Archive for the ‘net economics’ Category

Google is officially out of the band

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

You know, I can groan and roll my eyes at guys like Steve Jobs, who, for all his corp-o-speak is at least pretty blatant in his desires to produce a controlled software ecosystem rife with hipster-friendly products wherein Apple makes a big killing… and I can pat the boys in Redmond on the proverbial digital head for all the cute catch-up work they do, making sure the Interwebs are safe for greybeards and AOL refugees who love to forward their grandsons them there 9-11 conspiracy emails, all the while extracting oodles of dough from their customers’ pockets in shelling them over-priced, counterintuitive software… and I can even shake my fist in vain at Mark Zuckerberg for sugar-coating how he’s been pulling down Facebook’s garden walls month-after-month… but Eric Schmidt and Google ought to be downright ashamed of their behavior lately.  Eric Schmidt is actively lobbying to destroy the very system that made Google a benevolent empire to begin with, and he’s taking us all down with the ship.  A free and open information commons, a vibrant and democratized networked information economy is essential to the future of free peoples everywhere.  It seems, upon conquering ‘Free‘, Schmidt and his board of directors have gotten a taste of a new kind of teat from which to suckle, and they really like their new, extra cash-flow.  But this isn’t entirely Verizon’s doing, though they are infecting a search giant accustomed to unlimited reproduction with the wonders of scarcity.  Ultimately, Google must take a deep breath, step back, and think about what they’re doing – and own up to this unfettered attempt to ruin the Intertubes (Ted Stevens, RIP) and find a way to not be so evil again.  (Granted, corporations will always be a little bit evil, but Mr. Transparency himself, Schmidt, could be a little more honest about, right?).  We shouldn’t, and we can’t, fall for this gigantic “wink and a smile“.  Unfortunately, our congress critters WILL fall for it, while the ‘Murr-khun People kick back in blissful ignorance, scarfing down tasty nachos and watching So You Think You Can Dance.

And it’s no wonder that Schmidt says anonymity is going to die.  Our new online identification protocols (brought to you by Google™) will be perfect for accessing the tier-level we registered for with our MSO when we log in.

I honestly thought we could depend on benevolent empire Google to be the last bastion of hope for network neutrality. Boy, was I wrong!  I guess that’s why they call them empires.

Angry Mattso is Angry.  Google, you’re kicked out of the band.  Go play with all your other sell-out friends somewhere else.

Context for the uninitiated:

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The two kinds of Web video

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

I believe that there are two kinds of Web videos – those that exist as self-contained narratives, and those that serve a functional external purpose.

Self-contained narratives are iterations of a larger type, what we have classically referred to as “movies” or “films”.  Movies can be anything from that 15 second clip of a dog on a skateboard to a two-hour long Netflix stream of Spider-Man 3.  To a degree such videos can serve a functional external purpose – for example, the skateboard video could be co-opted by a skateboarding website to help generate pageviews, and we certainly understand a large Hollywood movie like Spider-Man 3 is going to have all kinds of licensed merchandise tie-ins – but invariably, “movies” are, in the old media sense, individual SKUs meant to be consumed on a per-performance basis.  By individual SKU, I mean that we think of these movies as products, something we would have traditionally exhibited on the aforementioned per-performance basis; we’d sell tickets or rent the DVD or otherwise distribute, or commoditize, these self-contained narratives for no other reason than to create a viewing experience, or an individual performance of a narrative which, hopefully, would be paid for individually.  Moreover, the experience can end when the curtains close and the lights come up.

Now, the fortunate thing about the Web is that anyone, anywhere, even collaboratively over great distances, can produce movies, the 15-second or 2-hour variety, completely unrestricted, and post them almost anywhere on-line.  From there, movies can take on new life in the social media space, too, in that they can spread an idea, help build a filmmaker’s portfolio and reputation, foster a meme, and perhaps lead to further work for the filmmakers.  Also, movies can become an active part of participatory culture.

The unfortunate thing is that, as digital commodities with a reproduction price of zero, movies on-line are painfully difficult to sell as self-contained narratives.  Almost all must (or inevitably will via infringement) be shared for free.

