why not start with Linux-powered ones instead? What do you think of this idea -
revolutionary, or will it be a flop?
At last I can announce the release of my new six-hour video series from Lynda.com, "Drupal 6:
Online Presentation of Data", which you can check out with a free one-day pass. (Of course it's also
available to anyone with a Lynda.com subscription, starting at $25/month for all-you-can-stand
training in over 600 topics.)
There are some pretty tempting deals today, such as the Panasonic plasma
with a Lumix camera that I was eyeballing. For those looking for laptops, we've got a nice
variety today. The rest of you hobos, KY lube and coffee!
Malcolm Gladwell is an interesting guy. He's an amazing writer and storyteller -- perhaps the
greatest storyteller of this generation. And, as such, he's amazing at taking complex ideas or
research and making it seem simple and easy to understand. I have to admit that I really enjoy
reading almost anything he writes for the pleasure of seeing how it's written. That said, I've
found his books to be unsatisfying in the end. Great, fun reads at the time, but I kept feeling
like I was waiting for more. I was waiting for the actual substance to back up the amazing thesis.
It's amusing then, to see him basically suggest the same thing about Chris Anderson's new book,
Freein his review of the book in the New Yorker. That review has kicked off quite an
online conversation -- with a response from Chris, and other "luminaries" like Mark Cuban and
Seth
Godin weighing in as well (Godin agrees with Chris, Cuban doesn't).
A few people asked me if I was going to respond to Gladwell's review, and at first I wasn't sure if
it was worth digging in to it, but at the same time, I did want to put up something of a review of
Free myself. So, I might as well kill two birds with one stone here. First: a bit of
disclosure: I know Chris. Not well, but we've been known to email and talk on occasion, and we sat
down and got lunch a year and a half ago when he was first planning out this book, during which I
made some suggestions (some he took, some he didn't) though I doubt my words really had that much
of an impact (I'm sure he heard similar things from others, and that they were much more clear and
eloquent than I was). Also, Chris does mention me in the acknowledgments section of the book,
noting that my daily writings here "informed and inspired" the book. Thus, take anything I say with
a grain of salt.
There have already been some attacks on Free that have
really missed the point. There are plenty of points to attack, but it seems that the problem is
that (once again) people get stopped by the big zero, and forget to keep working through the rest
of the details. Like I said last time, it's as if our brains have a "divide by zero" error message
that prevents all additional thinking on the subject. Nearly all of the attacks on the concept of
free seem to focus on the fact that not everything is free (this is what Cuban does, for
example). Except... no one ever claims that everything is free. The whole point is that
"free" is simply a part of a larger business model, and the fact that you charge for some stuff
doesn't take away from the idea of embracing "free" where it makes sense as a part of that business
model.
Gladwell, to his credit, stays away (mostly) from this type of mistake, but he makes a few other
ones in the process. For example, in responding to Anderson's recognition of the value of
non-monetary rewards as a part of the larger economic ecosystem where some business models involve
"paying people to get other people to write for non-monetary rewards," Gladwell's retort is:
That said, it is not entirely clear what distinction is being marked between "paying people to
get other people to write" and paying people to write. If you can afford to pay someone to get
other people to write, why can't you pay people to write? The answer to Gladwell's question is
simply one of economic efficiency. You can pay people to write -- just as Encyclopaedia
Britannica does. Or you can get other people to write for non-monetary rewards -- as Wikipedia
does. The latter is a lot more efficient a solution, and the difference in productivity and output
is quite evident. It's not saying that there is no business in paying people to write, but it's a
very different business than the indirect business model, and it's the economic efficiencies that
come into play.
Money, at times, is a transactional lubricant. It helps us make transactions faster than bartering
three pigs for two trees, a goat and a bushel of corn. At other times, though, money can be
friction. It can limit transactional effectiveness by acting as a kind of crutch. That's where
non-monetary benefits can suffice (or do a much better job) in rewarding people for their actions.
In those scenarios money gets in the way and actually makes a transaction less efficient.
A more efficient solution is a good thing. It helps enlarge markets, increase productivity and make
the net of society better off. Much of what Chris discusses in the book is that end result. The
process may be messy, but economic growth through efficiency is undeniably a good thing -- and
Gladwell seems to miss that point entirely.
That said, Gladwell's comment actually does bring to light my biggest complaint with
Anderson's book. I think it's a fantastic read, and quite educational and (at times) thought
provoking. But I don't think it goes far enough in diving into the meaty details, which is where
folks like Gladwell are led astray. So while I think that Anderson is correct, I'll also say that
Gladwell is correct in suggesting that Anderson doesn't clearly answer that question. That
doesn't mean that Anderson cannot or that the failure to answer that question means that
Anderson's thesis is wrong, even though Gladwell implies the failure to answer such questions calls
the entire work into question.
My second issue with the book is related to this, in that while it outlines why "free" is so
important and how it's being used and how it plays out in other areas, it really doesn't explain
much of what to do about it. This, too, is echoed in Gladwell's questions. He feels that
there should have been more about how do you actually apply such things -- and I agree that the
book comes up short here as well, though I believe it is on purpose. It lists out examples and
business models that are certainly useful to read about, but does little to suggest how
you actually apply them. This is speculation on my part, but I remember in our discussion before he
started writing the book, Chris explained his goal was to make the book more descriptive than
prescriptive, recognizing the difficulties in making a prescriptive book on a topic where there are
so many other factors that it's often difficult to outline specific prescriptions. I recognize that
challenge, but it does leave the book open to many attacks from people who read it and are left
saying "ok, but what do I do about this?" On that, I think the book comes up a bit short
-- though, it should provide plenty of consulting fodder for Anderson (and other consultants who
jump on the bandwagon, probably without understanding it too much).
The big problem here is that not only will people among the critics misinterpret the lessons of the
book, but so will businesses. They'll implement bad business models that have "free" as a
component, but that won't be economically sound. No one claims that "free" solves everything, but
some will undoubtedly interpret it this way. Then, when they fail, they'll blame "free" and claim
that it was wrong, rather than the fact that they implemented a bad business model. This, in fact,
is what happened in some areas with The Long Tail, Chris' earlier book. They assumed it
said stuff it did not, and then got upset when their improperly created business models failed.
