DISQUS

Nic I wonder how long twitter will be able to sustain this: 1) Is it just a feature? 2) Neilsen points to Attrition being very very high. http://tinyurl.com/cyr3l7 haven't you found it becoming just far less useful? http://tinyurl.com/c4yawk

Brilliant post. Couldn't agree more. you nailed it.

Nic I think you're completely missing the point.

http://www.thecoffeeshopsofmayfair.com/2007/10/...

It's not what you can auction them up to in the short term, it what value these businesses create over the longer term.

Nic, you've got me excited. spill the beans. You don't quite say how you think you can make money from "passion and data which resides in their user base and profiles."

If its not advertising then how else are you suggesting they make oney? Selling their own syndicated products and services?

Nic
I like this commentary on virtual worlds.
http://russelldavies.typepad.com/advertising_pr...

I would chance my hand that the new worlds that you're describing are the first generation. that all these big boys need to fail first before we get into the The Slope Of Enlightenment?

Hey Nic, I don't agree with you. You are arguing that larger content owners & studios will start producing lower quality content. To do that, shows like Lost and 24 will no longer be able to pull big audiences. To do that consumers will have to stop enjoying slickly made content, or the tail (and UGC) producers will have to start producing better quality content. Neither of which will happen in my view.

I think what is now, and will continue to happen, is that we have a market where consumers are very happy to pay top dollar for some quality content (like Ralph Lauren) and happy to snack the rest of the time on cheaper UGC and tail stuff (like Primark or Vente Privee): both products exist together and both have workable models...

Good point.

I'm only jealous that Southampton only seem to win one in 5!

Is it an indicator of just how far chelsea have fallen that scraping a win against an Arsenal reverse team is of such obvious importance to them?

Interesting post Nic. Wanted to develop one of your points:

" difficult to see a single service provider striking enough deals to make much of that long tail of content available"

I agree. And if this is the case, then it follows that consumers will need to go to source (i.e. a website) to watch various pieces of TV / Video. In practice this will mean many sources. And here is the problem. I don't think consumers will want to keep going to lots of different sources. Instead they will aggregate. And if they aggregate then they will need an interface to aggregate (which is why I think Netvibes and Pageflakes are not only cool but also only the tip of the iceberg of what aggregators can become).

Behind this, is in my view, a more interesting debate: who is doing the aggregating? For example, right now, millions of people trust the editorial choices that Channel 4 makes. (Channel 4 is simply an aggregator which makes choices about what certain demographics want to watch). Except Channel 4 are lucky because they also get to sell ad inventory.

My questions are these:

Q1. Rather than trusting my aggregation to Channel 4, what if I “outsourced” this and simply used the aggregation choices of my pals, or community? Who is creating this infrastructure on the web? YouTube? (sort of). Joost? (half way there within a semi closed environment.) There’s lots of white space….

Q2. YouTube is a crude aggregator and is completely failing to get advertising to fund content: just last Friday Viacom axed all of their content on YouTube saying Google was failing to “extend.. fair compensation to the people who have expended all of the effort and cost to create (content).” Channel 4 sell the ad-inventory because they “commission” the shows. I.e they pay the content creators. Could this happen online? If so wouldn’t be back to the old “closed system”?