Disqus - Latest Comments for marcelofrontiereconomy

Re: Comments - A Follow Up

marcelofrontiereconomy — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 10:13:23 -0000

But doesn't that nullify the value of the response? (I'm not saying that using tech, entry level employees, and/or outsourced employees to enliven and organize a comments thread isn't a good idea, it's just that it's a different concept than interacting with the author.)

Re: Comments - A Follow Up

marcelofrontiereconomy — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 02:40:43 -0000

I agree; it's definitely a big deal and something that would reward the reader and make it more likely for her or him to interact with the writer. My concern is that at five seconds per acknowledgment (an optimistic lower bound for anything not cut-and-paste, I think), that's more than an hour and a half of nonstop work to nod to 1200 comments, and a realistic estimate would probably be much higher. Granted, more than a thousand is at the high end of number of comments, but even at the lowest possible level of engagement, it's still a sizable commitment, and it didn't take into account the time needed to read those comments (if he isn't going to read the comment, his acknowledgment of it would be hollow, right?) The time investment is surely very worthwhile in some cases, I agree, but not necessarily in all.

It might be thought of as a tragedy of the commons: Krugman's attention span is finite (only so many hours in the week, after all). Getting two minutes of his time would be great for me, but if every one who commented on his columns got that, he'd have no time to do the other things that make him Krugman.

Re: Comments - A Follow Up

marcelofrontiereconomy — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:45:16 -0000

> You need to bring a street game to the mainstream world.

I agree. Most of us can give at least a token response to most people who want to interact with (praise, question, flame, etc) us, but when that demand grows beyond a certain level, this becomes impractical. Ultimately, the level of direct involvement is a personal strategic choice, not something that can be demanded (while still being true that writers who do engage their readers will probably gain from that).

Re: Comments - A Follow Up

marcelofrontiereconomy — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 08:06:52 -0000

It's an interesting dilemma --- Krugman himself doesn't scale conversationally, but there should be a way to scale what makes Krugman interesting. Division of labor: I'd rather have Krugman do what he does best, which isn't necessarily tending to a community (perhaps this should be a job position, Community Stoker?).

Re: From The Set Top Box To iTunes To Netflix

marcelofrontiereconomy — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 22:24:42 -0000

It shouldn't take long for the TV/computer monitor divide to disappear. Which is which should be a matter of ergonomics and internal decoration, nothing else.

Makes me a bit nostalgic. My first personal computer was a Spectrum (this was before the PC XT), which we had to hook to a TV. The more things change...

Re: Strange Knot

marcelofrontiereconomy — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 22:20:10 -0000

Siempre me gustó esa última frase, "Specialization is for insects." Aunque hay que reconocer que Lazarus Long tuvo el suficiente tiempo como para aprender y practicar todas esas cosas, y más. Necesitamos (o al menos quiero) vidas más largas y/o métodos de aprendizaje más eficientes.

Re: Streaming Kills Piracy

marcelofrontiereconomy — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 23:13:01 -0000

I think that's an artifact of current protocols and technologies. There's nothing making p2p streaming inherently impossible.

> But the good news is that as the media business wakes up and puts all the media we want out there in streams available on the Internet (paid or free - this is not about free), we see people streaming more and stealing less.

I'm not sure I follow the underlying logic of this phrase. Streaming != not stealing Stealing != p2p. And that's leaving aside the highly debatable "piracy == stealing" equation. Law breaking? Arguably. Stealing? Less clear. "Wrong"? Even harder to establish.

Ultimately, this is a generation that understands, down to their bones, that information has zero replication cost. That knowledge isn't going to go away.

Re: The Fine Line Between Informing and Spamming Your Followers

marcelofrontiereconomy — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 22:03:20 -0000

It's a bit of a cycle, isn't it? The more popular a medium/protocol/network becomes, the more valuable as a spam target, and henceforth the less valuable, and we move on, no, we *add* another network, followed a few months to a couple of years later by spammers/marketing people/etc. There's nothing particularly novel about Twitter in that sense.

Re: Does Anyone Use Chrome?

marcelofrontiereconomy — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:47:48 -0000

Google's apps live in the cloud and the existence of a fast browser is imperative. Chrome being that browser is not relevant.

Very true.

Re: Is The Exclusive Deal Between Apple and AT&T Anticompetitive?

marcelofrontiereconomy — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:51:08 -0000

I think it will eventually boil down to the question of what would it take to sidestep carriers. The economics of countrywide RF coverage feel like a weird legacy compared to the Internet networking model.

Re: Aggregate, Curate, Publish To Create Local Media

marcelofrontiereconomy — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:25:50 -0000

I agree very much with the assessment, although I think individuals might have a relative advantage in coming up with a voice, and social networking tools reduce some of their scale disadvantages when it comes to communities. In sales and curation, though, I don't see (most) individuals competing successfully with even small organizations, if nothing else because curating material scales in a different way than creating a voice. I do wonder about site looks. On one hand, I'm very swayed by good design, but on the other, some of the sources of news I trust and follow the most I only read through their feeds.

Re: Aggregate, Curate, Publish To Create Local Media

marcelofrontiereconomy — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 07:40:36 -0000

As Mark wrote, everyone is a publisher today (great phrase!). This also means everybody is a competitor. In that regard, I'd like to know more about how you see the competitive advantage of a local media like this versus, say, my Facebook/Twitter/etc network of contacts? (of course, it's not that my friends are producing either more of better content in objective terms, but it'd certainly be *very* narrowly targeted to my interests). I think that local media is a great field for new companies, but that's a term in the equation that I haven't seen discussed much yet.