Nels Wadycki » TechCrunch

Hamstrung Hulu

Nels — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 23:09:50 +0000

On TechCrunch Mark Suster compares Hulu to the oil cartel OPEC. I’m not sure what this point number 2 has to do with the cartel comparison, but I think it’s one of the more interesting points of the post:

2. Limited “Targeting” of Advertisements: The great promise of the Internet for advertisers was that they were finally going to be able to deliver targeted advertisements to users because they could finally know who you were. This has become a reality with banner ads, search ads, contextual ads and Facebook ads. But not Hulu ads.

Why? They know who we are, don’t they? Yes, they do. But they generally don’t even allow advertisers to purchase ads for a single show let alone ads targeting YOU by reading your cookies on your computer. So we have ads that are even less targeted than those on television. The reason lies in protecting the high price of broadcast & cable advertising rates. They are nervous about “trading analog dollars for digital pennies.” So advertisers have to buy “run of site” ads rather than show specific ones.

It was over a year ago now when I wondered why Hulu wasn’t targeting ads to it’s users. I haven’t run the numbers on targeted ads with lower volume vs. sitewide untargeted ads, but I’d have to think there’s a price point at which you can at least break even. I mean, Facebook’s advertising platform specializes in making it easy to target people based on tons of different criteria. Again, I haven’t run the numbers, but I think Facebook is making a lot of money.

Of course, even running the numbers won’t get to the heart of the reason that Hulu is basically having it’s hand tied when it comes to being able to innovate like other technology companies. For as long as the cable and satellite providers control that major distribution channels, the networks have no choice but to hamstring the efforts of other methods of distributions (even, obviously, ones that they support). Unfortunately (for me and other Hulu users), since the user base of people watching TV via the Internet using Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, etc. is still tiny compared to the number of people who pay companies to provide them with TV (while most of the time also paying them to provide Internet access), the networks have to tread lightly when it comes to the user experience provided through these alternate services.

Cable companies (and satellite and other pay-TV providers) are certainly scared pantless when they realize(d?) that something like Hulu could easily make networks more money by showing targeted ads for higher rates (not to mention charging people $9.99 per month without having to hand any of that over to the cable company). But they still have the market share, and therefore, the power, to make sure that networks don’t get too excited about prospects of nearly infinite riches. Netflix has run into the same problem (over and over) in dealing with movie studios who still see DVDs as their major distribution channel (although that point of view is even more short-sighted than the view that cable companies will continue to maintain their dominance in the television distribution market).

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Deep Post on the Future of Facebook

Nels — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 20:53:27 +0000

This guest post on TechCrunch is a not only a good read, but an awesome example of how to write a blog post. The only thing that’s really wrong is the number of typos. I realize that proofreading such a long post is difficult, but with the amount of effort that went into culling the links and writing and formatting the post, I would think that making sure things like “TechCrunc” wouldn’t slip through the cracks.

Nevertheless, the number of links by itself is impressive, as is the formulation and support of the argument. It’s almost like this form of blog post is a lost art in today’s world of “pump the news out as fast as you can move on to the next big thing”. Thanks, Adam.

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Weekend Reading: Is HTML5 Hot or Not?

Nels — Sat, 08 May 2010 14:53:28 +0000

Scribd is ditching Flash for HTML5, but Tim Bray says HTML5 ain’t all that big a deal.

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Apple Shutting Down Lala, Another Great Startup Obliterated

Nels — Sat, 08 May 2010 00:07:16 +0000

First: I Was A Lala User
Second: Why Do Good Companies Ruin Startups?

I Was A Lala User

I’ll give Apple credit for giving a month of advance notice, but on the other hand (that first part was the first hand), why are they shutting down Lala before they launch iTunes.com? I must conclude that it means they’re going to change the business model and neuter features available on Lala.com and they don’t want to have to deal with migrating current users of the outstanding service. How very Apple of them. Not supporting legacy anything is a good deal if you can swing it. And – unfortunately for me – they can get away with it.

Now, I hadn’t bought all that many web songs on Lala, but it was not exactly a trivial investment – especially for someone like me who used to open up multiple BMG accounts to get 10 CDs for the price of 1 and 4 extra for “referring my friend.” I’m happy to give artists money when I feel they deserve it, and that’s precisely why I loved Lala so much. I could listen to every song on there – the full song – and then decide whether I wanted to buy it. For me at least, I think that probably led to more purchases than I’d made in a long time because I got sick of paying for music that I’d never heard and wasn’t sure if I’d ever want to hear again.

Now, I will get an iTunes store credit for the web songs that I’d purchased on Lala… better than nothing, but it kind of feels like buying stock and then having it exchanged for 1/10th of a share in a new company with the same stock price. I’ll use it, because it’s there and I hate losing money… but… then what? Use the new iTunes.com? Or…?

