Anyone living through the media meltdown will enjoy this clever 9-minute rewrite of the old Don McLean anthem.
Posts Tagged ‘Business’
More than ever, the medium is the message
Thursday, June 4th, 2009
At the time, he was talking about the fast advent of TV. But if you want to see the truth of his statement in action, you’re already in the right place: online.
- A message in Twitter is 140 characters long.
- A message on 12seconds.tv is, well, 12 seconds long.
- You get about 400 characters to express your thoughts on Facebook.
- LinkedIn is businesslike; you can’t get as lost as you can on Facebook, and the variety of activities in more limited.
- Squidoo lets you type in original content, but it’s really about packaging other content — yours or somebody else’s — under a single thematic umbrella.
- A blog is unlimited, but is accepted as “good” only if it gets updated frequently.
There are at least dozens more kinds of electronic media where you can place your messages. I know people who market themselves online using all of the above media and more. But if you want to get people to pay attention to what you’re writing, you can’t just cut and paste your blog post onto Facebook and Twitter and Squidoo, etc.
In some cases, there are limitations such Twitter’s infamous 140-character limit. In all, there is the simple and unarguable feedback from the market. If you do it right, people will pay attention. If you do it wrong, they won’t.
Doing it right means integrating strengths, weaknesses and peculiarities of the medium into whatever it is that you’re writing, videotaping, podcasting, etc. If you want to give a lecture, don’t bother putting it on YouTube unless you have strong visuals to go with it. And don’t simply post the transcript of your lecture as a blog if you want anyone to say anything nice about it.
Today, as newspapers face their toughest economic environment ever, they’re trying to figure out how to get people to pay for content online. When I ask people about this, the usual response is that they aren’t sure they’d find an electronic newspaper to be worth reading, let alone paying for.
But they’re imposing their view of newspapers as a print medium on the coming reality of newspapers online.
To be sure, some publishers will make a mess of it. They’ll try to do exactly what they’re doing now — but without the paper costs. And they’ll fail.
Others will figure it out. The paper of the future may provide headlines to your cellphone in the morning, with updates all day. On a Smartphone, the headlines may link to the full story. You may have the choice whether you want to get one section (world news, for instance) in-depth, and another (perhaps sports) on only a cursory basis. The website might offer configuration and search tools, letting you scan for all articles containing a specific keyword, or filter out stories from the opposite side of town. It could give you Tweets as news breaks, video clips of big events, or full context about ongoing, longterm stories. It may led you contribute news in the form of short video and photos. You might be able to read it on a Kindle, on screen or hear it through your ipod. And somewhere in there, they’ll figure out how to not only collect a critical mass of paid subscribers, they’ll also figure out how to serve advertisers.
In other words, newspapers will survive. But they won’t look like they do today, and they won’t DO what they do today either, because they’ll come to us not just through the same old medium, but through a Dagwood sandwich of media.
So McLuhan’s old saw really is more important than ever. When he wrote it, he was dealing with print, TV and radio. Today, because the medium is the message, it means the message changes many times a day depending on where you happen to be when you choose to accept it.
10 YOUNG entrepreneurs to watch
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009
From ContentNext, with link to same
Warning: If you have more than 20 years already invested in your career, this is going to make you very tired and at least a little bit scared. Here, from ContentNext.com are 10 young entrepreneurs to watch. By young, they mean really young — no older than their 20s.
What’s most instructive and startling is the transformational nature of what these kid are doing. Their businesses are, largely, based on ideas that couldn’t even have existed 5 or 10 years ago.
If you have any questions about the power of the Internet to foster change; or if you have any doubt that the next generation does things very differently than you’re used to, then you ought to spend 10 minutes scanning this article. Then resist the temptation to take a nap.
The difference between liberals and conservatives is … genetic?
Friday, May 29th, 2009Nicholas Kristoff writes in the New York Times that your political leaning isn’t your fault.
Liberals and conservatives not only think differently, he writes, they feel differently. Which means that when a person accuses you of a horrible misunderstanding about the way the world works, an argument doesn’t have to ensue.
First, you should know that this poor confrontational soul has been trained from the day he or she was born — and maybe even programmed in the womb — to disagree with you on pretty much anything that matters.
This is important to a whole bunch of folks, like those at Civilpolitics.org who seem to think that we ought to be able to discuss our differences without calling each other idiots and nitwits.
That’s just crazy talk.
We should care precisely because polite dialogue is a waste of time that we don’t have. Anyone who uses this knowledge to increase the amount of talk should be sent to Guantanamo. The rest of us will use this insight can be used to get right to the heart of the matter ASAP. We can finally settle the critical issues of our time: abortion, gay marriage, access to health care and whether the Constitution is a living, breathing document.
What we need to do is conduct more research into the workings of the political mind. This could get costly, so the government might need to subsidize it. But it would be one area of study that we can all agree is worth the price. Am I not right?
Soon we will know with certainty which end of the political spectrum is not a choice, but rather an unfortunate disability. Once we know that, it’s an easy step to an infrastructure of subsidized treatment centers offering therapy, behavior modification, enhanced cognition techniques and, eventually, carefully monitored release of individuals back into society.
Which side would get this assistance and care? Liberals or conservatives?
It’s obvious already. And if you have to ask, fill out the form below; your plastic bracelet will arrive in the mail in a few days.
Can Obama be good for business?
Thursday, May 28th, 2009Conventional wisdom among many of the people I know — regardless of how they feel about President Obama’s social agenda — is that his economic agenda is pretty tough on business.
