Eyeballs help build community, but their impact on revenue is indirect. What ultimately drives revenue are the experiences that occur when people participate in a story. This is what the book The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage is all about and why communities and commerce are tightly linked. Here are a few related links:
Google’s business isn’t really about monetizing eyeballs; it’s about monetizing clicks. That may seem like a small distinction - you have to attract the eyeball, after all, before you can spur the click - but I think there’s actually a very big difference. Eyeball monetization is the traditional media strategy: publish or broadcast content that attracts readers or viewers, and then intersperse ads among that content. The content, in this case, serves not to prompt action directly, but merely to draw an audience that’s attractive to companies looking to promote their products and services. There’s a natural distance, in other words, between the content and the ads - a distance that’s good for the content producer but often frustrating to the advertiser. The click monetization strategy removes that distance. In Google’s AdSense program, for instance, a media company, or other content producer, earns nothing by simply attracting eyeballs. It only brings in cash by getting viewers to click on an ad link.
yes, in an attention economy, you have to get the eyeballs first. But the money, as many found out with internet stocks, does not automatically follow the eyeballs.
all the crap about attention allocation is primarily because that’s one of the best ways to build a community.
Community Value
A place where everyone can share stories.
Last fall, I said that the focus of this blog would shift to content and for a brief moment it did. The first GriotVision channel was launched as a sci-fi thriller played out in Second Life and on the web. While most people who saw it thought it was at least interesting if not innovative, it was a long way from fulfilling the vision and promise of GriotVision. It was nowhere near interactive enough and required too much centralized administration. I wasn’t surprised or disappointed because it was intended to be an interim, evolutionary step. However, shortly after launch, the lead writer was seriously injured in a car accident. This stopped the flow of new episodes and exacerbated the centralization problem. Then several months later, there was a major outage at the hosting provider resulting in corruption of the databases. While backups do exist, restoring the system would require a great deal of manual configuration of servers and I’ve chosen to stay focused on evolving the GriotVision platform. You may be asking just what is “the GriotVision platform”? The GV platform can be viewed as a stack of technical capabilities/services:
Various amounts of information about most of these can be found on the Sister Sites in the right column. Over the coming weeks I’ll be tying these pieces together here on this blog in preparation for a December roll-out. The first layer you’ll hear about is BOP which is due for a new release next week.
Having an IDE that I can use for multiple languages is cool. Initially I was unable to get Ruby support to install in Aptana because it said I needed some feature I’d never heard of:
It’s been nearly 2 years since I started this blog and there’s only 1 post! What happened? Well, too many things to account for here, but in a word Interpretations. Here are a few specifics:
I’ve read some decent analysis regarding Google’s new Android mobile computing platform and the new video from Sergey Brin announcing the $10 million fund to inspire developers to code new applications for the operating system. After mulling it over for a bit something occurred to me: This is Steve Jobs’ Mac OS vs. Windows nightmare all over again.
For those not versed in OS history, Apple/Jobs essentially lost the opportunity to own the computer industry many years ago by insisting on keeping the Mac OS wed “only” to Apple hardware while Microsoft opted to license its OS software to various hardware vendors. At the time, Apple’s strategy of controlling the entire hardware/software experience looked like a solid profit plan, while Microsoft’s early strategy seemed risky to such a young computing market.
The “sell the razor blades not the razor” technique is tried and true, but the personal computer business was a brand new market and success depended on Microsoft’s ability to cut enough of the right deals in a market that was then dominated by the giant known as IBM. Anyone that claims Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates weren’t engaging in a huge gamble are full of it. Regardless, that gamble paid off, and now Microsoft owns the lion’s share of the desktop OS market share.
Now that historic dynamic is at work again, happening right under everyone’s noses. This is Steve Jobs’ Mac OS vs. Windows nightmare all over again—only this time the nightmare is happening to Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer.
Google’s introduction of Android as an open source mobile phone computing platform is not a challenge to the iPhone. The iPhone is a boutique device with limited growth potential due to a closed environment and one—count’em—one cell phone provider. The real target of Google’s Android is Microsoft’s Windows Mobile computing platform. There are some foolish naysayers who either don’t get it or simply dislike Google as a company because it has become too powerful, but I’m convinced that this move will be almost as big if not bigger for Google than the company’s search dominance.
