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Tuesday, August 13, 2002 |
The Internet: Still not dead. Scott Rosenberg's written a great analysis of "Small Pieces, Loosely Joined" compared with "Bamboozled by the Revolution," a cyncial book about the "failure" of the Internet:
"If you're not an online user, it's very difficult to understand the medium," says Warner exec Jim Moloshok. Well, duh. But somehow this elementary principle eluded media leaders for years. In one embarrassing anecdote culled from an Industry Standard article about the aftermath of the winter 2000 Time Warner/AOL merger, Time Warner CFO Richard Bressler hears about plans to promote Time magazines on AOL and asks, "What are these pop-ups? How big are they? Can you send me some information on them?" AOL's legendary deal-maker, David Colburn, responds, "Rich, why don't you invest $21.95 in an AOL subscription and consider it due diligence?" Ouch.
What might have been due diligence for a corporate exec was already a way of life for tens of millions of people. Motavalli contrasts the New York media honchos' cluelessness with the insight of AOL's Ted Leonsis that, online, it's "user experience" that counts. For AOL the key experience was getting new users online painlessly: It has always offered the simplest, most idiot-proof onramp to the Internet. AOL solved a vexing problem for millions of people; that, more than any "content strategy" or insight into online behavior, secured its dominance.
But once those people got online, they almost immediately started behaving in unpredictable ways. They didn't wait for a media corporation to tell them what to do; they began writing pages and posting comments and building sites and contributing reviews and arguing and inventing identities. This unplanned behavior was made possible because of design decisions made by the engineers who established the Internet long before the media world ever heard of it. As Doc Searls summarizes these principles, "Nobody owns it; everyone can use it; anyone can improve it." Link Discuss (Thanks, JRC!) [Boing Boing Blog]
11:17:03 AM 
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WSJ. Big changes at American Airlines. The company will now manage flights to minimize costs vs. maximize revenue. This basically says that the Southwest Airlines model has won the battle. For passengers this is going to mean, lower fares, fewer 1st class seats (if any), very long connect times,and odd flight times. One of the major factors contributing to the change: online travel bookings. Why? Online travel sites typically list flights by cost, and not by the total travel time (as it is with most travel agent terminals), with the least expensive at the top. Low cost usually wins given this lay-out. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
8:15:29 AM
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Megnut: Blogging for Dollars. Interesting piece. I don't think she nails it though. I want to see weblogs from CEOs and Members of Parliament, people who are responsible, who aren't mouthpieces. I know they can't write, but in the future they will. A hired blogger inside a company is always going to be subject to pressures. It's kind of like hiring an ad agency to write your weblog. Hmm. I'm a Cluetrain guy, I want the head honcho to talk to me, and everyone else. If they do it as a sideline, as the Macromedia bloggers do, a labor of love, somehow I trust that more than if maintaining a weblog is their job. Now, that said, of course there will be professional bloggers, just like there are professional everythings. To me that would be like saying there will be professional word processor users. Hard to argue with. [Scripting News]
7:59:27 AM
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© Copyright 2003 Clarence Westberg.
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This is my blogchalk:
United States, Minnesota, Bloomington, West, English, Clarence, Male, 51-55.
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