Posts Tagged ‘content’

Monday, May 13th, 2013

Bald Cats, Putin, Homer and Algorithms

“Read Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey and try and figure out why they’re still being read, searched for, turned into movies or (digibabble) digital video content.”

The above was my reply to a question I was asked on a recent panel about what young creative types should do today to better prepare themselves for success in our world. And, while it might seem a bit facetious…it’s not meant to be – not in the slightest.  Frankly, if you think the answer is to learn social media/technology, you will fail – unless you understand why people share and why it is that some things share better than others.

BuzzFeed, for example, can talk all they want about their algorithm, but at the end of the day their young and savvy editors find the cat pictures, create the lists and recognize the news items they instinctively know will zoom from person to person – which in my book makes them that much more powerful and a true example of Digital Exponential, and that is the point.

Yet, sadly, it’s still only the holy algorithm that analysts and the digibablers want to worship. Because in their zeal to monetize, just how exciting is a story about hungry-smart editors versus the grail search for software that eliminates the human element?

The joke is that they abandon the latest greatest for the next as soon as the quarterly earnings don’t match their initial rave predictions, and of course Facebook, Groupon and LinkedIn are casualties of this fickle market – although while Facebook and LinkedIn are real, Groupon was a complete fabrication of the digibable financial set who perhaps one day will be called to task for misleading the public.

And more and more, the market leaders are turning to the need for human insight and interaction in order to better their products – sales – and earnings.

Bottom line – learn – learn from the greats. Don’t fall into the conceit that the fabulous technology we have today has created a revolution in human behavior.  Understand, rather, that it’s an amazing evolution in terms of what we can do and achieve in leveraging and enhancing exponentially our core human values and needs.

I share with you a conversation between Rudyard Kipling and Mark Twain (two of my favorites) that took place in Elmira, New York, in June of 1889.

“The two men discuss the difficulties of copyright before moving on to Twain’s work. ‘Growing bold, and feeling that I had a few hundred thousand folk at my back, I demanded whether Tom Sawyer married Judge Thatcher’s daughter and whether we were ever going to hear of Tom Sawyer as a man.’

Twain gets up, fills his pipe, and paces the room in his bedroom slippers. ‘I haven’t decided. I have a notion of writing the sequel to Tom Sawyer in two ways. In one I would make him rise to great honor and go to Congress, and in the other I should hang him. Then the friends and enemies of the book could take their choice.’

Kipling raises a voice of protest: to him, Tom Sawyer is real.”

Source: Hello/Goodbye/Hello by Craig Brown

This conversation could have happened today – copyright issues, crowd sourcing, social media extensions…but it didn’t and that is the point.

But allow me to end with Kipling’s final thought, which I believe brings us back to Homer, The Bible…all the great and living ideas and thoughts that will last way after the latest iteration of Bald Cats that look like Putin will be gone and forgotten…and by the way, I’m not knocking that—just making a point….

Listen:

“‘Yes; but don’t give him two joggles and show the result, because he isn’t your property any more. He belongs to us.’” Kipling to Twain

And there you have it…it always belongs to us – once the genie leaves the bottle, it can never be put back in. And that is the secret – not the software, not the technology, not all the digibable in the world….

So Bing Homer (the original, not Simpson) – and ask yourself why – and by the way, spend a few minutes with Twain and Kipling too.

What do you think?

 

Posted by David on 05/13 at 07:18 PM
Monday, March 25th, 2013

Zynga Farms Its Own Future

Remember Zynga?

In June of 2009, they launched FarmVille on Facebook, had 10 million+ active users daily in only six weeks, and on that trajectory went public with huge pre-launch hype on December 16, 2011 – opening at $10 a share, hitting a high of $14.50 in March of 2012, and today trading under $3.50 a share and not yet making a profit.

Last week, Zynga and Facebook distanced themselves – one from the other – with the upshot being that Zynga wants to build its own dot-com and Facebook can now produce its own games.