From there, however, Gladwell then goes on to bring up some other criticisms that don't pack much
of a punch. He knocks Anderson for using YouTube as an example of using "free" as a part of a
business model, noting that YouTube is losing money (though, Gladwell relies on
debunked numbers to assert those losses). Similarly, he talks about how the WSJ can charge,
Apple can charge for iPhone apps, and cable TV can charge -- but his mistake here is taking a
static picture and (often) removing the context. The WSJ can charge, but there are questions about
whether that strategy really can last -- and the publication has been opening up more and more
stuff as "free" to try to draw people in to that subscription model. The Apple example is quite
misleading as well. Estimates suggest that Apple makes very little on iPhone apps, but has really
nice margins on the iPhone.
But beyond shoddy research by Gladwell, the bigger issue is not recognizing the dynamic nature of
these things at work. Using a little game theory economics wouldn't hurt. By looking at how
business models play out when goods have a marginal cost of zero, you quickly learn how
opportunities to be more efficient via a well-placed use of free expands the size of certain
markets. The trick is recognizing that things that are "free" stop being products that are sold,
and become resources -- inputs -- into other products... for free. Thus, you get markets where
increasing marginal returns carry the day, rather than diminishing marginal returns. This seems
especially odd, given that Gladwell's claim to fame is his ability to pick up on trendlines. To
then look at Chris' book and compare it to a static picture of the world is quite unconvincing.
Furthermore, it misses the main point of the book: which is that competition happens, and when it
does, price gets driven to marginal cost. You might not like it. You might wish it didn't
happen, but arguing against the fact that it's how markets work is like arguing that the sun won't
rise tomorrow. No one said that it didn't make economic sense when other businesses had margins
squeezed. Yet when that big "zero" shows up, people seem to forget that it's just a number and the
basic lessons of the book aren't new or radical -- but the same economics we've always known. It's
just that it's applied to markets where marginal cost is zero, something that's become more common
thanks to technology.
Gladwell's review, then, does Anderson's book a disservice. It criticizes it because it doesn't
answer questions the book didn't set out to answer, and then attacks the picture today without
acknowledging the trendlines and the direction that they're moving in. And, finally, it ignores the
actual nature of the argument (this is happening) with a moral discussion (is this
good?). That's unfortunate. Where Chris' book shines quite frequently is in laying out
these trendlines clearly and in a way that will get you thinking. It may not answer all the
questions about free, but it should certainly help those who don't stop thinking at the zero to at
least recognize the trendlines and get them thinking about how to deal with them. And that is,
unquestionably, a good thing.
As Chris did with The Long Tail, he's taken complex economic theory and made it easy to
understand in a compelling and highly readable format. While my own personal complaint (above)
concerns how much of that economic theory may have been left on the cutting room floor, that's a
critique that probably only applies to folks like myself who spend way too much time reading,
talking and thinking about these issues. I'm guessing the mass audience this book is targeted for
doesn't care so much about understanding the deeper economics, even if it answers the basic
questions raised by Gladwell. If you read Techdirt frequently (and enjoy it), then you're quite
likely to enjoy reading Free. It certainly complements and adds to the material we write
about here frequently, and presents it in a great package. I did want to bring up one separate
issue, because I get the feeling it will be raised in the comments. There was a lot of attention
paid recently to charges of plagiarism in the book. Chris has admitted to the basics of the charges, and explained it as sloppy editing in an
effort to deal with concerns about how to cite online content. I have to admit that sloppy editing
seems like a weak excuse here, and a bit disappointing. It seems a bit lazy.
That said, I've discussed at great length my position on "plagiarism" in the past -- and,
amusingly, much of it is inspired by Malcolm Gladwell's own discussion on plagiarism, where
he recognized that someone taking his own work and adding value to it and doing something different
wasn't such a bad thing after all, and that it could actually represent an inspiration. So if I were actually
"plagiarized" by Chris or anyone else (and I don't believe I was), I'd actually find it something
of an honor to have my works as a part of something better and more interesting. I don't think it
takes away from the quality of the overall work at all. I would have preferred that such mistakes
in attribution did not happen, mainly because it's a distraction, but the issue is a minor one. If
Chris can take the works of others and make it into something more valuable, aren't we all better
off because of it?
As Mike Speiser discussed
recently, flash solid-state drives (SSD) will enable a once-in-a-decade improvement in
storage price-performance. Crucially, flash SSDs enable storage to keep up with the rapid advances in CPU
speeds driven by Moore’s Law. This may enable customers to dramatically scale back
purchases of expensive Fibre Channel (FC) disks and, potentially, high-end FC
arrays. However, some early flash SSDs implementations come with a set of
limitations that customers need to be aware of, notably around usability and resilience.
Why now?
Solid-state disks have been proclaimed the “future of storage” in the past, but we
are now approaching an actual inflection point because:
SSD pricing is declining at more than 50 percent per year, and SSDs have recently become
cheaper than their nearest competitior (FC disks) as measured by effectively usable capacity; the
gap will continue to widen in favor of SSD, as disk prices decline just 25-30 percent annually.
The exciting (and cost-effective) use case for SSD is as a cache for frequently accessed data
that front-ends lower-cost SAS and potentially SATA disks, rather than as primary storage.
Weaknesses of using SSDs as flash memory are starting to be addressed through smart firmware
that sits in the controller.
Pace of adoption
Overall, TechAlpha believes flash SSD is one of the most disruptive trends in storage, but it
will only become material to the market beyond 2010. Customers we interviewed for our GigaOM Pro
research note (subscription required) tend to focus more on cost per GB in the current
economic climate, and less on cost per Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS), which is where
flash SSD excels. However, the vendor executives we interviewed agree that flash SSD is the
single most disruptive trend for which their companies are preparing, causing them to completely
rethink how and where data is stored.
