Online TV Shows are trending towards a subscription only model

It has been fascinating watching the tentative forays of broadcast networks coming to grips with putting TV shows online.

Many Gen-Yers are taking the trend towards placing all TV content online for granted, and perhaps in the larger strategic sense it makes perfect sense for advertising industry and broadcasters to team up in order to take advantage of the Internets capacity to deliver more targeted advertising content. However, robust business models for incorporating profile driven advertising for TV shows do not really exist yet, and the jury is still out on if this translates into buyer behavior that would ultimately generate more revenue. In the meantime we are witnessing a retrenchment of sorts:

According to an article in the NY times today, AT&T, Comcast, DirecTV, Time Warner Cable and Verizon are among the companies exploring a subscribers-only approach to online TV.

Broadcasters “went out and did deals to put content on broadband without a whole lot of thought about the long-term financial model,” said Jeffrey L. Bewkes, chief executive of Time Warner and a principal supporter of the new subscriber-only Web video plan. “If people aren’t subscribing to the programming, you probably shouldn’t put it online, because then half of the financial support goes away. That isn’t good. It hasn’t been good for the newspaper industry.”

Image by JB Photo via Flickr

While a younger web-savy generation is thinking about concepts like trading their google searches and twitter activity to advertisers, in exchange for fewer and more targeted ads, the mechanics for this do not exist yet, and the aggregation platforms (like HULU and Boxee) that could deliver such business models are viewed with deep suspicion by network executives.

A friend today reminded my that old business models are easily destroyed, and die far more quickly than new and successful ones are born.

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• Some Online Shows Could Go Subscription-Only (nytimes.com)

State of Play: Rediscover the Swing of Things

Every grown up should once in a while get on a swing set and re-discover the giddyness, playfulness, moving perspective of having the sky, then the ground, then the sky again cycle through your entire field of vision, that sense of gravity letting up, almost weightless at the peak…

Leadership State of Flow = Unconscious Competence. If you fall often on the way there, don’t worry…

I’d encourage you to read an excellent post on “Are You StriDing or StriVing?” by Susan Mazza on her blog “Random Acts of Leadership“.

Much has been written about flow and being in the present moment. I have read a ton of it, searching for keys to experiencing more flow in my life and work. I can work so hard at times that I exhaust myself in the process. There have also been too many times in my life when I have worked like crazy and not been particularly satisfied with the outcome or the journey. Does this sound familar?

I have a contribution from the sport of Mountain Biking, my own experience and having gotten others started in the sport: There usually is a natural progression from incompetence to competence, and eventually to being able to achieve a state of flow, typically referred to as the “Four Stages of Competence” , here’s the MTB version:

Image via Wikipedia

Stage 1.) Unconscious Incompetence

• You don’t fall a lot: You have fun, take it easy, discover the ins and outs and don’t fall a lot because you’re not trying all that hard.

Stage 2.) Conscious Incompetence

• You fall a little more often: You become aware of how little you know, how much others can do, the fact that certain obstacles are outside your capacity to clear, and when trying anything new stiffen your body and mind.

Stage 3.) Conscious Competence

• You fall a lot: You are aware of your own capabilities and limits, but the fact that you are focused on testing these limits makes you go over the edge, resulting in more falls. Your mind is focused, but still over thinking how to approach each obstacle. Many people never progress beyond this stage.

Stage 4.) Unconscious Competence

• You don’t fall at all. The trail is a river, you are the water flowing over it. Your mind wanders in appreciation of the woods, the smells, the light, the blur of leaves underneath you, your own breathing. With continued practice it gets easier to recognize the onset of flow, and to maintain this state.

Being an authentic leader has much in common with achieving stage 4 in your life and work: On our way there it is helpful to remember that one cannot get there without first passing through stages 1-2, and therefore falling a lot!

The Mountain Bike Way of Knowledge - by William Nealy

PS Wikipedia suggests that a fifth stage should be added, called “Reflective Competence”

A cause and effect question on promiscuity: Why are Computer Science students getting laid more than other geeks?

Here is a statistic you don’t see every day: The percentage of virgins by major! (for the purpose of full disclosure I have to admit I was a fine arts major. Photography rocks!)

First of all I wonder who commissioned the study and for what purpose?

• To prevent art majors from being so damn promiscuous?
• To encourage math majors to get laid more?

