Disqus - Friends of aafter

Re: fredwilson.fm

BmoreWire — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 14:44:17 -0000

Hey, can you have Nathan share the server side source that he used?

Re: fredwilson.fm

BmoreWire — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 15:14:05 -0000

Nevermind..... Here it is.

http://blog.dankantor.com/p...

Re: fredwilson.fm

BmoreWire — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 17:06:15 -0000

1. make a tumbr account.
2. add the code to your tumblr page following these instructions.
http://blog.dankantor.com/p...
3. get any old free server (maybe godaddy or even geocities) post some mp3's on there
4. submit the url's of the mp3's (you can do as many non-hosted links as you want) or you can take mp3 links from other aggregators like seeqpod.com
5. style and re-host the page however and wherever you want

Re: How You Are Getting Here

BmoreWire — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 10:10:08 -0000

I have to assume #4 includes igoogle.

Re: The future of the "free internet"

BmoreWire — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 01:54:17 -0000

Wouldn't work. WSJ is doing that right now and it's a flop. Need to find a new model for media. Talented 1st party source journalism is a valuable resource but the big papers are saddled with pensions, unions, depreciating printing machinery, and massive warehouses. They also pay $10MM per year for access to the news wires. They need to go bankrupt to shed all of these costly liabilities and then re-emerge as an online news source of first party real journalism. Then their ad supported business model will be more than profitable and they can source the news wires for free via RSS feed. Pay per use won't work.

Re: JAY PARKINSON + MD + MPH

BmoreWire — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 00:19:32 -0000

Hmm, I wonder when drupal will have facebook connect. movable type is good but drupal is a lot for flexible and easier to add architecture and adapt to a more content related site and include a social network.

Re: If You've Got Suggestions For Boxee ....

BmoreWire — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 13:47:54 -0000

I'll have to wait for the windows version to leave my feedback.

Re: Mobile In/Mobile Out

BmoreWire — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 11:57:35 -0000

I want a dock where I can plug my Iphone in and have a full sized screen, keyboard, and mouse and a virtual hard drive port.

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

BmoreWire — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 14:20:43 -0000

Fred and Jeffery, you guys are missing an important part of journalism. The problem with using SAI as a news source is that, though I am a faithful reader and thoroughly enjoy SAI, it comes with Blodget and his team's slant. It by no means is honest journalism. It does in fact report the issues and current events in a timely fashion but it comes heavy handed with their opinion. For a blog to be a "true" news source, it needs to be straight reporting. Now, I am not naive enough to think that the NYTimes or Washington post doesn't come with some editorial slant but there is a strong effort to honestly report the facts. The difference between newspapers and blogs is that newspapers, sans the opinion section and columns, much like RickG said, build a career on having the relationships to do the fact finding and then report the facts in an un-watered-down manner. I know that Henry Blodget gets great inside information and and has built a career of using these relationships to get timely news, however he does NOT by any means stop at reporting the facts. Also, many bloggers like Blodget have no self governance or filter. For example Blodget breaking the story that Yahoo and AOL have merged probably at least 3 times by now base on a rumor. We all know he's just trying to boost his readership and he typically prints a correction within an hour of posting this, but you would never see the NY Times take that risk or compromise their reader's trust like that. With SAI and blogs like that we take their stories with a grain of salt because we know it's sensationalized news and we rely on Blodget to entertain us while he informs us. That however can't be the mission of a primary news source. They must have a strict code of reporting fact-based news and have a certain code of honesty and diligence before reporting a story.

I think the best way to shed light on this issue is to watch The Wire Season 5 and David Simon's follow up interviews. To be specific here is his interview in Salon. Start at "Making a profit was their downfall, essentially......"

http://www.salon.com/ent/tv...

The whole article is worth reading as well but I figured I'd start you where it starts to become relevant.

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

BmoreWire — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 14:23:57 -0000

Arguably the best true journalism I have seen about this issue was the episode of This American Life's podcast where Ira Glass interviewed the experts to explain exactly what was going on to the lay-person. Again, I think blogs are covering the topic and providing a lot more "interesting" commentary, but they are supplying the reaction and opinions on the story rather than reporting the facts of the story. So I wouldn't necessarily say they are "beating" journalists to reporting the news and the facts, they are more providing more interesting commentary....which don't get me wrong, I completely appreciate and enjoy...but it's dangerous when we confuse this with actual news reporting.

