Category: General

It’s always interesting to see a flurry of articles loosely relating to the same topic and that’s what I’ve seen in the past couple of days around the topic of content creators connecting with their audiences.

I wrote something recently about how movie makers should respond to reviews of their products.

And then this weekend the New York Times wrote an article about how TV show fans and creators are connecting on the Internet.  An excerpt from the article:

“…television viewers are migrating en masse to the Internet, looking not only to watch their favorite shows online but also for ways to discuss and engage with those shows.”

The same New York Times writes about how theater producers are using the web to connect reach and galvanize their audiences:

“…the Internet has provided a new and, some say, vastly improved set of tools to generate [word of mouth]: not just e-mail blasts but also Web sites, banner ads, search-engine pop-ups and blog coverage. In the last few years these tools have reshaped the way the theater reaches its audience.”

And then, as the pendulum swings the other way, the legal department at Paramount works overtime to alienate their audience, as reported on LostRemote earlier this week.

People who are creating media are beginning to interact with their audiences — it’s such an obvious thing.  It’s happening in software, where small and large developers alike rely on getting direct feedback from customers on their products.  It’s happening in music, as Ethan Kaplan talked about at Gnomedex.  And there’s no doubt that conversations about TV shows, movies, theater, and all other types of media are happening and will continue to happen regardless through the blogosphere and through various online communities.  But, the exciting and new thing here is that the content creators are starting to participate so those conversations are about to get a lot more interesting.

Excerpts from interesting things read in the past week or two:

• Guy Kawasaki’s Ten (Actually Fifteen) Questions with Dr. Sandor Gardos: an interesting and personally relevant excerpt:
• “Question: What can an ecommerce startup learn from your experiences selling sex toys online?Answer: Find a niche that is currently under-served in the way you want to serve them. Then, continue to mine the data, listen to your customers, and keep creating ever more experiences that are *amazing* for them. Also, stop thinking that you are selling a product—that puts you into commoditization and the only thing you can compete on is price. You are selling a *solution* to a problem that your customer may not even know they had. Finally, forget about all the latest trends and gee-whiz technology; if it doesn’t really help the majority of your customers, it is worthless or worse.”
• Guy Kawasaki links to three essays on social networking:
• 5 reasons why social networks fail5 reasons why social networks can succeed

  Situational Relevance in Social Networking Websites

• Another link from Guy Kawasaki (I’m learning a lot from this guy):
• AdAge published its annual Largest National Advertisers report. Great info for every marketer and any company that is using an advertising business model.
• Quick skim of the report shows that $8B of the $150B in advertising that was measured in 2005 was spent on the Internet. This is the disparity in ad dollars spent online vs. those spent on television that Pud mentioned in his talk at about at Gnomedex.
• John Batelle Tips on Ads that Work from Neilsen/Norman eyetracking study:
• …people do not look at static ads with graphic treatment. Users seem to “zone out” (with their peripheral vision) ads and other site elements that have clearly distinguishable ad features such as graphics and colors that make the ads look different from the rest of the site, or animated ads….When users DO look at ads with graphics, those ads usually have:
  -Heavy use of large, clear text
  -A color scheme that matches the site’s style
  -Attention-grabbing proprieties such as black text on a white background, words such as “free” and interactive (UI)
• KP’s Seven Rules for Software Startups from Paul Kedrosky
• Instant Value to customers – solve a problem or create value with the first use
• Viral adoption – Pull, not push. No direct sales force required
• Minimum IT footprint, preferably none. Hosted SaaS is best.
• Simple, intuitive user experience – no training required.
• Personalized user experience – customizable
• Easy configuration based on application or usage templates
• Context aware – adjust to location, groups, preferences, devices, etc.
• Scoble says, “Sorry, I don’t do Social Networks anymore“
• TED conference videos available online
• Venture Capitalist David Cowan links to “Television 2.0” companies (including Delivery Agent, which he covers in another post) that Bessemer has made investments in
• Many to Many is a great group weblog focused on social software
• From Lost Remote, Nielsen is planning on measuring video viewing on “alternate” platforms including PCs and mobiles
• Also from Lost Remote, a new research study shows people don’t mind watching video over the web.

