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I’m Calling It: Groupon Sitcom Will Be DOA

May 22, 2012 By Leave a Comment

grouponI wish I knew why Hollywood always thinks these things are good ideas. CBS is moving forward with a new sitcom based on the Internet coupon company Groupon. I’m sure they think it will be The Office for the tech set. I’m sure it will be a bomb.

The first problem is they used a real company name. This just smacks of sleazy promotion. If you really wanted to make a high tech comedy you would create a fictitious company  that could morph into anything. By sticking yourself with one specific company, you’re bound by those company aspects.

There is already one successful geek comedy, the Big Bang Theory and I doubt you’re going to outdo that one. Geeks aren’t really all that funny and working in Silicon Valley isn’t a laugh riot, although they have moved the show to L.A for just that reason I suspect. Oh, geeks out on the town in Hollywood.  And the hilarity ensues.

You can smell the stench all over this one. Groupon isn’t even that popular of a company. It would have made more sense to model the show after Facebook and have a quirky Mark Zuckerburg-like CEO.

Filed Under: Blog, Technology, TV/Entertainment Tagged With: , , ,

The Incredibly Short Sighted Movie Industry

May 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment

movie-tickets-popcornI don’t ask for much, but I want what I want. My daughter and I were to have a movie night and we decided we wanted to see Iron Man, the original 2008 movie. I hop on iTunes and find I cannot rent the movie, only purchase it. I don’t want to purchase it, I just want to watch it one time with my daughter. Interestingly enough, you can rent Iron Man 2. Her second choice was Captain America which you cannot rent either. I could not rent Iron Man on any system I had acces to including Amazon.com.

Why can’t I rent Iron Man, which is a four year old movie? What in God’s name are you protecting and why is this movie more valuable than Iron Man 2 which was just as good a movie? Here I am, willing and happy to give you some money so I can watch the movie I want to watch one time. Why won’t you take my money? If you think I will break down and just buy it, you’re sorely mistaken. Would you like to know what does happen?

People who are not tech savvy curse your name and go away angry. I didn’t know it was such good business to anger and frustrate your customers. Talk to the music industry about how that worked out for them. Tech savvy people will head straight for a not so hard to use website and simply download a copy. They will get to watch the movie they wanted and you will be out the money. Either way, that’s a stupid business proposition. It’s been proven time and time again; if you don’t give people what they want, you will turn them into pirates. And these are people who would have been more than happy to give you money to get the movie legitimately.

So please, again, tell me why I can’t rent Iron Man?

Filed Under: Blog, Marketing, Technology, Video/Social TV Tagged With: , , ,

The Coming Bandwidth Explosion

May 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment

FibreopticIt’s been building for years, and now it appears we are nearing a tipping point that will result in a massive explosion in Internet traffic. A great article here from Ars Technica about how the Net will cope. Of particular note, I found these statistics amazing.

  • One-third of the world’s population is on-line
  • Global IP traffic increased eightfold in the past five years and will quadruple by 2015.
  • Video is the primary driver of the data glut. Video is now the largest type of Internet traffic surpassing peer-to-peer file sharing.
  • Videoconferencing is the fastest growing business application.
  • Mobile Internet devices will soon outnumber the people of earth, reaching 10 billion by 2016.

Lots of work is being done to meet the demand from more undersea cables to the Internet 2 project. None of this surprises me as I have been working and monitoring the Internet space for years. I get especially frustrated with wireless companies who complain of the data use on their networks and now have put data caps on all their services. Clearly, they have not been able to keep up and the advent of the Smartphone took them by surprise. For technology based companies, they have not been very forward looking. Especially ironic is the fact that it is here in America where we invent most of the technology that drives the Internet and yet we are the country far behind in our own Internet infrastructure. We hardly have the fastest and most advanced Internet speeds in the world. The bandwidth explosion is coming; I hope we’re ready.

Filed Under: Blog, Technology Tagged With: , , ,

Wither Yahoo

May 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

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I’m an old school internet guy. I remember the days well before Google when Yahoo was king. Yahoo was the first major big time Internet success story. Now, so many years later another Yahoo CEO is gone and the company appears as though it will be lead by a wall street hedge fund.

