Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 348

Thinking About The True Tools Of Change

The first step to understanding New Media is understanding the tools of change.

In 2009, I attended the O'Reilly conference, Tools of Change for Publishing in New York City. Now, I'll be giving a keynote address at the upcoming Tools of Change for Publishing in Frankfurt, Germany on October 11th, 2011. Last week, Joe Wikert (General Manager and Publisher at O'Reilly Media, Inc.) published a video podcast where we discussed everything from book publishing and new media to marketing and whether or not it's a good idea for book publishers to start putting ads in books.

You can watch it all unfold right here...

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Kickstart Your Own Economy

Can you test the market for a product without ever producing it?

CW&T is a self-described, "teeny design studio in Brooklyn" that is basically a two-person operation - designers Che-Wei Wang and Taylor Levy. I have a certain kinship with these two because we all love the Pilot Hi-Tec C pen, which unfortunately aren't readily available in North America. The .25 fine tip writes like a dream (better than most Mont Blancs out there, I think), but they look and feel like your average (and cheap!) ballpoint pen. As designers, they set out to create a simple, classy and indestructible pen that could house the 0.3 Black Hi-Tec-C Cartridge. What they came up with was something they dubbed Pen Type-A. Without knowing if there would be a market for Pen Type-A and not having the resources to turn this design concept into a business model, they turned to one of the hottest online destinations, Kickstarter, to get a feel for the potential market.

Some thing new. Something different.

Kickstarter is a simple crowdfunding platform that allows individuals to post their creative projects (everything ranging from music and film to technology and journalism) and start an online threshold-pledge system for the funding of the project In short: if you can't get a book deal, you can post your project to Kickstarter, define the budget and invite anybody and everybody who thinks it's a good idea to become a backer of the project. Kickstarter is a New York startup that was founded in April 2009. According to Wikipedia, the company has raised more than $75 million dollars for more than 10,000 projects since it got started. Even more impressive, Kickstarter has a project success rate of close to 45 per cent. (Success is defined by whether the project met or surpassed the threshold set by the project organizers). The company makes its money by taking a percentage of the funded projects.

It serves as an amazing place to see business, creativity and entrepreneurship come together.

What better way is there to know whether there is a market for your business idea than by putting that idea "out there" and enabling those who take an interest in it to put their money where their mouths are? These backers are paying customers, they just happen to be paying for it long before it is ever produced. In 2004, Chris Anderson (the editor-in-chief at Wired Magazine) wrote the best-selling business book, The Long Tail. The book describes a new economy that has emerged online because we are no longer limited by the physical retail store and how much inventory can be sold per square foot. Because of online commerce, it now makes sense for companies to sell products that used to only get bought by a handful of people because they can make serious money by selling the more obscure items to more people online, instead of only selling a lot of a limited number of more popular items.

Kickstarter is a great example of The Long Tail at work.

Apple co-founder, Steve Jobs. was known for saying that it's not the customer's job to know what they want. There's also that old Henry Ford saying, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses" (although the Harvard Business Review recently published an article that claims there is no evidence Ford ever said that. More on that here: Henry Ford, Innovation, and That "Faster Horse" Quote). Regardless, we tend to think true entrepreneurs are the ones who can see into the future. The ones who recognize a new market where there isn't one. If that's the case, it also explains why there aren't that many great entrepreneurs: the risk is huge and having a true vision for a product or service that doesn't exist can be a solitary place to be...

Until now.

Kickstarter does more than initiate interesting and obscure projects, it helps kick-start entrepreneurship by minimizing risk. With Kickstarter, business owners can figure out if they're producing something that people actually want, instead of producing something and then trying to create the market for it.

If that's not a game-changer, I don't know what is.

So, I bet your wondering how the Pen Type-A project went? Wang and Levy set a threshold of $2,500. On Aug. 15, they surpassed their threshold to the tune of $281,989 by more than 4,000 backers.

That sounds like a solid year of sales considering the product doesn't even exist yet.

