The $1 business model

April 30th, 2010 • Digital Content, Social Media

I’ve been very fascinated with this idea. Now that Facebook is on it’s way towards profitability, it perhaps is not applicable to the social networking giant but there might be something for the new start-ups still trying to figure out their business model.

Plenty of start-ups in the Internet space follow a strategy of building a product, amassing an audience quickly and then trying to figure out how to monetize the audience. Facebook did the same, but it hasn’t and still struggles with winning the in-network advertising conundrum.

It changed its “FAN” to “LIKE” – with the definitive intention of pandering to brands and companies by showing them an increase in enrollment into their fan pages. Facebook also changed the settings on my profile page and now connected each “interest” of mine to a specific fan page. It annoyed me. I had beautifully crafted and super creative interests and activities and now they are all gone because I refused to link them to Pages.

From a brand perspective, these are all excellent changes. Branded content will continue to seep through personal social networks in form of “likes.” My clients are already excited with the possibilities.

But on a personal note, Facebook has become less and less intimate and is losing context for me everyday. I have more people on Limited than I did before and my interactions on Facebook have lessened to wishing happy birthday’s and liking a photograph. Maybe it’s just me but are these changes adding real value to the user to ensure they continue using and trusting Fbook for the long term?

That’s why my $1 business model is so brilliant. If I say so myself.

I’d have MUCH happily paid them a $1/ month subscription fee than be subjected to  forced changes. Facebook would have the operating budget they needed to stave off pressure from the industry and buy time to come up with a smarter strategy. It’s a flawed idea, I know but I just shelled out $20/yr for a flavors.me pro account. Facebook offers a much better service and contains my biography of sorts…so paying a subscription fee to Facebook is a no-brainer.

Just my two cents.

Not just location; I’m ready to share more

April 30th, 2010 • 1 comment Digital Content, Social Media

I haven’t written in a while. I’m thinking of migrating my blog over to tumblr. There’s a very work-like, formal feeling to logging into my domain name and blogging. Anyways, what follows are a few ideas I’ve been thinking about over the past few weeks. Just wanted to catalog them before they fly away.

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I’m fairly outgoing and so I enjoy Foursquare. But I very often simply forget to check-in because it’s just not a habit yet. On the other hand, if I’m watching an incredible show, movie or reading a page-turner of a book, I’m the first to yell, facebook, tweet it out to the world. It’s an ingrained habit and now that I read more than 3 books/month and discover new authors more often thanks to my Kindle, I find myself itching all the time to share my ‘finds’ with the community. As a personality, I care more about what people think of my media recommendations over my restaurant/ pub recommendations.

The growth of location-based services has been exponential. Books and reading based services have stumbled along the way, neither of them capturing my interest or attention for a sustained period of time. Books and media-based conversations are so rich and multi-layered in context. Then, I wonder why we can’t yet “check-in” to books and entertainment yet ?

We recently met with the brilliant team at HotPotato to evaluate potential opportunities with them for a client. Miso and Hotpotato allow users to share what they are currently watching. In doing so, they create a live environment of impassioned audiences that discuss live events, TV shows and even movies as they are watching it. But I’d really love to see a version for books and reading.

I’d ventured a guess earlier (largely from my own experience) about new mobile devices such as Kindle and iPad contributing heavily to an increase in media consumption. Perhaps there’s an opportunity waiting to happen here with interactive books on-the-go. Imagine you “check-in” a book everytime you read it and it post reading, you are privy to and have access to discussions and opinions – on the go, on your device.

Just a thought. You know, because I’m really ready to share more than just my location.

On philosophy, morality and children

April 19th, 2010 • 2 comments Culture Briefings, Ideas & Innovation

This is a rambling of ideas and thoughts that have been floating in my head for the last few days. This morning, I read a very interesting piece in the NYT about an experimental study in a second-grade classroom at a charter school in Massachusetts where undergraduate students from Mount Holyoke College teach these children philosophy. Not about philosophers but about the higher value, morals and questions with no right or wrong answers. The idea that Prof. Thomas E. Wartenberg purports is that philosophy is not an elitist discipline and that children have the capacity of abstract thinking and thus developing deep reasoning skills via participating in dialog of philosophical issues around stories and fables.

I find new ideas and new methods to improving education very compelling. Critics will argue for and against Prof. Wartenberg’s approach, but I think it’s important to consider how similar it is to what parents do with their children after reading a story book to them: they talk at their children about the morals associated in the story. If I collected a penny for every-time my cousin has compared her daughter’s actions to a fictional but highly respected character, I’d be richer. But I think doing it in a classroom and allowing the children to express their thoughts and feelings is different than a parent relating the moral of the story to them. Also, exposing them to each other’s thoughts and feelings probably makes the experience far richer for them.

