I can't figure out what should be different. If you have any ideas, please click through to Flickr and leave comments there -- they seem to have commenting figured out!!
Friday, February 23, 2007
Comments still not working - Help!
So I'm still not seeing comments. Here are my current comment settings on Blogger:
I can't figure out what should be different. If you have any ideas, please click through to Flickr and leave comments there -- they seem to have commenting figured out!!
I can't figure out what should be different. If you have any ideas, please click through to Flickr and leave comments there -- they seem to have commenting figured out!!
Personal Information: Beware the search session
The New York Times has an article on a new service, StolenIDSearch.com, sponsored by TrustedID. You can search for your social security or credit card numbers to see if they're already floating about the Internet:
A problem with the modern world is that databases are everywhere, forever, and creating an a-->b-->c-->d linkage when you've got highly distinct key values (like these ID numbers) is just way too easy. Even with the best will in the world toward TrustedID, I don't think I'll hand them that particular linkage on a whim and implicit trust of the NYTimes.
This same fact is, of course, at least half the reason the modern world works so well -- but it's important that we're all aware that the downside has teeth, too.
As an aside -- this demonstrates the continuing value of journalistic trust. If I'd read that article on RandomInternetNewsSite, I wouldn't have clicked through and entered my SSN at all. I assume the Times has checked these guys out, and that they're fairly legit.
Of course, I assumed that the Times had checked out Dick Cheney and WMDs in Iraq, too :-(
I went there and typed in my SSN -- according to them, it hasn't been hacked. I was going to type in my credit card number for a similar check, when I stopped and thought, "they have a search session ID on me -- and if I type that number in now, they'll have associated that CC number with that SSN. This is Not A Good Thing."TrustedID, a company that sells services to consumers to give them more control over who sees their credit reports, has compiled a database of compromised numbers that could already be traded or sold on the Internet.
It has created an online search tool, StolenIDSearch.com, where people can check at no cost to see if their number is one that is in a too-public domain.
TrustedID said that about 220,000 people have tested their numbers in the three weeks since the site has been open to the public.
The Social Security number remains the personal identifier not only for government documents, but for credit applications and medical records, as well as video and cellphone stores.
A problem with the modern world is that databases are everywhere, forever, and creating an a-->b-->c-->d linkage when you've got highly distinct key values (like these ID numbers) is just way too easy. Even with the best will in the world toward TrustedID, I don't think I'll hand them that particular linkage on a whim and implicit trust of the NYTimes.
This same fact is, of course, at least half the reason the modern world works so well -- but it's important that we're all aware that the downside has teeth, too.
As an aside -- this demonstrates the continuing value of journalistic trust. If I'd read that article on RandomInternetNewsSite, I wouldn't have clicked through and entered my SSN at all. I assume the Times has checked these guys out, and that they're fairly legit.
Of course, I assumed that the Times had checked out Dick Cheney and WMDs in Iraq, too :-(
Please comment!
Zoli has been nudging me to turn on comments. I finally (with his input) figured out how. Yes, I do run a software company, and yes, *your* user interface is probably more obscure than you realize.
This is a test to see of comments show up. Thanks, Zoli!
This is a test to see of comments show up. Thanks, Zoli!
But Fred, maybe you *belong* on top of the Google charts...
Fred Wilson is perturbed that he's got Google Juice.
* He posts about music often.
* His posts are very timely - many of them are about pre-release albums, release parties, and real breaking news.
* He posts widely -- gems from the archive, brand-new stuff, top-10 lists.
* He has a theme - I'd call it "classic rock meets new music."
* And he posts about the range of musical activities -- listening to albums, going to concerts, playing Guitar Hero, analyzing Last FM and Pandora, etc.
I recently decided that I needed to stop being passive and out of touch about music, and Fred was one of a few key sources that I used to seed my search -- I also talked to a couple friends, and then took their recommendations and fed them into Amazon, Last FM, and a few other good sources of "related stuff." I've bought about 20 CDs in the past month, and am really happy with all these new tunes.
"Someone I trust enough to buy CDs based on their recommendation" is exactly who should be at the top of a Google search, I think. And the band itself doesn't qualify.
So enjoy your Google juice, Fred. You've earned it.
