The Ten Spot: Apr 26, 2010
Back to the basics of the the Ten Spot – quick, relevant New Medici reads with an exact dose of interpretation.
1. For Web’s New Wave, Sharing Details Is the Point – NYT DealBook
The transparency brought about by Google search and Facebook community/beacon/(end of) privacy has created a slew of startups who cater to ripping open the social graph and letting everyone peek in, follow and link to your daily activities and habits.
From the likes of DailyBooth.com, Blippy.com and Groupon.com, the concept of “socially challenging” others to share interests in online creation and consumption is trending. The next logical step will be a return to a new and improved Facebook Beacon that extends the group mentality while providing multi-level marketing incentives to the individuals who create interest in new items, i.e., transactions (think ThisNext.com meets Groupon). This allows group rewards and either revshare or ranking points for the individual curators or arbiters of taste.
Blippy, which opened last fall, was the first site to introduce the notion of publishing credit card and other purchases. Last month it attracted around 125,000 visitors and closed an investment round of $11 million from venture capitalists. It hopes to one day to make money by, among other things, taking a commission when people are inspired to imitate their friends’ purchases posted on the site.
To Silicon Valley’s deep thinkers, this is all part of one big trend: People are becoming more relaxed about privacy, having come to recognize that publicizing little pieces of information about themselves can result in serendipitous conversations — and little jolts of ego gratification.
Steve Jobs defies the odds (recovering Apple), the gods (surviving cancer) and yet his consumer design “sculpting” and management fearlessness are really the two definitions he will be known by. In this above must-read link, an insider opens up about the mindset and fearset of the leading Designer CEO out there.
From secrecy to ordering the best-of-the-brainstorms (in terms of his managed teams), Jobs is building a line of devices that separate the chaos, the noise and the hacks of more open systems to bring its users a little hardware clarity (and style)… Read more >>
What is Zeitguest?
This is not our logo. Repeat: this is not our logo…
We’re launching our “Lifestyle Innovation Network” – an innovation blog network – in the next few months.
We’re happy to announce another new channel celebrating the voices of the era: “Zeitguest”. After attending Google’s exclusive Zeitgeist conference three years in a row, and hearing top leaders talk about innovation, I felt it was time to open-source the voices of our generation (and the next-gen).
Zeitguest.com – “Your First-Class Ticket to the Era.” Full access to the Zeitgeist – intelligent voices in culture, intellect, ethics, spirituality and the political climate of our era.
Pulling from these diverse disciplines, we’ll headline essays from top innovators, artists, politicians, world leaders and changemakers you probably have never heard of yet.
Are we the anti-TED? No, we’re the TED plus.
While you stay tuned for Zeitguest’s launch, send us your logo ideas, we’ll be selecting one shortly…
Should Traditional Media “Burn the Boats”?
It’s an interesting chapter for traditional media these days, where the advent of iPads (assume, if you will, that they will be “broken” or hacked to allow unlicensed or un-proprietary content), Boxees, Hulus and Netflix Streaming continually tests the ability of mainstream media to expand its price and library footprint.
Whether it be buying a big library like MGM (post-Sony/Comcast) or Miramax (post-Disney), the real value studios or private equity see in these sizable libraries is the money they will throw off in terms of license deals. Basically, 7-year “ultimates” – i.e., revenues from the many license windows of distribution.
That this money is now pointing more to more at the lower revshares of the iTunes/iPads/Apple TVs, YouTubes and Hulus reduces the overall payloads and valuations considerably.
It’s almost like adjusting for “technological” inflation. Will the studios adjust?
Questions have to be asked: Can the studios keep their accretive acquisitions and productions at the rates they are by adding staff to their digital distribution divisions? Will digital growth eventually narrow media losses, vis-a-vis by distributing content more intelligently in the primary traditional windows, followed by smarter delivery to digital windows? Read more >>