Three developments are likely to converge in 2011 and drive broader adoption:
Vendors will bring more robust flash SSD solutions to market.
Customers will look beyond short-term IT cost savings toward business value enabled by
technological innovation. One large bank we heard from estimated that every
millisecond of storage response time reduction translates to tens of millions of dollars in
incremental annual profit, because securities trades are executed faster.
Flash SSD pricing will be comfortably below that of FC on a cost-per-effective-GB basis.
We believe flash SSD will start to replace a good share of the high-performance (i.e., FC) disk
market in the next 2-3 years. Already, flash SSDs are starting to take off in the high IOPS use
cases, delivering much reduced power consumption and radically better read performance. The speed
of broader adoption, though, will largely depend on how well vendors address some limitations
(which we describe in more detail in our GigaOM Pro note). The early adopter workloads will
likely be search, video rendering, email and potentially other mission-critical applications.
Juergen Urbanski is managing director of TechAlpha,
an industry analyst and management consulting firm serving enterprise IT executives on aligning
IT infrastructure and applications with business needs, and a contributor to the GigaOM Analyst Network.
To download the full
research note, head over to GigaOM Pro, our subscription
research service where you can get access to deep dive articles and original research reports
from top analysts on a wide variety of topics including mobile, infrastructure, consumer and
green technology markets.
Another month, another promo code or coupon code for the increasingly popular MozyHome Unlimited
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Apple has posted a support document outlining a number of recent changes made to its MobileMe
subscription service. Among the more significant changes are the ability to maintain rich text
formatting when replying to or forwarding messages, the abil...
Afternoon of Tuesday, June 30, 2009 • Once it aimed to compete with
YouTube, but that goal has backfired on bigger companies than Joost, which on Tuesday
announced that it would be converting to a white-label video hosting service. Joost's CEO,
Mike Volpi, is also stepping down in favor of Matt Zelesko, the current senior VP of engineering.
"We have built a solid technology platform that there
is demand for in the marketplace, and look forward to this new chapter for our company," reads
Volpi's
blog post yesterday. "At the same time, we'll continue to operate Joost.com and its
associated video applications. Unfortunately, as a part of this change, we will say goodbye to
many of our colleagues and friends." Including himself, apparently.
Om Malik points out, though, that this wasn't just any video wannabe; Joost had hotshot
founders, heaps of VC, deals with content providers like Viacom and CBS... and far, far too much
hype for what it was able to deliver quickly. The company's new direction puts it in competition
with the likes of Brightcove and Edgecast.
Now you can make money at home with Pirate Bay!
Morning of Wednesday, July 1, 2009 • You probably see it every morning at
least five times in your inbox: a big batch of spam that tells you how you could be joining
dozens of your fellow countrymen in making money at home shaking milk bottles or stuffing
envelopes or making phone calls to foreign countries, and earning tens of thousands of dollars
per minute in the process (offer void where ridiculous). But who would have thought that another
such message would be as surprising as yesterday's news that
a Swedish software company is purchasing The Pirate Bay.
The news came first exclusively from the BBC this morning: The company, Global Gaming Factory,
apparently wants to create some kind of P2P business model where the people who help traffic a
file are compensated for its distribution, presumably by parceling out portions of revenue from
its eventual recipients.
"The copyright holder still gets paid, the users still get their file, the ISP doesn't have a
million people all grabbing a file and -- for the users who share that song -- a payment for
putting that file on the P2P network," GGF CEO Hans Pandeya told the BBC.
Seems like there used to be a term for that. Some regal-sounding term. "Royal..." something.
Cisco Live keynote goes on despite glitches, protest
Morning of Tuesday, June 30, 2009 • Might Cisco develop a WebEx-oriented
competitor to Microsoft Office? Senior VP Doug Dennerline dangled that (pick one based on your
opinion of WebEx collaborations: tantalizing, distressing) prospect to attendees at the annual
Cisco Live conference. Elsewhere, CEO John Chambers fended off protesters from SEIU 1877, furious
over staff layoffs at the company.
IDGNS's Stephen Lawson caught Chambers' measured response: "You may not agree with everything I say, but
the one thing you will find is that Cisco is proud of what we do in business, what we do in our
customers, how we treat people -- whether it's our 13,000 vendors, our 4,600 contractors, or how
we are (one of) the top 10 places to work in every part of the world," he said to the group. A
tech glitch likewise failed to flap him.
Bands wanting Pandora play will need a toehold on Amazon
Beginning the middle of last month • Word is getting out about a change to
Pandora's music-submission process
for recording artists, and it's not a hit among those who choose to release only MP3s or to
release their CDs through... well, anyone but Amazon. Artists must now have an actual CD
available through Amazon Advantage and a UPC for that disc, in addition to the legal rights to
their music and two MP3 tracks and so forth.
Digital Audio Insider flagged
the change a couple of weeks ago, but word is just now getting out as artists run into the
new rules. Formerly Pandora was famous for its all-comers policy -- if you could get their music
to them, they'd try to give it a listen.
Reaction among musicians varied widely; Hypebot's lively discussion thread contained a lot of remarks along the "#pandoraFAIL"
line; on the other hand, as Dan Rodriguez at metalinsider.net tartly noted, "Really, should you be clogging up someone's playlist with a song you
recorded an hour ago and aren't ready to sell?"
This morning, Pandora's Tim Westergren told Hypebot that his company's decision isn't about
taking a cut of the $29.95 -- moreover, "The commissions we get are a small part of the overall
business (it's all about advertising)." Well, at least that's honest. This after 14% of Hypebot
readers polled said that, after having learned of this deal, they would never use Pandora again.
RIAA smacks up Usenet.com, MCS Music smacks up everybody
June 30, 2009 • Sunrise, sunset, and nothing new under the sun for the mess
that is music copyright law. In the district court for southern New York, the RIAA has won a
tremendous victory over Usenet.com in a case that could set precedent elsewhere, as Judge Harold
Baer denied Usenet.com's attempt at claiming safe harbor a la Sony v Betamax, since a
subscription site such as theirs has an ongoing relationship with its customers and could in
theory have some effect on how they use the service. CNet's Greg Sandoval has been out in front on this
story so far.
