If you’re interested in taking a look at some of the videos from the recent mesh conference, Rob Hyndman has links to the keynotes (Michael Arrington, Richard Edelman, Jim Buckmaster, Tom Williams and Austin Hill) and 15 Minutes of Fame winners.
Social Networks the Latest Music Biz Threat
After waging a fierce and concerted battled against peer-to-peer networks and people who have used them over the past decade, the music industry has a new enemy that’s threatening its economic model: social networks.
Apparently, social networks such as MySpace and BeBo have emerged as a new and popular way to distribute music – albeit by people who aren’t paying for it. The survey suggests piracy has rebounded because consumers still find music expensive and the fear of legal action has subsided.
John Enser, head of music with Olswang, which conducted the survey with Entertainment Media Research, told the Telegraph that:
“The music industry needs to embrace new opportunities being generated by the increasing popularity of music on social networking sites. Surfing these sites and discovering new music is widespread with the latest generation of online consumers but the process of actually purchasing the music needs to be made easier to encourage sales and develop this new market.”
Is it me but haven’t we heard this kind of statements before about the music industry and its need to encourage sales and leverage new markets? Of course, every time the music industry looks like it’s taking a step forward (i.e. growing iTunes sales, the shutdown of AllofMP3.com), it seems to take a step backward (new, higher royalty rates for Webcasters).
Update: Speaking of iTunes, Apple said today it has sold more than three billion songs.
Got a Web Host!
Just an update on my search for a new Web host for a new – and terribly exciting! – WordPress blog I’m launching soon with my brother, Sean. After a lot of great suggestions, I decided on A Small Orange. ASO users were impressed with its customer service, and its prices are extremely reasonable. Thanks to everyone who left comments! The blog will be unveiled in a week or so.
NowPublic Raises $10.6M
Over the past couple of years, citizen journalism has become a growing part of the media landscape – and one of the leading players has been Vancouver-based NowPublic.
The company’s profile should get a huge boost amid news it has raised $10.6-million in private equity from Rho Ventures, Brightspark and GrowthWorks. The deal comes just over a year after NowPublic raised $1.4-million from Brightspark and several angel investors.
Mathew Ingram spoke with NowPublic’s Leonard Brody and Michael Tippett about the financing. The two entrepreneurs said they considered takeover offers but decided to focus on growing the company rather selling out too early – a decision likely bolstered by the strong interest in the financing.
Citizen journalism – and the concept’s future – has been in the spotlight recently with the demise of Backfence.com. As well, Dan Gilmour’s high-profile Bayosphere project also failed to resonate with readers or advertisers.
When it comes to citizen journalism, the key question is whether people want to read stories that, for the most part, aren’t as well written, polished or insightful as those written by professional journalists. While there is probably a niche for citizen journalism, it’s hard to see it establishing a major foothold at a time when so much news is available online.
NowPublic hopes to cement itself as the leading citizen journalism player by becoming a wire service with thousands of correspondents around the world. The company’s business model is mostly based on striking deals with media organizations looking to “outsource” their news gathering operations at a time when financial pressures are forcing them to squeeze costs and shrink newsrooms.
Earlier this year, NowPublic signed a deal with Associated Press that will see NowPublic’s citizen journalists contribute content (photos, text and video) to breaking stories on AP. AP will pay citizen journalists if their material is used with NowPublic getting part of the fee.
More: An interesting comment by NowPublic CEO Leonard Brody on GigaOm.com about whether you need to pay your writers: “We’re personally not big believers in paying for content, because we want you to own your content.â€
Milk 2.0?
Is there anything more frustrating than pouring milk into a steaming cup of morning coffee only to discover the milk’s gone bad? You’d think a milk maker looking for a competitive edge would offer technology that would let you know how long your milk has left before it goes bad. I mean, if Coors can come up with technology that lets you know when your brew is cold enough to drink, the milk industry can get on the high-tech bandwagon too.
Web 2.0 and Short Attention Spans
I wrote a post earlier this week about being tired of Facebook.
An interesting comment was how my view on Facebook reflects the fact that as someone really involved with the Web (aka online way too much!), I was hungry to try out new services/applications, and at the same time, impatient to move on to the next cool thing. This approach contrasts with probably 99% of online users who move slower and take more time to embrace a new service such as Facebook.
So as the “cool kids” such as Jason Calacanis ditch the “old” to move on to the “new”, most everything else is just starting to get used to the new or hasn’t even tried the new out yet.
Realizing the chasm between the leading/bleeding edge and the mainstream is important because they are two distinct groups with different needs, behaviours and roles.
While the in crowd may set the tone and determine whether a service is valuable/useful/needs improvement, the mainstream will eventually determine whether the service is going to be commercially viable.
More: In keeping with the theme of this post, it’s interesting to read about Pownce in today’s New York Times, and how it’s got “street cred” by opening itself up on an invite-only basis.
It’s interesting to see Pownce get this kind of coverage given it’s really just another social networking/P2P service – albeit started by an entrepreneur – Digg’s Kevin Rose – with a relatively high profile.
Having used Pownce, it’s an interesting service but I don’t share the enthusiasm that Om Malik (an insider’s insider within the Web 2.0 landscape) exudes in the NYT story.
To me, the most interesting part of Pownce is how you can share files (music, video, etc.) with friends using P2P technology. For content producers worried about the economic threats of P2P, Pownce could be a huge nightmare if it gets any kind of traction.