The above posting is my twice-monthly column for the Montreal Gazette and Vancouver Sun newspapers called, New Business - Six Pixels of Separation . I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original versions online here:

Montreal Gazette - Kickstart your own economy .

Vancouver Sun - not yet published.

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Is There Too Much Baloney In Social Media?

Episode #270 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

Jason Falls is a New Media pro. He's proud to call himself a Social Media Consultant and he is, without question, one of the names you'll often hear bandied around when it comes to the best people to follow on Twitter or one of the better Bloggers to read. His Blog is called, Social Media Explorer, but he also runs an online training community called, Exploring Social Media. This week, his first business book, No Bullshit Social Media, was published (the book was co-written by Erik Deckers). He believes it's time to push beyond the clutter and get to the guts of the matter: how business can make real money by using Social Media. He's been on the show before and it's always a good time. Enjoy the conversation...

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast #270.

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Employees That Spend Too Much Time Online Are Stealing

It's called, "Time Theft," and it's becoming a bigger and bigger issue.

There have been all kinds of shenanigans by lazy employees throughout the history of business (currently, I have the image of George Costanza napping under his desk from that infamous episode of Seinfeld). The concept of "time theft" includes everything from having someone else punch a timecard on your behalf to falsifying your attendance. It's a huge issue. It's a sad issue, but is this the same as when an employee is caught spending too much time online doing things that have nothing to do with work? Are they, in fact, stealing time from the company? Doesn't it pain you to even think about this? Does this really happen? Are people so sad with their jobs (and their day-to-day lives) that they spend all day futzing around online instead of doing everything possible to make their work lives better?

Would you consider doing non-work related things online stealing from an employer?

In Friday's issue of The Globe & Mail, there was an article titled, Does surfing the Internet at work qualify as 'time theft'?. The crux of the article is about a government employee (for over 25 years) who was caught spending more than half of the work day surfing the Web (oh, and he had also downloaded more than 300 pieces of porn, too). He was fired and accused of "time theft," but the judge found him not guilty and had him reinstated (you need to read the article to get the full scope of why this decision was rendered). While I think companies need better provisions to know when employees are so dramatically taking advantage of their situation, it is an interesting thought: when you're at work, you are expected to be working. If you're spending your time doing everything else but you're work and you're still being compensated as if you are working, are you stealing from your employer?

You may not be stealing, but you are being stupid.

No one is going to be able to turn the tap off. If you start locking down and tracking people's online usage, all they have to do is bring in their own laptop with an Internet stick, use a smartphone, bring in their iPad, etc... I've often said that blocking people from online usage won't make them more effective, they'll simply replace their online activities with other things (like longer lunches, smoking breaks, coffee runs, talking on the phone or whatever). You won't be surprised to hear that I believe that majority of people are smart and want to do great work, so if you treat them like adults, they'll behave like adults. That being said, every time I Blog about this, I get countless business owners telling me the opposite.

Be better.

It's two very simple and easy words to remember. I used to say this to myself when I was an employee. I still say it to myself before I walk into our offices at Twist Image. My basic thought process is this: today is a new day. I'm walking into the office to start a new day. I have a choice. I can sulk and worry and fall prey to the politics that take place in every office or I can be better. I can do my best to be better than I was yesterday. I can do my best to be better in how I connect with our clients and our team members. With a spirit of "be better," it's hard to just hang around, clock watch or surf the Web.

Time wasted is stealing time... maybe from your employer, but definitely from your own life.

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Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #64

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, LibriVox, iambik, PressBooks, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:

Cargo Cult Science - Richard Feynman. "Richard Feynman is always enlightening. In this piece - laced with his groovy patter and hip sensibilities -he reminds us that much of science is sloppy and built on bad findings of others. In an age of information obesity, a skeptic's diet is a good thing. As Feynman says in this commencement address, 'we really ought to look into theories that don't work, and science that isn't science'." (Alistair for Hugh).

