BlogMouth

Subscription Model Fail Whale

BlahBlog — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:51:40 +0000

Users naturally get upset when someone pulls a bait and switch wool over their eyes and put in place a subscription model on what used to be free content. Building a community and building a business around a community are not the same thing. This is especially true when a community organically develops around a previously free model. People invest their time and energy around the community but as soon as a pay wall goes up the social contract gets replace with a bottom line. I understand that people need to make money, we don’t like in communist Russia, but lets not forget that communist China is the fastest growing economy.

Andrew Warner, the founder of the startup and entrepreneurship focused site Mixergy, changed his site so that content older than a week is only available to paid subscribers. There is nothing wrong with making a buck, and I am sure he will do okay, but by making a quick buck we actually short our users. Funny enough, Andrew has interviewed dozens of successful entrepreneurs that have made a successful business by providing free content to build a platform to spring board their business.

Leo Laporte has built a podcasting empire with shows like This Week in Tech, MacBreak Weekly, Security Now, FLOSS Weekly and many more. Leo podcasts are ad supported and he spent a lot of time in making sure the ads are relevant to his audience. Another example and another entrepreneur whom Andrew has interviewed is Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary started out by making video reviews of wines for his blog. The video reviews where free but they where also presented and sponsored by his real business Wine Library. Gary has now moved on to write a book Crush It! A similar story can be told of Seth Godin. Seth writes freely available essays on his blog and writes a large number of books based on his writing. Seth has also “spun off” several online business. It is important to make the mental distinction that the free blog, podcast, essays are distinct from the paid service, product, or business. You don’t monetize your community by slapping a price tag on them.

Newsday recently learned by putting up a pay wall to your content does not lead to immediate success. Newsday is a half a billion dollar business and recently made the move to make their content online accessible to paid subscribers for a $5/week subscription. It is reported that after three months Newsday was able to sign up a mere 35 subscribers. I know Andrew will fair better than Newsday, there are a lot of passionate startup founders and entrepreneurs, but the complete and utter failure of Newsday is worth nothing. Subscription model to web content is not an original idea. It is not a purple cow, it will not help you get viral, it introduces money to the equation and money has a different expectation.

Social Media Etiquette

BlahBlog — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 09:00:09 +0000

As of yet, there is no association, board, or certification process to be accredited as a Social Media Expert. I guess if you have 100 followers and you have tweeted 10,000 tweets you are an expert. As an accredited expert, I have five rules of Social Media etiquette.

Share Your Passion – Passion is infectious, share your passion, spread it to others, and it might just go viral. Your followers don’t want to follow an ad robot, but someone that is passionate at what they do.
Add Value – It is not the quantity of tweets, but the quality that will attract followers. In a similar note, it is not the size of your followers, but how you work your network that ads most value.
Pace Yourself – No one wants to follow someone that clogs their activity stream with tweet diarrhea.
Promote those that promote you – Don’t retweet only tweets that mention you, but use retweeting to promote, connect, and extend your followers reach.
Invest in your followers – Pay dividends to your followers by given them exclusive access to you, your content, or your product.

Google’s Realtime Search or Mind Reading

BlahBlog — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 03:41:46 +0000

Google’s realtime search results are freaky fast. If you publish a new blog post, jump over to Google and search for your brand new blog post article, it would already have been indexed, cached, and showing up on Google’s results. How does Google do that? I think that in the future, Google will index our brains so that when you lose your keys, you can type “Where are my keys?” in the search box and the top result will be where you left your keys last. But on a serious note, I think Google has developed a Skynet, an artificial intelligent system based on the queries people search for. Currently, the Google Skynet project is stuck answering, HOW IS BABBY FORMEd?

Neo-American Revolution

BlahBlog — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 19:52:21 +0000

If the American Revolution was held today, instead of the Boston Tea Party it would have been the San Francisco bay electronics party. If the American Revolution was held today, the Federal Papers would have been the Federal Blogs. If the American Revolution was held today, the constitution would read life, liberty, and the pursuit of privacy. If the American Revolution was held today, instead of ‘taxation without representation’ our rallying cry would be ‘representation without special interest.’

Pick Any Two

BlahBlog — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 06:09:32 +0000

Better, faster, cheaper. Pick any two
Integrity, validity, security. Pick any two
Strategy, execution, luck. Pick any two.
Profits, Passion, Purpose. Pick any two.

