Five videos, for about 40 minutes of enjoyment. So . . . enjoy.
I hardly ever post two things in a day. However, I'm sick today and officially my last post was Sunday night. Plus, I've run into some great video recently. I don't know why or what's going on, but I'm starting to think this whole video revolution might have some teeth . . . Consider this channel NoahBrier.com
First up is a beautiful 2 minute introduction to typography "created by Vancouver Film School students Ryan Uhrich and Marcos Ceravolo through the VFS 3D Animation & Visual Effects program." (via swissmiss)
Next up is another beautiful animation, this one is a trailer for the film I Met the Walrus. A brief intro from the website (as transcribed by Flagged For Follow Up): "In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview."
Next up is some environmental messaging. I guess this was part of Live Earth (though I didn't see it in New York) and it's titled "A Beginner's Guide to Giving a Damn" (via ian tait). I can't quite decide what I think of it, though it's cute and it makes me laugh that they admit that part of being green is making other people feel bad for not caring.
Last up are two Ted videos. The first is slightly old (and I'm pretty sure I've linked to it before), anyway it's pretty much the most amazing demo I've ever seen for a technology Microsoft recently purchased called Photosynth. I've watched this thing at least 10 times and it gets no less amazing.
Finally, here's someone I find incredibly inspiring, designer Jonathan Harris. He's the guy behind some of the coolest information visualizations on the planet including WordCount, 10x10, We Feel Fine and his latest project, Universe. One of the things Harris mentions in the 18-minute presentation (which can get a little boring at times, I will admit), is the power of collecting passive information. Since that's something I've written about in the past it was especially exciting to hear him talk about it.
Like everyone else in the universe, I've been thinking a lot about Facebook lately. I get friend invites, messages and other randomness flooding my email daily (at some point I'm going to need to turn off the email alerts). However, I'm less interested in the functionality at the moment. Rather, I've got two specific thoughts about what I need to see from Facebook to believe in their prospects long-term . . .
Off-Site Integration
Apparently they've got some API stuff that makes this possible already, but I haven't seen it. My thought is simple: How do I integrate Facebook into my site rather than just integrating my site into Facebook? I'm not quite sure what I'd like to see from them in this realm, but the way I see it is they've laid the groundwork for a city and only provided one road in.
Advertising Differentiation
Google does one thing better than anyone else on the planet: Help advertisers target customers at the point of consideration. Sure they do other things well (like building applications), but they make their money with the former. So my question to Facebook (as a marketer) is what's your singular point of advertising differentiation? Clearly it's not regular display advertising (which I wouldn't have expected), but what is it? I suspect there's some real possibilities with their listing services, as being able to sell goods to a select group is worthwhile. However, even better might be the ability to actually share revenues with users and have them display ads for brands they trust/care for.
Anyway, not too sure on either of these things, but quite curious to hear everyone else's thoughts.
It doesn't make sense to pretend we live in a world of absolutes any more.
This whole entry is about an insanely simple idea: Everything is relative.
That's it.
Success is not an absolute number, rather it's an equation based on the value you extract from an investment. Value, of course, doesn't have a hard definition either. These ideas are not particularly easy for people to deal with.
Take this blog, for instance, I have made $0 in direct revenue: I don't sell ads or anything else here. However, the value I've received as far as friendships, networking, jobs and projects more than make up for the time I've invested here. I've found that's not particularly easy for people to understand that value can be something other than money (but I digress).
I first started thinking about this in relation to power laws (those things that look like hockey sticks laid on their side). One of the core characteristics of a power curve is it's scale-free distribution. Essentially what this means is that no matter how much you zoom in on any part of the curve, you're just going to see another identical curve. (This made me think about "turtles all the way down" but I digress again.)
Anyway, because of the scale-free nature we start to understand that success is relative. If you're looking at blogs, for instance, there's a power curve across the category and then each sub-category (say marketing) is also going to be a power curve, meaning that very few will dwarf the rest in terms of traffic or incoming links. So what's the point of all this? Easy: It's all relative. Indie records, for instance, aren't successful when compared to big label affairs if you're measuring purely on units sold. However, if the measurement is return on investment I don't think it would be all the surprising to see indies win out (especially if you consider the fact that people don't actually need tens of millions of dollars).
This isn't a new idea, people have always understood ROI, however, I think we got distracted by things like platinum records. All of a sudden as a people we started to believe that success was some absolute number ($1 million is a popular one). When cost of production started to lower, however, success began to mean very different things. If I can make a video with my $200 camera and 5 hours of time that 1,000 people watch I may declare it a wild success. Major media outlets could never do that because they have a machine to run and the only way they've figured out to monetize it is with advertising sold per impression (CPM).