ReadWriteWeb evaluates a few alternatives including MP3tunes, MOG, Napster, and Rhapsody. I’m also going to check out eMusic since I supposedly have 35 free MP3s there… but, in terms of how I use Lala, I think that a combination of Pandora and Amazon will have to fill the gap… With Pandora, I can listen to unlimited full songs for free, and then when I find something I like, I can go over to Amazon and get the MP3. (I could do buy the songs from iTunes as well, since they do sell DRM free MP3s now, but I can’t help but want to avoid Apple since they are the ones who interrupted my music consumption system in the first place) The only issue with my new system is that I can’t just scan new releases, add them to my queue, and then buy the web song for any songs that I want to hear again.

Why Do Good Companies Ruin Startups

I never used Dodgeball so their acquisition and subsequent shuttering by Google didn’t really affect me. But then they took over Jaiku (My posts tagged: Jaiku) and basically shut that down (yeah, it’s still there, but there’s no real support for it any more). Now Apple has bought Lala and is shutting it down. Why?

The obvious answer is: talent grab. Everyone knows that these big companies are basically rewarding the talented developers who started the companies by purchasing their whole company for a significant sum of money. I can’t blame the developers for taking it. And I guess I can’t blame the companies for doing it. That’s just the way the business works. It just sucks for consumers who end up with a crappier end product (eg: Jaiku vs. Google Buzz) because the big company seems to restrict and/or slow the development of the new imitation products. As I mentioned above, the fact that Apple is giving people iTunes store credit for the web songs that they’d purchased on Lala is almost a guarantee that the web songs will not exist on whatever web version of iTunes Apple launches.

Another example: One of my favorite features of Jaiku was the ability to unsubscribe from specific feeds from specific people. So, if I follow someone on Twitter and don’t want to see their imported Twitter feed duplicated in my stream, I could unsubscribe from that and only get their other updates. I have not yet seen that in Google Buzz, and if it’s there, I haven’t seen a place to do it.

It’s tough because, on the one hand, I am very happy for the developers and I do think that they deserve to be rewarded for their hard work. I just don’t understand why, if a site is so successful that it warrants being bought out, it doesn’t continue to be run in that successful manner. Okay, I actually do understand why. I already said it in the second paragraph of this section. The big companies want to pull the talented developers off the successful site to recreate the site for them. So really, what I don’t understand is why the big companies don’t continue to run the successful site and do a better job of integrating it and turning it into what they want instead of just shutting it down and rebuilding.

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This Is What Happens, Netflix.

Nels — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 02:05:41 +0000

So, apparently, Warner is letting Netflix know what happens when you, well, you see the pictures. It would seem that giving in to Warner’s demands that they not send out movies within the first 28 days of their release bought Netflix a ramrod straight from behind. It’s as though Warner said, “Oh, did you think we were going to screw over all rental companies with that deal? Nope, if they sell DVDs, then it’s totally fine.”

As TechCrunch has repeatedly pointed out in their coverage of this charade, the internet-streaming-movie cat is out of the bag. Trying to shove it back in at this point is only going to get you some wicked claw marks (and by claw marks, I mean pirated movies).

Or, to put it yet another way (because I love analogies), Warner Bros. is Walter, mistakenly bashing the hell out of a car because he thinks it will get him what he wants. Walter knows that Netflix has got some of his money, but he’s smashing up the wrong car.

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HTML Is The Future

Nels — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:02:50 +0000

I declare that emphatically because I want it to be so. I’m sure I’m not the only code monkey out there praying that “write once, run anywhere” doesn’t leave us like ###… Even now web developers have to test across at least 3 different browsers,* but at least things are trending towards standardization and it’s becoming easier to create a web app that will behave the same independent of a user’s choice of browser.

Smartphones pose a serious threat to that ubiquity in the same way that the differences between Windows, Mac OS, and Linux made developing desktop apps an elephant-sized pain in the ass. Web developers have long wished and advocated for browsers that run everything the same way. While that is probably never going to happen, the difference between developing for IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera is much (much much) smaller than the difference between developing for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

if (Portability > Usability) then ?

There is a reason that desktop-style web apps are popular. Yes, people still use Outlook, Thunderbird, and many other fat desktop clients for email, but there’s a reason that there’s 300 million people using Yahoo Webmail, Gmail, Hotmail, and AOL Webmail (I extrapolated that number from these percentages of market share), and that given the choice, 49% of people choose Gmail as the best email client. There’s also a reason that Google has basically given a big fat middle finger to native iPhone apps with their Gmail client in HTML5 (and now Google Voice web app, also in HTML5). There a reason that there’s a lot more “mobile touch” web sites than there are iPhone and Android apps. There’s a reason that I get practically all of my links from Read/Write Web and not Read/Write Native Smartphone App.

