The Future of Advertising and Privacy February 25, 2012
Posted by Peter Varhol in Publishing, Technology and Culture.2 comments
I’ve always hated dependence on advertising revenue. When I was in publishing, that’s how we made our money, and I always thought it to be a cheap and fickle revenue stream. I am, however, smart enough to know that I didn’t have any actionable ideas to improve upon it. Publishers in effect leased out their mailing lists to companies that wanted people on those lists to buy their products.
In short, the mailing list was the publisher’s product – our names and addresses, specifically. Early on (Byte, PC World), the volume of advertising was based entirely on numbers – hundreds of thousands, or even millions, who subscribed to these publications. We didn’t know very much about them, but advertisers liked the numbers.
Somewhere in the latter part of the 1990s, advertisers became more discerning. It wasn’t enough to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to have the subscribers view a succession of full-page ads. We needed to know if they had the potential to consider purchasing our product or service.
Now we have Facebook. The goal of Facebook is “frictionless sharing”, meaning that every single activity of our lives is available for sharing online. Yes, everything we do. In fact, Zuckerberg once famously claimed that if we didn’t want some information about us public, we must be engaged in something inappropriate.
Robert Scoble loves Facebook and the concept of frictionless sharing, but he acknowledges that there is a “freaky line”, as he calls it. The freaky line is the point at which we get freaked out by what we expose to others.
He notes that Facebook routinely crosses the line, possibly to determine just where it is for many of us at that particular moment, so that it can gauge just how much information it can routinely share about its users. For some reason, despite the mountains of criticism, users just keep coming back to Facebook.
I have a few takeaways from the ongoing debate about publishing, social media and privacy.
- Nothing will ever completely replace advertising as a media business model. A few people will pay enough for certain types of content to be able to have a niche business, but that’s about it.
- Print publications were never free twenty years ago, and social media isn’t free today. We’re paying for them with our information.
- We as individuals don’t own the data on ourselves that we provide or otherwise make available to social media sites. The best we can hope for is to someday have visitation rights.
- This disclosure of information to advertisers is simply the next step in a long history of exchanging our information for value of some sort. Nothing new here, folks. With about 200,000 (give or take on any particular day) hits on my name on Google, I have long since abdicated any notion that I remain anonymous.
My problem with social media is not really any of this, per se. I may have privacy in my own home (well, until I installed the IP camera last month), but I can’t count on no notice once I leave the house.
My problem is that I don’t really care what my friends and acquaintances are doing at any particular moment, what music they are listening to, what TV shows they are watching, or what bar they are at. I simply don’t have the time to wonder about it, let alone track them through social media. I marvel at people who do, and wonder what they are losing in the quest to have such knowledge.
I think the Toyota Venza commercial of last year hit the nail on the head here.
An Anniversary of Space Exploration February 18, 2012
Posted by Peter Varhol in Technology and Culture, Uncategorized.1 comment so far
Monday is the 50th anniversary of the first orbital space flight by the US, conducted by John Glenn, fighter pilot, astronaut, and former United States Senator. While the events of the day were glamorized in the movie (and book) The Right Stuff, these astronauts were more than simply passengers. They made real time decisions and acted upon them, at the risk of their lives and the success of their mission. They are permanently ensconced in history in a way few ever experience.
I had the honor of seeing John Glenn once, circa 2001. He was giving a filmed talk at the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum and I happened to be within about 20 feet of him as he talked about the wonders of space flight.
(Many years ago I also shook hands with Neil Armstrong, who spoke at my Boy Scout Council’s Eagle Scout dinner).
I’ve beat this dead horse on multiple occasions, but I’ll do so again. Sure, the space program creates jobs, but they are pretty much tax-funded jobs, so it’s difficult to distinguish it from other government programs.
But what the space program really does is create technology. We have technology that we take for granted today that was developed specifically for use in the space program. We know things about our planet and our universe that we would never have known otherwise.
As Larry Niven said, curiosity is a survival trait. Let’s continue to invest in our survival.
On Content and Relevance in Media February 17, 2012
Posted by Peter Varhol in Publishing.add a comment
My first foray into technology publishing was at the end of 1988, joining Phil Lemmons, Cathy Baskin, Dave Betz, and other talented people in starting a new computer magazine. Like most startups, it faltered for a combination of reasons, closing completely after about three years. But I found what I was good at in life. I spent the next 20 years doing it either full time or moonlighting.
There have been many changes in technology publishing, and publishing in general, in that time. Much of that, of course, has been driven by the Web, which lets anyone be a publisher, provides unlimited space for stories, and offers the potential for worldwide content distribution.
