|
Archives: July 2005
Beach recap
A hot and hazy week, with one night of spectacular thunderstorming. We putputted on a lengthy grass course and experienced lots of the card-game "golf." By day: boogey boarding in rough surf, baseball tossing, jellyfish, tiny clam watching. Why does everyone leave the beach at 5PM, just when it becomes most beautiful? Two days of surf-casting with blood worms and plastic proxies produced two whiting, one spot and one croaker. We're hooked. Surf lessons next year?
[4] comments (2872 views) | link
Beach
Well, we've just hired another programmer in Budapest and, as of August 1, have tripled the size of our US staff versus the beginning of the year. So I'm heading to the beach for a week to recharge. As the Hungarians say: chew while you've got teeth.
[3] comments (2793 views) | link
Update from the front lines: folk industry
If you've seen my Powerpoint spiel recently, you know I've got a page called "new media = new merchandise" devoted to the most interesting advertiser on the Internet, the archetype in a coming consumer revolution in which people customize their owns goods and experiences. Volvo? Microsoft? Google?
Here's a hint.
Though I think this is really a business story in the long run (and was covered very nicely in the WSJ a couple of weeks ago), its worth noting the NYT's coverage in the style section last week
Lately limited edition T-shirts, most likely made in someone's cellar in Brooklyn, have suddenly become the hipster's preferred mode of expression. Whether produced by college pals with studio art degrees or sold by highly organized Web companies like threadless.com - visitors to the site offer ideas and vote on designs, which are then put into microproduction - the limited edition T-shirt has become impossible to avoid.So some combination of the Internet, Moores' law, network computing, swarms and outsourced production have made it historically easy for anyone to create and popularize blog posts, podcasts, software, jamCDs, home-brews, t-shirts.
Often crude and uncommercial-looking, its imagery represents a kind of generational response to the bland uniformity of the mass-marketed "vintage" lines found in every mall. This development has not been lost on those same manufacturers, however. Some are already producing T-shirts that mimic the do it yourself look of indie T-shirts. "T-shirts are a really cheap blank slate," said Ariel Foxman, the editor of Cargo, Condé Nast's shopping magazine for men. "People have found a relatively inexpensive way to distinguish themselves."
The trend partly reflects the great democratic welter of the e-commerce ether, and it partly serves as a marker of hipness, defined by the savvy with which a consumer can navigate the Web labyrinth in search of the coolest obscurities. For a snapshot of the estimated 1,500 sites now selling limited edition T-shirts, one might double click on Wowch.com, whose designs ring changes on the visual conventions of painting-on-velvet kitsch, or to Trainwreck Industries, a 10,000-shirts-a-year site run by a San Francisco designer, Alec Patience, whose motifs run to sight gags like Mao as a D.J., or Che Guevara's face morphed into that of Ace Frehley, the lead guitarist of the rock band Kiss.
For that matter, one might even check out Prada's recent foray into the arena, a collaboration with the Chilean graffiti artist Flavien Demarigny, also known as Mambo. His shirt, the first in a series of proposed limited edition T-shirts grouped under the highfalutin' title "Unspoken Dialogues," has a drawing of a figure and a boom box that could politely be termed an homage to Keith Haring, as if drawn by a 5-year- old.
The common theme here is that individuals -- folk! -- are producing and distributing their own wares through networks of their peers. (Pause to reread Ctrain.) The old production chains and sales channels are being bypassed. Viewed in the context of Christiansen's distruptive technologies life cycle -- cheap, weak, new gizmos slowly create new markets and evolve up-capacity to fill old markets -- we can expect that these gizmos will invade other markets and slowly disrupt established industries. Expect home-brew cars, PCs, furniture, blue-jeans, movies, house-blue-prints...