"I got 36 visits (about 1% of all my visits yesterday) from searches on "we were dead before the ship even sank". That's a lot of words to write in a Google search so those people were clearly looking for the new modest mouse record of the same name...The implication of Fred's post is that there's something wrong with a system that puts him ahead of Amazon, and ahead of the band he's writing about. I disagree. From my perspective, Fred is a perfect example of a highly authoritative source on music.
...Number one is Wikipedia, the owner of more Google Juice than any other website in the world. Number two is this blog. Amazon gets the third spot... Modest Mouse's own website barely made the first page.
...Google Juice is not a perfect system by a long shot. Everytime I see this effect and I see it a lot, I think... there's a lot more headroom in search."
* He posts about music often.
* His posts are very timely - many of them are about pre-release albums, release parties, and real breaking news.
* He posts widely -- gems from the archive, brand-new stuff, top-10 lists.
* He has a theme - I'd call it "classic rock meets new music."
* And he posts about the range of musical activities -- listening to albums, going to concerts, playing Guitar Hero, analyzing Last FM and Pandora, etc.
I recently decided that I needed to stop being passive and out of touch about music, and Fred was one of a few key sources that I used to seed my search -- I also talked to a couple friends, and then took their recommendations and fed them into Amazon, Last FM, and a few other good sources of "related stuff." I've bought about 20 CDs in the past month, and am really happy with all these new tunes.
"Someone I trust enough to buy CDs based on their recommendation" is exactly who should be at the top of a Google search, I think. And the band itself doesn't qualify.
So enjoy your Google juice, Fred. You've earned it.
Friday, February 16, 2007
The empowerment of open-source innovation
Smaller. Cheaper. Lighter. More effective. Opens new vistas of usage, allowing people formerly reliant on expensive, centralized solutions to express themselves more freely.
The PC?
The cell phone?
Browser-based apps?
Nope. IEDs.
Andrew Cockburn has a nice piece in the LA Times about "explosively formed penetrators," the subject of much dinosauric rhetoric from our Dear Leader.
The punchline:
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld...bequeathed the Army the Future Combat Systems, a $168-billion extravaganza of computers, sensors and robots... Rumsfeld's mentor, defense intellectual Andrew Marshall, marketed the phrase "revolution in military affairs" as a justification for high-tech programs such as Future Combat Systems. But those copper disks [of EFP IEDs] represent the real revolution in military affairs, and it is not in our favor.
Are you a startup guy? Open source stack? Commodity servers? VOIP provider? Sneer at the old, the slow, the walnut-brained, who you're rapidly replacing with your clever new widget?
News flash: the nation-state you rely upon for the stability, social mobility, and capital that makes your life possible is fighting people just like you. And those people are winning.
I see the Bat Signal in the sky. After we make sure that we're the good guys, how are we going to help the good guys win?
The PC?
The cell phone?
Browser-based apps?
Nope. IEDs.
Andrew Cockburn has a nice piece in the LA Times about "explosively formed penetrators," the subject of much dinosauric rhetoric from our Dear Leader.
The punchline:
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld...bequeathed the Army the Future Combat Systems, a $168-billion extravaganza of computers, sensors and robots... Rumsfeld's mentor, defense intellectual Andrew Marshall, marketed the phrase "revolution in military affairs" as a justification for high-tech programs such as Future Combat Systems. But those copper disks [of EFP IEDs] represent the real revolution in military affairs, and it is not in our favor.
Are you a startup guy? Open source stack? Commodity servers? VOIP provider? Sneer at the old, the slow, the walnut-brained, who you're rapidly replacing with your clever new widget?
News flash: the nation-state you rely upon for the stability, social mobility, and capital that makes your life possible is fighting people just like you. And those people are winning.
I see the Bat Signal in the sky. After we make sure that we're the good guys, how are we going to help the good guys win?
Monday, February 12, 2007
PowerSchwag from PowerSet
I went to the PowerSet funding party on Saturday. It was the best party I can remember since that Scient/Viant guy flew in a 747 full of flowers, rented out Treasure Island, and shot off fireworks in February 2000. I was having a housewarming party in the Berkeley hills that same evening, and we got a great aerial lights show for free.
Click the photo for schwag commentary. Here was the haul:
By far the most memorable event was one of their investors (Peter Thiel?) reading a lengthy poem about the history of search - which was surprisingly inclusive, mentioning Altavista, Inktomi, Excite, Yahoo, Ask, etc. Lots of mockery of the dropped ball of Yahoo and the failed NLP promise of Ask; and the punch line to the whole thing, which I am doing no poetic justice to whatsoever, was something like,
"We'll know we've succeeded when Google's best guess,
will be to say I don't know, so go ask PowerSet."
