SaratogaSam touched on something for all of these examples. All of MS's products are in one way or another used to gain revenue through another product, or avenue of that product. Andriod from Google does nothing like that. I believe thats what Ballmer was refering to, and he explained it poorly.
-Bing sells ad space, but free for people who search.
-Silverlight is used to leverage more sales of Visual Studio, and possibly windows server.
That is an excellent point. Penny Arcade has done an incredible job as using that rabid following to create a medium that supports itself and themselves, but I think it goes without saying that their talent as comics was the pivotal factor in that. So I guess we weed the possible successful fulltime comics down even further to those who are very talented and those who can market themselves well.
Once again, not a bad thing at all if thats what the market decides. But it's always good to reflect on possible impacts.
This goes back to the whole question of "value" and the end of super-stardom.
No, I don't think thats the question brought up. I was just trying to define what we mean by self sufficient. I am wondering if Michael is saying that webcomics are now a hobby due to the market change, and not someone does for a living. Or he means self sufficient to include the artist and not just the comic.
I think it's an important distinction. Neither one is necessarily right or wrong, but we have to understand that if the former, a comic with a new "free" business model, can only support the comic and not the artist, the artist loses some value in return for his work. If great comics are still being produced this way, thats great for the readers, but it removes a lot of the potential value for an artist outside of loving what they do; you have people being comic artists as a hobby instead of a living.
Like I said none of this is bad if it's what the market dictates, but you can't ignore the impact.
We say self sufficient meaning that the comic has enough money to support itself, but may or may not be able to support the artist as well? I believe many of the artists in the article you link to have jobs outside of their online media.
Though completely overblown, the "troll" has a point, even though it was put across in a very crude manner. I think the lean toward saying that Showtime "benefitted" from putting the clips on youtube is not valid for the same numbers that our "troll" posted, and even more so because we do not know what the show would have done if they weren't on youtube.
The fact we can all agree on is that providing some content for free will most likely earn new viewers. This will obviously mean potentially LESS viewers of the same content; if you show the premiere for free, most likely their will be viewers who will not go out of their way to watch it again despite being loyal to the show. The benefit comes from hopefully an increase of overall viewer ship in episodes further down the road, and new showtime subscriptions. Therefore, measuring the success of the free clips via viewership of the free content on a paid medium is not really valid. I would be more interested to see the net change in show viewership in later episodes and showtime subscriptions. I think thats where we will see the proof that it works, and that it does provide a benefit. If those numbers don't show the expected increase, we have to be open to the idea that maybe it's not working.
That would nothing to do with the AP's current core competency. Sadly, one (or maybe more) of porter's five forces is overwhelming the AP so the AP's core comepentency isn't making them competitive.
That does mean they need to re-evaluate, but I don't think offering business solutions would be where they could shift elegantly.
Actually, if you aren't paying then you technically aren't a customer. You may get, and provide, value from the free service, but by almost all definitions in business they are not a customer. This does not mean that they as users are not important to the business model, they can be used to encourage a pulling strategy for your customers.
Is quoted out of context. The person interviewed specifically stated it would be used on other countries against other computers harming us. The legitimate military target means that someone attacking us, which isn't fully protected, would make a good target for the botnet. And the scarecrow argument used by Carlo just drives up the rage even more.
Read the article fellas. He makes a proper argument that warfare nowadays could easily involve who can keep their information systems running more effeciently than the other guy.
I think the point is that a judge who is an advocate of stronger copyright laws (and actively involved in organizations pushing for such things) is much more inclined to view a case like The Pirate Bay's through a different prism than one who is neutral to copyright laws.
You are absolutely right, that stinks for the Pirate Bay, but it doesn't mean he has a conflict of interest. Lawyers all the time have to deal with the luck of the draw about which judge they get on a certain case.
A scholar or expert in copyright law would be one thing, but an active member of organizations that have a stake in particular copyright laws is another.
