This blog is not about the iPhone

June 29, 2007

I lied.

Peering out from behind the glass in every newspaper stand, on the front page of every newspaper was the iPhone. I don’t know whether to be more grateful to Apple for such a sweet piece of phone, or for making something powerful enough to bump Paris from the headlines.

I can’t remember the last time a product was such big news. Apple even has television personalities begging for it on the air.

Clearly someone knows exactly how to advertise a product in the new-media age: make a brilliant product.

2 Comments | apple, boners, iphone, media, steve jobs | Permalink
Posted by c007km

Seth Godin is cattle (digitally).

June 21, 2007

A friend handed me one of Seth’s books about a year back entitled Small is the new Big. With such a unique and not-at-all-trite-whatsoever title, I could only assume that it would be filled with clever, intuitive advice on business. I flipped through the passages, and sampled about 15 before I quickly realized that this man was selling people a book on how to wipe their asses – something I hope we’ve all figured out by now. For this I say more power to him, that takes quite a salesman!

Now, a year later, I can’t get away from his name. Every “consultant” on the planet wants to quote him all day as the Mohammed of the Internet. Yesterday I ran across a quote from his 1998 book, Permission Marketing, “I guarantee you that by the year 2000, Internet ad banners will be gone.” Strangely it was in a collection of “dumb business quotes,” and I’m sure at this point Seth would distance himself from having ever said it – blaming context I’m sure. I however, think this is the smartest thing he may have said.

Not that the banner ad is gone, obviously they’re running strong, but they’re inflated. They’re not working – they’ve never worked. They’re staying afloat on our belief that the Internet is the new business frontier. Well guess what kids, it ain’t so new anymore, and if it hasn’t worked yet … it’s not going to, and to be honest, it’s only going to work less as web-users are spread even more thin.

I have to give it to Seth for going out on a limb and putting a date on a prediction, I’m not going to go that far, but I will give a prediction. When it all shakes out, the Internet will be used for the following things:

  • Porno: Instant, private delivery of wonderful, wonderful smut.
  • Banking, Billing and Booking: Real-world effects, instantly deliverable.
  • Mailorder: stuff you used to order from catalogs, before the Internet.
  • Research: Wikipedia, Yellow Pages, Finding a pizza joint etc.
  • Dating and Socializing: with the goal of eventually meeting in real-life
  • Entertainment: Limited to a few focused sites similar to the way we watch TV now

You may be thinking, “that was easy, you just listed everything;” but that’s not quite true. All of those things have instant, real-world results. You’ll notice one giant, glaring thing missing that is what most people (including our friend Seth) tout as the great, equalizing and revolutionizing factor of the Internet … “the sharing of ideas.”

That sounds so nice and fluffy until you realize that most of us really don’t have all that great of ideas; so hearing about them all the time rather sucks. All of the things on that list will be sought out specifically by a user who already knows what it is they’re looking for; whether it be boy-girl-girl double anal, tickets to NYC for the weekend, or the average life span of the Alaskan Moose. People will seek specific information and then turn their computer off to use it in their real, physical lives.

Anything you can spend an entire day working on and come away having produced exactly bullshit is doomed for abandonment – eventually. In the meantime, get you some gold rush – I know I am.

3 Comments | business, cattle, ceweblerty, internet, schmuck, seth godin | Permalink
Posted by c007km

What are these guys missing?

June 18, 2007

Some dudes from the future made an interesting video:

They do make some interesting claims, each one certainly worth thinking about. I think that the biggest thing they’re missing is they’ve based their entire concept of the future on the entertainment and information industries, leaving out things like food, transportation, energy and of course, booze.

Until there is digital tequila, and perhaps more importantly, digital-chubby-girls-you-hooked-up-with-because-of-tequila, this future will never exist.

Leave a Comment » | internet, prometeus, youtube | Permalink
Posted by c007km

Veoh my goodness, we’re not that stupid

June 15, 2007

Veoh is claiming to be the “democratization” of the television industry, allowing everyone access to the once “members only club.” It’s a higher quality version of You-Tube, with a less memorable URL (I thought google and yahoo proved that was all that mattered ten years ago).

So what’s the catch?

Three clicks later I was looking at a member list for said club, that apparently no longer exists … on Veoh’s about page. Michael Eisner … that name is familiar. Oh, and the primary investor is Time-Warner; between them they own more billions worth of content than Cougars at a Red Wings game – so what are they up to?

My best guess is it’s the shotgun approach to an uncertain future. No one knows where this is all headed … so Time Warner is sending a train down every track, in hopes that they aren’t left looking like they just fell off the turnip truck (if you can identify that reference you win a prize).

In the end, like doing your hot sister to piss off your mom, then finding out that she’s not really your sister anyway … Time Warner may be saving themselves despite themselves. With each of the megacorps launching tens of attempts each, plus all the indie and schmindie sites going up, MItB is compounding to critical mass faster and faster; the backlash may just lead people away from their computers and back to the newsstand where the conglomerates are already well entrenched.

