Disqus - Latest Comments for phillipbaker

Re: Some More Thoughts On Kindle and Reading On An iPad

Phillip Baker — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 20:00:01 -0000

I'm from Dartford so there is at least one other. Nice to meet you! I grew up close to the Heath and spent a lot of time riding my bike there as a kid.

Re: The Always Logged In Experience

Phillip Baker — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 10:03:18 -0000

Boxcar does notifications for iOS and seems similar to the Android functionality you described the other day, maybe someone mentioned it already.

Re: Going Direct

Phillip Baker — Sun, 23 May 2010 08:38:05 -0000

Hey, and Disqus auto-linked those two Web addresses, is that new as well? Very slick!

Re: Going Direct

Phillip Baker — Sun, 23 May 2010 08:36:24 -0000

Me three. Although, I recently discovered the 'Context' button on Disqus.com and that saves me a lot of time loading AVC.com :-) It would be even better if the excerpts were a tiny bit longer.

Re: Going Direct

Phillip Baker — Sun, 23 May 2010 08:31:41 -0000

I think that regularity and consistency could be a big reason why so many people choose to access this blog directly.

Re: Social Gesture Index

Phillip Baker — Mon, 10 May 2010 13:47:52 -0000

Hi Sam,

Two great additions, thanks!

What's your startup? Feel free to post about it here or email me at the address listed in the sidebar.

Phil

Re: On Pagination, Zip Codes and Zynga

Phillip Baker — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:32:34 -0000

Great story. About a month ago I found out my cousin's 14-year old daughter and all her friends were playing FarmVille. Since then her younger sister has persuaded them to let her create a Facebook account specifically for FarmVille (and nothing else) because all of her friends are playing it too. It seems Zynga is also good for Facebook.

Re: Tracked.com

Phillip Baker — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:42:48 -0000

Will do, thanks Miles.

Re: Tracked.com

Phillip Baker — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:50:07 -0000

Ditto :-) Looking forward to testing the new features, I'd seen a few cryptic references to communication, now it makes sense.

Re: Comment Length

Phillip Baker — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 08:25:34 -0000

Great idea. The total number of replies under each sub-thread is definitely worth considering as a metric to filter comments. The number of people in any given sub-thread would probably be good too.

Re: Comment Length

Phillip Baker — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 08:17:13 -0000

The line between posts and comments can definitely blur. Posting a comment keeps it in the thread but linking back arguably attaches you comment more closely to you so that people that follow you (your blog) are more likely to see it. We need a better way navigate people and content.

Re: Comment Length

Phillip Baker — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 07:39:07 -0000

Concise writing is probably best for most forms of Web content because it costs less attention, so short, high-impact posts are the best deal you can get.

Re: The Web and Education: We Need Scale!

Phillip Baker — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:32:09 -0000

Very interesting. On one side, free services attract engaged users through self-selection and there is no limit on scale. On the other, enterprise users are not self-selected and I'd guess only a small percentage are engaged but they are pre-grouped for scale purposes, bound together by educational institutions. In the second case, payment serves as a filter to identify engaged users. Does that sound accurate? I'm trying to get my head around the structural problem.

In a re-imagined world, do you think it would be possible to start by creating a Facebook (free service with self-selected and therefore engaged users) for education that attracts students directly, and then charge colleges to connect or take ownership of their students in some way?

Re: Statistics on Retweet

Phillip Baker — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 16:46:35 -0000

Hi Michael,

One (completely separate) study found that bots accounted for 24% of tweets, which makes 76% manual, I guess (http://mashable.com/2009/08/06/twitter-bots/). Lots more stats from that study are posted here: http://sysomos.com/insidetwitter/.

Re: Scanning Headlines

Phillip Baker — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 08:13:47 -0000

The NY Times has also already started to link to other sources from its front page, at least as a test (they are asking for feedback). There is a link under the masthead for Times Extra which inserts several links under story excerpts. It's not pretty, but it is there.

I love that the Times has so many experiments out there and I don't think it gets enough credit for trying most of the time. But, I also fear the way many of these experiments are released - by tip-toeing around the main site - will negatively affect the results it sees and what it learns from each one.

Re: Chris and Malcolm are both wrong

Phillip Baker — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 20:31:36 -0000

Really great post, Brad. There is a ton to think here and my head is spinning. It's interesting that you mention these companies are providing services more like governments than traditional firms. It makes perfect sense but it also feels a little troublesome.

Governments make money by exercising control and imposing taxes, fees and fines. They also force through disruptive changes, and not in the good sense! Facebook has experienced a couple of user revolts over redesign already. I don't use Facebook very much to post but I can never leave because my friends are there. I love that as an exit barrier for Web services but there is a small practical difference and a big emotional difference between exit barriers and captivity.

Leaving 'the people' alone and imposing fees on third parties for access to (or participation in) networks might well solve this by creating revenues and leaving users happy. But, if third parties are the paying customers in the traditional sense, it exposes firms to the risk of corruption (also a feature of governments!). Although, I suppose there is no reason why it can't work well if firms can resist this and choke-off demand by charging third parties for access to or participation in the network.

I guess it means that as the commercial user-firm relationship changes from buyer-seller to contributor-custodian (?), the trust relationship and responsibilities change as well. I think I'm just wary of the potential conflicts when the custodian is also a seller in the relationship with third parties.

Re: Thoughts on Free

Phillip Baker — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 10:17:29 -0000

Hi Barry,

The 'free' debate had left me a little unsatisfied as well. It felt like something was missing and Brad's post offers a new perspective. For example, it strikes me that consumer news sites are missing the social network piece. They made online content free but they did not start to capture the other side of the exchange (or even see it as an exchange, which is Brad's insight), by connecting users to each other and capturing their inputs (comments, sharing, social gestures etc).