Reciprocal Altruism: Why the Valley Works and Why Not to Screw Over People - StartUpHoodlum . "It turns out that there's a good reason why Silicon Valley runs on a mixture of greed and altruism: game theory. The closely-connected environment and reciprocal favours are the basis for interesting game theory. I've seen this in my twenty years working with tech folks, but never spelled out this clearly." (Alistair for Mitch).

The Great Bank Robbery - Project Syndicate . "Talk about strange: US bankers paid themselves $2.2 trillion in the past five years." (Hugh for Alistair).

Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult - TruthOut . "The split between left and right is getting wider and stranger all of the time in the US. Here's a former Republican staffer with an inside view on what's going on in the Great Republic to the South." (Hugh for Mitch).

Why the Impossible Happens More Often - The Technium . "Kevin Kelly is not only the founding executive editor of Wired Magazine , he also happens to be one of the brightest thinkers when it comes to technology and digital culture (if you've never read his books, Out of Control or What Technology Wants , you really should). In this Blog post, Kelly takes a look at what true entrepreneurship is really all about (without really saying it): proving that something is, in fact, not impossible. We've heard stories like this countless times in our lives or smacked ourselves on the foreheads for not coming up with something that went on to change our society. It happens more than we think and it's something we should all be striving for." (Mitch for Alistair).

Great digital expectations - The Economist . "The writing is on the wall. It happened with video rentals (see the demise of Blockbuster) and it happened with CDs (see the demise of the music industry as we knew it). It's happening with books too. People will tell you that it's different with books (the feel, touch and smell of the paper), but Amazon will tell you otherwise. Even in Canada, the largest bookseller ( Chapters Indigo ) is starting to look more like a giftware store than a book retailer. This article starts off with a fascinating thought: as the digitization of books take hold, what is Ikea supposed to sell? We tend to forget the many other industries that become affected when one major industry becomes digitized. As computers become more portable too, there is less need for a home office, bookshelves, etc..." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.

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The Fleeting Value Of Content

Most content screams into an empty universe.

It's nice to create content with the intent of reaching a broad and targeted audience, but it's becoming harder and harder to do this. No matter how good the content is. Yes, the best content always rises to the top, but when the amount of content being produced rises exponentially and is being published at a frenetic pace, it becomes a lot harder for individuals to filter the signal from the noise. It's a challenge that many of us lamented as Blogging became that much more prevalent and commercial in the early 2000s, and it's becoming an even bigger challenge in a world where content is created in channels like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google +, LinkedIn and more.

Content is short. Content is long. Content is text, images, audio and video. Publishing content is free.

It has come to the point where it's no longer about publishing on a topic that no one else has covered (because it seems like every topic has been covered), but it's now a world of perspective. What a grand world this would be if I was the only one Blogging about New Media, Marketing, Advertising and Communications. What you get here is, simply, my own take on specific topics (and if you're hungry for others, just look to the left and click on some of the links in my Blogroll or check out Ad Age Magazine's Power 150).

This means two, big important things:

Making money with content is very hard.

Making your content resonate for a long period of time is very hard.

Being a publisher is very hard.

The Wall Street Journal published a fascinating article yesterday titled, Content Deluge Swamps Yahoo, that focused on how Yahoo (and other big online publishers) struggle to make money because, "As Web traffic explodes, Internet companies are struggling to profit off ads shown next to the articles, videos and other content offered to viewers. It's a simple rule of any market. The more information that is created, the more the value is reduced. And despite attempts to woo spending with bigger, bolder and more targeted ads, services that help consumers navigate that content, namely search, remain the big money makers online." Strangely enough, I was reading this article at the airport having just attended Yahoo's upfront event. What was Yahoo's response to this challenge of more content equaling a reduction in value? Why, more content, more channels and more content, of course. Don't take this as a slight against Yahoo (it's not), but this is how publishers (and this includes some Bloggers that I know, as well) react to this value reduction. They publish more in hopes of capturing or maintaining the audience that may be slipping away into other channels and - without really thinking about it - are simply adding more value reduction to all of their inventory.

