Twitter is hugely popular, growing quickly, and has attracted lots of funding and worldwide buzz and all the other things a wildfire-on-the-way-to-greatness web start-up could ever hope for.
But how’s it ever going to make money?
That’s something that people have been discussing for a long time now. Aidan Henry, who I know from MappingTheWeb but is also now writing over at ReadWriteWeb these days (CongratsAidan!), posits a few interesting theorems today. In short, Aidan suggests doing contextual ads that run in Twitter feeds, an adwords-like system that auctions off ad space, or a tiered model with a free level of access and a subscription-level that allows people to get the site ad-free.
Personally, I like doing things simple and easy whenever possible. Although many people access Twitter through a mobile device or through applications like twhirl and twitterrific, there are large numbers who access it on the web, through twitter.com. Why not just put a leaderboard banner ad across the top of the page and perhaps a skyscraper ad underneath each person’s friends in the right column?
That way, each time anyone refreshes their page to receive new messages, and each time someone clicks around the site to browse, a new ad impression is created. Geotargeting or some other means of sending contextually relevant ads could further increase CPMs.
I think introducing ads into Twitter feeds could be a dangerous move. Even clearly labeling tweets as “sponsor messages” will annoy many people. It will also open the floodgates for more spam to be introduced. For example, if Twitter is sending sponsor messages, why can’t I send sponsor messages of my own? This could have an overall negative effect on what is currently a great and thriving and growing community.
Clearly these are all things that the people at Twitter are pondering. It’s a tough problem, adding a revenue model into the mix of an existing free service. I hope that Twitter can eventually figure out a system that works and does minimal harm to what is now a pretty special community.
This video exploring new features on Google Earth 4.3 is pretty cool, and gets cooler the deeper in you go. The 3D buildings layer is amazing. Baltimore was used as the example, and it had me wishing for more episodes of The Wire!
It’s Friday, and some Fridays are more Friday than others, you know? In any event, definitely time for some videos.
I’ve been talking about Grand Theft Auto IV a lotthis week both here and over on Twitter. This video posits what GTA IV would look like on the old NES.
I’m a sucker for parodies that utilize any kind of ’80s-era video game graphics, what can I say?
We’re living in an era where scholars – self-appointed and otherwise – are attempting to generate buzz and sell books via bizarre, “controversial,” and flat-out silly ideas about the Internet and technology.
The latest example comes in the form of Professor Jonathan Zittrain of Oxford University. Zittrain believes that the “rise of gadgets like the iPhone, Blackberry and Xbox threatens to unravel the decades of innovation that helped to build the Internet.” The rationale is that these “sterile boxes” will “stifle creativity and turn consumers into passive users of technology.”
In short, this is preposterous.
Sure, we know that Apple products are “walled gardens,” that outside developers can’t develop applications for Apple products. But… here’s a little not-so-secret: the iPhone includes an Internet browser. Blackberries have access to the Internet. Xboxes have access to the Internet (check out my thoughts on Grand Theft Auto IV here).
So the Internet helps to power and enhance these amazing devices and platforms. Many or all of the innovations of the Internet are accessible on these devices, and in fact vastly increase the Internet’s reach via mobile devices and entertainment centers in the home.
And as far as turning people into passive users of technology, is it possible that Zittrain is joking? If anything, you might make the argument that Blackberries and Xboxes are too interactive, that they’re addictive and pull people away from normal real life activities like eating and sleeping. Further, the implication is that these new passive users will suddenly shun the Internet in the form of desktop computers and laptops. I would argue that this implication is… bizarre.
The way to save the Internet, according to Zittrain, is to resist regulation and to have society “place its trust in the Internet’s users.” I’m personally curious as to how much trust the Oxford Internet Institute, where Zittrain works, places in these opinions.
Mr. Zittrain joins Andrew Keen, whose The Cult of the Amateur basically says that user generated content is ruining the Internet.
Yep, if it wasn’t for all those Blackberries and blogs, the Internet might really be something, you know?
As online video producers experiment, fumble, and tinker their way toward a model for making money on scripted online video content, an old school premise emerges on the new media scene: product placement.
It makes sense. Because online video needs to be able to be seen where there’s audience (see: YouTube), advertising that is already “baked in” to the video content itself can help producers to monetize their product.
Fred Seibert, creative director of NextNewNetworks, talks about creating programming around “community need” and then finding a way for video content and sponsorship to crossover to meet that need. Interesting stuff.
Online video advertising is still, relatively speaking, a brand new industry. People only started watching videos on a massive scale over the last three or four years, as broadband penetration peaked and video platforms like YouTube emerged for non-technical people to easily upload and publish video to the Internet. And it’s only in the last year or two that online video advertising has emerged.
Much like for the Internet itself, the idea of advertising for online video was strange at first. But over time, people are getting used to the idea, and depending on the quality of the content, will put up with it in certain forms. Further, if the advertising is contextually relevant and/or blended effectively with the content itself, audiences might actually enjoy it.