Elsewhere, a number of music publishing companies are suing Microsoft, Yahoo, and RealNetworks
for allegedly failing to get the correct licenses for the "underlying composition" on tracks
available in their various online stores. Scribd has a viewable version of
the 104-page filing, which you can scroll through to see if any of your favorite songs are
involved with this one.
Meanwhile, Ben Sheffner at Copyrights and Campaigns has the latest on Sony v Tenenbaum (pre-trial
maneuvering continues, judge's last good nerve clearly under siege); and Jammie Thomas-Rasset,
who now says she won't agree to any settlement that requires her to pay money or admit guilt.
WHAT'S NEXT? The President tells you how your money's spent...
Wednesday's tech headlines
The Register
• If China's so hot to filter something, why don't they try filtering their rampant outgoing
spam? Gary Warner, director of research in computer forensics at the University of Alabama and a
former activist with CastleCops, hopes that attention to the
problem will shame the government into action.
• A former volunteer at a group closely tied to that won't-someone-think-of-the-children "To
Catch A Predator" series apparently was tricked into cybersex with the leader of the group as
"revenge" for offenses real or imagined. When Rolling Stone reported on these people's antics,
the former volunteer allegedly launched a DDoS attack against the magazine's site and the group.
(Some people need other hobbies.) Dan Goodin has the
story, but you'll have to fend for yourself on the shower you'll need after following the
links.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
• Nick Eaton, proprietor of the indispensable Microsoft Blog, snarks for us: "Finally."
After 2,756 Internet-years, Redmond's finally offering
free POP email fetching for Hotmail. Seriously, gang, welcome to 2007. (In fact, congratulations;
can we come with you?)
• The Microsoft Blog also reports on the company's two new data centers slated to go operational
this month, including the first one outside the US. Can you guess where? Faith and begorra, you
might.
• Levi Pulkkinen on Seattle 911 reports that
people are getting yet another variation on that "hit man" extortion spam that makes the rounds
now and then. If you're the recipient, remember to file a complaint with the Internet Crime
Complaint Center, and if you're the sender, remember to point any guns at yourself first, kthx.
TechCrunch
• An impressive guest post from Mary Hodder explains why the wait for real-time search is going to be a lengthy one.
• And framed in the doorway of the barn, we see the rump of a horse as it gallops over the
horizon: Robin Wauters says Twitter's getting nervous about all those people using the word "tweet" in their names.
Turns out the company filed for a trademark on that back in April. Too little too late?
And elsewhere
• Trading in online currencies is so prevalent in China that officials are worried it'll
affect the rate of the actual renminbi, and so restrictions
are in order, writes David Barboza for The New York Times. Experts say that official
estimates of $2 billion in trades last year is probably much lower than the real number thanks to
a thriving underground economy.
• Writing for the Chronicle of Higher Education, Tim Barton, president of Oxford University
Press, examines the practical effects of Google Book Search and concludes that, while the settlement
between Google and various publishing entities isn't perfect, but "after long months of grappling
with it, what has become clear to us is that it is a remarkable and remarkably ambitious
achievement." Lovely stuff.
Sometimes I'd like to be the President...
Morning of July 1, 2009 > That's how the old song goes by the legendary rock
group "War," and it goes on, "So I can tell you how your money's spent." Well, if you think about
it, that's one thing that the executive branch of government really hasn't done all that
well. Let's face it, when's the last time you ever read the Federal Budget?
If it was a simple Web site, however, would you read it? In keeping with a new Federal law
requiring greater transparency in the expenditure of public funds, the US Government has
relaunched its spending overview site as USASpending.gov.
In its inaugural blog post, the site promises to provide for each line item of federal
expenditures: "1. the name of the entity receiving the award; 2. the amount of the award; 3.
information on the award including transaction type, funding agency, etc; 4. the location of the
entity receiving the award; 5. a unique identifier of the entity receiving the award."
For fiscal year 2009 to date, according to the site, the government has appropriated over $237
billion in grant money. Betanews now has a full report on what else we
found on our first visit.
Manufacturing numbers could signal economic recovery
Q3 2009 > Yesterday's Forrester report is starting to make more and more
sense: This being the first day of the second half of the year, market traders will be looking
out for signs of life in the global economy, and the place they're looking is the manufacturing
sector.
And for technology, that means it's all eyes on Asia, where the small parts are made. If
retailers, resellers, and re-manufacturers (OEMs) are replenishing their inventories, then their
orders will be going up, which means China and Taiwan (and now India's included there too, as a
leading LCD manufacturing country) will enjoy a bit of a boom. But then the question is, why
are they replenishing inventories? Is it because they anticipate greater consumer demand
going into the holidays (good news)? Or because the decline in orders last year was so great that
they now have inventory gaps to fill (bad news), which might not be a forecast of anything at
all.
Perhaps you've noticed: The fine art of economic forecasting these days seems to be more
predicated on the finer art of being able to explain what just happened in the last month.
angry tapir writes "Mobile carriers may start giving away netbooks for free, and Linux-based
application stores could help them profit by doing so, the Linux Foundation's Jim Zemlin argued at
a recent forum in Beijing. 'Selling discounted netbooks to users who buy a mobile data subscription
would extend a sales strategy widely used for mobile phones. Carriers often sell phones for below
retail price and let a user's subscription fees make up for any loss. AT&T already sells
subsidized 3G netbooks in the US, and China Mobile has announced similar plans. Carriers worldwide
are likely considering the option, which lets them charge for added services like downloads of
music, videos and software, said [analyst Jack Gold]. Those downloads could come from platforms
like the iPhone App Store that target mainly mobile phones today. Competition could push netbook
prices down as more carriers subsidize them, which would make putting Linux on the laptops an
attractive way to cut costs, said Zemlin.'"