How might this work? Take Dell's model and fold in Cafe-press. Right now Dell lets you "build your own" computer and CafePress will print/sell anyone's t-shirt designs. What if Dell let you "build your own" laptops (with a funky screen size or panel color or configuration?) and then sell them yourself via a relabeled Dell page to your peers. Dell gets a new sales channel. Consumers (producers!) get the goods they really want/need.
[3] comments (2873 views) | link
Moonwalk
36 years ago, man stepped on the moon. See Google's map of the landing area. (via Sploid.
I was seven and my family spent that summer in an apartment in Boston. I remember finding $1.75 is silvery change in a playground sandbox. I remember walking around on Old Ironsides in awe. I remember bargaining with a couple of street-stumbling flower children for a bongo drum; they wanted $5, but ultimately gave up and gave me the drums. I recall playing lots of games of "memory." I remember the glass flowers in some Harvard museum.
And I remember waking up at 1AM to watch some black and white dots move across a borrowed TV screen... which way was up? which patch was man or foot or moon dust?
Somehow that summer branded my senses and today I have a strong affection for steamy cities.
[2] comments (2973 views) | link
Candidate blogads
William Beutler is covering politician blogads for the National Journal's Hotline. See halfway down this page for an overview of ads bought for Louise Slaughter, and comments on the Robert Byrd ad here.
To keep better track of these pages, I've started a "recent candidates" section on our site here.
[2] comments (2895 views) | link
One of my favorite meals
Fish stew.
And this story of a lost Hungarian-speaking parrot reminds me of a story Kati, my wife's mother, tells. The family gets a parrot. Raised by a teenage boy, the parrot becomes known for its profanity. One day, the parrot flies away. Fliers are put on telephone polls. Grocers (the cisco routers of village life) are consulted. Kati sleeps on the porch, hoping the parrot will return. Finally, word comes that someone two villages over has found a parrot. Kati puts the parrot's cage on the back of her bike and rides to the village. "How will I know it is your parrot?" asks the savior.
[2] comments (2674 views) | link
Growing up (side down)
While the rest of us read Revenews, WSJ, Gawker and Adrants, what are the kids reading? Well, eight-year-olds are playing Runescape. And, when they are not buried in Xanga or AIM, the kidz slightly older are enjoying flash animations like these, at least according to Steve Locke, who wrote this morning from Amherst. Check out in particular: piehole, nader, doodoocaca, apple, avacado.
Lots of ideas in there for advertisers. Roughcut, profane, nihilist, unPC... how will corporate media/advertisers compete? Is there any media magazine (or blog) that focuses on kidz media consumption? What other stuff do you guys see going on?
[3] comments (2854 views) | link
Summer weekend
Saturday's activities included learning to play "9" and "golf," hiking to the top of the east ridge of Montreat, picking blueberries by Rattlesnake Rock, watching Taco pant furiously, eating at Salsa and listening some some folks jamming under the trees at the Bele Chere festival.
So far this summer, I've seen Willie Wonka (3/10), WarofWorlds (8), Batman (7), Herbie (5). I fell asleep during Wonka, and might have given it a 2 if I'd seen the whole rotten thing.
[3] comments (2917 views) | link
Patriotic ads...
I was in a junk store in Black Mountain, NC this weekend and stumbled on a stack of old Life magazine ads, circa World War II. Many of the ads used a patriotic theme and often weren't peddling a specific product or service.
An ad for Greyhound buses noted how a Greyhound movie travelogue was touring the world and entertaining GIs and Russian privates and Eskimos.
Royal Crown Cola's ad headline was "How to get your second wind for 5 cents" and included photos with these captions: "If you are a Sub Machine Gunner" ... "If you are a Parachute Maker"... "If you are a Airraid Warden" ... "If you are Jeep Driver"..."
There was an ad for Western Electric, showing a submariner talking on a headset. "Every branch of the Armed Servcies uses the Telephone."
