8 things from 08: tumblr.

I started using Tumblr on Jan 1st of 2008, which, at the time, I was convinced I would refer to as 'the Ocho'.  That part didn't go well.

Tumblr, on the other hand, has gone great.  In a lot of ways, it's similar to LiveJournal, in that the major attraction is the community.  But what sold me on it first and foremost was the incredible ease of posting pretty much anything.  Anyone who reads brokengentleman.com knows that I rarely post anything but text; a lot of that is because the Blogger interface seems best suited to posting text.  Comparatively, Tumblr feels as though it's designed to share stuff, more than to be a blogging platform.

I've tried the majority of services available for publishing content online.  Despite limitations, I can say pretty decisively that Tumblr is one of my favourites.

8 things from 08: NOTCOT.

I've decided to do a little rundown of 8 things that mattered to me in 08, at least in terms of things that related to this blogs 'mandate'.

Number one for 2008 has to be my favourite corner of the internet, the NotEmpire.

I've been reading NOTCOT since about mid 2006, and it's consistently interesting and inspiring.  I always find things to research, covet, stare at, etc.  Literally, NOTCOT has gotten me looking at and thinking about everything from wedding rings to garden gnomes, and it's done it with a clean style and solid writing, that, shockingly, keeps me entertained without resorting to snark.  There's legitimate enthusiasm that tells me regardless of it being a business, it's run for the love.

NOTCOT.org is a great place to distract myself while I wait for new posts to come out, a cork-board style page of user submitted / editor vetted links that range from ad campaigns to interesting product design to the simply informative.  This has been a resident of my bookmarks bar in Safari for the entire year.

NOTCOUTURE is the same concept as .org, but focused on fashion.  While I might complain (silently, to myself) that there isn't enough men's content, I inevitably end up pointing the finger at myself and my lack of submissions.  Still, it's the most consistently updated source of links to men's clothing / fashion / photoshoots that I engage with.

I guess that's about enough slobbering about NOTCOT for one post.  I would suggest you check it out, I've managed to turn every friend I have with any interest in design into a rabid fan.  

So, thing one for 08: NOTCOT is my favourite place on the internet for this year. 

the potential for social media in canadian democracy.

A recent conversation with my father let me know that until recently, and MP from my area considered listening to Talk Radio call-in shows a good way of monitoring what issues were important to his constituents.  Not only does this only represent a small segment of our population, but letters likely represent an even smaller one.  Conversations with our elected officials should not be intermittent, or one directional.

I'm still wrestling with how best to create a watchable discussion, based on riding, and divided by issues, that could assist with measuring public interest and ideals for Canadian MPs.  My first instinct is to sort out which tools would best fit the idea, and therein lies the problem: I both want something that is easy to use and doesn't require a large time commitment, and I would prefer an engaged group that hashes out ideas in depth.  Not easy to figure out which service would best fit.

I don't particularly think Facebook fits, although everyone is already on it.  Facebook isn't, in my experience, good for focus or commitment.  People will join a group, or make a comment, and then forget about it while maintaining an affiliation.  Being part of a group on Facebook doesn't mean the group becomes part of your Facebook experience.

I'm considering Ning, mostly because creating a riding specific micro-network with sub-groups and discussion boards relating to key issues / legislation appeals to me.  But I'd love feedback on the service.

If there is a simple, free way to create dialogue (on a by riding basis), and then provide MPs with regular digests (created by wiki?) on what constituents find important, and what they want raised as an issue in the house, I think that would help Canadian politics, or at the very least help Canadians consider their own role in politics. 

I'm willing to try if you are.

twitter and the content wall.

I'm pretty certain the main difference between being knowledgeable about social media, or being active through several different forms of social media, is whether or not you actually have time to participate in anything else.

Upon my (far too late) conversion to reading blogs via RSS, I needed to find the content wall, the magic number that is my limit: I can generally read about 100 feeds at any given time, without it impacting my productivity, and without it getting out of hand and me hitting the wall.  I'm starting to feel as though that number can rise, given my iPhone adding a lot of time where I can be reading feeds to my schedule, but I'm hesitant to try to find the wall again.  It's actually a harrowing process for me, because I'll spend a week reading the internet until 2am every night before I realize I need to cut back.

After a lot of hesitation, I'm trying to find my content wall with Twitter.  It's more difficult, because I'm trying to avoid following anyone who tweets 50+ times a day, excepting people I either know, or deeply respect.

That said, I'm looking for twitter users worth following.  My major interests are advertising/marketing, communications, internet culture, media theory, fashion, comic books, and a sarcastic take on current events.  All suggestions are welcome.

this is a placeholder.

I'm still figuring out the details, but a conversation with my father (in which I told him this would be impossible) has inspired me to think about how to build a better feedback loop for Canada's parliamentary democracy, using free web based tools.

I'm interested enough at the moment that I might spend a long, long time figuring this out.  And then, shock of shocks, I might actually do something with it.

dealing with economic problems. (off topic).

One of the common things you hear when the economy tanks is 'You can't get out of a recession through deficit spending.'  I call bullshit.

Here's how I see the current situation: The economy needs to be stimulated somehow, money needs to be spent, and it needs to be spent in a useful way that bolsters consumer spending, but doesn't result in waste.

As it happens, Canada is in the middle of a massive failure of infrastructure, because upkeep of roads, bridges, transit, etc etc etc has been pushed further and further into the future, to maintain balanced budgets.

Why not spend money there.  Instead of spending taxpayer money on directly bailing out failed corporations, why not take the billions that will eventually be spent, and use it to 1) fix a ticking timebomb of failing infrastructure (that we will need to pay for eventually), and 2) create jobs, projects for construction firms, long term contracts which in turn mean stability.

