Lunch with Luca: The Man Who Really Made Ferrari Famous
Really interesting short article on Ferraris transformation from a company that made expensive shit to one that makes the best road cars on the planet.
To state this as clearly as possible: The four American companies that have come to define 21st-century information technology and entertainment are on the verge of war. Over the next two years, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google will increasingly collide in the markets for mobile phones and tablets, mobile apps, social networking, and more.
The Great Tech War Of 2012 | Fast Company
If you work in tech or entertainment, consider this your mandatory Monday morning reading.
An offer I couldn’t refuse (AKA my new job.)
Probably the most famous line from The Godfather is “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.” There’s a retroactively sinister tone to it, coming as it does shortly before a fairly memorable demonstration of the degree to which Don Corleone is willing to “negotiate.”
There’s another kind of offer you can’t refuse though, the kind that you weren’t expecting but simply can’t turn down. The kind that catches you by surprise, but makes you feel like you just caught opportunity knocking. The kind I just accepted earlier this week.
Two years ago I left UTA’s online group to work on some personal projects and theories. Some of those projects reached completion, some are still in various states of progress, and some were abandoned (for good reason) shortly after their inception. Running my own company has given me the opportunity to do things, meet people, and experiment in ways I never could have imagined. Coming as it did during a period of massive worldwide recession, it probably wasn’t the smartest move to make, but I was lucky enough to spend two years paying my bills doing only that which I found interesting. I can honestly say that while it was the toughest challenge I’ve ever given myself, I enjoyed (almost) every minute of it.
So given all that, it must be a pretty extraordinary opportunity to make me give up my cushy (and occasionally cars, video games, and nerf gun-obsessed) self-employed lifestyle.
It is.
Starting this upcoming Tuesday, I’ll officially be changing job titles, from “So…what is it you do again?” to Director of Content Partnerships at Blip.tv.
I was already a Blip fanboy and I’m sure that more than a few people will claim this transition was inevitable given the frequency at which I recommend their services, but let me just name off a few of my reasons I said yes within 24 hours:
- I’ll be working with, under and for friends, past clients, and people whom I admire.
- Both the day-to-day and the long-term goals and projects are right up my alley.
- I’ll be joining what has always struck me from the outside as more of a family than a corporation.
- I’ll be working for one of the most interesting and successful companies in the single most interesting, challenging, and rewarding segment of entertainment.
There’s simply no bad here.
I wasn’t looking for a new job, having enjoyed running my own company for the past two years, but sometimes you’re presented something that would be utterly stupid to walk away from. Sometimes the company, position, and people are just right and you know it as soon as you start talking.
This is one of those times. I can’t wait to get started.
The reality is that 90 percent of the world does not have or cannot afford a smartphone or a high-end device
Nokia’s CEO (via nostrich)
mikehudack: This is a stupid statement. World income will increase and smartphone costs will decrease. Soon it will be that “80 percent of the world does not have or cannot afford a smartphone.” A few years after that it’ll be 70 percent. And guess where the margin will be? With the ever expanding high end of the market.
This is not the way to run a business.
Trica Wang, who’s currently researching mobile usage among migrants in China, came up with the perfect response to this months ago in her post about cheap, hacked smartphones in China:
Cellphone producers worked with a Taiwan company that stands outside of Chinese governance, MediaTek, to quickly produce affordable and customizable cellphones that could flood markets within and outside of China. Essentially, cellphone producers dreamed of a way to operate outside of market regulations for cellphones and in the end shanzai phones now are estimated to makeup 20% of all cellphone sales within China. Millions of migrants can now have their dreams come true of connecting in real-time with friends and family, playing lots of games, going online, reading books, and taking photos - these non-elite users can finally afford cellphones just like anyone else in China. Shanzai culture is about equalizing the playing field for the most economically disadvantaged consumers. Now that is what I call a disruptive innovation.
