b.cognosco
Where leaping to conclusions is my primary form of forward motion.
Most Popular
- Historical Yearly Average Gasoline Prices
- Outlook 2003 Message-ID Insanity
- Real-time Sand Animations
- Adobe Acrobat 7
- Adobe Announces Name Change and New Product
- Largest Technology Boondoggle in Public Education History
- Yahoo! Buys del.icio.us
- Skype - Disruptive, Not Compelling
- Aluminum Christmas Tree Museum
- Network Printing Hell and windoze XP
Book Reviews
Recently
Why Was It a Great Strategy When Jack Welch Did It?
Meetup.com Cuts Freebies, Charges $230/year
Sunday, May 15, 2005
Another 'Broadcasting is Dead' Story
This article, Piracy is Good, over at Australian site Mindjack, is a good description of the effect technology is having on broadcast television. Author Mark Pesce discusses, in some detail, the use of p2p filesharing technology BitTorrent and, more importantly, proposes some interesting business models for how producers and advertisers can collaborate to create a viable business.
Mark uses a couple of good case studies, including recent download scenarios for Dr. Who and Battlestar Galactica, to make the case that downloading does not necessarily equate to lower viewership. He also offers good analysis of the economic situation broadcasters face after 50 years of training viewers that TV is free, trying to suddenly convince them they should be paying for everything isnt going to work.
This, of course, is not news to anyone who regularly reads weblogs, RSS feeds, or uploads pictures to Flickr. But Pesces is one of the first articles Ive seen to dig into the figures around p2p distribution, broadcast viewership, and the relative impact for popular TV episodes.
Im not ready to concede broadcast is dead even the latest bittorrent clients are too geeky for mass use but Pesces case for advertisers is compelling. And if one thing is certain, its that advertisers follow the market. A commericalized, ad-supported p2p distribution network with viewer tracking cant be far away.
Terry Frazier at 1:14 AM
| Permanent Link
| Trackback URL | Categories: Business & Finance, Copyright, Strategy, Technology
Monday, April 25, 2005
Why Was It a Great Strategy When Jack Welch Did It?
The strategy described below is almost identical to the strategy espoused by Jack Welch at GE. But Jack is chatting with Leno while Lay and Skilling chat with prosecutors. Hmm… (via Frank Patrick)
Tell Me How You'll Measure Me, And I'll Tell You How I'll Behave
Tell Me How You'll Measure Me, And I'll Tell You How I'll Behave -- Mark Frauenfelder writes about measures and behaviors at Enron, via a recent documentary film..."Every year, all employees were rated from 1 (best) to 5 (worst). The more money you made for the company, the better your rating. (Skilling was fond of saying that money was the only thing that motivated people). Skilling mandated that between 10 and 15 percent of the employees had to be rated as 5s. And to get a rating of 5 meant that you were fired. This review process was dubbed 'rank and yank.'Cause and effect, plain and simple.
"It's no surprise that this algorithm resulted in a corporate petri dish teeming with sociopaths who were taped in phone conversations laughing at the thought of stealing money from 'grandma millies' who were hit with unafforably high utility bills, and urging on the California wildfires by chanting 'burn baby, burn!.'"
Terry Frazier at 11:20 PM
| Permanent Link
| Trackback URL | Categories: Business & Finance, Strategy
Thursday, April 14, 2005
Meetup.com Cuts Freebies, Charges $230/year
Meetup.com has put away the teat. It will be interesting to see if this starts a spiral down into nothingness.We have some news to share that we don't think you're going to like. There's no point in dancing around it so here it is. Starting May 1st, every Meetup Group will have to pay a monthly fee. Read on for the details.
How much? If your group starts paying in April, the charge is $9/month for the rest of the year. (If you wait until May 1st it goes up to $19/month). The substantial discount (more than 50%) is a "thank you" for being one of the first Meetup Groups.
Nine dollars?! To some, $9 every month may sound like a lot for an Organizer to pay, but remember, it's a group fee, not per person. If the Organizer splits the cost among the members who show up each month, it's probably $1 - $2 per person.
With a Thank You like that, I'm not sure Meetup users need any enemies. "Only $1 or $2 per user" is a tired, overused ploy that just doesn't work. Hundreds of internet services have died on the premise they could get a few pennies a day per user. I'm sure Meetup has lots of user stats and something makes them believe, however vaguely, they can pull this off. I don't know. I sure don't have the smarts of someone like Esther Dyson or the other backers, but this is such a drastic change that, to my cynical mind, it smells like VCs at DFJ have tightened the screws to get some profits rolling at any cost - maybe to pretty it up financially to try and unload it or something.
Meetup has never really taken off here in the south and maybe that colors my view. This will be interesting to watch.
Terry Frazier at 8:35 PM
| Permanent Link
| Trackback URL | Categories: Business & Finance, Collaboration, Strategy
Syndication
Contact
Presence
This Page was last updated: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:06:57 GMT