Tweeting from Space

BlahBlog — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 23:52:38 +0000

NASA astronaut Mike Massimino, may have not been the first person in space or on the moon. He was the first person to use the social networking site Twitter from space. One short message for man, one tweet for mankind. His tweet from outer spaces reads as follows.

From orbit: Launch was awesome!! I am feeling great, working hard, & enjoying the magnificent views, the adventure of a lifetime has begun!

As of date, Astronaut Mike Massimino has over 1.3 million followers. NASA’s official verified account lists 19 astronauts on Twitter, including astronaut Jose Hernandez. Astronaut Jose Hernandez was the first person to tweet from space in English and Spanish. As a Mexican-American, Joe Hernandez, tweets in both English and Spanish about his training and experience. Here is his first tweet from space.

Settling in and realizing my dream… Micro G is great. Finished setting up the computers and ready for bed! Don’t need pillow!

A minute later, he tweeted in Spanish.

Espero la cosecha de mi sueno sirva como inspiracion a todos! Acabo de configurar las computadoras. Buenas noches!

Current NASA astro twitterers include TJ Creamer, Soichi Noguichi, and Jeff Williams. Astronaut Soichi Noguichi is a currently in space on the International Space Station and is the most prolific twitterer. Many of his numerous tweets include twitpics from pictures he has taken from space. Seeing his profile page on twitpic is just awe inspiring.

Glacier Lake in Southern Patagonia

Southern Alps of New Zealand

Images by Astro Soichi

Retweet February 2010

BlahBlog — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 22:57:31 +0000

Here I am reblogging some retweets for the past month that broken down by subject matter. Some of these tweets also cover events that occurred in February 2010. If you like to follow along, befriend xwoop and lolprez and I’ll be sure to follow back.

Superbowl

Carrie Underwood sounds awful, off key and off tune, sounds like she is yelling. What would Simon say? “Don’t quit your day job.”
Super Bowl Sunday is a secular holiday.
Colts touchdown!!!
Colts touchdown!!! Twitter just down!!!
Go Daddy #superbowelads so predictable, they are acted and written like bad pron.
For some today is the Super Bowl, for others the Super Bore, but for most the Brand Bowl.
Wow. Saints denied. The defensive levees broke.
Men’s manlyness is attacked in FloTV and Dodge #superbowelads.
Pinball Wizard? What is a pinball? Who are The Who? How about having an act that has had a hit this century?
Super Bowl half time show with The When, I mean, The Who… Who are you is a perfect song for them.
The Who. WHO DAT?
The Who. I would have asked The Why?
Saints iTouchdown!!! Now we got a game.
Colts score to take the lead. Great drive on the third quarter.
Google gag. What a lousy #superbowlad by Google. They should have made an ad addressing their search censorship and privacy issues.
Saints TD.
Saints Miracle Interception!!! Party on Buorbon St.
Mardi Gras in Miami. The Saints go marching on to a Super Bowl championship.

Politricks

The Tea Party is a Democratic National Committee ploy to divide and conquer the Republican Party.
It I’d said that the Greeks invented democracy, but maybe that is a Greek mythology.
Democracy or capitalism do not even attempt to close the divide between social classes.
Obama tries to make a comparison between star athletes’ pay and wall street bonuses, but he forgets we didn’t bailout the MLB or the NFL.
The end product of hope is disillusion.

Got Gov?

China exports iPods, France exports champagne, Italy exports leather goods, Israel exports Mossad Death Squads.
In Israel, winning hearts and mind involves ripping open your heart and blowing your mind, literally.
In Israel, political assassinations are part of the peace process.
Water boarding: baptism by simulated drowning.
We should be able to water board our public officials to answer our concerns.
It seems that University of California prefers out of state/foreign students, they should change their name of University of China.
The One Government wants to normalize the world’s religion into a single belief.

Econemy

It used to be that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, now the squeaky wheel gets replace.
No one ever gets rich by working hard, they get rich by having others working hard for them.
Fix it tickets won’t fix the economy.
Wall Street bonuses are not a way to retain employees, it is a pay off to keep the the wool over the public’s eyes.

Propagandon’t

The government website recovery.gov might as well be renamed to propaganda.gov.
Ma Zhaoxu, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman, said “There are no dissidents in China.” I guess they must have killed them all.
Freedom is gained through the bang of revolution and lost through the whimper of torture, oppression, and tyranny in the name of the homeland.
In the future, we will have vaccines for boredom.
Curing people of illness and disease is not a profitable and sustainable business model for pharmaceuticals.