I'm assuming that their codebase will be better than their rhymes.
Mike Arrington posted and linked to some video, and for more flava, I am sure there are tons of action shots on Flickr.
Click the photo for schwag commentary. Here was the haul:
By far the most memorable event was one of their investors (Peter Thiel?) reading a lengthy poem about the history of search - which was surprisingly inclusive, mentioning Altavista, Inktomi, Excite, Yahoo, Ask, etc. Lots of mockery of the dropped ball of Yahoo and the failed NLP promise of Ask; and the punch line to the whole thing, which I am doing no poetic justice to whatsoever, was something like,
"We'll know we've succeeded when Google's best guess,
will be to say I don't know, so go ask PowerSet."
I'm assuming that their codebase will be better than their rhymes.
Mike Arrington posted and linked to some video, and for more flava, I am sure there are tons of action shots on Flickr.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
A shout-out to Marc Canter
Marc dropped an "emotional outburst" (his words) on the blogosphere last night, after Om Malik wrote a post on white-label social networks that didn't mention Marc's company PeopleAggregator.
The first person I ever heard say "social networks are a feature, not a product" is Paul Martino, who brought Marc in to advise Tribe Networks back when the whole world temporarily didn't care about the Internet. Marc has been thinking and building this stuff for years, and not only is he defining the white-label social network space, he's been an essential thinker for me and plenty of other entrepreneurs with his concept of "digital life aggregators" combined with vertical web services. Vertical web services like, ah, events.
Thanks, Marc. Keep leading the charge. And occasionally wearing your heart on your sleeve is way OK with me.
The first person I ever heard say "social networks are a feature, not a product" is Paul Martino, who brought Marc in to advise Tribe Networks back when the whole world temporarily didn't care about the Internet. Marc has been thinking and building this stuff for years, and not only is he defining the white-label social network space, he's been an essential thinker for me and plenty of other entrepreneurs with his concept of "digital life aggregators" combined with vertical web services. Vertical web services like, ah, events.
Thanks, Marc. Keep leading the charge. And occasionally wearing your heart on your sleeve is way OK with me.
Friday, January 26, 2007
The bad guys are hackers, too
The world has reached a certain fascinating state when the New York Times, the gray lady herself, writes a bemused and almost laudatory article (no, wait, it's a blog post!!) about a pseudonymous hacker who's broken the content industry's latest quixotic attempt at copy protection. I can think of no better proof that the hacker culture of freedom has deeply affected our modern culture.
Unfortunately, a lot of innovation is done by bad guys, too. Spam, phishing, and box cutters + airliners = -skyscrapers are all great examples of brilliant hacks, and they've made our lives measurably worse. The latest example comes from John Robb -- apparently some guerilla hacker has figured out how to block GPS signals with readily available, cheap tech. This does not bode well for the maintenance of structure and order that is so important for the fragile capitalist economy.
Every time you celebrate innovation, the open-source spirit, and radical change, ask yourself, "do I disproportionately benefit from the status quo, and am I at risk?" Much more often than you realize, the answer is yes.
Unfortunately, a lot of innovation is done by bad guys, too. Spam, phishing, and box cutters + airliners = -skyscrapers are all great examples of brilliant hacks, and they've made our lives measurably worse. The latest example comes from John Robb -- apparently some guerilla hacker has figured out how to block GPS signals with readily available, cheap tech. This does not bode well for the maintenance of structure and order that is so important for the fragile capitalist economy.
Every time you celebrate innovation, the open-source spirit, and radical change, ask yourself, "do I disproportionately benefit from the status quo, and am I at risk?" Much more often than you realize, the answer is yes.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
The second most sincere form of flattery...
...is a Google ad against your name.
Zvents says thanks, guys.
Some other names you might consider buying ads against:
Denver Post
Boston.com
San Jose Mercury News
Freedom Communications
Zvents says thanks, guys.
Some other names you might consider buying ads against:
Denver Post
Boston.com
San Jose Mercury News
Freedom Communications
Monday, January 22, 2007
Coming Soon: The American Democratic Revolution
From today's New York Times:
Needless to say, if you've paid a fixed sum for something from which you can derive variable income, your motivation is to squeeze every last nickel from your franchise.