As reported by Stacy Blackman at bnet.com, Dr. Robert Frank at Cornell University’s Johnson School of Management and a New York Times columnist, feels othewise. I’m especially intrigued by his view on universal health care.
Marketing, or just anti-social networking?
Thursday, May 28th, 2009When I heard about the college kids who are making money by advertising products with temporary tattoos on their foreheads, I knew it wouldn’t be long before something like Wrapmail came along. As reported in Inc. magazine, 
Wrapmail is a service that puts an ad in every outbound e-mail sent from your place of business. Inc’s example was pretty benign: a guy who sells copiers is using the service to promote his own products on e-mails sent out by his employees. I can’t really see very much wrong with that.
But it’s not really welcome, either. And how long will it be before the matchmakers step in — paying individuals and small companies to advertise national brands in their outbound e-mails? My guess: within the next 10 minutes, if it hasnt already started.
We all know: The Internet tends toward cesspool. Every time there is an uplifting addition to the amazing things this medium can achieve, there is someone who finds a way to just as quickly coat it with a certain amount of stink. I’ve learned to live with that, even embrace and enjoy it.
Which is why I’m writing about Wrapmail (which, incidentally uses equally intrusive pop-up chat technology as soon as you open their website). I’m impressed someone thought of it. I’m also depressed someone thought of it.
And if they want to get the word out, they might consider tattooing it on someone’s forehead. Because on principle I’ll delete the e-mail I will undoubtedly receive from Wrapmail after writing this post.
More on the suing of Entrepreneur
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009UPDATE: Entrepreneur magazine, being sued for publishing information in its “Top 100″ list of entrepreneurial companies about a CEO who was subsequently arrested and charged with running a Ponzi scheme, has now asked that the suit be dismissed.
The original suit, for $178 million by a group of 87 investors, alleged that, by printing information about the company Agape World (this was covered in more detail in my previous blog entry, Are Magazines Really That Important?), Entrepreneur magazine played a role in their making a bad investment.
Entrepreneur’s motion for dismissal strikes me as pretty fair and on-target. I have no sympathy for investors dumb enough to bet millions of dollars on information taken from Entrepreneur magazine.
The strange thing is that’s pretty much Entrepreneur’s defense. According to Folio:, the magazine cites New York law in stating: “A publisher is under no duty of care to its readers to ensure the accuracy of published information unless it constitutes a breach of contract, obligation, or trust, or amounts to deceit, libel or slander… A publisher, even those who maintain a paid subscription service, such as Entrepreneur, owes its readers no duty to ensure the accuracy of its publications, and thus, cannot incur liability for an allegedly inaccurate statement.”
OK, I agree that magazines make mistakes and shouldn’t be held accountable for the cost to someone who uses that information to make a business decision. But does Entrepreneur really want to be on record saying that it doesn’t need to worry whether the information it prints is accurate?
Facebook: eyeballs, China and deja vu
Monday, May 18th, 2009Is it possible to have two deja vus at the same time? Or is that simply schizophrenia?
According to Venturebeat, Facebook is raising money to buy back stock from its employees. It hopes to borrow $150 million to buy back 15 million shares at $10 each. These shares have been given to employees of the private company 
over the past few years, and those employees have the right to sell up to 20% of their holdings, according to the article.
And now that the market for IPOs is so rotten, this is apparently the only way the company can help them cash in anytime soon.
That’s where the first case of deja vu comes in. Just 10 years ago, during the first Internet boom, people couldn’t cash in quickly enough on their foundation-free stock. Yes, Facebook has an astounding number of users, but I’m not so sure about its business plan. The company will undoubtedly go public some day, but I simply don’t believe it’s monetizable to the same extent as Amazon, eBay and Google.
Facebook really has only one asset: a bigazillion eyeballs. Which is impressive in itself, and there ought to be a way to make money from it. But with ad markets drying up and Facebook’s genuine incompetence when it comes to figuring out how to let businesses participate in a way justifies their spending money, I don’t know what the company is going to do to pay back this next $150 million that it borrows — let alone the previous $460 million it’s raised, according to PaidContent.org.
Facebook is undoubtedly an 800-pound gorilla in the white-hot social networking arena. But there were scores of 800-pound gorillas a decade ago, whose names I can no longer recall, that went bust because they couldn’t figure out how to turn eyeballs into cash.
I’m not predicting Facebook is going to go under anytime soon. In fact, I’m sure it will be around to cash in on an improved IPO market sometime next year. But if I were an employee and could get $10 a share for stock that I hadn’t paid for, I would sell as much as I was allowed at the first possible moment.
Here’s another deja vu-inducing part of the story: Facebook can’t get the money from its usual investors, so according to the reports already cited above, some portion of the money is coming from Asia. I remember when Japanese investors bought (and overpaid for) Rockefeller Center in the late ’80s. At the time, it was assumed to be a disheartening sign that U.S. economic dominance was ending.
It’s clear to me that, no matter how strong and innovative the U.S. may be, the world is becoming a more competitive place; any perception that we are falling probably has more to do with the fact that others are rising. Still, do we need to make it easy for them?
It’s always bothered me when people complain that we’re losing our mojo as a world power, but they don’t seem to make a conneciton between that observation and our willingness to let Asia — China in particular — lend us the money to finance our foreign wars and deficit spending.
If China comes to own a third or more of Facebook, do you think these people will notice? Do you think they’ll care?