And there was a Chrysler ad with a brutish cartoon of a bespectacled Japanese naval officer grimmacing in a flood of light. "It was dark, it was black as Tojo's heart"... the searchlight came on and "we could see those Japs plain as day scurrying around like rats in a ship." As it turns out, the spotlight mirror was polished by the same machinery used to make Chrysler engines.
[2] comments (3165 views) | link
Coverage of blog advertising
Danny Glover gives a great overview of the revolution in advocacy advertising spawned by blogs in the National Journal. The lede says it all: "Advocacy is a staple of the blogosphere, and advocacy advertising on blogs is quickly becoming a popular tool for groups hoping to mobilize the online masses."
I should also mention that Farah Miller, who has bought a number of blogads for books including Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore, Nicholson Baker's Checkpoint and Camille Paglia's Break Blow Burn, was the star of an article in Friday's WSJ about new ideas in book marketing.
Book publishers generally stick to their tried-and-true formula for promoting a new novel: send the writer on tour, slip review copies to critics and negotiate strategic displays in bookstores. The Internet has been used to create barebones Web sites tied to new books, and the occasional advertising campaign on popular online destinations, but little more. Now, publishers like Knopf are hoping to supplement their traditional campaigns by wooing bloggers, giving away free copies online, and other initiatives.You can see the full article here.
[1] comments (2931 views) | link
Buffett and the Washington Post
Warren Buffett owns 20% of the Washington Post, currently valued at $1.7 billion dollars. It's interesting to review Buffett's steadily declining attitude towards the publishing industry and wonder: at what point does Buffett bail on WPO? Obviously, selling even 10% of WPO would be tough in the open market and destroy confidence in WPO's business model. So what is a billionaire to do?
Charlie Munger, Buffett's partner, said in 1986:
“Newspapers are a marvelous business. It's one of the few businesses that tend toward a natural, limited monopoly. Obviously, it competes with other advertising forms, but not with anything exactly like itself. Show me another business like that — there isn't one.”Asked about selling shares, Warren Buffett in 2002:
"It's not our natural inclination to sell. We've never sold a share of the Washington Post, Berkshire Hathaway (since we began acquiring it in 1962), Coke or Gillette."And in 2004:
"We would sell if we needed the money for something else, but that hasn't been a problem in the past 10-15 years. Earlier in my career, I had more ideas than money, but now it's the reverse."
"Now, we typically sell when we reevaluate the economic characteristics of a business; when we had one view of the long-term competitive advantage, but are modifying it. That's not to say it's become a bad business -- just that the competitive advantages are not as strong as
we initially thought."
"A classic case is the newspaper business. Decades ago [when Berkshire bought The Buffalo News and The Washington Post], it was impregnable. We still think it's quite a business, but it's not the same as in the 1970s. There are so many other sources of information now. Incidentally, the same thing has been happening to network television."
Buffett and Munger were surprisingly bearish on newspapers, a major investment for Berkshire through its large stake in the Washington Post Co. and its outright ownership of the Buffalo News.Here's a 15 year perspective on WPO.
After saying that he and Munger are "newspaper addicts" and that "it's still an unusually good business," Buffett struck a somber note.
"The economics of newspapers are very, very close to certain to deteriorate over the next 10-20 years," he warned. "I see nothing that will turn around the erosion from both the circulation and advertising standpoints."
[2] comments (2791 views) | link
Teething gains
Tony Pierce, one of my favorite bloggers, finally started selling Blogads about a month ago. Yesterday, he wrote:
i have been using blogads since the day i was laid off and last month, full disclosure, i made $420. its not a lot but it was exactly how much the dentist charged me yesterday to do some serious work on me. and to rewind a little in the story, whats funny is nearly the second that blogads paypalled me the moola (so smart that they use paypal) the dentist office called me to see if i wanted to get my teeth worked on.
the beauty of having a paypal debit card is tuesday i was paypalled the cash from blog ads and wednesday i paid the dentist with the paypal debit card. my real bank stash was never touched and career builder and those indie movies basically paid for my dental work. the perfect circle.