angry tapir writes "Mobile carriers may start giving away netbooks for free, and Linux-based
application stores could help them profit by doing so, the Linux Foundation's Jim Zemlin argued at
a recent forum in Beijing. 'Selling discounted netbooks to users who buy a mobile data subscription
would extend a sales strategy widely used for mobile phones. Carriers often sell phones for below
retail price and let a user's subscription fees make up for any loss. AT&T already sells
subsidized 3G netbooks in the US, and China Mobile has announced similar plans. Carriers worldwide
are likely considering the option, which lets them charge for added services like downloads of
music, videos and software, said [analyst Jack Gold]. Those downloads could come from platforms
like the iPhone App Store that target mainly mobile phones today. Competition could push netbook
prices down as more carriers subsidize them, which would make putting Linux on the laptops an
attractive way to cut costs, said Zemlin.'"
p2pnet news viewFreedom | P2P:- Funny — you’d have
thought The Pirate Bay announcement was of more importance than Farrah Fawcett’s death. The
naysayers, the fanboys of Peter and Krew sellin’ out to the Big $.
What world do some of you people live on?
Try this on for size. Remember Napster? ‘Nuff said. Peter and the Bay are apparently going
to still be ‘pirates’, buy only in a vague sort of way.
Peerialism is a decentralized p2p sharing system much like bittorrent. It allows for NAT
clustering, and upon review, looks pretty frikkin good, I hate to say.
On a platform host like MPSBroadband and Peerialism AB seeders (that’s you) can easily distribute a
massive amount of on-demand streaming HD, everything. The plan seems to be to get the members:
that’s the first thing.
And there’s nothing like an already prebuilt opt-in membership base and all its little
pieces of information and secrets.
Napster, Moebius, Kazaa, SeequPod, imeem, Last.FM, eMusic, ad nauseum.
Now they have a captive audience. But wait! The MAFIAA has only converted 20% of its catalog to
digital?! So where will all the content come from now!?
You, my ‘played-like-a-fiddle’ friend, will seed user generated videos (UGV) at the
‘new-and-cool’ YouTube knockoff.
This is how it’ll begin. They’ll keep the fanboys and convert perhaps 1% of anyone
who ever used The Pirate Bay for their source of file sharing. While the MAFIAA think, wtf is
going on? And while the MAFIAA is working up the extortion numbers for this new
’service’, you’ll be uploading your ‘backflip off the house into the pool
video’.
This new TPB venture is a grab from an outside player Global Gaming Factory X AB (publ) (GGF) to leverage an
existing membership base to ‘free’ use at first, for mulitmedia sharing like youtube.
After a while, they’ll address the MAFIAA with a lucrative deal to convert that over to
subscription, probably paying by the Mb, like minutes on a cell phone, all the while feeding you
ads that you’re actually paying to see. (Typically over 40% of content on a website is
irrelevant or ad related X bandwidth usage = holy fuck!)
It could be a great platform for media distribution, and it could be used to level the copyright
playing field by demonstrating how UGV can be monetized and is worth no less than the garbage in
the MAFIAA’s catalog crypt.
It could easily rival YouTube and Microsoft, perhaps enough to influence the greedy extortionists
running the music and movie industry.
But that ain’t gonna happen.
IMHO, The Pirate Bay crew sold the fuck out to get the MAFIAA off their back and to cut into the
bill the owe. No amount of ‘crying because they don’t understand me’ will
persuade any tertiary file sharing individual from believing otherwise. Grow a pair.
Use the new iteration of The Pirate Bay with caution …
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma
Gandhi
June, 2009
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Xbox 360 owners will be able to access Last.fm to varying degrees whether they have a Gold or
Silver account, but full ad-free access will require a premium Last.fm subscription.
That's according to Christina DeRosa from Xbox Live, who told Joystiq that Silver users will get
some form of time-limited access with video advertising, while Gold users will get unlimited
ad-supported access. DeRosa said Microsoft was considering "a trial period of three hours a
month" for Silver users.
Those prepared to pony up for the full shebang, however, will get ad-free access "and will also
have more sophisticated personalisation features, like Loved Tracks".
The Chronicles of Spellborn, an independently-developed MMO which launched late last year, is to
be re-developed as a free-to-play game supported by micro-transactions.
Its US and UK publisher Acclaim made the announcement, but Frogster, the publisher for most of
mainland Europe, is also involved. Frogster's Asian studio in South Korea will collaborate with
developer Spellborn NV on the change.
Frogster has had some success with its Taiwanese free-to-play import Runes of Magic recently. The
news also follows hot on the heels of Turbine's decision to move Dungeons & Dragons Online
from a subscription to a free-to-play model.
“PayPerLive is the easy way to create and monetize professional live streams.”
Why it might be a killer
It is a valid framework for the monetization of online content.
Some questions
How much does this cost? Are there different plans for you to weigh up?
What it does
PayPerLive is subscription service that was launched not so long ago. In general terms, it attempts
to avoid the shortcomings of other video streaming providers by giving professional users a high
definition platform that can be employed to stream shows and ticketed events.
Both domains and subdomains can be procured, and those who have a Stickam account can log in using
that. A website designer is provided in any case, so that those who do not have HTML or CSS
knowledge can set up everything easily. It will also come in useful for those who do have the
knowledge but not the time to put everything in position.
Of course, one of the most interesting options (if not the most interesting option par excellence)
is the one that lets the broadcaster sell tickets for his broadcasts and generate an income in the
process. Tools and resources for publicizing the event are provided as well, so that it could be
said that the whole process is covered from start to finish.
When Apple upgraded its iPhone operating system in June, it included some highly prominent and
loudly demanded features, like search and copy and paste. But the Cupertino, Calif., computer
maker also added some behind-the-scenes upgrades that haven’t yet started to show up in
most iPhone users’ daily experiences. One of them, HTTP video streaming, has the capability
to substantially change how mobile video is perceived and consumed.
