One of those great ideas that seems so obvious once you think about it…
People who know me well, know that I am an avid reader. Many times when I am bored at a bar or a dance club, I am often caught reading on my phone or my kindle, despite the noisy environs, alcohol and pleasant company.
I am in love with my second Kindle, and still in mourning over my first (which was lost in a pool accident).
Anyways, Amazon has just announced a new Kindle for $119, $25 cheaper than the Kindle 2. The new Kindle 3 will be adsupported, with ads showing up as you load books, and on the screensaver. And as a compromise to consumers who do not want to carry a digital billboard in their pockets, they:
Amazon assures us that the screensavers are “attractive,” and is even trying to give consumers some agency by letting them vote on the screensavers they would like to appear on their devices.
It’s a smart move for Amazon, as they move to consolidate their domination in the ebook space. It makes sense, as most of their revenues come from selling books, and the Kindle is more of a distribution channel for them, rather than a profit center. Much as the iPod was more about selling music, Kindle is and always has been about selling books for Amazon.
Adding an adsupported model is smart for Amazon, as they can always use it to promote their own efforts/sales. I do not imagine Amazon will be selling much of this inventory to brands, but instead use it to promote their own internal campaigns. Certainly books is the obvious beginning, but I imagine that we will see special ads on the Kindle around Christmas (especially Black Friday and Cyber Monday), Mother/Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day etc.
It’s a smart move, and it further capitalizes on my own pet peeve, that it isn’t easy to customize my Kindle’s screensaver.
The only question I have is, why $119, and not $99?
I’ll admit it, I am one of the Twitter naysayers. As a communication channel, I feel it combines the “thoughtlessness” of instant messaging with the permanency of a blog. Seriously, most people put more thought into what color socks they will wear in a given day than in a given tweet.
For me, Twitter is a good channel for sharing information. Sharing information in the vein of:
I am not treading new ground by saying “Twitter is good for sharing.” But people are missing the fact that it is TERRIBLE for content creation.
I’ll say it again. ”Twitter is terrible for content creation.”
Which is to say, most people use it incorrectly. Content is more than just information. Content HAS to be more than just status updates. Egregious examples include:
Perhaps the difference between content and information, is that content has value to someone else. If your information educates, rewards or entertains me, your information falls into the content category. If it fails to do any of these three things, it falls under the inane chatter category.
And Twitter is like 99.5% inane chatter.
What Twitter Content Feeds do I like?
Sure, outside of the content curation feeds that I follow, there are a couple of Twitter feeds that I follow that are entertaining, with funny, bite-sized morsels of content.
These include Batman and Shit My Dad Says. The only reason that they are so popular is that they are piggybacking off of popular cultural memes. Most people on the planet know who Batman is, and everyone has a friend with a crazy/cranky father figure.
But remove the cultural connections. Try getting 15,000 followers on Twitter with another superhero that isn’t Batman, say “Owlman.” Without the 50+ years of Batman-icana, the whole concept collapses in on itself. Likewise, instead of “Shit My Dad Says,” we try, “Shit my cousin says” it loses impact, and even more so when you say “Shit my cousin Steve says.”
Celebrity Tweets
For the past year or so, we have seen the rise of celebrity tweets. Fans follow their tweets in desperate hope of a moment of insight into the lives of their favorite musician, songwriter, dream man/woman.
<Lots of Conjecture>
I imagine that the first celebs on Twitter, tweeted about lots of boring boring things.
- Singer Britney Spears says on website Twitter: ‘I love Japan! I think all the tiny cars are so cute!’
Then they hired writers to write stuff for them, pretending to be them.
- …it was disclosed that the rapper 50 Cent had handed over his tweets to a ghost. Chris Romero, the director of his Web empire, said, “He doesn’t actually use Twitter, but the energy of it is all him.” Kanye West has also admitted to hiring two people to update his blog.
Then they realized that they could make money off of this Twitter thing, and get paid to shill products.