Yahoo is like a once great race horse, now out of its prime and injured. Someone needs to put it down. It’s time. There are a few valuable assets left like flickr which should be responsibly sold off to live another life.

But Yahoo needs to be done. I don’t want to stand by and watch it continually get brutalized. Say goodnight Gracie.

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Google Hangouts On Air Spells Trouble For Ustream

May 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

hangouts-on-airUntil now, Ustream..tv has been the king of online streaming video. The Ustream platform has been solid for years and, for the most part, devoid of serious challengers. Until now. Enter Google.

This week Google launched Hangouts On Air for all of it’s Google+ users. Hangouts are online video chats for the Google+ social network. Until now, Hangouts were limited to 10 participants and video chats were not recorded for later viewing. Hangouts On Air provides a true live broadcasting capability with virtually unlimited viewers and in addition, Hangouts are recorded and posted to YouTube for viewing later. This puts Hangouts on par with other broadcasting systems like Ustream and Justin.tv. Of course Ustream.tv has more features, a more mature platform and user base, but whenever a giant fish jumps into a small pond, it’s going to create big splash. Another big advantage for Google, Hangouts On Air are already connected to your growing social network on Google, whereas Ustream.tv does not have nearly the social network features.

What all this means for your business is video continues to grow in new and different ways. It’s a force you will not be able to avoid soon. What kind of video content could your business provide on these platforms?

Filed Under: Blog, Social Media, Technology, Video/Social TV Tagged With: , , , , ,

Apple Looks At Multi-User Support For iOS

May 8, 2012 By

iPadAnyone with a family or a pesky significant other knows multi-user support is an absolute must for iOS devices like the iPad. We have one iPad in the family and it’s shared among at least three people. The real bummer is apps like Twitter or Facebook because you have to maintain a login which has to be changed every time someone different uses the iPad.

Finally Apple is looking at support for multiple users on iOS and it cannot come fast enough as far as I am concerned.

Filed Under: Blog, Technology Tagged With: , , ,

Google Changes The Rules Making Content More Important

April 19, 2012 By

ContentToo many times, when I hear people talking about Internet marketing they are mostly talking about search engine optimization (SEO). Companies are obsessed with search ranking on Google, often ignoring other forms of social media marketing. SEO experts have been raking in the cash as well selling companies their fancy tricks for climbing the search ranks. I don’t necessarily have anything against SEO per se and I do reasonable  SEO on Connected World Media projects, but it’s not the complete story.

The party is about to end, however, as Google will be changing their algorithm to compensate for “over optimized sites”. This penalty for overly SEO’ed sites will level the playing field, giving sites with great content a better shot at ranking above sites with not as good content but great SEO.

It’s a constant fight between Google and those that seek to artificially manipulate results. Google’s job is to help customers find what the are looking for in the most pure sense possible. It’s always been about the content and this new change is going to make that even more true than ever. Rather than paying thousands of dollars a month for SEO wizardry, companies will be forced to focus on the content. Real, honest, authentic content. It’s about time.

I have always been more interested in content and the strategy that surrounds that content than SEO tricks. Give me a call at 503-427-8860 if you would like help getting your content strategy in order. In the meantime I would recommend reading Content Rules by C.C. Chapman and Ann Handley. This is one of the few new marketing books that focus on content and content strategy exclusively.

Filed Under: Blog, Content Marketing, Technology Tagged With: , , ,

The Great 3D TV Scam

January 15, 2012 By

3dtvA recent study indicates most of the American public is not interested in buying a 3D television. This is no surprise to me as I have always thought 3D television is indicative of a greedy industry pushing technology consumers never asked for.

Once you have sold plenty of HDTV’s, what’s next? How do you get consumers to keep upgrading their televisions? I understand the motivation but 3D is completely the wrong answer. It’s a gimmick, and not a very good one either. The same thing is happening with movies in theaters. Way too many 3D movies that have no reason to be 3D and they don’t even look better. Read Roger Ebert’s great article on why 3D movies suck.