But what is a site with few visitors to do? Is it less valuable? The answer is no: It's actually more valuable to advertisers, but less valuable to the publisher (from a purely monetary standpoint). Being able to efficiently target an audience is worth a lot of money, however, if a site or other niche property doesn't have big numbers it may not be able to survive the CPM game. Instead of thinking about other ways to add value, however, most just end up folding. That's sad. While I don't have a definite answer for how to fix it (Google figured out one way, job boards are another interesting one), it's clear that Scott Karp is right when he says page views and CPMs are suppressing online advertising.
I feel like I've not been paying enough attention to this site over the past few weeks. First it was the likemind birthday party (which was a raging success I might add) and now I've got a speaking gig to prepare for and a street mine to think about.
So, I'm going with a quick links post to make myself feel better. First, though, I will be in Chicago at ad:tech next week. If you're around, drop me a line, I'm thinking about trying to get some people together for a Friday evening Happy Hour (since I'm sticking around until Saturday). For those curious, here's my speaking topic: The Great Re-bundling Debate: Should Media and Creative Come Back Together? "Despite protests from a consistently familiar group of agency executives, the issue of re-bundling is back on the table. Interestingly enough, we rarely hear from clients that an “unbundled� world is a better world and a whole new class of new-breed agencies have risen up to offer clients a world of bundled services not out of convenience or differentiation but out of necessity and real-world market conditions. And although some agency executives may be in denial about what is happening across their own networks and agencies, the reality is that even in the world of unbundled agencies, re-bundling is occurring in plain sight. In this Exchange Series session, we want to hear from you on this subject and hear exactly why you think the world should remain unbundled or whether a re-bundled world is inevitable."
Okay, enough of that. Here are some links:
Coworker and friend Eric with a 'c' wrote about small worlds over at the Naked blog a few months ago. I've found myself quoting it quite a bit lately, especially this bit: "there is no such thing as a small world. Because I am the sort of person I am, because I was born to a certain type of parents, had a certain type of upbringing, lived where I did, went to the schools I went to, like to pick my nose, and whatever else that make me uniquely me, then it naturally follows that I will be acquainted with people similar to me. People with similar interests. They in turn will have friends similar to me with similar interests as well. The circles of friends rippling out from me are actually quite small."
Speaking of things I quote often, I love this quote from Michael Bierut on Design Observer: "But the great thing about graphic design is that it is almost always about something else. Corporate law. Professional football. Art. Politics. Robert Wilson. And if I can't get excited about whatever that something els is, I really have trouble doing good work as a designer. To me, the conclusion is inescapable: the more things you're interested in, the better your work will be."
Speaking of things I quote a lot, Malcolm Gladwell's Blink has a whole chapter on relationships. It turns out the single most important factor to a marriage failing is contempt: "there is one emotion that he considers the most important of all: contempt. If Gottman observes one or both partners in a marriage showing contempt toward the other, he considers it the single most important sign that the marriage is in trouble."
I go up and down on whether I want an iPhone. At this very moment, I'm on the I don't really want one side . . . Jeff Staple and Shelly Palmer.
A recent Russell Davies insight into the internet: "I've liked noticing the solidification of the internet recently, it seems to be becoming more like a thing and less like a service or process." Very interesting . . .
Last, but not least, some 80/20 action. As Sarah turned me on to, it turns out GE approaches its employees as a power law. It breaks them down into three groups: The top 20%, the middle 70% and then the bottom 10%, which it manages out (I believe that means fires). "'You should take the top 20 percent of your employees and make them feel loved,' Welch advised. 'Take the middle 70 percent and tell them what they need to do to get into the top 20 percent.' Managing out the bottom 10 percent of performers is necessary not only for the organization's continued success but also for the sake of employees affected by the rigorous appraisal system."
Think that's it. I have a smarter entry in my head . . . I just need to write it . . . Don't forget street mining this weekend.
Since today is officially likemind's first birthday I figured I'd post a slightly edited version of the original email exchange between Piers and I that made it happen.
From: Piers To: Noah Date: July 12, 2006
NB. I'm thinking of doing a coffee morning type thing sometime. Maybe we could roll something together.P
From: Noah To: Piers
let's do it . . . what about friday the 21st at 8am somewhere? (just throwing a random
date out . . . feel free to suggest something better)
From: Piers To: Noah
let''s do it - give an hour or two window. My recommendation would be Snice in West Village. Nice place, nice people, room.