Beyond the value, we're not spending a ton of time with all of this content, either.

A friend of mine has been grappling with a conundrum: should they release their next book with a publisher or simply give it away as a free e-book? If you sell a book, this immediately limits the ability to get the story to spread, but if they publish it for free - in a world where free content is everywhere - will that guarantee that their thoughts will be valued, spread, read and really thought about? It's a serious challenge for many people who create content. The HubSpot Blog published a post yesterday titled, Shelf Life of Social Media Links Only 3 Hours, that looked at a new report issued by the URL shortening service, bitly. Here's what they uncovered: "generally, links shared on Facebook, Twitter, and via direct sources like email or instant message have a shelf life of about 3 hours. This excludes YouTube, where people remain interested in links for more than twice that - 7 hours! And while you can expect that the majority of links will only remain interesting for less than 2 hours, others can generate a lot more interaction and clicks, lasting for more than 11 hours." For a great visualization of this, get ready for your head to spin: Business Insider - Chart of the day: The Internet Has A Short Attention Span.

You're doing great if your content can last 12 hours. How depressing.

Bloggers already know this. They post something that they think is ground-breaking, earth-shaking and game-changing and everyone is talking about it everywhere... for a couple of seconds... for a couple of hours... and then everyone is on to the next thing (and that Blogger is already on the the next Blog post). It's hard going if you're really looking for your content to make an impact. We're learning (as the world of content evolves) that it's hard to create value for content when it's not a scarce (or limited) commodity, and that most content has but a fleeting moment of time to get any true attention.

If that doesn't get you thinking about your content as media and as a marketing imperative, I'm not sure what will...

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Do Some Good. Right Now. Today.

I'm a parent. I've got two kids. Life changes when you have kids.

The truth is that life changes when you become an uncle (or an aunt) or when you have kids in your life. Prior to that experience, you tend to see kids screaming or having meltdowns in the airport and you think to yourself, "I'm glad that's not me." Now, when I see kids having a meltdown I feel for the parents and I want to help out in any way possible. Have you ever been to a children's hospital? That's when reality really kicks in. Being a parent has changed me... dramatically. I used to love watching boxing and UFC, but I can hardly stand violence or anything combative (this includes violent movies, etc...). I'm a sucker for a good story, and where I used to think that I was dead inside, I now shed a tear for some of the most inane things in life.

Suffering sucks.

With those emotional changes comes a complete disdain for things like war and strife. Our world is a very unbalanced place. For the amount of wealth and prosperity that many of us see, the majority of human beings on this planet struggle with access to the most basic of things (like clean water and medical attention). If you're reading this Blog - no matter how much money you have in the bank - you have hit the genetic lottery. You won. You have access to things like heat, shelter, food, water, etc... As much as suffering sucks, kids suffering sucks more... in fact, it sucks the most.

$20 is all that I am asking of you today.

I know that times are tough. I know that the job market is unstable. I know that you have bills to pay. I also know that you can - without a doubt - scrounge up $20 to save some children's lives. It is not a big ask and I never really ask this community for anything, but I am asking for your help and support today. Today is End Malaria Day. Kids are dying from malaria simply because they don't have a malaria net. They're cheap, easy to manufacture and they know who needs them. All we need is your help to make this happen.

What if I gave you hundreds of dollars in value for your $20? 

This isn't just an ask to make a blind donation to a good cause. In fact, it's not a donation at all. I was asked (along with 60+ other authors) to contribute to a book called, End Malaria (and it comes out today on Seth Godin's new publishing imprint, The Domino Project). The book is filled with gems from people like Seth Godin, Dan Pink, Chris Brogan, Charlene Li, Jeff Jarvis, Gary Vaynerchuk, Sir Ken Robinson... and the hits just keep on coming. The book costs $20 for the Kindle edition and $25 for the paperback. So, I'm asking you to buy a book (or 5 or 10 or 20 or 100 copies) that is filled with golden business goodness (and yes, I've read it and there is TONS of good stuff) and in doing so, all of the money ($20 from the sale of every copy will go to Malaria No More). How often in life can you buy a book with this many great thinkers and actually save lives at the same time?

