Results From Our CwF+RtB Business Model Experiment

from the cwf+rtb dept

Before getting into the "meat" of this post about how our CwF+RtB experiment worked out, I want to announce that we've "replenished" the store with some new t-shirts and hoodies. These are brand new -- not the same t-shirts and hoodies we had before, which are sold out. You have a choice of either a t-shirt or a hoodie with the full Techdirt logo, or my personal favorite DMCA takedown t-shirt which says on the front:

The content of this t-shirt has been removed due to a DMCA takedown notice.

Consider the message on the shirt a good way to engage people in a conversation about the abuses of copyright law and the DMCA. The hoodies come with a copy of my Approaching Infinity book, while you can get the t-shirts without the book or with the book.

Also, we are doing one thing differently this time around. Rather than just waiting until we sell out to stop selling these shirts, we're taking open orders for two weeks only and then will make the shirts and send them out. So if you want this shirt from us, you have two weeks to order. And that's it. On to the post itself...

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After seeing many musicians setting up various interesting/amusing "tiers" of scarce value worth buying, while also working to connect with fans, we decided to launch our own CwF+RtB tiers, at the end of July, as an experiment to see what we might learn. We knew that this sort of thing worked for music, but had no idea if it would work elsewhere -- say, for a blog. It wasn't designed to replace our existing business model, but just as an experiment to see what would happen -- and what we could learn that might help others implementing similar business models.

I should apologize, as this post detailing the results is way, way, way overdue. We had most of the results and lessons within about a month, but this is a big post to write up and I kept procrastinating. No good reason why: there was just always something going on in the news that seemed more urgent and every so often I do like to catch up on sleep.

The quick summary: we consider the experiment to have been a huge success.

• We brought in approximately $37,000 total due to this experiment, mostly in the course of that first month.
• Nearly $12,000 came from direct sales to individuals of the tiers between $5 and $150.
• As was revealed in an article at Wired, another $5,000 came from an individual, Didier Mary, who was working on a business plan and bought the Techdirt Reviews Your Business Plan package. The package included an Insight Community conversation, which recently concluded, about his business model idea. Didier has told us that "it was a great experience" and very useful to him in moving forward with his plans.
• Another $20,000 came from larger companies, which purchased Insight Community packages after learning about them through this effort.
• The effort also resulted in potential future deals, as it led many more companies to contact us to learn more about the Insight Community.
• Other companies, with whom we were already talking about the Insight Community, contacted us after we launched this, with one noting that if what his company had been discussing with us was on the list, he probably would have just "clicked buy" right away (though, with that company, we're still discussing a deal and have not yet completed it).
• Ignoring the higher end Insight Community deals, the average amount paid by users was over $70. This was significantly higher than expected.
• Sales came from 15 different countries around the globe. North America and Europe were obviously the biggest, but we also got sales from Asia, South America and Australia (no Africa). The international sales might have been bigger if we had launched international sales the same day we launched the overall effort. Unfortunately, we didn't have all the details on that sorted out until a week later, and I think we probably lost some international sales that way. The US Postal Service does make international sales much easier these days -- especially with its "one rate" boxes, but shipping is still really expensive, and many countries then add annoying tariffs on top of everything. This was annoying, but (unfortunately) unavoidable.
• Our highest selling item was not the cheapest, second cheapest or third cheapest offering (contrary to the claims that people just want the cheapest item). Instead, the biggest seller -- by a pretty wide margin -- was the Approaching Infinity package, that included both a copy of my book and a t-shirt.
• For quite a while, the hoodies (which we almost didn't offer) outsold the t-shirts... but in the end the t-shirts barely passed the hoodies.
• The Techdirt Book Club outsold the Techdirt Music Club by a factor of three.
• No one bought the Day with Techdirt package, though we actually got a lot of inquiries about that, with multiple people who don't live in California saying that if they were closer, they would have bought it. This is still available, though.
• And, fear not, no one bought the $100 Million Silence Techdirt offer (still available as well!), though we did get a few people who were worried that someone would actually take us up on this -- and one satirical offer from someone claiming to be from the RIAA, which made me laugh, saying the RIAA would pay up, but wanted to guarantee "exclusive rights" to the RIAA, such that it would be able to "pursue appropriate legal action against any and all 3rd parties that make use of this silence purposely or inadvertently" including, of course "the right to pursue similar action against any individuals who are also not reading Techdirt and therefore infringing on our own licensed agreement to be the sole recipient of a Techdirt-free world." Brilliant.
• However, the $100 Million Silence Techdirt offer did get the most traffic of any of the tiers, by a factor of three -- though, it also drove many people to check out the other tiers.

Lessons Learned

So, what did we learn? Lots of things:

1. This works! These sorts of models can absolutely work in connecting with fans and in making money.
2. All of you, in our community, are awesome. Not just for buying, obviously, but because the overall response we got was incredible. This included many really, really nice emails that made us feel great, along with happy emails and Twitter messages from people receiving their packages, and telling us stories about wearing the clothes, reading the books, etc.
3. It's fun making people happy. Really. It really gave all of us here at Floor64 a great feeling every time we heard back from happy community members.
4. Logistics and inventory management are more complicated than you expect. We sort of knew this ahead of time, but you realize it first-hand when somehow, somewhere copies of signed books go missing, and you suddenly need to ask for an author to send extras. Also, dealing with sourcing inventory from so many different people for the Book and Music club is doable, but takes a lot of time to manage. Though, I have to say, every one we worked with -- from authors and musicians to publishers, agents and record labels really were fantastic. We didn't have even the slightest trouble from any of our partners in this endeavor. Shipping out the products definitely was an effort, but we tried to make it fun, with a group of us working together to package up and ship stuff (and on this one, the team here, lead by Gretchen, did a fantastic job, going above and beyond to get everything organized and shipped).
5. Having lots of options was a good thing because we weren't very accurate in predicting what would sell. We came close to not offering the hoodies at all, but those were incredibly popular.
6. You can't keep everybody happy, but you should try! We had to set up a better process for "customer support" as we launched this (nice job, Dennis!) and then work with and respond to customers who had questions or (in a few cases) problems. A few times the problem was that we did not explain things clearly enough, and sometimes there were problems with shipments (or, in one case, a hoodie that was frayed). But we tried our best to make sure everyone was happy and hopefully succeeded (mostly).
7. What you're selling should match your audience. The Book Club sold really well. The Music Club, not as much -- despite being awesome (seriously, the combined Music Club items are really, really cool, and the music is great as well). But, in retrospect perhaps that made sense, as the books in the Book Club directly related to everything we talk about here. The Music Club, while supporting artists who did things that we talked about here, was a bit different, and required people to like the music as well, which is a lot more subjective. Bundling together four separate musicians with different styles was, perhaps, not a great idea. On top of that, we perhaps did not do enough to promote the music itself to get more people to enjoy the work of those musicians. Finally, while some of the offerings were "unique," others could be purchased elsewhere, which limited the "scarcity" of the overall package.
8. Some promotions worked really well. The first promotion we did was offering anyone who bought both the music and book clubs together a choice of either lunch with me or a free hoodie. This helped motivate a bunch of folks to step up and buy -- and resulted in a handful of lunches.
9. Having lunch with people was really, really cool. I have to admit that I was a bit nervous going into the lunches from the above promotion, but they were all really amazing, often in very different ways. Each individual was really interesting and the conversations were quite engaging and thought provoking and fun. I'm pretty sure every lunch ended up lasting well over the allotted hour. I ended up learning a lot and had a great time at every one. I'm hoping to set up more ways to do things like that, if not the same thing.
10. Even the tiers that didn't sell, still generated interest in other things we were doing. A bunch of people contacted us about the Day With Techdirt package, and while no one bought it, many of them bought other packages instead.
11. Not everyone who says they will buy will buy, but that's okay. It was interesting to note that some people who told us they would buy (or even announced it on their Twitter/Facebook feeds) never actually did buy for whatever reason. That's fine, of course. Everyone is free to do what they want, but it was interesting to note. Just because someone says they'll buy, it doesn't mean they will.
12. Communicating directly with everyone can be difficult. While others here handled customer service requests, I started getting a bunch of emails personally from people who participated, sometimes with long and detailed questions. I tried to reply to most of these, but it was difficult, and I'm sure I missed a few.

Anyway, that's the basic summary. This really has been a lot of fun and quite educational at the same time. We've still got lots of things planned and will be trying a few new things as well, but thanks to everyone who participated and a big thanks to all the authors and musicians who partnered with us, along with the team here at Floor64 for helping to make this all work.

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Some Questions For Lily Allen

from the once-more... dept

Lily Allen has continued to post statements from various artists on her blog against file sharing, and most are of the "yeah, file sharing, it's bad!" variety. While she still doesn't quite seem to realize what was hypocritical about her decision to copy a Techdirt post while claiming that copying was bad, she did recently post something where she tried to "answer some questions" that others seem to be having about her effort. The problem is that the "questions" she's answering aren't really the questions that people have been asking. Her explanation is that she's trying to show what file sharing is doing to new artists. Furthermore, she complains that comments about people getting cut off from the internet are misguided, since the proposals are no different than cutting someone off for not paying their bill. Then she attacks the concept that music could be free, saying:

"It's not free to make, so it can't be free, can it?"

And goes on to say that not enough people are paying for music, so that's "threatening new music." Anyway, her "answers to some questions" mostly raise more questions from me, so I'd like to present them here. If Lily Allen is serious about dealing with these issues (and serious about being "sorry" -- even if she apologized for the wrong thing), then it would be great to see her directly address these questions, rather than responding to some made up questions.

1. You claim that file sharing is harming new music. Yet, at the same time, a recent study has shown that more new music is being created today than ever before in history. Partly, that's because new tools have made it cheaper than ever to create and record new music. But those same technologies are also making it cheaper to promote and distribute that new music. All of those factors seem to outweigh the "piracy" issue. So, how can you claim that it's harming new music, when the evidence suggests more new music is being created than ever before?
2. You claim that "not enough people are paying for music." However, just a few months ago, the economists employed by PRS, which is a big part of the UK music industry, released a study suggesting that the music market was growing, not declining. They agreed that retail sales have dropped, but that live show attendance and other offerings (merchandise, etc.) have outweighed the decline in music sales. In other words, people are spending more on music, it's just going into different things -- just like 50 Cent said. Given that the economists who represent your industry are saying the opposite of what you claim must be happening, can you support the claim that not enough people are paying?
3. According to many reports, you benefited greatly yourself by promoting your music via MySpace, which allowed people to listen to your music for free. Other reports have suggested that you have complained in the past that your record label does not give you much, if any, money from CD sales. Given that you seem to have used "free music" to your own advantage in the past, how can you say that "music can't be free"?
4. You are posting your blog on a Blogspot.com domain, which is provided by Google to you, for free. It cost Google money to create this service, and all of its services, and yet it has been able to create a business model whereby it makes money by giving away certain aspects of its business for free. Google is one of the most successful companies in the world. Why do you insist with such certainty that using free as a part of a business model is a bad thing?
5. There are a growing number of artists -- big, medium and small -- who have learned to embrace file sharing, and have found that it has helped them to better connect with their audience, and when combined with a smart business model, makes them more money than in the past. Given that's the case, is it possible that the problem is artists choosing a bad business model rather than "piracy" being the problem?
6. Despite your shading of the issue, there have been and continue to be proposals in the UK that would lead to people being kicked off the internet -- yes, for a limited time, but still removed from the internet. Can you explain how that makes people any more likely to buy your music?

