Non-commerical use? Yeah, right....who's going to stop me?
There's a lot of talk out there about freemium, premium, etc... but what about products where you have one market that gains real economic value from usage, and another market segment that you really want using it that gains none? Can you offer the same exact product to two different classes of users and simply say that one group has to pay and the other gets it free, and expect no cheating?
That's what "Non commercial use only" implies. There are many examples of software out there that you're supposed to pay for if you're a business, but if you're a person, you can get it for free.
The question is how to enforce that and how many users slip one past the goalie and get away with it? Are most people honest? How do you enforce that?
There's a lot of open source stuff out there that works in this manner, and I'd be curious to see research or first hand accounts of management of this... and potential for "cheating". I mean, are developers and users of open source code just a more respectful and sophisticated class of users?
Could this work if MySpace adopted this model? I think MySpace's issue is that the little guys, like my local pool hall, would be hardpressed to pay thousands of dollars for their page... but what if there was a way to set appropriate pricing... that they had to pay 5 bucks a month for their page. Could you enforce that?
Flat tire on first bike ride to work of 2007
Do you know how hard it is to get a bike on a rush hour express train? I was halfway...couldn't go back.
Going to SXSW
Just FYI, I'll be heading to SXSW Interactive on the weekend of March 9th.
It looks like I'll be arriving late Friday night and staying through Monday.
If anyone wants to meet up, let me know... I've set up a wiki page for me to keep track of what I'm going to... I'll add more as I get closer. Please feel free to add your name if you want to meet up. The password is fordham. Does anyone know when they're actually going to post the times of these workshops? Do they run all morning in tracks repeatedly or are they just given once?
Thoughts about CommunityNext and Conferences on Social Media in General: Is passion for community a requirement?
I've been remiss in writing my follow up post to CommunityNext. First off, Noah Kagan did a fantastic job organizing this. He had great speakers and the whole thing went off like clockwork, especially considering the ambitious schedule.
The tough thing for me, though, was that I didn't quite get who the audience was. I hung out with Fred and Brian (who treated us to bar substinance, btw... very sneakily, too... never got a chance to thank him), saw Stephanie... Tara spoke, and got to meet Anastasia and Frank... and then I thought to myself... Why are we all here? I mean, are we all preaching to the choir?
Tara wrote in her post conference notes, "The audience, I guestimated, was more than half filled with people who were asking the question, “How can I use community to make money?”
I have to admit, I didn't run into many, or any of these people for that matter. Unlucky Tara.
Or maybe I'm just looking at these people differently. Hell, maybe I'm one of them. There are a lot of people out there who work for businesses that maintain communities.... so I guess they are "using communities to make money" or put another way, "are in the business of providing services that include communities". Sounds a little bit different depending on the word choice and order, doesn't it?
To use another example, would you rather monetize a community or create a sustainable community... because last I checked, its hard to sustain a community, grow and innovate without some dough. Even Wikipedia is asking for money. No one calls it monetizing, but that's essentially what they're doing...getting money from users.
And, that's just fine. In fact, its more than fine. Its fantastic that people are asking "How do I make money?" Because, what is implied is that they're really asking, "How do I make money without totally pissing off all my users and having them disappear in a year?"
The way I see it, with no real barriers to entry and hardly any switching costs, in a wide open web, the big bad corporations and money makers should actually be aligned with users, no? No users, no money. More users, more money. Get users by making something people want to use. People are not idiots, they will only use useful stuff.
For all the MySpace bashing that went on at the conference and that I even do here, if MySpace didn't really provide any value to its users, it would cease to exist. They'd all move over to Hi5 or back to Friendster. A lot of the evangelists at CommunityNext cringe at the thought, but the reality is that it doesn't take passion to create community and it doesn't take care, concern, etc. I think the people at MySpace care about community to the extent that it is a monetary decision and that seems to be working for them.