Now companies like Nokia and Microsoft are panicking because they are unable to compete in the crowded smartphone market. Longtime buyers of Nokia feature phones (symbian) have defected to Shanzai smart phones in masses. But Nokia still has an odd split in their company - they’ve set their company up in China (and India, Africa) to be split into two parts: emerging markets and smartphones. And now Nokia smartphones are switching to Microsoft platform (good-bye Meego!). But this means that Nokia has segmented their market into two groups and made two assumptions - that emerging markets still want to buy feature phones and elite-users want to buy expensive smart phones. Sorry, but this isn’t going to work because both non-elite users AND elite users want access to really cool smart-phones.
People in emerging markets are going to want to have access to the same features that expensive smartphones offer. They see the iPhone ads and they want the lifestyle that comes with it. So even if they can’t buy it from Nokia/Microsoft, iphone, or some Android phone - they’re going to get it a smartphone with the SAME features from a shanzai smartphone. Sure shanzai smartphones are cheaply made and it may fall apart in 1 year, but guess what - that’s more of an excuse to buy a new one. At such an affordable place, migrants can afford to get a new phone every year or so.
My suggestion for any hardware manufacturer in emerging markets - learn more about your consumers.
As a non-coincidental aside: Tricia was once an intern at Nokia Research.
(via kenyatta)
I think the other thing to remember is that connectivity is ever-expanding. A laptop is expensive, but a smartphone can do 90% of the things a laptop is normally used for. The disconnected world isn’t unaware of the connected world, it’s just unable to afford the connected lifestyle. The main feature of smartphones isn’t apps, and it isn’t games - it’s the ability to better connect to the world at large. The phone doesn’t need to be “high-end,” it just needs to be “smart enough” - and just as the high end keeps getting higher, “smart enough” keeps getting smarter.
(via kenyatta)
Senators Want To Put People In Jail For Embedding YouTube Videos
So yeah. If you embed a YouTube video that turns out to be infringing, and more than 10 people view it because of your link… you could be facing five years in jail. This is, of course, ridiculous, and suggests (yet again) politicians who are regulating a technology they simply do not understand. Should it really be a criminal act to embed a YouTube video, even if you don’t know it was infringing…? This could create a massive chilling effect to the very useful service YouTube provides in letting people embed videos.
*sigh*
Using legal means to prop up businesses based on a now-artificial scarcity doesn’t change the fact that artificial scarcities are - by their very definition - nonviable in a marketplace. If the existence of the real world - or the general habits and customs of humanity - have to be regulated to allow for your business model to function, you don’t have a business model anymore.
Time Warner’s Bewkes: ‘This is not the music industry’
“Let’s cheer up. This is not the music industry; this is the cable industry,” Bewkes said before rearranging a few deck chairs and renaming a large blanket “Innovation.”
He then went on to give a mountain of meaningless lip-service to the consumers and technologies he so obviously disdains.
I *love* all the data exhaust coming out of Stack Exchange.
Here’s a simple chart demonstrating the correlation between the quality of a developer and age. Older hackers rule.
I think it’s funny we need a chart to show us experience is worthwhile. Our industry is so ageist.
Very ageist.
Hollywood and the tech space both are, but I think the underlying reason behind that is that many (Most? All?) of the success stories in both industries have to have a certain amount of calculated naivety to be as passionate as both industries require for success. You have to believe that you know more, are smarter, more creative, better positioned, luckier, and are just generally better than those who have come before you to be willing to give it a shot despite all the obvious and apparent failures. From that opinion comes a certain amount of ageism both in front of and behind the scenes.
Hollywood is obviously ageist when it comes to actors, but not-so-obvious is the blatant ageism towards writers, directors, executives, and every other BTS position that’s not a producer. Producers get the pass because they’re the money people, and everyone likes (and needs) access to money. Part of that is the decreasing ability to appeal to a younger crowd, sure, but you would think that in certain positions that don’t involve having to properly attenuate what a 17 year-old in Wyoming appreciates, age would be an advantage.
But that doesn’t necessarily apply when that calculated passionate naivety almost requires an assumption that those who have come before you were…well, mostly wrong.
Or at least that’s my take on it.