Randumb

No. 2 Pencil: Instead of learning how to think, students tend to learn how to remember factoids.
Multiple Choice: Instead of learning the material, students tend to learn how to guess.
Tiger Woods saying “Elin never hit me that night or any other night” is as true as Bill Clinton saying he didn’t have relations with that woman.
Tiger Woods sounded like a robot reading his prepared and rehearsed public apology, he probably does it like a robot too.
Tiger Woods wants to change his name to escape all the attention, he is considering Tiger Morningwood.
Every single scientific innovation has brought us that much closer to complete and total annihilation.
There is a thin line between suck and blow.
Forget 49ers and 76ers, I’m a 69er!
Sour grapes make bad wine.
Working on the menial, thinking of the grandeur, dreaming of the eternal.
When people say they are looking forward to making $$, they really mean looking forward to spending $$.
There are some parks that walking at night is not a walk on the park.
I need someone thinking on their toes rather than standing on their head.
Opportunities are magnetized, you should not fight their polarity.
Getting mad is like taking one step back.
Do you earn, find, or hustle success? I bend, flatten, and distribute success.
What you think and what you know are not the same thing.
The universe is flexible, so much so that it routinely bends light, time, and space.
Reality is relative.
Nature favors survivors.
Positivity is it’s own reward.
People are often reactionary, and usually to other people.
crazy idea + watershed moment + great effort = breakthrough
Time adds up to more than just a period of time.
Let time be your ally, don’t fight against time, .
Being too early is just as bad, if not worse, as being too late.
Marriage makes a men mediocre.
Your marriage vowels should not include legalese.
The reason you can’t buy love is because people want to haggle like they are buying a car.
The roar of a dandy lion is a whisper in the wind.
Not all questions are meant to be answered, some are meant to be reflected upon.
What is unobtainable is no reason to stop trying.
People say stupid things but what is really stupid is to accept what people day without consideration.
Next to smoking crack nothing kills more brain cells than going shopping.
For some bitching is living.
Feelings are not based on facts.

Overheard

OH: John Mayer is so bluesy for someone so pale.
OH: you a fake ass bitch, fake as gold plates jewelry, fake as cubic zirconium, fake as $20 rolex, fake as imitation crab meat, …
OH: I’m the DJ to your soundtrack.

Social Media Top Links February 2010: Google Buzz Privacy Debacle

BlahBlog — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 06:38:03 +0000

Here are the top links, articles, and news regarding social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google Buzz. The big news this month was the announcement and initial release of Google Buzz. Google Buzz generated a lot of buzz with users, mostly because of it’s thoughtless disregard for user’s privacy.

Twitter

Facebook

Google Buzz

Winter Olympic Sports

BlahBlog — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 04:42:41 +0000

Is it just me or are most of the winter Olympic sports just derivative/descended of the same thing event? They all involve going down the mountain in a ski, board, sled, toboggan alone or with up to four other people as fast as possible and then maybe a jump or some tricks in mid-air. Can anyone tell me the difference between the skeleton and the luge other than one is going face first/down the the other is on your back? I know that all these sports involve snow, snow is not the point but that brings up my second point… I can’t wait until next winter Olympics when they introduce snow shoveling, ice fishing, or synchronize snowshoeing as new events. I’m holding out for 2018 when they add reindeer games.

Fuzzy Buzz February 2010: One Month with Google Buzz

BlahBlog — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 04:37:25 +0000

After using Google Buzz for a month I have started to find my grove and how that fits with my social networking self. If you are using Google Buzz, be sure to follow me I’ll follow back. Here are some recent buzz posts from a variety of topics.

