conflux
Light Reading
Telecom Downturn: Just Beginning?
"The carrier spending downturn could very well last another five to six years, according to Dr. John McQuillan, president of McQuillan Ventures. McQuillan, cochairman of the NGN Ventures conference here, sent a few attendees scrambling for their Maalox on Tuesday when he pointed out that, historically, capital spending downturns have tended to last for seven to eight years.
Since the telecom industry is only two years into its current downturn, McQuillan told attendees that they'd better just buck up and quit living in the past: "We need to stop telling ourselves that it’s a tough market and start telling ourselves that this is the market.""
"Phone and cable carrier AT&T Corp. reported its loss widened to nearly $1 billion in the first quarter, blaming the performance on falling long-distance sales and a slide in the value of its investments."
redux [03.15.02]
"After nearly $2 trillion of investment, the build-out of the information superhighway has run out of gas. The mountain of money invested by wannabe global telecom providers continues to go up in smoke. Though the smaller upstarts were first to pull the plug, major carriers like Global Crossing are now hitting bankruptcy court. And analysts say it could be years before the industry shakes off its debt hangover, absorbs a glut of capacity and begins to grow again."
redux [02.08.02]
""Some of the more highly leveraged companies are really struggling. They don't have the cash flow to make their payments," says James Glen, a telecom economist with Economy.com."
Worse, Baby Bells such as Verizon (VZ ) and SBC (SBC ) continue to eat away at consumer long-distance monopoly of AT&T, Sprint, and WorldCom. That's on top of the woes the big three already face in operating backbone undersea and land-based networks, which they resell to other operators in some places. While Sprint, WorldCom, and AT&T don't face the type of imminent cash crunch as Global Crossing does, a consolidation among even the major long-distance providers is now a possibility."
"Sprint PCS stock hit a 52-week of low $10.00 on Wednesday after the company cut 2002 subscriber targets. Meanwhile, Sprint stock plummeted to an all-time low of $12.64 on Wednesday after the company posted a big loss and cut its 2002 outlook.
The telecom market has been rocked by the bankruptcy of Global Crossing and lingering doubts from last year. Sprint competitor WorldCom has seen its stock fall drastically this week while fears of more Enron-esque accounting problems plague the industry."
"The fundamental health of the [telecom] sector is likely to get worse before it gets better . . . The combination of: the sector's anemic growth outlook, the cannibalizing competitive mega-trends of wireless substitution, voice to data migration, Bell entry into long distance combined with local competition, and the bubble-induced excesses in debt and over-capacity, all create a powerful wealth destroying dynamic. Telecom's 'debt spiral' has gotten so bad that even the relatively strongest players who are still able to raise significant capital (VZ, SBC, and BLS) don't want to assume any more liabilities or business risk. Consequently, Precursor is reversing its long held view that consolidation can help improve the sector from excess capacity and debt any time soon."
"Despite the darkened outlook, new communications capabilities are within reach that will make the current Internet look like tin cans and string. The technical know-how exists. Radically simplified technologies can blast bits a million times faster than the current network at a millionth of the cost. These are sitting in laboratories undeveloped, in warehouses undeployed, and in the field underutilized.
It's not even that the communications revolution has been derailed by inept or self-aggrandizing behavior by incumbent telephone companies and their government regulators. Something more fundamental is at work."
10:54 PM 0 comments
Newsbytes
Online Newspapers Top Local News Source On Web
"This just in: Web surfers looking for local news on the Internet are most likely to visit online newspapers, beating out Yahoo, local television sites and America Online".
"But what is it that drives Internet users to a newspaper's online edition? Among those interviewed by telephone, 38 percent go to the Net for breaking news, 34 percent search archives and classified ads, 32 percent look for greater detail of a story in the paper's printed version, and 31 percent are trying to find information not available in print."
redux [02.14.02]
"Among internet users in their twenties, the ritual of sitting down with the morning paper is gradually being displaced by a new routine: logging on for news.
People in the 20 to 29 age bracket are bypassing print newspapers for their online editions, according to a recent study from Forrester Research.
"There’s a new wave of consumers that are coming up the pike, and these consumers have been introduced to the web at a much younger age," says Christopher M. Kelley, the analyst behind the report."
redux [10.19.01]
"As the days and the weeks pass after the attacks of Sept. 11, an interesting development is taking place: American media is being beaten, and beaten solidly, by foreign competitors in the hunt for the stories of the new war against terrorism. This is particularly true of electronic media, whose shortcomings -- especially in terms of international coverage -- are on view for all to see. While American media seems fixated on the anthrax threat, the rest of the world is receiving better information about the larger, more complex issues."
"The limitations of other media -- time, space and depth, in particular, in various quantities -- mean that the Internet is becoming the one medium where Americans who are interested in getting the 'real facts' of the story can go to find them. Even most American media also recognize this -- witness the regular exhortations to audiences and readers to 'go to the Web to get more on this story.'"
"A new ABCNEWS poll finds that nearly half of Americans now get news over the Internet, up by 11 points - perhaps 22 million individuals - since mid-1999. And just over a third of Internet news consumers say they've been going online for news more often since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks."
redux [06.13.00]
"The most-credible Internet news sources are Web sites run by network or cable TV outlets or national newspapers, according to a new survey. Such well-known Internet names as America Online, Netscape and Yahoo! ranked higher on credibility than lesser-known sites."