HTTP streaming enables publishers to give users a better video experience by employing adaptive
streaming techniques, something other players such as Microsoft, Adobe Systems, Move Networks and
Swarmcast already offer (though Adobe uses a more traditional proprietary real-time streaming
protocol to do so, rather than sending chunks of video over standard HTTP like the others). That
means that watchers can enjoy a continuous, smooth video experience. The stream intelligently
adjusts to the highest quality a viewer can receive at each moment. If the connectivity worsens,
a lower quality stream is substituted without interruption or buffering. (For a more extensive
explanation about adaptive streaming, see this subscription-only piece from
GigaOM Pro.)
Apple only made its HTTP streaming plans known to the world
in the very beginning of June, so very little content is available in the format now.
However, it let two encoding companies, Inlet Technologies and Envivio, in on its plans so they
could prepare solutions for content providers. (Here’s
an interview with an Inlet executive about how exactly Apple’s HTTP streaming works.) One
Inlet implementation, with Major League Baseball’s At Bat application, is already live.
But where it gets really interesting is that Apple’s HTTP streaming is available via the
iPhone’s Safari browser, without the downloading of any application. And both Inlet and
Envivio have prepared demonstration sites so you can see video sharpen to adjust to your
connection in real time. Through either site, you can view live-streaming, fast-loading,
high-quality video in QuickTime right from your mobile browser.
Inlet’s test site, made in partnership with Akamai, can be found at
http://iphone.akamai.com. Envivio’s demo is not publicly available yet, but those who are
interested can sign up for a pass here.
Some open Internet advocates have cried foul on iPhone carrier
AT&T’s handling of MLB’s At Bat app, saying its HTTP streaming-powered live game
broadcasts do exactly what AT&T has prohibited
Sling Media from doing: redirecting television over the mobile network.
But that controversy belies the opportunity Apple’s new video streaming offers. Because
HTTP streaming is possible through the browser, developers who use it don’t need to pass
through Apple and AT&T’s thorny App Store approval process. (They also don’t have
to expend the cost and effort of building out a specialized app.) At this point, anyone who
enables the technology is free to run it on 3G or Wi-Fi.
Embedded above is a short demo video we made of the two HTTP streaming sites playing on my
iPhone. You can see for yourself that they load up over 3G in my browser with a continuous smooth
stream. We can’t wait to watch what people do next with this stuff.
Josh took a break from ribbing his grandpa
to tell you why you should get involved with Adopt a Feature v2.
In case you're still buzzing from Josh's high-energy onslaught, here's what you need to know: Make
a video about any or all of the features on the list below (click on the name of the feature to get
more information about it). Include the name of the feature and "adoptafeature" in the tags -- this
is important; it's how we'll locate your video for inclusion on our channel and possibly on the
YouTube homepage.
The weekend after
Michael Jackson’s death saw the King of Pop take over the Billboard charts. Though
the numbers aren’t final yet, it’s estimated that Number Ones, The
Essential Michael Jackson and Thriller each sold 100,00 copies last week; the week
before, his entire solo catalog sold 10,000 copies total. Jackson may hold six to nine of the
slots in the Top 10; the Beatles and AC/DC have both had five albums in the Top 10 at the same
time. In other Jackson news, photos from Jackson’s final tour rehearsal taken two days
before his death have been released. His body will be returned to Neverland Ranch on Friday for a
public viewing. [Billboard.com, PopEater.com, CNN.com]
Aerosmith played a nearly two-hour long set on Friday night at New York’s
Jones Beach that featured all of their classic album Toys in the Attic, as well as big
hits including “Cryin’” and “Love in an Elevator”. For the encore,
guitarist Joe Perry defeated his Guitar Hero doppelganger and the band closed with
“Come Together.” [RollingStone.com]
Another band playing an entire album on tour: The Pixies, who will celebrate the
20th anniversary of Doolittle by performing all of the album and its B-sides on a
European tour this fall. [Gigwise.com]
The Flaming Lips’ upcoming album Embryonic keeps getting more
interesting. MGMT and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O are both contributing to the double
album, which Wayne Coyne described as more “groove-oriented” than the band’s
typical sound. Coyne also mentioned that a “weird mathematician guy from Germany”
would be doing “some spoken word stuff” on Embryonic, which is due in
September. [Guardian.co.uk]
Vibe Magazine is closing its doors. The magazine, which Quincy Jones
founded in 1993, tried raising subscription prices and decreasing the amount of issues published
to no avail. [Idolator.com]
Two of hip-hop’s best-known women will have shows on VH1 next year. Pepa
of Salt-N-Pepa will be looking for love on her show, discussing her life with three of her
friends over brunch. Meanwhile, TLC’s Rozonda “Chili” Thomas will also be
searching for that special someone with the help of relationship expert Tionna Smalls on her
series. [AllHipHop.com]
Indie artists who want their music included on Pandora’s streaming radio
will have to meet new packaging and artwork standards and are strongly encouraged to pay a $29.95
yearly fee to join the Amazon Advantage Program. [Hypebot.com]
The multiplicative nature of retention
Retention metrics, like viral marketing, have a powerful multiplicative approach that makes them
important to optimize. This is an often-overlooked metric that is easily sacrificed to the Great
God of Viral Traffic
I wanted to dig into this issue a bit more, and give my thoughts on how your retention numbers
can be an incredibly powerful method of driving up total traffic numbers to your site, not just
the user acquisition piece.
Matt Humphrey from Bumba Labs on user retention curves A frequent
collaborator of mine, Matt Humphrey, has often referenced some of these ideas in a public posting
below, which I’ll excerpt. I’ve worked with Matt closely for over a year
and a half now, and know a lot about his skillsets, background, and interests. His background is
influenced by his time as a Carnegie Mellon alum, YCombinator entrepreneur, and working on
quantitative marketing projects with me.
In my conversations with Matt, we often discussed the metric of “user retention rate”
which tells you what % of users are revisiting after some period of time. So you might define 50%
user retention as, 50% of the users on your site come back after a month, or what % come back
after an initial signup, or whatever suits your particular business.
What’s amazing is the multiplicative aspect of this number:
[...]Â Having month-to-month user retention of 92%, 96%, and 97.3% will get you on
average 1, 2, and 3 user-years respectively per user that ever signs up on the site.
