sad admissions.

I am probably going to go to the Fido store nearest work on monday, to see what my options are in procuring an iPhone.

Mock away.

moo cards - round one.

broken gentleman Moo Cards - Round One.

In circulation starting July 28, 2008.

adbusters decries remixing of culture (more or less).

Adbusters isn’t a publication I’ve ever found myself agreeing with.  Mostly because it’s core proposition is based on self-deceit: that you can create a worldwide brand based on anti-branding, anti-capitalist values, and still judge popular culture as deluded and vapid.

I did not, however, think I would find a place where Adbusters, and the copyright lobby, would agree with one another so precisely.

The final sentences of the article titled ‘Hipster: the Dead End of Western Civilization’ are as follows:

We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new.

The idea that combining previous ideas, previous works, cannot result in new culture, not only denies the entirety of popular culture’s history, but it also very clearly explains the distaste with capitalism that defines the magazine – if only wholly original creations count, there would never be a need for business to make things better, or more valued.  With this mindset, capitalism is a factory that re-hashes the beautiful and original, making it valueless.  Obviously, this is true in some cases.

But I’d argue that remix culture has resulted in profound statements, both from a political standpoint, and a beauty standpoint.  I’d argue that melding past elements into a new ideal or aesthetic, is how culture (and business) moves forward.  Adbusters disagrees, and wants you to stop doing what other people are doing, because it feeds the machine.  The copyright lobby also wants you to stop mixing and matching the work others are doing, unless you pay heavily for it, because that would stop the machine.

Someone, or everyone, has to be wrong here.

crowley's second rule.

I’m proposing the following social media uncertainty principle:

At the moment you are unable to respond personally to the volume of comments and emails generated by your commentary on social media, you are no longer participating in social media.

This came to mind when I read a recent post talking about how great twitter is as a research tool, that simply asking one’s list for recommendations is far more useful than checking a site dedicated to the topic. This is certainly true, for a comparatively small number of pundits. But if you can do that, you aren’t really using social media. You’re being famous on a platform designed for the ‘Famous for 15 People’ world of augmented social interaction. And really, this level of internet fame makes it impossible to really comment on how social media works.

You can’t tell me how twitter, or tumblr, or even blogger works when you’re using it in a way 99% of people will never use it. You aren’t talking about how social media works. You’re talking about being internet famous. And as wise and informed as your perspective may be, it’s not a perspective that benefits most users.

So, the short version is, fame breaks social media. It alters the experience to the point where it’s unrecognizable, and often, breaks it so completely that the internet famous individual gets sick of the vitriol thrown their way and gives up.

You can’t comment on social media without experiencing it. And often, I find the social media punditry crowd is really just talking about personal publishing. It would help me, I think, if I thought they realized it.

explaining the coming radio silence.

I'm off to British Columbia tomorrow morning for a work event.  So, it's unlikely I'll have anything new up until Tuesday, although I'm trying to put something together for tonight.

Sorry for the interruption in service.  I'm sure the weekend will result in another torrent of inspiration.

six misconceptions about the future of music.

I had a great conversation with a friend from school today, and the following misconceptions about the future of music came to mind:

1. Piracy has ruined the business for everyone except the massive acts.  Actually, the massive acts were generally the only ones making lots of money (for the recording industry).  Piracy has cut back on that, so labels can no longer offset the losses from other projects with the massive income from a few hit records.
2. The label system / the recording industry is dead.  No way in hell.  What's dead is that entire engine existing to create recorded music, and make money off recorded music.  What's coming is a label system that focuses on it's ability to break acts, broker cross promotions, and generate income from it's network of merchandising partners.
3. Independent artists will suffer.  Independent artists always suffered, if we're defining independent as 'not a major act'.  If we're defining independent as 'mainstream but angrier', please go read a different blog.
4. 'Real Fans' will pay for music.  Music, now that it is available in unrestricted (and infinitely copyable) digital files, isn't worth money.  Real fans will pay for an experience, or a collectible, or a memory.
5. Fans will pay for ease of use, or a simpler experience.  Piracy is, for a notable segment of the population, easier than having a credit card.  Therefore, piracy is not going to be trumped in terms of ease of use, or user experience.
6. NIN / Radiohead / Livenation will figure it out.  These entities are going to figure out how established names continue to make large amounts of money in a changing marketplace.  But, this has no real bearing on discovering how to freshly establish names, and then make large amounts of money, in this new marketplace.

Keep this in mind while you consider how to change this industry.

a soon to be unpopular opinion.

I actually quite like the new Facebook layout.

metrics that matter.

I was thinking about this before I went to sleep last night, and I thought it was important enough to post.

In terms of web traffic, I don’t really care about unique hits. My number one criteria for success is simple: how many people have the site in the bookmarks bar of their browser. How many people love this site enough that it requires one click, no menus, to get there.

Obviously, if the average visitor spends 20 minutes on your site, visiting 10 pages, that’s wonderful. But I’m more interested in how habitual their patronage is. How incorporated into their daily life a site is.

The most important thing for a person, a product, or an outlet to be, is habit-forming. So, unless people are reading your RSS feed, and making visiting your site as simple as possible, I don’t know that they really care about what you do.

I should note that I can guarantee no one has my site in their bookmarks bar. I don’t. But I have notcot.org, and ilovenewwork, and digg. And you can bet those are three of the sites I evangelize most.

perceived barriers and consumer behaviour.

The perception of a barrier is more important than the realities of that barrier.

This is equally true of whether or not you can get someone to pay for a product or service, whether they will pay twenty nine dollars but not thirty, whether they will change their behaviour around your product or service, or whether they will watch / eat / do what-have-you in a new location.

The issue isn’t simplifying the barrier, or even minimizing it.  The issue is the existence of that barrier.

The reason itunes is important is it carefully removed the perception of barrier from the music buying experience.  You use the same program to buy music that you use to play music.  Once your details are logged, you just click through.  In the same window you use to play your music.

Buying a song has the same fundamental user experience as playing a song you already have, or subscribing to a podcast.

So, to dispute a point I made earlier, it is still logical to attempt to make money selling music.  Assuming the manner in which you sell music is not too divergent from what your market would be doing anyway.  It’s not the price point that matters (25 cent MP3s are just as expensive in terms of time and effort as 99 cent ones).  It’s the perceived barrier.

ratings systems are terrible.

While perusing potential sources of new information on tumblr, I came across a post which included this tidbit:

I know it’s impossible, but it would be interesting to see how much more money this movie is going to make because it’s not rated R.

This caught my attention because rating systems are (always) a negative thing for creative products.  Frank Miller (creator of 300, Sin City, etc) has had a lot to say about this, but I can summarise his argument fairly well in two points; rating dictates audience dictates money, and people should be media literate enough to know what’s appropriate.

Any R rated movie has a smaller audience.  This is fair, not everyone is mature enough to see the things in an R rated film.  At the same time, attaching an arbitrary age range further limits the number of people who will see it.  The real problem, though, is that films (as the most prominent rated medium) are written, filmed, and edited to the desired rating – meaning as a creative product, the rating outranks all artistic concerns.

Think about your favourite book.  Now consider if it wouldn’t have been published unless it was edited either 2 hollywood ratings up (i.e., from G to PG-13), or 2 hollywood ratings down.  Would it still be your favourite book?

The second point is that ratings don’t really protect anyone.  The people who care, or want to protect their children, should be able to tell from the title, posters, and trailer, which movies are appropriate.  The people who don’t care will take their kids no matter what the rating is.

I’d like to live in a society that assumes people are smart enough to entertain themselves appropriately.  I realize how absurd it is to have to say that, but here we are.