Needless to say, this can be hard on the populace, when your authority is backed up by the state.
And pointedly, fermiers were among the significant causes of the revolt that became the French Revolution, and many of them ended up under the guillotine.
Lotteries are demonstrably a disproportionate tax on the less-well-educated, less-well-off members of society. That they are voluntary is no excuse. State involvement in gambling has always been papered over with false moral rebates like "it will be used for education" or other nonsense.
Now, Illinois is skipping past all the fake morality, and simply grabbing cash to pay its operating deficit while casually mortgaging its residents' future expenses.
It terrifies me that every possible measure of indebtedness in this country is rising, while every possible future income is being packaged and peddled. After we're done mortgaging our last remaining free cash flows and fully selling our souls to the false twin gods of excess consumption and no new taxes, maybe it will be time, again, for the American Democratic Revolution.
Illinois Is Putting Lottery on Block for Quick PayoffThe first thing that sprang to my mind was the pre-Revolutionary practice in France of the Fermiers. According to this convenient website, "The fermiérs paid a fixed sum of money every year to the King. It was then their responsibility to collect the taxes for their region - taxes on the tobacco, the salt, the materials that come and go from each city."
The state of Illinois yesterday took the first steps in selling its state lottery system, hoping to attract as much as $10 billion from investors who, in return, would own a monopoly that could turn out to be the biggest jackpot yet.
Needless to say, if you've paid a fixed sum for something from which you can derive variable income, your motivation is to squeeze every last nickel from your franchise.
Needless to say, this can be hard on the populace, when your authority is backed up by the state.
And pointedly, fermiers were among the significant causes of the revolt that became the French Revolution, and many of them ended up under the guillotine.
Lotteries are demonstrably a disproportionate tax on the less-well-educated, less-well-off members of society. That they are voluntary is no excuse. State involvement in gambling has always been papered over with false moral rebates like "it will be used for education" or other nonsense.
Now, Illinois is skipping past all the fake morality, and simply grabbing cash to pay its operating deficit while casually mortgaging its residents' future expenses.
It terrifies me that every possible measure of indebtedness in this country is rising, while every possible future income is being packaged and peddled. After we're done mortgaging our last remaining free cash flows and fully selling our souls to the false twin gods of excess consumption and no new taxes, maybe it will be time, again, for the American Democratic Revolution.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Owning local search results - and avoiding the "Google back button tax"
Don Dodge has a great post on the big gap in local -- newspapers, yellow pages, and the big search portals have thus far all failed to own local search results. I think that Don is right that papers need to do a much better job of exposing (largely through SEO) their content to the major engines; but they have an equally important task, which is to retain the user through value once the user arrives at their sites, by offering them parallel navigation, related content, useful search tools, and appealing options to explore and expand on the initial query that brought them to the site.
While papers have to live in a world that starts with Google first, they have to maximize their value in that world -- which means attempting to avoid the "Google back button tax" of the user clicking back to Google after every search that lands them on a newspaper content page, to give Google first crack at the targeted ad dollars on each subsequent search.
This requires serious product thinking, user testing, and technology on behalf of newspapers and other local content owners. It will hopefully surprise no one that Zvents, my company, is heavily engaged in all three. We're going to be at the NAA conference in Las Vegas, and I'd be delighted to speak with papers about how they can not just compete, but win, in the local search market.
While papers have to live in a world that starts with Google first, they have to maximize their value in that world -- which means attempting to avoid the "Google back button tax" of the user clicking back to Google after every search that lands them on a newspaper content page, to give Google first crack at the targeted ad dollars on each subsequent search.
This requires serious product thinking, user testing, and technology on behalf of newspapers and other local content owners. It will hopefully surprise no one that Zvents, my company, is heavily engaged in all three. We're going to be at the NAA conference in Las Vegas, and I'd be delighted to speak with papers about how they can not just compete, but win, in the local search market.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Calling YouTube: Michael Oher
I've just finished reading Michael Lewis' excellent new book The Blind Side, which details the evolution of the left tackle position in the NFL, and traces the extraordinary personal story of a gifted young left tackle, Michael Oher. The book begins with the tale of a grainy videotape of an extraordinary block by Oher being sent to a national football scout, and the book describes many other such plays during his high school senior year. But there's nothing on YouTube for Oher. Why hasn't someone posted this? Why hasn't Michael Lewis posted this?