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

BmoreWire — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 14:39:06 -0000

Steve I agree with you. I personally volunteer myself to be part of a joint venture with one of these newspaper companies to take over their websites and experiment with the revenue model. The fact is a paper like the Baltimore Sun (my hometown paper) has an incredibly talented reporting, writing, and editorial department they are just can't get out from under all of their costs but to re-design and re-model their online version and set up technology resources to leverage that talented primary source reporting could be incredibly valuable and profitable if done the right way. Maybe have a section with completed stories and a section with developing stories with reporter's notes and corrections so that users can watch a developing story evolve. If you've ever read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail by Hunter S. Thompson, it's a collection of stories about the Nixon election that were printed in Rolling Stone and then collected into a book with HST adding filler and connecting some of the stories. Imagine if you could watch a masterpiece like that evolve and then be archived into a repository of masterpiece stories that are then added to over the years similar to a Wikipedia entry. Just the fact that a story would evolve over months or years and a story would have a certain demographic that could be actively sold to advertisers along the way similar to how a television show develops an audience and then it grows and is re-sold week after week to advertisers.

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

BmoreWire — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 14:45:48 -0000

Dave, I'd disagree. Fred is in fact an expert, but often times Fred is the story. He's the investor, he's involved with a lot of the companies that he writes about. He is also a moving part of the industry, so rather than being an expert on the story, he IS the story. Much like you cannot trust Barrack Obama to write his own story about his election because he only has his point of view. If a blogger/reporter interviews Fred and some of the CEO's to his companies, and gets market feedback about the industry, then they can synthesize a story, but much like you talk about Paul Krugen and Jay Rosen reporting off of the city administrator's blogs, Fred cannot be a trusted fact-reporter on his own companies and his own business that he's involved in.

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

BmoreWire — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 14:57:55 -0000

to your #5, the problem is truly talented salespeople are engaged in their content and the media that their company puts out there and can sell this. And good Marketing Directors/CMO's can find the good salespeople and buy adjacent content that will build their brand or draw an association to purchase or catch a user just-in-time to purchase in the consideration phase. The problem with that is good sales people and good marketers are hard to find. That's why google works so well, google can hire "order takers" (glengarry glen ross) and Marketers can have zero marketing intuition and it still works........i.e. I'm selling cell phones, I bid on the word 'cell phones'............DONE. You could teach a monkey to do that. But to build a brand like P&G or RJ Reynolds has done over the years for a white brick of soap or tobacco stuffed into a paper tube that draws on emotions, psychographics, experiences, attitudes, and lifestyles built buy years of buying the right media and the right creative......that's where you need to know what you're doing and unfortunately that's incredibly expensive.

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

BmoreWire — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 15:01:49 -0000

Agreed, but a true reporter would need to compile all of those opinions, interview Fred as well and report all sides of a particular story. That is honest journalism, not just one opinion and I think this is where blogging falls short to be a primary news source.

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

BmoreWire — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 15:10:52 -0000

I think I agree with Steve and my final thought is. I like reading blogs almost more so than news, but it cannot replace news just like NY Times cannot make their opinion section the front page because it's not in fact 'news'. It's the reaction quotes of news which is what blogging is.

Re: Scale Economics

BmoreWire — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 15:19:11 -0000

no, no, no. networks are all science. Which is the problem, and which is why network cpm's are plummeting. Investors want a model that makes them money and aren't necessarily concerned with whether it works. The art is missing, the engagement is missing. Math can only take you so far, trust me I've tried. Successful campaigns are those run by smart marketers who know their audience. Google has a model that works for search advertising and is much like the end-cap point of purchase unit in the super market. But why did they walk down the cereal aisle in the first place. That's what display has to solve and going for heavy tonnage and lower cpm's won't solve that problem. You might get lucky if your optimization is good enough and you have enough budget to burn through to find your audience, but more time needs to be spent on creatives, tracking, tactical adserving, and better mathematical models need to be discovered for engagement, this will provide true ROI, and as a side effect will drive up CPM's. (disclosure: i work at an ad network as well as owned an operated media company and social network so i have a full view and hopefully am less biased than just a network)

Re: Mobtown Labs - Wilco @ The Lyric Opera House, Baltimore

BmoreWire — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 17:58:32 -0000

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

BmoreWire — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 16:33:12 -0000

Yea, I laughed out loud when I read that and, I don't know if you watched the wire, but that scene could have fit into the final montage that wrapped up the series.

I agree that you can't get away from slant and after re-reading all of these discussions for a day, I kind of feel like the comments look like the notepad of a reporter covering a story. The only problem is the final story ends up in the readers head rather than being culminated into an actual final story. I think it would be cool if you could highlight and grab quotes from websites (pre-sourced with links), import all of your disqus discussions, and basically keep a "reporter's notepad" as your doing research for a blog entry. I think when a blogger goes to post a blog entry it's either a thought or reacting to another story in which they link that supports a thought that they have had for a while or recently developed. It would be great to be able to gather all of that information as you browse in zemanta under topics for possible later posts so when you actually post people can see a bibliography and source all of the quotes. I think something like this will enable bloggers to evolve into journalists and provide a richer experience to readers......Which I guess goes back to your original post that some of your companies are working on this.....