I’m going to try to do this more often — it’s largely for my own benefit, as a way of archiving interesting things that I’m reading and thinking about.

I spent July 4th hanging out with my sister and her housemates at the Berkeley Marina Pier, where they had a sort of carnival going on.  While we sat in our front row seats for the fireworks, an idea occurred to me.  It seems pretty obvious, but here’s the idea:

People are always in groups at events like these — some couples, some families, some friend groups.  And people may or may not have a camera amongst their group, and even where there is one, most people shy away from asking someone to take a photograph of their group.  So the idea basically goes like this:

1) someone from an online photo printing company, say Ofoto, should be at events like these

2) they should run around taking pictures of families, friends, and couples that they see

3) they should hand out cards with a URL on it that will take them to the photographs from the event on the Ofoto website

You’d have a certain number of people visit the Ofoto website and from there some people would share the photographs by e-mail with other members of their family and some people would actually order prints of their photographs.  Ofoto entices potential customers with something free, gets referals to other potential customers and potentially also drives sales of photo prints.  Everyone wins.

(a larger version of my favorite from the group below…)

After a quick meeting in Los Angeles and Gnomedex in Seattle, I flew down to Oakland and spent the weekend hanging out with one of my younger sisters, Arti. She did her Ph.D. in Chemistry at Berkeley (p chem) and is now getting a masters in accupuncture. A photologue of my trip:

Thai restaurant mascot at the corner of Bancroft and Oxford

Berkeley bumper sticker

Vegan raw food place that Arti and I ate at (it was OK…)

Parasailing (is that what it’s called?) at the beach on CA-1, near Santa Cruz (I was just taking photographs before our hike, not participating!)

An outlook from our hike

Arti, Soumya and I picnic and then throw a disc around at Crissy Field, at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge

Sunset at Green’s restaurant (taken by Soumya)

Making the trek out the Berkeley Marina on July 4th for the fireworks with Arti and her housemates

They had free valet parking at the Berkeley Marina July 4th carnival, as long as your method of transport was ‘bicycle’.

Having claimed our seats, we wait for the fireworks to begin

This is probably my favorite photograph from the evening, taken after the sun had set while we were waiting for the fireworks to begin. The lights are the lamposts that line the pier.

One of the cool fireworks photographs

——

Most of the photographs from my trip are here — I also have some images that need to be stitched together for panoramic shots so look forward to those a little bit later. Autostitch (recommended by lifehacker) is the first tool I tried and it didn’t work very well on my images.

Philg has a review of Edward Tufte’s new book, Beautiful Evidence.  I attended a one day seminar given by Tufte a couple of months ago and I took a lot away from it.  Phil highlights one of the key Tufte ideas that I left the seminar with, display device resolution, in his brief review.

Sheesh, I’m really out of it today. Hopefully it’ll pass soon.

Michael Arrington, author of TechCrunch, lead a session focused mostly on start-up Internet companies. Notes from that:

• Calls TechCrunch a micro-business, he employs 5 people
• Defines success as 1) making money AND 2) making the Internet a better place to hang out
• Rejects the notion that we’re all in an echo chamber and that none of these new companies won’t go mainstream (Digg gets as much traffic as the New York Times)
• YouTube is cool, he started watching SNL again after “20 years” because he saw a clip from the show there
• They spent $75,000 to launch Edgeio
• Pointed out Fox’s acquisition person in the audience, Heather
• He says MySpace is pulling a Friendster — slow page loads, things breaking, not enough people
• Chastised Scott Rafer (feedster founder, now with dogster — myspaces for pets) for not promoting the industry

Mike over at TechCrunch has a much better look at TechCrunch than my brief first glance. Mike concludes with, IMO, the most significant thing about PA — they support open identity standards (among other open standards) so they win loyal users through trust instead of “lock-in”. I remember hearing Marc pitch the value of data portability at Gnomedex last year so I know shipping PA is is a big milestone for him and his team. Congratulations guys!