Roger Ebert: Sequels and Unoriginality in Hollywood
Aside from his spot-on commentary on the state of originality in mainstream film, I also thought this paragraph was particularly apt:
Trailers also do their best to spoil secrets and sight gags for you. One executive told me: “We want them to feel like they’re seeing the whole movie, except that it’s longer.” This model can also be found in the aisles of supermarkets, where you’re offered a bite of cheese on a toothpick. After you eat it, you know everything there is to know about that cheese except what it would be like to eat a pound of it.
More than ever before, I get the feeling that my colleagues at various studios think that I’m rather slow.
Actually, the WiiU is probably going to do horribly in terms of actual games. Developers doing multi-platform games HATE developing with console specific functionality in mind, which is why the Wii utterly failed in 3rd party support.
Also, MS and Sony are probably going to go to the next generation in a few years, so the WiiU will still be the underperforming console on the market with weird but unrealized gameplay potential.
Short version: If you get a WiiU, don’t expect amazing stuff to come out for it. Except for from Nintendo (maybe).
My brother Eric, commenting on this post, and probably accurately predicting the future. (via lizlet)
No offense Liz, but I totally disagree with your brother’s premise, as well as his conclusions.
The Wii was the most successful console of this generation, so I don’t understand his “still be the underperforming console…” comment. It sold more consoles and more games than any other, and made more money than PS3 and 360 - combined. Chart here, numbers on the right hand side.
Coupled with the fact that it sold 50% more consoles than either Sony or MS, is the fact that Nintendo is the only console manufacturer that sells its consoles at a profit - the other two lose money on hardware, hoping to make it up later on software licenses. So even if they all three sold the same amount of hardware, Nintendo would have made more money already.
Speaking of software, yes, the Wii lacked in 3rd party support, but no - I don’t think Nintendo minds. In fact, they might happily continue giving EA and Activision the middle finger because doing so made them a metric fuckton of money. Since they sold more software (again, see the chart here) and since it was mostly first-party developed, they made far more money than they would with robust third party support. A single copy of Mario Kart makes them 2-3 times more than a copy of Madden (this is sort of an oversimplification, but at million sales+ scale, it ends up being somewhere between 2 and 3x.)
So given the above, where they make more money on a single console sale, more money on a single software sale, and sold (by FAR) more software and hardware than their competitors…how are they underperforming?
Their market strategy as brilliant - “we’re not going at it like last time, where it was the gamecube VS the PS2 VS the Xbox, we’re going to be the system you have *in addition to* your hardcore platform. AND, since we won’t have as many cross-platform games as the other two - who will be forced to duke it out against each other for the Metal of Battlefield Warfare crowd - most of our best games will be exclusive to our platform.”
Genius.
(via spytap)
Healthy debate! Though I think Eric’s point has more to do with the creative success of the Wii as opposed to the business. Nintendo might be happy with how the Wii has performed, but what about the millions of users who got bored of bowling and Rayman after six months? And that alone could have an effect on Wii U sales — it’s a cool toy, but people might be wary of shelling out for a new device to gather dust.
(via lizlet)
I think *some* people got bored with the console, but the reality is that by setting itself up as the “additional system” it was never going to be the primary console for hardcore gamers. Additionally, those other consoles (the 360 and PS3) set themselves up as media centers with a ton of extra functionality beyond gaming - I, for one, spend a fair amount of my “PS3 time” with Netflix, Blu-rays, TV shows, and other assorted non-gaming areas. So yes, for some people the Wii may have gathered some dust in between sporadic game purchases, but the reality is that for the vast majority of the Wii’s consumers, it did so about on par with the other consoles, and that’s reflected in the software sales.
It’s tough to calculate a formal attachment rate (i.e. median number of games purchased for each system sold) so we’re going to fudge it a bit by going for the average by dividing the software sales by the hardware sales and calling it close enough. Within those guidelines, it was very close for every console.
Wii - 7.8 games sold per console sold
360 - 9.0 games sold per console sold
PS3 7.8 games sold per console sold
It’s right in line with the PS3, and just a little more than one purchase behind the 360. So from an overall standpoint, it doesn’t look like there were that many “bored” consumers who stopped purchasing Wii games. Some did, probably, but some also did for 360 and PS3.