From: Noah To: Piers
Just looked up snice, its sounds great . . . I guess all that's left is a name for it and then to let people know the plan.
From: Piers To: Noah
re. name? well, what's the coffee morning all about - the exchange of ideas? just networking?
From: Noah To: Piers
to me it would be about meeting other interesting and passionate
people who want to talk. it would be informal. of course networking is
part of it, but it's more about talking to some like-minded
individuals. not sure how organized i think it would need to be. i
guess we could have some topics for people to talk about, but that
seems kind of forced. what were you thinking?
From: Piers To: Noah
I was thinking it was just about like minded people turning up. oh, how about we call it likeminded, (in fact likemind.us is available on godaddy)
NoahBrier.com turns three and likemind turns one. How cute.
First off, I just realized that on July 16th, this blog turned three. I didn't give it a proper celebration, so I figured I'd at least say a few words.
I often tell people that the most interesting things that have happened to me over the last three years have happened as a result of this site. Normally they laugh. But when I explain, it tends to make much more sense. Here are three quick examples:
Sometime in May I get an email asking me if I might like to come out to Montana to give a talk. When I eventually found out what happened, it turned out that my good friend Max had suggested me and after checking out my blog Mike thought I would be a perfect fit. I ended up going out to Montana, talking about power laws and having a fantastic time doing something I never would have expected.
I first ran into Johanna in the comments section to a post Russell Davies wrote about likemind. She mentioned she was moving up to NYC and was going to stop by likemind. She did, we became friends and then when it was time for me to find a new job she was one of the people who got an email . . . one thing turns to another and I've now been with Naked NY for five months.
Almost exactly a year ago I wrote a very simple entry: "Lately I've had a desire to meet some people from the blog world in person. So, if you're a reader of this blog and live or are visiting the NYC area, drop me a line and we'll get coffee or a drink." That was it (well it actually said "That's all for now. Talk to you later." as well). A few days later I got an email from Piers saying we should grab a coffee. Eventually the chain turned into start a coffee morning, then call it likemind, then stick up a website and invite others. Now, one year later, that little idea that started with a 50 word post that got one response (thanks Piers!) is in 32 cities around the world.
The bottom line is that I'm overwhelmed by the power of this medium. Those three stories are by no means isolated incidents, they don't speak to the hundreds (literally) of new friends that have come as either a direct or indirect result of this site. To say it's changed my life would be an understatement.
So I just want to say thank you. When I look at the number of people who subscribe to the site I am tickled pink. Same for when someone comments here, I am absolutely amazed that people take their own time to contribute to my world and I can't tell you all how appreciative I am. It means an incredible amount that such brilliant people chose to spend their time interacting with both the site and myself. So thanks to all of you.
Let's talk about music. Sure, I know "writing about music is like dancing about architecture", but it's fun nonetheless. Every article I read telling me that they're struggling only makes me feel less bad for them. Industries change and businesses need to change with them. The choices are hold on to an outdated business model and die or evolve and survive (note I didn't include sue customers as an option).
Anyway, the latest round of articles on the music industry's woes has much to do with Prince's latest move. Rather than releasing his album in stores, he made a deal with the Mail on Sunday in England to give away nearly 3 million copies of his new album with the paper. According to the Guardian, "Prince is estimated to be being paid between £250,000 and £300,000 by the newspaper, a far greater sum than he would receive as an advance from a record company."
Of course, this makes the record stores and industry none-too-happy as evidenced by a quote from Paul Quirk, co-chairman of Britain's Entertainment Retailers Association: "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince should know that with behavior like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores." (Zing!) Funny enough, it's Fake Steve Jobs who put it about as succinctly as I've seen:
Here's the back story. The music companies are in a dying business, and they know it. Sure, they act all cool because they hang around with rock stars. But beneath all the glamour these guys are actually operating two very low-tech businesses. One is a form of loan-sharking: they put up money to make records, then force recording artists to pay the money back with exorbitant interest. The other business is distribution. They’ve got big warehouses and they control the shipment of little plastic boxes that happen to have music in them.
Neither of those businesses are particularly relevant in today's digital age. But that doesn't mean they're not still trying to make it happen. A recent Economist article mentions "360 degree contract": "Instead of settling for a cut of CD sales, they increasingly offer artists broader contracts that encompass live music, merchandise and endorsement deals. Such deals, also known as multiple-rights or all-rights contracts, are particularly important in regions with rampant CD piracy, such as Africa, Asia and Latin America." Not surprisingly, many artists are reluctant to sign deals like this.