I've gone from never having heard of the guy, to wanting to watch a 5-minute highlight reel. Isn't this what the user-created, on-demand economy is about?
Maybe I'm just kidding myself -- or maybe I'm just years ahead of the "extended conversation" that I envision emerging around all media. Oher is supposedly a latter-day Orlando Pace, the fantastic Ohio State player and current NFL all-star, whose amazing play from the mid-90s helped Eddie George win the Heisman. There's nothing on YouTube under "Orlando Pace" either.
I dug around and (apparently) found some Oher video -- but I have to subscribe to a prep football scouting site to view it.
How Web 1.0.
I've gone from never having heard of the guy, to wanting to watch a 5-minute highlight reel. Isn't this what the user-created, on-demand economy is about?
Maybe I'm just kidding myself -- or maybe I'm just years ahead of the "extended conversation" that I envision emerging around all media. Oher is supposedly a latter-day Orlando Pace, the fantastic Ohio State player and current NFL all-star, whose amazing play from the mid-90s helped Eddie George win the Heisman. There's nothing on YouTube under "Orlando Pace" either.
I dug around and (apparently) found some Oher video -- but I have to subscribe to a prep football scouting site to view it.
How Web 1.0.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Google is not evil. But what are the rules?
Well, it seems that I've put my name right in the middle of the latest Silicon Valley tempest in a teapot. I'm right there, in the un-deleted comments on the original post, full name in view. Just to be clear, since three points [3] can be construed to make a curve, I don't think Google is evil. I actually think Google is full of smart, sincere people trying really hard to create the future, and breaking a few eggs while making their omelettes. What really worries me is that the future is full of unintended consequences, and none of us have fully thought those consequences through.
On the one hand, all of us users of hosted software are trusting -- implicitly and absolutely -- that we won't be wrecked by the removal of that software. How many people trust their personal lives and/or their businesses to Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, and Gmail? Hundreds of millions. How many people trust their businesses to Salesforce, SocialText, JotSpot, or JigSaw? Tens of thousands. In the very near future, how many independent producers and actors will trust YouTube to bring them their daily bread? This doesn't even begin to touch on blog platforms, eBay, and Second Life.
Leaving aside all the basic issues -- terrorists, power failures, hackers; your basic Bruce Schneier territory -- there is a huge, dark continent of social mores and best practices around this emerging reality that has yet to be explored or mapped. Much of common case law, as painfully built up over the past several centuries, deals with the delicate ways that property rights can be ascertained in various bizarre situations. Aside from the occasional Congressional meat cleaver, we have no such body of thought or practice built up in this new new world. What is the right answer to Kevin and JotSpot, to downtime by YouTube or PayPal, to the downtime that some Zvents customer may well suffer sometime in the future? How should we guard ourselves against this in advance, defend ourselves against it in the present, and adjudicate around it in the past? I don't know. It worries me that no one is talking about this issue. Where is the council of SaaS? The W3C for ASP? If we're going to build this future, in all its wild entrepreneurial frenzy, someone has to lay out a few ground rules, so that the market can do its magic.
Who will lead? And how can I help?
On the one hand, all of us users of hosted software are trusting -- implicitly and absolutely -- that we won't be wrecked by the removal of that software. How many people trust their personal lives and/or their businesses to Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, and Gmail? Hundreds of millions. How many people trust their businesses to Salesforce, SocialText, JotSpot, or JigSaw? Tens of thousands. In the very near future, how many independent producers and actors will trust YouTube to bring them their daily bread? This doesn't even begin to touch on blog platforms, eBay, and Second Life.
Leaving aside all the basic issues -- terrorists, power failures, hackers; your basic Bruce Schneier territory -- there is a huge, dark continent of social mores and best practices around this emerging reality that has yet to be explored or mapped. Much of common case law, as painfully built up over the past several centuries, deals with the delicate ways that property rights can be ascertained in various bizarre situations. Aside from the occasional Congressional meat cleaver, we have no such body of thought or practice built up in this new new world. What is the right answer to Kevin and JotSpot, to downtime by YouTube or PayPal, to the downtime that some Zvents customer may well suffer sometime in the future? How should we guard ourselves against this in advance, defend ourselves against it in the present, and adjudicate around it in the past? I don't know. It worries me that no one is talking about this issue. Where is the council of SaaS? The W3C for ASP? If we're going to build this future, in all its wild entrepreneurial frenzy, someone has to lay out a few ground rules, so that the market can do its magic.