One obvious conclusion is to invite more math students to those wild art parties.

Secondly, I have a chicken and egg question:

• Does the workload of a math/science student keep them too busy to “get busy”? Or are they just so geeky they don’t “get any”, so they may as well study?
• And is being an art major too easy? Do Art students have so much free time on their hands that it inevitably leading to more sex (and drugs, rock and roll, etx.)?

Either way, I think the indication here is that “Computer Science” is reaping the benefits from not being as geeky as it once was.

Polymash Prediction: Monetization features of OS 3.0 will change the iPhone app landscape completely

I was following today’s iPhone OS3 announcement live event, and one thing in particular struck me:

Most of the advancements are focused on the app developer community, and while I agree that these will enable this community to produce far better and innovative apps, one feature in particular I think will change the application landscape for the iPhone completely: the ability to have optional paid content and subscription models within an app.

iPhone 3.0 in-application payments

In general I am in favor of multiple business models for developers to monetize their apps, however I do see this eventually resulting in a completely changed application landscape compared to what we know today, where freemium vs. free will reign, and where I believe a majority of applications will have limited functionality and some sort of premium concept.

Now Apple promised that free applications will indeed remain free, “no new taxes, read my lips”… But I think the temptation for re-designing existing apps to build in monetization will prove too tempting for the app dev community, and will result in fewer free apps in general, and fewer choices for consumers eventually.

Additionally, the concept of getting prompted via a fairly intrusive pop-up boxes to purchase content, or sign up for a subscription, rankles me a bit. My iPhone experience is based on being used to pay for an app once, and then enjoy seamless service, and the user experience of reading something only to be then prompted for premium content mid-stream does not sit well with me. Signing a once a year subscription may be OK too, if I value the service, but I don’t know if I’ll like to “pay as you go” for content.

Let’s hope that the bevy of OS3 features announced will make it all worth it in the end, and that the resulting increase in innovative apps will be just so cool, we will all be happy to pay for them, one subscription at a time.

What do you think?

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• The iPhone OS 3.0 Announcement Scorecard (mobilecrunch.com)

Can Twitter Survive What Is About to Happen to it? I think that is the wrong question…

The explosive rise of Twitter in the last couple of months is giving rise to a couple of phenomena, and to some these trends are harbingers of doom: More than a few people are asking if Twitter can survive what is happening to it, in it’s current form. And the answer is surely that it can, at least from an infrastructure perspective.

I would pose the question differently: How can Twitter continue to deliver value as a meaningmaking and sensemaking tool for its users?

A couple of examples that illustrate what is happening:

Tweepme, a ponzi-like scheme that would have you pay for followers, in return to following everyone else, is causing a lot of controversy with its concept: Ultimately with this concept everyone would follow everyone else, and this becomes meaningless very quickly. Cheryl Harrison writes in her blog that Twitter is not a numbers game:

Is there value in having a large, worthless network on Twitter?  While I might not agree with it 100%, I can see the value of connecting with everyone on LinkedIn – in the most direct benefit, this lets you contact other people to whom they are connected for free, without having to pay for InMails and whatnot. But on Twitter – you just crank up the noise and turn down the substance.

At the SXSW conference in Austin Texas, the traditional paradigm of having a Twitter based backchannel to find interesting topics and keep up with what was happening was made meaningless by the sheer volume of tweeps coming through the service. Stacey Higginbotham writes in her piece Forget the Fail Whale: Twitter Jumps the Shark

Twitter is still up and running, but the idea of generating a real time picture of what folks are doing, and extracting relevant information from that picture, is kind of like trying to pick out your grandma at the Washington Mall on the satellite image taken during President Barack Obama’s inauguration. It’s easy to see that a lot of folks were there, and hard to find that one thing you’re looking for.

The trend is apparent: Twitter, as we know it, is about to change. And, to use another shark metaphor, it needs to “keep swimming”  to stay alive; it needs to keep evolving in order to provide meaning to its users.

So the question raises itself: How can Twitter continue to provide “meaning” for its users?

What the cool kids did this weekend…

For those not obsessed with recent tech or online developments, the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, is the place where the Digerati, Social Media Mavens, Tech Geeks, Bloggers and increasingly Corporations assemble each year to immerse and attune themselves with emerging trends, innovation, creativity and fun.