By the way, it's also worth noting that many of the ideas for these questions come from the comments to the post on Lily's blog. While there were some nasty and childish comments on some of the earlier posts (such as the one where she copied my post), going through the comments on this particular post show that the vast majority of them are well thought-out, well-argued and thought-provoking. And most of them disagree with Allen's statements.

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Lily Allen, Don't Apologize To Me, Apologize To Everyone Else

from the sorry,-but-that's-not-the-point dept

It seems that a few folks misunderstood the point of my post yesterday in joking about Lily Allen's double standard in ranting against unfair copying while copying blog posts from other sites. And Lily herself appears to be among those people. She's posted an apology, though, a bit petulantly, starting in all capital letters:

I THINK ITS QUITE OVIOUS THAT I WASNT TRYING TO PASS OF THOSE WORDS AS MY OWN , HERE IS A LINK TO THE WEBSIITE I ACQUIRED THE PIECE FROM . Apologies to Michael Masnick

While I appreciate the "apology," that's really missing the point. First, the reason TorrentFreak and I both brought it up wasn't because I was upset about her using the post. As I clearly said in my response, I thought it was great that she wanted to use our post, and I encouraged her to do so. The point, though, was that it was a bit hypocritical of her to be going on and on about how evil it is to copy another's work without their permission, when she went and did the same thing. Furthermore, the point is that when it's natural and easy for people to copy like that, it's time to learn to accept it and use it to your advantage. So, no apology is necessary to me. My post wasn't about you trying to pass off my words as your own, but recognizing that even you, Lily Allen copy other people's work all the time, even without realizing it.

And, yet, in the very same breath, you want to kick people off the internet for doing the same thing?

If anyone deserves an apology, it's all the people you've been blasting with this complaint that it's "piracy" that's somehow harming artists, when the actual evidence shows no such thing. Plenty of artists have learned to embrace file sharing and used it to their advantage, suggesting it's not piracy that's the problem -- it's artists unwillingness to adapt and put in place smarter business models. Running to the gov't and asking them to kick your fans off the internet isn't a new business model. So, don't apologize to me. We're happy for you to use Techdirt posts however you want. We just thought it was worth calling your attention to the fact that even you seem to have no problem copying stuff when convenient, so maybe you should think twice about blasting everyone else for doing the same thing.

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Lily Allen: Copying Isn't Alright... Unless It's Done By Lily Allen

from the funny-how-that-works... dept

The folks over at TorrentFreak alerted me to the news that singer Lily Allen, who made some news last week for speaking out against file sharing and against artists who have defended file sharing, has put up a blog, called "It's Not Alright," to talk about this particular subject. In one of her very first posts, she reposted an entire Techdirt post about 50 Cents' view on piracy and how it's part of the marketing. Allen goes on to then say that this is not alright and that 50 Cent is being selfish and isn't thinking about everyone else. But what's quite odd is that Ms. Allen, while complaining about such unfair copying, seemed to have absolutely no problem with copying my entire Techdirt post -- without credit or a link. As I said when asked by TorrentFreak for my response:

I think it's wonderful that Lily Allen found so much value in our Techdirt post that she decided to copy -- or should I say "pirate"? -- the entire post. The fact that she is trying to claim that such copying is bad, while doing it herself suggests something of a double standard, unfortunately. Also, for someone so concerned about the impact of "piracy" I'm quite surprised that she neither credited nor linked to our post. Apparently, what she says and how she acts are somewhat different. Still, Lily, glad we could help you make a point... even if it wasn't the one you thought you were making. Feel free to use any of our posts going forward as well. Unlike some, we're not scared of people copying our stuff. By the way, does this mean we can post her music to our site without crediting her now, too?

Enigmax, in his TorrentFreak post put it nicely as well:

Lilly, in isolation we don't think your copyright infringement is a big deal at all and neither does Mike, but in the arena of this debate it's still quite important. Infringing copyright these days is so easy to do, most people manage it every day in one way or another, and you are clearly no different. You probably didn't mean any harm or even give it a second thought but half a dozen clicks later and you're a pirate these days I'm afraid.

The next thing you know you've got God-knows-who accusing you in public of being an evil copyright infringer and telling you the sky's falling in. Oh, you're on your first strike now by the way. A couple more and it'll be off to Ofcom for disconnection for you young lady....

That said, I also think it's worth responding to Allen's attempted "point" in response to 50's comments:

this is particularly selfish in my view, he seems to only be thinking of how piracy effects him. What about the guys that work in the studio and the kids that run around town putting his posters up,the people that designed his artwork, the people that run his website. Is he giving them a cut of his live fee?

