End Noise

I will admit that I have an unhealthy obsession with the Kit-Kat Big Kat bar, which is the combination of 4 Kit-Kat's into one giant Kit-Kat. I wonder if the bar contains any more Kit-Kat material than the normal Kit-Kat. Probably not, but the fact that I just thought about it made some marketing executive quite happy.

With a few clicks I am able to block all ads from being displayed on my screen. Companies that derive their revenue from ads and ad-serving come up with tricks to circumvent the ad-blockers, but at best these only work for the few days it takes an ad-blocker to get updated. If ad-blockers become mainstream, as has happened with pop-up-blockers, how will ad and content companies respond. One novel way would be to deliver their content through Flash, where the content and ads are interspersed in a way that cannot be blocked. This would put the content and ad companies back in control of their content. While this may turn off some readers, the majority would most likely accept it.

I wonder if the future of content is not RSS, but Flash.

One of the criticisms Microsoft levels at iTunes is lack of choice. They argue in their 'Plays For Sure' campaign that with an iPod, you are locked into the iTunes Digital Music Store when you want to purchase a song. Sure, this is true. If I want to purchase a song online through a digital music store and I have an iPod, then I am limited to iTunes. The problem with this argument is that I really don't care where I get my music as long as I get my music. The fact that with a Microsoft-compatible mp3 player I can choose between Napster.com, MSN Music, Rhapsody, etc., etc., is not very important when I can get the exact same song from iTunes for the exact same price. This ability to choose is meaningless to me. Even if you argue that the experience of the MSN music store is better than the iTunes experience, its still not as if the user is having a bad experience. Microsoft fails to realize that the content is the important part and as long as I can get it, then who cares that I am locked into the iTunes Digital Music Store.

Anyway, if I wanted complete freedom of choice with my music, I'll just buy the CD and rip it into DRM-free mp3's.

One of my favorite bloggers Jason Kottke at kottke.org has quit his day job to pursue blogging as a fulltime gig. I support his effort, but I think his method of generating capital by forgoing advertising and instead asking for donations will not be overly successful. The idea of asking people to pay for a blog will generate some revenue, but it will not generate enough to survive on.

He will benefit from the initial exposure that his announcement has received, but after that I think he will have exhausted most of the people who would pay to support him. Blog traffic (especially to a site like his) tends to breakdown between the loyal readers who frequently visit his site and the new people who discover his site by clicking on some link. The loyal readers are the ones who will provide the bulk of the donations, and while I am sure they are numerous, I doubt they are enough.

The unheralded star for the Republican administration in the 2004 presidential election was Google.

The algorithm which runs the search engine ranks sites based on the number and quality of sites that link to you. If your site is linked to by 2,000 sites than you will have a higher ranking than sites that are only linked to by 150 sites. If you are ranked to from CNN.com or NYTimes.com than you will have a higher ranking than someone linked to from my Eddie Arnold fansite.

One of the more sensational stories of the most recent election was Rathergate, where CBS news chronicled the 'war' record of George Bush based on some fake documents. This gaffe was first discovered by bloggers, who received converge in all of the major news organizations. Because of this, Republican blogs got a large number of links from high quality sources, thus causing a rise in their page rankings. Automatically, they got prime placement in the largest and most popular Internet presence.

According to this op-ed piece in the Guardian (link via buzzmachine), a leading conservative pundit predicts that blogs will help the conservative forces unite and directly communicate with the masses much as they did in the U.S. presidential election.

The author makes it seem like there was a vast army of Republican bloggers out there. Which leads to the question as to whether or not there are more Republican blogs out there than Democratic ones. After all the talk of Swift Boat veterans and Rathergate, its an easy assumption to make that Republicans own the (apologies for use of this word) Blogosphere. I really doubt this is true, however. I think it's really just perception since Republican bloggers stay on message far more than their Democratic peers.

Looking back of the blog scene in the 2004 election, most major conservative blogs had a few relatively clear talking points about their candidate and a few talking points against the opposition. A reader would see over and over again: Bush = security, Iraq war = good, Kerry = hopelessly liberal and Kerry = disloyal Vietnam soldier.

Democratic blogs on the other hand were unfocused on their attacks. They attacked Bush's Iraqi war record, his abortion stance, his environmental stance, the torturing of Iraqi prisoners, etc, etc. The common thread on these sites was that they do not like Bush. They were unable to focus on key issues, which made it seem like they lacked cohesion.

By keeping their attacks simple and focused on limited talking points, Republican blogs gave the appearance of solidarity, strength and numbers.

You can order a Pizza Hut pizza (assuming you can call it pizza) from within the Everquest 2 video game.

I suspect this is the start of a video game/commerce trend that the commerce players will embrace and gamers will largely ignore.

Do you think the BTK serial killer hums 'Takin Care of Business' and wonders why the press hasn't labeled him the BTO serial killer.

Disclaimer: I am a proud iPod owner who purchased a 5 gig iPod when they first came out. I also worked for a subscription-based service, much like Napster.com.

I am not optimistic about the new Napster-To-Go service. I think its a neat idea, but I do not imagine it will be successful enough to erode the market share of the iPod.

One of the biggest problems confronting the service is their poor advertising which highlights the perceived savings of renting music versus purchasing songs a la carte. The biggest problem with this is since the original Napster the perceived cost of music has essentially been reduced to almost zero in most people's mind. While the iTunes digital music store is popular, it's still used by a relatively small percentage of iPod owners. Since most music fans already own a lot of CD's (or can use their friend's mp3 libraries), the cost 'savings' of Napster-To-Go is questionable.

Perhaps a more successful marketing campaign for Napster would emphasize the initial hassle involved with the iPod. When I first got my iPod, i spent a great deal of time sitting in front of my computer ripping CD's. While iTunes is an elegant piece of software, it was still tedious to repeat ad-infinitum. The existence of companies like Rip Digital exist means that there is an actual hurdle that must be overcome with the iPod.

The Napster-To-Go add would be much more effective if they showed an excited music fan gleefully opening up an iPod and then realizing that she has 8 hours of ripping CDs to look forward to.

If they want to familiarize people with the concept of renting your music collection, Napster-To-Go might want to consider comparing themselves to satellite radio. The two systems are pretty similar. You have to buy hardware and pay a subscription fee to get things to actually work. Napster-To-Go might want to create ads where they compare themselves to satellite radio, except instead of DJ's picking music, you do. Comparing themselves fee-wise with satellite radio may be an easier sell of their business model.

If you've been checking out blogs for the last year or two, you'll see more and more sites with side bar's highlighting the blogger's favorite books and CD's. While this is good from the point of view of a browser looking for product recommendations, it should be troubling for Amazon.com.

The feature that really differentiates Amazon.com from all of the other commerce sites out there is the community element. Throughout Amazon.com's history, thousands of people from across the internet have been willing to spend significant amounts of time writing interesting and thoughtful reviews of books and products.

Part of the reason people chose Amazon.com to share their thoughts was the ease in posting. In the pre-blog days of the internet, creating your own page was tedious and out of the grasp for most people. Amazon placed member reviews on actual product pages, so everyone had the chance to be an influential reviewer.

In this blog age, however, people have less of a reason to write reviews for Amazon.com. People with a distinctive voice and an inclination to write can easily have their own site where they can review books as well as whatever else is on their mind. People are using their own recommendations and lists to tell something about themselves on a site they themselves created, as opposed to Amazon.com using customer reviews and enforce their own brand.

Combine these blogs with Froogle and Amazon.com should be worried.