It's quite remarkable how much the device landscape has change in the last two years and how important premium content is to the eco-system. Perhaps the Kindle Fire's slogan says it all: "All the content, Ultra-fast web browsing." As John Gruber notes in his daringfireball blog, "It's all about the content." And this is something Motorola, Samsung, and RIM seem to have missed. "They seem to be chasing the iPad on specs, building the best tablet they can manage at the same starting price of around $500. But they have no clear message telling people what you can do with them". (http://daringfireball.net/2011/09/amazons_new_%20kindles?)
I recall introducing to publishing groups in mid-2009 examples of the new devices coming to market. Magazine publishers were already looking over the Kindle's shoulder for color display technology that would be appropriate for their rich media. Plastic Logic (Que) got some attention because it was thin, lightweight, attractive and about the same size of a standard magazine. But publisher did not like to hear that color for this device would be two years out. But this device seemed like progress, nonetheless.
I also brought in Mary Lou Jepsen, CEO of Pixel Qi and formerly CTO of One Laptop Per Child, an organization that focused on getting computers in the hands of student in developing countries. Dr. Jepsen is all about utility and building on existing technologies. She spoke of combining existing LCD displays with her transreflective technology that provides the benefit of low-power consumption and sunlight readability; combining an e-paper look with rich color and video. The sample screen she showed the group interested them but didn't have the eye-popping saturated color to win them over. And in less than a year the iPad came to town and profoundly disrupted the device and content space.
The Pixel Qi blog reports that to date three million screens have been shipped with tablet and netbooks for a variety of uses, for soldiers jumping out of planes to educational uses in the developing world. Recently it has been widely reported that Pixel Qi has received investment from 3M and formed partnerships with Shanghai's Shizhu Technology to develop a number of multi-media devices and with the Southern Media Group for content for the China market.
This is a movement upward into premium markets and demographics.
As Apple and Amazon have shown us, it is not enough to have great technology and a ton of content; it's also essential to have a narrative that consumers can identify with.
Friday, October 14, 2011
Thursday, September 29, 2011
The Definite Article
The Amazon tablet Fire might indeed be the definite article, as so many of my tech friends have written, but that is not the subject of this blog. My focus is on the definite article, as in "the" and all the other indefinite stuff out there.
I read Senator S.I. Hayakawa's Language in Thought & Action in my freshman English class. His basic sematic message--the word is not the thing--seemed very sensible to me after four years in the military where verbal primitivism prevails. The author, of Japanese descent, knew something about labels. As chance had it my first shipboard navigator was named Lt. Iwatsu who received his share of anti-Japanese venim when he unwittingly steered our ammunition ship into a monster typhoon. The slurs were not driven by his navigation skills.
While studying literature at Lehigh University my professor devoted a semester to a textual analysis of Capote's In Cold Blood. Or more precisely, the textual differences between the serialized New Yorker edition and the final book version. There was a lot of attention to the definite article and sentences that started with "it." The doctoral students were the textual slaves. I think the professor shared his results with the author who told him he was nuts. I think my professor was a firm believer in Freud's dictum: even the slip of the scribe is significant and the man made a career out of such nostrums.
There is at least one professional journal devoted to these oddities. Notes and Queries was established in London in 1849 and apparently still has an audience of historians and English professors who publish arcane articles, usually right before they are up for tenure, that few people read. A recent issue of N&Q included articles on: "Old English Brost at Line 2176B of Beowulf; "Princess Carolina's List of Monthly Expenses, January-February 1727/8; and 'The Brewing Process in Dryden, Pope and Hogarth." One assumes search technology now aids these sleuths. If these journals adopt deep meta-tagging our academics will enjoy restful sleep.
We know words kill and words offend, protected as they may be. But not all words are life -threatening. Some just seem to be a bother. One of my first publishing bosses sent around memos outlawing the use of "it" to begin a sentence, citing all the appropriate rules from the 8th grade grammar book and the New Yorker style sheet. It failed but to his credit the man loved words. A case in point: he loved the word "regeneration" and thought it spoke to his personal development and the trajectory he imagined for his company. He asked our corporate attorney to see whether he could patent the word. My boss wasn't happy that about this time The New Yorker published an article using his precious word countless times. Thereafter, the staff used regeneration in as much verbal and written communication as good taste would allow.
