Recorded July 29, 2006
Author Archives: Steve Mays
Rupert Murdoch paid $580M for MySpace
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This is the best piece I’ve seen on MySpace. Written by Spencer Reiss for Wired Magazine, the story offers fascinating insights into the social networking site. All the smart kids thought Rupert Murdoch was insane for paying $580 million for MySpace (it’s now worth about twice that).
MySpace reaches more kids each day than MTV sees in a week. Think of it as
“an 80 million-screen multiplex where YouTube videos are always showing. Or an infinite radio dial where the DJs spin only the records you want to play.”
MySpace’s ultimate value to News Corp.: the power to make hits. A Net-fueled word-of-mouth machine.
Rupert Murdoch is 75 years old. And, like my daddy used to say, sharp as a mouse turd.
iTunes video
Tonight I purchased (and watched) my first TV show from iTunes. I somehow missed the first episode of Comedy Central’s Reno 911 (Seaon Four) but there it was on iTunes for just $1.99. I’m sure the cable channel will show the episode again (many times). But I wanted to see it now and I wanted to experience watching a TV show on my Mac Book (I don’t have a video iPod).
Took about 2 minutes to download the file and I found it to be very watchable on the small screen. I might just purchase every episode for the convenience of having them on my Mac Book to watch whenever/wherever. This is where it’s headed folks.
Blogger motivation
“The ease and appeal of blogging is inspiring a new group of writers and creators to share their voices with the world. A national phone survey of bloggers finds that most are focused on describing their personal experiences to a relatively small audience of readers and that only a small proportion focus their coverage on politics, media, government, or technology. Blogs, the survey finds, are as individual as the people who keep them. However, most bloggers are primarily interested in creative, personal expression – documenting individual experiences, sharing practical knowledge, or just keeping in touch with friends and family.”
— Pew Internet & American Life Project survey on what motivates bloggers [via Micro Persuasion]
Phone Whores
In case you are not familiar with a term that I just made up, a phone whore is a woman who goes to the airport with no magazines, laptops, books, puzzles or other means to entertain her. All she has is a phone, and she’s going to use it, no matter how many people are annoyed.
The phone whore is motivated by the desire to talk with people. The phone asshole (male variety) is motivated by the need to have everyone on the flight know he’s negotiating important business deals and that he has staff members that must receive his wisdom.
— Scott Adams
Tips on linking
Chris Pirillo points to some excellent tips on using links properly:
- Traditionally, links are underlined as well, but that approach is often unnecessary and falling out of favor to reduce visual clutter.
- Links lack affordance, which means their visual properties don’t suggest how they are used and are understood only through experience.
- Link text should indicate the result of clicking on the link.
- Use different colors for visited and unvisited links.
- Don’t use color for text that isn’t a link because users may assume that it is a link.
- Always show either an underline (for any link text) or a button frame (for command link text only) on hover to reinforce visually that the text is a link.
- Don’t underlined text that isn’t a link because users will assume that it is a link.
- Use background colors that contrast with the link colors.
- Use link text that is the most relevant part of the text and are large enough to be easy to click.
- Don’t provide an infotip [in HTML, a title element] that is merely a restatement of the link text.
- If a link requires further explanation, provide the explanation in either a separate text control or an infotip, but not both.
- Place optional supplemental graphics that indicates the target of a link to the right of the text and use an infotip to explain its meaning.
- Link to specific content rather than general content.
- Use a link only if the linked material is relevant, helpful, and not redundant.
- Link only on the first occurrence of the link text.
- Don’t add “Click here” to the link text. It isn’t necessary because a link implies clicking. Also, “Click here” and “here” alone are poor link text because they convey no information about the link when read by a screen reader.
- Start the link with an imperative verb and clearly describe the action that the link performs.
- Don’t use ending punctuation except for question marks.
Winston Churchill on due process
“The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.”
— Winston Churchill
The Long Tail
I tend to rate non-fiction books by highlighters consumed. And if I really like the work, I post excerpts here so I can find them long after I’ve loaned the book to someone that really didn’t want to read it in the first place and promptly lost it.
I’m sure I’ll be boring people with references to Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, for many weeks. I’ve posted some of my favorite segments after the jump. And here’s one to get you started:
News was the first industry to really feel the impact of the Internet, and we’ve now had an entire generation grow up with the expectation of being able to have on-demand news on any subject at any time for free. This may be good for news junkies, but it’s been hell on the news business. (Pg. 185)
Kennett’s Tomlinson a Stern fav
J-Dub (a foam-at-the-mouth Howard Stern fan) reports that Kennett singer/songwriter Trent Tomlinson gets some mega-exposure on on Stern’s show:
Howard Stern plays one of his tunes frequently. Mrs. Howard Stern, a little drunk vixen, chose Drunker than Me as the tune to sing along to for Howard. They love it so much, that they play it all the time on the show. Good exposure for Trent.
I love the thought of Trent and Sheryl Crow co-writing and performing a song. I gotta believe somebody is already working on that.
How many people actually saw the commercial?
Seth Godin offers an explanation for why Nielsen is just now getting around to rating viewership of commercials:
The answer is that the networks are a critical client of Nielsen, and the last thing in the universe they want is to rate commercials. The surprising thing is that many advertisers don’t want the ratings either. Why? Because as soon as you measure, you need to admit you failed. So you need to tell your boss you wasted a few million dollars…
The Internet has been messing with (disrupting?) traditional media since the beginning but I’ve always felt the real disruption would occur in the advertising arena. Who is listening and watching our commercial messages? What do they think about them? And how are they reacting to the messages? Answers: Lots of people. They love them. Racing to make a purchase.