"Among news media, continuing a trend, the Pew poll found key segments of the nation's news audience, particularly younger and better-educated Americans and those seeking financial information, are turning increasingly to the Internet."
""Increasingly, news organizations that are going to be successful have to offer news on a 24-hour basis..."
redux [04.20.00]
"Young adults say the Internet, not newspapers or television, is their number one source of information, a Round Table Group survey has found.
Fifty-nine percent of Internet users in the 18- to 24-year-old age group say that their household gets more "useful information" from the Net than from newspapers; 53 percent say they receive more information from the Internet than from TV.
Fully 84 percent say that their household is more likely to use the Internet to find useful information than to go to the public library. For specific questions, 68 percent are more inclined to consult the Internet than turn to a newspaper and 67 percent are more likely to go to the Net than rely on television."
6:23 PM 0 comments
The New York Times Magazine
The 14-Year-Old Hit Man
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"The businessman stepped out of the bank carrying a briefcase in his right hand. At first, Tiny said, they followed half a block behind and then grabbed him. ''He started making a scene and going, like, 'No, no, no,''' El Raton said, opening his eyes wide. ''Me and my little cousin caught him and shot him in the back of the head.'' Then, Tiny said, they grabbed the briefcase and got into the taxi. They had been promised $300 each to kill the man and steal his briefcase. They didn't even count the cash in the case nor what they were paid. Only later did they realize that they had made only $25 each."
"These kids are confined, for the most part, to urban areas, because the risk of kidnapping renders much of the countryside impassable. And for many of the poorer ones, trapped within ghettos, living on the edge of society means dealing with the daily specter of death in the form of murder, bombings, and random gang violence, or the threat of being drafted as paid assassins, sicarios , by the outlawed paramilitary groups. For them, salvation can be found through sharing music—the kind brought back by artists like Ospina, and the kind they create using bare-bones equipment, often with no more than their bodies and a mic.
"I've been down what they call the 'bad steps of life,' and I now realize that's not what I want," says Javier Beltrán, a/k/a Javi Herc, a Bogotá-based hip-hop producer. "I use hip-hop not as a mechanism of escape, but as a mechanism of living.""
"There is the Clockwork Orange-style ultra-violence , mixed with heavy doses of nihilism and fatalism. "I reckon I've killed thirteen people," one twenty-year-old sicario tells Alazar. "That's thirteen I've killed personally, I don't count those we've shot when we're out as a gang. If I die now, I'll die happy. Killing is our business, really ... We don't care who we have to give it to, we know it has to be done, that's all there is to it. Whoever it may be: I have no allegiances."
The gang lifestyle allows an underprivileged youth to lead a briefly opulent existence, in imitation of the films and T.V. programs gang members watch devotedly - studying Rambo movies and old episodes of The A-Team for everything from fashion tips to military strategy. "There's lots of eighteen-year-old kids round here who've got luxury flats in El Poblado, farms, cars, motor bikes," says one Medellín priest. "The only problem is that very few of them live beyond twenty or twenty-three to enjoy it."
"Another tragic aspect of the conflict has been the dramatic increase in "social cleansing killings" committed by the paramilitaries. The mission of many paramilitary organizations now includes a "moral" purification of Colombian society through "the physical elimination of drug addicts, exconvicts, petty thieves and criminals, prostitutes, homosexuals, beggars and street children."
Between 1989 and 1993 there were 1,926 documented cases of social cleansing performed by death squads or assassins known as "sicarios." Many of these assassins come from the ranks of the young urban unemployed who are becoming increasingly marginalized as a result of Colombia's deteriorating economy. Ironically, once their employers decide they know too much, these young assassins often become the targets of newly recruited sicarios."
"La virgen de los sicarios (Our Lady of the Assassins) already has sparked great controversy in Colombia, where some critics have demanded the film be banned outright. Their reaction, though misguided, is understandable: Director Barbet Schroeder's unsparing portrait of Medellin as a veritable hell on Earth is so devastating, so focused and unrelenting in its sorrow and fury, it's natural for the people who see themselves reflected in the film to reject it."
"With its mopey protagonist and unforgiving setting, Barbet Schroeder's Our Lady of the Assassins would be grim even if it weren't dramatically numb.
The movie itself is dull, however. The characters never engage our interest, and the relentless violence grows monotonous."
10:50 AM 0 comments
The San Francisco Chronicle
CIA warns of Web hack attacks by Chinese
"U.S. intelligence officials believe the Chinese military is working to launch wide-scale cyber-attacks on U.S. and Taiwanese computer networks, including Internet-linked military systems vulnerable to sabotage, according to a classified CIA report.
Moreover, U.S. authorities are bracing for a possible wave of hacking attacks by Chinese students against the United States in coming weeks, according to the analysis."
redux [10.04.01]
"Netwar is an emerging mode of conflict in which the protagonists - ranging from terrorist and criminal organizations on the dark side, to militant social activists on the bright side - use network forms of organization, doctrine, strategy, and technology attuned to the information age. The practice of netwar is well ahead of theory, as both civil and uncivil society actors are increasingly engaging in this new way of fighting. We suggest how the theory of netwar may be improved by drawing on academic perspectives on networks, especially those about organizational network analysis. As for practice, strategists and policymakers in Washington and elsewhere have begun to discern the dark side of the network phenomenon - especially in the wake of the "attack on America" perpetrated apparently by Osama bin Laden's terror network. But they still have much work to do to begin harnessing the bright side, by formulating strategies that will enable state and civil-society actors to work together better."
