Google plots e-books coup - Sunday Times - Times Online
Every seven years somebody resurrects the idea of eBooks. I was on the Microsoft Reader 1.0 team in 2000. They were some of the best days of my life. We had a saying: Every seven years the eBook comet comes back through earth’s solar system. We thought that we were the generation that was going to make the comet impact on earth, but we only got it to graze the planet. Now it looks like Google is going to take up the current rotation. I wish them a better ride than we had and thought I would share some of the lessons I learned.
Do NOT talk to the Publishers.
As a rule these guys are greedy and clueless. Just look at what the record producers are doing for media players and you get a sense of what these guys can do to eBooks. There are exceptions, but I still wouldn’t get into bed with them. These guys sucked 30 to 60% of the eBooks business development and marketing efforts away and we had very, very little to show for it. What little we did get wasn’t enough in the end. The book industry has been struggling for 30 years. Things are so confused that many authors are not sure who, if anybody, has the rights to publish their books in an electric format. Their book may not even exist any longer in electronic format. Anything easy you ask the publishers to do for you will be almost impossible for them. They can sure talk a good talk though. They had our guys going the whole time. Every time your business development person falls into the trap of thinking that all will be well if we get the publishers in our playground, slap him/her very hard.
Oh, and approaching authors directly was a lot of fun but ultimately just as frustrating.
Figure out a way to do both paper and screen layout.
Adobe Reader is all about paper page layout. If an author says that word “x” is the last word on page 1, then word “x” will always be the last word on page 1. It doesn’t matter if the document is being viewed on a 21 inch flat screen or a cell phone. This is necessary for business documents where you want to be able to say something like “Turn to page 24 of your document” and have it be meaningful.
Microsoft Reader went the opposite direction; we were all about the screen. We invented ClearType and gave it to the operating systems. A LIT file will always format itself as best as it can for the screen it’s being displayed upon. There isn’t even a concept of real paper. If you wanted to print out a passage from a book you need to copy and paste it into a different program. But the readably inside the Reader is to die for. No matter what your screen size, you can almost smell the scent of fine heavily clayed paper.
Both of these programs are correct. As an author sometimes I will want one and sometimes the other. Sometimes a document will only work one way and sometimes the mode I need is situational. I need the reader to do the right thing on every platform and screen size or give me an easy way to control this as an author.
Microsoft = readability and immersion. Adobe = business and collaboration. Put both of these together and the world will beat a path to your doorstep.
It *so* isn’t about DRM.
About 30% of the Microsoft Reader’s product team’s efforts went into DRM and it was a pretty big failure. Yes, some sites still use it, although it has been hacked a few times. Mostly you hear users that have over $100.00 worth of eBooks who can’t read their books any longer clamoring for Congress to do something. So to sum it up, Microsoft Reader DRM really made people angry and it didn’t work.
The thing that is saving the record industry is new artists and people ripping their old CD’s. The new artist angle can work for eBooks but not the CD ripping. So if your efforts to get current content will be mostly fruitless that leaves new content. That’s OK, there is a boom going on in the self publishing industry and it’s only going to get better. Everybody who has kept a blog for any length of time could easily create a book and already has an audience.
To avoid DRM, but to keep it simple, you have two kinds of eBooks; those with advertising and those without. Just like the Google Blogger model, it is up to the author which path they would like to go down. This way if somebody posts the eBook, that’s great! They email it to their friends, great! There is no genie to keep in the bottle because there isn’t a bottle.
I would also add the sub-case where a book can be sponsored, but that could probably wait for the second version. It would be nice if the advertising payback could be enough that best selling authors will still be able to make about the same amount of money or more. It would be nice if the authors could have some say over what ads go into their book. It would be nice if the author could choose to include more or less ads to change their monetary rates. It would be nice to do a bunch of other things, but all of them pale in comparison to the effort it takes to do a small DRM system.