So much to comment on here I could have Ramble material for a month or more…

  • Who has the better shot? Facebook in creating games or Zynga in creating yet another social platform – and their plan is to do just that.
  • Compare their stock market performance; analyze the analyst hype before they went public…and after; see what they say now – amazing how the analysts are always right….

Truth is – I don’t want to bash them – in fact, I have growing respect for them as they fight back from the digibabble morass they got thrown into (and to be fair, were happy to drown in). Look how much the founders made even as the company makes no “money” and begins to deal with the real world and real world needs.

They have expanded their view of the world – and I imagine they were the ones who amended Wikipedia as follows: “The company develops social games that work stand-alone on mobile phone platforms such as Apple iOS and Android and on the Internet through its website, Zynga.com, and social networking websites such as Facebook, Google+, and Tencent.”

More interesting – as far as I’m concerned – they are also turning their best sellers into board games – physical…buy in a box/open in your home…play face-to-face with friends…honest to God, old-fashioned traditional board games.

And, by the way, board games are selling.

Bottom line – Zynga has followed the content – if you will. Sometimes it ends up on Facebook, sometimes in stand-alone use on a smartphone, and occasionally on a kitchen table or living room floor.

They have a long way to go – selling virtual goods just doesn’t cut it: advertising isn’t enough and the board games won’t get their stock price going – but maybe – just maybe – if they can really cut themselves loose from all the digibabble hype – they will create real value for their investors and continue to delight their users.

I’m rooting for you, Zynga – keep following that content – and keep it as fluid as it is…Listen:

“Follow the customer, if they change…we change.” Sir Terry Leahy, Chief Executive, Tesco plc

And the content leads you right to the customer….

See what I mean?

What do you think?

Posted by David on 03/25 at 03:00 PM
  • A hundred and one variables for both companies, but this could ultimately be a win-win. Zynga's success will be determined by the quality of their output, and with no built-in Facebook audience they're going to have to step up their game. I like the idea that they are diversifying their distribution platforms, while still sticking to what they do best, ...
    Read more >
    Posted by Rick Liebling on 2013-03-25 18:02:54
Monday, February 25th, 2013

The Oscars – Social Heritage

Did you watch the live broadcast, through any source, of the Academy Awards, known more popularly as the Oscars?

Did you watch it time delayed – depending on where you live? Or perhaps just follow it through various postings across a host of channels? Or maybe even just discuss it with a friend to share a “Like,” or an agreement or disagreement with the judges’ choice, or perhaps just to register your desire to see one of the selected movies or one of those not?

Chances are – if you live in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago or London – you might have…this at least according to Google Trends, which pre-Oscar showed a “zero” search trend just about everywhere else (to be fair – Texas and Florida showed a small interest…), and post-show seems the same.

Yet, the night is being touted as the be all and end all of the movie industry – Hollywood’s biggest night – global entertainment’s number one event. The producers claim an audience of 1 billion viewers aggregated — across all channels. Nielsen will no doubt beg to differ, as early numbers show growth of the TV audience to be flat, which would make the hurdle to an audience that large, highly unlikely – but I’m ready to bet it’s big…

Let me be even more cynical and share with you the fact that the aging or should I say graying (makes me feel better) live audience has over the past ten years aged twelve! And according to the Nielsen Ratings, the overall audience has dropped as many as 10 million viewers over the past ten years – although it has clawed back up a bit and is expected to do the same this year as well.

All in all – an event whose time has come? An anachronism? A relic of a past age? Or is something else happening here?

Let me begin with a favorite topic – follow the content: Great movies going in, the right hosts and show material and guess what – more people watch, stay tuned in and talk about it positively.  And more – given the right hosts and material, the audience expands – Generation World – younger people come in without alienating the older.

No magic – no digital bounce yet – simple – make it interesting and they will come.

Now – let’s look for the bounce!

