“Meet the new boss; same as the old boss”
NYTimes: Hulu Questions Nielsen’s Count of Its Audience
“Web publishers are never entirely happy with the online ratings they receive from measurement companies. Their internal numbers, collected via clicks to their servers, are almost always higher than the third-party estimates. But the third-party figures act as the currency for promoting sites and selling ads, making them the lifeblood of the industry.”
“It is a pivotal time for Hulu. Analysts say the site has struggled to sell out its advertising inventory amid the rapid gains in traffic. Visitors often see public service announcements in place of paid advertisements when they watch episodes and short clips.”
RRW: Stats Need Standards
“The real problem here, of course, isn’t even about knowing exactly how many people watched videos on Hulu last month (even though we have to admit that this discussion is quite interesting in its own right). Instead, this kerfuffle once again shows how hard it is to correctly estimate usage numbers on the web, especially in the absence of any real standards. As every blogger can easily attest, three different stats programs will give you three different numbers.”
While the IAB issued Audience Reach Measurement Guidelines to try and settle the panel-centric versus server-centric measurement debate, it occurs to me as pointless. It is just elaborate and expensive game of advertising and measuring advertising. It is an endless game of hide and seek that will hopefully, one day, drive them all mad.
So, where does user-centric fit into this conversation? Maybe it is time for a fresh approach? I’m spending some time with Doc Searls’ ideas about the Intention Economy:
Is “The Attention Economy” just another way for advertisers to skewer eyeballs? And why build an economy around Attention, when Intention is where the money comes from?
A random, well-timed twitter search tonight turned up a pleasant surprise: Nobody Move, a new novel from Denis Johnson. The links stacked up nicely with reviews in The Washington Post, SFGate and The Daily Beast and one worth reading:
The Way of the Gun: NYT Sunday Book Review
Johnson is one of the last of the hard-core American realist writers, working — in his own way — along a line that might be charted from Melville and Stephen Crane, with a detour through Flannery O’Connor and Don DeLillo. He routinely explores the nature of crime — all his novels have it in one form or another — in relation to the nature of grace (yes, grace) and the wider historical and cosmic order.
The Book Design Review gives you a peek under the dust jacket. I also turned up a Lannan Foundation reading and conversation with Johnson from a couple of years ago and an upcoming Summer Writers’ Conference at USC featuring the man himself on Saturday, June 27, 2009. It looks like you can go to the reading without having to suffer through the whole conference.
The very fantastic Stop Smiling pointed me to the Financial Times article by director Alex Cox on his spaghetti western obsession. I haven’t been exposed to much of the genre beyond Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, but I do often fall under the influence of the music.
Yet the real find was wedged into the end of the article that he is working on ‘Repo Chick’, a sequel to ‘Repo Man’. I found more details at We Are Movie Geeks along with Waldo’s Hawaiian Holiday, a graphic novel that explains what happened to Otto. There is even more at Alex Cox’s Blog.
I am a big fan of Alex Cox’s movies. Especially ‘Repo Man’. The movie along with my bootleg cassette of the soundtrack became a teenage obsession and still one of my all time favorites. Over the years I’ve found it easily quotable and a fine reference point to a Los Angeles I ended up in 20 years later.
WSJ: Disney to Buy 30% of Hulu, Put Full ABC Episodes on Site
For all the obvious reasons, Hulu has been fun to watch since the beginning. Over the last few years I’ve kept a good eye on the titans of the professionally produced content world come to grips with the reality of digital distribution. The music industry went face first without really knowing until it was too late, despite all the warning signs. The broadcast networks, despite knowing better, keep hanging on tighter and tighter, yet hedging a few small bets. Even though they are making earnest efforts to provide a digital solution, nobody seems to be able to get it right and make it profitable on a scale they’ve been accustomed. And as competition for distribution gets even more frantic, everyone seems to be saying that this is the year that the broadcast networks need to assume the crash position.
Someone will always have a death grip on the rights to professionally produced content and will do everything possible to protect it and profit from it. Yet if it really was only a combined $100M investment from NBC Universal and News Corp. to get Hulu off the ground (along with other minor partners), and the scratch that Disney had to kick-in to get into the game, it seems like a relatively small ante for the best thing going right now.
I imagine that no matter what part you play in this game that there is no grand unified theory. Only a fractured market, niche players, clueless incumbents, smart startups, bad content, charlatans and the teeming masses looking a better experience. Seems like a lot of opportunity and an a great time to get involved. That is why it is going to be fun to watch Hulu for now.
Postscript: Can someone please explain to me what this last sentence means?
The addition of Disney to Hulu leaves only one major broadcast network, CBS Corp., distributing its shows independently online. CBS puts its shows on a wide array of sites but without offering them to any exclusively.
CBS issued a statement reiterating its strategy and its reasoning. It said the company “believes that controlling our own rights for that content–in all media–preserves its value in a multi-platform business system.”
My boy still prefers: Animal Collective Who Could Win a Rabbit.
Saturday nights redefined: Sitting on the floor in the living room with my baby girl, spoon feeding her rice cereal while she swings a maraca nearly the size of her head, we listened to Henry Rollins on his first night back on KCRW. It was amazing as we both responded with delight to his energy and intensity.
“Just so you know, I work on these play lists for several days, sometimes for weeks in advance, moving things around, adding new music, so that every Saturday night, we get the best out of our 120 minutes! Since I have only two hours a week with you, I try to make it matter.”
As a teenager I was fell under the influence of Black Flag after my cousin made me a mixed tape with the Repo Man soundtrack on one side and Everything Went Black on the other side. Although I think it was Black Flag – Slip It In with The Descendents – Milo Goes to College on the other side that really tipped it…
There is lots of history being documented here via Joe Carducci.
From the IDEO Method Cards: Five Whys?
HOW: Ask “Why?” questions in response to five consecutive answers.
WHY: This exercise forces people to examine and express the underlying reasons for their behavior and attitudes.
My two and a half year old is a master of this method. It is a fun and refreshing exercise that keeps me on my toes. I find myself asking five whys quite a bit lately and finding it difficult to get to root causes. Maybe I need to go back and listen to this episode of This American Life again.
In a stack of magazines and old notebooks I found a catalog from William Stout Architectural Books from many years ago. I’d ordered the IDEO Method Cards and stuck the catalog away for future reference. The cards are a timely reminder to “make the human element as important as the technical and business elements” and the catalog reminds me that I have another stop to make on my next trip to San Francisco.
We’ve been cleaning house. Over the years I have accumulated lots of things. Books, records, articles, magazines, flyers, posters, business cards, notes, scribbles, reminders, todos, schwag, tchotchkes and all sorts of ephemera and on and on. I tell myself, “This is a reminder of something important. It will take you back and remind you of something that you have certainly forgotten.” It always does. Superb memories. It immediately provokes and takes me right back to why I saved it in the first place. Most of it is paper. Paper and more paper. Though, sometimes it is a rock. A plastic ball, a rubber bumper, a coin, a communication, a letter, a reminder.
She allows me to hang on to most of it. Some of it is secretly stashed in unmarked boxes in the attic, some of it out in the open, lots of it organized and most of it unfinished business.