This case would not effect copyright law is what people have to really get a hold of. This was just determining whether or not they were guilty of laws already in place. He MAY hold opinions we don't like about copyright law, but that doesn't mean he was a bad choice, unfortunately.
If that were the case, then judges who are members of organizations supporting stricter laws about child abuse, or any other topic, would not be allowed to preside over trials that concern that topic, even though that is their focus and what they are most educated on. If an attorney didn't like their opinion on the matter, it doesn't mean they have a conflict of interest.
I actually don't see a problem with this. The trial wasn't about whether copyright laws are valid or not, it's about whether or not the Pirate Bay broke those laws. Right?
This judge focused on copyright law, wouldn't it make since for him to be involved in those organizations?
I think people are mistaking the case to be about whether or not copyright needs reworking. It wasn't, the case was about whether or not the Pirate Bay broke the laws already in place, which I think a judge who is very involved in copyright would be a good choice to preside over. He isn't associated with anyone that would benefit from the Pirate Bay being convicted.
Again, I don't see this as a conflict of interest.
I am totally for the idea of the entertainment industry finally realizing they need a new distribution model and rethinking how to monetize that, which a lot of people are focusing on, but I don't think that was what the case was about.
Isn't bad for whom, exactly? Because when I want to watch something online and cannot I consider that bad. Since it's my eyeballs they want watching their ads, making it harder for me to look at them seems like it will be bad for them, too.
Sometimes it's simply part of the value creation model they have setup. Perhaps they want to provide ads in a certain way that their advertisers demanded. By doing this they are able to do things in a far more nonintrusive way without sacrificing revenue. Perhaps they had a hard policy of never putting ads over the games (which I would appreciate), which means if they were to make the ads embeddable they would have to remove advertising altogether, which provides other potentially dangerous legal hazards. There are dozens of scenarios in which more value is provided to everyone if distribution is controlled. There are so many factors, determined by so many parties that come into these decisions other than a simple question "Should we give this stuff away or not?"
I really hate to be the one to tell you this, but NBC gives its stuff away for free over the air. In HD. So, they too, believe that "Free to everyone = better". I mean, as long as it's not via a web page-- that would totally ruin them, it seems. Enlighten me on this one, please.
They are not giving it away for "Free", like you said they want your eyeballs looking at ads. Thats just one single distrubution channel that NBC is happy to show with advertising interuptions. Their web platform had very few interuptions, if any for some games, and would be considered more "free" than the example you site as proof they think "Free = better". I am still not sure what you are wanting me to enlighten you on here. My point is, it simply isn't always the case that free distribution all around is better for everyone, in my opinion.
The Olympics was a huge success for them. As stated in the Mix keynote this past year, they had such success using the web presence to ENHANCE their TV viewership, they can't wait to do it again. Many of the problems that you said NBC fell short with were logistical ones, not decisions to be shortsighted.
"CBS recently added its on demand service to our Brighthouse network. Granted, it's only a few shows, but it's a start.
Where's ABC and NBC? *crickets*"
Ask Brighthouse, both cable providers here in Atlanta have on demand showing for both those networks. This doesn't seem to be a policy by NBC or ABC to not have the content shown, but more of a cable provider one.
I feel that most of the thoughts around these topics is "The more you can give away, the better" and that is not always true. There are many ways and fashions in which just getting your name out in as many avenues as possivle is a very good thing. Other times, controlling the way in which people can view content isn't bad. I am not saying that NBC is doing this perfectly, but I think the hard line many people at techdirt take of "Free to everyone = better" isn't always the case.
You prefer open source software, I can understand that.
You think MS products are too expensive even if you do prefer them so you go with a cheaper or free alternative, totally on board with you there too.