Other Random Notes:
Don’t count Microsoft out. The number of LIT files that are sold each quarter steadily grows. It is sites like this and this and Powells that keep the train chugging along. Yes, the Reader program itself is getting a little long in the tooth, but the new stuff in Word is very cool. But the real core, the people that made up the heart and soul of the Reader team, still work together. They could suit up and be taking prisoners very quickly if Microsoft decides to really go down this road again.
I would try to keep eBooks as just one of my design criteria. For example, I read all the time, but only some of that is done in pBooks or eBooks. It would be nice if my RSS feeds were on my device every morning and I could go through during lunch them in a pretty way. Or perhaps any RSS post that was over 3000 characters would automatically switch to an easier to process format. A lot of people on the Reader team would create photo albums in LIT format because they were so beautiful on every device and also had the killer compression.
Be the king of the study guide. Everybody uses their computers to do research. I want to be able to bookmark content in blogs and web pages, office documents and PDFs, etc. I want to be able to do it by keyword. So if I’m writing an essay on something, I can bookmark anything that looks interesting and it all comes together in a Google eBook for me to study.
Join me and worship at the feet of Bill Hill and OSPREY. Not all the time, but whenever possible.
Empower anybody to create a document for your reader. Try to stay as far away as you can from creating authoring tools. I would look seriously into using Word’s new .DocX XML format as my native format. (It is now an open standard approved by ECMA and free to use.) It would rock if you could read PDF and LIT files.
Ok, this one is really cynical, but by law publishers need to offer handicapped people a reasonable product experience. Publishers may be more inclined to offer their books in your format if your reader is the absolute best for disabled people. I would also make sure the non-profits that might pursue this are well funded.
Give money to the University of Virginia Library. They rocked and Microsoft kind of left them high and dry when the Reader team was reorganized.
NIST used to be really into eBooks and were doing a great job driving reasonable standards but I don’t see anything current on their web site.
Automatically create the infrastructure so that every eBook has its own web community (social) on your servers. Capture the author's contact information and keywords and a summary, and of course an advertisement. Allow the author to customize these sites and sign up for a cut of the advertising revenue. Yes, 98% of these communities will languish, but they are still helpful just in their uniformity. The ones that take off will more than make up for any costs here. (Imagine if you got a penny for every web page ever written…)
Do *not* piss off librarians. They are very nice people and very, very smart. As much as the publisher’s don’t get it, librarians do. Also, nothing will happen in this space without them. Win them to your side early and court them constantly.
Expect some pretty bruised feelings from customers, vendors, ISVs, publishers and authors. We (the Microsoft Reader team) were so sure that this time was the time and it ended up we were wrong, the comet needs to make another pass. I wish Google the best.
Showing posts with label social networks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social networks. Show all posts
Monday, January 22, 2007
Saturday, January 20, 2007
MySpace is dead.
Ok, it's not dead yet. It's feeling particularly well, but it is doomed.
It won't go away 100% but it will go away 80%. Why?
1. AOL.
AOL flourished and expanded and was considered "the" place while the whole of the Internet existed. I remember the day AOL turned on their portal to Usenet (primitive discussion boards where practically the whole Internet population gathered to talk). It was a scary thing because suddenly all these AOL people started talking about how unsafe things were and the first spam started and all the old Internet people just shuddered.
After the first wave, most of the AOL people never ventured out of the safe AOL boards for a decade. They were afraid of the vastness and chaos of the Internet and so they crawled back into their little fish bowl. It was a no brainer for most AOL members. They got a CD in the mail and stuck it into their computer and found a board or two that they liked and they were happy.
They turned into vocal ambassadors for AOL. Loudly proclaiming that it was THE place to be. I was even belittled by an AOL member because I couldn't read the same board that she did. When I replied that I didn't want to pay the monthly fee, she told me that I could never be anybody unless I joined AOL.