That reason is Portability. That is: I can run a web app from anywhere on anyone’s computer (or phone) as long as I’ve got internet access. So, while a client like Outlook or Thunderbird offers a slightly faster response time and some extra features, if you use one of those and don’t use a web-app version in addition to the desktop client, you suddenly sound like someone who doesn’t really know how the internet even works (do you really want to be the person who says: “I have to check my email on my home computer”?)

And for the second part of the equation: Usability – the gap between web app and desktop app is getting smaller every day. Web developers continue to push the limits of what web-based applications can do with respect to speed and user interfaces. Sure, web apps (even the good ones) are slow compared to native apps when they’re running on a (relatively) slow phone with a (relatively) slow 3G internet connection. But the speed of the phones and the connections is improving even faster than the speed of the apps themselves.

So, now take the difference in Portability (we’ll say this difference is a fairly large positive in favor of web apps) and add the difference in Usability (we’ll say this is slightly negative with respect to web apps) and then add in the fact that you can write a web app in one language and have it run on every single phone and computer with internet access and see if you don’t come out with a conclusion that says: HTML is the Future.

And, if you want some awesome tips for developing in HTML5, check out Alex Bosworth’s post.

* Yes, all you Opera and Safari heads, I said at least.

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PoketyPoke: Best. Idea. Evar.

Nels — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 23:07:29 +0000

From TechCrunch

PoketyPoke is a new service that calls you when you have a conference call and connects you automatically. Why it took someone that long to think of and implement this is beyond me. This is like GTD times 80 bazillion. If implemented correctly, you’d never have to remember a conference call again (which could be a problem, I suppose if you’re supposed to give a presentation or something).

If you were me, you’d never have to worry about the timing of your meeting reminders (although I’ve got a pretty effective system down at this point).

I suppose the only downside is that is probably won’t be able to use Skype to call in for free. But, I think you can get a SkypeIn number for somewhere around $5 per month, so if that’s less than you’re paying for your normal phone or mobile because of conference calls sucking up all your plan minutes, then it might be worth it. Especially worth it if it means you never miss a meeting again.

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Zong+ … PayPal Killer? More like credit card killer

Nels — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:34:57 +0000

While this post from TechCrunch on Zong and the new Zong+ is long, and covers a lot of ground on Zong, it leaves out what David Allen might call the Crazy Maker viewpoint.

Leena Rao (the author) pits Zong as a potential PayPal killer, which it certainly could be, but my Crazy Maker idea is that Zong could take on credit cards as we know them.

I’ve already mentioned this concept to my wife so many times I’ve learned to stop even saying anything remotely related to it, but: Why can’t I pay for stuff using my phone instead of my credit card? Sure, I’d still probably have to carry around my library card (until they start accepting phone numbers instead of library card numbers), cash, and my driver’s license. But, I wouldn’t have to worry about losing my wallet or having someone steal my card or spy on my card number. Why? Well, if you’re asking, you clearly didn’t read the TechCrunch article (and I can forgive you for that), so here’s the short version:

1. You give Zong your phone number and – with Zong+ – your credit card number.
2. You buy something and put in your phone number instead of any other number or email or whatever.
3. Zong sends you a PIN number via text message.
4. Put in the PIN number and you’re done. Paid!

Now imagine… You’re at the grocery store… instead of sliding your card in the credit/debit card machine, you punch your phone number into a PIN pad. A text is sent to your phone. You put the PIN from the text into the PIN pad. Done!

Yes, I realize it’s not all that much easier than the process for using a credit card, but it means that someone can’t take your card (if you drop it or leave it somewhere) and go on a shopping spree. More importantly, identity thieves won’t be able to sell credit cards they steal in shady internet chat rooms because they’d have to have your phone to get the PIN number text message in order to complete the transaction! Bam, said the lady!

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Crunchpad: Because laying in bed with a laptop is not good enough

Nels — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 00:18:58 +0000

I’ll admit, I watch Hulu on my laptop in bed sometimes.

I’ll also admit that somehow I missed the announcement of the first couple of designs and/or prototypes of the TechCrunch CrunchPad. But that doesn’t mean I won’t take a look at the price tag when it comes out.

Yeah, that’s a computer. Or a really big iPhone. I guess it depends on how you look at it.

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The Hulu Takeover

Nels — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:41:50 +0000

According to TechCrunch, Hulu gained 10 million viewers in Feburary, which is an impressive number, but if you look at their chart, what I think is more impressive is the 64.5 minutes per viewer which is second in the top 10 behind only Google Sites (aka YouTube) which had 134 minutes, and 3.6 times more than the next highest average minutes per viewer in the top 10.

Maybe it’s because Hulu rocks the house. I wish CBS and ABC would take note. I would give them more advertising revenue that they are otherwise losing because I’d be all over the past 4 seasons of How I Met Your Mother and the last few episodes of LOST that I haven’t been able to watch yet (and I might even watch Wipeout if I could add it to my Hulu queue).