[requires 'free' registration]
""People aren't going to be killing us with computers," Mr. Hunker said, "but our life may be hell because of computer attacks."
The likeliest use of the technology, he said, would be to complicate matters further after a real-world attack, a tactic he describes with the military phrase "force multiplier." That could involve planting false information on the Web to create a panic or taking down crucial computers in the financial or communications sectors."
redux [09.12.01]
"One day after the terrorist attacks against New York and Washington, a congressional report has warned of the vulnerability of the country's computer networks."
""Despite the importance of maintaining the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of important federal computerised operations, federal computer systems are riddled with weaknesses that continue to put critical operations and assets at risk," he said."
redux [08.19.01]
""Taiwan has one of the world's largest computer software and hardware manufacturing bases," said D.K. Matai, managing director of the British-based Mi2. "The computer software programmers in Taiwan are world class. Our view is that getting involved in any kind of conflict with Taiwan, given the kind of intellectual capacity the country has, may prove detrimental."
The Chinese government has been quite open about its future strategic military objective. In paper appearing in the spring issue of China Military Science journal, a member of the Chinese Committee of Science, Technology and Industry of the System Engineering Institute, wrote: "We are in the midst of a new technology in which electronic information technology is the central technology. The technology provides unprecedented applications for the development of new weaponry...Military battles during the 21st century will unfold around the use of information for military and political goals.""
redux [09.06.00]
"The thesis of this think piece is that the information revolution will cause shifts both in how societies may come into conflict, and how their armed forces may wage war. We offer a distinction between what we call "netwar" -- societal-level ideational conflicts waged in part through internetted modes of communication -- and "cyberwar" at the military level. These terms are admittedly novel, and better ones may yet be devised. But for now they illuminate a useful distinction and identify the breadth of ways in which the information revolution may alter the nature of conflict short of war, as well as the context and the conduct of warfare.
While both netwar and cyberwar revolve around information and communications matters, at a deeper level they are forms of war about "knowledge" -- about who knows what, when, where, and why, and about how secure a society or military is regarding its knowledge of itself and its adversaries."
redux [01.04.01]
"Scenes of street violence are played out day after day in Palestinian towns across Gaza and the West Bank. But another modern-day arena for battle between the Palestinians and the Israelis is growing ever more heated, so much so that the Internet war waged by computer-savvy political activists is being dubbed an "e-Jihad.""
redux [03.22.00]
"A group of Pakistani hackers has used the conflict in Kashmir as a reason to deface almost 600 Web sites in India and take control of several Indian government and private computer systems, according to the group."
"Unlike the majority of Web vandals, the MOS members say they secretly take control of a server, then deface the site only when they "have no more use" for the data or the server itself.
"The servers we control range from harmless mail and Web services to 'heavy duty' government servers," says the MOS representative. "The data is only being categorically archived for later use if deemed necessary."
"Take the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade several weeks ago. Rage spread across China and hackers from the mainland attacked the Web sites of the US Departments of Energy and the Interior, and the National Park Service. A subsequent attack brought down the White House Web site for three days. The attacks generated headlines across the country.
What the news media didn't report was that the US government had known for a long time that someone had been in its computer systems - they just didn't know who. Then, in a fit of anger, the Chinese hackers caused some real damage - and gave away the hidden "location" of several "backdoors" they had built in US government networks."
"The US Government Accounting Office estimates 120 groups or countries have or are developing information-warfare systems. According to a report issued by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, 23 nations have cyber-targeted the US."
7:02 PM 0 comments
The Financial Times
Burmese get glimpse of superhighway
""If you are in the car business and you request a car website, if it is for your business, that's OK," Ye Htut said. "But if sites are not suitable for this country's culture they will not open them, even if there is high demand."
Aung Aye Htut, the venture's US-educated chief financial officer, says the purpose of the gradual opening "is to have policy makers here get more confident. They understand the power of the internet and what information can give to the public. It's just a matter of being comfortable with the people who are going to be running the system.""
redux [04.11.02]
"At a gala recently at the opulent Russian Tea Room in New York City, serene looking Tibetan monks rubbed elbows with suited clients of a Silicon Valley company that boasts about having survived the tech bust. This is a story about an unlikely marriage between philanthropy and capitalism, and how it could very well help preserve the culture of the people of Tibet.
SCATTERED across Northern India, Nepal and Bhutan are 32 settlement camps, home to more than 122,000 Tibetan exiles displaced from their native land by Chinese troops, who invaded the country 50 years ago. Just last month, action was begun in earnest to install a computer in each of these settlements, and to wire each for Internet access."
redux [10.22.01]
"I have seen that even a small village like mine can benefit a lot from the internet.
We can use it to generate money for the village, to provide quality education for our children, to provide information about our culture to children all over the world, and to invite volunteers to come to our village.
If everything goes well, I plan to build a college in my village and provide computer courses to the students. This will open a door for us to produce computer programmers in the village, and produce software for the big firms around the world."
redux [09.13.01]
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"The prospects seemed bright when the Internet was recently introduced in a remote part of the mountainous Cotopoxi region in Ecuador. Under the guidance of aid workers, Quichua-speaking peasants planned to gather crop information and sell their crafts over the Web.