We may have a solution, however. What will propel the televisions in 2012 and beyond will not be the evolution is so-called “smart” tv’s. These are televisions with Wi-Fi and Internet applications built in. We have been waiting for this convergence for a long time and it’s looking like 2012 is the year it will happen. Apple is driving this change with their still rumored TV product. Even before the rumors are confirmed, other manufacturers are racing to get their own smart tv’s out. I will write more on smart tv’s later but for now let’s hope the smart tv technology will spell the end of the great 3D TV scam.

Filed Under: Blog, Marketing, Technology, TV/Entertainment, Video/Social TV Tagged With: , , , ,

Why Google Needs To Bitch Slap Samsung

December 23, 2011 By

fragmented-androidSamsung just took a giant dump on Google and Android.

They announced today the hugely popular Galaxy S line of Android phones will NOT be getting the latest Android OS, Ice Cream Sandwich. Samsung only sold around 10 million of those phones last year. One year and your phone is already software out of date! It’s outrageous. The excuse is that the phones are not powerful enough to run the new OS. Not powerful enough actually to run the OS and Samsung’s user interface layer they put on top of Android.

This is going to be a huge blow to Google and the Android OS. The ramifications will spread beyond the 10 million customers they just instantly pissed off to many future owners of Android. Who wants to buy a phone when there is no guarantee you can update the OS? Apple could pound this point home in it’s marketing. Every iPhone gets the same software update the moment Apple releases it. Apple only leaves behind phones that are more than 2 generations old. By that time, your two year contract is up and you are eligible for another discounted phone.

Here’s what’s worse; they risk loosing the tech community and influencers who have been hot on Android. These folks set the buzz around products and the buzz on Android is going to get pretty sour.

Google has not been able to control Android and this is the worst example to date. There was supposed to be a rule that all Android phones would be updated to the newest OS within 18 months. Samsung just threw that rule right out the window. Google is going to have to do something to these vendors to bring them in line. These are the perils of an open system. It sounds so great in theory, but when you get down to the practical day to day it often causes more trouble. I don’t always like Apple’s maniacal control, but I do love that my iPhone works really well all the time and I can expect regular software updates until I am eligible to move to the next model.

This flakiness in updating OS software has been going on for awhile in the Android universe, but this could be the straw that breaks the camels back because the Galaxy S line have been the most popular Android phones ever. This could be the tipping point that really causes serious damage to Android. It will be very interesting to see how Google responds to this crisis.

Filed Under: Blog, Technology

Kids Creating And Producing Their Own Toys

December 4, 2011 By

Disruptive Technology

A disruptive technology or disruptive innovation is an innovation that helps create a new market and value network, and eventually goes on to disrupt an existing market and value network (over a few years or decades), displacing an earlier technology there.

3D printing is not terribly new and has been around a few years, but putting this technology into the hands of kids IS groundbreaking and could lead to all kinds of unexpected consequences. The prototype Origo 3D printer is made for children 10 and up to design objects on a computer and print them out in 3D to play with. Yes, kids designing and creating their own custom made toys. I have always preferred the random box of legos to the highly designed play sets they make these days. With a random box of shapes and colors, you can endlessly create all kinds of lego toys to play with. The only limit is your imagination. In that same spirit, this 3D printer can free kids minds even further to create literally anything they can think of. They could even make toys for friends. Technologically, the ability to design and create your own objects is very cool, but what kind of disruption could this cause for the toy industry?

Oh Barbie and GI Joe don’t have to worry quite yet, but for how long? Per the definition, disruptive technology can take decades, so how much better do you think the technology will be in 20 years? This isn’t just a disruptive technology for the toy industry but as larger, and even more sophisticated versions of 3D printing are made for adults, it could be disruptive to a large sector of manufacturing. How many companies will be savvy enough to make the transition to selling the designs for objects rather than the objects themselves? How many entrepreneurs will get there first, selling their own versions of products directly to customers on the Internet?

Filed Under: Blog, Technology Tagged With: , , , ,
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