Who will lead? And how can I help?
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Was YouTube downtime scheduled?
YouTube has been down for about 24 hours now:
I don't exactly hang out there, but I wasn't aware this was scheduled. That's a very long downtime, and I haven't seen any commentary -- was it unexpected?
Expected or not, it raises an interesting point about the new distributed badge/widget ecosystem emerging on the web. It's not just enough to fail gracefully at your main URL -- you have to fail gracefully in the thousands, or millions of places where your functionality has been spread. How many websites would be affected if Adsense went down, and would they all fail gracefully? Would "Adsense is down, sorry" appear everywhere? Or just blank holes? I first became aware of YouTube's burp when a friend told me that there was no video at a link I'd forwarded -- the page was just blank.
I don't exactly hang out there, but I wasn't aware this was scheduled. That's a very long downtime, and I haven't seen any commentary -- was it unexpected?
Expected or not, it raises an interesting point about the new distributed badge/widget ecosystem emerging on the web. It's not just enough to fail gracefully at your main URL -- you have to fail gracefully in the thousands, or millions of places where your functionality has been spread. How many websites would be affected if Adsense went down, and would they all fail gracefully? Would "Adsense is down, sorry" appear everywhere? Or just blank holes? I first became aware of YouTube's burp when a friend told me that there was no video at a link I'd forwarded -- the page was just blank.
What would I do with a newspaper? Fix it!
Kevin Maney at USA Today apparently was wandering around the Web 2.0 conference talking to Silicon Valley folks about how to fix newspapers. I wish we'd had a chance to talk, since Zvents is partnering with major newspapers to reinvent local media.
First let's examine the problem. Newspapers have no online pageviews. That means that they can't make any money online, and their offline revenue-generating ability is cratering. What's a useful measure of online vs. offline? How about physical print pages (one sheet of paper in one newspaper) vs. one online pageview? Here are 10 major papers compared:
Now keep in mind that an online pageview in no way compares to an offline page. An offline page has perhaps 3 articles and some big ads; an online pageview is perhaps 1/3 of an article and some small ads. Add in a "like to like" impact/influence factor of 10X, and you've got the leading online papers (NYTimes) in the 5% range of replacing their offline traffic, and others (Tribune) at less than 1% of where they need to be. Maybe that's why Tribune is for sale, while the NYTimes is making smart web acquisitions like About.com?
So how do you get traffic up? The best answer is, "build a compelling product that people want to use." Here I am flabbergasted that Maney's techie interviewees totally missed the boat. He writes, "No one, for instance, proposed that newspaper websites, which generally look more crowded than a Mumbai flea market, pare down to a single, clean Google-esque local search box."
OK, Kevin, I'll bite: The navigation and presentation metaphor of newspaper websites is totally broken, and it's a big reason why their products don't get enough usage. There are dozens of subtle clues in a physical paper that tell you that there's lots inside -- the size and heft, the number of pages, the fact that your periperhal vision is picking up page 3 while you're reading page 2, the fact that the sports section falls out when you pick up the front section. None of these clues exist in a website, and thousands of great pieces of editorial content posted on newspaper sites get a fraction of the traffic they'd see if *anyone could find them*. This doesn't just mean Google-like active search -- it means passive discovery mechanisms like Memeorandum or Google News (which already drives about 30% of total newspaper pageviews -- yes, you read that right!) and it also means "sidways navigation" mechanisms like Aggregate Knowledge. Solving this problem is crucial to the future of newspapers online.
And then there's the content. Newspapers have created their content to match the physical and economic constraints on their business. The length, detail, and volume of news stories they create -- and their focus on text first, pictures second, audio and video never -- are deeply driven by their dead tree tradition. Even more importantly, their emphasis on data and the long tail has been very curtailed by their inability to publish a phone book every day. Zvents focuses on events, where newspapers cover perhaps 2% of what's actually going on in a metro area -- but there are dozens, hundreds, of other areas where newspapers have been forced by past realities to curtail the breadth and depth of their coverage. All those constraints have been blown away, and suddenly the entire shape and structure of their news-gathering, sorting, polishing, and dissemination has to change.
I haven't even touched the advertising side. That's food for another post.
There's a lot more... but that's a primer on how I'd fix newspapers. To find out more about how my company, Zvents, can help newspapers in this transition process, visit our site.