But over time the AOL members got used to ocean that is the Internet. They explored. They found the rules and limitations of AOL were too limiting and that there were other people that they wanted to interact with that weren't on AOL and so they moved out of the fish bowl.
It's now about 10 years since their heyday and AOL has all but disappeared. They don't have members any more, anybody can see their boards. They are still a reasonable conglomerate of content, but nothing that you can't get elsewhere with more value.
MySpace is a fish bowl. It's a beachhead where teens can own their first Internet property and not have to think about the vastness of the Internet ocean. It has the functionality they need to feel cozy, just like AOL had the easiest user interface. (Although I must say that the MySpace user interface sucks.) But time, functionality and the Internet march on. And every generation gets more comfortable with the Internet out of the womb.
2. Cliques
Teenagers do not exist in the same space without somebody getting hurt. Although I doubt I'm talking Columbine hurt, I do think that the virtual equivalent will probably happen if it hasn't already. Security on MySpace isn't great and once you log in as the person you are angry at, a host of evil possibilities are easily in your reach.
Although this will hurt MySpace, it's not really the thing that's going to kill them.
If you look in the cafeteria of any high school or junior high, you will notice that the kids sit in cliques. Freaks hate the Jocks. Computer Geek's hate the Student Government types, etc., etc., etc. The Cheerleaders are not going to co-exist in close approximation to the Stoners any longer than is necessary. They would like to exist in an exalted and exclusive board with lots of pink and other Cheerleaders. This way they can plot how to be extra mean to all the people around them. (Can you tell I wasn't a cheerleader?)
This is a small twist on the LongTail "don't be a Big Fish" thing and "Small is the new big."
3. That is *so* 2006!
If the right teen idol declares that MySpace isn't cool they could lose 50% of their traffic overnight.
When the next mini-generation notices that all the un-cool older people are on MySpace, they will find a new place (or many new places) to swarm to.
4. Time
As the number of social networks that people belong to grows, the time it takes to service each network becomes more irksome. The number of blog hits is contracting right now rather than growing because they all just became too much for people to keep up with.
As MySpace becomes less valuable to their users the cost of time to maintain my profile/email/blog, etc become a drag.
(This point could also have been made in the AOL section)
5. When I became I man I put away childhood things
People grow up, move on and leave childhood behind them. None of my high school friends (4-Eva) kept in touch, even though we all were home for the holidays. We had moved on.
None of my college friends keep in touch, same reason. Same with single friends, same with friends before we moved across country, etc.
My brother keeps in touch with his high school friends and even gets together with them once a year, but they organize it through email. They wouldn't put up with the advertisements, spam and other crap that is MySpace.
So MySpace is doomed and there is nothing they can do about it. Changing their interface isn't going to stop the march of time. Creating Clique Groups isn't going to change the fickle fashion sense of teenagers and teenage idols. Streamlining everything to reduce their drag is going to kill their bottom line and not broker peace between the freaks and the jocks.
The bottom line is that in the long run, you can not successfully create a fish bowl for humans.
It won't go away 100% but it will go away 80%. Why?
1. AOL.
AOL flourished and expanded and was considered "the" place while the whole of the Internet existed. I remember the day AOL turned on their portal to Usenet (primitive discussion boards where practically the whole Internet population gathered to talk). It was a scary thing because suddenly all these AOL people started talking about how unsafe things were and the first spam started and all the old Internet people just shuddered.
After the first wave, most of the AOL people never ventured out of the safe AOL boards for a decade. They were afraid of the vastness and chaos of the Internet and so they crawled back into their little fish bowl. It was a no brainer for most AOL members. They got a CD in the mail and stuck it into their computer and found a board or two that they liked and they were happy.
They turned into vocal ambassadors for AOL. Loudly proclaiming that it was THE place to be. I was even belittled by an AOL member because I couldn't read the same board that she did. When I replied that I didn't want to pay the monthly fee, she told me that I could never be anybody unless I joined AOL.
