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  <title><![CDATA[Random Apple]]></title>
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  <link href="http://hyperboloid.github.com/"/>
  <updated>2013-12-08T22:12:00-08:00</updated>
  <id>http://hyperboloid.github.com/</id>
  <author>
    <name><![CDATA[Michael Wilson]]></name>
    <email><![CDATA[eternalprogrammer@gmail.com]]></email>
  </author>
  <generator uri="http://octopress.org/">Octopress</generator>

  
  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[Photographs are a Medium]]></title>
    <link href="http://hyperboloid.github.com/blog/photographs-are-a-medium/"/>
    <updated>2013-12-07T19:00:00-08:00</updated>
    <id>http://hyperboloid.github.com/blog/photographs-are-a-medium</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>It’s been well over a year since the Instagram acquisition, and yet there is still a strong feeling that entrepreneurs should not be building ‘photo sharing apps’.</p>

<p>But photos are just a medium, like text and video. There is still plenty of room for innovation even in text-based communication.</p>

<p>There is a difference between the medium and its distribution mechanism, and many people conflate the two concepts because they come packaged together. Over time, there are improvements to either the medium or the distribution mechanism, and this is what causes the rise of new communication tools.</p>

<p>For example, Twitter took an existing popular medium (text messages) and combined it with a new distribution mechanism  (public broadcast). Instagram took a newly popular medium (high quality photographs), and created a new distribution mechanism (mobile).</p>

<p>Looking ahead, mobile is where innovation in communication tools is currently taking place. So what sets mobile content creation apart from desktop content? Authenticity and ephemerality.</p>

<p>The internet is full of millions of photographs, but given how far desktop publishing and editing tools have come, it is becoming increasingly rare to see fresh and authentic photographs among all the memes and photoshopped pictures. Authentic photographs can be very powerful. And they are arguably the easiest content to create on mobile. They capture something real and temporary, which is very compelling.</p>

<p>I believe there will be many more types of visual media created in the future, given evolving tools (touch screens) and the importance of language-independent communication in an increasingly international world.</p>

<p>As some final food for thought, here are some examples of innovations in visual interaction that I thought were interesting:</p>

<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rando/id588683021">Rando</a> is an anonymous photo sharing app. It has a rating system with a slider that turns frowns upside-down, depending on how much you like the photo.</p>

<p><img src="http://hyperboloid.github.com/images/rando.png" title="Rando" alt="Rando" /></p>

<p>Similarly, <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/knotch/id579744181">Knotch</a> is an opinion sharing app that has a rating system based on colors.</p>

<p><img src="http://hyperboloid.github.com/images/knotch.png" title="Knotch" alt="Knotch" /></p>

<p><a href="http://ciid.dk/education/portfolio/idp11/final-projects/feel-me/">Feel Me</a> is an experimental concept exploring the way two people can connect over the internet by touching the same place on a screen.</p>

<p><img src="http://hyperboloid.github.com/images/feelme.png" title="Feel Me" alt="Feel Me" /></p>
]]></content>
  </entry>
  
  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[Advertising Models]]></title>
    <link href="http://hyperboloid.github.com/blog/advertising-models/"/>
    <updated>2013-02-23T16:06:00-08:00</updated>
    <id>http://hyperboloid.github.com/blog/advertising-models</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>In today&#8217;s age, the idea that a business can offer a product for a reduced price by subsidizing the cost with advertisements is quite prevalent. But where did this business model originate?</p>

<p>It turns out the first large-scale use of this business model was introduced by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Day_(publisher)">Benjamin Day</a> with the introduction of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_press">penny press</a>.<sup><a href="#fn-1" id="fnref-1">1</a></sup> He reduced the cost of a newspaper from 6 cents to a penny, and printed at the top of every page, &#8220;The object of this paper is to lay before the public, at a price within the means of every one, all the news of the day, and at the same time offer an advantageous medium for advertisements.&#8221; This resulted in quite a remarkable change in the distribution of information, and has sustained newspapers successfully for many decades.</p>

<p>One important drawback when relying on advertising is that it inevitably decreases during a recession. This most recent recession saw a 50% cut in ad revenue for newspapers, and because of the prevalence of online display advertising, it seems that this model will never recover.</p>

<p>Now let&#8217;s look at online advertising models. Initially, a successful online ad was measured in pageviews, mirroring the print advertising model. There have been some improvements in terms of analytics, but from my perspective online advertising has not yet significantly changed the effectiveness of advertising. It has simply reduced the cost of an advertisement without significantly increasing the volume, which is why it has been so detrimental to publishers relying on a percentage of the adspend.</p>

<p>I argue that as the economy recovers, we will see a growing gap between the amount of money an advertiser was spending on traditional print ads and the amount of money spent on online display ads. This will leave a large margin (almost 50%) for experimental adspend. We have already seen this with the widely available Groupon campaigns.</p>

<p>This new advertising model is still very much up for grabs, but I believe the winner will utilize all the new data being collected about the consumer, and pair them better than ever with advertisers. With the ubiquity of mobile devices, I don&#8217;t believe display advertising is going to be viable for much longer, even digitally.</p>

<p>So what is the solution? I&#8217;ve just mentioned that there will be a large surplus of adspend in near future &#8211; so why not spend it directly on the consumer? I believe that the best utilization of this surplus will be to offer FREE goods and services to consumers for both customer acquisition and retention. The company that can most effectively distribute these goods and services will steal the online ad market from today&#8217;s players. This means predicting the cost of acquision for individual customers, their cost of retention, and their ability to bring new customers on board through word of mouth. This is a tall order, and will require the joint effort of people from many disparate disciplines. Groupon very nearly had the right idea, but unfortunately they were missing the biggest piece of the puzzle &#8211; proper targeting.</p>

<p>What this means for the newspapers is that the adspend is not coming back. They will need to find a way to distribute their content more efficiently than ever before.</p>

<p><sup id="fn-1">1</sup><sub>Some credit should be awarded to Horatio David Shepard for envisioning a penny press, but it was Benjamin Day who ultimately commercialized it successfully with advertisement. Shepard&#8217;s penny press failed within 3 weeks because it simply relied upon economies of scale. <a href="#fnref-1"> &#8617;</a></sub></p>
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