Soon, though, it was discovered that some of the men were using the computer to visit pornographic sites."
"Dismayed, the women began to question how the men were treating them, and a debate ensued over the common practice of beating women. Although use of the Internet was later curtailed, its introduction unexpectedly generated discussion on a once taboo topic.
"The changes created by the Internet in rich industrialized nations are well known, affecting everything from how people date to how they work. But less is known about the impact on societies with limited contact with the rest of the world. As such experiments multiply, at least one outcome seems certain: the way people in these communities relate to each other and with the world is likely to be altered forever."
redux [04.23.00]
"I have spent my whole life in Corrientes, Argentina. Even as it is a state-capital and my family is relatively well-off, there are tons of cultural treasures that I couldn't have known if it wasn't for the Net, and not only knowledge or information, but whole mental frames: a passionate, whole-hearted love for science and philosophy, self-respect as a computer geek, excellent non-contemporary thinking (like Chesterton's, Voltaire's or Shaw's), non-hispanoameric poetry, enlightenment values and, yes, all kinds of erotic information and art (OK, pornography, too :), along with lots of other things.
Those things, althought mostly intellectual in nature, have, as you have pointed, corroded my "native" culture, to the point that I feel more at ease with Scientific American, the Need to Know e-zine, the Linux scene or the Discordian(-like) humor|philosophy. I still have my friends, my girlfriend and my family here, but I don't think I share my culture with them anymore (not that this started wholly with the Net; I have read Asimov from age 6, programmed from age 7, &c., but the richness of the Net has deepened it to the point of making myself councious of it).
It has its social and psychological side effects, but I wouldn't go back for all the group status of the world. I like this culture a lot more than my "native" one, for sheer deepness, meaning and beauty."
redux [08.07.00]
"As the Internet is spreading around the globe, a problem is created concerning its impact on the local cultures. This paper argues that the relation between computer-mediated communication technologies and local cultures is characterized neither by a homogenizing effect, where the technologies bring about one global monolithic culture, nor by an erecting of barriers separating one culture from another, where there is no impact at all. Instead, local cultures usually find ways to cope with the impact and are resilient enough to absorb it without losing some kind of identity. A case study is presented on a local Internet scene in Thailand to see how Thai culture co-opts the Internet and how its identity is being constantly negotiated."
redux [04.10.01]
"Can Mayan culture stand up to the global culture? Sure, says Audelino Sac. "First, we have to strengthen our own culture. Then, once we have established our own identity, we can receive from, but also give to, the process of globalization. Mayan culture shouldn't be against technology. We have always adopted new technologies." The example he uses is the corn mill. I guess you could add rayon and artificially dyed threads.
Then this Mayan priest -- dressed in green jeans, thick-soled black shoes, and an open-necked striped shirt -- says something that, in my view, cuts to the heart of the issue here: "All cultures," he states, "are dynamic and able to take positive things from other cultures."
Dynamic, yes -- a thousand times yes. If there's one thing I've learned on my trip so far, it's that cultures are not, and never were, inert."
9:17 PM 0 comments
Newsbytes
Long-Time File-Swappers Buy More Music, Not Less - Jupiter
"Contrary to charges that Internet song-swapping is killing the music industry, new Jupiter Media Metrix research contends that experienced online song-swappers are more likely to buy new albums than average music fans, not less."
"Media giant (and MPAA and RIAA member) Viant conducted an extensively detailed study [PDF] of filesharing last year. It's an excellent analysis of the current state of various types of filesharing systems as well as an overview of the legal and technical issues surrounding each."
redux [04.17.02]
""Our data show that the dominance of a few music superstars is decreasing, and their hold on music sales is slipping," said Sudip Bhattacharjee of the University of Connecticut's School of Business. "This is definitely good news for up-and-coming artists and groups, who now have a better chance at chart success because of (new) technologies" such as programs that allow users to download songs for free from the Internet."
""Superstars just don't have the sustaining power they used to," said Gopal, who headed the research team. "They get knocked off by new artists who get sampled over the Internet.""
[requires 'free' registration]
"The record industry's legal victory over Napster last year has neither stopped the trading of free music online nor halted a slide in music sales."
"Underscoring the industry's woes, a survey released today by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, an international record industry trade group, found that revenue from global music sales fell 5 percent in 2001, to $33.7 billion."
redux [03.18.01]
""The sense of music needing to be tied to a physical artefact, whether that be a CD or a cassette, is coming to an end," explains Simon Hopkins, head of BBC Music Online."
""The minute music went virtual in the 1990s, when it was available as ones and zeros over the internet, music was no longer a fixed commodity, no longer something the artist handed over to the audience," he says."
[requires 'free' registration]
"Technology is changing music. But then again, it always has. The invention of the piano 300 years ago centered Western music on the keyboard. Electricity's arrival in the late 19th century enabled the duplication of performances and, later, the amplification of instruments. With digitization, the pace of upheaval has further accelerated. Digital file-sharing technologies -- Napster and its offspring -- are now undermining the established economics of music. And everything we know about digital technologies suggests that Napster is only the beginning."