There are few better places to get in touch with trends in online developments. Web2.0? We’re talking Web3.0 here (officially announced at SXSW on Friday)…

Now I was not there, but not being able to attend an event like this is actually becoming ever less painful through conference live blogging and Twitter back-channels. Still a poor substitute for face to face networking at tweet-ups, concerts and various bashes, but staying at home at least you will have had a stable internet connection…

To note a few trends:

Perhaps Stewart is not the new Murrow, but he’s as close as we’ve got

We watch Jon Stewart almost every night, and have somewhat guiltily been getting a lot of our news from a comedian.

Last night’s interview of MSNBC‘s Madman Jim Cramer, after a week long series of pieces exposing the hypocrisy of Cramer and MSNBC, felt different, riveting, and somewhat liberating.

Going forward I’ll feel better about getting the news from Stewart:

I’ve come to accept that while perhaps Stewart is not the new Edward R. Murrow,  the sad truth is that he is as close to a Murrow as we currently have. Isn’t it ironic that it takes satire on the Comedy Channel to do any sort of investigative reporting, ask the tough questions, and display relentless perseverance that the financial network shows have had no intestinal fortitude to conduct.

By the way I thought Jim Cramer handled himself well and was pretty forthright under the circumstances.

Image via Wikipedia

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Advertising that is perhaps a bit too interactive

Came across this story in Gizmodo: In Amsterdam a bus stop bench now interacts with a nearby fitness ad to publicly display how much you weigh… The ad indirectly shames you into joining a gym, but seems rather prejudiced.

All seriousness aside:  Why use technology in such a limited way?

Let’s discriminate more broadly and democratically:  Why not dynamically display different ads based on how much you weigh, for example “Hungry Jack” TV dinners for the underweight, school supplies for those under 40lbs,  funeral services special offers for those over 275lbs etc.?

Or how about adding one of the new facial recognition enabled cameras to detect a person’s hair color and outfit and suggest makeovers, hair-styling products, shoes and the like, complete with photo-shopped before and after “mock up” for the entertainment of those “unlucky” enough not to get a seat at the bus stop?

Bus Ad Shames You Into Joining a Gym by Showing Everyone Your Weight

By Adam Frucci,

This bus ad for Fitness First in Rotterdam, The Netherlands gives you the hard sell via shame. It uses a scale in the seat to display just how fat you are to everyone around.

I, for one, would be pretty pissed off if I didn’t know about this thing and sat down to wait for the bus, only to notice people laughing at my weight. It’s an attention grabbing ad, to be sure, but one that might just cross the line into ruining the bus stop rather than just advertising via it. But hey, if it’s getting people to work out at Fitness First, it’s effective. What say you? [DirectDaily via Animal New York]

Technorati Tags: advertising, interactive media

Kafka-esque iTunes Tweetie 1.3 flip flop at the app store leaves some questions…

The byzantine mechanism by which new iPhone apps are approved for listing in the iTunes App store has always been a subject of somewhat derisive musings among Apple’s many fans.

Yesterday however, the story reached Kafka-esque proportion when Apple rejected an upgrade to Tweetie, arguably the most popular iPhone Twitter app. The reason given was profanity, which they had noticed in a screen shot that displayed a dynamically generated has tag list. (see image)

The truly amusing thing is that Loren Brichter, the developer of the app,  did not provide the offending screen shots to Apple, but that the Ooompa Loompa’s at the app store factory generated these screen shots themselves, only to be surprised and dismayed to find that 1.) profanity exists on the internet and 2.) can be displayed on mobile devices and browsers

In apparent realization that perhaps iPhone’s safari browser would need to be removed on similar grounds, Tweetie 1.3 was reinstated in a sudden burst of sanity.

Or could it have been the outcry and ridicule of  the Twitter community that ensued?

For your amusement I enclose some of the developers tweets:

clipped from twitter.com To clarify: no, I would never submit a screenshot with profanity. Apple sent that to *me* as an example of the objectionable content.about 19 hours ago from web Hot damn I love Twitter. You are all awesome. #fanningthefireabout 20 hours ago from web clipped from twitter.com You all ready to be pissed? Tweetie 1.3 rejected. Because there’s an offensive word in the TRENDS – http://twitpic.com/1zbcsabout 22 hours ago from web

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