So here is the sad truth – I wanted to know, in aggregate, how many people interact with the Oscars. I searched and searched some more – and then yet again – across every engine – through every permutation – and the only information I could find on audience size was from Nielsen; or was the billion number dropped by Seth MacFarlane, the host.

It’s as if we had entered a time warp and were back at the original ceremony where the audience was measured by the 270 people in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

The winner for Best Picture was Wings (a silent movie), which also won for Best Engineering – watch it – it’s worth it.

I might also point out that in our age of always on – anywhere – everywhere – instantaneous connections, the first Oscar was awarded in 1929, only two years after the first transatlantic telephone call was made from New York City to London. Transatlantic calls cost $75 per three minutes.

So here is my question.

Are we fooling ourselves?

Do we (me very much included) ascribe more to our digital connectivity than maybe is true?

More to the point – do we just make sweeping assumptions and bombastic predictions because we ourselves with our smartphones, tablets, pads, networks and latest greatest apps just happen to see the world through our own digital eyes – and miss the bulk of the world – who are not connected in the same way. And to whom the luxury of tweeting or posting about our current mode, bad service at a restaurant or latest status is as alien as Mars.

Or maybe we are not so isolated and the deepest truth is that we are all connected; there are many shared values – Generation World is in fact a growing phenomenon.

To begin with, we need more information – the best movies from anywhere make money everywhere else – meaning that global movie sales are what drive fame and fortune – no matter what the home market for the movie is.

For example, Avatar made 70% of its close to $3 billion outside the US. Same for Titanic – and the list goes on.

Second, I continued my searching and discovered this fact – the most recent Oscars were seen in more than 225 territories internationally via traditional broadcast, VOD and online streaming – this according to Disney and the deals they have cut around the world. Clearly a larger audience than the one measured by Nielsen….

Finally I thought I’d share a comment recently made by the singer Adele, who performed her Academy Award-winning theme for the latest James Bond 007 movie Skyfall at the Oscars.

Asked at the Grammys earlier this month how she felt about the prospect of singing to Hollywood’s finest, and hundreds of millions watching live around the world, she answered, with characteristic frankness: “I’m shitting myself.”

And there you have it – proof of the globality of the event and its huge and interconnected, engaged audience.

Bottom line – the world has come a long way since the first movie was made – since the first talkie – since the first color version – even since digital production was first introduced.

We are still in our digital infancy – flailing around – picking up everything and throwing it away just as quickly – but every day brings new understanding, new engagement, new learning and amazements.

We are like parent and child in one – we watch ourselves, amazed at what we can do, and marvel at what we learn. Yet we have no guide to lead us, so our missteps are probably more frequent and our recovery longer.

We have a lot to figure out and there is more thrown at us every day – which is why I rail against the analysts and pundits who speak in the absolute, who deem it necessary to forget anything that has ever happened before, who need to tout everything as the latest and greatest in order to monetize, and who in general – in my opinion – are actually holding us back from the full potential of what we can achieve in this world.

Nielsen aside – people engaged with the Oscars through more human ways than we can count – and more importantly, the influence of the movie content represented has a great impact on shared culture, shared discussion and shared values –

As I said – we are just at the beginning – to look back at 1929 and say that 270 people in a closed room in Hollywood had no impact on the world is sheer nonsense – ergo, to suggest that in today’s always on/interconnected world it has no impact is equally wrong.

Let me end with a thought from one of the best…a movie that won three Academy Awards (Oscars) including Best Picture, and is in most, if not all lists of the top 100 movies ever made – Casablanca:

[Last line, as Rick and Captain Louis Renault walk off.]

Rick: Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

We are at the beginning of a beautiful friendship, and like all friendships it needs to be nurtured, grown, cherished…the future is yet to be written – let’s not write it out before it happens….

Final thought – whether you watched it or not – whether you tweeted, posted or merely mentioned it – I will bet that you will see at least one of the winners – and watch other movies from your own country and others – and therein is that beautiful friendship between us and content and the power of the digital world….

What do you think?

Posted by David on 02/25 at 08:00 PM