Leave a Comment » | time warner, veoh, video, website, youtube | Permalink
Posted by c007km

Totally add me to your reader

June 15, 2007

Google Reader is a step in the right direction, from the people who take a lot of steps in the right direction. Google has based its entire existence on helping us make sense of this mess, and we like it when they stick to that instead of attempting to monetize kids getting shot in the penis with bottle rockets.

Google reader is a very simple gadget; it’s an RSS compiler … like TiVo for your news sites, online music-mags and, of course, critical blogs. While Google Reader will certainly help you keep up on all the information that you already read, it is not going to help thin out the giant mound of information looming just outside your RSS gates.

As an added bonus, you can install an offline version so that when you have connectivity, google will update your feeds right there on you computer so that you can read them, offline, at your leisure. So go ahead, add MItB, Jasper, SuperD, irockiroll and the Times, but don’t forget to head out into that scary, wide, Internet now and then to see what is new.

Now let’s break it down: The Internet is cool because it’s big, and available all the time, in all its infinite glory – so Google takes a step in the right direction by making the Internet smaller and available less of the time.

This is the world you live in.

Leave a Comment » | cattle, google, information, internet, review | Permalink
Posted by c007km

Search Spam: Killing itself slowly

June 14, 2007

Obviously, the best weapon against this insurmountable pile of information is the search engine. With Ask.com mounting an advertising campaign about “the algorithm,” a word which approximately 0.001% of the population has ever heard before, it appears that the search-engine-wars are going to heat up again.

The winner, if there is one, will be the engine that can stem the tide of search spam. To explain it briefly, if you click through to the third or fourth page of your google search, you’ll find it full of links to things that have absolutely nothing to do with what you are looking for. The bottom half of your search has filled up with shit … digitally.

Given the aptitude of 15-year-old’s in the eastern block, I’m guessing it will be less than a year until they’ve figured out a way to stack the crap all the way onto the first results page – and, unless someone finds a cure, they’ll essentially kill their host … digitally.

Let’s try a demonstration: Take my favorite web-show Robots vs. Dragons – that’s a pretty specific search, especially if I toss some quotes around it. You’d think that it wouldn’t be common enough to net search-spam… I guess not. That’s only page two.

This may be the silent killer of the internet … rapidly, automatically, multiplying information that is using brute force to make you pay attention to it. Eventually, people are just going to pick up a yellow pages.

Leave a Comment » | business, google, internet, spam, superdeluxe, website | Permalink
Posted by c007km

Twitter: best/worst idea ever

June 8, 2007

Twitter is proof that even when you start with a terrific idea, and execute it well, it can still suck.

I was introduced to Twitter at SxSW this year, and instantly thought, “this is terrific.” In the mass-hipsterfuck that is South by Southwest, Twitter was the perfect way to, “at Red7 free Shiner and Sloan.” For that week twitter took a little bit of the “cluster” out of the fuck.

This was great, I could be constantly updated to my friends’ (yes, plural, asshole) locations and up-tos, and should I feel the need to … I could update them! All at once! Also, since the folks at Twitter fucking rule, they made it super easy to pump information into the system via SMS, AIM, or right on the website.

Then I realized that I could be constantly updated to my friend’s locations, up tos…. Fuck. Me. this is terrible.

I woke up Monday back in Michigan, sweating 100% blue agave and hoping that I would still remember how to tie a shoe. I most certainly didn’t care if Jen was having waffles with someone in Chicago, but Twitter felt that I cared enough to text me.

I thought, “wow, that’s cool… but what I really want to know is what my Atlanta crew thinks of traffic this morning.”

In the few short hours before I quickly unsubscribed exactly 100% of my friends, I realized that Twitter is a metaphor for the More Info than Brains problem. People get very excited about information, until the realize that most of the information in the world is completely useless, and we’re better off not wasting our time – like the fact that John successfully hailed a cab on 5th Ave, and it seems cleaner than most.

The Internet is rife with things that seem extremely exciting and revolutionary due to their complexity and advancement *cough*googlestreetview*cough* but they have the practicality of a slap-bracelet.

1 Comment | internet, review, the problem, twitter, website | Permalink
Posted by c007km

Vodaphone: polling 13-year-olds?

June 6, 2007

Well, at least I hope that’s the case.

Today the world’s largest wireless provider claimed that Internet access is a “human right.”

“Internet access is now such an important part of life that we regard it as a modern civil liberty, according to seven in ten of those polled,” said a spokesperson for mobile giant Vodafone, which conducted today’s survey.

This is a clear case supporting my proposed law that people must record, and listen to everything first, before saying it in public. You read that correctly, they said “civil right,” as in Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness and zombo.com.

This statement is so out there, that it’s hard to comment on – I have no basis or history in this magnitude of retarded. (note: since “retarded” is no longer the accepted term for the specially able, I can use it in its original meaning without offending – if you’re offended, you need to pick a side, you can’t completely kill valid language.)

