Ironically, Dan Martell is one of the most genuine friends I’ve made in the startup world. I say ironically because he is a caricature – the guy literally uses hashtags when he speaks :-). But none of that can take away from how legitimately passionate he is about helping others, in particular other entrepreneurs.
Dan doesn’t talk about it much, but his path to the #leanstartup celebrity all his Twitter followers know today was a pretty long and unglamorous road compared to a lot of today’s entrepreneurs (including myself). Though he doesn’t remember it, Dan and I first met on the Internet back in 2009 when I was trying to do some early content marketing for awe.sm and he was, as always, building his personal brand by explaining how he got to 595 Twitter followers (how quaint! 😉 ). At the time, I believe Dan was still living in Canada having sold the professional services business he had built over years of unglamorously quotidian hard work, and, like me, was trying to break into the Silicon Valley in-crowd. I wrote him off as YASMDB (yet-another-social-media-douchebag), albeit one with amazing hair and actually pretty good advice, and forgot about @danmartell.
About a year later, awe.sm got its first “office” in San Francisco courtesy of some desks Klout was subletting in their space, where Flowtown was already subletting a conference room. Over the following 2.5 years I got to know Dan as we worked side-by-side there and later at the new office we moved to with Flowtown and Plancast. In such close quarters for such an extended period of time in such often-times stressful circumstances, you learn a lot about anyone. And what I learned about Dan is that his enthusiasm and passion and child-like love of startups are unimpugnably genuine. But in Dan’s case, I found myself learning a lot not just about him but from him as well. I learned from his example as well as his mentorship, with which he was always generous to everyone – those of us in the office just were fortunate enough to have access to the firehose. He has one of the best product senses I’ve ever seen because he has the rare ability to assume the veil of ignorance of a real user. And his belief that creativity and hard-work (aka #hustle) can solve any problem enables him to turn whatever challenge you bring him into an opportunity.
Even though we’ve talked about it several times over the last few months, what Dan is doing with Clarity.fm wasn’t truly clear to me until today when I started reading the (impressive) press coverage of their launch. Until this morning, I saw it as Dan building a product to solve a pain point Dan had and thought enough other people have to make it a viable business. Then I read the following quote Dan gave in the TechCrunch post:
For the first years of my working career, I was still living in my native Canada and I was desperate for advice. I emailed the minister of my province there, he respected that I was a young entrepreneur, and he introduced me to three guys that had built hundred million dollar companies. That was the reason that I moved to San Francisco in the first place,” Martell said. “I know that getting the right advice at the right time can dramatically change an entrepreneur’s life.
Only then did I realize this isn’t purely a convenience product for Dan, it’s a passion product. And when an entrepreneur and product person as talented as Dan is passionate about something, you know it is going to be great. So that is why I’m excited Clarity is being built by Dan.
As for why I am (and I think you should be) excited about Clarity in general, my friend Hunter says it better (and more concisely) than I can:
Excited by @getmoreclarity bec expert networks are another example of individuals unbundling from corporations to be their own business
That money in politics you’re always complaining about, it’s yours. Take it back!
Our government is way broken. As citizens, we need to fix it fundamentally. And until then, the Internet industry needs to get better at playing by today’s broken rules. But in the case of SOPA/PIPA (also see this great infographic), there isn’t time to fight lobbying fire with lobbying fire, and the notion that emailing and Tweeting at Congress is our best shot of battling entrenched special interests is naive IMHO.
Yesterday we saw a great example of how grassroots online organization can focus our collective economic leverage into influence and results. But before we all go patting ourselves on our collective backs, let’s be honest: this was a gimme — an Internet business dumb enough to thumb their nose at their core customers, and who could ultimately be swayed by a chorus of angry digerati. I applaud the spirit of the GoDaddy boycott, and even participated, but I want us to parlay this small win into something much more meaningful. Let’s not stop at the pawns, let’s strike at the root of support for SOPA/PIPA: the entertainment industry.