Wait... since when did any of those people get a cut of album sales? Really. None of them do. They all get paid regular fees for their work... and that doesn't change if 50 is making all his money from album sales or concerts. So, yes, they actually do get a cut of his "live fee." It comes in the form of regular payment for services... the same as if it were coming from album sales. And, if 50 is making even more money from those live shows, he can still afford to pay the studio guys, the street teams, the art designers and his web gurus more. So what point is Lily Allen making again? Because so far I can't figure it out...

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News.com Interview On CwF+RtB

from the rage?-what-rage? dept

Greg Sandoval, over at News.com, ran an interview with me about both Techdirt and our CwF+RtB experiment. The only quibble is that "full of rage" bit. As most people who know me will tell you, I'm about as far from "filled with rage" as just about anyone. I'm a pretty laid back, happy, optimistic guy. Can't think of much to have rage about -- but I could see how some might misinterpret some of my writings that way. Anyway, I'm way behind on posting about some of our findings (though, the interview reveals a few), and will try to get to it very soon. There isn't much left to buy (and we're down to limited sizes on t-shirts/hoodies of what is left), but we'll try to do a refresh with some new offerings soon. In the meantime, we've started shipping stuff out, but we're still waiting on all the signed books/music to get that out, so please hold on if you haven't received yours yet...

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Mark Helprin Stole From Techdirt Commenters (Using The Logic Of Mark Helprin)

from the where-should-he-send-the-check? dept

Last week, I wrote about Mark Helprin's error-filled Wall Street Journal op-ed that was really just an attempt to generate attention for his new book -- attacking everyone who criticized his 2007 NY Times editorial. I, of course, am one of those who challenged Helprin's reasoning at the time. Of course, as much as I write about this stuff, I'm no Larry Lessig or James Boyle, and I certainly never expected that Helprin would even bother to read what I wrote. And, as I've been reading his dreadfully written book, I didn't notice anything to indicate that Helprin was directly addressing any of the points I raised.

However, I was just reading Larry Lessig's long and thorough takedown of Helprin's book, and noticed something odd. Early on, Lessig states:

The product of this feeding, Helprin suggests, is just so much trash. The work of the Internet is an intellectual waste. No serious reader, or especially writer, should pay any attention to this waste.

But then here's the astonishing fact about Digital Barbarism: Though the Internet is a waste, though blogs are "subliterate" and wiki's are written "the way Popeye speaks," Helprin draws exclusively upon the Internet to form the knowledge he needs to launch his attack. He cites no book, or scholarly article, that might help explain the copyright puzzle that started him on his odyssey. Literally everything he points to to explain the weirdness that is copyright is either a blog, or a wiki, or an essay in an Internet publication.

Now I like the Internet as much as the next guy, and I guess I had never really had to think about the question before. But Helprin has convinced me that you can't understand the subject of copyright law by simply reading blog posts. To get it, or at least to get it well enough to write a frakking book about it, you're going to need to read something other than techdirt.com.

Emphasis mine -- obviously. Now, while this might seem like a bit of a slap at Techdirt, I actually agree -- wholeheartedly. I certainly hope that no one gets their copyright education solely from any blog, whether it's written by me or by William Patry. However, it struck me as odd that Lessig specifically called out Techdirt, seeing as I hadn't even noticed us being mentioned at all in the 1/2 (or so) of the book that I've gotten through (and I've never spoken to Lessig, nor seen him mention Techdirt in the past). So, I pulled out my copy of the book, and went to look at the endnotes for the first time... and realized that a rather large number of the quotes that Helprin spends his time deriding are pulled from Techdirt. But not from what I wrote... but from the comments (which he refers to, oddly, as "sections").

Now, I'll be the first to admit that we have all types of folks who show up in the comments -- from incredibly intelligent knowledgeable experts in the field of copyright law to interested amateurs to the totally clueless to trolls. To pick and choose a few crazy comments, and position them as if they're representative of the common views of folks questioning Helprin's logic, is incredible. I could equally pick out some of the more ridiculous pro-infinite copyright comments on Techdirt, and make the same nutty claims about those who support stronger copyright laws. Just yesterday, someone wrote in our comments:

There is never a proper debate for copyright theft. If you create it, then you own it. Many countries have unlimited copyright. Maybe that's what North America should consider. If it is created by your intellect then it is yours. You may pass it along as you wish, but it is yours forever.

Now, this is all sorts of wrong, but I assume this is one incredibly misinformed individual, rather than a representative of, say, the RIAA. However, Helprin has no such qualms. He takes random comments from up and down that Techdirt post, and assumes they represent the secret agenda of groups like Creative Commons (who he refers to as an "informal" group building software to abolish copyright -- again, all sorts of wrong).

Even more amusing? With at least a couple of the comments that Helprin quotes, he's clearly taking them totally out of context. For example, there is one point in the book where Helprin goes against people who pointed out that he had written a book called Winter's Tale, and assumed (incorrectly) that it was based on Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. In it he quotes a commenter on Techdirt ("section 20") who wrote: "So then Halpron's the guy who did the "West Side Story" job for Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale?" and uses that as evidence of us morons critiquing him. Except, he left out the rest of that comment, which made it clear that the whole thing was a joke: "Was it any good? Have they made a movie out of it yet, or was it only on Broadway?"

And, of course, even for the people who legitimately thought that Winter's Tale was based on Shakespeare, that mistake is certainly no more egregious than the many, many, many mistakes that Lessig lays out in his review of Helprin's work -- specifically taking him to task for clearly not having bothered to read a single scholarly piece on copyright, but relying entirely on hand-chosen silly comments on Techdirt.