First let's examine the problem. Newspapers have no online pageviews. That means that they can't make any money online, and their offline revenue-generating ability is cratering. What's a useful measure of online vs. offline? How about physical print pages (one sheet of paper in one newspaper) vs. one online pageview? Here are 10 major papers compared:
Now keep in mind that an online pageview in no way compares to an offline page. An offline page has perhaps 3 articles and some big ads; an online pageview is perhaps 1/3 of an article and some small ads. Add in a "like to like" impact/influence factor of 10X, and you've got the leading online papers (NYTimes) in the 5% range of replacing their offline traffic, and others (Tribune) at less than 1% of where they need to be. Maybe that's why Tribune is for sale, while the NYTimes is making smart web acquisitions like About.com?
So how do you get traffic up? The best answer is, "build a compelling product that people want to use." Here I am flabbergasted that Maney's techie interviewees totally missed the boat. He writes, "No one, for instance, proposed that newspaper websites, which generally look more crowded than a Mumbai flea market, pare down to a single, clean Google-esque local search box."
OK, Kevin, I'll bite: The navigation and presentation metaphor of newspaper websites is totally broken, and it's a big reason why their products don't get enough usage. There are dozens of subtle clues in a physical paper that tell you that there's lots inside -- the size and heft, the number of pages, the fact that your periperhal vision is picking up page 3 while you're reading page 2, the fact that the sports section falls out when you pick up the front section. None of these clues exist in a website, and thousands of great pieces of editorial content posted on newspaper sites get a fraction of the traffic they'd see if *anyone could find them*. This doesn't just mean Google-like active search -- it means passive discovery mechanisms like Memeorandum or Google News (which already drives about 30% of total newspaper pageviews -- yes, you read that right!) and it also means "sidways navigation" mechanisms like Aggregate Knowledge. Solving this problem is crucial to the future of newspapers online.
And then there's the content. Newspapers have created their content to match the physical and economic constraints on their business. The length, detail, and volume of news stories they create -- and their focus on text first, pictures second, audio and video never -- are deeply driven by their dead tree tradition. Even more importantly, their emphasis on data and the long tail has been very curtailed by their inability to publish a phone book every day. Zvents focuses on events, where newspapers cover perhaps 2% of what's actually going on in a metro area -- but there are dozens, hundreds, of other areas where newspapers have been forced by past realities to curtail the breadth and depth of their coverage. All those constraints have been blown away, and suddenly the entire shape and structure of their news-gathering, sorting, polishing, and dissemination has to change.
I haven't even touched the advertising side. That's food for another post.
There's a lot more... but that's a primer on how I'd fix newspapers. To find out more about how my company, Zvents, can help newspapers in this transition process, visit our site.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Andy Sack: Reality a Luxury Good
Andy Sack is CEO of Judy's Book and a blogger whom I read regularly. He recently posted some thoughts about sending and receiving physical notes in this digital age that fit nicely with my previous post about reality being a luxury good -- though in this case, the reality is not presence at a physical event, but delivery of a physical good (the note).
I am reminded of Neal Stephenson's superb second novel The Diamond Age, where in the futuristic neo-Victorian Hong Kong community, the same news is delivered electronically to most people, and in hand-printed, hand-delivered newspaper form to the very wealthy few.
I am reminded of Neal Stephenson's superb second novel The Diamond Age, where in the futuristic neo-Victorian Hong Kong community, the same news is delivered electronically to most people, and in hand-printed, hand-delivered newspaper form to the very wealthy few.
Friday, November 17, 2006
Reality is becoming a luxury good
My personal definition of luxury goods is that they are exclusionary -- if one person owns them, then another person can't. Original works of art. Wineries in Napa. Antique Ferraris. Houses in Atherton. All exclusionary goods.
I was chatting with Brian Smith this morning about Second Life -- and it hit me that a lot of what goes on in Second Life is people expressing very human creative urges in virtual reality, because doing so in reality is (often) too expensive. In Second life, you can build a house, an orchard, furniture, a boat... owning the land and the machinery and taking the time to do all that in reality is simply beyond the means of most people.
I don't spend any time in 2nd life, because in real life I'm building a company, and I have a 2-car garage full of woodworking machinery which I use to make furniture, in my very limited time. I've also been working to create a citrus orchard on our patio. If I lived in an apartment in San Francisco, I wouldn't be able to do that last 2; and anywhere but Silicon Valley, the first would be vastly more difficult. Luxuries all. Exclusion runs on a personal timelie as well -- I have spent several decades of my life learning how to work in wood, and time is the ultimate exclusionary good. My ability to build furniture is inversely correlated to my ability to play the piano, hit a fastball, or any of a number of other ways I might have invested large slices of my life.