But basically this article is calling MS audacious for trying to collect payment on an agreed upon contract. The amount of BS that could fly all over if there was a clause in an MCP contract with MS that said "If one of your clients can't pay, you aren't liable to pay us anymore" would be incredible. It's the MCP's job to collect from the company for what they sell, even in bankruptcy, and then to pay MS. I don't know how bankruptcy in most other countries work, but part of the filing will allow debt to be repaid by selling off assets or restructuring; thats the whole point of filing.
This isn't some evil by MS. This is simple business. If you had a business where you sold to resellers, would you act differently? Just let them off the hook if they said "Well one of our customers can't pay, so we aren't going to pay you."
The rest of the article goes on to say how OpenOffice is just better, which is a total matter of opinion, and how dare MS integrate their software, Navision, with another one of their products, Excel, and not the open source alternative. Come on man, really?
The article then goes on to point out how a business handled itself poorly, can't find a way to monetize their business well which lead to very weekly thought out layoffs, and that means MS "Skull f**ked them."
MS has positioned themself well in the market. Thats good business. Look up Porter's five forces, MS just did a good job making themself a standard and people are complaining that their products are now prefered.
I rarely comment, but this article is really just a rant posted by a naive open source fanboy who hates MS, and has a poor understanding of business. Being a fan boy doesn't bother me, and neither does the ranting, but I am confused as to why Techdirt gave it creedence.
I agree that google is certainly not the guilty party here, but implying so does something worse, it removes responsibility from the acting party.
Frankly, I think Mike took a little bit of an over step in saying that an ad won't drive people to gamble. In part, thats exactly what the person paying for the advertising wants to happen, and google's job is to provide a platform for that advertisers to do that. Google/the advertiser would consider it a success if they are able to make the viewer decide to gamble based on the ad.
Where the Church needs to take a step back is that someone has every right to say no to gambling. If they are looking for help for gambling and the ad comes up, it is not googles responsibility, moral or otherwise, to special case that user. That whole implication says that google is more responsible for that user's choices than the user themself.
Open CAN be a winning business strategy. Your examples of AOL and the iPhone are very specific and poor. AOL was very successful for a long time, but their decline did not come about because they didn't have an open business strategy, it was simply a poor outlook on the internet market which other, even more "open", providers fell to.
In your examples you seem to talk more to compatibility as "open". Being able to work with other applications is a feature that allows a strong or weak symbiotic relationship with one or many other products. This increases value for a product surely, but does not make a product "open" in the traditional definition.
Open can work when the core competency or monetization of the product is increased by uncontrolled variations in the marketplace. The owner can almost certainly expect loss of exposure of his on flavor. A good example of this working is with LinkSys. The WRT54G sells like wild fire because of the company allowing third party firmware. The firmware that comes with it is mediocre, yet adequate, but is enhanced by third party firmware. The firmware is not how the product generates revenue, it’s in the selling of the hardware, and so making it "open" for firmware flavors increased the products value. This would have been a better example of how it works.
I admit to not knowing enough about this and I figured this would be the best forum to ask. Can someone clearly, intelligently, and without blantant bias explain to me why the telcos should be liable? From how I understand it, the government ordered them to do this and they complied with them. Do we think the telcos should be punished because we demand for them to question the Gov on this? Granted, I think that was the right action, but I think a lot more anger should be directed at the governing body who ordered the illegal taps than the telco who was doing what their government ordered them to do.
I see what you are saying, but here is where I think it is different. You state they recieve 1 million, but generally the people we are talking about get paid by impression, not an upfront cost. If you went to the Yahoo Board of directors and said "People are compling about this ad we are showing and I think we are losing users over it. This ad stops us from getting impressions from other ads which generate revenue." I am pretty darn sure they would pull the ad.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Ben Matthews.
It's free, but makes money through complimentary products.
SaratogaSam touched on something for all of these examples. All of MS's products are in one way or another used to gain revenue through another product, or avenue of that product. Andriod from Google does nothing like that. I believe thats what Ballmer was refering to, and he explained it poorly.