I'll ask that you look at this differently.

You can do some good. Right now. Today. It's twenty bucks. In making that happen, you will get the End Malaria book as a souvenir to remind you not just of your good deed, but that kids (young kids, babies) are helpless and they need our help. A strong society is always judged by how we treat our most frail and vulnerable. These kids are our kids.

Will you help and be a true game-changer in our world?... and don't forget to kiss your kids tonight.

Here's how to buy the book...

End Malaria - Kindle Edition.

End Malaria - Paperback Edition.

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The New Gatekeepers

Blogging did many cool things to our world, but the coolest thing it did was remove the Gatekeepers.

The first time I heard the word "gatekeeper" it came out of Seth Godin's mouth. The idea that we (us, the audience, the public, etc...) no longer needed editorial gatekeepers to tell us what news is relevant (and in what order) was (and continues to be) a huge deal. We're no longer beholden to an editor at a known mass media entity to decide for us which news truly is fit to print and what makes it to the front-page of our newspapers. I still marvel at my Google Reader set-up. I can spend days and nights consuming content that I want, when I want it and in in the order of my choice. Beyond that, because publishing content is (essentially) free, the myriad of choices gives me access to information that I never thought I would have. Who knew that the day would come that I could have access to hundreds of different Blogs and news sites that only cover the topic of Marketing? If that weren't enough, I can now follow thousands of interesting Marketing professionals in spaces like Twitter, Facebook and Google +. This not only keeps me informed, but their infovore lives guide me to other interesting people, links and discussions. If that weren't enough, there is also audio and video podcasts on the topic of marketing being produced and published by the new gatekeepers.

Who are the new Gatekeepers?

You. You are the new gatekeeper. You decide what news is relevant and you decide how prevalent you want it in your lives. This is both a good and a bad thing. It's good if you're smart but it's bad if you're someone who is either uninformed or does not have the capabilities to understand the demands and importance of being slightly media savvy. It's also a big deal because you're not just consuming content anymore... you're creating it as well. In text, images, audio and video, many of us have become both content producers and publishing empires (in our own minds, at least).

Don't forget about serendipity.

As informed and up-to-date as I think I am, I'm in constant amazement by just how little I know and how quick I am to go to the sources that I know and love best (which are not, necessarily, the best sources for me to consume, but simply the ones I know). This may shock you, but I still pick-up and read the local daily newspaper. The serendipity of reading articles that fall outside of my areas of interest gives me additional perspectives, newer ideas and allows me to see some of the general issues and trends that are popping up in our culture. Each week, I do a link exchange with Alistair Croll and Hugh McGuire (you can see the latest one here: Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #63). Originally, the reason for this exercise was to point each other in a new direction. To show each other a link that we felt the other person might really appreciate (especially when considering how diverse our personal and professional backgrounds are). It evolved quickly. Suddenly, as each week would pass, I found myself looking for content for them. It was no longer about pointing them to something I found interesting in as much as it was about discovering something new. It has become a game. Weekly hunts for pearls of wisdom that aren't necessarily relevant to my day-to-day professional life. The evolution has been a huge learning curve. While it's only a total of six links every week (we each chose one link for one another), you quickly realize how the serendipity of hunting for news outside of your comfort zone and then reading news that was chosen by someone for someone else (like Hugh's links for Alistair) only further pushes your brain into newer arenas of discovery. Something I would never get if I was only gazing at my own RSS reader (and yes, this is also one of the best parts of Twitter... by a long mile).

Being a Gatekeeper is serious role.

It's easy to be lied to. It's easy for anybody to publish anything. It's easy for an individual's perspective to be seen as fact or news. When we removed the traditional gatekeepers, we also opened up the floodgates for anything and everything to get ranked or be placed on our radar. We have to be both diligent and respectful of this new role that each and every one of us now plays.