More specifically, we need to kneecap the MPAA. Once you understand the motivations of the players involved, the logic of how we can put an end to this nonsense is relatively straightforward. The MPAA is a trade group that represents and is funded by the 6 major film studios (Disney, Warner Brothers, Universal, Fox, Sony, and Paramount). It has an annual budget, determined by its members, that has been shrinking since 2009. The recently appointed new head of the MPAA, former Senator Chris Dodd, is pulling down more than $2 million a year to turn the organization around, which means convincing the studios that they should increase its funding. Not to be overly-cynical here, but it doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch that a former Senator being paid a ton of money in the private sector might seize on Congressional legislation highly favorable to the industry he now represents as the quickest way to prove his (and his organization’s) worth.
I am convinced that the management of the studios don’t really care that much about SOPA/PIPA. If they thought anti-piracy legislation was important, they wouldn’t have been slashing the budget of their lobbying organization over the last several years: in 2007 the MPAA’s overall annual budget was $93 million, in 2009 it was down to $64 million; and within the MPAA itself, the money spent on lobbying went from $2.7 million in 2008 to $1.7 million in 2010. This legislation is even worse than what everyone thinks — it’s not being driven by the needs of a single industry, it’s being driven by the needs of a single industry *trade group*. The studios support it because they’ve been told it will be good for them (even though anyone who knows anything about technology knows it will do little to actually stop piracy) and because there’s no additional cost to them other than what they’ve already sunk into the MPAA’s annual budget. Let’s change that!
If we can show the studios that this ineffective legislation that only succeeds in being hostile to their customers is going to cost them money, I believe they’ll rein in Dodd and the MPAA right quick and that would be the end for SOPA/PIPA. The good news is we have a clear path for demonstrating that cost because, even though these guys may not read the bills they’re paying to have written, they watch their weekend box office receipts like hawks. The bad news is I don’t think the usual online activist base will be enough — in order for this to work, we need to get real people to take real action by changing their offline behavior (i.e. it only works if people who normally go to theaters don’t go when we ask them).
So, here’s what I propose:
We pick a weekend far enough from now that we have time to adequately mobilize mass support
We educate our non-geek family and friends (aka muggles 😉 ) about how SOPA/PIPA will impact the Internet in ways they care about (e.g. censoring YouTube and Facebook)
*Then* we start making noise online to get as many people as possible to join the boycott on the appointed weekend and to make clear to the studios that the dip in revenue they’re going to see that weekend is a direct result of their support of SOPA/PIPA
That’s my idea. I think it can work, but only if enough other people think it makes sense and want to help. I’m open to suggestions on how to move forward and happy to help however I can in making this a reality. You can reach me at jonathan [at] jonathanhstrauss.com and @jhstrauss on Twitter.
And in the meantime, I’ll be that guy annoying his girlfriend’s family about the evils of Internet censorship at Christmas dinner 😀 .
Apple’s acquisition of Lala yesterday is the coda to an interesting chapter in the evolution of the music industry. It comes on the heels of MySpace’s acquisitions of iLike and iMeem (both at similarly distressed prices to the reported ~50% discount in the Lala deal) as well as the launch of (nearly) inline streaming music in Google’s search results. Talk about mixed messages: the business of on-demand streaming music (vs. streaming radio like Pandora) is broadly being conceded as a failure just as the user experience is finally hitting the mainstream.
In the last 24hrs, I’ve read a lot of analysis across the spectrum and heard the thoughts of friends in various segments of the music industry. Here are some of the big issues that are front of my mind.
Whither the MP3 of streaming music?
Most of the people I respect in online music have been opining for on-demand streaming music for years. So, their first reaction has echoed that of my friend Lucas: music in the cloud will now be a reality. But *how* it will become a reality matters too, and I think that’s been lost a bit in the discussion so far.