Phil

Re: Freemium and Fanatics

Phillip Baker — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 14:59:26 -0000

Thanks for your comment. I read your post and it's an interesting question. If there is strong network component, i.e. the overall service becomes richer or more useful for every additional user that joins, having more unpaid users could be more valuable (assuming the bills can be paid by some other means).

I have tended to think of 'free' as a cost of marketing but it can be more than that if free users are contributing to a central data asset. Contributions could come in the form of user-uploaded content like photos on Flickr, videos on Tube etc, that are part of the user experience/usefulness of the service. The data produced by users viewing, clicking, sharing etc is also a type of contribution because that data can be aggregated and analyzed to create something else. In these cases free users become more than potential customers, they become a valuable and necessary part of the service.

The point I was trying to make is that not all users are the same. Some users are always more valuable than others and can be orders of magnitude more valuable. In these cases, I think there might be some conflict between growing a huge user base and creating deeper offerings for a smaller number of hugely more valuable users.

Re: Comments - A Follow Up

Phillip Baker — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 07:49:17 -0000

When comments get to unmanageable and unreadable levels, I think it also makes the ability to follow the comments of specific users (and hopefully journalists or other staffers) more valuable. A Disqus-like tool could help turn news/media sites into comment-driven social networks that foster the kind of engagement/community around content that media companies are looking for (as well as providing valuable data on users).

Re: Why Comments Matter

Phillip Baker — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 13:08:07 -0000

Great follow-on from the last post. Getting journalists involved in comments is one way to get users invested early like they are at Flickr and ultimately build a community around journalists/beats/stories.

Storing and seeing comments gives users a reason to register and I can envisage additional features built into the overall experience that interested/engaged/active users would pay for.

Re: Why Comments Matter

Phillip Baker — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 12:41:21 -0000

Not sure what your idea of cliff notes looks like (i.e. a summary of points of view vs. user selected/voted comments) and reviews are obviously different to comments but Amazon makes their reviews more useful with 'was this helpful to you?'

In fact, I may have posted a link to this article when you mentioned cliff notes once before, I know I've posted it somewhere before. Sorry for the repeat if it was here: http://www.uie.com/articles...

NY Times comments are sometimes great too, when I'm brave enough to wade through them, sometimes there are hundreds and hundreds. They have filters for comments although they're definitely not optimal yet.

This random column has zero editors selections and 88 readers recommendations (out of 135 total comments): http://community.nytimes.co....

Am sure the Disqus team will come up with something super smart, although this seems like quite a difficult problem.

Re: Monetize The Audience, Not The Content

Phillip Baker — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 15:57:08 -0000

I think the difference is that at Flickr there is a better on-ramp that gets user investment early and there is also a community.

There are dozens of other places to upload unlimited numbers of photos for free (I think, right?!) in the same way you can go elsewhere for news. I think one reason people choose to pay Flickr is because they have already uploaded/named/tagged/organized/shared photos within the free limits and it's more convenient to pay to avoid the hassle of starting over somewhere else (exit barrier). Another reason is the community that exists at Flickr that makes everyone's photos more valuable by being in one big pool.

I can see Jeff's point on this one, I think paying for an article that someone else is reading for free could be at least a psychological barrier for the best customers although I absolutely agree with your philosophy of charging users rather than charging for content. It might mean putting more effort on making that clear to customers that that is what is being sold.

I think Jeff's point also depends on how those first X visits happen. Someone going straight to the site as a loyal reader is different to someone who reads a lot of news and happens to get directed to the FT (or wherever) X times. I think it highlights the idea that these visits need to be used either to earn a registration or get users more invested like they are at Flickr.

Re: Monetize The Audience, Not The Content

Phillip Baker — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 15:03:33 -0000

Repeat business IS the result of services provided. Loyalty is making customers' second transaction/interaction/experience with you more convenient, more comfortable or more rewarding than making their first transaction/interaction/experience somewhere else.

I agree with you that in the case of media the answer doesn't lie in aiming for exclusive coverage of news facts that you can't get elsewhere because that is impossible.

Re: Monetize The Audience, Not The Content

Phillip Baker — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 14:38:36 -0000

Requiring registration for some articles and not others can be just as jarring as charging for some and not others. YouTube made a pretty strong case for making all content viewable.

I like the extra layer of registration but there has to be a reason to do it that makes services more useful. Registrations have to be earned just the same as payments.

Re: Active Users and Online Retailing

Phillip Baker — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:21:43 -0000

Even better would be distributed eCommerce (or at least the point of purchase) and the idea (not that it's original I'm sure) came to me when thinking about Glue. I absolutely think Glue could become part of the infrastructure for making what I'm about to describe happen.

I don't see why products should only be sold via the website of the company that sells them in the real world. Obviously there are department stores, mixed retailers and companies like Zappos that sell lots of brands of shoes but I imagine these are all based on traditional, offline distribution deals.

Products would most likely still need to originate and ship through the same company distribution networks but why limit the point of purchase to the company website? I would love to see the YouTube 'embed' moment happen for eCommerce where any user could grab product data such as images, descriptions, pricing etc and embed it in any site or any stream (and ideally in a standard format like RSS for products). What would be really killer is if that content, for example views or reviews, was personalized based on your social network connections as with Glue. People might create their own uncrate.com or occasionally insert products in their existing blog feeds or other social media streams. Whether or not some kind of affiliate payments or commissions are involved is another debate but it's something that seems reasonable and natural to me.

If I recall Fred has blogged about the concept of "superdistribution" a couple of times (which may be similar or the same idea as "social distribution" which I've seen mentioned more recently) and either of which may or may not be what I've described here! I think Fred has also blogged about blogging about products specifically.