Tonight at 11:30pm, I am flying to Columbus, Ohio to watch the latest iteration of the awesome Ohio State - Michigan football rivalry. Thanks to my ex-OSU faculty father, my brother Ben and I have tickets at face value(score!), but I'm still spending 48 hours and nearly a thousand dollars to be at the game. Meanwhile, 500,000 people voted in an ESPN poll on who will win the game, and millions will watch it on television.
Reality is luxury, indeed.
Oh, and Ohio State wins, 16-9.
I was chatting with Brian Smith this morning about Second Life -- and it hit me that a lot of what goes on in Second Life is people expressing very human creative urges in virtual reality, because doing so in reality is (often) too expensive. In Second life, you can build a house, an orchard, furniture, a boat... owning the land and the machinery and taking the time to do all that in reality is simply beyond the means of most people.
I don't spend any time in 2nd life, because in real life I'm building a company, and I have a 2-car garage full of woodworking machinery which I use to make furniture, in my very limited time. I've also been working to create a citrus orchard on our patio. If I lived in an apartment in San Francisco, I wouldn't be able to do that last 2; and anywhere but Silicon Valley, the first would be vastly more difficult. Luxuries all. Exclusion runs on a personal timelie as well -- I have spent several decades of my life learning how to work in wood, and time is the ultimate exclusionary good. My ability to build furniture is inversely correlated to my ability to play the piano, hit a fastball, or any of a number of other ways I might have invested large slices of my life.
Tonight at 11:30pm, I am flying to Columbus, Ohio to watch the latest iteration of the awesome Ohio State - Michigan football rivalry. Thanks to my ex-OSU faculty father, my brother Ben and I have tickets at face value(score!), but I'm still spending 48 hours and nearly a thousand dollars to be at the game. Meanwhile, 500,000 people voted in an ESPN poll on who will win the game, and millions will watch it on television.
Reality is luxury, indeed.
Oh, and Ohio State wins, 16-9.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Google launches event search
Tyler noticed a "search public events" button in his Google calendar this morning, and now the official Google blog has a post about the launch.
As noted on GigaOm in their discussion of Google's announcement, my company Zvents announced a $7m funding round last week for our local events search product.
Event search is a great market. Welcome, guys.
-- Ethan
As noted on GigaOm in their discussion of Google's announcement, my company Zvents announced a $7m funding round last week for our local events search product.
Event search is a great market. Welcome, guys.
-- Ethan
Friday, November 10, 2006
Memo to Job Seekers Everywhere (PS to Entrepreneurs!)
Since our recent funding announcement at Zvents, we have been flooded with job applications. Thank you, and those of you who fit our current needs will be hearing back from us soon. This flood has inspired me to write down something I figured out during my own job-applying days:
When you send your resume to a company in MSWord format, the title of the document should NOT be "Resume.doc". I understand that in your own personal PC world, utterly centered around you, "Resume" is a self-obvious description. But in MY inbox, resumes folder, etc., it utterly fails to differentiate you. Call it MyNameResume.doc. Or better yet, MyNameResumeMonthYear.doc. Since this naming issue is a complete failure to think from the perspective of your "customer", I view marketing applicants that make this mistake with a particularly high level of dubiousness.
PS to Entrepreneurs: Exactly the same is true of your pitch deck. I *know* that VCPitch.ppt makes sense to you. Do you think it helps Mike Moritz tell your file from the 300 other ones on his laptop?
When you send your resume to a company in MSWord format, the title of the document should NOT be "Resume.doc". I understand that in your own personal PC world, utterly centered around you, "Resume" is a self-obvious description. But in MY inbox, resumes folder, etc., it utterly fails to differentiate you. Call it MyNameResume.doc. Or better yet, MyNameResumeMonthYear.doc. Since this naming issue is a complete failure to think from the perspective of your "customer", I view marketing applicants that make this mistake with a particularly high level of dubiousness.
PS to Entrepreneurs: Exactly the same is true of your pitch deck. I *know* that VCPitch.ppt makes sense to you. Do you think it helps Mike Moritz tell your file from the 300 other ones on his laptop?
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
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