Which brings me to our second variety of Web video, material that serves a functional external purpose… (more…)

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Posted in advertising, communication, convergence, digital media, entertainment, film, monetization, net economics, new media, old media, storytelling, web video | View Comments

The Solution to the Net Neutrality Debate

Saturday, November 21st, 2009

During discussion this past Tuesday in Kathy Gill’s Net Economics class at the UW MCDM, my breakout group went over the subject of Comcast’s bid for NBC Universal.  Now, when I first heard about the news a few months back, my mind went straight like a bullet to the word “anti-trust”, like so many other people apparently did.  The implications alone for net neutrality didn’t even have to trigger such larger concerns for me – because the idea of the biggest cable provider in the US owning one of the biggest media content producer/distributors in the world just stank to high heaven on its own.  Granted, Time Warner is number two in the cable game across the country and has a massive cadre of cable nets itself, but a juggernaut in the form of Comcast NBC Universal was a daunting concept regardless.  Of course, in adding net neutrality to the discussion, knowing that if the Right gets its way and the Internet becomes a deregulation playground, the thought of a top-to-bottom Comcast MSO* experience, from the consumer’s vantage point, one which throttles its competitors’ content and makes it impossible to get away from 30 Rock and Jim Carrey, well, that becomes a frightening thought indeed.

Then it hit me… or the gist of it hit me and I have finally formulated it all (and I have my discussion mates and Kathy to thank for spurring this on, of course)…  if you want to save the Internets and preserve network neutrality, let Comcast buy NBC Universal. Heck, let MSO’s buy whoever and whatever they want.  It’s time for daddy to give the big content producers away and let them get married to all those big infrastructure providers who have come-a courtin’.  But, before you scoff at this, allow me to explain. (more…)

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The Wealth in Networks

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

Yochai Benkler’s”The Wealth of Networks” is the Old Testament of social media.  It’s long, a bit dry, and nobody ever gets through it – despite the fact we all talk about how important it is anyways.  It’s not nearly as exciting as some newer books, those metaphorical New Testaments of social media – books that preach pleasant gospels of untold riches to be had by those businesses who get involved in the groundswells of crowd wisdom, where everything will someday be free.  Nevertheless, the Genesis (pun intended) of just such newer gospels is to be found in Benkler’s seminal 2006 achievement.

Moreover, a closer examination will reveal that The Wealth of Networks has a vengeful deity, too, one akin to the god found in the first thousand-odd pages of that most famous of Books.  Benkler’s jealous Being is seen in the fundamental message of, at least as I read it, Benkler’s text – that the social production of an information commons and the existence of an alternative to the industrial models of the twentieth century, a networked information economy, does not always have to be about the bottom line.  That, it would appear, is a scary message for some, indeed.  But for those small few of us who have joined with the covenant people and followed Benkler as our Moses in to the World Wide Wilderness of Sinai, there’s a message of freedom and a better world to be had in networks, the kind of wealth in networks that I feel inspires the greatest economic motivation: sharing knowledge, and lifting others thereby. (more…)

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Posted in book reviews, mass media, net economics, new media, social production | View Comments

The crowd wants information to be free

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

Let me begin with a picture of Kenneth Himma, Ph.D, J.D., and philosophy professor at Seattle Pacific University.

bacon

Alright, all kidding aside, this is actually actor Kevin Bacon in the 1978 film Animal House. And, if you are familiar with the scene being depicted, I should note that I am not asserting that Himma is a flustered ROTC student trying in vain to maintain order during a riot on the city streets after a fraternity prank causes mass chaos, uselessly shouting to the crowd “All is well!”. No, instead I should explain that this image is something that came to my mind when I realized that arguments Himma puts forth in a 2005 accepted and forthcoming APA Newsletters on Philosophy and Computers essay against the popular notion “information should be free” (ISBF) are likely to forever fall on deaf ears. (more…)

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Post-class Reflection: Economics 101, courtesy of Monday Night Football, Chris Anderson, and Mickey Mouse

