Posts tagged photo credit
Should the AP pay Woot $17.50 for a quote?
Jul 8th
Using the iCopyright AP licensing calculator, Rutledge determined that the total value of these words, by AP standards, was $17.50, and in a tongue-in-cheek blog post, suggested that the AP buy a set of Sennheiser In-Ear headphones as payment for them. After all, the news organization was infringing his copyright and needs to pay up to avoid legal action!
TechCrunch blogger MG Siegler spotted Rutledge’s post and tried to turn it into a ‘story‘. Paul Colford, the AP’s Director of Media Relations, apparently didn’t like Siegler had wrote and responded in a somewhat edgy manner. Which, as one might suspect, earned the AP another TechCrunch story.
Unfortunately, while Rutledge’s poke at the AP may be somewhat amusing, Siegler makes a mountain out of a mole hill. That’s because, all things considered, the AP’s ‘lifting‘ of a 16-word quote from Rutledge’s 1,100+ word email is a perfect example of ‘fair use‘ under United States law.
Of course, the AP was a prime target for Rutledge’s blog post given past reports that it was looking to extract $2.50/word from bloggers. Those reports, the AP claimed, were inaccurate. Even so, AP in many cases does have a legitimate reason to complain. Some bloggers do employ large excerpts from AP stories instead of taking the time to craft original descriptions of events and news stories. In some cases, a reasonable person would question whether these excerpts represent ‘fair use‘ or copyright infringement.
At the end of the day, there is a real debate to be had over fair use, and hot news as well. And it’s not a one-way street: traditional news organizations are increasingly incorporating information from online sources and they can take too much without permission just as easily as a blogger can. Unfortunately, the type of squabbling described here isn’t going to facilitate a serious discussion about these issues and frankly makes both Old Media and New Media look petty and self-righteous.
Photo credit: r-z via Flickr.
Has Chatroulette finally jumped the shark?
Jun 15th
Obviously, traffic figures are going to fluctuate from month to month, and given Chatroulette’s meteoric rise, a drop — even if temporary — was bound to occur. It’s entirely possible, if not probable, that Chatroulette will see further traffic increases.
Yet there’s good reason to believe that Chatroulette’s fastest growth is behind it, and that it is more likely to be a fad than a long-term phenomenon: a lack of strong network effects.
There’s no doubt that the social experience Chatroulette provides is intriguing, if not somewhat predictable in a NSFW way. But unlike popular social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, Chatroulette doesn’t support strong, long-term connection between its users. Instead, the connections it facilitates are fleeting.
That’s going to make it awfully tough for Chatroulette to maintain the kind of loyalty seen on popular social networks. Facebook users might be skeptical about the company’s privacy stance, for instance, or even tire of the overall experience, but those who have lots of ‘friends‘ will always have an incentive to stick around, even if their usage declines. Once Chatroulette users tire of the experience, however, there are no strong network effects to keep them from leaving altogether.
Considering this, the biggest challenge for Chatroulette is not finding ways to filter out body parts, but finding ways to build stronger network effects without completely eliminating the randomness that makes Chatroulette so intriguing in the first place.
For obvious reasons, that’s a tall order and at some point, Chatroulette’s founder, Andrey Ternovskiy, might wonder why he didn’t take the money and click ‘Next.’
Photo credit: avantexgarde via Flickr.
Microsoft gives up on Bing Cashback
Jun 7th
As the name implies, Bing users who used Cashback to make purchases through participating online retailers received cash back on those purchases from Microsoft. When Microsoft launched Bing Cashback the motivation was clear: by giving affiliate referral fees it generated back to shoppers, Microsoft might be able to lure consumers to Bing and keep them coming back for more.
Judging from the comments expressing disappointment at Microsoft’s decision to terminate Bing Cashback on July 30, it appears that Bing Cashback did acquire loyal fans. But apparently not enough of them to convince Microsoft that the return was worthwhile.