In an upcoming post, I'm going to disagree with myself (it's my Blog, I'm allowed) and argue that the new gatekeepers may well be Apple , Google , Twitter and Facebook.

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The Evolution Of Apps

Is everything moving full circle back to the Web?

It's hard to get excited about something called, HTML5, but if you're in the business of media, marketing and/or advertising, you should be excited. Very excited. The past few years have seen some very interesting shifts from the importance of websites to the importance of apps (need I remind you of the August 2010 Wired cover story, The Web Is Dead. Long Live The Internet?) to the pending dominance of smartphones and iPad-like devices. For years companies struggled with various screen sizes on various devices that needed to deliver content across various carriers with varying degrees of technological capabilities. While HTML5 doesn't solve the complete Da Vinci Code that is this tangled web of wires across companies (both hardware and software) jockeying for position, it does offer some new and amazing capabilities that truly bring the digital experience to life.

HTML5 is changing our media.

In the past few months, both Amazon and the Financial Times have released robust app-like websites in an effort to circumvent Apple's ever-changing app store policy (more on this here: FT Bypasses Apple's iTunes, Launches HTML5 Web App). Recently, Apple has changed their terms and service to ensure that they are compensated for any in-app purchases. This move has angered many media brands within the app eco-system, but much like the old saying about Wal-Mart goes ("the only thing worse than selling to Wal-Mart is not selling to Wal-Mart"), brands are stuck. The growth of Apple's app store and not being present within that space is a fate (nearly) worse than death. How can any major media brand not have an app in the Apple app store? On a personal note, I was loving the ability to buy books through my Kindle app on both iPhone and iPad, and became frustrated that this feature set was removed because of Apple's business reasons.

The Web becomes the big workaround.

Instead of Amazon, the Financial Times and others outright ditching Apple's app store, they leveraged the power of HTML5 to create their own app-like environment and the results (thanks to the functionality of HTML5) are staggeringly beautiful. They now have more limited/skinny apps available through the app store (that are in line with Apple's terms and services), while they are heavily marketing their own apps that are (essentially) new websites that completely bypass the app stores, but look, feel and react like the apps that everyone has come to know and love. For example, the Kindle Cloud Reader can be accessed by any internet connection and then all the consumer has to do is add a bookmark to the homepage of their smartphone or tablet. From that moment forward, it's hard to tell the difference between the Apple-approved app and clicking the icon that will take you to the company created platform.

The new media can't be stopped.

While many brands are rushing to put out these cloud-based apps on their own, it's not hard to imagine a time in the not-so-distant-future where most brand spaces are simple and malleable. It would make sense if a media company could create one website that can then adapt and adjust to each platform instead of having to program a website, a mobile version, an Apple app , an Android app, etc...  So, while we're not there yet (and HTML5 doesn't cure-all), it's probably going to be one of the next big leaps forward. In the meantime, being able to have the power to create an app that a brand or media entity can control, update and change on the fly (that isn't beholden to another media entity) not only makes sense, but points us to a new day and age where brands can develop their own media and test the true market power to see if they do indeed, need an Apple or a Google in their corner to dictate their own success.

What's your take on the evolution of apps and the media?

The above posting is my twice-monthly column for The Huffington Post called, Media Hacker . I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original version online here:

The Huffington Post - The Evolution of Apps .

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Podcasting + Advertising = Beancast

Episode #269 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to. This is also episode #39 of Media Hacks.

If you have never heard an episode of The Beancast podcast with Bob Knorpp, stop listening to this and pop over to check out (at least) one of his episodes. Along with being a writer for Ad Age, Knorpp's Beancast is a staple in the advertising industry news diet. Each week he grabs a handful of very diverse advertising luminaries and digs down deep into the current hot topics (I've had the pleasure of being a guest on a handful of episodes - the non-luminary ones, no doubt). In this episodes we discuss everything from the merits of audio podcasting to the current state of advertising and if true marketing integration is happening or if we're still stuck in a world filled with sucky 30-second spots. Enjoy the conversation...

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast #269.

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