"Everyone with a computer I know uses them, rips them from their CDs, and shares them with others. Napster (and later on, Kazaa) built massive worldwide networks based on the sharing of these files, spreading terabytes of files to millions of users. And yet, you can't walk into a store anywhere in America and buy a physical form of media embedded with mp3s."
"Given the ubiquity of mp3s among consumers, the continued rise in popularity of the format despite anything that's been put in place to stop them, and the millions of dollars being spent on mp3 encoding/decoding software and hardware, I no longer think the RIAA operates solely on fear. At this point, they're simply running on stupidity."
redux [12.18.01]
"Indeed, the pointless attempt to control copyrighted data every step of the way from musician's voice to listener's ear is the biggest roadblock to success for online music. Just as HBO doesn't try to stop you from taping its movies, so music sellers need to let go and trust their customers. Remove the incentives for people to steal, rather than imposing more technology that treats customers as would-be shoplifters. Even former BMG head Strauss Zelnick, who says he has no problem throwing big-time bootleggers in jail, agrees the industry's challenge is to come up with an attractive alternative to Aimster and its ilk. "We need to give consumers a service they want, at a price they're willing to pay," he told me in an interview this summer. "People don't like to think of themselves as criminals." But ironically, the more anti-theft hurdles crammed into the legal products, the more attractive the pirate alternatives become."
redux [12.11.01]
"The major record labels have rolled out their much-anticipated subscription music services -- the ones that are supposed to be legitimate alternatives to the free file sharing services spawned by Napster. MusicNet went online last week. Details of the upcoming PressPlay service were officially unveiled today. But they come at a moment when more people than ever -- even more than in Napster's heyday -- are using FREE services."
redux [07.24.01]
""In some respects, this brings the labels back to square one," Mooradian said.
One label executive agreed, saying, "I fear we're getting into a game of whack-a-mole, where we sue Napster, then we sue Aimster and so on and so on."
"If (the labels) killed Napster -- and that's 'if,'" said Johnny Deep, CEO of Aimster, "they killed their only chance of a viable online strategy. Napster was easy enough to use, and there was loyalty and confidence in the brand. That's something the labels can't recreate, even if they spend a hundred million.""
"It didn't have to be this way, of course. The music industry has had the opportunity for several years now to begin offering reasonably priced access to comprehensive catalogs of digital music across the Internet, sweetened with special premium additions for fans willing to pay even more. Such a service could satisfy the hunger of millions of people for ready access to new and old music while preserving a reasonable income for the artists who make that music. Fear has stayed the industry's hand -- fear that today's unconscionably high CD prices can't be sustained; fear that the many layers of middlemen in today's industry might find themselves out of jobs; fear that the superstar system couldn't survive such a change; fear of the unknown.
The industry's paralysis is a tragedy for anyone who believes that artists should be compensated for their work as well as for anyone who loves music, period. But it's clear that the record labels would rather sue than find a sensible rapprochement with the new world of digital distribution."
redux [05.02.00]
""The Recording Industry Association of America wants to educate consumers with the message, "Artists deserve to be compensated -- artists won't make music if they can't make money." I can only imagine the public service announcements with multimillionaire artists pleading for their right to a seventh Porsche in the driveway.
There's no rationalization for piracy; it is what it is. However, rampant music piracy online indicates that the music industry's distribution and pricing model is out of whack with what people want. The problem isn't the piracy; the problem is unhappy customers.
And the music industry had better do something about it. This is a dinosaur moment -- with the big rock looming overhead -- where the music industry needs to ask itself how it will adapt."
11:09 PM 0 comments
EPN World Reporter
Go Publish Yourself
"Can anyone be a journalist now?
“Well, sure,” says Matt Welch, “it’s always been true, though oftentimes more in theory than in practice. The country I live in, for example, has a rich tradition of pamphleteers, weirdos handing out flyers, punk-rock zines. The best of the self-starters - I.F. Stone, Ben Franklin, Matt Drudge - gained notoriety and can either be called ‘journalists’ or some other separate creature worthy of respect. At the end, few self-publishing exercises on the Web end up resembling what we normally associate with the word ‘journalism,’ but the list is still long, varied and vital. The weblogs, especially those that have sprouted in the last six months, are a new kind of publication, more akin to the notes of an op-ed columnist or editor."
"In the first wave of online journalism, the owners controlled all, and end-users had little say in how the product was developed. In the second, end-users fought for control, spurning ads and declaring that content be free. In the third wave, control is being shared. Network owners see value in cooperating closely with their audience; the audience is more willing to let the owners make a buck."
"A new publishing model seems to be emerging in the third wave: Control is being shared and innovation is developing through a partnership between owners and users."
redux [03.28.02]
"As an interconnected society moves toward participating in the news, the Brotherhood of News seeks to protect its values and exert its control. Just as zero changed the equation shaping humanity's vision of the universe, accessible media changes the equation that shapes news and informs society. Everyone is a journalist in the age of access. But for most news organizations, collaboration with their audience is an irrational concept, a dangerous idea."
redux [03.06.02]
"So how does the Internet fit into the financial survival of journalism? Right now, some people think it looks more like the kiss of death than potential salvation. The Internet forces us to produce news in all media types—text, photos, audio, video—and to do so twenty-four hours a day, with technology that requires high-priced maintenance and regular upgrading. And almost no one in the audience is paying a penny for it. There’s a business model straight out of Alice in Wonderland: let’s push costs through the ceiling and drop prices to zero!