In the download world, an open format (MP3) pre-dated Apple’s entry. So, they had no choice but to support it in order to make their software and devices backwards compatible. In fact, it’s easy to forget today that the market for iTunes and the iPod was largely built around satisfying the needs of consumers of illegally acquired music (the iTunes Music Store was actually launched over 2 years after iTunes debuted). If not for that pre-existing market condition, I don’t think it’s hard to believe the iPod would only play AAC music files (Apple’s proprietary format). Remember that no one could compete with the iTunes Music Store as a legitimate storefront for online music until less than two years ago, when the labels agreed to let Amazon and others sell in MP3 format so that customers could play the songs sold by retailers other than Apple on iPods. (This in itself was an interesting saga with Jobs publicly justifying why Apple would never support someone else’s proprietary format on their software/devices and why they would never license Apple’s DRM to others. In the end, the labels’ fear of Apple’s growing control of the online music value chain was greater than their fear of piracy and they called Jobs’s bluff by actually licensing MP3 sales.)
The relevance here is that there is no MP3 equivalent for streaming music — no pre-existing open standard that consumers will require Apple to support before they buy a wifi-enabled iPod (aka iPod Touch). Just like there is no (legitimate) way to play films or tv shows not downloaded from the iTunes Store on your Apple TV, there will be no way to consume on-demand streaming music from other sources in the native player on your iPod. You will of course continue to be able to install separate third-party applications, like Pandora or Spotify, to manage and play streaming music you acquire through those services. But, that silo will continue to be incompatible with iTunes and the rest of your music library while the native player will offer you an integrated consumption experience across downloaded and streaming music. Maybe this will still be good enough for the small number of power-users who care enough to want an alternative to the Apple offering (like those of us today who install the eMusic or Amazon download manager to have a somewhat equivalent purchase alternative to the iTunes Music Store).
However the segment for whom I think the lack of an open streaming music standard is potentially most harmful is the actual artists and the growing industry of direct-to-fan enablers, including my good friends at Topspin. Direct-to-fan sales are better for the artist because they get to own the customer relationship with the people who are *their* fans to begin with (see my boy Ian explaining to Wired how important this is) and they can have more control of the offering and better margins by cutting out middle-men like Apple. Today, I can buy an album directly from Topspin artists like Get Busy Committee or Fitz & The Tantrums (two of my current faves) in MP3 format and play it in iTunes and on my iPod. How exactly are they going to sell me streaming music outside of iTunes (or a 3rd-party service)? There are products like MobileRoadie, which artists can use to create their own branded iPhone/iPod app. But, I don’t foresee consumers being willing to switch apps every time they want to hear a new artist (and forget about a streaming playlist with multiple artists).
Licenses, schmicenses!
Several commentators on the Lala deal have noted that their licenses with the labels expire in the case of an acquisition. And I hear from insiders that Apple has already had requests for streaming licenses denied by at least some labels. Here’s why neither of those things matter.
Apple is going to build a kick-ass streaming experience natively integrated into their service/software/device stack of the iTunes Music Store, iTunes, and the iPod. They are going to get the thousands of independent labels, aggregators like TuneCore who represent individual artists, and at least one or two major labels (my bet is EMI will be first) to give them streaming licenses on a critical mass of music. Then, they are going to use the iTunes Music Store to promote the shit out of both downloads and streaming (most likely bundled) from the artists for whom they have streaming licenses while at the same time freezing out promotions for any hold-outs.
This is a non-issue IMHO and every song you can buy as a download from the iTunes Music Store today will be available for streaming within a year of launch (just ask NBC how well playing chicken with Apple works).
Sustaining innovation doesn’t work.
This post is already way longer than I intended, so I’ll leave this point as more of a footnote. On-demand streaming music is the future. Everyone I respect believes it, Apple believes it, it is the logical conclusion of the path the music consumer experience has been on since Napster. And yet it is a business widely viewed as “toxic” by investors, several of whom in recent months have demonstrated they think so little of its future potential that they are willing to take steep losses on their investments to get out. What gives?
Not only were these businesses endorsed by the major labels, both iMeem and Lala actually had labels as investors (as does Spotify). The reason that on-demand streaming music is a great product but shitty business is because the license fees demanded by the labels make it impossible to make money with any kind of offering that consumers will think is reasonable. It’s somewhat counter-intuitive that a vendor who is an investor wouldn’t be willing to adjust their pricing in order to preserve the value of their investment. But Warner Records, in particular, made it clear that are happy to spend tens of millions of dollars co-opting companies they see as potential threats and running them out of business in order to prevent hundreds of millions of dollars in (perceived) cannibalization.