But over time the AOL members got used to ocean that is the Internet. They explored. They found the rules and limitations of AOL were too limiting and that there were other people that they wanted to interact with that weren't on AOL and so they moved out of the fish bowl.
It's now about 10 years since their heyday and AOL has all but disappeared. They don't have members any more, anybody can see their boards. They are still a reasonable conglomerate of content, but nothing that you can't get elsewhere with more value.
MySpace is a fish bowl. It's a beachhead where teens can own their first Internet property and not have to think about the vastness of the Internet ocean. It has the functionality they need to feel cozy, just like AOL had the easiest user interface. (Although I must say that the MySpace user interface sucks.) But time, functionality and the Internet march on. And every generation gets more comfortable with the Internet out of the womb.
2. Cliques
Teenagers do not exist in the same space without somebody getting hurt. Although I doubt I'm talking Columbine hurt, I do think that the virtual equivalent will probably happen if it hasn't already. Security on MySpace isn't great and once you log in as the person you are angry at, a host of evil possibilities are easily in your reach.
Although this will hurt MySpace, it's not really the thing that's going to kill them.
If you look in the cafeteria of any high school or junior high, you will notice that the kids sit in cliques. Freaks hate the Jocks. Computer Geek's hate the Student Government types, etc., etc., etc. The Cheerleaders are not going to co-exist in close approximation to the Stoners any longer than is necessary. They would like to exist in an exalted and exclusive board with lots of pink and other Cheerleaders. This way they can plot how to be extra mean to all the people around them. (Can you tell I wasn't a cheerleader?)
This is a small twist on the LongTail "don't be a Big Fish" thing and "Small is the new big."
3. That is *so* 2006!
If the right teen idol declares that MySpace isn't cool they could lose 50% of their traffic overnight.
When the next mini-generation notices that all the un-cool older people are on MySpace, they will find a new place (or many new places) to swarm to.
4. Time
As the number of social networks that people belong to grows, the time it takes to service each network becomes more irksome. The number of blog hits is contracting right now rather than growing because they all just became too much for people to keep up with.
As MySpace becomes less valuable to their users the cost of time to maintain my profile/email/blog, etc become a drag.
(This point could also have been made in the AOL section)
5. When I became I man I put away childhood things
People grow up, move on and leave childhood behind them. None of my high school friends (4-Eva) kept in touch, even though we all were home for the holidays. We had moved on.
None of my college friends keep in touch, same reason. Same with single friends, same with friends before we moved across country, etc.
My brother keeps in touch with his high school friends and even gets together with them once a year, but they organize it through email. They wouldn't put up with the advertisements, spam and other crap that is MySpace.
So MySpace is doomed and there is nothing they can do about it. Changing their interface isn't going to stop the march of time. Creating Clique Groups isn't going to change the fickle fashion sense of teenagers and teenage idols. Streamlining everything to reduce their drag is going to kill their bottom line and not broker peace between the freaks and the jocks.
The bottom line is that in the long run, you can not successfully create a fish bowl for humans.
repost - Note to NBCU - How to use Social Networks
January 17, 2007
After I shreaded NBCU's press release, I've been asked what NBCU should do about social networking.
First I would spend a lot more than an hour or two thinking about it and I would make decisions based on research and not my gut. Also, I'm not assuming that NBCU should do anything about social networks. I think an overall NBC site would be almost worthless (but that's another post).
One "given" is that there will always be numerous communities that exist for every TV show. The least popular shows probably have a few thousand. There is no way to create a community that is so good that these other communities won’t exist.
And even trying is a mistake. Each of these communities represent approximately a few hundred people that love the show (or tens of thousands). These are your evangelists not your competition. It's never a good idea to squash your fans. The fact that there is a vibrant community on MySpace is awesome news. All the Network needs to do is augment these communities.