Among the errors are things like, "It would be one thing if such a revolution produced Mozarts, Einsteins, or Raphaels, but it doesn't," to which Lessig notes: "Helprin apparently didn't notice that none of those creators enjoyed anything like the "copyright" of today. One might as well say the world of non-copyright gave us Mozart, Bach and Beethoven, while the world of copyright gave us Britney Spears. That too would be a bad argument, but just [the] sort of argument that is at home in this book." It's actually even worse than that. Some of Mozart's greatest works were derivative works that likely would be considered infringing today. Helprin also seems to not know what was in the last copyright extension act, known as the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension:

Helprin writes: "Previously, a copyright assigned to a publisher or a studio would remain there for all the days of its life. Now, and thanks to Sonny Bono, if it is not a work for hire (which nothing should or need be), a licensee can keep it for only thirty-five years, after which the rights return to the author, the composer, the artist, or the heir." (127). Wrong. The Sonny Bono Act didn't create the termination right. It merely extended it.

Yet, Helprin believes that a random small error (which was actually part of a joke by an Anonymous Coward on Techdirt) gives him proof that all copyright critics are clueless? Even if you consider the "errors" of equal magnitude, we're talking about an anonymous quick jokey comment vs. a "professional" book by one of the nation's top authors, from a top publishing house with (one assumes) an editor.

Still, the most amusing part of all, was Helprin's attempt to defend copyright infringement as being the same as theft -- an old argument, and one that's been dismantled many times (including, of course, by the Supreme Court, who famously stated: "interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The infringer of a copyright does not assume physical control over the copyright nor wholly deprive its owner of its use"). However, Helprin doesn't even bother to look at the intellectual arguments around this issue, preferring to use an emotional tale from his youth about "stealing" an ear of corn in the field, arguing with a farmer about it, and then realizing the incredible importance of never "stealing" anything.

Yet, as Lessig points out:

So should Helprin have been ashamed that he stole the farmer's food. Of course he should be! What kind of confused mind would think it right to take another person's property? There are a million reasons Helprin's juvenile behavior was wrong, not the least that it would deprive the farmer of a chance to profit from the food he was growing. Helprin's taking that ear of corn meant that the farmer couldn't sell it. It is inconceivable that this should even have been a question for him.

But what's less clear is what Helprin thinks follows from this moral tale. Does he think that it shows that one can't "take" another person's words? That when, for example, I quote a sentence from Helprin's book in this review, I am doing the same thing he was doing when he stole some corn?

Of course, as Lessig then notes, the quoting is fair use -- but according to Helprin's own corn-story description of the importance of never stealing even an ear of corn, any "taking" of one's words would also be stealing. So, by that reasoning, considering how he quoted (by my count) 12 separate comments from the Techdirt story, one can conclude that Helprin clearly believes he has stolen from the commenters here twelve times. If he's willing to send us our royalty check, I'll make sure the money is distributed to our commenters. Mark, we're waiting! In the meantime, I can't wait to see what comments you guys make on this post. Be sure to provide only the best quality stuff, since it may be the raw material for Mark Helprin's next book!

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Insight Community Participation Directly Through Techdirt

from the making-it-more-accessible-than-ever dept

As you hopefully read in my last post about our new branding, Floor64 has separated out the Insight Community brand from the Techdirt blog. However, that doesn't mean the two won't still work together happily. In fact, we're also launching a new effort today, that will allow Insight Community cases to appear directly within Techdirt. You will see the first such integrated Insight Community case on the site in a short while.

Starting a Real Conversation, Rather Than Advertising

The idea here is similar to what we started last week with American Express sponsoring an Insight Community case concerning how small businesses are responding to the current financial crisis, the results of which are starting to appear on American Express' Open Forum blog. In situations like that, where we believe the wider Techdirt community would be intrigued by, and benefit from, the wider conversation, we'll be placing those cases directly on the Techdirt blog. Thus, a selection of Insight Community cases that are relevant to the Techdirt community will start appearing directly on the blog, allowing members to jump right in to respond (and for non-members to join up and participate).

This evolution fits in nicely as one of the many ways that the new Insight Community can be used by companies to generate insight and engage with the broader community. Integrating Insight Community cases into Techdirt is based on our strong belief about content and its relationship to advertising. Traditional, annoying, intrusive advertising is a market that won't last -- especially in economically troubled times. It's based on the false belief that there are still captive audiences.

While the online advertising market is still a big one, it's going to need to change. It's entirely focused on a one way push. Companies that buy advertising are pushing a message to an audience. The site is just the one-way pathway to get to that audience -- and that audience often doesn't care about the message being pushed. That's simply not that effective for the advertiser. And yes, before people point it out, we do include some advertising on Techdirt, though we think that the companies buying those ads could spend their money more effectively by actually engaging the community here.

Engage the Community, Reward the Community and Get Value Back

So, rather than focus on that one-way street of merely pushing "message" at an audience, we believe strongly that the concept of "advertising" needs to diminish, and in its place, the focus should be on providing good content that provides real value to all participants. That means not just viewing things as a one way street, but actually engaging the community of folks a company is trying to reach by getting back insight from them and then rewarding those in the community who provide that insight. This is much more of a win-win situation than advertising. It's about actually creating value -- about building an insightful discussion that everyone benefits from, and then making sure that those who participate can be rewarded both monetarily and through reputation, rather than just being seen as a "target" market.