Okay, in English? If each month you lose 8% of your existing users (92% retention) from the
previous month, the average use will stay for 12 months. If you can hold just 4% more of your
users (96% retention), then they will stick around for 2 years. If you can hold only 1.3% more
than that (97.3% retention), they will be in for 3 years.
It’s easy to think of retention percentages in the 90’s as good. It just feels good.
But over the course of time, products in the low-to-mid 90’s will fade super-fast, and ones
only slightly more sticky will do much, much better. Single percentage points here are mission
critical, that’s why attention to detail and rigorous analytics become so important on the
web. [...]
To restate this, as you approach high levels of user retention, you begin to see powerful
multiplicative effects.
Let me state, for reality-checking purposes, that retention rates over 90% are unrealistic, but
are useful for discussion purposes because they bring out the extreme cases. More realistically,
the numbers I’ve seen are generally much closer to 30-60% revisit rates after the initial
registration. Similarly, the typically retention rates are not linear – you see the most
churn initially, but then the cohort usually settles and becomes much more loyal.
But the core issues still hold, and the reason, of course, is simple – it’s simple
arithmetic, which we’ll examine below.
An example of two subscriber cohorts
Let’s say you’re running a subscription site, and you compare two sets of
subscribers, both starting in the same month, both numbering 1000. Let’s say that one
cohort has 80% monthly retention, and the other is 90%.
In the short run, the numbers are close to the same:
80% monthly retention, after 1 month = 600
90% monthly retention, after 1 month = 700
Although obviously you’d want to have the 90% retention, the differences are not huge
– you end up with 17% more users, after one period.
But let’s look at these numbers once you get to 12 months:
80% monthly retention, after 12 months = 1000*(0.8)^12 = 68
90% monthly retention, after 12 months = 1000*(0.9)^12 = 282
Of course, this ends up being a staggering 3X difference. Wow! And when you compare aggregate
lifetime value, the numbers are even bigger.
Retention-focused features are very powerful
The point of all of the above is that retention-focused features are very powerful because they
let you create dramatic improvements in all the important metrics, across the board – be it
pageviews, total time usage, revenue, etc.
This means that you can, just as people do with addressbook importers and the like, put a
tremendous amount of time into a whole host of retention-driven features like:
A great product and value proposition
Targeted notifications
Fresh news and content on every return
Desktop app-integration (which has a much lower rate of uninstall)
The number of friends on the site (the more that are there, the more notifications can be
generated)
All of the above contribute meaningfully to this user retention number.
As weird as it is to imagine that something as pedestrian as how you deliver your notifications
can cause success or failure to your web business, in fact it can. The reason is that how you
deliver notifications can have a huge impact on whether or not your users come to your site, and
every percentage point of improvement may lead to many times the revenue, pageviews, and content.
This is certainly an area worth focusing on, as much as Bay Area companies have focused on just
the viral metrics.
How many times have you bought a CD only to find that most of the songs
are not to your liking? I am sure most of you have this kind of experience. It is definitely not
a good feeling, perhaps coupled with a pain in the wallet. This doesn’t apply only to
physical CD that you buy off the shelf, but also those songs that you bought from iTunes store or
Amazon.
Won’t it be great if you can listen to the whole songs (or CD) before you buy? iTunes store
and Amazon has the preview feature, but they only come with a 30-second preview, which is not
enough to sample a song.
AOL music is one of the best place in the Web that offers free full length songs and music for
listening. It has a huge database of songs. You simply pick the songs you want. If the song is
not available, AOL will search for it in the web and playback (from the remote location) the song
on the fly.
In addition, AOL music always have a “New music releases” section where
you can listen to new CD releases for free in their entirety every week.
This is not only a good way to sample the CD before you buy, it is also a good way to discover
new CDs in the market.
At Youtube, you won’t be able to
sample the whole CD at one go, but surely you will be able to find most of the tracks (in music
video and other forms) in its database. When you search for the songs/artists/albums in the
search bar, there is a high chance that you will find what you want in the search result.
Furthermore, with all the YouTube
and other video conversion tools
previously highlighted by MakeUseOf, you can also convert and download the music video to your
desktop, even though the music quality differs a great deal from those in the music store.
With Rhapsody, you never have to worry about a lack of songs. They have more than a million songs
in their database and there is a very high chance you will find what you want. Rhapsody operates
on a subscription model (only available in US), that is to say, you pay a subscription fee every
month ($12.99) and you have access to all the songs in their database and you can listen to them
again and again, unlimited times.
With the subscription account, you can also download the software and access to your favorite
songs from your desktop.
If you are not willing to pay the subscription fee, Rhapsody also allows its users to listen to
25 songs for free. That should be enough for you to sample two and a half CD of songs before you
make your purchase decision.
Imeem is a social network that enables its users to share media, including music, video and
photos with each other. In here, you are likely to find the songs/CDs that you want.
Some of the music are restricted by the label/artists and features only a 30-second preview, but
there are still a great deal of them that are full length and you are able to listen to the full
CD.
This may not be suitable for everyone, but if you are a Chinese song lover, like I am, then this
is the place to listen to free songs.
All you need to do is to perform a search with the search bar and it will fetch the required
songs from the artists. You can then scroll to find his/her current album or previous albums. You
can click on the link beside the song to hear the full song.
Other alternatives that did not make the list MySpace
I am sure some of you will swear by MySpace.
I am not an active user of MySpace and I don’t have much love for it. Personally, I find
the layout very messy and it crashes my browser (and computer) very often.
Last.fm
While there are plenty of songs and information in Last.fm, you seldom have the chance to sample the
full CD of your favorite artists. I do use it for occasional listening, but when it comes to CD
sampling, I guess there are better sites out there.
aimed at people who are interested in writing, self-publishing/print-on-demand and internet
marketing for their books (in print/ebook or audio format).
That is a great niche, there are thousands of people struggling to get their book written,
published and sold. I know the pull of books very well myself.