All About Buzz

With any new service there is always a land rush for the best vanity url, profile name, and followers?
The short for Google Mail is GMail. The abbreviation for Google Voice is GVoice. Will Google Buzz be shorten down to GBuzz? What about Guzz?
That is the plural of buzz? Buzzes?
I expected Microsoft to blatantly copy Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare before Google.
Google Buzz is a new opportunity for the race to reach 1,000,000 followers. I hope @aplusk hasn’t heard of Google Buzz yet as it would give me a head start.
What I like about Buzz is that it has not been taken over by marketing and SEO bot accounts, just like the early days of Twitter.
What is the verb of using Google Buzz? Buzzing? Like, “I can’t talk cause I am buzzing right now.”
Having a buzz attack.
I’m going to buzz my facebook to tweet my tumblr post on myspace and blog about it.
Remember when following someone meant stalking… Now it means, friending.
I don’t know how to find the Google Buzz posts that I liked. Anybody know where to find liked posts?
I think that Google and Facebook are in a battle for your friends. But it feels more like a Belfast brawl cage fight… Google and Apple are battling it out in in the mobile space with tit for tat guerrilla warfare… i.e. you can use the word ‘Android’ to describe you app on the Apple App Store. Now Google will suck a lot of the hot air valuation from Facebook. I think Jason Calacanis stated that Facebook lost half it’s value because of Google Buzz… and Microsoft is trying to pick a fight with Google in the search space with Bing but it is not getting much traction.
When commenting in the middle of the Buzz stream, people notice the comment box flicker and jump around as other posts around the one you are commenting are updated with new comments. If you don’t like the flickering, I get’s me dizzy after a while, click on the post’s time stamp in the upper right corner. The link is to the page for this one post and it does have the jumpy flickering visible when commenting in the middle of your stream.
I am not sure how Google will combat the additional spam I expect because of Google Buzz and Google Profiles. But I imagine, spammers and marketers are already hard at work developing spam bots that will follow everyone possible and then it is very easy to figure out peoples email address by adding at gmail.com at the end of you profile user name which is public, visible, and searchable.
When Twitter first came out Leo Laporte and Kevin Rose had the most followers for the longest time because the early adopters where mostly technologists. But once celebrities and mass media discovered Twitter, and after the stop laughing at the concept, they quickly gained the most followers and brought on new users. Leo Laporte currently has over 6K++ followers. Just wait until Britney Spears gets her buzz on.
Ansel Adams would not have had used Flickr, Shakespeare would not had has used Twitter, Ghandi would not have had used Facebook, and Columbus would not have had used Foursquare.. But I am sure they would all have had used Google Buzz.
How does one get verified on Google Buzz/Profile? I certify myself. Does my mom need to call Google to verify my identity? What else will Google verify? What I really need is an alibi and some receipts from a convenience store in Albuquerque, New Mexico for last night.
There is a lot of negative reaction regarding the privacy failures with Google Buzz. I think that the problem with Google Buzz is not that it is integrated in GMail. The problem is the defaults of Google Buzz, including auto-follow, and public profiles, and the inability to use a public profile name other than your private GMail user name, the blocking functionality does not seem to work, etc. Google pulled a Facebook move in terms of privacy… Their motto of ‘do no evil’ did not stop them from doing something so stupid.
There are a few things I like Buzz over Twitter. The ability to edit buzzes after they have been posted and commented on, and the ability to post more than 140 characters at a time. What I don’t like is that, unlike Facebook, is that you can’t delete comments left on you posts from trolls or stalkers or folks buzzing on their own supply. Even after you block spammers their comments are still visible in your posts.
Posting on Google Buzz feels like posting a medium size blog entry. First we had blogs where we can post long form articles, then came microblogs like twitter, and now we are moving back up with medium size blogs like Buzz and Posterous were we can easily post a paragraph or two.

Buzzing Enlightenment

For those that have not attained enlightenment it is some special to attain, for those that have achieve enlightenment it is not worth mentioning.
I feature I hate in my iPhone 3GS is that when listening to music, if you shake or jolt the phone it shuffles to some random song. I feel like shaking a bitch when that happens!
I think one problem with anything that Microsoft does is that everything they develop looks like Windows, which is based on Windows 3.1. Windows CE, Windows Tablet, Windows Mobile, it all looks like Windows. I mean, they ported Microsoft Office to their mobile platforms to look like it does on the desktop.
Is Comcast trying to re-brand themselves as XFINITY? Don’t they know that a rose with any other name smells as sweet, and that bad customer service with any other name sucks the same, if not worse because now they confused you as to who you are calling to complain about your cable being out?
Tiger Woods saying “Elin never hit me that night or any other night” is as truthful as Bill Clinton saying “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”
What is the must have Apple software? Apple Aperture, Microsoft Office for Mac, iWork, iLife, VMWare Fusion 3, MacSpeech Dictate, Pixelmator, Comic Life, Mobile Me, other? What other Mac software should I have?