The best thing to do when something is claimed a human right, is play a little game of mad-libs. Try replacing the item in question, in this case “Internet,” with other terms that have equal or greater claim to be a right given the arguments presented. In Vodaphone’s case these are that people claim it would affect their work, and personal lives significantly if they were denied Internet access.

That sounds like the telephone, let’s try “telephone.”
Telephone access is now such an important part of life that we regard it as a modern civil liberty. That doesn’t sound right at all … but let’s try something else, just to be sure.

Well, Television is certainly an important part of life, and affects business and social lives significantly…
Television is now such an important part of life that we regard it as a modern civil liberty Wow, that’s pretty fucking retarded.

But hold on, what about cars? They certainly meet all those criteria…
Cars are now such an important part of life that we regard it as a modern civil liberty

I think you get my point, and hopefully you’re sweating at this point. There’s more, Somehow, their research took a turn for the worse.

One in ten women said they would rather surrender the right to vote than internet access

…hi, this is C007km’s assistant, I just came into his office and he was lying in a pool of blood, so I figured I’d just post this blog. TTYL!

Leave a Comment » | business, internet, retarded, vodaphone | Permalink
Posted by c007km

Make a Zazillion, Schmuck

June 6, 2007

It’s not often that I give this sort of thing away, for free, but quit your job today and start an advertising agency. I don’t mean slick your hair, do blow off a $6,000 hooker and grow a second head. Instead, all you need is a laptop, a firm handshake and some baby-sitting experience.

Stay with me, I’m serious – if any of you schmucks ever complain to anyone about your job after reading this, well, you’re a schmuck.

Google, the Zazillion-dollar golden child of the Weboom, has made two major missteps in the last few years leaving the normally sealed-like-a-latter-day-saint company leaking blue-whale-turds* of cash. All you have to do is get-you-some.

AdWords does work, and can work very well, given two things; first, you know how to use it well. Second, you are willing to babysit that motherfucker and dick with your campaigns all day. Google realized this (infallible as they are) and decided that they would be the media and the ad agency (latter-day-saint-tight, remember). They hired 1,000 young dudes and chicks in Ann Arbor, MI to do the using, and baby-sitting for their clients.

The problem is that it’s not working. Clients are spending heaps of cash (if you think you can’t drop $20k in a month on adwords, I wish you were right; I really, really wish you were right), but the returns are minimal – and this is with the full support of the Google AdWords specialists.

Why isn’t it working? Why aren’t these highly-trained Google dudes-and-chicks creating effective campaigns for their clients? It’s because they’re too-highly-trained. Google, as a good mega-company, indoctrinates their employees – it’s the best way to a successful business, and I fully agree with it. They’re trained to believe that AdWords (their product) is the greatest thing ever invented, and, therefor, can’t do wrong. To them, it can’t fail. How are they supposed to optimize something that they believe is perfect to being with?

They work for Google; AdWords is their product. Clients want, and need, someone who works for them and is trying to sell their product.

So get to it. If you’re reading this, you already have a computer, and time. Start baby-sitting AdWords for people at a small fee. Everyone wins, and you can stop punching a clock. My gift to you.

*note: “turd” is not in spellcheck dictionary, but “schmuck” is; I encourage you to make stereotypical jokes.

Leave a Comment » | adwords, business, google, the problem | Permalink
Posted by c007km

Quick, everyone change their adwords to “pole vault”

June 5, 2007

By now you’ve all heard of Allison Stokke. While blogs and “credible” news sources alike bounce arguments about whether or not Allison’s rapid rise to ceweblerty is wrong, degrading, disrespectful etc. We think there’s something much larger afoot here (and no, we’re not going to post pictures of her, so go wank somewhere else).

In the crusade to monetize the Internet, or anything for that matter, there must be some amount of predictability. Any business needs a method of being right more times than wrong, otherwise it’s called Las Vegas. The Allison Stokke phenomenon proves that there is simply no way of telling what the next big thing will be. Last week, no one could have thought, “there’s an attractive woman pole vaulter in California … let’s buy her advertising rights.”

There are millions of attractive girls with their pictures on the Internet, just log onto MySpace for a few seconds. There are also plenty of pictures and videos on the web of women who want horny dudes to look at them, and they’re wearing less – it’s called porno. So why did this one young woman end up such a hot search-item? The pole vaulting aspect is unique, and probably played a role, but I’m going to attribute most of it to lighting striking – and that cannot be predicted.

In the past, fame has been some combination of exceptional, unique talent and time, money, hard work from a number of people/groups. That’s all over now.

The person who succeeds in this overloaded ‘net will be the person who is able to predict, or intentionally create fame.

Leave a Comment » | allison stokke, ceweblerty, fame, media, myspace, pole vault, the problem | Permalink
Posted by c007km

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