But that’s going to change."
redux [10.19.01]
"As the days and the weeks pass after the attacks of Sept. 11, an interesting development is taking place: American media is being beaten, and beaten solidly, by foreign competitors in the hunt for the stories of the new war against terrorism. This is particularly true of electronic media, whose shortcomings -- especially in terms of international coverage -- are on view for all to see. While American media seems fixated on the anthrax threat, the rest of the world is receiving better information about the larger, more complex issues."
"The limitations of other media -- time, space and depth, in particular, in various quantities -- mean that the Internet is becoming the one medium where Americans who are interested in getting the 'real facts' of the story can go to find them. Even most American media also recognize this -- witness the regular exhortations to audiences and readers to 'go to the Web to get more on this story.'"
redux [02.02.00]
"According to McAdams, who helped create the Washington Post's online service, "A journalist with little online experience tends to think in terms of stories, news value, public service and things that are good to read, but a person with a lot of online experience thinks more about connection, organization, movement within and among sets of information and communication among different people". Journalists today must choose. As gatekeepers they can transfer lots of information, or they can make users a smarter, more active and questioning audience for news events and issues. Making users smarter means involving them in a collaborative experience; i.e. interaction ”
redux [01.30.02]
"First, we're already seeing the most wired reporters discovering the power of the blog, and rapidly becoming addicted to the kind of instant feedback and massively expanded informational networks they can provide. Watching a reporter start to blog is like watching a sugar addict stumble into Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. Most of them immediately "get it" as soon as they open themselves up to the people they had always previously been talking at. I think this will continue, because I think reporters are just like that. The good ones will never pass up an opportunity to increase their reach."
redux [12.20.01]
"Everybody knows about the 800-pound gorillas of online news — nytimes.com, CNN.com, MSNBC — but there's another group that's contributing mightily to the craft of Web journalism: the solo, lone-wolf operation.
These outfits, each created and operated largely by one person, show that you don't need a large staff and venture-capital seed money to do news on the Net."
"The Internet and specifically its graphic interface the World Wide Web is reaching a level of saturation and widespread adoption throughout the world. Specifically for journalism practiced online - in the discipline of computer-assisted reporting (CAR) and a specific kind of journalism: online journalism - we can now identify and theorize about the impacts the global system of networked computers has had on journalism. This paper signals four particular journalisms online as these have emerged in the 'first generation' of newsmedia on the World Wide Web (1993-2001), discusses the key characteristics - cf. hypertextuality, interactivity, multimediality - which determine the 'added value' of these journalisms, and provides three specific strategies journalists may use to further enhance the potential of journalism online: annotative reporting, open source journalism and hyperadaptive news sites."
8:59 AM 0 comments
The New York Times
Pay Features Gather Steam on Web
[requires 'free' registration]
""The smarter bears in the bunch will be testing different products at different price points this year," she said, noting a recent Forrester survey indicating that one-third of Internet users would be willing to pay for online content next year.
But that means two-thirds of Internet users are not willing to pay for information or services online, which is why Ms. Allen stopped short of exhorting media executives to block off key areas of their Web sites immediately and start charging for entry. Rather, she said, media executives and others hoping to cash in on the subscription trend "have to start acting less like a media company and more like a retailer.""
redux [03.19.02]
"To online publishing and entertainment firms looking to start charging for their content, there was a simple message from today's Jupiter Media Forum: Don't hold your breath."
"Seventy percent of online adults surveyed by Jupiter, he said, can't understand why anyone would pay for any online content.
"If anything, people are less willing to pay than they were 18 months ago," he said."
"As some of you will be aware, I'm a major critic of 'negative' subscription models. Time and time again we have witnessed websites introduce subscription services that represent nothing more than a closure of existing content.
There are a few exceptions - one being the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) whose subscription model is to my mind flawless. They kept their exist proposition entirely unchanged and brought in a high quality advanced option designed perfectly to cater for a specific sector of their audience. Furthermore they have undertaken to continuously improve the subscriber experience, aggressively seeking user feedback.
IMDB and others have demonstrated that you can introduce a subscription service in a positive manner, and succeed, so why don't more websites follow their example?"
redux [01.15.01]
"As Microsoft, along with everyone else, wrestles with the challenge of how to make money on the Internet, you cannot help but wonder if Bill Gates & Co. regret a pivotal decision in the evolution of the Web.
When Microsoft decided in 1995 to make Internet Explorer and fold it into Windows, the action more than any other may have cemented the concept of “free” on the Internet."
"Microsoft won the browser wars but in so doing indelibly emblazoned in users’ minds the conviction that nothing on the Internet should cost money."
"Back when I did direct marketing, we were well-aware that people were irrational about pricing. The only way to really find out the right price for a product -- especially an information-based product, for which prices can be so arbitrarily set -- was to test a few, by sending different offers to random samplings, and see which resulted in more profit. Actually, it would be unusual if more than one (or any) of the prices produced any profit at all. And the results were all over the map. A higher price could sometimes bring in not just more money, but more orders, because of the increased perceived value. Then again, a price 20% lower could increase sales by 100%. You could guess but never know, and you were often surprised.”
redux [11.23.01]
"While the concept of e-publishing (as most people think of the term; in the strictest sense, everything on the Web could qualify as e-publishing) hasn't exactly set the world on fire, it is still the 'early days.' And like so many things on the Web, is still sorting out its proper place and 'mode of delivery.' The following sites reveal four different approaches to e-publishing - and whether through odd coincidence or 'environmental compulsion,' each one parallels a familiar method of software distribution."