By only pursuing ‘sustaining innovations’ that perpetuate what has historically helped them succeed, companies unwittingly open the door to ‘disruptive innovations’.
In other words, by trying to take an innovation and use it only to perpetuate and/or protect legacy business models, incumbents give new entrants the opportunity to do things the way the market actually wants them to be done regardless of how they have been done in the past. By trying to force LaLa from being a potentially disruptive innovation into a sustaining innovation, Warner Music and the other major labels unintentionally drove them into the arms of Apple, still the biggest threat to the legacy model the labels are trying to preserve. (Studios and networks trying to “de-fang” Hulu, take note.)
The Ringers are an LA band fronted by Joe Hursley (aka White Gold). I first caught them opening for Fool’s Gold at one of Little Radio‘s Summercamps in August (see 3rd video below) and they stole the show. The music has started to grow on me, but the performance is pure LA punk and cannot be ignored. If you like to rock, don’t miss a chance to see them live.
Fixed to Flexible – The Ebook – A free 37 page eBook on high-level microeconomic business theory with solid practical examples. The primary focus is on margin, specifically the pricing and cost strategies that go into that equation. It's a very quick read, concisely and clearly written with very illustrative (if somewhat over-simplified) examples.
For me, the most interesting ideas were on 'constructing value' for a previously unknown product. First, you need to have a compelling free offering so there is minimal risk to customers trying your new product. Secondly, you should take the lead in setting the perceived value of your new product by using an 'anchor' of premium pricing even if you end up selling at a discount to it.
"We really enjoy the work that we’re doing and we don’t want to cheapen it. Consciously or unconsciously — probably both — we’re trying to create a manageable way to earn a living and still maintain our sanity. We value time as much, if not more so, than money."
Give-A-Fuck-O-Meter – Saving this to send to people in the future when they tell me something I could care less about.
The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage – Conservative attorney Ted Olson, a member of the legal team challenging the federal constitutionality of California's Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage, explains his rationale for participating in the case as a conservative American who wishes to preserve and forward the fundamental principles on which this country was founded:
"Conservatives and liberals alike need to come together on principles that surely unite us. Certainly, we can agree on the value of strong families, lasting domestic relationships, and communities populated by persons with recognized and sanctioned bonds to one another. Confining some of our neighbors and friends who share these same values to an outlaw or second-class status undermines their sense of belonging and weakens their ties with the rest of us and what should be our common aspirations."
YouTube – Sugar: The Bitter Truth – A very interesting, if long and sometimes quite technical (it is a med school lecture) explanation of the scientific, socio-economic, and political reasons our food is making us less healthy as a nation (and ultimately a planet) in the last 30 years. It centers around increasing our refined sugar intake, in particular fructose, which has the same long-term chronic health effects as alcohol.
How Best Buy plans to beat Wal-Mart – Dec. 1, 2009 – A strategy to make Clayton Christensen proud. Best Buy is betting that the consumer electronics and computer markets have not yet reached a good enough point where cost is the only factor. By providing an integrated buying/service solution with their in-house Geek Squad division, Best Buy hopes to differentiate from retailers like Wal-Mart who are commoditizing the purchase experience. In this case Best Buy is playing the Apple Computer role to Wal-Mart's WinTel approach.
What’s strategic for Google? – An interesting and concise analysis of Google's various product/business initiatives using a simple but intuitive strategic framework.
Paul Buchheit: Open as in water, the fluid necessary for life – A very interesting rationale for the potential common good of social media behavior that is increasingly referred to as "over-sharing". The more we share about what we think and do, the more information will be available to help improve ours and others' future decisions.
"The basic pattern of openness is that better access to information and better systems lead to better decisions and better living. This general principal is broadly accepted, but we're just now discovering that it also applies to the minutiae of our lives."
