Posts about Internet

Black and white and dead all over

January 7, 2006 by Jeff Jarvis
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Michael Kinsley writes a, well, cute column about the Rube Goldberg process that produces newspapers and how it’s likely doomed. Not sure what the news is there. In it, he asks:

No one knows how all this will play out. But it is hard to believe that there will be room in the economy for delivering news by the Rube Goldberg process described above. That doesn’t mean newspapers are toast. After all, they’ve got the brand names. You gotta trust something called the “Post-Intelligencer” more than something called “Yahoo” or “Google,” don’t you? No, seriously, don’t you? Okay, how old did you say you are?

The latest Ad Age, in a special issue with American Demographics, asks Americans just that question (no link, damn them):

What Web site provides the most reliable source of information on the internet?

Top picks were Yahooo (cited by 11.3% of U.S. consumers), MSN (10.4%), Google (9.9%), CNN (8%), AOL (5.2%) and Consumer Reports (3.1%). Google scored first among younger consumers, with 22% of the 18-24 crowd and 15% of the 25-34 group choosing to Google.

In Europe, no single media property emerged as most trustworthy and objective. But Eruope has a clear choice for most-reliable Web information source: Google ranked tops in France, Germany, Netherlands and Spain, and scored No. 2, behind the BBC, in the U.K.

Google’s strong showing in the U.S. and Europe as a reliable Web information source is intriguing since the site largely leaves it to users to figure out what in the sea of unedited search results should be believed or discarded. But that leaves consumers in control, and those consumers count on Google to lead them to the truth.

Behind these stats lie a few phenoms: Yes, online brands are trusted. And in a world of new ubiquitious and international uberbrands, it’s impossible for a local or niche brands to rise up in top lists such as these. But don’t get trapped into old, media 1.0 big-think: The aggregation of the smalls is the powerful force here. Small is the new big.

But the real lesson is what Ad Age said at the end: This is about control, about finding, packaging, editing, judging sources on our own.

The challenge for those black, white, and dead-all-over old properties is to find the ways to contribute to that new world and be found when Google is the front page.

Robber barons of the internet

January 6, 2006 by Jeff Jarvis

The phone companies are continuing their campaign to get not only us to pay for bandwidth but also to get providers of content and services (movie services, voip services) to pay for quality service. Note first that they’re admitting they can give and withhold quality service; that’s blackmail. Note, too, that if they succeed, we’ll end up paying twice.

We desperately need competition in bandwidth, and that includes municipal efforts. The laws in Pennsylvania and elsewhere that prevent local governments from delivering wireless bandwidth should be revoked. And laws such as New Jersey’s that prevent providers of bandwidth — and TV — from freely entering into local markets should also be shot down.

The big, old phone companies are trying to act like monopolies again. There is only one cure for a monopoly: competition.

Tag this

January 2, 2006 by Jeff Jarvis
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My latest Guardian column is about tagging. A few bits:

Tags are a means not only to remember links, but also to discover content tagged by others, to target searches and advertising, to connect people of common interests, and even to collect the wisdom of the crowds….

But this isn’t just another valentine to just another cool online trend; we’re so over that. No, tags have a larger lesson to teach to media. They present a clear demonstration that the web is not about flat content. The web is about connections and the value that arises from them if you enable people to collect and communicate. In the old, big, centralised, controlled world of media, a few people with a few tools – pencils, presses and Dewey decimals – thought they could organise the world and its content. But as it turns out, left to its own devices, the world is often better at organising itself.

Alternate link here.

Cookie monsters

December 31, 2005 by Jeff Jarvis
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The government cookie story is getting stupider by the day. The AP — having naively believed they had some investigative scoop when they discovered that the NSA site, like most every site on earth, sets cookies — now finds that the White House has “bugs”: gifs that let stats software count visitors (like the garish, multicolored thing on the very bottom right of this page). All it does is measure traffic. It is an issue only with the tin-hat society. This is a nonstory born of ignorance and paranoia and now hype.

‘The fans are dictating’

December 27, 2005 by Jeff Jarvis
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It’s internet-culture day at The Times. Below, I link to a story about the internet exploding TV. Shortly, I’ll have a post about the Times story on Amazon’s author blogs. And there’s also a story about the net and musicand, again, how the public is finally able to decide who the stars should be:

Even as the recording industry staggers through another year of declining sales over all, there are new signs that a democratization of music made possible by the Internet is shifting the industry’s balance of power.

Exploiting online message boards, music blogs and social networks, independent music companies are making big advances at the expense of the four global music conglomerates, whose established business model of blockbuster hits promoted through radio airplay now looks increasingly outdated….

