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Breaking Down the Game Film – Voting with Your Dollars

Feb 2nd, 2010
by Benjamin Hysell.
2 comments

“Breaking Down the Game Film” is a term commonly used to analyze tape from an already played sports game to dissect what went right and what went wrong.  In this series I’ll be taking published articles from around the web and break them down.

Topic: Voting with Your Dollars

Article: “Will Anyone Pay for Anything”

Author: Guy Kawasaki

Links: https://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/the-world/article/will-anyone-pay-for-anything-guy-kawasaki and video http://www.building43.com/videos/2009/07/24/will-anyone-pay-for-anything/.

Guy’s article sums up the video nicely, but I highly suggest watching the video just so you can hear what the panelist say with your own ears.

In the event you are short on time, I’ll save you the click through to the article and the video and sum them both up here:

Guess what teenagers and twenty-somethings are willing to pay for online?

NOTHING!

There were only two services any of the panelists were willing to pay for:

  • Gmail
  • Xbox Live

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube…they won’t pay for any of them.  This panel never clicks on banner ads, and if any of the services started charging them money to use them they would move on to find a new service to meet their needs.

Millions of users, and Facebook might loose them all if they ever wanted to charge money.

That is scary.

It turns out developers of all ages are not too different, well, it appears we don’t click on ads at least, as Jeff Atwood laments, http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/11/our-amazon-advertising-experiment/,

If Stack Overflow, a site that does a million pageviews a day, can’t make enough from AdSense to pay even one person half time — and let me tell you, that’s being overly generous based on the actual income it generated — how does anyone make a decent living with AdSense?

Thus, teenagers, twenty-somethings, and developers don’t click on ads on the Internet.

I then asked myself two questions:

  1. How does anyone stay in business online?
  2. What would I pay for online if it wasn’t free?

Question one has a myriad of answers that I won’t dive into in this post.  With question two I spent a few minutes and came up with this list:

  • Gmail – Nope, I would put up my own email server if push came to shove.  I already have one on standby just in case.  Better safe than sorry, :-) .
  • Xbox Live – This I do pay for, mainly because there is no alternative to play the Xbox online.
  • Facebook – Gone.
  • Twitter – Gone.
  • Flickr – I have already moved to Facebook.  See above for how I feel about paying for Facebook.
  • Stackoverflow – Tougher decision, however there are too many free alternatives out there to fill the void.  Right now when I Google a programming question I’m still finding plenty of links to non-Stackoverflow sites with very good answers.  Someday, but right now, it is a no.
  • Google Reader – Plenty of alternative RSS readers.
  • All of the feeds in my Google Reader – There isn’t a feed/website in my reader that I couldn’t live without.
  • Google – Would I pay for Google?  Again, there are too many free alternatives.

It would be painful to move, change, or lose any of these services/websites, but not painful enough to pay any amount to continue to use them.

Scary thought.

Or…

What happens in a world where no one pays for anything and you are the one person who will pay for something?

You might just get everything you ever wanted.

Look at the cartoon Family Guy, from our friends at Wikipedia:

Shortly after the third season of Family Guy aired in 2001, Fox canceled the series.  However, favorable DVD sales and high ratings for syndicated reruns convinced the network to renew the show in 2004.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_guy

Family Guy was dead in the water, with no hope to ever see the light of day again.  Then, something crazy happened.  People voted with their dollars, bought the DVDs like crazy, and watched all of the reruns over and over and over again.  Fox woke up, picked the series back up, and Family Guy is entering it’s 8th season.

I’ve decided to start “voting with my dollars” online by monetarily contributing to the following projects that create the plug-ins I use on my blog:

I also purchased an iPhone game I normally wouldn’t have, but I bought it based on the author’s excellent blog posts.  Check out Monkeys in Space from Streaming Colour: http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2009/09/22/monkeys-in-space-escape-to-banana-base-alpha/ and check out Owen Goss great iPhone development blog at http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/.

It is my hope to continue to support developers and their projects by contributing to them on a regular basis to further their development.

Next time you find a project, blog, or application you really enjoy I urge you to support it.  By voting with your dollars we have a lot more power online than we realize to influence what survives and what withers.

It is time we all start voting with our dollars!

Seth Godin Marketing for Makers

Aug 2nd, 2009
by Benjamin Hysell.
1 comment

I found this video the other day in my travels along the interwebs and wanted to share with the class.  For me, this was one of those videos I’m going to have to watch a few times to fully appreciate it.  Seth says he is going to move fast through his material when he starts, and he isn’t kidding.

Seth explores marketing over the ages and how the game has changed from interruption marketing (TV) to the new world order.  In the past, someone could force you to view their ads on TV (thank you, thank you, thank you TiVo), but now a days there are so many media outlets and products pushing for our attention that we are overwhelmed with stimulus and are never forced to view any marketing from anyone.