Joanna has self-published her print book using print on demand, and also e-books, along with
marketing via clickbank, so she has practical hands on knowledge of what she writes about. She
also has created an online course called Author2Zero which
teaches people “how to use Web 2.0 tools to write, publish, sell and promote your
book”.
You know already what I am going to say … yes, Joanna is an Authority Blogger
The content of the blog is great, and Joanna has a great personality that comes across very well
in text (as you would expect!), audio and video. While the video is not “slick”, and
on occasion lighting and audio suffer a little, I actually think the character of them is an
asset and warms you to get more engaged rather than putting you off.
In terms of promotion, the site is currently No 6 on Australia’s top writing
blogs. This score is based on Google PageRank, Alexa and Technorati scores. Essentially, if
Joanna gets a bunch more links then she will be able to top that list.
First Impressions
Colours are fighting for attention
My first impression was that the red dominates. Spend too long reading and you might get a
migraine I guess this pushes people to subscribe to the feed, heh.
"Noisy" layout
The layout is also very busy. There are literally hundreds of links per page - far too many
choices without giving clear demarcation and some sense of content hierarchy.
Choose what you want the visitor to do next, then work your layout to support that
focus.
As it stands the visitor might well get so confused they do not hang around, I imagine this is
reflected in the bounce rate statistics.
You will want to guide visitors to
Read
Subscribe
Buy
At the moment the clutter will cause the first goal to be hindered - prioritize the
content, and put everything else to the background apart from your subscription box
(providing a clear call to action) and also give your Author2zero product banners space to
breathe.
Recommendations
I have three big recommendations for this blog, and combined they underscore a key lesson in any
kind of market.
Change the colour scheme so red is used only to draw attention to specific focus
areas rather than as a block colour. Right now the background dominates, and the colour
combinations used in the content cause confusion rather than attract. If you look at my blog, I
use spot red for very important locations, and orange as a general “look at me”
colour. The rest of the scheme is very much in a supporting role. Make the content come to the
fore, the background should, well, be in the background.
Simplify layout and use graphics and HTML boxes to differentiate, clarify and
segment the content to add more legibility and context. Right now the layout is
“noisy”. When the visitor is given too many choices they make no choice at all. At
the moment rather than being helpful the layout is inhibiting the visitor. You need clear sign
posts, and remove the clutter. Reduce the categories down to seven as a maximum, lose the
Tweets and the tag cloud.
Build links by offering viral blog content resources and networking with other
bloggers and writers. You already do a good job of networking, and offer some great free
content. What you need to do is turn those around to your link advantage. Repackage some of
your already written content and put those to work as series or big resource potsts, then
promote promote promote in social media. Also create a writing competition where folks can win
copies of your books. Anything to bring the links in to boost your link count and traffic, and
in turn grow your PR, Alexa and Technorati scores.
As it stands the vast majority of your links go to the homepage, which is not going to help with
your search traffic as you want topical, keyword focused deep links as well as general domain
linking for good long term growth.
I would also grab the variation of your domain without “the”
(”creativepenn” versus “thecreativepenn”) as some people will
instinctively write it without as well as with.
You do not need to throw away your branding. In fact I would suggest the
DIYThemes Thesis Theme
for WordPress as your base theme, with your existing header would be an excellent evolution
rather than a radical departure. This will also give you the advantage of an excellent framework
that will make full advantage of the links you grow.
Summary
Right now the content is great but being let down by usability issues. These are easy to resolve,
either with the help of a great designer or simply by moving over to a customised Thesis Theme install.
Clear Selling-Off Sensitive Data
You've probably seen those short lines at airport security terminals for Clear pass holders. On
June 22nd, the company (which had promised to whisk traveler-members through airports for a fee)
suddenly went belly-up, gleefully
taking those $199 subscription payments until the 11th hour. Well, the shadiness keeps on
coming. The company is trying to sell off sensitive customer data to get back all that money
it spent on nice uniforms for its check-in staff (and on hiring defense contractor Lockheed Martin
to integrate its service into airports). To qualify for membership, travelers had to submit
detailed personal info (iris scans, Social Security numbers, and everything in between). Clear told
members via e-mail that it values its members so much that it's selling them out to another travel
membership company, violating its own privacy agreement in the process. Yeah, this will work out
well. [From: Wired]
The Pirate Bay Goes Legit
The Pirate Bay has been bought out by European Internet café company Global Gaming Factory,
and will be adopting a pay model in the near future. When faced with the legal wrath of the
entertainment industry, the popular torrent-sharing site once adopted a devil-may-care attitude and
brushed off lawsuits like they were nothing. Not anymore, it seems -- the pirates are selling out.
No word on what the pay model will be, but this reeks of Napster 2.0. [From: Engadget]
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There are some pretty tempting deals today, such as the Panasonic plasma
with a Lumix camera that I was eyeballing. For those looking for laptops, we've got a nice
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"We have built a solid technology platform that there
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p2pnet news view
The weekend after
Michael Jackson’s death saw the King of Pop take over the Billboard charts. Though
the numbers aren’t final yet, it’s estimated that Number Ones, The
Essential Michael Jackson and Thriller each sold 100,00 copies last week; the week
before, his entire solo catalog sold 10,000 copies total. Jackson may hold six to nine of the
slots in the Top 10; the Beatles and AC/DC have both had five albums in the Top 10 at the same
time. In other Jackson news, photos from Jackson’s final tour rehearsal taken two days
before his death have been released. His body will be returned to Neverland Ranch on Friday for a
public viewing. [
I wanted to dig into this issue a bit more, and give my thoughts on how your retention numbers
can be an incredibly powerful method of driving up total traffic numbers to your site, not just
the user acquisition piece.
How many times have you bought a CD only to find that most of the songs
are not to your liking? I am sure most of you have this kind of experience. It is definitely not
a good feeling, perhaps coupled with a pain in the wallet. This doesn’t apply only to
physical CD that you buy off the shelf, but also those songs that you bought from iTunes store or
Your Free Subscriber Download!
Subscriptions are available as FEED , DAILY and WEEKLY emails, 
Recommandations
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