-Bing sells ad space, but free for people who search.
-Silverlight is used to leverage more sales of Visual Studio, and possibly windows server.
This list could go on.
Re: Re: Re: penny arcade
That is an excellent point. Penny Arcade has done an incredible job as using that rabid following to create a medium that supports itself and themselves, but I think it goes without saying that their talent as comics was the pivotal factor in that. So I guess we weed the possible successful fulltime comics down even further to those who are very talented and those who can market themselves well.
Once again, not a bad thing at all if thats what the market decides. But it's always good to reflect on possible impacts.
Re: penny arcade
I think it's safe to say that Penny Arcade is far and away the exception and not the rule.
Re: Re:
This goes back to the whole question of "value" and the end of super-stardom.
No, I don't think thats the question brought up. I was just trying to define what we mean by self sufficient. I am wondering if Michael is saying that webcomics are now a hobby due to the market change, and not someone does for a living. Or he means self sufficient to include the artist and not just the comic.
I think it's an important distinction. Neither one is necessarily right or wrong, but we have to understand that if the former, a comic with a new "free" business model, can only support the comic and not the artist, the artist loses some value in return for his work. If great comics are still being produced this way, thats great for the readers, but it removes a lot of the potential value for an artist outside of loving what they do; you have people being comic artists as a hobby instead of a living.
Like I said none of this is bad if it's what the market dictates, but you can't ignore the impact.
We say self sufficient meaning that the comic has enough money to support itself, but may or may not be able to support the artist as well? I believe many of the artists in the article you link to have jobs outside of their online media.
The drama about this post
Though completely overblown, the "troll" has a point, even though it was put across in a very crude manner. I think the lean toward saying that Showtime "benefitted" from putting the clips on youtube is not valid for the same numbers that our "troll" posted, and even more so because we do not know what the show would have done if they weren't on youtube.
The fact we can all agree on is that providing some content for free will most likely earn new viewers. This will obviously mean potentially LESS viewers of the same content; if you show the premiere for free, most likely their will be viewers who will not go out of their way to watch it again despite being loyal to the show. The benefit comes from hopefully an increase of overall viewer ship in episodes further down the road, and new showtime subscriptions. Therefore, measuring the success of the free clips via viewership of the free content on a paid medium is not really valid. I would be more interested to see the net change in show viewership in later episodes and showtime subscriptions. I think thats where we will see the proof that it works, and that it does provide a benefit. If those numbers don't show the expected increase, we have to be open to the idea that maybe it's not working.
That would nothing to do with the AP's current core competency. Sadly, one (or maybe more) of porter's five forces is overwhelming the AP so the AP's core comepentency isn't making them competitive.
That does mean they need to re-evaluate, but I don't think offering business solutions would be where they could shift elegantly.
A quick note about the title...
Actually, if you aren't paying then you technically aren't a customer. You may get, and provide, value from the free service, but by almost all definitions in business they are not a customer. This does not mean that they as users are not important to the business model, they can be used to encourage a pulling strategy for your customers.
The article
Is quoted out of context. The person interviewed specifically stated it would be used on other countries against other computers harming us. The legitimate military target means that someone attacking us, which isn't fully protected, would make a good target for the botnet. And the scarecrow argument used by Carlo just drives up the rage even more.
Read the article fellas. He makes a proper argument that warfare nowadays could easily involve who can keep their information systems running more effeciently than the other guy.
Re: Re: Confused about the conflict of interest
I think the point is that a judge who is an advocate of stronger copyright laws (and actively involved in organizations pushing for such things) is much more inclined to view a case like The Pirate Bay's through a different prism than one who is neutral to copyright laws.
You are absolutely right, that stinks for the Pirate Bay, but it doesn't mean he has a conflict of interest. Lawyers all the time have to deal with the luck of the draw about which judge they get on a certain case.
Re: Re: Confused about the conflict of interest
A scholar or expert in copyright law would be one thing, but an active member of organizations that have a stake in particular copyright laws is another.
