von Roland Hachmann | Juni 7, 2007 | Blog, Digital Culture, Digital News, Marketing Trends, Social Media Marketing
There is an interesting article at the Times Online about the new book „the cult of the amateur“ by Andrew Keen. A cry out against the crowdism of web 2.0 and how it is killing our culture. How user generated content on wikipedia, blogs, youtube, et al results in the crippling of traditional, quality content producing industries.
I don’t agree. I think quality will still prevail. The problem with some of these „quality content producers“ was simply the fact that it wasn’t really good quality. The value for money isn’t right. So it is better to watch much worse content from users for free rather than paying anything for only mediocre content.
I think this whole trend will only result in a market shake out. Providers of really good content will always be able to charge money. They will always enjoy large appreciation. But those providing contents with little added value (e.g. newspapers simply copying news from a press service or TV stations showing low quality TV series) will face a decrease in acceptance.
They also state the example of how the interent has resulted in big problems for the music industry. This I don’t agree with at all. The biggest problem of the music industry is the fact that they have not adapted quick enough. There is lots of potential to leverage the net. Apple with iTunes has proven that there is lots of opportunities!
The internet is making standard market mechanisms more efficient, that’s all.
von Roland Hachmann | Mai 10, 2007 | Ad News, Blog, Digital Marketing, Marketing, Online Advertising, Social Media Marketing
- Online web presences are finallly compulsory according to this post. Even if the businesses aren’t doing any business online, consumers expect to be able to find information online, many even expect to be able to purchase online, even if they never actually would.
- According to this article at emarketer, the music industry is complaining without a cause, since even with decreasing sales on CDs, etc., net growth is strong. It’s just the fact that sales now increasingly come from digital music, merchandising and live performances. I never thought the music industry was in any danger any way.
- Forbes features a short essay, apparently written by Rupert Murdoch himself. It shows, that he has truly understood the signs of the times, but in essence, there is nothing new in this essay. Why am I posting it? It can serve as a good source for quotes when you’re preparing another one of these „convince the client’s bosses to invest in new media“ presentations.
- The Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog lists some more information on the advertisers that have made deals with joost, the much hyped new IPTV platform. Apparently, you can even find their ad content, when typing their names into the search function of joost!
von Roland Hachmann | Mai 9, 2007 | Blog, Digital Culture, Social Media Marketing
While other online radio stations close their gates due to new licensing rules, last.fm will now even include videos, writes read/writeweb. They’ll start with smaller independent labels, but will have, allegedly, also partnerships with bigger ones like EMI and Warner. And they are negotiating with Sony and Universal.
Once that is live, you should be able to compile your own video channel, too. In even better quality than anything you can currently (llegally) get on YouTube. read/writeweb calls it the MTV of web 2.0 and I think that defines it quite well.
von Roland Hachmann | Jan. 13, 2007 | Blog, Digital Culture, Digital News, Marketing Trends, Social Media Marketing
Now you thought YouTube is already a bad site for yoyeuristic nerds. But then I stumbled upon Stickam. This is absolutely crazy. It’s almost like YouTube, but there is one major difference: it’s LIVE!
Live video can feel very strange, I just noticed. The only times I have experienced live video streaming were during skype calls with my brothers in Hamburg or my Cousin in Arizona.
But this is different. You click on one of the links and all of a sudden you end up in the living room of a stranger. So while checking out the live feeds, I actually sneaked into one person from Denmark who started – quite openly – to smoke a selfmade hashpipe or something that looked like it. Made out of a plastic soda bottle. There was the option to chat, but quite frankly, I didn’t want to disturb the guy.
The next live stream I visited was the DJ performance of a breakbeat DJ. In the videostream it seemed that there are two people DJ-ing. But neither of them bothered to answer my question if there is any OK, one just answered. A little later, and he admitted that he is quite drunk. (And I just got reminded of the fact that chat syntax is revolutionary: “lol kwl im goin now sum1 else will tlk soon ok c u l8r m8“).
The most surprising live-surprise: the DJ actually greeted me via the stream! (â€wanno make a loif shouuwt ouuwt to roouwlaanâ€)
Very kwl, m8.
(found here)
von Roland Hachmann | Dez. 5, 2006 | Blog, Digital Culture
Cory Doctorow, one of the Bloggers behind Boing Boing wrote an article in Forbes about Giving It Away
I’ve been giving away my books ever since my first novel came out, and boy has it ever made me a bunch of money.
An interesting philosophy, but it does make sense somehow. In this new digital age, ebooks form the basis for word of mouth for books. In the paper age, I would borrow a book from a friend, read it and if it was good I would probably buy a version to add to my collection.
Like Joe Jaffe said in one of his podcasts, it’s like buying the T-Shirt after a good rock concert. You want to have a souvenir, something to show to your friends.
ebooks don’t replace this kind of purchase, but they even help spread the news since it is much easier to email ebooks across the globe compared to books.
That he has been successful, even in perspective of his well experienced publisher, shows this quote:
There’s no empirical way to prove that giving away books sells more books–but I’ve done this with three novels and a short story collection (and I’ll be doing it with two more novels and another collection in the next year), and my books have consistently outperformed my publisher’s expectations. Comparing their sales to the numbers provided by colleagues suggests that they perform somewhat better than other books from similar writers at similar stages in their careers.
The web does require us to rethink certain things. There is a book called Free Culture (which I haven’t fully read, I admit), in which Lawrence Lessig describes how people needed to rethink land ownership, when the first planes flew over people’s land. Up until that point, people owned the land and the air above it. With the aviation industry arriving on the horizon, this needed rethinking and changing of laws.
Nowadays, information (and things like movies and music are nothing but information, from a digital standpoint) is so easy to share and remix, that the only added value really stays with the creator of the piece of information. And the fact, that he is the only one able to recreate a piece of information (music, film, essay) that will be equally sought after.
What I mean? In future, there will be a big shakeout in the whole value chain of all parties dealing with information. Any party sitting in the value chain that doesn’t really add value, will have a hard time justifiying their relevance (other than owning rights – which means enforcing „value“ through lawsuits).
This is no bad news for the content creators. Cory earns good money by many activities surrounding his writing, as he writes in that article in Forbes, which, in turn, has apparently been paid well, too. This works out fine, since people pay to see, hear or read stuff coming directly from a content creator. And in music, bands will always be able to earn money through concerts. It’s the big fat middle that will increasingly need to justify their contribution to the value chain.
Wo ich sonst so bin...