Month: May 2005

Monday, 23 May 2005

How Netflix Could Use Recommendations To Increase Subscriptions

by Garrick van Buren 3 Comments on How Netflix Could Use Recommendations To Increase Subscriptions

One of the challenges of highly customer-driven systems like the iPod, Tivo, and Netflix is the keeping it fresh. I wrote about my experience with this problem last fall (New, Unexpected Music on Your iPod).

I’m sensing the same “2,000 songs and nothing’s on” wall with Netflix. Sure, there are 50 discs in our queue right now. But that’s down from nearly 80 a few months ago. This means, we’re adding movies at a slower frequency. Though we’re watching them at about the same frequency.

To add to this, the only reason I visit the Netflix.com is to add an item to my queue. I get the queue as an RSS feed and my ratings are posted via email. I never checkout their recommendations

This is a recipe for burnout.

Tivo solved this problem by developing recommendation engine that records things it thinks you’ll like. Though Netflix also offers recommendations, it doesn’t go the extra step – sending me the disc.

Since Netflix makes the bulk of their revenue on a tiered subscription model, the discs in each of their tiers could default to a ‘Netflix Suggestion’ with additional membership dollars going to override their recommendation engine with a something I’ve selected. The upshot is, of my 3-at-a-time subscription – 1 or more of them could be selected and delivered by Netflix – thereby guaranteeing new stuff is always in the queue.

Sunday, 22 May 2005

Saturday, 21 May 2005

Drawing the Line with Corn

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on Drawing the Line with Corn

Despite (or because of) growing up among fields and fields of it I’m not a big fan corn. It’s alright in pancakes (especially from Maria’s) and Red Hot Blues, just not on the cob, frozen, or in a can, or in my food as a sweetener. I’m not the only one. Mexico’s sugar industry has a lot to lose from imported US high fructose corn syrup and a number of studies have declared HFCS dangerous to our health.

So, I was pretty disappointed to see HFCS as the third ingredient (before dried apples) in Great Harvest’s otherwise healthy and ever delicious Apple Crunch.

I’d like to take all the corn out of my food and put more of it in my gasoline especially in places like Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.

Looks like Senator Mark Dayton has similar view, at least on ethanol:

“We need to take whatever actions necessary to increase the use of alternative fuels such as ethanol. Right now in Minnesota, E-85 fuel which is 85% ethanol costs 22 to 25 cents a gallon less than regular unleaded, but many consumers cannot use it because they don’t have a vehicle with a flexible fuel engine.”

Friday, 20 May 2005

Thursday, 19 May 2005

The Buzzword Blacklist

by Garrick van Buren 9 Comments on The Buzzword Blacklist

Here’s a small (and growing) list of meaningless, negative words that I’d like to strike from my world.

  • User
  • Consumer
  • Content
  • Sticky
  • Leverage
  • Synergy
  • Facilitate

Doc Searles has a nice follow-up on these terms and language in Relating to Customers

…customers don’t like being “consumers” or “targets.” Being “reduced” doesn’t stir their hearts, either. Least of all do they wish to be “acquired.”

Doc, as always, gets right to the point with:

“…we’re living in a world where customers will only become more and more independent and self-reliant. And — even more importantly — that they can often supply themselves.”

A second Buzzword blacklist from Fortune magazine
Ask Annie – Business Buzzword That Make You Gag

Tuesday, 17 May 2005

Designing for Beausage?

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on Designing for Beausage?

One of the things that continues to inspire and intrigue me is how the marks of previous uses communicate how to use something to a new audience.

In the non-electronic, non-disposable world of say, a rural Midwestern farm in the 1980s; the wear on the barn door shows you how to open it, the path through the field leads to the cows, the best place for your hands is on the shiny spots of the tractor’s steering wheel.

The action of planning for this communciation: designing for wear.
The word to describe something with this characteristic: beausage.

A Business Model for Abundance

by Garrick van Buren 2 Comments on A Business Model for Abundance

Heretofore, most business were founded on the idea of scarcity. Being the One and Only as Seth Godin describes.

If you’re the only vendor offering something, it used to be easy to make money. Just convince people you’re the only one that can solve their problem. Then surround yourself with huge barriers to entry while locking your customers in with fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

Today, the only things remotely scarce are time and money.

Everything else, like mosquitos in August, are irritatingly abundant; news, exotic fruits, stylish furniture, spam, and reality television. Given the constraints of time and money, what you’re ignoring is as important (if not more so) as what you’re paying attention to. I’ve talked about this before in What Price Garbage Avoidance. I’m going to repeat something I originally wrote there:

“This filtering-out is why Tivo can charge a monthly subscription and why AOL is marketing themselves on virus, spam, and pop-up protection.”

As I’ve been refining Working Pathways’ purpose, ‘filtering out’ is a recurring theme.

Complete eradication (spam filtering) is one avenue. This approach keeps out anything that isn’t already known. Fine for short term, yet completely worthless for staying relevant. As I’ve written before, this is why podcasting was such a huge win for iPod listeners. It brings the unknown into a closed environment. Tivo’s recommendation engine, despite its drawbacks is a more interesting model – filter out things I don’t like, and continually and intelligently offer things I might like.

Today’s media environment is bigger than newspapers, radio, television, and magazines. It includes weblogs, video logs, podcasts, email, video games, satellite radio, DVDs, and SMS. No one can track everything that affects them all the time. Therefore, all of the messages we receive each day are worthless if they don’t answer 1 question:

  1. Why should I pay attention to this right now?

In a hotel concierge study I conducted a few years back, I learned the goal of a good concierge was to fulfill a guest’s need the moment before the guest acknowledged the need. We need more businesses founded on delivering the right information to the right people just before it’s needed.

Monday, 16 May 2005

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Review

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Review

Despite my earlier prediction, Jen and I went to the new Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy this weekend.

Being a huge Hitchhiker addict since way back, I can confidently say it was: Good.

The intro dolphin song was a wonderfully amusing touch that stuck in my head all the way through. The screenplay adaption was 80% spot on the story I could in-fact recite from heart. I suspect this is because Adams had plenty of practice (original movie, radio show). As with any Hitchhikers retelling, the divergence from the original book was both interesting and consistent with the overall HH storyline.

Two things told me I spent too much time with this storyline as a child:

  • Thinking how brilliantly Zaphod’s 2nd head and 3rd arm was handled.
  • The glee that came over me when I noticed the original Marvin and Arthur (Simon Jones).

On the way out of the theater, I was pondering the giant human-powered computer similarity between Hitchhikers and the Matrix.

Jen just reminded me in the movie, the plans were “in the cellar”, not “on display on the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard” as in the book. Belgium. That’s one of the best lines.