|
 |
Monday, July 28, 2003 |
 Another question: is Madonna's move to star in Gap ads a first babystep towards a clothing or lifestyle line? Is she thinking about reinventing herself as the Martha Stewart for the aging babyboomer? It is possible, p diddy pulled it off with hip hop clothing for young urban affluents.
I love the process of people reinventing themselves (as only happens in the US) as Martha Stewart did when she went from Wall Street to a guru of domestic perfection. We live so long now, that the idea of an entire life spent doing the same thing is absolutely boring. By necessity it would make us grumpy, insensitive, greedy, tedious, and disingenuous. To protect the spirit, change is a necessity. It brings joy to the heart and a zest for life. At least that is my philosophy, your results may vary.
8:48:43 PM 
|
|
I was talking to my friend Peter tonight over chips and hummus about AOL's new strategy. One thing we both seemed to agree on is that the strategy sounds alot like a return to Time Inc's Pathfinder strategy. For those that don't remember Pathfinder circa 1996, it was an attempt by Time Inc. to bundle and repurpose all of its media properties into a single destination site. It was a monumental failure. Its return in AOL 9.0 is testament to the evaporation AOL's braintrust.
8:36:50 PM
|
|
Social Dynamx is about to release an easy to use desktop interface for MT and Manila weblogs.
2:36:36 PM
|
|
Network World: Microsoft's search strategy sounds like it will go after more than just Google...
Microsoft believes Web search can be done much better than any Web search engine does it today. "Our research indicates that only 30% to 40% of the Web is indexed and that people's questions (to search engines) go unanswered half the time," Gurry said.
Actually, with high quality topical content it is very easy to create an answer based system like Jeeves. My team did this once before for online brokerage in '99. Given the potential structure of the Weblog Network, this could really take on a life of its own.
11:27:11 AM
|
|
Health update: already dropped 3" on my waist since going on full Thyroid replacement three weeks ago. Nice.
11:23:07 AM
|
|
Question: On Feedster's advanced search page (for filtered newsfeeds), what does blogrank mean??
10:28:14 AM
|
|
Bloglines: Server-based aggregator.
10:24:08 AM
|
|
Susan Mernit (an ex-AOLer) provides a checklist of items AOLers may be willing to pay for:
1) Exclusive videos and streamed live performances of popular musicians: No.
2) Net-only outttakes from Smallville and other WB shows: Absolutely not.
3) People.com stories and photos: No.
4) ABC news stories: No.
5) Blogging software: Yes and no. You can get a free weblog on blogspot and a much more complete weblogging experience on inexpensive self-managed solutions (Radio/MT).
6) Online photo albums: Yes, but these would be better if a P2P option was available.
7) Email -- Yes and no. Most people get this for free with their broadband account. Or course, continuity is important. Note: IM all but killed one of the great AOL features: chat (which was great at driving revenue when AOL charged by the hour).
In my opinion, to build customer loyalty AOL needs to build closed networks between individuals while they still have the chance. That means P2P apps. Again, repurposed content won't do it and the old barriers to switching are falling away.
10:09:26 AM
|
|
BusinessWeek. As the AOL 9.0 client software ships, the broadband trap continues to close on the company.
"Only 10% of broadband subscribers get its service now, a big comedown for a company that once had 50% of the Net-access market. AOL 9.0 is a step forward, but much better content is needed to justify $15 a month. Richard Greenfield of Fulcrum Global Partners, the only analyst who has made such projections, thinks the company can improve its content enough to boost its broadband market share to 25% of the expected 40 million subscribers in 2006, while retaining about half its narrowband base. Under such optimistic assumptions, AOL would have about $5 billion in 2006 revenues, down from Greenfield's estimate of $8.7 billion for this year. Without more compelling content, the more likely scenario is that AOL's share of broadband subscribers will stay at about 10%. Then AOL's revenues will plummet to less than $3 billion by 2006, and its cash flow will be crunched."
Frankly, AOL's repurposed content (this has been proven again and again online over the last decade) can't justify an added $15 a month. AOL's approach to new services is to add more expensive, centrally delivered services and content puts them into a tough position. They have wrongly added structural costs in market that requires cost competition (both Yahoo and MSN are less expensive). They have also set up a cost structure (by building infrastructure -- ie. new weblog tools) that is going to squeeze them mightily if they don't hit their subscriber goals (which they won't given the prices they plan to charge).
The smart approach would have been to return to their roots (circa 1992 where smart and beefy desktop software provided AOLs with an experience far and away much better than alternatives) by beefing up the desktop software by improving connections between AOL desktops (P2P) to build new services/applications (too numerous to deliniate) that fully take advantage of the limited bandwidth offered by the broadband providers (AOL doesn't pay for the end-user connection in the broadband model). The beefed up client would allow AOLers to connect to each other in ways that doesn't force AOL to pay any incremental costs for each Mbit utilized.
7:47:14 AM
|
|
As Doc was walking on the beach in CA, I was walking on the beach with Aaron (my extremely smart, and nice, 13 year old) on the east coast.
7:03:57 AM
|
|
© Copyright 2004 John Robb.
|
|
|