They should find every The Office community and figure out ways to make those communities better. They should give awards to the best The Office community. They should budget some of their stars' time to do chats on these sites. The more they make these sites successful, the harder these armies of evangelists are going to work to make The Office a success. Holding contests is great, but communities win, not individuals. You can still be the host of content (as opposed to YouTube), but you are not the "go to" place. Create the content so that 24 sites can do things like have scavenger hunts around the net for some mocked up terrorist pages. Touched by an Angel communities could have charity drives and good works goals.
I would have a team of people whose job would be making these communities a little better every day. Their jobs would range from programming a custom widget for a particular community to helping another community tune their Google search information. The average team should breakdown something like this:
Every community you build (or even a community of communities) needs nurturing. To keep people coming back it needs to be updated often with very compelling content. Somebody’s got to create that content. It’s either going to be the network or a few overworked and harried community managers that are doing this “for fun”. It takes a lot of technical people and infrastructure to create excellent online communities.
I would staff these teams with creative people that are fans of the show from around the world. They should be little islands separate from the other little islands and the network mothership. They must feel uncensored ownership and creative freedom and have the charter to do what is best for their show. Then I would sit back and watch the scores of evangelists recruit new evangelists and a groundswell of new viewers watch the show.
Now, this assumes that all of this is about getting new viewers. If NBCU is trying to build a site to drive new ad revenue that's a different story. Maybe that's possible, but it's still not the best idea and a very, very different approach is needed (but that's a different post).
After I shreaded NBCU's press release, I've been asked what NBCU should do about social networking.
First I would spend a lot more than an hour or two thinking about it and I would make decisions based on research and not my gut. Also, I'm not assuming that NBCU should do anything about social networks. I think an overall NBC site would be almost worthless (but that's another post).
One "given" is that there will always be numerous communities that exist for every TV show. The least popular shows probably have a few thousand. There is no way to create a community that is so good that these other communities won’t exist.
And even trying is a mistake. Each of these communities represent approximately a few hundred people that love the show (or tens of thousands). These are your evangelists not your competition. It's never a good idea to squash your fans. The fact that there is a vibrant community on MySpace is awesome news. All the Network needs to do is augment these communities.
They should find every The Office community and figure out ways to make those communities better. They should give awards to the best The Office community. They should budget some of their stars' time to do chats on these sites. The more they make these sites successful, the harder these armies of evangelists are going to work to make The Office a success. Holding contests is great, but communities win, not individuals. You can still be the host of content (as opposed to YouTube), but you are not the "go to" place. Create the content so that 24 sites can do things like have scavenger hunts around the net for some mocked up terrorist pages. Touched by an Angel communities could have charity drives and good works goals.
I would have a team of people whose job would be making these communities a little better every day. Their jobs would range from programming a custom widget for a particular community to helping another community tune their Google search information. The average team should breakdown something like this:
• 1 ManagerThat sounds like a lot of people. And I don't think every social site on the web needs 20 people. Sometimes a half of one person is enough. But the overall number of viewers to be serviced here is huge. One of the biggest mistakes I see companies do is to make a push into this wacky world of social networking and then leave after they have "something" built. It’s like inviting a bunch of people to a party, decorating and leaving 10 minutes after the guests arrive. The guests are all going leave after a little while because they are just too uncomfortable. They will also be a little angry for having been lied to.
• 1 Marketer (not a publicist, that’s done elsewhere)
• 1 PR person
• 3 Program Managers (technical project managers and marketers)
• 3 Code Programmers
• 1 Flash Developer
• 4 Testers
• 3 Editors/writers
• 3 Graphic Artists
• ----- 20 people (and some times larger depending upon the
show).
Every community you build (or even a community of communities) needs nurturing. To keep people coming back it needs to be updated often with very compelling content. Somebody’s got to create that content. It’s either going to be the network or a few overworked and harried community managers that are doing this “for fun”. It takes a lot of technical people and infrastructure to create excellent online communities.