Today's Gawker.com has an interesting piece on the Delpian Prep school in rural Oregon that seems to take it's pedagogy from the principles of Scientology. One principle suggests that all educational problems arise from misunderstanding words, as basic as "it" and "the." According to Gawker the school teaches that abstract ideas must be shown in pictures or clay to be fully grasped.
Apparently parents are paying $42,000 in annual tuition to be schooled in this language literalism that Hayakawa preached against: the word is not the thing, not matter how much it costs.
My freshman English professor asked us what was S.I. Hayakawa's first name. I had been stationed in Japan and suggested every Japanese name I could think of. Other students, including those of Japanese lineage, provided others.
We were all wrong.
His name was Sam.
I read Senator S.I. Hayakawa's Language in Thought & Action in my freshman English class. His basic sematic message--the word is not the thing--seemed very sensible to me after four years in the military where verbal primitivism prevails. The author, of Japanese descent, knew something about labels. As chance had it my first shipboard navigator was named Lt. Iwatsu who received his share of anti-Japanese venim when he unwittingly steered our ammunition ship into a monster typhoon. The slurs were not driven by his navigation skills.
While studying literature at Lehigh University my professor devoted a semester to a textual analysis of Capote's In Cold Blood. Or more precisely, the textual differences between the serialized New Yorker edition and the final book version. There was a lot of attention to the definite article and sentences that started with "it." The doctoral students were the textual slaves. I think the professor shared his results with the author who told him he was nuts. I think my professor was a firm believer in Freud's dictum: even the slip of the scribe is significant and the man made a career out of such nostrums.
There is at least one professional journal devoted to these oddities. Notes and Queries was established in London in 1849 and apparently still has an audience of historians and English professors who publish arcane articles, usually right before they are up for tenure, that few people read. A recent issue of N&Q included articles on: "Old English Brost at Line 2176B of Beowulf; "Princess Carolina's List of Monthly Expenses, January-February 1727/8; and 'The Brewing Process in Dryden, Pope and Hogarth." One assumes search technology now aids these sleuths. If these journals adopt deep meta-tagging our academics will enjoy restful sleep.
We know words kill and words offend, protected as they may be. But not all words are life -threatening. Some just seem to be a bother. One of my first publishing bosses sent around memos outlawing the use of "it" to begin a sentence, citing all the appropriate rules from the 8th grade grammar book and the New Yorker style sheet. It failed but to his credit the man loved words. A case in point: he loved the word "regeneration" and thought it spoke to his personal development and the trajectory he imagined for his company. He asked our corporate attorney to see whether he could patent the word. My boss wasn't happy that about this time The New Yorker published an article using his precious word countless times. Thereafter, the staff used regeneration in as much verbal and written communication as good taste would allow.
Today's Gawker.com has an interesting piece on the Delpian Prep school in rural Oregon that seems to take it's pedagogy from the principles of Scientology. One principle suggests that all educational problems arise from misunderstanding words, as basic as "it" and "the." According to Gawker the school teaches that abstract ideas must be shown in pictures or clay to be fully grasped.
Apparently parents are paying $42,000 in annual tuition to be schooled in this language literalism that Hayakawa preached against: the word is not the thing, not matter how much it costs.
My freshman English professor asked us what was S.I. Hayakawa's first name. I had been stationed in Japan and suggested every Japanese name I could think of. Other students, including those of Japanese lineage, provided others.
We were all wrong.
His name was Sam.
Friday, September 2, 2011
How Not to Parody the New Yorker
It must be the end of summer, the silly season, and a time when even the bare knuckles-first Church of Scientology gets a sense of humor. The NYT reported that people were distributing outside the magazine offices copies of a parody title looking faintly like the original: "The New Yorker: What a Load of Balderdash." This was a response to an exhaustive February 2011 article that according to the Times painted the Church "as corrupt and cultish." That it did but with 26-pages to play with, TNY actually offered a lengthy, balanced, and nuanced view of the organization, often using its own language, teachings, and apostates to tell the story. It has the tension, tone, and narrative progression one expects from the magazine. This after all is about the struggle for mind and soul.
Actually I read the article after I had read the parody and accompanying videos at http://www.freedommag.org/. The parody itself is quite funny and the mock New Yorker cover works. The video version has symbolic flies or gnats buzzing around the cover image, suggesting that the Church is the gnat that will peck at the media giant. In the various videos that take TNY fact checkers to task, there are background scenes from Western bar fight movies, overwrought dramas, and probably the Three Stooges. TNY is described as no better than a supermarket tabloid. A fake cover shouts: "Remnick Denies Alien Baby Claims." TNY editor David Remnick will not lose much sleep over this.
