Getting Crispy With the Rock

Listened to the podcast of the This American Life show featuring the story of how Luis Da Silva got to be featured in Nike’s Freestyle commercial, along with some of his favorite B-ball players, back in 2001.

Mad skillz indeed…

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I’m submitting this through the blogging tool in the new Flock 1.0 browser release. How’s it look?

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Tags: flock, this american life, youtube, basketball, crispy, skillz

Snapshot: current strategies in the consumer content and media space

Some quick observations on what’s going on in the general business environment in the consumer content and media space.

First, in the content space, we see that Glam Media and Sugar Publishing have been/are going on acquisition sprees (examples 1 and 2), creating content verticals/blog networks (i.e., womens’ interests) that they are going to leverage to essentially become ad networks. Anecdotally, it seems that at least some of these properties place a high value on content that is editorially generated, and not just UGC.

Looking at the social networks, Facebook’s open platform model has many fans; the competition is taking note and making moves to do the same. Google, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, etc., will follow in close order.

The open platform model is of course what is driving the evolution of advertising from behavioral to social (as was stipulated at the Graphing Social Patterns conference). Facebook’s platform experiment has demonstrated so users are very receptive to messaging and brand influence (7x more than MySpace, based on RockYou’s experiences), provided that these are provided in a proper social context. This context can be derived with relative – and growing – ease based on users’ willingness to provide tons of data about themselves and Facebook’s willingness to disclose this data (e.g., likes/dislikes, hobbies, and other tag- and application usage-derived data).

Shifting to music, we see Facebook working to launch what appears to be a direct promotional channel between artists and fans. The timing couldn’t be better (for FB, at least): combine 44MM active users (expected to reach 60MM by the time the service rolls out) with a yearning for a new business model by big-name artists such as Radiohead and NIN (and Oasis & Jamiroquai) to finally stick it to MySpace. One question is whether iLike will become collateral damage as part of this process.

On the content side, Imeem is inking deals with the major labels to provide users with access to the respective catalogs (presumably using a free to consumer/ad revenue share model). Last.fm, incidentally now messaged as a music search and discovery recommendation tool, will likely leverage its technology (i.e., scrobbling) across CBS’s media properties.

Taking this all in, the following conclusions take shape:

1. “Lead, follow, or get out of the way” -Lee Iacocca

2. Massive data and complex analysis are necessary to create a “just right” experience (i.e., signal to noise ratio approaching 1)

1. You need a user base with critical mass (or access to someone else’s)

2. User data is key

a. To personalize the user experience

b. To create social context

c. To monetize efficiently by

                                            i. Delivering the user exactly the content that she wants

                                            ii. Connecting the right seller with the right (potential) buyer

 

Making Music Discovery Services Equitable

Music discovery services sprouted like mushrooms after a storm in 2006. Pandora, Last.fm, MOG, iLike, and a number of others are vying strong for consumers to use their services and/or be active users of their communities.

Pandora is arguably one of the best known of such services. While it does not cater to the social networking concept the way that the other start-ups in this niche do, it does share a common challenge with them – and the majority of social networks: without producing a good or service that users are willing to pay for, how can the company generate revenue?

Why, online advertising, of course! This simple answer, touted by many participants in Web 2.0, however is not always as simple to implement. Pandora rolled out text-based ads on their site a while back, which users seem to be at least tolerating. The company has made a bolder advertising push more recently by reportedly incorporating audio ads into their music streams.

Initial indications point to displeased users, and while Pandora is a user-focused company that will surely not commit to a strategy that alienates its users, this incident highlights the potential short-comings of relying on advertising as a sole revenue stream, as well as the challenge created by consumer expectation to receive services and consume content at no cost and without diminishing the experience whose equivalent they previously paid for.

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Will iPhone Reaffirm Apple as the Hero, or as the Villain?