"I've been listening to online-news people talk about it with much interest ever since I was laid off 6 months ago as the managing editor of a regional news site for an Internet Industry portal. Most of the old pros say it won't work. The consultants say about the same thing. The Suits? Well, they just don't say.
Yet, people have paid for print newspapers for ages and they don't seem to mind. So what's so different about online-news?
At this point, I think that online-news users have to pay, it's as simple as that."
"The Web's great free-for-all is coming to a sudden, sharp end. Under today's market conditions, Web companies can no longer expect to sustain themselves by losing ever-larger sums of money to gain ever-larger slices of market share. As more traditional business yardsticks take hold, many companies face the difficult decision to charge for some of their online content and services—and users have begun to accept that they can no longer get everything they want or love for free.
Sure, the Web continues to offer a vast, unprecedented array of gratismaterial. But professionally produced sites need to pay their bills, and relying on advertising alone is a risky proposition in an economic slump. As senior vice president of editorial operations for Salon.com , I've become very familiar with these realities. For content sites like Salon.com, charging for subscriptions—once considered anathema on the Web—is now an essential move for survival."
8:39 AM 0 comments
The Motley Fool
How Do Analysts Sleep?
"It should have been the "big-freaking-surprise" story of the year, and yet we still find ourselves shocked at the cynicism and self-interest of Wall Street's equity analysts. We have known, and yet not known, that analysts commanded enormous salaries based in no small part on their ability to drive investment banking business to their companies. After the Attorney General of New York's inquiry, we know for sure, and the truth is as bad as we imagined."
redux [04.10.02]
"At the height of the technology bubble, Henry Blodget and other Internet analysts at Merrill Lynch & Co. issued glowing reports about companies that would later crash, while privately deriding the stocks to one another in salty, dismissive language.
One company given a top rating by analysts was described in-house as "a piece of junk." Another was called "such a piece of crap," even though analysts in Merrill's Internet group told investors to buy more of it for their portfolios. One analyst worried that regular investors "are losing their retirement" because of the misleading advice."
redux [08.21.01]
"There is something a bit disingenuous about this legal assault, which is, after all, mainly about people who lost money speculating in the stock market. Some are suing because they couldn't get shares in initial public offerings at the offering price; others are suing because they got the shares and lost money on them. Federal regulators and politicians are suddenly shocked - shocked! - to discover that conflicts of interest are rampant on Wall Street.
Still, with $3.3 trillion up in smoke since the Nasdaq hit its peak in March 2000, it's hardly surprising that the people and institutions that helped engineer the epic Internet bubble are being called to account. And for the technology finance industry - which was transformed by the Nasdaq's boom from a relatively obscure West Coast offshoot of Wall Street into a major source of growth and profits for top-tier firms such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase, Credit Suisse First Boston and Merrill Lynch - it's going to be a painful reckoning indeed."
redux [07.19.01]
[requires 'free' registration]
"Investment banks, whose analysts were touting stocks with overwhelming zeal even as the stock market started crashing, are now trying to rehabilitate their images. Last week Merrill Lynch , by some measures the world's biggest investment bank, declared that except under strictly monitored circumstances, its analysts would be prohibited from holding shares in the companies they research. The goal is to remove any incentive for them to boost a stock to ensure their own enrichment. But this novel policy will not entirely prevent conflicts of interest from arising. It should be regarded as a springboard to a more complete revamping of the relationship between publicly available research and investment banking."
redux [06.27.01]
"Wall Street analysts are known for a lot of things--being too optimistic, failing to warn investors about the dot-com crash, and being the latest target for Congress--but they usually aren't known for their apologies."
"Morgan Stanley analyst Jeffrey Camp cut Exodus to a "neutral" from "strong buy" and gave his clients an apology.
"There are few moments in my career that rival this one in its difficulty and unpleasantness. Elbert Hubbard said, 'The line between failure and success is so fine, we scarcely know when we pass it.' But passed it I have, and it is time to own up," Camp said."
redux [06.11.01]
"As pundits rush to explain what happened on Wall Street, fingers point to the thought leaders. We read exposés on Mary Meeker and Frank Quattrone--once dubbed geniuses--and wonder how they could have sponsored initial public offerings for the nth online grocer or women's portal. Or we ask ourselves how stock analysts could ride a stock all the way down from $150 to $3, all the while touting it as a "strong buy.""
"These are people who were supposed to be making smart decisions. How did they get it so wrong? The answer is, they didn't. "
redux [03.13.01]
"Henry Blodget, Wall Street's loudest cheerleader for Internet stocks, made it to the front page of the New York Times last week. And thereby hangs a tale about the media and the bubble."
"For it was the mainstream media -- which now take such delight in scolding those involved in the dot-com mania -- that helped push the idea that anyone could get rich by playing the market.
"The media invented Blodget," says Christopher Byron, a columnist for Bloomberg News and MSNBC. "In a bull market everyone loves to cheer, and Henry Blodget was everyone's first phone call. . . . Where were they when companies were trading for 150 times revenues? They were repeating the words of these guys. It's disgusting."