Thus, rather than focusing on "advertising's" one way street to pushing a message on our community, we're asking companies who are interested in the Techdirt community to actually engage with them via the Insight Community, where not only can they start a real dialogue, they can learn from the community, gain valuable insights that can be used elsewhere, and reward the community for participating. That seems a lot more effective and valuable than "advertising." It's about good content and a real conversation where everyone benefits.

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Techdirt Moves On Up To The 64th Floor: Some Changes Around Here

from the pardon-our-dust dept

We've got a bunch of announcements today (and a few more coming up as well), but I wanted to start off with the big one: Techdirt, the company, is becoming Floor64, the company -- while Techdirt, the blog, will remain Techdirt. The blog began back in 1997 as a fun side project by me. Over the years it grew into much more, and in 2000 it became a business, also called Techdirt. In 2006, we launched the Techdirt Insight Community as our main line of business and the natural evolution of what we'd been doing as a company. However, there was growing confusion over the Techdirt brand, as people weren't clear whether it meant the blog, the company or the community -- so we felt it was time to clarify. Specifically, there are now three brands related to this site:

• Floor64 becomes our new parent brand. That's the brand under which all of our products will now reside. It's a brand we've used for years internally (though some have noticed), and now it represents our overall outward brand.



• Insight Community is one of Floor64's two main offerings. This rebranding of the Techdirt Insight Community will allow us to expand beyond the community we've built around Techdirt, to cover much more than just technology and business. The Insight Community is totally redesigned to reflect where the business has been headed over the past few months. If you're already a member, go check out the totally redesigned system. If you're not yet a member, go sign up and start participating (and earning money). If you're interested in sponsoring a case there, go check out how it works and learn about the value of sponsoring a case and engaging with the community.
  
  The Insight Community is all about generating insights for companies, recognizing, as we often talk about here on Techdirt, that there's value in the creation of insightful content. The Insight Community is a platform that makes it possible for companies to generate insightful expertise on demand for use in a variety of different ways.



• Techdirt is our other main offering, and is now solely focused on the blog itself. This should help us avoid some confusion over our different properties and the services that we, as Floor64, offer. Techdirt will remain the same great blog it's been all along, but we'll have some cool new features which we'll be posting about shortly as well. As always, Techdirt, the blog will be focused on providing timely and insightful analysis of technology and business news, with a focus on how technology relates to innovation, public policy and economics.

We've been hard at work on this effort, and there's a lot more to come -- some of which we'll announce today, and much more will be coming in the near future. All of our efforts are, of course, made possible by the great, vibrant, often brilliant and always opinionated community that was built up through this site. So, we're excited to open this new chapter of the business and the site, as we look forward to doing plenty more in the future to continue to give back to this community.

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Talking About Tapping Into The Insight Community

from the get-some-insight-now dept

Brian Deagon from Investor's Business Daily spoke to me last week to discuss the details behind the Techdirt Insight Community, and IBD has now published the interview. The interview gives a good overview of the Techdirt Insight Community and the different ways companies are getting insight and analysis from the various experts in the Community, focusing mainly on how we help open up the market to allow companies (or individuals at companies) who might never otherwise have tapped into a research or analysis firm to get useful analysis from multiple perspectives.

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Abundance And Scarcity In The Insight Market

from the it-all-fits-together dept

Last week, after I wrote about some of the theory behind the Insight Community and the Smart Dossiers offering (which is a subset of the Insight Community), someone asked how my writings on economics fit into the equation. It's rather straightforward: In any market there are likely to be various scarcities and various abundances. You should always look at the scarcities as problems that need to be solved and the abundances as the resources you can use to solve those problems.

So, as we were building out Techdirt's business, working with various Fortune 500 companies to better understand various technology trends, we again began to notice an interesting set of scarcities and abundances. On the scarcity side, companies were really hungry for useful and actionable insight about their biggest challenges. At best, they could hire a big analyst firm or a big consulting firm, which would be excessively expensive, and often wouldn't give particularly useful information. In fact, it was a huge risk, since they would only receive a single answer, as if handed down from a wise man on the mountain, with no idea if it was accurate or not. At worst, they could have internal people try to do the analysis, often passing it off to a junior person to handle the work. Again, this would result in a single opinion (often from someone not very experienced) providing an important analysis that was also biased by coming from inside the company, rather than with an outsider's perspective.

At the same time, we were discovering an immense abundance in the ability to find and communicate with smart, knowledgeable passionate experts, many of whom we got to know via their participation on Techdirt itself, or via their own websites and blogs. At first we began to tap that group informally, to help us with the work we were doing with existing clients -- but we realized it was better to formalize the system, which is how we came up with the Insight Community, helping to eliminate the middle man and solve the scarcity (relevant, timely insight) with the abundance (lots of knowledgeable folks). The trick was coming up with a system that allowed the best, most useful insights to bubble to the top. In other words, figuring out not just how to connect companies to smart people, but to make sure that those companies could get the best, most relevant and insightful analysis out of the most qualified folks in that group of experts. To do that, we put in place a competitive system, that allowed experts in the community to compete to show they could provide the best insight. The end result has worked quite well, making it incredibly easy for companies, both big and small, to tap into this network of experts in order to get the best, most relevant insights into the challenges they face, gaining multiple expert opinions -- and doing so at a price the company gets to set.