In the 1980s and into the 1990s, tech editors and writers tended to be people with a technical education and/or experience. We were paid fairly close to technical salaries (I actually got a nice raise over my previous software engineering job), and were expected to know our subject matter at a deep technical level.
The cost dynamics have changed a great deal, with $10K full-page, four-color advertisements replaced by ad impressions for a few cents. Whenever I did it full time, I managed to keep close to a technical salary, but those around me became younger, non-technical, and far lower paid. In most cases, they willingly learned enough to do what their corporate masters demanded, but never really understood what they were writing about.
I mention this because of several interesting articles recently have commented on the current and future state of content in the Web era. MG Siegler notes that the culture of blogging and seemingly unlimited content in tech publishing has produced a plethora of blogs about other blog posts, rather than about technology.
Felix Salmon describes the quantity versus quality debate, concluding from more recent examples of broadly read, extensively reported and edited content is making a comeback over volumes of lightly reported, poor quality blogs. However, Felix is known for drawing the conclusions he wants to draw, irrespective of available evidence, so I take what he says with a grain of salt.
And there’s Clay Shirky, who I respect a great deal, who finds himself fighting a rear-guard action against those who believe that the problems with publishing and journalism today are merely cyclical.
I can still speak fairly definitively of tech publishing, and noted a period of the mid to late 1990s where it became less about getting the tech story right and analyzing the implications, and more about interviewing company representatives and presenting those interviews as an industry debate. That was when I started feeling less a participant in the industry, and more of an outside observer. I wasn’t expected to (and was actively discouraged from) critically evaluate a statement or technology based on my own expertise.
Today, many of the articles I see are about technology users and their practices. While any publisher will tell you that’s what people want to read, that’s simply not true. Most want to read about cool new technologies, not a case study that is more about the personalities than the solutions.
The problem is that it takes people who understand the cool new technologies to write about them. And publishers don’t employ them any more. There are still some niche publishers and bloggers who understand the technology and can explain it to readers, but you won’t find it in any mainstream outlets.
It’s a shame, because readers aren’t being well served. I acknowledge the fact that publishers had to find a way to stay in business, and editorial is always a place to cut costs. And advertisers use media in a very different way than they have in the past, to gather sales leads, rather than promote their brand.
It’s a chicken and egg problem. If publishers had continued to produce relevant technical content, would advertisers have spent more? I don’t know, but based on some of the experiences of those niche publishers, my guess would be yes.
Where Your Humble Author Regresses into Modern Social Commentary February 10, 2012
Posted by Peter Varhol in Technology and Culture.add a comment
I have to preface this with a disclaimer – I’m not a parent. Once upon a time, I was a trained and licensed psychologist (really), but I don’t think that necessarily gives me any special knowledge or insight. So take this for what it’s worth.
There seems to be a YouTube video of a father “executing” his teen daughter’s laptop after discovering a profanity-laced Facebook posting concerning some perceived deficiency in their treatment of her. This article notes a variety of parenting experts that universally condemn the father’s response.
I’d like to cue the experts in on something – being a parent is entirely on the job training. You’re regularly faced with new and unique experiences that demand a response. Parents will make mistakes; they are human, too. Some will get violent and abusive, and that’s where government intervention comes in.
I know that my parents had some significant limitations, both in their own lives and in the upbringing of their children (myself and my two sisters). I wish I could have had some of the understanding and experiences that would have made me a better-adjusted and knowledgeable young adult on my own. I acquired those skills once I realized I lacked them, and it wasn’t an especially pleasant time in doing so. I’m still not where I would like to be with my social skills and empathy.
But my parents must have done something right, because none of us turned out all that badly. And without knowing anything else about this particular family or the situation, the experts are more than willing to pass judgment against the father. Really, would it kill one of these parenting experts to say “I don’t have any understanding of this specific situation, so I really can’t say whether or not this was an unwarranted act.” Apparently so.
Technology has created many more landmines in raising children that my parents didn’t have to face. In a way I’m glad that I don’t. Social media in particular opens up complex doorways for the public outlet of strong emotions for all. This is the first generation of parents who have had to face that challenge head-on. Let’s give them a break if they don’t always get it right; if other things in the home are pretty good, it won’t be a disaster.
The Decline and Fall of Kodak February 9, 2012
Posted by Peter Varhol in Strategy, Technology and Culture.add a comment
Circa 1980, an old high school friend of mine had just graduated from Penn State magna cum laude with a BS in Management. He got a job at Kodak at what was at the time a very attractive entry level salary (at least a third more than my salary as an Air Force lieutenant). I ran into him two years later. He told me that since he had started, the entire focus of the company was dedicated to winning a legal battle with Polaroid surrounding instant photography.