Re: Scale Economics

BmoreWire — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 16:34:40 -0000

You're probably giving my opinion too much credit but thank you, and I will continue to offer commentary.

Re: jay parkinson + md + mph = doctor in brooklyn

BmoreWire — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 20:30:14 -0000

I saw the brother guitarists in this band at the kitchen with the drummer from wilco doing some stuff they composed together. pretty incredible.

Re: Scale Economics

BmoreWire — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 11:12:05 -0000

Well, I think display is at a completely different stage in the purchase consideration funnel and the problem is that people are considering them equal. To say that display ads in social networks don't work, is not necessarily correct. As you drive down Interstate 95 and speed by outdoor ads for BMW and then you purchase a BMW, just because you don't use the 800 number on the outdoor ad for that dealership, doesn't necessarily mean that after years of exposure, BMW's display advertising had no affect on your purchase. A big problem is that people evaluate online display in the short term. I would love to see research or a study of a major online display spender's long term effect from heavy banner advertising.

Re: Kafka Interviews Boxee

BmoreWire — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:17:28 -0000

plug your computer into your TV

Re: Kafka Interviews Boxee

BmoreWire — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:37:17 -0000

So I was curious about what the economics of a cable business like Comcast were like and wanted to make the statement that if they cut their video business gradually and switch it all over to more expensive high speed internet business they would be better off. For example on average you pay $99 a month for phone/tv/internet. In reality you end up paying $130ish and after a year you are in the $150 zone. Then I was looking at their latest earnings release.....

7.3 million or 44% of digital cable subscribers have advanced
services such as digital video recorders (DVR) and/or
high-definition television service (HDTV).

I wish they would break that out into just DVR as I think that would be a huge stat for the success of Boxee. And a huge reason why Comcast should be afraid because DVR and HD are another $25 a month.

But back to my original point......if they became a bandwidth provider and scrapped video content delivery. They made $1.8 B in Q3 on internet only penetrating 30% of homes. Lets say adoption increases to that of their Video service in which they reach 69% of homes and they also up their average costs because they deliver faster speeds from $40 a month to $60 a month. Market penetration would get them to $4.2 B in revenue and the up in price gets them to $6.4 B. They made about $374 M from Advertising in Q3 (down 10%) and $347 MM from programming which would all get stripped away because they don't have a hand in the content anymore. And lets say they keep the Digital voice business because people figure it's easy to plug the phone into the modem and, hey, they're paying a lower overall bill now....so add $690 B (for argument sake lets say this doesn't grow and suckers remain suckers and Skypers remain Skypers).

So that gets them to about $7.1 B in revenue in the new Boxee world per quarter and only $1.4 B less than their current revenue while shedding the fees and administrative costs of running their video business. The costs are a lot harder to estimate.....but interesting none-the-less.

Re: Search Advertising - Up, Down, Or Flat

BmoreWire — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 15:39:24 -0000

I would love to agree with you but the truth is consumer need will never subside. Your argument is kind of flawed. People don't buy clothing and food because they are advertised to, they buy it because they are cold and hungry and to say that people will grow less cold and less hungry is incorrect. Advertising just re-directs that consumer need. For example people don't buy cell phones because Sprint advertises. They buy cell phones because they want to communicate with eachother in a mobile fashion and their lives are simplified and made easier by this invention. Verizon, Sprint, and At&t then fight over this consumer need by differentiating product, placement, price, and promotion in order to partition that consumer need and create brand loyalty and brand favorability. But if all 4 of them stopped advertising tomorrow, people would still buy cell phones and search for cell phones because they know they exist and they make life easier and have become a consumer need.

Banner/offline advertisers don't like google and like to dream up reasons why it will fundamentally fail. But the truth is they connected all consumers with all advertisers and matched supply and demand in the most efficient and simple manner. You want something you type it and click 'search' and there it is! Now, you do in fact need Banner/Offline advertising and brand building to point that fire-hose in your direction but google won't go away, it will not decrease, and it will only decrease in revenue if there are less dollars in each transaction of that supply/demand interchange (i.e. reduction in RPM/RPC) Look at Yandex or Baidu. They are in communist or post communist environments where advertising is restricted or unnecessary and they still thrive. People still want stuff, people still need stuff and if they have an easy way to find it, they will do it. You may not like it or the rules that they have laid out but they will not go away or subside.

Re: jay parkinson + md + mph = doctor in brooklyn

BmoreWire — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:47:24 -0000

this is awesome. I work in this industry. it is chaos.