The New Music Business Model: Imogen Heap « Deep Dive Marketing – A very thorough account of the many ways Imogen Heap is using different social media services (i.e. Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, uStream) as a cohesive whole to build deeper relationships with her most engaged fans.
Op-Ed Contributor – Wall Street Smarts – NYTimes.com – A deceptively simple (yet likely true) explanation of the underlying cause of the financial meltdown: the level of Wall Street’s intelligence finally caught up with that of its greed.
Letters of Note: Okay, you lazy bitch – A great letter from Hunter S. Thompson to a production executive on film adaptation of his book “The Rum Diary.” If you know anything about the film business, you know that sometimes cursing and threats of bodily harm are more than appropriate, they’re necessary 🙂
100 years of Big Content fearing technology—in its own words – Ars Technica – A well-compiled overview of the arguments used by content industries to stifle various production and distribution innovations from the gramophone to the DVR. The overriding theme being that incumbent content producers are more inclined to seek government intervention (usually through sensationalist fear-mongering tactics) to protect old models in the face of new technologies rather than to figure out ways to improve their businesses to take full advantage of the benefits these technologies afford.
30 Under 30 2009 – Hype Machine Profile – Very nice write-up of my friend Anthony Volodkin, founder of the Hype Machine, named #27 in Inc. Magazine’s 30 Under 30 for 2009. He definitely should have been higher 🙂
The power of no reward | Derek Sivers – An interesting article on the difference between ‘Social Mindset’ and ‘Market Mindset’. Actions driven out of personal volition are more authentic and the motivation is more powerful though more difficult to activate. Whereas actions driven out of financial calculation are by definition more mercenary — easier to activate, but of less value and harder to maintain. If you can appeal to someone’s ‘Social Mindset’, you cheapen your offer by invoking their ‘Market Mindset’.
The Power Of Passed Links – A framework for thinking about the relative value of inbound traffic from different sources based on conversions (however one defines them) and growth. The hypothesis is that links passed from friend to friend via channels like Facebook and Twitter will have significantly higher conversions.
Official Google Blog: Leave the math to us: Advertisers increase their profits using Conversion Optimizer – “Each and every time someone types in a search query, AdWords runs a new keyword auction. Advertisers who are still bidding on a cost-per-click basis will be using the same bid in many different auctions, so sometimes their bid may be too high or too low. However, for advertisers using Conversion Optimizer, we’ll automatically adjust the bid for each of these auctions so that it can hit the sweet spot more often, helping the advertiser to make more money.”
Seed is the new Series A for VCs | VentureBeat – A good overview on the move by later stage investors into earlier “seed” rounds along with advice for entrepreneurs on raising a pre-Series A round.
These are my Delicious links for September 2nd through September 6th:
Taking the Initiative: Carl Pope’s Blog – Sierra Club – This is as depressing as it is sickening. We progressive Americans who were finally so galvanized by our reaction to 8 years of Bush/Cheney coupled with the bright promise of the change Obama could bring have reverted back not just to complacency, but worse to underestimation. Just because *we* are immune to the politics of fear, does not mean they have lost their power — no matter how absurd the claims in question (whether it be death panels, Obama's racism, or Van Jones's "extremist views and coarse rhetoric"). Remember how much we underestimated George W. Bush in the 2000 election? We have to stop assuming people fact check outrageous claims and recognize that inflammatory propaganda must be stopped in it's tracks and those who perpetuate it must have their credibility undermined so they can't continue to spew it. Say something enough times (especially on tv) and too many people will start to think it's true.
Kareem Mayan’s Weblog – How I Discovered My Life’s Purpose – I've never really thought about coming up with a mission statement for my life, but that's what my friend Kareem has spent the last 18 months doing. I'm very excited that he feels he has come up with a verbal distillation of his life's purpose (even if I personally find the actual language to be a bit vague). I look forward to seeing the ways he comes up with to pursue this purpose.