Here’s what we know: people are online, they watch video online, they spend money online. Therefore, video producers and advertisers are going into overdrive to figure out a model that works. And as this marketplace matures, we’re going to see higher quality video content online and advertising models emerge that make money for producers.
There are probably many people who will disagree with that last statement, by the way. It’s conventional wisdom in some circles that you can’t make money online from scripted video content. I disagree. It’s simply a matter of time and experimentation.
Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0, one of the crazy-smartest people writing about the interwebs and what-it-all-means today, continues his exploration of the over coverage of breaking news stories with a piece called The Declining Value Of Redundant News Content On The Web. In this case, Karp uses the Microsoft-Yahoo non-merger aftermath as a means to display how “it’s a problem to have 2,000 stories about the SAME THING,” showing a numbing sampling of Google News results as a visual example of how many publishers offer nearly the same thing about the same story.
I agree that this over coverage creates a glut of stories that are nearly identical to one another, that it presents a disservice to readers who are trying to make sense of it all. But I think it’s important to explore why publishers jump on the bandwagon in the first place. Karp likens mass coverage of breaking news stories to 100 newspapers and 50 TV stations covering a factory shutdown in one single Midwest city. It’s an interesting analogy, but I’m not sure that it quite works.
The global nature of the web coupled with a 24/7 publishing environment creates a never ending chase for page views and ad revenues. In other words: publishers aren’t all covering the same story to provide a public service; they’re doing it because there’s a marketplace for huge stories – massive interest for a brief window of time – and everyone is desperately trying to cut themselves in on a piece of the action. That doesn’t mean that everyone will get rich doing this, but obviously there’s some payoff in hopping on the bandwagon.
The conclusion that Karp comes to is that everyone should “BE ORIGINAL.” Of course, this is harder said than done, and everyone will have a different definition of “original.” Scott likes to use Google News when showing examples of over coverage. And Google News is a great news search engine.
But I would argue that “the answer” – if there’s indeed an answer to this problem – is smart content aggregators and smart people networks to help individuals filter out what is the most important, the most original, the most valuable stories in a fluid environment.
The best example I can think of in terms of a smart content aggregator is Techmeme, as well as Memeorandum when it comes to general news and politics. Mixing in individual trusted websites and blogs along with a smart content aggregator or two is a great way to stay on top of breaking stories without getting lost in a sea of sameness.
And what I mean by smart people networks: this can come in many forms, but I’m particularly thinking about Twitter and Friendfeed when it comes to breaking tech and online stories. Building trusted friend/contact networks allows links to get distributed from trusted people to individuals in real time. Social networking sites like Facebook and instant messaging applications like AIM or GTalk can also provide a basis for a smart people network.
So in conclusion I don’t see the deluge of over coverage ending anytime soon. The potential to get in on the action is simply too tempting for publishers. Or, alternatively, many publishers will feel like they’re not legitimate if they don’t write something about a story that everyone else is talking about.
However, over coverage can be combated through a combination of smart content aggregators and smart people networks.
Mark Cuban wrote a piece last night about “the failings of Internet video and the expectation of free content,” which references a Bernstein Research report called And Now for the News…The Emperor Has No Clothes.” Cuban’s premise is that “the a la carting of video on the net” will force video production budgets to be slashed and video content quality dumbed down, which will only benefit “Google and Youtube and black and white hat SEOs.”
This is an interesting and complex topic, and no one really has all (or even many) of the answers right now, but I find some flaws in Cuban’s thinking.
Let’s walk through this. Cuban’s initial premise is:
* Consumers won’t pay for content on the web, so it will have to be ad supported. - Is this true though? Over the last month, I’ve paid for music and video on the Internet, purchasing both through the iTunes store. The content was high quality (a great 2007 album by The Hives, and episodes of Lost that I had missed) and the price was right.
Consumers will of course be savvy in setting the barometer on what they will and won’t pay for. Most people though will be willing to be subjected to some form of video advertising.
Then we have:
* [Video content] will have to be ad supported, and it won’t be ad supported - Cuban is arguing that video content producers won’t be able to make money back on video advertising that it will take to create video content. This is a tough one, but it makes a number of assumptions. It assumes that video is being produced for web distribution (only?), and that the revenue model is based on some form of video advertising.
There are a number of ways, however, that things may work differently, in whole or in part. Video could be a branding vehicle to drive eyeballs back to television or elsewhere, or it could be a “loss leader” in an effort to get people to purchase video.
Cuban is right in stating that “a la carte” consumption on the Internet is exploding traditional methods of media consumption. In other words, people would only pay for the cable television channels that they wanted if they could, but they’re forced into paying for expensive packages at present. The print newspaper and music industries are flailing because people can purchase “a la carte” or get the content for free online.
So Cuban is looking ahead to see how the television and movie industries are going to deal with these same issues when it comes to video.