I think the point here isn’t that Prof. Wartenberg chooses to take a philosophical approach to inculcate reasoning skills in second graders – the point is how he does it. Quite simple actually – they read a book together and then they talk about it.

By now they knew the drill: deciding whether or not they agreed with each question; thinking about why or why not; explaining why or why not; and respecting what their classmates said.

There was no real point to this blog post apart from expressing wonder at a professors attempt to inspire a tiny portion of how we educate our children and prepare them for the future.

The Future of Publishing Conference

April 15th, 2010 • 2 comments Digital Content

… confounds me as much as you. And so on April 30th, I’m headed to the Future of Publishing Conference headed by University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School, to discover and learn what the leading practitioners are thinking and how they are approaching the content business.

This conference is jointly put together by Knowledge@Wharton, the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative and Wharton School Publishing with the goal of “examining new technologies and strategies that impact all facets of the industry to help bring actionable answers to publishing executives.”

Not only does the conference have an impressive line-up of speakers (Demand Media, Simon & Schuster, Fast Pencil, Conde Nast, etc) but the panels are well-designed to tackle one specific issue facing the content industry. While, I’m psyched to hear Martin Nisenholtz (he founded nytimes.com in 1995!) keynote the conference, you must also take a look at all the panels here.

I’m not a fan of concurrent panels because it’s difficult to decide which ones will offer most value (based on speakers, moderator and content) But I’ve decided to attend one panel where I learn something new and another panel, where I go deeper on what I already know. So to learn something new I’m planning on attending this panel on the future of books. Ever since I got my Kindle, I’ve been very surprised by how my own reading habits have changed (for the better). I’m curious to hear how the book industry is thinking about new platforms and pricing.

The Future of Books: (Designed to discuss new book platforms, new delivery methods for content and pricing models)

Ellen Archer, President, Hyperion Books
Brendan Cahill, VP and Publisher, Open Road Media
Steve Ennen, Managing Director, Wharton Interactive Media Initiative
Jason Epstein, On Demand Books
Ellie Hirschhorn, EVP and Chief Digital Officer, Simon & Schuster On Demand Books
Steve Wilson, CEO, Fast Pencil

The next panel I’m planning on attending is on Content Discovery & Promotion. This ties in close to my current work and interests. The panel is designed to explore how partnerships can help drive revenues, traffic and bring more visibility to content.

Richard Baum, Global Editor, Reuters.com
Pete Fader, Frances and Pei-Yuan Chia, Professor; Professor of Marketing; Co-Director, Wharton Interactive Media Initiative (moderator)
Jason Jaynes, VP Marketing and Product Management, Pluck
Seval Oz Ozveren, VP Finance and Business Development, Cuil

If you are planning on attending, buy your tickets now. Drop me a line as well – maybe we can meet up there!

Exit Through The Gift Shop – A Banksy Film Review

April 8th, 2010 • Culture Briefings, Life in the big city

So last night I had the opportunity to go to an exclusive (oh, I feel special!)screening of Banksy’s “Exit Through the Gift Shop.” So here’s the strange and in hindsight, a very Banksy-ish thing about the movie that he made – it’s not about him. Yep. And if you think that you might actually be disappointed that the movie isn’t about him, you are wrong. Because the character that the film is about is an extraordinary metaphor for what’s possible when you are…. sort of winging it.

Enter Thierry Guetta or (circa 2008) Mr. Brainwash. But let me rewind for a bit and, to the uninitiated, tell you why this movie is a big deal and why you should watch it.

You’ve probably heard of Banksy – if you haven’t heard of him, you certainly have at some point come across his work. When I think of how best to describe him, I can only say that he is a dichotomy, in that, he is one of the world’s most famous street-artists, but ironically he is also entirely anonymous. A total mystery. His true identity is shrouded in mystery and there are probably ten people in the world who know of it. I suppose his meticulously orchestrated anonymity has played a large part in creating his intriguing identity as a street-artist. His work is amazing and if you aren’t familiar, I highly recommend to get on top of your cultural education and learn about him.

For the last two years, I’ve been clued into street-art phenomena because of my boss, Marc Schiller. Marc, like Banksy, leads a dichotomous life. By day, he is a prolific strategic thinker and a marketer and outside work, he is a street-art connoisseur and the founder of Wooster Collective. It is inevitable that his passion for street-art rubs off on the team and at the very least, we’ve become more attuned to this esoteric world.

So that’s the spiel. Think of Banksy as the Brad Pitt or the Obama the street-art world. So when he makes a movie, it’s guaranteed to become an art piece as Marc says. So what’s the film about – and I quote Banksy, when I say, “The film is the story of what happens when this guy tried to make a documentary about me but he was a lot more interesting than I am, so the film is now kinda about him.”

That’s just it. And the guy in question is Thierry Guetta.