I wish I had some incredible insight into how to fix this problem, but at the moment I don't. What I do know, however, is that there's got to be an answer. I also think this is an incredibly good case study in resistance to change. How long before the music industry realizes the world has passed them by and they take off the blindfold? People are out there doing clever things. Apparently RCRD LBL is going to seek out sponsorship/marketing deals as part of it's association with Downtown Records. Or take a look at what Canadian folk-pop singer Jane Siberry has done: "she has a “pay what you can� policy with her downloadable songs, so fans can download them free  but her site also shows the average price her customers have paid for each track. This subtly creates a community standard, a generalized awareness of how much people think each track is really worth. The result? The average price is as much as $1.30 a track, more than her fans would pay at iTunes."
There was a pretty good idea in this Slate article from a few years ago: "What we need is a system that will continue to pack the corporate coffers yet be fair to music lovers. The solution: a real-time commodities market that combines aspects of Apple's iTunes, Nasdaq, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Priceline, and eBay." All these require evolution of the current model, however, and the industry doesn't seem so down on that.
So as not to throw out a lot of problems without any solutions, I turn the table to all of you (and myself . . . I will give it more thought): What would you do to fix music?
Squeezing a few more minutes out of a five-day weekend.
Alrighty, it's time for a Sunday night entry full of random thoughts. Not sure where to begin, so I will just start.
I went back and watched Wieden's commercial for Honda's cleaner diesel. It's quite inspiring. Sure it's just a commercial, but the idea that hate is not such a bad thing is no joke. Sometimes you can learn the most from the things you like the least. As Dave Winer said recently: "You should always do what you least want to do as long as it's safe. How you learn." (Quote via Jeff Pulver.) That's smart.
I'm not sure whether this is connected at all, but for months before the iPhone came out I told people I'd never get one and that I didn't think it was going to be any good. I've since gone back on all of that. And you know what? I kind of like that I was so incredibly wrong.
Here's that Honda ad:
I spent all day yesterday at Live Earth. It was quite an interesting event. Not sure what my feelings are overall, but here are the Twitters from the afternoon: " There is a plane flying around live earth with a banner that says don't believe Al Gore", " Melissa ethridge is preaching and the teleprompter reads "talks to crowd"", "Ethridge said freedom has no brand name. Someone should look into that: Think of all the free media freedom gets.", " New Jersey really likes bon jovi" and "I forgot how good smashing pumpkins are." So . . . that was my day in a nutshell. Am quite curious to hear everyone else's thoughts on the whole Live Earth idea.
I went to see Pixar's Ratatouille and it was a blast to watch (as well as fairly realistic, apparently). Anyway, one of the thoughts I had as I saw Steve Jobs' name flash on screen during credits is the similarities between Pixar and Apple. Both companies make the most beautiful product in their industry and that's often credited as their biggest asset. However, I think what really sets them apart from their competition is their ability to tell stories that cause visceral reactions. In the case of Pixar and specifically Ratatouille, it's an underdog/equality story and in the case of Apple it's a creativity story. I remember when I got my first Mac that I was amazed at how much more creative it made me feel. It made me want to use it. I was talking to my friend Chet today and he said the same thing about the iPhone.
Speaking of phones, have you noticed that the number of wrong number calls have decreased significantly? Or maybe it's just me . . . I assume it's becaue no one's dialing numbers anymore, rather they're just choosing them from their cell phone's memory. Not sure what the point of this is, but it seems worthy of filing away for later.
We are having a likemind birthday party (it's a year this month). If you're around NYC and want to come, drop me a line and I'll send you the info.
Know there's not a terrible amount of insight or interestingness to this entry, but I felt like writing something and it's Sunday night . . . Have a great Monday!
How does exploring someone else's favorite NYC spots sound?
Last weekend I had brunch with my friend Pam. After enjoying a long and relaxing meal we started walking around Soho, showing each other our favorite somewhat hidden spots. After the third or fourth stop Pam said something to the effect of, "we should make this into a thing . . . it's fun to go exploring and introduce people to new places." I got incredibly excited, as I've had a similar idea for a while and have been waiting for someone to do it with.
So, let me introduce . . .
That's right, street mining. Here's the description we put up on the site: "street mining is pretty simple: once a month a bunch of people get together and go walk the streets. each month is guided by a different person showing off their favorite gems. anyone's invited, so why not come exploring? " The first one is saturday, july 28th. If you're interested, pop over to the site and sign up for emails. That's going to be the only way to find out where to meet.