Does this mean that Microsoft is giving up on shopping-related search? According to Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s SVP of the Online Audience Business Group:
Shopping remains one of the most important tasks people engage in while using
search, and we remain committed to delivering great shopping experiences for you
that help you make better shopping decisions, get great deals, and save time and
money along the way. For merchants and advertisers, we have some ideas for
making it easy to get a broader array of products and offers into Bing, and
we’ll share some details on this later this summer.
While it will be interesting to see what Microsoft cooks up next in this area, one has to wonder: if Microsoft couldn’t obtain the type of adoption it had hoped for by enticing consumers with cash back, how will it drive adoption when it isn’t paying them to use Bing?
Photo credit: Neubie via Flickr.
Zappos lives up to its reputation for customer service
May 24th
A pricing bug on 6pm.com, a Zappos sister site that sells discounted products, surfaced in the middle of the night this past Friday. The bug gave customers the ability to purchase any product for no more than $49.95. The mistake was discovered six hours after it appeared, and by that time, Zappos was looking at a $1.6m loss. A $1.6m loss only if, of course, it decided to honor the purchases made by customers who took advantage of the pricing bug.
So what did Zappos do? It decided to eat the loss. Zappos Director of Brand Marketing Aaron Magness explained on the Zappos Blog:
While we’re sure this was a great deal for customers, it was inadvertent, and we took a big loss (over $1.6 million – ouch) selling so many items so far under cost. However, it was our mistake. We will be honoring all purchases that took place on 6pm.com during our mess up. We apologize to anyone that was confused and/or frustrated during out little hiccup and thank you all for being such great customers. We hope you continue to Shop. Save. Smile. at 6pm.com.
$1.6m isn’t chump change, but it will hardly dent the finances of Zappos (or parent Amazon). But even so, I think it’s safe to say that more than a few companies would have thought twice about honoring purchases made under similar circumstances.
Zappos, however, clearly understands that its reputation is worth far more than $1.6m and that sometimes eating a loss is the smart thing to do. Interestingly, one might even suggest that Zappos will only boost its reputation and customer loyalty with this move.
Hopefully, more and more companies will take a cue from Zappos and apply the same level of common sense when mistakes are made. After all, being penny wise and pound foolish is no way to manage a brand.
Photo credit: bschmove via Flickr.
Five ways publishers lose ad revenue
May 10th
Here are five of these behaviors…
- Poor yield management. Serving up more impressions usually doesn’t mean greater revenue, and trying to create impressions like a central bank printing currency often has the effect of devaluing each impression. But that doesn’t stop many publishers from doing swinish things in an effort to maximize impressions instead of yield.
- Lazy ad placement. ‘Ad placement‘ encompasses the location of advertising, the format of the advertising and the type of advertising (CPM, CPC, etc.). The right ad placement can deliver stellar results, while bad ad placement can produce disappointment. Unfortunately, thoughtful ad placement is often missing in action.
- Relying too much on ad networks and exchanges. Ad networks and exchanges may be a necessity pragmatically, but publishers have good reason to be careful about how and when they employ them as ad networks can be detrimental. Ad networks and exchanges may hamper a publisher’s efforts to sell inventory directly at a premium, as savvy advertisers can often get access to ‘premium‘ sites for pennies on the dollar through them.
- Not making an effort to sell. Ads don’t sell themselves. While it may not be possible for smaller publishers to hire a dedicated sales team, in my experience a surprising number of publishers don’t even try to sell their ads proactively on their own. That makes it awfully hard to build a business that isn’t dependent on ad network crumbs.
- Having a ‘once and done’ mentality. Making money with an ad-based business model online is a journey, not a destination. Publishers who throw up a bunch of ads and who aren’t constantly analyzing performance and experimenting with their ‘ad formula‘ will almost always earn far less than they otherwise could.
By focusing on what really matters, staying proactive and avoiding the above behaviors, publishers can often realize significant increases in their ad revenue.
Photo credit: Photos8.com via Flickr.