I would staff these teams with creative people that are fans of the show from around the world. They should be little islands separate from the other little islands and the network mothership. They must feel uncensored ownership and creative freedom and have the charter to do what is best for their show. Then I would sit back and watch the scores of evangelists recruit new evangelists and a groundswell of new viewers watch the show.
Now, this assumes that all of this is about getting new viewers. If NBCU is trying to build a site to drive new ad revenue that's a different story. Maybe that's possible, but it's still not the best idea and a very, very different approach is needed (but that's a different post).
repost - NBCU misadventures with social networks.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
I keep saying that I'm going to get away from the TV networks and post about something else. I don't even *care* that much about them, they are just fumbling things so badly that I can't keep my mouth shut.
Today MediaPost has this article "Just An Online Minute ... If you build it: NBCU and Social Sites"
OMG!! The advantage of a differentiated experience can be leveled by one blogger linking to that content.
I posted the following comment to Media Post:
Social networking is about is people having fun hanging around with their friends and other people just like them. People go to these sites because they are entertaining and because they tie into their identity.
Yes, the networks can do some killer sites around their shows, but these sites will not be the end-all be-all last word or even necessarily the “go to” place. The reason is because there are many different types of communities, and many of their properties are mutually exclusive.
For example, there are people who insist on communities where every piece of user generated content has been guaranteed “safe” by the community manager. Other people insist on the opposite and don't want to go anywhere near what they call censorship. Think of the red state/blue state divide and then add more passion to the arguments.
Good content is not the top deliverable of a community, the actual community is. This means the people and the tone are as important as content and the networks can’t guarantee that the right people show up at the right time. Yes, they have an advantage, but not a huge one.
...
This doesn't even get into the feelings of identity people have with different communities and also the drive, by some communities, to actually create content. (The Starwars Wiki). Some of those fans will want to stick with the canon and others use it as a jumping off base. There is every reason in the world why there is a vibrant MySpace community around The Office and it will continue to exist no matter what NBCU does.
Why don't the suits at NBCU hire some t-shirts and listen to them?
I keep saying that I'm going to get away from the TV networks and post about something else. I don't even *care* that much about them, they are just fumbling things so badly that I can't keep my mouth shut.
Today MediaPost has this article "Just An Online Minute ... If you build it: NBCU and Social Sites"
“NBCU is building a core social networking platform that will provide various
tools and functionality on all our major properties to enable users to
self-express and find, interact and share with other like-minded users,”
Kanaujia wrote on his blog. “There is no reason why users should go to/create
‘The Office’ community on MySpace when NBCU has the competitive advantage and the ability to provide a differentiated experience on NBC.com.”
OMG!! The advantage of a differentiated experience can be leveled by one blogger linking to that content.
I posted the following comment to Media Post:
Social networking is about is people having fun hanging around with their friends and other people just like them. People go to these sites because they are entertaining and because they tie into their identity.
Yes, the networks can do some killer sites around their shows, but these sites will not be the end-all be-all last word or even necessarily the “go to” place. The reason is because there are many different types of communities, and many of their properties are mutually exclusive.
For example, there are people who insist on communities where every piece of user generated content has been guaranteed “safe” by the community manager. Other people insist on the opposite and don't want to go anywhere near what they call censorship. Think of the red state/blue state divide and then add more passion to the arguments.
Good content is not the top deliverable of a community, the actual community is. This means the people and the tone are as important as content and the networks can’t guarantee that the right people show up at the right time. Yes, they have an advantage, but not a huge one.
...
This doesn't even get into the feelings of identity people have with different communities and also the drive, by some communities, to actually create content. (The Starwars Wiki). Some of those fans will want to stick with the canon and others use it as a jumping off base. There is every reason in the world why there is a vibrant MySpace community around The Office and it will continue to exist no matter what NBCU does.
Why don't the suits at NBCU hire some t-shirts and listen to them?
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