A few weeks ago my wife had a bit of an accident in the kitchen with a cutting knife. As we quickly took action to slow the bleeding I scrambled to look online to see if the wound was serious enough to warrant a visit to the emergency room for stitches.
I landed on About.com’s First Aid site. And after reading some informative articles I clicked to watch this video on how to dress a wound. Would you believe that I first had to sit through an ad spot? The video is currently playing ad-free, but I’m not sure if that’s because they caught this monumental fail or if the campaign had wrapped.
Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief at Wired, and author of The Long Tail has recently released his new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price.
With the publishing industry currently imploding, “free” is very controversial these days. Malcolm Gladwell slammed Free last month in The New Yorker.
To put his money where his mouth is, Anderson released the entire book as a free audiobook available on iTunes. While his book cites compelling examples of how “free” translates into profits, I’m not sure how that will work for him here. Probably from enough chaps like me writing about it and linking to Amazon for the real book.
I’m about half-way through and haven’t hit anything revelatory. But maybe that’s because I’ve been listening in on this conversation for some time.
A few weeks ago QuickSilver Software Longbox, Inc. announced that their LongBox Digital comics reader would be forthcoming. Longbox is being called the iTunes for comics.
Demand for this type of service is being generated by several factors.
Printed comics are expensive ($2.99 and higher). LongBox issues are .99
Your local comic shop can’t carry everything. And some comics quickly sell off the shelf.
Customer expectation. Everything is becoming available digitally: music, movies, TV, books, news.
A few weeks ago I met the first person I know who reads all his comics on his computer. He truthfully told me that he downloads them all illegally as he can’t afford the print editions.
Longbox has its own proprietary format (LBX), but it will also support the CBZ and CBR open formats. Meaning that my acquaintance will still be able to read his bootlegged copies, but maybe he might consider purchasing legal ones that now cost a third of the price.
I have to be honest that between being a collector in my younger years and now a casual reader, it’s hard to imagine replacing the experience of visiting the comic shop and the tactile experience of flipping through a beautifully printed edition with a computer screen.
But Longbox’s announcement combined with the success of the Kindle and the recent rumors of the Apple tablet are clearly signaling to me that digital comics’ time has come (or near enough).
And while hesitant, I think I’ll be a convert.
Cnet has a good write up. Interesting to see the user comments there too.
Great video here from Clay Shirky on how social media has permanently changed the media and communication landscape.
He reviews some powerful moments such as the citizen journalism that happened during last year’s earthquake in China, and recent user interactions with Obama.
Coincidently, I was reading yesterday of the collapse of a building in Brooklyn. Fortunately no one was seriously hurt. The news came via the local, The New York Times local news channel that harnesses citizen journalism and bloggers
For a while now media companies have been pointing to third-party ad networks (such as 24/7 Real Media) as contributors to the devaluation of online content. The alternative has been to bring ad sales in house (or partner with other media companies to start their own networks). In the short-term this is a costly approach, but all are betting that the creation of a trusted, high-quality environment will change perceptions and ultimately bolster the value of content.
AOL’s previous strategy to utilize third-party ad networks performed poorly for them - ad revenue dropped 18% year over year. And considering the size of AOL it’s highly likely that this move played a role in the devaluation of online content.
AOL has since changed their strategy. And in this video from Ad Age Walker Jacobs, SVP of Digital Ad Sales for Turner talks about what drove them to do the same.
A few weeks ago my wife had a bit of an accident in the kitchen with a cutting knife. As we quickly took action to slow the bleeding I scrambled to look online to see if the wound was serious enough to warrant a visit to the emergency room for stitches.