In a world of broadband connections, 60-gigabyte MP3 players and custom playlists, consumers have perhaps more power than ever to indulge their curiosities beyond the music that is presented through the industry’s established outlets, primarily radio stations and MTV.

“Fans are dictating,” said John Janick, co-founder of Fueled by Ramen, the independent label in Tampa, Fla., whose roster includes underground acts like Panic! At the Disco and Cute Is What We Aim For. “It’s not as easy to shove something down people’s throats anymore and make them buy it. It’s not even that they are smarter; they just have everything at their fingertips. They can go find something that’s cool and different. They go tell people about it and it just starts spreading.”

There are several signs that as more consumers develop the habit of exploring music online they are drawn to other musical choices besides hitmakers at the top of the Billboard chart – a trend that suggests more of the independent labels’ repertory will find an audience.

On the Rhapsody subscription music service, for example, the 100 most popular artists account for only about 24 percent of the music that consumers chose to play from its catalog last month, said Tim Quirk, Rhapsody’s executive editor. In the brick-and-mortar world, he estimates, the 100 most popular acts might account for more than 48 percent of a mass retailer’s sales.

“It’s no longer about a big behemoth beaming something at a mass audience,” Mr. Quirk said. “It’s about a mass of niche audiences picking and selecting what they want at any given time.” …

But no factor is more significant than the Internet, which has shaken up industry sales patterns and, perhaps more important, upended the traditional hierarchy of outlets that can promote music. Buzz about an underground act can spread like a virus, allowing a band to capture national acclaim before it even has a recording contract, as was the case this year with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, an indie rock band.

Is every star in the new world as big as the stars in the old world? No. But neither is the industry dependent on a blockbuster economy; success has new definitions and so does fame.

Small is the new big.

The internet makes stars

December 27, 2005 by Jeff Jarvis
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The Times picks up on the success of the Lazy Sunday video — and the fact that the internet, not NBC, that gave it critical mass. (See my post below.)

t is their obliviousness to their total lack of menace – or maybe the ostentatious way they pay for convenience-store candy with $10 bills – that makes the video so funny, but it is the Internet that has made it a hit. Since it was originally broadcast on NBC, “Lazy Sunday” has been downloaded more than 1.2 million times from the video-sharing Web site YouTube.com; it has cracked the upper echelons of the video charts at NBC.com and the iTunes Music Store; and it has even inspired a line of T-shirts, available at Teetastic.com.

“I’ve been recognized more times since the Saturday it aired than since I started on the show,” said Mr. Samberg, 27, a featured player in his first season on “SNL.” “It definitely felt like something changed overnight.”

Every network exec, show producer, star, agent, and media prognosticator should pay attention to that: The internet makes stars. Well, actually, the audience makes stars, now that we’re empowered to.

Yahoo strikes again

December 26, 2005 by Jeff Jarvis
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So I had a hissy fit sometime ago because Yahoo deactivated my email, which I think is a dumb thing to do to a prodigal customer who comes back and wants to try to use your service again. But I created a new identity for one purpose only: to try out the new Yahoo email. I waited patiently. I was told that finally, I could try out the new mail and when I had some spare time, I sat down prepared to enjoy what I’d heard such good things about. And what happens? Deactivated. I don’t care how groovy it is, I am not using Yahoo email or RSS if I cannot trust that it will be there. Old girlfriends and stray dogs are more loyal than Yahoo.

Compare and contrast that with Seth Godin’s Squidoo. A lens-creator (aka page-creator) there got an email saying that if he didn’t update his lens, it would killed. He blogged it. And Seth threw himself on his sword with abject apology and Squidoo sent email to all the affected users telling them to nevermind. [via Bubblegeneration]

I certainly hope Yahoo doesn’t start thinking they can kill my Del.icio.us and Flickr accounts because I don’t use them as often as they think I should. They did kill my beloved Oddpost, which I used for email — even paid for — as they took it behind the walls at Yahoo and cooked up the new email I am constantly thwarted from using.

This is why I say Yahoo is the last of the old media companies — because Yahoo thinks they’re in control. No, I’m in control. I’m using Gmail — which, it so happens, is good enough to use every day.

UPDATE AND APOLOGY: I do have a Yahoo account. I’ve had three recently. The first two were killed. But the third and latest is alive. My mistake. I am still antsy, having had prior identities zapped. But this one does exist. So my wrong. Oh, and I’m still not in the new mail.

Is print doomed? At this speed, it is….

December 24, 2005 by Jeff Jarvis
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My point/counterpoint with John Griffin of National Geographic responding to the question, “Is print dead?”, is finally online, a month after it came out in print.