The Church should have stopped while it was ahead. The endless lamentations about the magazine fact-checkers, the ad hominen pokes, the scorched earth policy when dealing with apostates, hands a trunkload of weapons to those who reside on the other side of the Amen altar.
Actually I read the article after I had read the parody and accompanying videos at http://www.freedommag.org/. The parody itself is quite funny and the mock New Yorker cover works. The video version has symbolic flies or gnats buzzing around the cover image, suggesting that the Church is the gnat that will peck at the media giant. In the various videos that take TNY fact checkers to task, there are background scenes from Western bar fight movies, overwrought dramas, and probably the Three Stooges. TNY is described as no better than a supermarket tabloid. A fake cover shouts: "Remnick Denies Alien Baby Claims." TNY editor David Remnick will not lose much sleep over this.
The Church should have stopped while it was ahead. The endless lamentations about the magazine fact-checkers, the ad hominen pokes, the scorched earth policy when dealing with apostates, hands a trunkload of weapons to those who reside on the other side of the Amen altar.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Magazines & Depth Psychology
Yes, I realize the above title might be considered an oxymoron given the content of many lifestyle magazines. To be sure, there is much popular psychology in men's and women's magazines these days and that is probably just about right in a world driven by bumps, grinds, and tweets. It was not always the case.
I came across a few pages from "The New Eve: A Magazine of Feminine Charm" from December 1926 and 'Mademoiselle: The Magazine for Smart Young Women" dated September 1943. Eve focused on society, fashions, sports and theatres. Mademoiselle seemed to pay most attention to brides and fall fashions, in this instance.
1943 is wartime and the cover shows a sailor with his hat off sitting at the desk of a towering executive woman, perhaps asking for a job or recruiting her, which seems unlikely. Chesterfied supports the war and the cigarette advertisement that has a banner stating America Needs Nurses---Enlist Now, also shows three nurses smoking. And promotes "So Proudly We Hail" a war movie epic about nurses featuring Claudette Colbert, Paulette Goddard, and Veronica Lake.
In tone and spirit these titles contain the elements of contemporary women's magazines. Eve actually contains "An Editorial for Advertisers" that sketches the demographic shifts from the flapper to the new woman, in the kind of breezy language that would please advertisers. But this does not sound like "church vs. state" stuff. It seems more like an early 20th century magazine trying to find its way.
What most struck me about these magazines were the analytical psychology articles written by M. Esther Harding, MD, an influential Jungian psychologist. a student and friend of Carl Jung, and an analyst profoundly important to the adoption of Jungian psychology in the US. An article "Till You Meet Again" describes war time romances and the dangers of projection, building up illusions, and not establishing psychological boundaries to protect oneself.
In an article in Eve Dr. Harding psychoanalyzes a play 'The Captive." The editor in her note sets up the analysis by suggesting that the "performance is something akin to an agony of tense silence" and the audience leaves subdued, chastened and wondering. So there must be something more to the play than its objective plot.
Harding explores the archetypal implications of a Mother fixation and a male tendency to want a lover idealized and "harmonious" like the mother but at the same time hungers for the other woman representing the vulgar, of a lower class than his own.
These observations have spawned an industry.
Monday, August 8, 2011
Now the Unsexy ARPU
Online metrics used to be easy, until they didn't mean anything and became little more than competitive hammers in the marketplace.
Metrics are becoming hot again mainly because so many IPOs are coming to market. In his column for the Nieman Journalism Lab Ken Doctor takes a knife (and fork) to this fantasy world of online metrics (www.niemanlab.org/2011/08/the-newsonomics-of-arpu). He mentions Groupon's foggy metrics and balance sheet nonsense: "adjusted consolidated segment operating income." He also cites the Huffington Post claims to have surpassed the New York Times in online traffic.
Doctor suggests that publishers add another metric to the mix: Average Revenue Per User (ARPU), as the telcos and cable TV have done for years, to change the focus from customers or visitors to how much money we are making. By his back-of-the envelope analysis each unique NYT customer in 2010 was worth about $3.54; the Huffington Post about $.96.
In this tale of the tape "unique visitors are a great dumb count." In the future he sees a mobile ARPU,a smartphone ARPU, and so on.
In the last year I have been working closely with network operators.
I think they can teach publishers a few things about digital business models and metrics.
