by Gigi L. Johnson | Jan 7, 2009 | Innovation Shifts
One of my friends posted on LinkedIn an excellent “Bargain Hunting for Books” story from the New York Times late last month. If you have the market now to buy used books for $.01 or $.25, does that shift tremendous flow from the new book market? Now, my children have no patience to even wait until a book comes out in paperback, but for the rest of us who have longer lifespans to look back on, have we now unleashed our own libraries’ economic value just as we have unleashed the CD collections and hard drives of people all over the digital music world, just with shipping for $3.99?
Another related item is my current life hanging out in dusty stacks of the libraries. The Los Angeles Public Library, in its struggles to keep its shelves full without spending a lot more money, has cut its borrowing time to two weeks. So I’ve been going onto Amazon’s used books to now look at a buy or borrow strategy for books I’ve been wanting to use on my research on connected education. I love WebCat.org, which can tell me which of many libraries a book appears at, then lets me click right there to see if it is available to check out. The amazingly liquid market for used books reflects well the lack of availability in libraries. A friend hinted, and I don’t have the data to support this story, that libraries are having challenges with “rarer” (fewer hanging around Amazon’s used book market) books being “lifted” from library shelves and appearing on the second hand book market as some folks’ personal revenue. Any facts behind this? I wouldn’t be surprised in that over at UCLA’s stacks, many, many books on the more expensive list that I’m looking for are “missing” and haven’t been replaced by the university. In fact, of 20 education books I was looking for, nearly half had disappeared — the expensive half. Hmmm.
All this while I’m working on a textbook proposal. Reminds me of banking — I was told when I got in during 1988 that I’d missed the “good times.”
by Gigi L. Johnson | Jul 19, 2008 | Tech+Change
And in my last post, I forgot the now ubiquitous YouTube channel, not mentioned in any of the other material. http://www.youtube.com/doctorhorrible, with 1,586 subscribers and 10,887 channel views. So with the volume that supposedly had been hitting their own site, this is a surprisingly low number.
4th largest subscribers to a channel on YouTube this month, but way behind #1 with 29,149 called The Mean Kitty.
But this is where the fun responses are. I do love that sidekick piece!
And more about Dr. Steel. And the soup thickens — if you go to http://www.toysoldiersunite.com/index.php?pid=missions&mid=34, you can find marketing missions from the Dr. Steel folks on how to place comments into these various viral marketing elements of Dr. Horrible. An interesting marketing play perhaps? Will this get weirder going into ComicCon?
by Gigi L. Johnson | Jul 9, 2008 | Tech+Change
Do I want another virtual world? News this week:
Google launches Lively, its own virtual world — http://www.lively.com/html/landing.html. Screenshots look like a surrealist painting.
Second Life/Linden Labs and IBM announce the exportability of avatars, so I can be weird version of me in more places?
by Gigi L. Johnson | Jun 9, 2008 | Tech+Change
I told Will Richmond at Digital Hollywood that I was really enjoying his e-newsletter. He looked quite startled and told me to pass the word along.
So here I am. I appreciated his post on June 5’s VideoNuze about the abundance of money that is plummeting into video aggregators — http://www.videonuze.com/blogs/?2008-06-05/Video-Aggregators-Have-Raised-366-Million-to-Date/&id=1867
By his account, more than $366 million of new funds have gone into companies that are still scrambling around to figure working business models. This makes me think strongly of Gartner’s Hype Cycle, with so much money chasing so few ad dollars…and video consumers still trying to figure what ad deployment they are willing to tolerate in front and surrounding their videos. A banner CPM with low clickthrough doesn’t pay for a video environment…yet. And advertisers are trying to pieces together the data they get back and the diverse opportunity sets.
As noted in the LA Times, Bit Player Blog, citing comments at the recent Advertising 2.0 event in NYC:
“As Roger Lee, a general partner at Battery Ventures, put it, the online video field is ‘dramatically overfunded.’ Lee said that there are more than 200 companies in the online video market and more than 200 in social media.”
And Metacafe spoke at that same Digital Hollywood saying that only 25% of their visitors were coming through their home page, making aggregators like this more like Quicky Marts for social-network referenced videos instead of viewing destinations.
Or are they hybrids, with vastly diverse time spent, hoping to convert our average of 64 videos viewed and 143 minutes/month for April 2008, according to the just published Nielsen Online figures, into “real time”. We’re pouring funding into time spent so far of about 1/2 of 1 day of average TV viewing per person in the U.S.
by Gigi L. Johnson | May 1, 2008 | Innovation Shifts, Tech+Change
I feel very blessed right now. I am so lucky to have the life that I have.
I spent some time at the gym talking with two people. One has just retired at age 58 after having first been a photographer and then a city councilman — and now is waiting for the world to present his next adventure. That resonated with me.
The other is a friend who has spent the past week at the hospital bedside of a 23-year-old niece (single mother of an 8 year old) who was hit in a head-on collision down by San Diego and smashed her leg. The other passengers were mostly badly hurt, with three reconstructed intestines from the seatbelt damage, but all alive in a very bad crash.
We forget how lucky we are.
Then I just got off the phone with a charming person in biz dev at TokyoPop, who may speak in both of my programs. VERY neat guy in a VERY neat business. What other thing could I be doing for a living that would bring me to such broad walks of life? That would allow me to talk with so many interesting people? How very cool!
And I am blessed by technology and life allowing me to have so many wonderful people as precious piece of my puzzles.
A friend at breakfast this week suggested I should be writing a book about how to change your life and supercharge your business. I’m in early stages of two books: one on how to have a great Digital Family and the other on the megatrends happening in media across all platforms. Maybe that really is my mission and space.
Today I happen to be lunch with a friend who helps people write books today — maybe that’s part of where I am going. Maybe I can affect lives that way best and really have something powerful to say.
Maybe I just need to enjoy today that I am blessed.
Gigi