Of course, while the "name your own price" model works well in some cases, it doesn't work for all. It can sometimes be an impediment for a company that knows they want something specific and isn't sure how much to bid for it. So, to help with those situations, we wanted to focus on common types of cases that the Insight Community was being used for and start to launch more packaged solutions -- the first of which is Smart Dossiers. Many of the customers using the Insight Community, had used it to get a straight analysis of a company. Sometimes of themselves (to get a quick snapshot of multiple outsider expert viewpoints), but more often of other companies they were dealing with: customers, competitors, partners, investments and investors. For example, we had one company use the Insight Community to create detailed "dossiers" on the company's top customer targets, so that its sales people could be better informed while calling on them. Another firm needed a competitive landscape of a new market it was about to enter, and was able to get a bunch of experts to all weigh in on the competitors in just over a week.

So, yes, we are putting into practice the economics that get discussed here all the time. It's all about taking an abundance and helping them "solve" a scarcity that companies desperately are looking for help solving.

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Techdirt Announcements: Smart Dossiers And Thomson Financial Partnership

from the moving-forward dept

We're in New York City today making a couple of exciting announcements that I wanted to share with everyone. First up, we're launching a new offering as part of the Techdirt Insight Community called Smart Dossiers. As it stands today, it's quite difficult for companies to get good, knowledgeable analysis of companies, both private and public. In the financial sector, you get some coverage from "professional" analysts, but 65% of companies are considered "undercovered" with 35% having no coverage at all (according to a Reuters profile). And, all of those focus solely on the financial side, rather than understanding a company as a potential customer, partner or competitor.

With that in mind, we knew that the members of the Techdirt Insight Community were uniquely qualified to help solve that wide gap in the marketplace, and we've set up the Smart Dossiers offering in response. Companies can now get a SWOT (strengths-weaknesses-opportunities-threats) analysis on any company they'd like, with a minimum number of guaranteed perspectives from qualified, proven experts in the Techdirt Insight Community. Those experts are competing to provide the best possible analysis, continually ensuring quality analysis. Imagine being able to get a detailed, quick, analysis from multiple different people who have experience and knowledge about a specific sector. Actually, there's no need to imagine it, you can do it, right now. There are a variety of Smart Dossier packages available depending on what your company needs, starting as low as $995.

On top of this, we're also thrilled to be announcing a partnership with Thomson Financial, allowing Techdirt to distribute research from the Techdirt Insight Community (including Smart Dossiers) through Thomson's leading platform for providing research and analysis. Thomson offers deep real-time and after market research to thousands of institutional and business customers in 70 countries via professional subscription networks, including First Call and Investext, and we're thrilled to be a part of that system. As Keith Ackerman, Thomson Financial's Global Head of Next Generation Research, said:

"Thomson Financial views the addition of the Techdirt offering into its portfolio of research as significant. Our financial services and corporate clients have increasingly asked for and are spending more for insights, custom surveys and other kinds of research emanating from the use of expert networks and other types of social media. Accordingly, Techdirt and other high quality alternative research firms that feature these capabilities and research outputs are an important part of Thomson Financial's product strategy."

We're announcing both of these at O'Reilly's brand new Money:Tech event in New York, which looks like it will be very exciting. If you happen to be at the event, please make sure you say hello! Otherwise, if you happen to need a quick and useful detailed analysis of any company, check out Smart Dossiers today. Finally, if you think you have what it takes to provide this kind of analysis to companies around the world, please apply today!

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Recap Of Edinburgh Talks: Lots Of Interest In New Business Models

from the a-step-forward dept

As mentioned earlier this month, I was in Edinburgh, Scotland last week, after being invited over to give a series of talks at the University of Edinburgh. It was a fantastic trip, full of interesting discussions. I gave three different talks, with the second one, being the one with the most interesting reaction. It was for a graduate-level class on "digital marketplaces" and was the first time I've done a detailed talk about the economic theories we discuss around here.

I was interested to see how people would react to some of the ideas, and it certainly generated a lively discussion that lived on well-past the class itself. In fact, some of that talk got dragged into the other sessions as well and even a student-run tour the next day of the Edinburgh castle (imagine discussing new business models while touring an ancient castle... surreal). However, the most interesting thing was that, for the most part, people didn't seem to think the idea that you could make money by leveraging infinite goods to sell scarce goods was a strange idea. Almost everyone seemed to grasp that intuitively -- and the majority of the discussions then focused on how such concepts could be constructively applied to a variety of different fields and offerings (with some asides to question why certain old industries have so much difficulty adapting to the changing market).

This was immensely encouraging. While I assume there were some people who disagreed with what I said and just decided to remain quiet, the fact that so many people seemed eager to take these ideas and make use of them in the real world suggests that the next generation of entrepreneurs and engineers aren't going to be tied down by legacy ideas of trying to limit artificial scarcity. They're going to go out into the world and build the new businesses with the new business models that finally force the old regime to change (or simply go away). It was an extremely encouraging experience. I was somewhat concerned that most of the discussion would be about defending and expanding on the concept, but instead it turned into a much more constructive conversation about how to apply it in the real world. Hopefully, that's a sign of good things to come.