Watching the rise of Linux and then Firefox on the shoulders of the open source community has convinced me that, if played correctly, open source software is no longer a paper tiger when competing with closed platforms. The $10 million incentive offered to developers will only hasten Android’s adoption.
So, if you own an iPhone and think you are using the future of mobile computing, you’re only half right. Like the Windows vs. Mac platform war of old, the slick functionality of the iPhone is definitely the future of mobile computing, but the mobile market will be dominated by Android and the hundreds of companies and developers supporting the robust open platform.
Hi All,
For the time being, I’m disabling comments here while I try to get to the bottom of what appears to be malicious tampering with the site. During this time, you may notice some entries that are blank, but I hope to have the database restored soon.
Thanks for stopping by.
A discussion on the Squeak list reminded me of the saying “those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it” and thus prompted me to squeeze out another bit of this saga …
Back in 1992, before Mosaic, before Java(formerly known as Oak) was demoed to Sun management as a language for networked consumer devices, David Taylor examined the state of object-oriented programming in a book entitled
Object-Oriented Information Systems: Planning and Implementation
This book is available used for under a dollar and provides considerable evidence for my view that the vacuum created by the collective choices of the Smalltalk community opened the primary avenue for the widespread adoption of Java. Taylor conducted an informal survey that listed case studies of actual projects and concluded:
these findings jibe well with my own personal experiences as a project leader, contract programmer, consultant and mentor on major Smalltalk projects as well as those as an engineer and database administrator.
In the early 90’s, the corporate landscape was littered with the rotting corpses of failed C++ projects aimed at what we now call enterprise applications. Smalltalk had replaced C++ as the language of choice for new projects and as a more effective means of transitioning COBOL applications and programmers. Early in it’s growth, Java wasn’t replacing Smalltalk but rather filling a vacuum created by the Smalltalk community. Moreover, it was only able to fill this vacuum riding the Smalltalk-based VisualAge IDE that Eclipse was born from. This is happening with Croquet and will continue to happen with Smalltalk-based innovations until and unless the community learns the lessons of its own history. I am optimistic that it will though it will likely be painful for most.
During a brief speech (about 3 minutes, see video below) about the strike, Writers Guild of America member Howard Gould explains why the writers are striking: “It’s the way my kids watch TV… They hear about a show, they look for it on the Internet. Soon, when computers and your TV are connected, that’s how we’re all gonna watch. Those residuals are going to go from what they are [now] towards zero if we don’t make a stand now.”
**More scenes from the strike include:
-”Grey’s Anatomy” star Sandra Oh chanting, “How greedy can you get, you have to share the Internet!”
-Old schooler Garry Marshall (of “Happy Days” fame) waxing nostalgic about previous strikes.
-Two writers from “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives” explaining their take on the strike and why ABC.com should be paying them for online content.
Photo by myyearofnewthings
*This post was originally about the delusional comments from the head of the Writers Guild East, but I interrupt this blog post to mention that one of the most popular shows around, ‘24,’ has officially been cancelled for next season because of the writers strike. Considering that ‘24′ is probably the most popular series drama on television, this is huge. OK, back to our regularly scheduled muckracking…
I think the Writers Guild made a smart move by getting on this DVD/Internet content compensation issue early before the big bucks roll in as broadcast TV gradually moves completely online (more on that in another post). But Michael Winship, president of the Writers Guild of America East, has allowed the strike to effect his higher mental functions resulting in absurd statements like the following made to one NY Times reporter: “Losing Stewart and Colbert is something like losing Cronkite during the Vietnam War.”
OK, I miss my Colbert Report, and I won’t argue that a lot of people (foolishly) get their news from Jon Stewart, but equating those shows with hard news is ridiculous. I’m actually rather surprised that no one from the mainstream news media has stepped forward to challenge Winship’s assertion. Maybe the reporters and anchors are afraid Winship is right.
Opportunity Crease: If non-union writers, indie filmmakers and video bloggers are paying attention they’ll realize that this is their greatest opportunity to capture the attention of the public. As the TV reruns increase, the already large online video audience will grow even larger, and not everyone will be content to watch online archive video of their favorite television shows. That’s where the the opportunity for indie online video creators exists… “if” they’re paying attention.
Colbert photo by David Shankbone