It is as if our attention is being attacked by a huge denial of service attack where so much marketing information is coming at us we decide to turn it all off and listen to none of it.

The game has changed, people need to be looking for you to find you, and most marketing and products are not designed this way.  Seth hammers home several points:

  • Your software should have marketing built in
  • Your software should be able to self market
  • Your goal is to have people want to use your software, and spread the word about your software to others

::cough Apple, cough Google, cough, cough::

Seth’s best example of one company who gets it and one that doesn’t?  Ford vs. BMW.  When was the last time you saw an ad for a BMW?  Can you go three minutes watching TV and not run into a Ford ad?  BMW pours their marketing money into the product, making something people want, and given unlimited resources, something most people would likely buy given the chance.

::That is, of course, until you have to take it to the shop, but I digress::

This is a great video for anyone who makes anything, software or otherwise.

Please to enjoy Seth Godin at the Business of Software 2008.

::After watching this the first time through I thought to myself, ‘I need to add his blog to my daily reading list‘.  Little did I realize I’ve been reading his blog for some time,  doh, http://sethgodin.typepad.com/::

Steve Yegge

Feb 19th, 2009
by Benjamin Hysell.
Comments are off for this post

After a little diversion I’m back into my digital reading list:

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/

I am not sure how to describe Steve Yegge.  I’ll start with some bullet points:

  • Lately, and sadly, he has been an infrequent blogger
  • Plug in your laptop before you start reading one his posts…you thought I had a few posts that went on and on and on and…I’ve got nothing on Steve
  • Bloody brilliant communicator
  • Insightful comments and vision regarding the industry we all work in

I don’t remember where I found Steve.  I forget if it was Joel’s Reddit feed or if I stumbled across him while on another software related blog, but every time he publishes I clear my calendar for the morning.

“Helen, hold all of my calls, Steve has posted again.”

:: Now, right this second, I don’t have a need for a secretary, and I’m not sure on the Helen part…maybe a Sally, or go another way, how about a Johnson.  I like Johnson, you can really let it rip from your gut…sounds manly.  ‘Johnson, (pause for effect)…Hold all of my calls’. ::

Steve is long winded.

“How long winded is he?”

Long.

However, those who embark and complete the journey will be pleasantly rewarded.

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/10/programmers-view-of-universe-part-1.html

A couple of years ago I had a 55-gallon freshwater fish tank running in my living room, and I learned a few things from the experience.

  1. I’m not very good at keeping fish.  Towards the end of the experience every morning I awoke to a few less living fish and a few more dead fish.  Emotionally keeping fish can be very difficult.
  2. I never kept Bettas like Steve, but could relate to the heartbreak he had at the end of his post.  I think my algae eater died in the same fashion as his Betta.
  3. You can’t play catch with a fish…I confirmed through the experience of owning fish that I’m a dog person.

:: It didn’t take a tank full of fish to make me realize I was a dog person, but it’s always good to have confirmation. ::

Steve’s post is a classic post, referencing a non-industry related event to make a pointed statement about software and the world of computers.

Not all of his posts are downers.

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/10/universal-design-pattern.html

Any post that references Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid is ok in my book…as Steve states:

Get yourself a copy and settle in for one of the most interesting, maddening, awe-inspiring and just plain fun books ever written. The Pulitzer Prize it won doesn’t nearly do it justice. It’s one of the greatest and most unique works of imagination of all time.

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/09/bellic-school-of-management-training.html

I still haven’t completed the Niko Bellic management-training course.  I’m finding it harder and harder to fire up the Xbox 360 and devote the required hours needed for this management course.  One of these I will re-enroll…

Who turns an M-Rated Xbox 360 game into a post relating to management?  Steve Yegge.

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/08/business-requirements-are-bullshit.html

How many times have you had an idea for something, anything?  You know the type of ideas, like the ones Ron Popeil puts up there in late night TV, but rather than creating the next ‘Pocket Fisherman‘ you want to write a complex software system to make your life and the lives of other people easier.

What if there was a website where tenants could pay for their rent with their credit card?

Seems like a good idea, property owners are paid immediately with recurring credit card payments, and tenants get points on their credit card when they pay rent.  I could use a system like this…dealing with checks every month is a major pain in the ass…I could build a system to do this.  I could do it in Ruby on Rails, play in a language I don’t use on a day-to-day basis.  I have server space…this could all come together.

Here is the rub…financial transaction systems are not my passion.  I would be writing something for me, but in an area I know very little about.  This is a case where I might use something like this if it existed, but to build, maintain, and support a system that I’m not passionate about is a recipe for failure.

Steve dives deep into the idea of building business for yourself, in areas you know, and you are passionate about.

http://blip.tv/file/319044/

This video ranks up there with my favorite web videos…his talk is titled “How to Ignore Marketing and Become Irrelevant in Two Easy Steps.”  Ever wonder how Verizon came to be the company they are today?  Steve Yegge answers all.