Archive for the ‘Opinion’ Category
The Evolution of the Newspaper
March 29th, 2010
Short presentation I wrote recently on the evolution of the newspaper. It’s implications were presented on another day in another forum; will put that piece up next week. Until then, enjoy. As always, feedback much appreciated.
Tags: cadmus, culture, evolution of the newspaper, mythology, oral tradition, phoenician alphabet, syntax, written tradition
Posted in Opinion, reflections | Comments (1)
[awesomeness] is new world tech March 16th, 2010
Came across this piece on the web. Apple vs. Google’s been providing some soap opera fodder for tech journos in the past few months. Some of it’s real, some of it’s not. There was Eric Schmidt being asked to step down from the Apple board, there was Google putting out Nexus One to compete with iPhone, possibly with some patent infringement.
The reason this is really interesting, though is that it is in many ways #2 of Apple versus Microsoft. Only this time it’s different. The World’s moved on from then and the internet will ensure that systems will have to talk to each other, one way or another. I think the big thing this year will actually be the iPad and HTML5. One will define/redefine mobile computing proper like a Smartphone can’t yet do; while in the other lies the foundation of the new internet.
I don’t think Google will win this round simply because as a company it isn’t designed to do some things. The reason Wave hasn’t worked too well, is that it’s way before its time and the tech hasn’t developed to enable true collaboration – you can probably do more, and better on adobe or microsoft’s online products. The reason Buzz didn’t work was that it’s stupid, and tries to create another self-contained ecosystem, even as the industry – vis-a-vis Facebook+Twitter are understanding that you need to be more open. Buzz tries too little. The reason Open Social didn’t work was that it tried to do too much (and Buzz and Wave are probably components of that old model – one more bit of proof that it doesn’t work)
Similarly, the smartphone market will likely play out to script, between Apple and Blackberry, not Apple and any other player, simply because they are two distinctive ideologies which try to manage the experience from end-to-end. NexusOne and the other Android phones are hodgepodges – the old-world-engineering ideology of “oh isn’t it cool we can do this?” without asking the question “does the consumer give a damn?”.
More on this over the next few weeks.
Tags: apple, future of tech, google, microsoft, Rivalry
Posted in Opinion, Technology, reflections | Comments (0)
die, birdie; birdie, die! February 8th, 2010
The difference between Twitter and Facebook – and the reason why Facebook will likely be scalable and why Twitter likely won’t – comes down to the medium.
Twitter is ultimately a broadcast medium. Whether 1-1, 1-many, or many-many it invariably stops at just that – the exchange of data. Facebook on the other hand, is an ecosystem. Apart from communication it also creates interaction via “apps”.
The idea of paying real money for symbolic (virtual) value is nothing new – and the latest to pick up on it is Zynga.
On Facebook, people have been, for three years now, encouraged to pay $1 to do a variety of things, from “sending someone beer” (a beer icon, on their facebook page) to feeding your virtual dog (foopets) to buying some designer crop on Farmville.
Zynga is the firm behind Farmville and other games such as Fishville and Cafe World, and is positioned to make a lot of money on Facebook.
I stumbled across this short note discussing their business proposition and model (see below)
In the meanwhile, you can also read this Adweek article, titled “The tweet hereafter”.
I had a real shocker when Farmville published that they managed to raise more than half a million dollars for charity. How did they manage that?
So I did a little research and found amazing things about their business model:
1) Low cost
Creating an application in Facebook is relatively low cost compared to high capital investment industries like infrastructure and manufacturing. You’d just have to outsource the programming to an IT company or even individuals to do so. Moreover, the games are played on a repetitive basis so lesser development goes into building a complex game engine or storyline or graphics (unlike WOW).2) High Margins
Games like Farmville sell items using a virtual currency. Items are sold on a per item basis. Having an intermediate currency disassociates the buyer from the real price of the virtual good/item bought but at the same time, creating the same level of joy of obtaining as a real item. Essentially, Zynga sells “happiness”.3) Sticky games
Games developed by Zynga keeps you coming back for more and entrenches you deeper and deeper as you progress. No one wants to lose an empire after spending so much time invested in it. A4) Customers are the sales force
This has become so much apparent that the feeds on profiles have become spammy in a sense. However, it is tolerable as it works on a permission basis and friends do not mind something if it is posted by yourself. In fact, with the trust set already, the friends looking at the profiles would tend to want to get involved as well. There isn’t a need to even place an advert on Facebook to get more customers. Users do it for Zynga by putting such ads on the highly demanded real estate on their profile page. Another indicator of a strong sales force is the number of reviews outside Facebook itself.5) Repeat Customers
A facebook user does not only play one Zynga game but several of them at the same time. Essentially, Zynga upsells when they can as well as seen by the ads in the games.6) Huge base of Customers
Not everyone will purchase something. Just like me. However, you can see that Farmville alone has about 60 million active users. There are more than 10 games and still more coming up I believe. To make a rough estimation. If 1 in every 600 people makes a regular purchase of $1 daily (really a pinch of salt for many of us), it is already a daily revenue of $100,000 for Farmville.
Tags: digital advertising, facebook, future, Opinion, scalability, social networks, sustainability, twitter
Posted in Opinion, advertising, interesting reads, random musings | Comments (0)