- @lindsaylohan “Just scored myself a stunning Balenciaga bag from Beyond the Rack!! Got such a sick deal!! Addicted to this site!! http://bit.ly/d49jpPT Ad”
</conjecture>
In fact, the only truly original Tweets I enjoy are from Team Coco. Sure, he’s got a team of writers working on it for him. I can live with that.
Oh, the internet is full of bored people and timewasters. I should know, as I am one of their chieftains.
Over the weekend, a rumor went arount saying that Facebook will end on March 15th. I first found out about it while in the office yesterday. One of my staff was understandably concerned that Facebook would close, as in Vietnam, it is being effectively blocked across the country. http://www.lisp4.facebook.com still works, but it is very slow. Proxy applications like Hotspot still work, though expose your security credentials to the world.
Yes, proxy services create security risks.
With this environment of “endangered Facebook” in Vietnam, a rumor of Facebook shutting down gains rapid credibility here. Quoted an article at the respectable Weekly World News states:
“After March 15th the whole website shuts down,” said Avrat Humarthi, Vice President of Technical Affairs at Facebook. “So if you ever want to see your pictures again, I recommend you take them off the internet. You won’t be able to get them back once Facebook goes out of business.”
Facebook is one of the largest Internet companies in the world. It receives more internet traffic than Google in any given month, and has just raised another round of funding (totaling 500m USD) bringing their total valuation to 50b USD.
To compare, Apple and Microsoft are both worth over 200b USD.
Besides, I don’t think Zuckerberg would ever say:
“I don’t care about the money,” said Zuckerberg. “I just want my old life back.”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UouP8cRYZ8&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
The hottest bit of tech news today is that Facebook has raised another round of funding, bringing their total raised funds up to about 2.8b USD, and their overall valuation at a staggering 50b USD. A gigantic sum of money, all told.
But buried in the article, was that the company only has from 1500 to 2000 employees. Relating that to my own agency here, our PARENT company has a total of about 600 people. Certainly, a lot of them are call center staff. But as a measure of scalability, the 2,000 employees at Facebook are able to manage roughly 500m active users.
That implies an employee/user ratio of 1 to 250,000. Now THAT is EFFICIENCY.
Happy New Year everyone!
It looks like the last week of 2010 and the first of 2011 has started off with an interesting development for Facebook. At the end of 2010, Facebook was actively recruiting someone to be their country representative. I have heard that they have found someone, and hopefully he/she has already started off on their job!
Because over the last week, it looks like the ISPs have finally gotten their act together to block Facebook. The old solutions of using different DNS servers (i.e. Google DNS and/or OpenDNS) are no longer working. To wit, the only way to use Facebook I know of nowadays is through this link:
Mind you, going through this link means that a lot of the internal links to Facebook (i.e. through notifications, events, etc.) will not work, but it WILL get you to your profile to check your wall and messages. Y’know, the vital stuff that will keep you running.
Otherwise, you will have to use things like HotSpotShield, or try to VPN to a server
in America to get your Facebook fix on.
Happy New Year all!
I am a big proponent of having stress relief during the course of the day. Some people chat via instant messenger while working on proposals. Others listen to music. Some of my staff (both current and past) actually nap when stressed or blocked for ideas. Me, I am know for doing two things. The first is that I go on short walks around the neighborhood to get re-centered and find my perspective. The second is that I read A LOT of comic books.
The comic book author Warren Ellis wrote once that reading is a medium which is selfish, a medium where you “come alone.” Unlike the live arts or even TV, reading is intrinsically private. Chris Anderson from the Ted Talks recently presented a talk on how “You Tube is driving Innovation.” Arguably, one could say that the Internet in general is driving innovation and fast-paced iterations of art, music and personal expression in general. This blog, with all of its warts and half-baked ideas, is one humble example.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6Zo53M0lcY[/youtube]
The web has also made it easier for authors and artists to reach wider audiences. Some have been able to translate their audiences into financial success, but many (not most, but a significant number nonetheless), have been able to establish audiences, and above all, entertain.
So, for your convenience, I list here some webcomics that I enjoy.
The Abominable, by Charles Christopher. In short, take Watership Down and add Bigfoot to it.
