Must Read for the Day: Anil Dash on Flickr, and The Interesting Economy. He extends my argument about the economic unreality of social apps.

But interestingness in Flickr doesn’t pay. At least not yet. Non-pro users are seeing ads around my photos, but Yahoo’s not sharing the wealth with me, even though I’ve created a draw.

And the biggest interestingness freeloaders of all have to be the ISPs — all this interesting content provided by me, Anil and everyone else is the reason millions of Americans monthly DSL bills.

4:54:32 PM    comment   

CED Magazine’s primer on next generation broadband technologies.

4:54:09 PM    comment   

Dan Farber provides an interesting report on a talk by Google IT executive David Merrill about how the fast-growing company works. What particularly struck me is the simplicity of the company's process for sharing information among the many projects it has under way at any given moment. Actually, it's not even a "process." Its just "an email posting of a list of bullet points" that anybody in the company, "'from engineering to sales to folks who sweep the floors," as Merrill puts it, can read and add to. It kind of makes you wonder about all the time and money companies have dumped into complex information systems for "knowledge management." Google uses similarly simple email systems for evaluating the performance of employees and collecting comments on potential new hires - two other processes that companies often "automate" with complicated technology.

Also of note is Google's practice of keeping its people on the move: "Part of Googleís innovation strategy is to keep its employees challenged, and the company does that by moving people from project to project, Merrill said. An average project lasts three months or less, and employees spend only a year to 18 months in one area." He notes that this practice creates its own set of problems, such as "maintaining continuity," but despite the drawbacks it seems like a good way to keep smart people engaged and motivated - and thinking about the broad interests of the company rather than their own pet projects.

Less valuable is Merrill's discussion of the company's deliberately messy organization. "'We always over hire," he says, and the structure of the organization is in constant flux. Google currently has the luxury of being inefficient because of its enviable position as the most powerful member of an oligopoly controlling an exploding market (Internet advertising). Most other companies don't hold such a lucrative position, and they can't be so cavalier about expenses. Sooner or later, Google will have to run a tighter ship.

Farber also notes that Google's commitment to transparency ends at the boundaries of its own organization. "Working at Google," he writes, "is about openness, flatness and transparency, which is pretty much the opposite of the companyís interaction with the outside world ... Google is enlightened on the inside but closed to the outside."

4:30:03 PM    comment   

I missed this last week, but I find this new service from Hutchinson’s 3UK called See Me TV incredibly interesting:

See Me TV is set to become the ultimate reality channel - providing an opportunity for 3 customers to shine in front a potential audience of millions.

All the budding star has to do is submit a thirty second video clip to the service displaying their talents in front of or behind the camera. The clip will then be uploaded to the ‘See Me TV’ channel for other 3 customers to view*.

Each time a clip is downloaded by a 3 customer the performer gets paid 1p. With a potential audience of 3.2 million, the most popular clips from contributors could make thousands of pounds worth of cash.

Credits from downloads are accumulated in an account and then a transfer made via Paypal - with no cap on what a 3 customer can earn from See Me TV.

I think this is pretty amazing. God knows how much they’re charging the viewer for the clips - probably a lot more than the meager 1p they’re sharing back to the creator… But it’s just the fact that Three is basically doing a rev-share for user-generated content that blows my mind. Not a lot, but if you happen to have a hit video seen by a decent percentage of Three’s 3 million UK subscribers, you could make some money!

It could be the beginning of a whole new revenue stream for the mobile industry based on multimedia microcontent. Think about it. This isn’t a mobile operator playing broker between merchant and consumer (like DoCoMo has famously done), but instead playing broker between the consumers themselves. It’s got an eBay or AdSense like quality to it, no? Who’d have thunk the Wall Gardeners would be the company to do this?

Speaking of eBay, I have to wonder why they’re bothering with PayPal, though. Why not just deposit your earnings back into your account? Maybe because of all the pre-paid accounts out there? Maybe because Three doesn’t want to become essentially a bank (by holding your earnings in case you earn more than you owe)? Very strange to me.

Regardless, I think it’s brilliant. What do you think?

-Russ

3:56:22 PM    comment   

The image of WiMAX as being a ‘grown-up Wi’Fi’, as it was often called in its earlier days, was once a definite plus. It made a hitherto obscure technology readily understandable and generated excitement on the back of the boom in all things WLAN. Now this association is becoming something of a curse.

3:52:03 PM    comment   

Key take-aways

âo¢ The emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India, China account for the vast majority of ringtone download growth âo[base "] India, for example, demonstrates annual average growth of over 250%.
âo¢ Mobile operators will gradually move to âo[ogonek]all you can eatâo? flat rate pricing to lift the ceiling from the data market. Operators stand to save $300 per user per year by using subscription based entertainment services to prevent churn.
âo¢ Niche segments, adult users and ethnics are the neglected customers. Youth currently account for nearly 90% of the mobile music market, but the overlooked âo[ogonek]over 25sâo? could potentially generate a further $2 billion in spending if only targeted correctly.

3:44:32 PM    comment