6:55 PM 0 comments
MarketingProfs.Com
1-2-3 Success! Build Your Personal Brand and Expand Your Success
"But branding is not just for companies or products any more. In the new millennium, everything is a brand. London is the world's hippest city. Route 128 in Boston is "America's Technology Highway," and "Operation Enduring Freedom" is a branded military operation. And Madonna, Martha Stewart and Richard Branson. Brand. Brand. Brand. That's right, branding is for people, too."
"In a world where cities, wars, CEOs, politicians and highways are branded, you need to think about yourself in the same terms. So build and nurture your brand. There are three simple steps. Leading you along one clear path to success."
redux [01.29.02]
"There has been a discussion of the issue of personal branding as it relates to K-Logs. While it may seem amorphous and slightly shallow, I can vouch that it actually works. The benefits of running a high traffic K-Log within a company or on a publicly available server (for CEOs in particular) are many. They include:
1) The ability to showcase your thinking. Well reasoned posts showcase your ability to think. If you are a knowledge worker, as most of us increasingly are, this is a must. You need to demonstrate your ability to solve problems and to reason through alternatives in order to gain stature. Want competition for your services? This is the way to generate it.
2) The potential your K-Log will become an important corporate resource. IF your K-Log is a constant source of insight that many co-workers refer to, it enhances your position and makes you a corporate asset.
3) A chance to demonstrate your vision and leadership. This is particularly important for managerial K-Logs for both internal and external audiences. Externally, a personal K-Log provides a CEO the opportunity to demonstrate vision (hopefully with clarity) to a wider audience (how often do most people talk to the CEO of their company or the CEO of the company they buy lots of product/services from?). This allows the company to talk to customers and internal audiences in a way that rises above the marketing hype surrounding most corporate communications. If there was ever a vehicle for clue train status, this is it."
redux [08.14.00]
[requires 'free' registration]
"There is something, I think, about the Internet -- with its microtargeted discussion groups and virtual celebrities who are famous to 15 people -- that ramps up the possibilities of personal hype. The padded résumé is probably as old as the résumé itself, but with one's own Web site, it is easy to showcase not just your padded resume but also complimentary blurbs from friends and colleagues, thoughtful sound bites, photographs of you with friends, etc. These little self-marketing monuments exist now by the thousands. Two years ago, it was rare for a serious author to have such a site, but now even New Yorker writers have them, successfully creating viral marketing campaigns that were not possible in, say, J.D. Salinger's time. Of course, the strategy isn't limited to published authors. I recently stumbled across a Web site that advised chat-room denizens on how to establish their personal on-screen brand. For starters: "Develop a catch phrase."
It is all part of the "Brand Called You," a sort of life-as-company philosophy articulated by the management guru Tom Peters -- and long since swallowed whole by the career-advice wing of the business press."
"Start right now: as of this moment you're going to think of yourself differently! You're not an "employee" of General Motors, you're not a "staffer" at General Mills, you're not a "worker" at General Electric or a "human resource" at General Dynamics ( ooops, it's gone! ). Forget the Generals! You don't "belong to" any company for life, and your chief affiliation isn't to any particular "function." You're not defined by your job title and you're not confined by your job description.
Starting today you are a brand."
10:23 PM 0 comments
SFGate
New musical acts get lift from Internet
""Our data show that the dominance of a few music superstars is decreasing, and their hold on music sales is slipping," said Sudip Bhattacharjee of the University of Connecticut's School of Business. "This is definitely good news for up-and-coming artists and groups, who now have a better chance at chart success because of (new) technologies" such as programs that allow users to download songs for free from the Internet."
""Superstars just don't have the sustaining power they used to," said Gopal, who headed the research team. "They get knocked off by new artists who get sampled over the Internet.""
[requires 'free' registration]
"The record industry's legal victory over Napster last year has neither stopped the trading of free music online nor halted a slide in music sales."
"Underscoring the industry's woes, a survey released today by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, an international record industry trade group, found that revenue from global music sales fell 5 percent in 2001, to $33.7 billion."
redux [03.18.01]
""The sense of music needing to be tied to a physical artefact, whether that be a CD or a cassette, is coming to an end," explains Simon Hopkins, head of BBC Music Online."
""The minute music went virtual in the 1990s, when it was available as ones and zeros over the internet, music was no longer a fixed commodity, no longer something the artist handed over to the audience," he says."
[requires 'free' registration]
"Technology is changing music. But then again, it always has. The invention of the piano 300 years ago centered Western music on the keyboard. Electricity's arrival in the late 19th century enabled the duplication of performances and, later, the amplification of instruments. With digitization, the pace of upheaval has further accelerated. Digital file-sharing technologies -- Napster and its offspring -- are now undermining the established economics of music. And everything we know about digital technologies suggests that Napster is only the beginning."
"Everyone with a computer I know uses them, rips them from their CDs, and shares them with others. Napster (and later on, Kazaa) built massive worldwide networks based on the sharing of these files, spreading terabytes of files to millions of users. And yet, you can't walk into a store anywhere in America and buy a physical form of media embedded with mp3s."
"Given the ubiquity of mp3s among consumers, the continued rise in popularity of the format despite anything that's been put in place to stop them, and the millions of dollars being spent on mp3 encoding/decoding software and hardware, I no longer think the RIAA operates solely on fear. At this point, they're simply running on stupidity."