Jeff Random

musings and metatheory


New Media Economics Today

“Work It Harder Make It Better Do It Faster, Makes Us stronger” DaftPunk

Looking at revenues & users for Ebay, Yahoo & Google is where new media economics really begins to come into it’s own. This is web 2.0 theory being proven in the market today.

Times of great change mean times of great opportunity.

Web 2.0 is a shift to from tight, hierarchical architectures which realize exponential network FX, to loosely structured architecture which realize combinatorial network FX.

More simply, Web 2.0 is about the shift from network search economies, which realize mild exponential gains – your utility is bounded by the number of things (people, etc) you can find on the network – to network coordination economies, which realize combinatorial gains: your utility is bounded by the number of things (transactions, etc) you can do on the network.

via bubblegeneration – strategy, business models, and innovation

Published by r8ndom, on September 13th, 2005 at 6:21 pm. Filled under: Content,Media 2.0,Media Economics,Metatheory,Posts,SearchNo Comments

Trust is not Trusted Computing


While I have written about The Value of Trust before, trusted computing is entirely different.

This incredible short is both a beautiful example of messaging as well as a good explanation about some of the issues with trusted computing.

watch it now

After watching that, it’s an ideal time to enjoy reading the story
0wnz0red to take your understanding to another level.



Via Boing Boing

Published by r8ndom, on September 10th, 2005 at 1:17 pm. Filled under: Content,Media 2.0,Media Economics,Metatheory,Posts,Trust,VideosNo Comments

Granularity Metaphor

Nivi offers a great metaphor for understanding the benefits of granularity for RSS content.

The RSS is the TCP/IP of Web 2.0 is a very interesting read, as is Nivi in general.


RSS is like an API for content. RSS gives you access to a web site’s data just like an API gives you access to a web site’s computing power. Most important, RSS gives you access to your data that you have locked up on a web site.

Every Web 1.0 company will have to decide what content they will open with RSS. For example, Amazon already makes their content like their book catalog available through their API. But will Amazon open up user-contributed content through RSS?

Will you have access to

  • Your explicit content like your purchase history and reviews you’ve written?

  • Your drive-by content like the books you have recently browsed on Amazon?

  • Other user’s content such as book reviews?

I believe I heard Jon Udell say that the winners of the Web 2.0 orgy will be the sites that don’t lock up user-contributed content. Instead, the winners will create a compelling ecosystem for you to store your content and bring in your content from other sites via RSS. Food for thought.

Note: This is Part 3 of a continuing series called RSS is the TCP/IP of Web 2.0. You may also like Parts 1 and 2.

Published by r8ndom, on September 6th, 2005 at 10:24 pm. Filled under: Media 2.0,Metatheory,Personalized Content,Posts5 Comments

Copy Optimized- DVDA & more

Metadata that reconstructs the file via the web – exactly what we need these days. The more granular content gets the better this works.

There needs to be a standard so that it’s completely unambiguous just what one means when one says “Copy Optimized DVD Audio disc”. It’s that clear specification that will make embedded players and perfect peer-to-peer network copies possible. A disc containing such files could be popped into your home stereo DVD player and made to play, copy and share with no more user intervention than hitting a button…

But here’s the key: each file will be named in a way that’s optimized for file sharing, with artist, album, title and track number right in the filename, and with all the right metadata already embedded in the file when the album was mastered at the studio. To share Copy Optimized music you just direct your peer-to-peer filesharing application to your DVD drive so it will share what you’re listening to, have your friends copy the tracks onto their computers’ hard drives, or else burn them copies of the whole DVD.

But wait: there’s more! The DVD disk itself will have a metadata file in its root directory that will specify the contents of the entire disk. My idea is that one could make a bit-for-bit reconstruction of the whole disk just by grabbing this one metadata file and then looking for the tracks on the file sharing networks. This file would be one or two kilobytes of XML that would have each track’s metadata as well as its Secure Hash Algorithm checksum so it can be uniquely identified over the net.

Via Boing Boing

Published by r8ndom, on September 5th, 2005 at 2:27 pm. Filled under: Content,Media 2.0,Media Economics,Metatheory,Personalized Content,PostsNo Comments

From Tastemaker to Collaborative Filter

“DJ’s are like collaborative filters – but the best ones are also sources of novelty. Noise, if you like, – but good noise. Filters that can jump from peak to peak – from things I might like now, to things I will like when my preferences will evolve (or, better yet, that evolve my preferences). Algorithmic solutions don’t do this yet – and probably won’t for a while, because it’s a (really) hard problem. But it’s also a (really) big market gap.” link

You don’t need an algorithmic solution when you can have your users brute force it for you more accurately, and also introduce novelty.

The question becomes where are you going to get a dedicated group of users who are willing to invest their time, efforts and attention into your system?

Untold numbers of music fans & teenagers seems like a good place to start.

“MTV Hits, an MTV offshoot channel in UK, will turn into a fully interactive service, encouraging viewers to choose playlists and influence the on-screen look of the network.