Why? Because, you're not really creating community online. Community was there. People talked before blogs. They found music before last.fm. They had anonymous sex before Craigslist...um... I mean... bought each others couches, or whatever. There were garage sales before eBay. Granted, online tools allow better expression of community and more explosive growth... more robust information exchange, and more efficient communication... People are social animals... they started making the web social long before the term social software came out. In the end, all you really need is to put the tools of expression and connection in the hands of the people.
That's what MySpace did. They gave people big dumb empty boxes and allowed us to throw whatever crap we wanted in there. That's community. We threw our thongs, our middle fingers and our bling in there... and MySpace threw ads all over it. Do people care? They don't seem to.
Community? MySpace is the Mott Haven to the Soho of our rich Flickr Web 2.0 life, but, gasp all you want, they're both thriving web communities.
I think people are confusing passion for community with good product design. Do the people at last.fm have passion for community? I dunno... I don't know who they are or what they stand for, but the product rocks. AIM, Skype... Good products. Passionate communities? umm... On the other side, a lot of people fail at community because their product just sort of sucks... its not because they lack passion.
Or look at what I'm up against in my area. IAC has used paid advertising to get over 4 million people to register for the Zwinky avatars, which come with a lovely Ask.com search toolbar that installs itself all over your system. Long after you abandon your Zwinky, the toolbar remains, generating search revenue for the company. That kind of behavior should lead to a massive revolt by their community, no? No... people continue to click and register everyday.
Show me a fantastic social product that went nowhere because the founders lacked passion for community.
I guess what I'm saying is, while passionate founders and community caretakers definitely instill an authenticity and quality to their community...think Craigslist, Vimeo, etc...that hasn't shown itself to be a requirement, nor, unfortunately, an advantage. Hopefully, though, when Voki arrives in March, we will use our passion to our advantage and you will see it in our usage, our content and in our marketing...and in the product itself.
Flixster does viral right.... but what about the product?
If anyone wants to learn a little something about online viral apps, walk through Flixter.
First, I got a message from someone who accidently uploaded their whole address book and sent invites to take a movie quiz. Loving movies, I signed up and took the quiz, but the whole while, it made a big point of getting me to invite my friends, and then it had me paste a MySpace bulletin as well as a widget in my MySpace movies section... automatically.
Plus, smartly, it tells me when friends of mine have answered my quiz and coaxes me to go online and see how we match up.
Admittedly, I haven't gotten into much of the depth of the product.... I'm not sure they've developed enough hooks yet to pull users deeper into the system to encourage more movie ratings, but that will come in time as they grow their community. For now, I can see how this is going to grow like a weed.
Of course, I'm ceonyc on there, too...
Now this is the kind of privacy violation I like
I buy Gilette Good News razors...have been for years. My dad uses them, so they were the first ones I tried.
Duane Reade knows this, because I use their loyalty card, so Gilette bought the opportunity to send me a free Fusion five blade razor.
If it works, both companies will know about it.
They didn't ask to use my data, but I'm glad they did. Next time I shave my head, I'll let you know how it goes.
Searching for Some Web 2.0 in My One True Love
So, for some reason, I'm a little more conscious of being alone this year, even though its actually a rarity that I'm actually dating someone on Valentine's Day.
Being so swamped with work lately, I started to think that maybe what I'm looking for in the woman of my dreams is the same as what I look for in a good social Web 2.0 app.
Hear me out!
1) First off, low barrier to usage. I don't see myself registering and giving all my data beforehand. Whoever I wind up with is going to slowly seep into my life and get me hooked over time. Call it the New Dating Deal.
2) SMS and IM notifications... I really hate the phone, so she's going to need short form message capability.
3) Voice enabled... She needs to be outspoken, especially to be able to talk over and interrupt me. I get very excited about what I'm into and can too easily drown someone who is too quiet, even if I'm really interested in them and want to know about them.