But to put more of a point on the question “what about the millions of users who got bored of bowling and Rayman after six months?” Well, they bought new games. That’s pretty much how it goes. For every Wii customer who bought two games and then let it gather dust, there was another who bought 18 - just like the 360 and PS3. If there were that many unsatisfied consumers, Nintendo wouldn’t have sold almost 700 million pieces of software. The retail, if you will, doesn’t match the rhetoric; or rather, the constant refrain of the rhetoric.
So where does the refrain come from? Well, I’ve got my opinion, but it’s probably going to make more than a few people feel like I’m personally insulting them. Sorry folks, I promise it’s not personal, but it needs to be said:
What I think this comes down to is the eternal argument of the “true” (read: “more hardcore”) gamers who spurned the Wii, and their very vocal opposition to the casual people’s gaming machine. “They’re not real gamers” was a frequent comment I’ve read over the past few years, coupled with “the Wii is just kiddie games” mantra, reiterated ad nauseum. It’s similar to how Halo players feel about Farmville - that’s it’s not a real game, and the “culture” surrounding it isn’t representative of “gamer culture.”
But here’s my real issue: gamer “culture,” isn’t. I’ve been playing video games since I was about 4, and given my background there’s no way anyone could question my gaming credentials (Proof? I’ve owned six consoles, several hundred games, built and rebuilt my own gaming PC a dozen times, logged about a thousand hours into CS, and co-captained a TRIBES clan - just to start.) But the reality is that gaming “culture” is inherently exclusionary. I get it, it started as a self-embracing response to being spurned and mocked by the mainstream, but despite being a bigger industry than feature films, it still has these vestiges of “US VS THEM” that permeate and seek to exclude certain factions.
These exclusionary factions believe that there is one “right” way to be a gamer, and that involves a certain amount of necessary hazing from outside the community to earn one’s stripes, and when that ceased to be applicable due to the mainstreaming of gaming, that hazing started to come from within. This vocal faction is, I believe, the minority. I sort of have to believe this to be willing to continue calling myself a gamer, because this minority, vocal as it is, also serves often to reinforce the least appealing aspects of gamer culture.
Need an example? Go play multiplayer Halo on the 360, the most “hardcore credible” console. Within thirty seconds you’ll conclude that the only solution for humanity is to nuke the entire planet from orbit - it’s the only way to be sure. Granted this single example doesn’t apply to everything, but it serves as a valid illustration to knowing where a lot of the Wii criticism is coming from. This contingent A) expects online multiplayer to be a part of every game, B) vocal communication to be a part of every online multiplayer experience (whose sole use is generally to mock the defeated) and C) that games *must* be hardcore to be “real games.”
None of this - not one single iota is accurate. But by choosing to embrace exactly zero of these “understood” rules, and by actively eliminating that hazing element, Nintendo put itself against the vocal minority. This pissed them off. When Nintendo won, as demonstrated in sales - this pissed them off further. So they stopped playing the Wii, and the world continued on, and the Wii continued absolutely dominating the charts despite that minority’s exclusion of the platform, which bruised a few community egos. So the vocal minority did their best to expunge the Wii from the ranks of “real gaming.”
To which I respond: if gamer culture is best represented by calling someone a fag after you shoot them in the face, then I’ll gladly sign off to play Mario Kart with friends while having a beer.
I enjoy gaming, I really do. We’re in a golden age of gaming, that - proliferation of the Madden and Halo series aside - is better in almost every respect than ever before. I’ve loved the Uncharted series, and both Portals are still in my go-to list. I still get giddy at any Half Life 3 or even Episode 3 rumor, and have spent some time recently getting to know the intricacies of my friendships through who heals my ass in Left 4 Dead 2. But I also like the various versions of Mario, Zelda, and Metroid I’ve been playing on the Wii. They’re different, but that’s not a bad thing for me. Some are better, some are worse, but all are - and this is the really key thing here - enjoyable to play.