Tablets & the Value Proposition
There are hockey sticks and then there is tablet growth. According to ABI Research more than 17 million tablets shipped in 2010. The firm expects 46 million tablets to be shipped in 2011 and an estimated 126 million media tablets to be shipped worldwide in 2016.
Only three media tablet vendors can claim shipments of more than 2% in 2010. Apple led the pack with 85% of all shipments with Samsung at 8% and Archos at 2%. Or 95% of all products. Apple's market share might have dropped below 75% so far in 2011, but no one is likely to match Apple's appeal.
So what happened to the 80-plus media tablets we saw at CES in 2011? Not surprisingly, many of these tablets were from first-time vendors who were trying to differentiate product mainly by price. According to ABI this strategy could lead to a "netbook" effect, meaning end-users expectations are set higher than what products deliver. "Should this occur with media tablets, market demand will cool and hinder the transition from early adopters to the early majority."
ABI suggests fragmentation within the OS software will hinder growth of this device category. As we know application develops must choose an initial software platform. If the market upside is not significant, application development might be delayed. "The benefits of open software platform development have yet to be realized for media tablets."
While some of my publisher friends have privately stated that the tablet game is over with the Apple anointing and Samsung declared a worthy #2, the pesky eco-systems rules that the ODMs and OEMs live and die by suggest that the tablet value proposition remains unclear.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Time Magazine--Digital Genius
L2, a think tank for digital innovation, has provided publishers with a huge service in rating the web efforts of the top titles.
In his introduction to the "Digital IQ Index" Scott Galloway, Founder L2 and Clinical Professor of Marketing, NYU Stern, reminds us that "There is no shortage of smarts or innovation in the magazine business. However, even with the total advertising down more than 20% from its pre-financial crisis peak, no company or individual has been able to paint a cogent picture of what the industry's next interation will look, smell or feel like."
Galloway notes that online CPMs dropped 30% in the 12-month period ending March 2011. He adds that the iPad has not lived up to its hype and "as of December 2010 all magazines reporting data experienced declining digital edition sales."
On the bright side: "In 2011 the amount of paid content traveling through the ether surpassed free content and several pay walls appear to be gaining traction." The researcher cites PwC analysts who have suggested that by 2015 annual digital circulation revenues associated with magazines could grow to $611 million by 2015."
The L2 study attempts to quantity and rank the digital competence of 87 top magazine brands. The study also explores the relationship between digital savvy and ad revenue per page. The end game here is to provide publishers with tools to help better quantify return on incremental digital investment. This has been a decade-long lament; pouring significant investments into online efforts but not always having a clear sense of return.
I'll dig deeper into how this range of magazine online brands rate in my next post. The point I'd like to make here is that most digital innovation and business advances are coming from the larger companies with the resources to take strategic bets. It is not surprising Time magazine rates at the Genius end of the spectrum and is rated #1 in this study and is in four of the top ten positions.
In the language of the study: Time magazine has a"strong presence across nearly every platform; inspiring."
This is good news for everyone.
In his introduction to the "Digital IQ Index" Scott Galloway, Founder L2 and Clinical Professor of Marketing, NYU Stern, reminds us that "There is no shortage of smarts or innovation in the magazine business. However, even with the total advertising down more than 20% from its pre-financial crisis peak, no company or individual has been able to paint a cogent picture of what the industry's next interation will look, smell or feel like."
Galloway notes that online CPMs dropped 30% in the 12-month period ending March 2011. He adds that the iPad has not lived up to its hype and "as of December 2010 all magazines reporting data experienced declining digital edition sales."
On the bright side: "In 2011 the amount of paid content traveling through the ether surpassed free content and several pay walls appear to be gaining traction." The researcher cites PwC analysts who have suggested that by 2015 annual digital circulation revenues associated with magazines could grow to $611 million by 2015."
The L2 study attempts to quantity and rank the digital competence of 87 top magazine brands. The study also explores the relationship between digital savvy and ad revenue per page. The end game here is to provide publishers with tools to help better quantify return on incremental digital investment. This has been a decade-long lament; pouring significant investments into online efforts but not always having a clear sense of return.
I'll dig deeper into how this range of magazine online brands rate in my next post. The point I'd like to make here is that most digital innovation and business advances are coming from the larger companies with the resources to take strategic bets. It is not surprising Time magazine rates at the Genius end of the spectrum and is rated #1 in this study and is in four of the top ten positions.
In the language of the study: Time magazine has a"strong presence across nearly every platform; inspiring."
This is good news for everyone.
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