He is a character. Multi-dimensional, funny, slightly over-the-top and mostly unbelievable. The film traces Thierry’s story from an untalented video-film maker to an overnight commercial street-artist. (Yes, notice the irony?) It begins in France when Thierry stumbles upon his cousin (who eventually picks up the pseudonym Space Invader) creating Space Invader inspired art-pieces. Intrigued, he films his cousin placing the art strategically across various nooks and streets of Paris and thereby, igniting his own interest in street-art.

Thierry’s path leads him to Shepard Fairey and eventually to Banksy who inspires Theirry to find his own artistic calling. (Because film-making definitely wasn’t it!) Not one to let Banksy down, Theirry soon finds his distinctive style (Andy Warhol reborn) and goes on to become an art sensation literally overnight, selling over $1 million in art.

In my opinion, this paradoxical nature of Thierry’s rise to fame and success is really the essence of the film. What’s more important for an artist? Commercial success of respect of his peers? Because while Thierry rakes in millions, it’s not clear whether his peers (Shepard Fairey, Banksy) believe that Theirry earned the success.

Also, how does this lens change when the artist in question is a street-artist? The footage leading up to Guetta’s seminal and first show “Life is Beautiful,” tells a story of a man who in his naivete decides he has every right to be and deserves to be an artist as big and famous as Banksy. It makes the audience question the integrity of his intentions but also hopelessly making them fall in love with this outlandish, clown-like character. “But that’s how Banksy did it…” was his response when someone questioned him about the practical and logistical details of his art show. It at once, sounds so silly and yet, so endearing that the only appropriate response is to laugh and go along with Banksy and Guetta for the ride.

Personally, I walked away feeling a little bit foolish. In one particular scene, as a marketing and PR stunt Geutta promises exclusive limited edition one-of-a-kind prints of his work to the first 200 people that enter his show. To make each print unique, he lines them up in one long row and like a child playing with color, he sits in his wheelchair (with a broken foot) and as he rolls down the line, he spray-paints a red and yellow squiggles across all 200 prints, making each print a (moronically) unique representation of pure bullshit.

Oh and guess what? I’ve actually paid for similar “exclusive one-of-a-kind, limited edition” artist prints.

So there.

If anything, this movie will give you an entirely new perspective and appreciation for street-art. And you might just walk out a little bit smarter.

In full disclosure – My company is handling the marketing of this film. Only because Marc is one of the few people Banksy trusts.

Watch the short video clip here:

iPad POV

April 2nd, 2010 • Digital Content

Did I ever mention here that ever since I got my Kindle, I’ve been reading (at least!) three more books a month than I did before? I’ve been following the publishing price wars with great interest over the last few weeks and have thought a lot about whether it would impact or change my habits if it the book prices on Kindle were increased. That’s for another blog post.

This one is about the iPad. I definitely won’t be buying the device just yet (poo!) but I’m as passionate about the debate and excitement following it as everyone else.

I think as a Kindle-owner  my biggest question is how will the iPad impact the ebook market. In his review for the NYT, Pogue mentions a few flaws that drive my skepticism regarding the iPad and ebooks.

1. It weighs 1.5 pounds (compared to 10 ounces of the Kindle!)
2. Books purchased from the Apple bookstore cannot be read on any other machine – not even a Mac or an iPhone. That’s a bummer. (Although the 9.7 inch color screen might actually compensate for the drawbacks!)

I think the biggest confusion is around the one true use of the device. As an audience, we’ve been sort of conditioned to perceive a single important use/ value for any device. Even with the iPhone, it’s first real purpose is to play the function of a telephone. The Kindle is for reading, the iPod is for music. I’m still having trouble assigning a single value for the iPad. And that might actually be a good thing – symbolizing a new age of devices that are more integrated and have multiple values as opposed to primary and secondary value.

To me, the value of the iPad is as a content consumption device. Even with the no-flash policy, (and some news sites have already converted their videos into an iPad friendly format) I see a lot of potential in form of applications and optimized websites for the iPad. Add to that the comfort and convenience factor (making it super easy to surf the web) and the iPad might strike the chord.

I’m also positively assured of the success the iPad will have with applications. About 150K iPhone apps work for the device but it will also launch a host of iPad specific applications. (I’m excited at the thought of hulu.com launching it’s own iPad app!)

Pogue sums this up succinctly when he says,

the iPad is not a laptop. It’s not nearly as good for creating stuff. On the other hand, it’s infinitely more convenient for consuming it — books, music, video, photos, Web, e-mail and so on. For most people, manipulating these digital materials directly by touching them is a completely new experience — and a deeply satisfying one.

Kleiner Perkins is obviously very confident of the iPad and its future. It just invested $200 million in its iFund to specifically create applications for the iPad. The company has some 20 applications already under development and will be launching 11 of those tomorrow to coincide with the iPad launch.

What are your thoughts? Will you be buying the iPad?