Dead Winter – A girl, a diner, a Zombie Apocalypse.
Kukuburi: Beautifully drawn, trippy as all hell, and a lot of HATs.
Sin Titulo: I have only seen this one frame, but will make time to read more.
Misery Loves Sherman: No need to read too deeply here. Minimal investment in time, good solid returns in smiles.
The Zombie Hunters: I’m pretty sure you can figure what this comic is about.
Girl Genius: Pulp fiction-y goodness from Kaja and Phil Foglio
Man, I am one of those unabashed assholes who thinks that he is super smart. Luckily, most of my friends and staff around me humor me and allow me to live in my own Chris-centric universe. Thankfully so.
Thanks, guys.
However, every couple months ago I get hit by an idea that somebody else has done/is doing, wince, and say “man, why didn’t I think of that!”
I wrote a post a couple weeks ago about Group-buying and how Vietnam is cloning a bunch of Groupon sites. One of my colleagues told me once, “The beauty of working in emerging markets is that you don’t have to create a business model. You can just take an old business model and figure out how to make it work in Vietnam.” For the GroupOn clones, it has been largely about copying GroupOn (well duh).
Today in a post on Facebook by Minh Skydoor, he lists these clones:
Apologies to those clones that are missing from Minh’s list.
Copying someone else’s business model isn’t that smart. Especially in the Internet Startup space. Essentially, it is a race to see who gets the most mass quickest, and who can utilize that mass to push the competitors out of the market. Certainly some startups have some advantages at the starting line (i.e. with lots of traffic, capital, sales force), however there are no inherent advantages in the business models. Nothing differentiates them, which makes it impossible for them to have long-term competitive advantages.
GroupOn (the real McCoy) has realized this, and has created GroupOn stores. What GroupOn now allows retailers to create their own group-buying deals without having to go through a GroupOn sales person. GroupOn is now evolving beyond being social buying into a “self-serving deal platform”. The GroupOn deal experience for retailers to date has been based around their sales force on the ground. The number of deals (and consequently their revenues) have been capped by the number of deals their sales people can put into the system.
By automating the platform for retailers, they essentially remove the glass ceiling on their revenues. At the same time, they are differentiating themselves clearly against their competitors by putting the power in the dealers hands. For consumers, they will consolidate and expand on their leads to offer the most deals on the planet.
It is this “self-serving” paradigm that gave Google such a lead on the SME business space, over that of Microsoft and Yahoo. To date, Microsoft and Yahoo are still trying to catch up. Many doubt that they ever will.
I read this morning that AOL has started a Groupon Service called Wow.com. Many big publishers jump into the Internet startup game. They normally wait until a business model has been proven (or at least made sexy) and then they jump in, hoping that their established audience base will allow them to pole vault past the bootstrapped startups who pioneered the model.
Companies that the publishers are trying to emulate include:
And now, GroupOn is the next on the list. AOL has started their offering, but in Vietnam, most of the local major publishers have started their own (or in the process of) launching their own social buying services.
The challenge for publishers jumping into the Group Buying model is that the often do not have the correct sales people to negotiate the deals with the retailers. They often try to get sales people who are comfortable and used to selling media. The approach and the conversation with retailers is very different. The limited success of these publishers can be seen from the quality of the deals. Poor quality deals will inevitably lead to low adoption rates in the market.
Just a short post. I saw that FCUK had established a video boutique on Youtube. They call it a “Youtique” which I think is an odd name. Essentially, it is a collection of videos that showcase FCUK apparel, with suggestions on accessories and occasions where they are appropriate. In my brain, I have deemed it “on demand home shopping network.” After watching the videos, you may see that the tone is quite similar.
http://www.youtube.com/frenchconnection
I think the true future of online clothing shopping is through the use of Augmented Reality fitting rooms, like this one below.
Through these systems, it is quite easy to imagine yourself wearing the clothes and also to match different combinations of clothes together. I imagine that mail-order stalwart Land’s End should get on the ball with a similar system.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn_iPjGKd0M[/youtube]
