Content, er … customer, is king
Read a good piece in the NY Times this week about the campaign to bring back Wispa — a chocolate bar withdrawn by Cadburys four years’ ago. What, with Cadburys recent PR problems, I wonder if it is quite the community campaign it seems at face value, but it appears to have reached a tipping point, and provides some positive outcomes for Cadburys.
The convergence of media here is interesting: integrated social networking, blogging, and physical advocacy appears to have done the trick. I suspect it won’t be too long until publishers start to experience this phenomenon too. And with publishers now joining the movement to sell directly online perhaps there are niche markets to be exploited here.
It’s certainly one worth watching to see if the market responds to the reintroduction of the brand and if consumers and demand can sustain it.
What happens when the Internet crashes and all data is lost?
Breaking News: All Online Data Lost After Internet Crash
The CD is 25
The CD has just turned 25. Its contribution to the audio world is well known, the logical predecessor of the mp3world, and to a large extent the first digital data-exchange mechanism. You can even argue that it led to the easy disassembly of the album, in favour of the audio track.
The CD also led to the disassembly of data. Early players like SilverPlatter rapidly adopted the search and distribution capacity of the CD to change the market and model for information access. Using CDs, fixed-price subscription models began to replace the pay-as-you-use and connect-fee models that were prevalent in the old online world.
This began to place electronic information resources on end-user, researcher and student desktops for the very first time and provided a pre-Internet explosion in access to information.
So let’s hear it for the humble CD.
J2EE versus Ruby on Rails
From time to time I get involved in technical things, and while I don’t pretend to really understand it all having just finished working with some folks on a proposal with buckets of enterprise class J2ee this advert hit home. Enjoy.
An Open library
The objectives of the open library group are laudable but it’s got a heck of a job on its hands to achieve its goals. It seems that several players are already in the space — Amazon, major libraries that have built up specific catalogues over time, the ubiquitous Google and fledglings like Wikia..
Yet there is something about the approach that just feels right. It’s backing from the Internet archive and the “success” of Wikipedia point to a potentially successful model, which involves engagement with the community of users, in a manner that could benefit Amazon, libraries, Google and publishers.
It will be interesting to see what happens once catalogues meet users, in an interactive manner; it’s a way overdue happening.
I for one would like to see it work.
It will be interesting to see what happens once catalogues meet users, in an interactive manner; it’s a way overdue happening.
I for one would like to see it work