[1] comments (2637 views) | link
Chamber of Commerce panels on blogs
Damn, DC humidity is about 101% and my glasses fogged up walking through the door. I'm participating at a panel today sponsored by IDI and Rightclick at the American Chamber of Commerce.
On the first panel, Cheryl Contee gave a strong overview of blog phenomena -- Rathergate, London bombing. Then some interesting stuff from Peter Hirshberg , a VP at Technorati.com. He shows a slide with the total number of bloggers, now 12 million. But how many of those are active? We get a hint in the next slide, charting the number of blog posts per day. Apparently this peaked last week during the London bombings at 1.1 million per day. So, assuming that some bloggers make dozens of posts a day, the media guy makes 3 and many make zero... do we have 200,000 active bloggers... ie people who post at least seven times a week?
A month ago, when I asked Technorati's Dave Sifry when they were going to commercialize their blog tracking service, the answer wasn't clear. Listening to Hirshberg, it seems they are a lot closer. I heard a bunch of things from Pete Blackshaw yesterday suggesting that his Blogpulse is going to take a big leap ahead in this dimension also in coming weeks.
Mike Cornfield or Pew Internet and American life project: bloggers are "gatekeepers for the gatekeepers." But you've to go manage your boss's expectations. "Everything interconnects. When you are online, you are one click away from e-mail, one click away from an institutional web site, one click away from gather money, mobalizing people, one click away from organizing people. Because interconnectivity is so easy, it is very easy to think you can go viral.... Things don't go viral as part of anyone's strategic command. We are riding the waves just like everyone else. Don't go chasing after the big viral thing that is going to change the world because your boss will know you are full of it... Btu you don't need to go viral to create action. Even if we only sign up 100 people or get four journalists to go to our website, we've succeeded."
[1] comments (2645 views) | link
Pierced heart
Tony Pierce: "mind over chatter."
Alex Macris' new gaming magazine offers a very usable update on the landscape display, something like what we saw previously with Seth Godin (in PDF) and the IHT.
Gawk-stalking.
[2] comments (2815 views) | link
Mininetworks
We've now published a page summarizing the mininetworks bloggers have been pulling together over the last couple of months. You can see it at www.blogads.com/advertise/order.
Tap this and can quickly advertise on a blogger-sorted list of Evangelical blogs, TV blogs, food blogs, gay blogs... all organized and supported by the members of those individual blogospheres. Note that, as an advertiser, you can click a bunch of these networks and build a "package of packages" and we'll automatically cull duplications. (Are you a blogger who wants to form your own mininetwork? Drop me a line.)
[3] comments (2993 views) | link
Clark: blogads are 'my favorite buzz seeding tool'
Brian Clark, the philosopher king of blog advertising and maestro behind the Sharp, Audi and Levi's blogads campaigns, has finally stepped from behind the curtain to talk about his strategies.
My favorite "buzz seeding" tool currently is the amazing network over at BlogAds.com in part because of the interesting things you can do when you leave the IAB standards behind...I'm relieved to see Brian write this, because he's been threatening to dis us to scare other creative advertisers away from his favorite fishing hole.
[2] comments (2667 views) | link
London echos
Vauhini Vara does a good job of rounding up blogger reactions.
My favorite photo from yesterday.
[3] comments (2924 views) | link
How many bombers? The map says: one two
Looking this morning at the map of bombings in London, I was struck by the relatively narrow slice arc of London geography the bombers chose to attack. Why didn't they also go for the tourist-strewn West End or posh Belgravia or strike right in the heart of the pin-striped City?
Looking again tonight, I notice that all those three trains and the bus passed through one junction -- Kings Cross/St. Pancras tube/train/bus station. (I used to live right around the corner.)
Here's the tube map. Edgeware road, Liverpool Street and Aldgate are all on the Circle line (yellow). And Russell Square is on the Picadilly line (blue), which also passes through Kings Cross.