All the above serves to illustrate my main point: that I believe the rhetorical refrain of dust-covered Wiis and millions of disappointed customers is more likely the backlash of a small subset of vocal gamers who are more than a little mad that gamers aren’t the Rebel Alliance anymore; but in fact the Empire. Perhaps it’s that more importantly, the erstwhile leaders of the rebel alliance have been usurped by a less militant majority - the people who just like playing video games because they’re fun, and have no desire to wave a flag of allegiance. That’s who the Wii caters to, and as it turns out that’s a bigger consumer audience.
(via lizlet)
New State Law Makes Posting Distressing Images a Crime
Tennessee: reminding people all over the world of just how backwards it really is.
My favorite comment from Reddit:
See how well this law goes down when a Moslem or atheist get offended by a christian churches photos or writings.
Life in the Crosshairs
Like many of you I tuned into the news flowing out of Apple’s WWDC yesterday. As the nerdgasm of news and features climaxed many began to wonder aloud how this new wave of software releases would impact the ecosystem built around Apple devices As VentureBeat noted:
Many of the new features shown at the WWDC keynote Monday looked very much like ideas first seen in iOS apps from independent developers…Similar tactics won Microsoft opprobrium in the 1990s, when the company incorporated features into Windows that had previously only been available through Windows software created by Microsoft developers. It contributed greatly to the impression that Microsoft was a ruthless company that would even stab its closest allies in the back, if that’s what it took to make its OS more competitive.
As the keynote concluded journalist began to furiously churn out lists of roadkill companies who only hours before were their darlings. The NYT asserted that Apple was trying to put such notable companies as Dropbox, GroupMe, Kik, Instapaper, Remember the Milk and Hipstamatic (among many others) out of business. A damning move for a company who only moments earlier announced having paid out $2.5B to the developers building to their devices.
So, are these companies screwed? No.
The first rule of startup club is that if you’re doing anything interesting you’re in someone’s crosshairs. Get over it. Startups are at far greater risk of putting themselves out of business than having Steve Jobs do it for them.
Take a deep breath and remember that this is still a very emergent mobile market. As Marco noted:
Today, fewer than 1% of iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch owners are Instapaper customers, despite Instapaper spending a lot of time (including today) at the #1-paid-app spot in the App Store’s News category for both iPhone and iPad. The potential market is massive, but most people don’t know that they need it yet.
Having been involved with a number of portfolio companies in the crosshairs of big company press releases and hostile moves from platform partners, there are worse places to be. Its means what you’re doing matters and the market you’re going after is a real one.
But, life in the crosshairs tends to have a better outcome when you don’t start there; meaning, its best not to start your business as an obvious missing feature or a better version of an existing one. Most crosshairs take aim on what’s at the center of the bullseye. Going after pieces of an emergent platform that would bring them to parity with their competitors will occasionally lead to a small exit, but it’s generally a losing strategy.
We’ve found that creating your audience at the edge of a market allows startups to build and educate a user base on the value of their service before the platform vendor takes note. That existing user base will tend to pull you to other platforms and technologies which will mitigate the competitive risk of being tied to a single platform vendor’s technologies and objectives.
As a startup you can’t out Apple Apple, but you can compete in ways they can’t. And if you find yourself locked in their crosshairs, the worst thing you can do is get scared and freeze. Its much tougher to hit a moving target.
Reblogging so I can re-read this every morning and twice at night.
Film Makers Turn to iPad for Interactive Storytelling Online Video News
Now we’re talking.
What would our world look like if books could fly? That’s a question that’s at the center of the a new iPad app called The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore that was added to the iTunes app store on Thursday.
The app is based on the animated short film of the same title, in which a book lover finds himself catapulted into a world where books are alive, capable of flying, dancing and playing piano. It’s an interesting metaphor, especially during times where some people bemoan the supposed death of the traditional paper book in light of the growing importance of tablets and e-readers.
“An iPad app book is sort of like a book that flies,” said Moonbot Studios co-founder Brandon Oldenburg when I talked to him and two of his colleagues on the phone today. However, Moonbot didn’t mean to provide cultural commentary with its app; instead, the company just tried to explore new avenues of interactive storytelling.
I have no special talents. I’m only passionately curious.
Albert Einstein (via alexheath)
That’s becoming more and more of a talent these days.
