Stat I'd like to snag down: the percentage of online videos that, when played, actually get completed. I find that 99 percent of videos over 1 minutes that I watch I don't complete. Any are partial views counted in most video statistics? I think the answer is obviously yes, but would like to know more about this.
I always enjoy reading Felix' recap of the latest art auctions. And I think his latest one is one of his best. Why can't there be art magazines with writing as simple, straightforward and clear as his? I'd be much more interested in the whole scene.
Been insanely busy with all kinds of stuff, so I apologize for not having written more lately.
For an amusing story about misusing social media, do check out my friend Carlo's post over at MobHappy.
It was funny, I recently did a sort of "career day" thing for some local college kids, talking to them about what pro blogging serious online journalism in the blog format is all about. It was pretty cute and the kids had some interesting questions. One concerned pay, and how my pay stacked up to journalists working in the print idiom.
I had no idea. I don't have a good sense of what typical print journalists with my level of experience are making, nor, for that matter, do I know what other digital folks make. I should, but I don't.
Anyway, FT's outstanding FT Alphaville blog is hiring and the enterprising dean of blogonomics Felix Salmon asked some questions of the blog's leader. The one about pay rang true:
Does the job pay the same as an equivalently-qualified FT reporter?
Yes, the same as a regular FT reporter, depending on age/experience/skills etc. At the FT we do not draw any division between newspaper and online work. If anything, the premium lies with those on the blogging / interactive side because of the relative rarity of the skills. (emphasis added)
Funny that for all the millions upon millions of people out there that blog, the skillset to do it fulltime is considered rare. That will change before too long.
Even if you could argue that there's no value in public prediction markets, it's hard to see what value there is in banning them, or pushing them into the farthest recesses of the law. Not that anything is likely to change soon, but the small CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) is soliciting public info on the matter of prediction market regulation.
Michael Gilberson offers some analysis on what CFTC is looking for and what it all means.
Also, David Pennock (a Yahoo who interested in gambling and prediction market stuff) is excited, so that's cool.
The other day, I said I was bullish on e-commerce startups, as I suspect that there's been a dearth of innovation in this sector: Amazon has been unassailed for too long, and surely there's more to winning the game than low prices and big selection... right? I listed a few of them above.
Anyway, Peter Kafka reminded me of another example: Threadless, the kind-of-hip but also kind-of-not-hip online T-shirt company. The smart twist: users can submit t-shirt designs and others can vote on them. IAC-owned BustedTees also lets folks submit T-shirts (for a chance to win $150!) but I don't think they have the voting part. Plus those guys are pretty clever, so probably no need to crowdsource the design.
Personally, I'm rather resentful of all the online T-Shirt companies cause they never take any of my ideas like:
-- Capitalists do it with arbitrage.
-- Fronton! (with a drawing of a jai alai player flinging the ball)
-- My Boss is a Jewish-Vegan Carpenter (picture of Jesus... yeah, yeah I know)
-- Yes Virginia, There is an Establishment Clause
Their loss, no?
To be honest, I'm surprise that Hillary Clinton's riffing on this famous statement (originally pertaining to the holocaust) hasn't gotten more attention. I just heard about it today reading The Economist on the train:
In Mrs. Clinton’s version, she intoned: “They came for the steel companies and nobody said anything. They came for the auto companies and nobody said anything. They came for the office companies, people who did white-collar service jobs, and no one said anything. And they came for the professional jobs that could be outsourced, and nobody said anything.”
Like, she must really not like trade.
Apropos yesterday's post about the way the internet has changed the discovery of new music (for the worse!), I wonder: what has happened to regional band clusters and their sound? Back in the day, you knew certain cities had their sound. The Boston sound, the LA sound, the Gainesville sound, the Omaha sound, the Austin sound, the Denver sound, the Bakersfied sound (seriously).
Linguists say that the advent of national television has caused a dilution in regional accents. Sure, someimtes you can identify a guy with a hard Boston, Chicago or Vermont accent, but even most Texans pretty much sound like Midwesterners these days. Has the the same happened with bands? Is there still a distinct Boston scene/sound, or has the internetization of music diluted the similarities.
It does seem like regional musical dialects still exist pretty strongly in rap: Houston, Dirty South, Cali, etc.
If it hasn't been done, it'd make for a great study for some budding ethnomusicologist. Ideally you'd have some kind of empirical way to measure the similarness of a cluster of bands, and then see whether that measure has changed of time.
Anyone have any ideas?
Apparently they had to kick out the dad of some American Idol contest from backstage because he was causing problems. If someone could explain the scandal to me I'd appreciate it:
Despite a warning, Jeff Archuleta insisted on altering "Stand by Me," one of two songs his son sang on the show Tuesday. By adding a verse from Sean Kingston's "Beautiful Girls," the father incurred additional costs for "American Idol," the person said.
Fox declined comment. Attempts to reach Jeff Archuleta for comment were unsuccessful. A phone number listed under his name in Murray, Utah, was no longer in service, and Fox did not immediately respond to a request Friday evening for help in contacting the family.
So that's a big deal?
Don't get me wrong, I love the internet. I make my living off of it, and a lot of my so-called social life revolves around it. But lately I've been in a sort-of anti-internet mood. Let me identify one sad thing about the internet.
There's absolutely no joy in cultural discovery any more. Back in the day (high school) it was always exciting to discover a new band, a new scene or a new zine. You actually had to hunt it out. Filling out the entire back catalog of Les Baxter albums was no easy chore -- at all. Sometimes you had to send out to obscure labels or distributors. Sometimes you just had to lust after those lucky bastards in Japan who apparently had access to all kinds of special "import" (not for them of course) CDs. When you were in a new city, you might pick up a zine you'd heard about or maybe check out the local record shops for some nugget. All that is gone gone gone. Any song you want to hear is now 5 seconds away? Is this a good thing? Sure. I probably wouldn't go back, but the thrill of discovery was really, really fun. The idea that cultural artifacts were scarce is something we won't get back ever.
Along the same lines: There was a certain joy in having only partial knowledge of certain topics. Take for example the accordianist Myron Floren -- I'd seen his name in a few liner notes, as well as some Re/Search books. But it was hard in those days to piece together his bio. Now it's easy. In the absence of full information, you had to create your own mythology, to keep it all in your head.
Then there's geography. I used to know which bands were from the Boston scene and which ones were from Minneapolis and which ones were from LA and which ones were from Austin. Now I have no clue. It could be because I care less about music these days, so I don't pay as close attention, or it could be that to me, all bands come from the internet -- hypem.com specifically, most of the time.
Anyway, it's gone gone gone and never coming back.
</rant>