The short answer that anyone can say for sure is that it’s both an exciting and chaotic time for media creation, distribution, and consumption. I would argue though that in the end it’s a great thing because people are able to get more of what they want and how they want it than ever before.
Here are a number of other factors that I see playing out in the years ahead:
* Television will compete with the Internet for a long time - The opposite is of course true. However, if seven or eight million people watch a show on broadcast TV or one or two million watch on basic cable, no one blinks an eye. These numbers are astronomical when compared to numbers of people watching any one show online. That means that television – and that includes premium channels like HBO and Showtime – will be producing high quality content for the foreseeable future.
And really: the last decade has perhaps been the best in the history of television. The Sopranos. The Wire. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Dexter. Lost. The Shield. Great shows are managing to be produced. One could argue that the proliferation of cable TV helped to drive this “golden age.” So as a devotee of great TV, I’m confident that that won’t change anytime soon.
* Producing and distributing “high quality” video content on the Internet is still very new - New web enterprises like Funny or Die and web-only shows such as Prom Queen are voyagers on a brand new ocean. Television has been around for decades, so of course many of these newer efforts are going to look and feel awkward, as production budgets and episode lengths are tinkered with to meet brand new economics.
This will get figured out though. Here’s the thing to remember:
* People love to watch video on the Internet - So people will figure out a way to make money on it. Sure, there will be some of the “dumbing down” and SEO plays that Cuban fears, but there can and will be a way for high quality shows to find an audience, and for that audience to help drive revenue for the content producers.
* The video advertising industry is still brand new - Pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll, sponsorship, banner ads, companion ads, takeover ads, ad overlays, hypersyndication. These are all brand new tools for video publishers to play around with to find the model that will be acceptable to viewers and will make the most money. If it sounds confusing, it is. But there are hordes of hyper smart folk working on the equation even now. There’s gold in them thar hills, if you follow.
Production budgets, content type, and content length will all be experimented with wildly for many years to come. And over time, expectations and norms for advertising and monetizing online video content will evolve and mature. Let’s remember that a decade ago, online advertising wasn’t respected as a way to make money!
* Creative destruction - If nothing else, the Internet is a powerful force that is still only beginning to shape our daily lives. We’re only a few short years into widespread broadband cable distribution, which is driving the mad wild rush of video consumption.
So, finally, Mark Cuban asks: will it lead to destruction?
Yes. And that destruction will clear the way for what’s next.
When it comes to hardcore gaming – online role playing games, World of Warcraft, intense first-person shooters, adventuring off into Nintendo Wii land with magic wands made “real” – I’m what they call a n00b. A newbie. I appreciate all of these activities intellectually, understand that they’re huge huge business nowadays, and love hearing people talk about their passion for them, but I simply strayed off the gamer’s path at some point during late childhood.
And I always figured that I’m so busy in other areas these days – reading, writing, interwebbing for work and play, getting outdoors and doing real life activities every now and again – that I could get away with not having all of these things (perhaps distractions, I thought, I’ll admit) in my life.
Which is certainly true. However, there was something about Grand Theft Auto IV that absolutely compelled me to go out over the weekend to both buy and Xbox 360 and GTA IV both.
And I’m absolutely delighted that I did. Within minutes of setting things up, I felt as close as is possible to driving around my old neighborhood in Queens without actually being there (and without the real world responsibility to do things like stop at stop lights and to take care to not run people over!). The game felt that “real.” The nearly endless boundaries of this gaming world, the interaction and personalities of the characters, the interlacing storylines, the mad grand size of it all is dizzying, quite frankly.
So this is all to say my perspective on the gaming world – as a web cultist and gaming n00b – is somewhat unique. Millions of people around the world are already hip to the gaming thing, of course. And GTA IV may simply be one of the better or even best products produced yet.
It reminded me how quickly things have changed and are changing. How entertainment and information gathering and collaboration are shifting from movie theaters and video arcades to the home. How treating music in anything other than digital form makes less and less sense. How buying and consuming and communicating from anywhere other than the home, the office, the palm (mobile), and online is making less and less sense in many ways.
We’re living in fascinating times.
And now, I have to get back to a fantastical car chase through the wildly and heart poundingly fictionalized streets of New York, er , Liberty City.
Before this week, if someone had brought up the Grand Theft Auto franchise to me, I would have shrugged my shoulders and perhaps offered a vague recollection that some values groups were in a panic years ago when the San Andreas version came out.
That’s all changed now. Grand Theft Auto IV is absolutely stunning, in every way. I’m not a hardcore gamer. I tend to enjoy casual games (like the addictive Desktop Tower Defense), but GTA IV has me ready to go out to purchase an Xbox 360 this weekend.
It’s the storyline, the characters, the attention to detail that I find most intriguing. As I told a coworker, I don’t really care about the shooting and driving parts (though those look amazing to be sure) – I just want to walk around and hang out in that world.
For a huge array of GTA IV message boards, blogs, and resources, check out the Mahalo guide page.