Friday, October 30th, 2009

Epic MickeyI’ll explain what this image is about momentarily, but first, let me begin with a prologue.  Tuesday night in my Net Economics course at the UW MCDM a lively debate, to say the least, was had over Chris Anderson’s new book “Free”; whether free as a concept was good or bad.  I took the free side, but it made me feel a little lonely.  I almost felt like I was the only student in the room who believed that it’s a good thing that we’re moving towards a digital economy based on giving bits away, harnessing business models that find alternative sources of revenue.  For instance, a fellow student mentioned that Microsoft has a 90% market share of netbook operating systems, a testament to the strength of their software, no doubt.  However, I posited that if MSFT went the Anderson route and gave their OS away for free they could have a 100% market share.  I’m not going to say what the reaction to that was, but considering our proximity to Redmond and the makeup of the class, which includes Microsoft employees, you can take a wild guess…

Anderson’s “Free” starts out by giving us a quick economics briefing, using that as backdrop to defend the notion of ‘free’.  He explains that, for instance, traditional, or old media has used a third-party advertising model to earn revenue while still providing a “free” product.  I may not pay for 30 Rock, but when I buy products advertised during commercial breaks on TV or in interstitials on Hulu, I am still giving my money to NBC.  It’s pretty basic and has worked for Google, a benevolent empire that has largely amassed their wealth through selling advertising and diversifying revenue streams.  Of course, the model isn’t absolutely identical – the web magnifies things by presenting opportunities to apply wisdom gleaned from specific metrics and target users with relevant advertising, as well as ways of satisfying niches with long tail services – but the principle is the same: subsidize one product (free content) with money made from another (paid ad space).  Multiply and diversify.

With the notion of one product funding the other in mind, I further illustrate the point by explaining how I helped inadvertently save ABC, Monday Night Football, and the Disney company in 2004.  Maybe.  Or not.  But keep reading!  I think you’ll enjoy the reasoning anyways!

(more…)

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Posted in advertising, entertainment, monetization, net economics, new media, old media, personal, reading reflections | View Comments

Book Review: Chris Anderson’s “Free, The Future of a Radical Price”

Monday, October 26th, 2009

…and it could be yours, absolutely free!

“Free,” the latest book by Chris Anderson, author of “The Long Tail” and editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, illustrates how the 21st century’s digital economy of ones and zeros is increasingly moving towards a pricing model where everything is (or should be), essentially, free (Anderson, 2009).  Another way of putting it is thus: whereas the marginal cost of reproducing intangible digital goods made of bits instead of atoms is practically zero, whereas Moore’s law and other concepts dictate that the cost of processors, bandwidth, and storage are marching towards nil, and whereas less typical motives for doing business like gaining reputation and raising social capital are on the rise, the very notion that one should pay for digital goods and services is pretty much dead at the door.  Anecdotally, for a US economy that is for all intents and purposes steeped in never-ending debt, built on the foundations of imaginary money no less, the irony is not lost upon myself that we really ought not to be paying for anything anyways!  Nonetheless, money is scarce, but the resource of intellectual property is endless.  “Free” addresses what to do about this, and how real money can be made by giving everything away.

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Learning goals for Net Economics

Friday, October 9th, 2009

This quarter in the MCDM at the University of Washington (my final quarter, w00t!), I am taking a course entitled “Economics of Digital Communication”.  During introductions in the class I rightly indicated that I am only in the class because it is one of the two being offered this quarter that I had not yet taken.  I don’t know anything about economics, and I am not certain it’s a field that is of any interest to me.  However, after one night of class and doing some reading for my other course, also related to economics, I am beginning to feel much more interest.  I am realizing that economics is actually a realm expressly critical to everything we do, because there is a dollar sign attached to everything in the universe, or so it seems.

This isn’t at all to say I know absolutely nothing about technology and business, if not specifically economics.  I know plenty about innovation, incumbents, disruptors, and so forth.  But, now I need to learn about the Information Economy. And, gladly, our instructor has been going over the basics of economics already, so I feel I won’t be utterly lost in this course.

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