TV commentators this morning suggested that the bombings may have been the work of 10 or 12 people. But the subway map suggests one person could have planted all three bombs simply by strolling around in the Kings Cross station and then surfacing to plant the final bomb on the bus on nearby Tavistock Square. And if the "cell" had more than one person, we'd have seen bombs on other transport axes.
Update: The NYT's recap states that the two Circle Line trains were headed toward Kings Cross, but doesn't specify the direction of the Picadilly Line train. If the latter was headed north, it's conceivable that all three bombs were dispatched from the South Kensington station in the south west corner of the Circle Line, which is where all three trains might have crossed at roughly 8.30AM. But the Tavistock bus is tough to fit into this scenario. If there's any truth to the lone bomber scenario, the good news is that he'll be easier to identify in London's omnipresent security cameras. The scenario also opens the door to non-jihadist Eric Rudolph-like culprits.
[4] comments (3693 views) | link
Huffington back at the anonymous well
Having decried anonymous sourcing last month the day after publishing anonymous speculation about Tom Cruise's studio relationships -- "I'm very much against the use of anonymous sources unless there's some compelling public interest" -- Arianna Huffington goes back to the well today after standing around with some insiders in Aspen, but not bothering to scribble down names.
A cluster of high-powered media insiders quickly switched over to “The Gossip-Driven Reality.” The well-informed suppositions were flying faster than the peloton at the Tour de France. I can tell you what was said, I just can’t tell you who was saying it... According to the players, the key to whether this story has real legs -- and whether it will spell the end of Rove -- is determining intent. And a key to that is whether there was a meeting at the White House where Rove and Scooter Libby discussed what to do with the information they had gotten from the State Department...Ahh, the joys of anonymous mud-slinging.
[3] comments (2611 views) | link
Amazon genius
Celebrating its 10th birthday, Amazon is going to get Harrison Ford to make the delivery to someone who orders a Raiders of the Lost arc DVD. Anna Kournikova will deliver an Adidas order. Moby will deliver his latest CD. Great fun and marketing before, during and after.
As it did during its last birthday, Amazon links to its original home page.
[4] comments (2601 views) | link
Bomb threats in Budapest
My colleague Peter IMs from Budapest that the authorities have cleared the city's three biggest shopping malls -- Mammut, Westend, Árkád -- as a result of a bomb threat.
Apparently the threat was phoned in at 9.20 AM (that's 40 minutes before the first London explosion.)
Folks are apparently disturbed that the public was only told of the threat at 2PM. The bombs were threatened to blow at 4PM, which was 10AM EST and has now passed.
For those of you who speak Hungarian, more news
here.
[4] comments (2653 views) | link
Image server wonky
Though the thing was apparently fixed yesterday, one of our image servers seems to continue to be on the blink, which is having spill over effects on the other image servers. This should be fixed overnight.
[4] comments (2673 views) | link
Vacation notes
To celebrate the fourth, we attended a parade run (twice) around a tiny lake in the hills of western North Carolina, then watched hula hoop/greasy pole-climbing/pigcalling contests. I won a dollar wagering on the winning hula-hooper but lost it backing the wrong pole-climber. After dinner, watched square dancers on a couple of abandoned tennis courts. Walking home, we squashed lightning bugs.
Last week's events included canoeing on the New River (America's oldest) with Wahoo, watching Horn in the West, lots of fiddling at BRAG and pottery at Montreat. The highlights: waving sparklers around a fiddler stoked camp-fire, singing Amazing Grace, hearing a young fiddler riff on Summertime. Despite occassional patches of sun, the week was soaked in fragrant green fog.
Meanwhile, Matt Welch compares the blog boom to the dotcom bubble and foresees tears: "Once the funny money was gone, so too were the celebrity journalists."
And Steve Locke builds a pool pool as his neighbor relives a bike trip across America from 1995. 1995.
[4] comments (2834 views) | link