As the crowd begins to regain its composure after the heart flutters instilled by Steve Jobs’s Macworld Keynote last week, news is slowly emerging that the iPhone may not beworthy of the accolades that many are heaping onto it.

The announcement that the device will run OS X may be a red herring of sorts. It seems that Apple is intent on keeping a tight leash on how users may hope to use the device. Optimist that you are, you may say, “you’ve got it all wrong! Apple would never do that to it’s customers!”

Let’s forego the point that Apple and Cingular (or at&t, if you will) are determined to keep iPhone firmly locked to the wireless carrier’s network. Apple’s attitude towards DRM – namely, that it will never sell content without DRM protection, even if it is not demanded by labels/studios, should give everyone pause as they consider locking themselves even tighter into the i/Tunes/Pod/Phone empire.

technorati tags:Apple, iPhone, DRM, Cingular, at&t

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Mog and Last.fm: What Opportunities Exist for Differentiation?

I was recently introduced to Mog, and got hooked instantly. It reminded me, in a sense, of the functionality and capabilities that I’ve yearned for over the years as I was part of the Acid Jazz mailing list – things related to finding new music that I was into, as it was emerging.

There are a lot of great things about Mog, but also some (potential) challenges. Chief among the latter is how the service does/can/will differentiate itself from Last.fm, which has a lead start on fulfilling a similar mission.

Here are a few things that I want from such a service, and where Mog may be able to take the pole position.

• Widgets (in general): Greater flexibility in creating new widgets, defining their elements, and controlling their position and size. E.g., I want to add URLs for my favorite artists, maybe offer links to, or directly embed, a track of theirs that I particularly like.
• Site operability
  • Keyboard shortcuts.
  • Fix the occasionally wonky formatting that occurs on a page — text should flow more smoothly.
• Navigation: Why is it that I can’t seem to navigate back to the page that is served when I first go to the site? I want access to the dashboard of what’s been going on on Mog: new-comers, movers & shakers, new posts that are getting a lot of attention. Think Digg, in a sense.
• General site / service: Show more info about who is behind Mog; put up a tangible “about us” section so that one can get the sense of the real team behind all of this goodness.
• Vital signs vs. profile: Add a little more meat to what goes into the profile to give a richer baseline sense of what someone is about. Make the profile more directly accessible.
• Tagging: should be a bit more accessible. Vague suggestion, I know, but I feel like tagging is a bit offhand in Mog.
• Access to music: I guess this is in progress at Mog, but it’s mission-critical. If it’s about discovering music through others, I want to be able to hear the music and have access to buying it (and iTunes does NOT do it for me).

And we’re back…

This blog has been mothballed for nearly eight months as I’ve searched for a way to integrate into my life in a useful manner and come up for a purpose for it that I don’t feel self conscious about.

Although not highly original, I’ve decided to use it to capture and track my thoughts regarding the wave of consumer tech entrepreneurship that is currently in full swing in the Bay Area. I will probably also have random posts on other topics, time permitting.

The merits of eternity

Quotes can be a source of insight, though I try not to go overboard in referencing them. Google’s customizable homepage is a good source of (seemingly) random quotes. A recent quote on Google gave me cause for reflection:

The average man, who does not know what to do with his life, wants another one which will last forever.
- Anatole France

It reminded me of a recent conversation with three friends — all of whom are film makers, and thereby presumably familiar with at least some aspects of immortality — in which the merits of an endless life were pondered. One of them – whom I lovingly refer to as the slow gazelle – just couldn’t see any downside to living forever.

Brand new day

Originally uploaded by malaparte.

My first official blog post. I’m way behind the blogging adoption curve. This is mostly because I don’t feel that what I have to say that is interesting enough to warrant pushing out onto the internets.

Nevertheless, I am going to use this forum to get myself to help precipitate some of the thoughts and ideas flitting in my mind. The lesson for today is that I’ve figured out how to post an entry directly from Flickr. Baby steps.

At some point I promise to also decide on a theme for this blog…