The most important part: just because it's deficit spending doesn't mean it shouldn't still be prudent.  Use the economic downturn, and the scale of the project, to get companies to fight for the contract with low bids.  No 'cost plus' here.

In short, use the economic crisis as justification to fix decades worth of disregarded infrastructure, at a better price than you ever could if it was done gradually.  While actually doing something meaningful to help Canada through this crisis.

Just a thought.

eyeballs are screen agnostic (monetizing p2p television).

I'm consistently baffled about why pirating TV online is an issue.  Let's look at this logically:

1. TV is paid for (in part) with advertising sales.
2. Advertising is a matter of eyeballs, and metrics.  The number of people watching, and other demographic info, determines the price of advertising time, with past results dictating future pricing.
3. Piracy is fast, wide distribution, usually at no cost to the uploader of content.
4. The simplest option, with the minimum intrusiveness, usually wins.

If those four things are true (and I believe they are), I will never understand why television programs aren't distributed online, at time of broadcast, from the networks that broadcast them traditionally.

Eyeballs are eyeballs regardless of what screen they are focused on.  Whether I'm watching a show on a TV, a monitor, or an iPod, I'm still watching.  When I watch a program on my iPod, it normally doesn't have commercials; but only because I'm either paying for it, or it has been uploaded without commercials.  

If the first place to get a TV show I wanted to watch was from the broadcasting network, with commercials, I would get it there.  No questions asked.  Because the time saved in downloading something at 8pm from NBC rather than at 11pm from EZTV is worth a few minutes of commercials to me.  I would wager it would be the same way for others, provided the download was in an open format, with no copy protection.  This would be a product that competes with piracy, using the tools the content owners actually have: initial release date (usually), and best quality (almost always).

The interesting thing, is that there is a potential for a wider market of advertisers.  If google analytics can tell me which country my readers are coming from, it can probably tell CBS which country a visitor is trying to download How I Met Your Mother from.  Why can't there be dozens of versions of each show, each with localized commercials in the same break period?  Why can't online distribution mean that the same ad space can be sold to different companies in Canada, the US, and Uruguay?  It happens when signals are rebroadcast over TV, why not do the same online.

Instead of complaining about the internet stealing eyeballs, why not sell access to those eyeballs too?  Why not do the whole thing via bittorrent, at next to no cost?  Why not use the torrent download information from each localized version, and use that to justify ad prices?

The short version of why is because you're leaving money on the table, and because you won't stop piracy unless you give customers a better product than piracy does.  If you want to keep selling high quality versions without commercials, there will still be customers.  People will always be willing to pay for a premium version, or for a physical copy (DVD).  Monetizing content online can't be based on the idea that you can change behaviour, only that you can create a system that isolates value in that behaviour.  So get on it, despite the complications of clearing content in different countries.

Because the shortest version of 'Why?' is a desperate need to stay relevant.

[To point out: 1) Yes, I am aware that people can skip past ads in downloaded content.  They can also leave the room to get a drink, and often do.  No one uses this as an excuse to stop advertising on TV.  2) People could just burn DVD copies of the torrented shows.  People already do.  Buying a DVD is usually about convenience, quality, love of the content and special features.  3) There are probably technological issues with this.  I understand that, and this is why there are people smarter than me to make it work regardless.]

popularity and perceived quality.

I've listened to the new Kanye West album, 808's and Heartbreaks, a couple of times now, and I actually enjoy it.  But it's a massive departure, and not one that will easily be accepted by existing fans.  That said, I think it will be interesting to watch how the album sells.

808's is for Kanye the equivalent of Common's Electric Circus: a huge step away from what he has done before, and a huge step away from what anyone who is considered a contemporary is doing.  But, there's something interesting to point out here; that the album preceeding Kanye's big departure (Graduation) has sold three times as many copies in a little over one year than Common's pre departure record (Like Water for Chocolate) did in it's first five.

The question is, how big will the effect of popularity be?  It's impossible to measure, because you can't compare quality, and the music industry is a far different beast now than it was then, but it's still sticking in the back of my mind.  Is Kanye popular enough that he can still sell an admittedly odd record to a notable portion of his massive audience?  Will people be more willing to give the record the multiple listens it may need?

Either way, the more popular someone is, generally the kinder the perception of their work.  It will be interesting to see how far one of the most popular artists currently making music can push the envelope before it all falls apart.

on social media specialists.

I saw this gapingvoid cartoon today, and immediately came to a gut reaction.

The concept of a social media specialist is one of those transitional holdovers that will seem almost embarrassingly quaint in the not-too-distant future.

Most 'social media experts' have about the same level of skill with social media as the average western teenager, but usually lack the same fluency, the same level of intimacy.  The difference is, they see it as a new frontier, and interesting realm of communication to study and hopefully leverage effectively.  But social media isn't an interesting quirk of how young people talk - it's an essential part of communication for the internet generation, and it's only going to get more integral as it shifts to mobile.

Having a social media expert will very quickly be like having a telephone expert: essential only when your company is staffed with people who clearly do not understand that the world has changed.

We are heading quickly to the point where everyone has to be a social media expert.  We are already at the point where anyone who gets labelled as part of a company's younger generation should already be one, and should know that bragging about it is like claiming proficiency with email.

you can't copy innovation.

I read an article, not too long ago, about the creation of a Chevrolet plug-in hybrid, and how the major goal was to actually create innovation.  I can't remember where I read it, but the major thing I took away (other than the project probably being doomed) was Toyota announcing a similar product later on, with a more restricted schedule and numbers, and a GM exec feeling accomplishment and delight, even awe, in the fact that this fearsome, dominant competitor was being a 'follower'

The BlackBerry Storm, the first touchscreen phone from RIM, is available in the next few days (I believe starting Nov 21st).

Just saying.