From later this year viewers will initially be invited to create their own home pages on MTV.co.uk, with features including personal blogs, all-time favourite track lists and current favourites.” –link

Published by r8ndom, on September 3rd, 2005 at 12:52 am. Filled under: Content,Media 2.0,Media Economics,Metatheory,Personalized Content,PostsNo Comments

Free Mobile Adult Video Clips

Would you like porn with that?

Mobile phone retailers in China are offering free adult video clips as a value add for handset purchasers. – Link

Published by r8ndom, on September 2nd, 2005 at 10:11 pm. Filled under: Adult Entertainment Industry,Content,Media 2.0,Mobile,Posts5 Comments

It’s the relationship

Working for AVN in the Adult Entertainment Industry teaches you the value of relationships. The AVN media network spans magazines, tradeshows, and websites. IMHO the following quote applies to all of them:

“The relationship the magazine has with readers — and, more important, that readers have with readers — is at least as valuable as the magazine’s content. That’s a lesson.”

Originally
by Jeff from BuzzMachine
at September 1, 2005, 16:58

Published by r8ndom, on September 1st, 2005 at 2:07 pm. Filled under: Adult Entertainment Industry,Adult Webmaster,Media 2.0,Media Economics,Metatheory,PostsNo Comments

Web as Operating System

Kottke make a great case for the web as the next operating system here

Compared to “standalone” Web apps and desktop apps, applications developed for this hypothetical platform have some powerful advantages. Because they run in a Web browser, these applications are cross platform (assuming that whoever develops such a system develops the local Web server part of it for Windows, OS X, Linux, your mobile phone, etc.), just like Web apps such as Gmail, Basecamp, and Salesforce.com. You don’t need to be on a specific machine with a specific OS…you just need a browser + local Web server to access your favorite data and apps.

It raises one of the major obstacles facing the idea of Web as Operating System – Lameness

One thing that might deter you from writing Web-based applications is the lameness of Web pages as a UI. That is a problem, I admit. There were a few things we would have really liked to add to HTML and HTTP. What matters, though, is that Web pages are just good enough.

With the introduction of ifthen YubNub could be a solution to the “lameness” of web pages as user interface.

Just as using CSS allows separation of the content from the presentation, Yubnub allows separation of the interface from the application.

This allows for the hypothetical “WebOS” to have the advantages without suffering from “lameness”

Published by r8ndom, on August 26th, 2005 at 11:50 pm. Filled under: Media 2.0,Metatheory,Personalized Content,PostsNo Comments

The Value of Trust

Jeff from BuzzMachine says:

Who wants to own content?

Distribution is not king.

Content is not king.

Conversation is the kingdom.

The war is over and the army that wasn’t even fighting — the army of all of us, the ones who weren’t in charge, the ones without the arms — won. The big guys who owned the big guns still don’t know it. But they lost.

In our media 2.0, web 2.0, post-media, post-scarcity, small-is-the-new-big, open-source, gift-economy world of the empowered and connected individual, the value is no longer in maintaining an exclusive hold on things. The value is no longer in owning content or distribution.

The value is in relationships. The value is in trust.

Link

Information wants to be free while trust wants to be earned.
We pay attention to those that we trust.

Trust in network environments
The need for a cognitive model of trust
The socio-cognitive model of trust
The beliefs of trust: what X thinks about Y
The “Motivation belief” of trust
Yin-yang trust
Internal and external trust
The sources of trust
Trust and irrationality
Degrees of trust
Trust and risk
Trust and delegation
Trust and control
Trust and adjustable autonomy
The dynamics of trust
Trust and experiences
Trust elicits trust
Trust atmosphere
Trust as a three parties relationship: contracts and authorities
Trust as a communicative act
Trust as a fuzzy network
Trust in contract nets
Trust, security and technology
Trust and technical knowledge
Trust and knowledge management

Published by r8ndom, on August 24th, 2005 at 11:52 pm. Filled under: Content,Media 2.0,Media Economics,Metatheory,Personalized Content,Posts,Search,Trust3 Comments

Search Engine Spammers – The Unsung Heroes?

Do yourself a favor. Close the door, turn on your speakers and devote seven minutes to watching this flash movie .

evolving-personalized-information-construct

When I first came across this about a year ago it blew my mind. It’s a tiny bit dated, but still incredible. Go ahead, watch it now! (then read the rest of this post)

While I think some of the specifics are unlikely (or even silly) the examples of the New Media Economics and business models are brilliant. The personalized content meme is definitely out there.

Today at SEO Blackhat I saw a very interesting question tied to the Googlezon idea.

“Who is really pioneering the computer generated content, the rewording and content scraping technology of the Web?

SEO Black Hats

Search engine spam technology keeps improving, so search engines keep evolving. The best SE spammers are the ones who provide as close to EXACTLY what the search engine is looking for as possible. The best search engine is the one that finds as close to EXACTLY what the user is looking for as possible. Therefore as search engines improve, SE spammers will have to evolve as well to deliver EXACTLY what the user is looking for, transforming them from a hated nuisance to a valued resource.