This case would not effect copyright law is what people have to really get a hold of. This was just determining whether or not they were guilty of laws already in place. He MAY hold opinions we don't like about copyright law, but that doesn't mean he was a bad choice, unfortunately.
If that were the case, then judges who are members of organizations supporting stricter laws about child abuse, or any other topic, would not be allowed to preside over trials that concern that topic, even though that is their focus and what they are most educated on. If an attorney didn't like their opinion on the matter, it doesn't mean they have a conflict of interest.
Confused about the conflict of interest
I actually don't see a problem with this. The trial wasn't about whether copyright laws are valid or not, it's about whether or not the Pirate Bay broke those laws. Right?
This judge focused on copyright law, wouldn't it make since for him to be involved in those organizations?
I think people are mistaking the case to be about whether or not copyright needs reworking. It wasn't, the case was about whether or not the Pirate Bay broke the laws already in place, which I think a judge who is very involved in copyright would be a good choice to preside over. He isn't associated with anyone that would benefit from the Pirate Bay being convicted.
Again, I don't see this as a conflict of interest.
I am totally for the idea of the entertainment industry finally realizing they need a new distribution model and rethinking how to monetize that, which a lot of people are focusing on, but I don't think that was what the case was about.
Re: Re: NBC is getting a bad rap
Isn't bad for whom, exactly? Because when I want to watch something online and cannot I consider that bad. Since it's my eyeballs they want watching their ads, making it harder for me to look at them seems like it will be bad for them, too.
Sometimes it's simply part of the value creation model they have setup. Perhaps they want to provide ads in a certain way that their advertisers demanded. By doing this they are able to do things in a far more nonintrusive way without sacrificing revenue. Perhaps they had a hard policy of never putting ads over the games (which I would appreciate), which means if they were to make the ads embeddable they would have to remove advertising altogether, which provides other potentially dangerous legal hazards. There are dozens of scenarios in which more value is provided to everyone if distribution is controlled. There are so many factors, determined by so many parties that come into these decisions other than a simple question "Should we give this stuff away or not?"
I really hate to be the one to tell you this, but NBC gives its stuff away for free over the air. In HD. So, they too, believe that "Free to everyone = better". I mean, as long as it's not via a web page-- that would totally ruin them, it seems. Enlighten me on this one, please.
They are not giving it away for "Free", like you said they want your eyeballs looking at ads. Thats just one single distrubution channel that NBC is happy to show with advertising interuptions. Their web platform had very few interuptions, if any for some games, and would be considered more "free" than the example you site as proof they think "Free = better". I am still not sure what you are wanting me to enlighten you on here. My point is, it simply isn't always the case that free distribution all around is better for everyone, in my opinion.
NBC is getting a bad rap
The Olympics was a huge success for them. As stated in the Mix keynote this past year, they had such success using the web presence to ENHANCE their TV viewership, they can't wait to do it again. Many of the problems that you said NBC fell short with were logistical ones, not decisions to be shortsighted.
"CBS recently added its on demand service to our Brighthouse network. Granted, it's only a few shows, but it's a start.
Where's ABC and NBC? *crickets*"
Ask Brighthouse, both cable providers here in Atlanta have on demand showing for both those networks. This doesn't seem to be a policy by NBC or ABC to not have the content shown, but more of a cable provider one.
I feel that most of the thoughts around these topics is "The more you can give away, the better" and that is not always true. There are many ways and fashions in which just getting your name out in as many avenues as possivle is a very good thing. Other times, controlling the way in which people can view content isn't bad. I am not saying that NBC is doing this perfectly, but I think the hard line many people at techdirt take of "Free to everyone = better" isn't always the case.
This article shows a complete lack of business sense
You prefer open source software, I can understand that.
You think MS products are too expensive even if you do prefer them so you go with a cheaper or free alternative, totally on board with you there too.