I agree with a lot of Kareem's thinking on these matters (which is probably why we're friends 🙂 ) and greatly admire (and somewhat envy) his courage to so aggressively pursue these questions. So, it's great to be able to ride along on his journey even from afar. My favorite line from this post is: "The opposite of quiet desperation, I reasoned, is magnificent fulfillment."
I’ve been quite absorbed with my startup the last couple months, but it’s been hard to escape the derailment of the Obama administration’s political agenda — in the form of the current healthcare “debate” — less than a year after sweeping to office with a seemingly overwhelming mandate. As much as I’ve pushed these concerns to the back of my mind, I can’t help but at least subconsciously find the reemergence of the politics of fear depressing.
The right-wing extremists we united to vanquish only 10 months ago haven’t disappeared; they just went underground long enough for us to lose focus and for them to prepare their insurgency. This political battle is Afghanistan, not Iraq (or more accurately, what Iraq was supposed to be) — it’s not quick or sexy and the minute we let up, the enemy will take advantage with sneak attacks.
With enough stability regained that the everyone no longer feels we’re in crisis mode and Obama in office long enough for people to realize he’s not some kind of miracle worker and that the solutions to the problems we face are going to take meaningful time and effort, the right-wing has turned up the intensity of their guerilla war by reengaging in the politics of fear. Healthcare is obviously the most conspicuous theater (‘death panels’, really?!), but Glenn Beck’s unabashed claims that Obama is a racist, the “outrage” over Obama’s back-to-school speech, and now the forced resignation of Van Jones are all part of a pattern we cannot afford to ignore.
This post was prompted by one from Carl Pope, Executive Director of the Sierra Club, on the Van Jones debacle entitled “We All Blew It“. I couldn’t agree more, and it made me realize this is a problem that is only going to escalate if we don’t do something to stop it. We progressive Americans, who were only finally galvanized by our reaction to 8 years of Bush/Cheney coupled with the bright promise of the change Obama could bring, have reverted back not just to complacency, but worse to underestimation.
Just because *we* are immune to the politics of fear, does not mean they have lost their power — no matter how absurd the claims in question (whether it be ‘death panels’, Obama’s racism, or Van Jones’s “extremist views and coarse rhetoric”). Remember how much we underestimated George W. Bush in the 2000 election (regardless of whether he legitimately won, none of us thought it would ever even be close)? We have to stop assuming people fact check outrageous claims and recognize that inflammatory propaganda must be stopped in it’s tracks and those who perpetuate it must have their credibility undermined so they can’t continue to do so much damage. Say something enough times (especially on tv) and too many people will start to think it’s true. The more unsubstantiated and/or downright false claims we allow the Glenn Becks of the world to shout from the rooftops, the further they will push the boundaries. We cannot afford to let these extremists define the terms of engagement — if you have to answer questions on ‘death panels’, you’ve already lost.
The politics of hope are a challenge of patience and understanding, while politics of fear pander to our desire for quick fixes and to blame others. Getting people to think beyond sound-bites and seek substance is no easy task, but we have proven it can be done. Let’s not let all that hard work be squandered by neglecting to follow through.
I won’t lie, I’ve found the continued emails from the White House and Equality California (the No on Prop 8 folks) annoying. But I realize now that’s because they remind me I can and *should* be doing more. I’m going to start by phone banking for Equality California this week, because if I don’t participate then I don’t have a right to complain.
Raphaël—JavaScript Library – Raphaël is a small JavaScript library that should simplify your work with vector graphics on the web. If you want to create your own specific chart or image crop and rotate widget, for example, you can achieve it simply and easily with this library. Used by Thingfo.com.
Hitwise Intelligence – Robin Goad – UK – An interesting post about Twitter traffic growth in the UK. But, the most interesting part is the chart showing sources of traffic for various vertical categories of websites. Notably that over 40% of traffic to sites in the 'Entertainment' category is coming from either Twitter or Facebook. This reinforces my hypothesis that social media is a particularly powerful marketing channel for content.