His salary had grown by several thousand dollars more, and he was pursuing an MBA at Rochester Institute of Technology that was being fully funded by Kodak. He often skipped out by mid-afternoon, leaving an array of papers on his desk to fool others into believe he had just stepped away from his desk and would be back any minute.
Having come from a working class background, I naively believed that his experience was the essence of corporate life. Perhaps it was, there and then, and perhaps it was that type of culture that ultimately put the company on its deathbed. Kodak exited film manufacturing years ago, and now in bankruptcy has announced it is also exiting the digital camera business.
Kodak is yet another cautionary tale of how a once-great company simply has too much invested in its existing business to be able to dramatically change that business. Print photography defined Kodak, and it will stand on that legacy, even today.
By all accounts most leadership at Kodak over the years were fully cognizant of the technology changes that would eventually render its flagship business obsolete, but still could not change its direction.
Kodak did do at least one thing right, innovating and applying for patents, and putting together a patent portfolio that ended up as the basis for a lot of digital imaging these days. But patent portfolios are almost never offensive weapons for tech companies; instead, they act as an effective defense against other attacks. There simply isn’t enough firepower in its patent portfolio to keep Kodak a going entity. If there’s any value, someone will snap it up; if not, like Polaroid, only its name will survive.
Apps are Becoming a Huge Business February 8, 2012
Posted by Peter Varhol in Education, Software development, Strategy.add a comment
I was educated to believe that the way to employ large numbers of people was to make a tangible thing. Sure, software companies had employees, but rarely the tens of thousands you see making physical products in companies like IBM, HP, Dell, and Cisco (Microsoft is an exception here, making one wonder if it has substantially too many employees).
That’s why I was surprised by the Technet study concluding that the App Economy has created almost half a million jobs since 2008. The author, economist Michael Mandel, made a few further notes concerning the study on his blog.
I picked a nit on his blog post, noting that most software companies that I’ve worked for have more non-engineers than he estimated, and that his estimate includes an overall “economic impact” of those companies.
But you have to give some serious respect to the app business, with job numbers such as these. And this only goes to show that a technical and/or tech business education is going to be essential in the future economy. Even though I no longer write code (except occasionally for self-edification), my foundational mathematics and computer science education makes it possible for me to understand and act upon just about any software or hardware development.
Where Your Humble Author Travels Europe February 7, 2012
Posted by Peter Varhol in Technology and Culture, Uncategorized.add a comment
I’ve been incredibly fortunate over the last year or so to make multiple business trips to Europe. A significant part of what I do these days involves speaking at software conferences, and I’ve fooled enough people over the last year to manage trips to Zurich (twice, soon to be three times), Germany, and Austria (London is a definite later in the spring, and others are on the horizon). In the past, I’ve also been to Ireland, the UK, Amsterdam, and Prague.
There are a lot of things I like about Europe. I regrettably don’t speak any foreign languages beyond a smattering of old high school Spanish, but it turns out that most of Europe speaks at least some English. I’m especially impressed with Zurich, where most people will address you in German, but switch to excellent English in the middle of a sentence without missing a beat once they see your confused look.
The European cities I’ve seen are wonderful. My favorite is Zurich, with Vienna in second place. Potsdam has incredible history and beautiful architecture.
I’ve universally been treated well by everyone I’ve come in contact with. I’ve heard tales of boorish behavior, but have neither given nor received such responses.
I’ve seen a lot of airports. Despite ongoing criticism of old and obsolete airports in the US, the ones in Europe are really not noticeably better. Rhein Main is old, Schiphol is crowded (and security at the US departure gates is slow), and Schwechat is dreary. Tegel is about to close, and for good reason. My last flight from Tegel was cancelled, leaving me in the dark as to how to even begin getting home (I did, and I was even early).
The streets in most cities are mazes (though you can say the same thing about Boston), but the public transportation is largely better, more useful, and better utilized.
My world smartphone does well there, with its GSM SIM providing a quality of service that makes it seem like science fiction. I am old enough to remember that you knew when you were having a transatlantic phone call. Not anymore; the US is right next door. Itinerant Internet access costs more, and seems to be even more unreliable than in any random city in the States. I’m told that Europe doesn’t have Netflix streaming or video by mail, so you have to buy many of the movies you want to view at home.
The food in Germany is a bit heavy for my taste; while similar in Austria, it is somewhat lighter and more enjoyable. As long as it is cooked, I’ll pretty much try anything once, an amazing reversal for someone who was once the ultimate picky eater. If that’s not your speed, American comfort food is readily available, and pizza and US fast food are regrettably ubiquitous.
The world is largely a good place; go visit it.
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