But basically this article is calling MS audacious for trying to collect payment on an agreed upon contract. The amount of BS that could fly all over if there was a clause in an MCP contract with MS that said "If one of your clients can't pay, you aren't liable to pay us anymore" would be incredible. It's the MCP's job to collect from the company for what they sell, even in bankruptcy, and then to pay MS. I don't know how bankruptcy in most other countries work, but part of the filing will allow debt to be repaid by selling off assets or restructuring; thats the whole point of filing.
This isn't some evil by MS. This is simple business. If you had a business where you sold to resellers, would you act differently? Just let them off the hook if they said "Well one of our customers can't pay, so we aren't going to pay you."
The rest of the article goes on to say how OpenOffice is just better, which is a total matter of opinion, and how dare MS integrate their software, Navision, with another one of their products, Excel, and not the open source alternative. Come on man, really?
The article then goes on to point out how a business handled itself poorly, can't find a way to monetize their business well which lead to very weekly thought out layoffs, and that means MS "Skull f**ked them."
MS has positioned themself well in the market. Thats good business. Look up Porter's five forces, MS just did a good job making themself a standard and people are complaining that their products are now prefered.
I rarely comment, but this article is really just a rant posted by a naive open source fanboy who hates MS, and has a poor understanding of business. Being a fan boy doesn't bother me, and neither does the ranting, but I am confused as to why Techdirt gave it creedence.
Slight disagreement
I agree that google is certainly not the guilty party here, but implying so does something worse, it removes responsibility from the acting party.
Frankly, I think Mike took a little bit of an over step in saying that an ad won't drive people to gamble. In part, thats exactly what the person paying for the advertising wants to happen, and google's job is to provide a platform for that advertisers to do that. Google/the advertiser would consider it a success if they are able to make the viewer decide to gamble based on the ad.
Where the Church needs to take a step back is that someone has every right to say no to gambling. If they are looking for help for gambling and the ad comes up, it is not googles responsibility, moral or otherwise, to special case that user. That whole implication says that google is more responsible for that user's choices than the user themself.
Don't pass opinion as rule
Open CAN be a winning business strategy. Your examples of AOL and the iPhone are very specific and poor. AOL was very successful for a long time, but their decline did not come about because they didn't have an open business strategy, it was simply a poor outlook on the internet market which other, even more "open", providers fell to.
In your examples you seem to talk more to compatibility as "open". Being able to work with other applications is a feature that allows a strong or weak symbiotic relationship with one or many other products. This increases value for a product surely, but does not make a product "open" in the traditional definition.
Open can work when the core competency or monetization of the product is increased by uncontrolled variations in the marketplace. The owner can almost certainly expect loss of exposure of his on flavor. A good example of this working is with LinkSys. The WRT54G sells like wild fire because of the company allowing third party firmware. The firmware that comes with it is mediocre, yet adequate, but is enhanced by third party firmware. The firmware is not how the product generates revenue, it’s in the selling of the hardware, and so making it "open" for firmware flavors increased the products value. This would have been a better example of how it works.
I am a little confused
I admit to not knowing enough about this and I figured this would be the best forum to ask. Can someone clearly, intelligently, and without blantant bias explain to me why the telcos should be liable? From how I understand it, the government ordered them to do this and they complied with them. Do we think the telcos should be punished because we demand for them to question the Gov on this? Granted, I think that was the right action, but I think a lot more anger should be directed at the governing body who ordered the illegal taps than the telco who was doing what their government ordered them to do.
Re: Complain to the website?
@John
I see what you are saying, but here is where I think it is different. You state they recieve 1 million, but generally the people we are talking about get paid by impression, not an upfront cost. If you went to the Yahoo Board of directors and said "People are compling about this ad we are showing and I think we are losing users over it. This ad stops us from getting impressions from other ads which generate revenue." I am pretty darn sure they would pull the ad.