Archive for the ‘random musings’ Category
[awesomeness] is next-gen tech April 22nd, 2010
I wrote some time ago; that Microsoft’s next big thing will be its evolution as a gaming co. The value its XBox division can add – especially with stuff like Project Natal (below) in the pipeline – will likely supersede the value of its Office and Windows businesses combined in another 5 years.
Project Natal, along with Apple’s own touch and gesture-driven computing, is set to redefine the way we work. The computer, you understand, has so far been conceptualized as evolving avatars of typewriters. You sit at a desk, you work. This hasn’t – hadn’t changed for a very long time. Even laptop computers merely gave the same structure greater mobility.
The iPad is the first real computer (almost-computer? It’s going to replace the Macbook Pro I’m typing this on sooner rather than later) designed with a completely different assumption for how you seat yourself, how you work, how you think. And that’s what’s so interesting about it. There’s more interesting things going to happen over these next few months, with iOS and of course, iPhone 4.
Redefined form and a redefined interface; never-before connectivity and the cloud. Awesomeness is in, the future’s a fascinating place to be.
Tags: apple, awesomeness, future of tech, Gesture, iPad, microsoft, personal computer, Project Natal, tech, Technology, Touch, typewriter
Posted in Technology, random musings | 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)
[awesomeness] is the precession of simulacra January 9th, 2010
The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.
What is real?
Where does what we define as real come from? Is it something tangible? Something you witnessed? A part of your memory? What is memory, when what you witnessed never happened. Baudrillard years ago noted that photographing an object makes the object itself cease to exist in the tangible, but endure in memory.
The modern world is defined by images and light whirling into a bricolage of experience – some real, some unreal. Was it real if you were never there? As technology speeds up even faster, building different levels of interaction with the image, as the interfaces of interaction with the real world change, where do we go next?
Design has the power to inspire, the creation of the complete and perfect image precedes the creation of the complete and perfect object. The map truly does precede the territory.
The video is the proof of photography through anti-photography. The image is not real, but made. Take a look at it yourself, and tell me what part of it is real. Only one element is. Fitting, really.
The cycle is nearing completion. Time for history to hit that refresh button.
Tags: Alex Roman, Animation, Baudrillard, Design Thinking, Precession of Simulacra, Real, Simulation, Technology, The Third & The Seventh, Unreal
Posted in Opinion, random musings | Comments (0)
