Previously, I’ve talked about the a Business Model for Abundance and what price means in an age of abundance.
Seems like a meme going around.
Yes, I see Attention.xml playing a big role in this. And I’ve got the napkin sketches to prove it.
Category: Thought of the Day
Tuesday, 5 July 2005
Wednesday, 29 June 2005
Waiting Room Wireless is a Must
If you have a waiting room, where people are likely to sit for longer than 5 minutes (doctor’s offices, corporations, hotels) you need to offer free wireless internet access.
From personal experience, it’s the difference between continuing check things off my daily to do list and the frustration of being held hostage.
Sunday, 26 June 2005
RSS Feeds to Replace CDs
To this point, musicians need to press bits of plastic (records, CDs) each time they want to share music with their fans. This means, enough music has to be ready to make pressing bits of plastic worth the cost. These bits of plastic are then shipped at an additional cost to stores where hopefully the fans, after hearing about the new bit of plastic via the marketing campaign, will purchase it. Passing little bits of money back to all intermediaries on the return trip to the artist.
I see two weak links in that process;
- Musicians needing to have a number of tracks ready at once.
- Fans paying musicians at the end of the process.
With a podcast, musicians can release whatever they’d like, whenever they’d like; demo tracks, rough tracks, experiments, final edits, interviews, conversations about the song writing process, anything their fans would enjoy. All of it delivered automatically to their biggest fans.
To access the podcast feed, fans pay up-front, or along the way, or at the end. Doesn’t matter. Passionate fans will pay for access to an empty RSS feed, thereby financing new work, while new fans pay for access to previous feeds, just as they do with previous albums today.
Faster publication and distribution helps musicians refine their work more quickly and gives fans a sense of being involved in the creation process. Two big wins.
What do fans lose when RSS feeds replace CDs? Aside from the physical artifact and the costs of designing, creating, moving, and storing the physical artifact? Very little. Cover art and credits are in the ID3 tags and the feed itself.
Friday, 24 June 2005
The Difference Between Consumers and Customers
Tuesday, 21 June 2005
Anonymous Responses Are Useless
One of my current projects has a major survey component. The survey ends with:
“If you’d be open to follow up questions, enter your email address below.”
There’s about a 60 / 40 split on responses with emails and those without. The responses without email addresses have skipped questions, irrelevant answers, and are generally unusable. This is so much the case, that I’ve found it a better use of time to check for an email address first – then read the response.
It’s interesting that people comfortable with being contacted give useful answers, while those providing non-useful responses don’t provide a way to be contacted.
Conventional wisdom on requiring accountability has it backward. Accountable people want to be responsible for their actions. Those that aren’t don’t. Forcing it doesn’t change anything.
On a related note, perhaps my observation is related to Ben Hammersley’s explanation of why wikitorial died.
Monday, 20 June 2005
Theres Always More Than One Way
“Don’t ever allow yourself to believe that there is only one way to make ideas real.” – Scott Berkun
Stated more traditionally, “there’s more than one way to skin a cat.”
The great thing about roadblocks is they force an evaluation of goals.
For example, you’d like to publish a book and are continually rejected by publishers. Is is that you want to have a physical book on Barnes & Noble’s shelves or that you want to share your ideas with the world?
One answer says mold yourself to what publishers want and wait for them to like you. The other says start a blog over lunch.
Friday, 3 June 2005
The IKEA Furnishings Subscription Model
I had a couple of apartments completely furnished via IKEA. As I’m sure you know, once assembled Billy isn’t going anywhere. Drooping and wabbly, the Billy entertainment system lasted – to the day – as my last rental lease. Not a bad thing, I didn’t have to move it. Though it did leave me without a bookcase.
Tonight, browsing their rug selection and picking up a couple things for the office, I pondered again the potential for an IKEA Furnishings Subscription Model. Yes, subscription-based furnishings. IKEA’s furniture prices are low enough where refurnishing is like putting on a fresh coat of paint and like that coat of paint, it only lasts a couple years. Two-years later, when that bookcase is sagging and worn, no worries – it’s replacement has been paid for. The delivery truck will be here tomorrow. Same with the sofa and dining room set and eventually the entire house?
Thursday, 26 May 2005
On being Seth-dotted
I want to thank Seth Godin for linking to the Work Better Weblog yesterday. As expected, I saw it in the server logs.
Work Better saw quadruple the traffic of just 24 hrs earlier. It didn’t take down my server (slashdotted) but it did make my afternoon (seth-dotted ?). Plus, I got a great email from Joe Ely over at Learning about Lean – one of the blogs that inspired the Work Better Weblog.
It reminded me just how fast and direct internet communication is. Two other recent, personal, and measurable examples of this:
- 2 minutes from song listen to iTunes purchase
- Watch this timeline:
- 9:18 – I got a location confirmation from Tim Elliot on the Greater Midwest Podcaster Gathering.
- 9:38 – I sent it out to everyone involved.
- 9:43 – Julio posts it to the Pioneer Press Your Tech Weblog
- “time to press”: 25 minutes
Tuesday, 24 May 2005
I missed another 1-on-1 Bike Swap
The 1-on-1 Bike Swaps are a great way to celebrate spring and autumn, clean out your garage, and race un-ride-able bikes around a track bordered with empty PBR cans.
The May 22 bash was the second one I missed. Gene, Hurl, if you’re listening – add an RSS feed to the 117 blog.
Thanks.
Monday, 23 May 2005
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.