4) Doesn't require too much money. I'm lucky that my career has kept me in a comfortable living situation, but I've never taken any of it for granted. She should appreciate whatever she has and be able to make do in rich times and in poor. Money doesn't buy happiness or a successful startup necessarily.
5) Uses AJAX...Small superficial changes should not require her to completely refresh her pages...she should be able to change on the fly without a lot of fuss...go with the flow
6) Tagging... She shouldn't easily fit into one static category...she can have many seemingly random traits and be many things to many people.
7) Open APIs... She plays well with others and is selfless and giving.
8) Uses OpenID...She's true to who she is in all situations.
9) Skinnable... She can dress up for a party and lounge around in PJs with no makeup and feel comfortable and functional in either attire.
10) Rounded corners. I'll be honest...I like a few curves in both my dates and my Web 2.0 app UIs.
Welcome... new bloggers, new readers...
In the last week, I went from about 950 readers to 1100. Feedburner glitch or real human subscribers? We'll see if it lasts.
In the meantime, I'm proud to say that my Fordham undergrad class got marching orders last night to start up their blogger blogs. Last week, they e-mailed some bloggers to get tips and they're building that last as they get responses here. One student jumped all over it and had his blog up about 40 minutes after class ended. Should be a lot of fun as, in a couple of weeks, we'll be moving from a discussion on tools to a talk about how specific industries are being affected by technology. They'll be blogging their responses and thoughts on the subject. Should be fun.
Plus, I'm going to open up those pages on how industries are being affected to the public... so you'll have a chance to have some input into the content of my class.
It's snowing here, by the way. I'm sort of unimpressed.
First Class, Coach, or Handbasket?
Let's see.... there's a conga line of men who claim to have fathered Anna Nicole Smith's child.
Norbit grossed nearly three times as much as Hannibal Rising.
The Mets signed Chan Ho Park.
Tomorrow is Valentine's Day and recently, Flickr and Friendster told me that my ex has a new boyfriend.
Well, at least my dodgeball teams are good... Between my two teams, we're 31-8-1 and both are in first place.
Twitter just sounds... dirty
But I signed up for it anyway.
If you're connected to me on Facebook (which I've been keeping pretty much friends-only, btw... in case I turned you down), then you've noticed that I've been obsessing over the whole "I'm in ur (noun), (verbing) ur (noun)z" cat thingy. In fact, I'm so obsessed with it, that I just secured iminur.net. I don't even know what I want to do with it yet.
In any case, the idea of away messages that are freed from the IM client and universal is interesting, and so I thought I'd give Twitter a try. I think they have a long way to back into a whole social network or business, but it's an interesting concept.
Actually, though, if I were AIM, I'd just break the status messages out of AIM and allow people to place them as a blog widget and change them from my phone... they're well positioned to do this.
Exclusive digital distribution of sports games eats away at the core of my soul
When the Mets were in the playoffs last year, I couldn't get a video stream of the game on the web, even though I had paid for MLB Extra Innings. Why? Because I was actually in New York, so the game was blacked out locally. Well, without a TV at my desk, I literally had no access to some of the daytime games. It had nothing to do with whether I was willing to pay... I was just shut out cold.
Now, the NFL wants to feature similar TV packages exclusively on DirectTV. I don't have DirectTV. Therefore, this sucks.
Argue away about business models and pricing... about whether content should be free, paid for, freemium, ad supported or what have you... and that's fine... but the following is UTF (utterly... ridiculous).
It is 2007 and there is digital content that I as a cable subscriber and broadband internet user still cannot access, even though I am willing to pay for it.
When is this going to end? It's one thing to say that the stuff is mispriced, but access? Access should not be an issue. If I want to watch any baseball game, I should be able to... on my TV or on the web, regardless of who I pay for my big fat dumb data pipe, which seems to be getting dumber by the minute.
All content on demand for anyone, period. If I have to pay, I'll pay, but at least give me the opportunity.
Anyone want to venture some guesses as to when this happens?