The Smart Growth Manifesto – Umair Haque – HarvardBusiness.org – 20th century economies are limited to unsustainable, unfair, brittle, dumb growth. Smart growth is more sustainable, equitable, and resilient based on 4 pillars:
1) Outcomes, not incomes
2) Connections, not transactions
3) People, not product
4) Creativity, not productivity
The inefficient legacy technologies for measuring growth forced us to reduce our understanding of it to purely quantitative terms that don't accurately represent the whole point of progress: to advance humankind. People do not measure happiness and satisfaction in purely quantitative terms, yet those have become our de facto measures of success. Now that we have the capabilities to measure the effects of qualitative goods, we should abandon our legacy tactics that reduce progress to mere numbers.
Confessions of an Executive Producer: earn it – "The irony is consumers have never been easier to find but never harder to reach. As I see it brand/consumer relationship is analogous to that of a married man to his mistress. For years the affair was a simple proposition. He wined and dined her. Bought her jewelery. Paid her rent. In return he got laid and left guilt free at the end of the evening. After years of this pattern, the mistress begins to feel used and unsatisfied. She desires more than material goods. She wants conversation. She wants to be listened to. She wants to be in a relationship. Much to the displeasure of the adulterer, sex can no longer be bought. It has to be earned. I believe the same thing is happening today with the brand/consumer relationship. Brands must earn consumers time not simply purchase it. The problem is they don't know how and don't seem eager to learn."
the blip.tv blog : blip.tv: the next generation – "Over the course of the last century the television networks (and their younger cable siblings) have evolved into nearly perfect businesses. Unfortunately, however, they have optimized for a historical condition: an oligarchical economy of scarcity. The networks are perfect for an era of expensive production, limited distribution and ubiquitous attention.
2009 is not 1949. Modern consumer electronics and the Internet have ushered in a new economy of plenty. Production costs have decreased at an astounding rate. Distribution has become ubiquitous. It is no longer necessary, for all but the most ambitious projects, to seek out a studio to bankroll your pilot and a network executive to green light you for a time slot. Your talent and work ethic are now greater predictors of your success than who you know."
How to Pitch to a VC or Angel – ReadWriteStart – A collection of high-level tips for startup investor pitches, including Guy Kawasaki's 10 slides / in 20 minutes / with 30pt font rule.
Maturation of the Twitter Ecosystem – A very cool presentation about how the ecosystem of Twitter applications has evolved over time (featuring a shout-out to TweetPo.st on slide 31).
LocalBunny Gives Businesses Custom Twitter Bots, But It Longs For Old @Replies System – LocalBunny is a new paid service targeted at small businesses that will auto-respond to keyword mentions on Twitter with @replies based on user-defined rules. The kinds of use-cases mentioned as examples are interesting and the app sounds good on paper. But, I'm not sure I'm fully convinced that auto-responses will be successful in a medium like Twitter with such a high value placed on authenticity.
BackType — Blog Archive » Tweetcount Widget & Plugin – Announcement of the new awe.sm-powered Tweetcount widget from BackType. It shows the number of times the current page has been tweeted using the BackTweets API and uses awe.sm to create new tweets.
Brand Mentions Preferred over Ads – eMarketer – Study showing that earned media (i.e. consumer/press brand mentions) and permission marketing (i.e. *solicited* emails) are more effective than paid media in general and interruption marketing (i.e. banner ads and pop-ups) specifically.
Digg the Blog » Blog Archive » DiggBar and Digg Short URLs – Digg reverses course on their URL shortener and states that they have no intention of marketing it as a conventional URL shortener. It is solely a way to share Digg pages.
10 Impressive New Implementations of Facebook Connect – TweetPo.st (né TweetFace), an application built by our company to connect Twitter and Facebook, was included as #7 on Mashable's list of "10 Impressive New Implementations of Facebook Connect". 🙂
Sharing on Facebook Now More Popular than Sharing by Email – Data from the AddToAny showing that Facebook is now the most popular sharing channel for their share widgets. This data claims Facebook has 24.0% of shares while email has only 11.1% of shares. However, this is inconsistent with ShareThis data from less than a year ago that still had email near 50% of all shares.
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