If you care about the internet, entrepreneurship or technology, you should care about PIPA / SOPA. For the record, I am 100% in favor of protecting the rights of artists and copyright holders. Artistic creation takes incredible effort and intellectual property rights help insure that we have a vibrant culture and media economy. However, the “Stop … Continue reading
Friend and Indaba Music co-founder Jesse Chan-Norris (jcn for those who know him in the virtual world, @jcn) would not allow the team at Indaba to refer to our website as a “community” for quite some time after launch. At least 2 years if memory serves. Why? Because “community”, he said, was hard. JCN outlined … Continue reading
I found myself in a Sony store at the Cherry Creek mall in Denver yesterday, and came to some (interesting?) conclusions about product design and user experience. Obviously the fact that Apple ate Sony’s lunch in multiple departments is not news, but I think my visit to the store encapsulated that story well. First , … Continue reading
I titled this blog “Silicon Bowery” because my company, Indaba Music, has been located on the Bowery in lower Manhattan since 2006. We have space in a renovated building that used to be a flophouse called The Windsor Hotel. For those who don’t know, the Bowery is a historic area at the intersection of the Lower East … Continue reading
I’ve been asked a lot lately about the process of marketing a new product. In particular, how does one go about generating initial buzz and adoption of a new consumer web or mobile application? Since this has been coming up a lot lately, I figured I’d organize my thoughts here. The plan I outline in … Continue reading
For most of media history, we have been creatures of consumption. Large corporations and centralized distribution operations pushed a small amount of expensive, high-quality content at us. Think film studios, record labels, the big book publishers, etc. Because the tools needed to create content were scare, and the financing needed was great, this system perpetuated … Continue reading
Just saw this sign on the 5th ave. Apple store. Seems like a positive ROI idea…. “We’re simplifying the Fifth Avenue cube. By using larger, seamless pieces of glass, we’re using just 15 panes instead of 90.” Would be cool if they said “and we’re using the old panes to construct a homeless shelter, albeit … Continue reading
In a previous post I talked about Edgerank, the algorithm Facebook uses to determine what shows up in people’s Facebook feeds, and its importance to advertisers. I wondered why more attention wasn’t being paid to it. Someone was paying attention, because the WSJ is reporting that advertiser complaints are forcing Facebook to make changes to … Continue reading
In part 1, I defined a way of thinking about the differences between “websites” and “platforms”. A platform, according to this writer is a pervasive utility – an application of real use that extends into many other, if not all, parts of the web. A website on the other hand is a somewhat isolated destination … Continue reading
Over the past couple of weeks, I have pondered the competitive threat that Facebook poses to Google and vice versa. This question is of course top of mind due to the launch of Google+ (which I love by the way). This post is Part 1 of my thinking, and it will focus on the concept … Continue reading