The Power of an Earthquake
Apr 18th
Most photographs of earthquakes depict damage to buildings and roads, or fissures in the earth. The one above is most unusual. On April 4, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck northern Mexico and the Baja region just south of the U.S. border.
Brothers traveling in Mexico during Sunday’s deadly earthquake photographed this surreal sight: The power of the quake lifting a layer of dust off a mountain range. “We felt the truck shake and the roads cracking,” Roberto wrote to NBCSanDiego. “We stopped and looked at the big hills, and the force of the quake shook the mountains and dust stared to come up.”
Link, via Found Here. Photo credit Roberto and Adrian Marquez Marquez.
The Godfather on social media
Mar 30th
“The richest man is the one with the most powerful friends.”
Relationships and influence are currency in the world of social media. While both may be hard to quantify and control, brands should not underestimate what the right ‘friends‘ can do for them in the realm of social media. From this perspective, brands should also remember that social media is not about ‘friending‘ the most consumers; in social media less is often more.
“They talk when they should listen.”
Never before have brands been given the opportunity to collect so much direct and honest feedback from customers. Yet many still focus on spreading their messages rather than using the internet and social media to listen to what consumers are saying. That’s a huge mistake.
“Times have changed. It’s not like the Old Days, when we can do anything we want.”
While there’s a lot of hype and hyperbole around social media, more than a few brands have learned the hard way that social media can drive heavy scrutiny of corporate activities and practices. Because of this, smart brands will recognize that it’s not always possible to get away with the things that were easy to get away with in the past.
“Your enemies always get strong on what you leave behind.”
Companies shouldn’t adopt trendy new social media tools just for the sake of adoption. Perhaps the latest social media flavor of the month truly isn’t a good fit. Yet brands should be aware that a strong overall social media presence can be a valuable business asset. That means that brands ignoring social media are ceding a potentially powerful advantage to their competitors.
“I got a business to run. I gotta kick asses sometimes to make it run right.”
Social media can do a lot of things for companies, but they shouldn’t become so enamored with the touchy-feely aspects of social media that they forget that they are businesses first and foremost. Sometimes this means standing up and defending themselves against social media criticism.
Photo credit: @labnol via Flickr.
Is the iPad already influencing big publishers?
Mar 25th
One big publisher — CBS — may already be hedging its bets. According to MacRumors, bizarre “iPad – test” links have been spotted on CBS.com. These links point to pages containing videos. When loaded in a web browser, these videos are Flash-based. But when loaded using the iPad SDK simulator, these videos (which don’t yet work) appear to be based on HTML5.
The implication, of course, is that CBS has decided that finding a way to distribute its website video content on the iPad is a worthy investment despite the fact that the iPad isn’t here and nobody yet knows just how important it will eventually be. If anything, that says a lot about publishers’ eagerness to be ahead of the curve. If the iPad turns out to be a hit, publishers don’t want to be playing catch up this time around.
Of course, it would be premature to point to CBS’ example, for instance, as evidence that Flash is dying. Many companies have made significant investments in Flash, and already have a significant amount of Flash-based content, some of which is not easily converted. HTML5 isn’t here, and there will likely always be a place for Flash (and other RIAs), even if HTML5 eventually takes a larger part of the market for things like online video delivery.
The risk for Adobe, of course, is that the iPad is giving publishers a motivation to adopt alternative technologies alongside Flash. Alternative technologies that could also serve as Flash replacements altogether at some point in the future. The risk for publishers, however, is that the iPad won’t be as big as many have predicted. There may be very valid reasons for publishers to look at Flash alternatives going forward, but technology decisions made on assumption and speculation alone could prove quite costly.
Photo credit: Richard-G via Flickr.
Popeye Squirt Gun
Mar 29th
Posted by PostMan in it
7 comments
This Popeye the Sailor squirt gun reportedly dates to the 1960s. There is another photo, of the “derriere view,” which shows that the little plug that holds the water in is missing, but the squirt gun appears to be otherwise in quite good condition. I’ll defer any commentary/analysis.
Photo credit: blackthorne56