As for the other talks, the first one, given to a graduate-level entrepreneurship class, was on market research and how to actually make it useful. The last talk was on the history of Techdirt and how we (hopefully!) have been able to build a sustainable company. That one was to the local Edinburgh Entrepreneurship Club and involved a talk I've done a few times now. One attendee wrote up his notes on it. During the trip I was also able to meet a few local entrepreneurs, including the folks behind PeopleMaps, Hubdub and Scoopt, among others. We held a Techdirt Greenhouse idea workshop, which was quite a bit of fun, as well. It's always interesting to see startup communities outside of Silicon Valley. The experience was somewhat similar to when I went to the Mesh Conference in Toronto last year. While the entrepreneurs there may not have quite the same resources as they would in Silicon Valley, they seem to make up for it with additional enthusiasm and determination. Overall, it was a great trip full of interesting people and interesting discussions. Thanks to Mike Clouser for making it happen.

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Looking For A Few Big Brains

from the calling-all-experts... dept

If you're knowledgeable about technology, business or finance and aren't already a member of the Techdirt Insight Community, then you're missing out on plenty of chances to make serious cash for being smart. We've got a bunch of open cases looking for good analysis and there's plenty of money available to be earned. Just a few of the open cases, for example:

• Dow Jones wants to know about social media in the enterprise.
• An investment firm wants to know how WiMax's troubles are going to impact the wider technology ecosystem.
• Another firm is trying to understand how the subprime mortgage mess is going to impact the technology business.

There are a bunch more along those lines. We're always looking for more smart, insightful people, so if you think you've got something valuable to add, apply to be an expert today. Alternatively, if your company wants to tap into a community of really smart folks, who can provide you with some of the most useful insight and analysis you can get, check out the details and sign up.

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Techdirt In The Interview Hotseat

from the Q&A dept

It's apparently interview season, as two separate interviews that were done with me about Techdirt were just published. The first was conducted by Glyn Moody and appears in today's Guardian over in the UK. It covers a variety of things, from the Techdirt Insight Community, to this blog, to the economics I tend to write about. It was a fun interview and it's almost too bad that the limits of newsprint (and time) meant we couldn't go into more depth on some of the subjects.

The second interview was by Michael Banks, for his new book called Blogging Heroes. Banks went out and interviewed a bunch of bloggers to try to find out the history of their blogs, what makes them blog and what advice they have for other bloggers. The publisher is conducting a little marketing experiment as well, where they send each of the bloggers who was interviewed a copy of their own interview to post on their blogs. So you're starting to see a few different chapters available. It's yet another experiment in understanding how free content makes good sense, so I can't resist posting my interview here:

One point that unfortunately doesn't come through clearly enough in either interview is how much we owe all the readers around here -- especially those who actively participate in the comments and the Insight Community. This wouldn't be worth doing without all of you. So, a big thank you from those of us at Techdirt!

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If You're So Smart... Why Don't You Prove It (And Make Some Money While You're At It)?

from the calling-all-experts... dept

It's been a little while since we've spoken about the Techdirt Insight Community service that we launched earlier this year. If you're not familiar with it, you can see a quick two minute video explaining what it is. It's been going great, as the experts in the community have been providing fantastic insight to all sorts of companies worldwide, helping those companies make important strategic decisions, filling in key knowledge gaps and or (in some cases) helping to validate certain ideas and plans. It's been a great way for some really smart folks to get companies to listen to their advice, to find out about the challenges facing companies in their space, to validate their insight... and also to make quite a bit of money for being smart.

Some of the open cases are displayed in a running ticker on the front page of Techdirt.com, but in case you haven't been watching, here are a few that recently opened where top insights can earn between $400 to $600 -- as well as validate your own insights into these areas. If you think you have the expertise to provide valuable insight to the companies presenting these cases, feel free to apply.

• Forecasting Trends In Digital Entertainment. Where is this important market heading? How will the economic trends play out? Who will be impacted and how?
• How To Index Multimedia Files For Fun And Profit. Help a company design its latest product by giving some advice on the current landscape for digital asset management offerings.
• Taking Jajah to the Next Level. Jajah's been getting plenty of attention this week for launching its Jajah buttons allowing any site to easily add a "click-to-call" option -- and for having that very same feature quickly banned on eBay who is apparently still grumpy over the Skype writedown. Now help Jajah continue to improve its product and marketing strategy.

There are a bunch more in the system, with even more on the way, so if you ever felt that companies should be paying your for all your smart ideas, why not prove it?

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For Your Listening Pleasure... Techdirt On The Air

from the podcasting dept

Every so often we get people saying that the folks here at Techdirt should do a podcast, and we occasionally toy around with the idea, but for the most part it just takes too much time, so we leave it to those who are much more inclined to podcast. However, the folks behind two of the better tech-related podcasts both asked me to stop by as a guest this past week, so I wanted to point them out.

• Leo Laporte was kind enough to ask me to take part in the latest episode of his massively popular "This Week in Tech" podcast along with professional curmudgeon John C. Dvorak and the ever insightful and entertaining Wil Harris. The TWiT experience was quite a bit of fun... though AT&T decided to cut off my DSL as Leo was introducing me. I heard the "and for the first ti..." part of Leo's introduction and then suddenly I had no internet connection. Luckily I was reconnected with varying quality after about five minutes. As you would expect from TWiT, the discussions range across a number of tech related stories, including quite a few found right here on Techdirt.
• I may not agree with Adam Thierer about wireless piggybacking and metering broadband, but he was still nice enough to invite me to participate in the Technology Liberation Front's latest podcast on the topic along with TLF regulars Tim Lee, James Gattuso and guest Ben Worthen from the Wall Street Journal. It turned into a lively discussion on the topic -- though I'm still curious about which industries that use metering are really that innovative.

So if you have some time to spare and enjoy listening to a bunch of tech geeks and wonks chatter on, take a listen.

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