Anyway, I'm pretty excited. I think it's going to be great. Pam is going to lead the first exploration and I hope to see some of you there.
Maybe it's an argument over semantics, but I think it's bigger than that.
What makes something "disruptive"? Wikipedia defines disruptive technology/disruptive innovation as a "a technological innovation, product, or service that eventually overturns the existing dominant technology or status quo product in the market." In the book Space Race the focus is much more on giving people something they didn't know they wanted: "Disruptive technologies emerge that are not what consumers think they want, or claim in resarch to want . . . ." (Thanks Adrian).
Personally, I take issue with both of these ideas. My definition of disruptive technology is something which re-routes a flow that once came from a single source. In other words, products themselves are not disruptive, rather the disruption is the effect. Disruption is normally achieved in one of two ways: Innovation or scale.
Some examples might help . . . Napster was a disruptive technology. It took an industry that once controlled the flow of music and democratized it by allowing people to freely trade and download. Joost, on the other hand, I wouldn't call disruptive (yet). The flow is still coming from the same location (big media), it's just being offered in a more innovative interface. If Joost were bought by someone like Sony, however, and they started loading it up on every flat-panel display they sold, that would disruptive. All of a sudden people would be able to get content without going through their cable company (other than a modem of course . . . ).
Google's a very interesting example. I wouldn't call Google's original offering disruptive. While they certainly changed the dynamics of the market, it didn't change the way information flowed: It was the same process as Yahoo!, just better algorithms (and PageRank, of course). However, what Google has done since they became the leader is pretty much constantly disrupt. They've done this through a combination of innovation and scale. Take Gmail: When Google decided it was going to give away something like 10x more storage than everyone else, competitors were forced to change their offerings. What was once costly became free. GOOG-411 is another example of this, because of their size they can afford to give away what others charge for. (Wal-Mart is pretty goodat this as well.)
So finally onto the iPhone. Call it semantics, but I don't think the phone itself is disruptive. Innovative for sure, but as Umair points out the disruption comes what Apple does when it's shifted the way people think about what a device should be. Umair suggests, and I agree, that Apple couldn't open unlocked devices at first because of the pushback it would have gotten from the operators. However, if this is really a superior device and gets the market share people think it might, Apple will be able to disrupt the way the mobile market works. As Umair puts it, "after the iPhone shifts massive market power to Apple, network guys will have little choice but to play by Apple's rules, to accede to it's newer, better value chain design - because the pool of consumers Apple offers access to will simply be too large a percentage of the profit pool for decisions not to be dictated by them."
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Mostly random thought (from Twitter): Wow, I am now getting Ground Zero Mosque comment spam ... I don't know whether to be impressed or disturbed. (31 August 2010, 11:54 am)
Q: What is this site all about?
A: I think Michael Bierut explained it nicely a few years ago in response to people asking him why he didn't write more about design on Design Observer: "But the great thing about graphic design is that it is almost always about something else. Corporate law. Professional football. Art. Politics. Robert Wilson. And if I can't get excited about whatever that something else is, I really have trouble doing good work as a designer. To me, the conclusion is inescapable: the more things you're interested in, the better your work will be." Replace "graphic design" with "media/marketing/technology" (or whatever you'd like to call my field) and you've got my deal.
Q: Where else do you live?
A: Good question. All over the place as a matter of fact. On Tumblr for more randomness, Twitter for short bursts, Dopplr for places I'm going, Delicious for things I'm reading, last.fm for music I'm listening to, Flickr for photos I'm taking and Facebook because I don't really have a choice. (Oh, and Amazon for stuff I want people to buy me.)
Q: I meant that literally. Where do you live?
A: Oh, sorry, Brooklyn, New York is where I call home at the moment.
Q: Any other side projects you'd like to tell us about?
A: As a matter of fact, yes. There's How Much Does it Buy?, a calculator for the rest of us. Holy Crap! Facts (and accompanying Twitter feed) which is pretty much exactly what you'd expect. Da' Bears Blog is, in my opinion, the best Chicago Bears blog on the web (I don't write it, I just helped it get off the ground) and Tweemail is a little PHP script I wrote for getting Twitter updates by email. I'm also always working on a few other things and will let you know when they're ready for public consumption.
Q: Um okay.
A: Yeah, that's a fake question mostly so I can throw in this one other quote I like that I think sums up some of what I try to do here. This one comes from Albert Einstein (or at least the internet says so) and goes something like, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." Words to live by.
Hi, I'm 