Communication

If a communicatee is at all interested in understanding a communicator and the communicatee misunderstands something the communicator communicates, it is almost always the fault of the communicator.

I need to communicate better.

“What Will The TV Spot Look Like?”

I was meeting with our investors today about Newsvine and the subject of product “explainability” came up. It seems that every time we think about adding a new feature to Newsvine, it becomes progressively harder to explain exactly what Newsvine is. This is a fairly common problem in product development, and if not dealt with swiftly can lead to consumer confusion and adoption issues.

One of our investors then proceeded to tell me how it works at Apple (he was behind a lot of Apple’s successful product marketing and development). He said:

“The answer to every product question that comes up at Apple is ‘What will the TV spot look like?'”

In other words, if you can’t think of a 30-second spot that neatly and efficiently explains your company, your product, or whatever other consumer-facing thing you happen to be working on, you aren’t building the right thing.

Refreshing.

Holy Headlines, CNN!

I’m not complaining or anything, but has anyone noticed how tabloidy the CNN.com front page has gotten lately? The subject matter is more topsy-turvy than ever and the headline writing seems deliberately offbeat.

“Libby’s Defense Tackles Bush’s Former Spokesman” (TACKLES?!?)

“Dead Soldier To Father Kid With Woman He Never Met”

“Idiot Window Washer Hangs By Toes 6 Floors Up”

A screenshot of the front page as of one minute ago is below:

Just to repeat, I’m not complaining, but I’ve definitely noticed a gradual change from CNN’s matter-of-fact hard news approach to a more entertainment-based approach over the last year. For better or for worse, I think most news outlets will move in the same direction if they aren’t already.

“Guaranteed in Stock” Debunked

I swear, I was *just* about to write a really positive post about Blockbuster Video’s New “Total Access” program (which I think is totally great and I will definitely try), but upon visiting a Blockbuster location this evening, I ran into another episode of Blockbuster ridiculousness I had to post about.

You see, Blockbuster has this promotion called “Guaranteed In Stock!”, which leads consumers to believe something along the lines of “If you come to a Blockbuster store for a really popular movie, we’ll have it in stock… guaranteed.” They even back it up by proclaiming that if it *isn’t* in stock, you get to rent it for free as soon as copies become available.

So you can imagine my surprise when I saw the display below at my local store:

What’s that? Two identical shelves, both 6-wide and 6-tall. On the left is Al Gore’s popular new documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”. On the right is a movie I’ve never even heard of called “John Tucker Must Die”. There are at least 40 copies of the obscure Tucker thing available and exactly ZERO copies of An Inconvenient Truth. And guess which one is “Guaranteed In Stock!”? Tucker, baby!

Seeing this display made me immediately suspicious of Blockbuster so I approached an employee about the situation:

Me: “I noticed that ‘Josh Tucker Will Die’ is guaranteed In stock and ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ is not… and yet, they both have the same amount of shelf space.”

Blockbuster Employee: “Yes, that is correct.”

Me: “So, you guys didn’t just remove the ‘Guaranteed In Stock’ thingie from ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ because it was inconveniently out of stock?”

Blockbuster Employee: “No. The only movies that are ‘Guaranteed In Stock’ are the ones which we order a certain number of. I think it’s 200.”

Me: “Ok… so the ‘Guaranteedness’ of Blockbuster movies has more to do with how many of them you order than how popular they may be?”

Blockbuster Employee: “Yep.”

Me: “Interesting. I’ll take Crash then.”

So the good news is that there’s nothing nefarious going on here. The bad news, however, is that Blockbuster still seems to be out of touch with its customer base. If you want to instill in me the trust that a popular movie *I want to see* is going to be in stock, then just make sure it’s in stock. Hopefully Total Access helps get this company back on track. It’s probably their last chance to crush Netflix.

Results from the Google AdSense Experiment

Well it’s been a week since I threw a Google ad into the header region of this site and the results are in. With just under 50,000 page views, my earnings were just under $100.

It was sort of a low traffic week with not a lot of posting, linkage, or commenting activity, but even so, $400 a month isn’t enough for me show that huge ad to everyone who comes to this site.

But still… it’s more than a few pennies so I wanted to come up with a solution which would let me continue to show the ad in some cases and not show it in other cases. I could frequency-cap it but that would change the design in the middle of a user session (not good). I could only show it a few days a week, but that would be a similarly inconsistent experience.

In the end, I came up with a happy solution: show the ad to everyone except subscribers to this blog. That way, people who come here often and have more than a passing interest in what is written here will get a nice, clean ad-free experience, while those who arrive here via searches for MySpace Layouts, sIFR, or other linkage will see the ad and in some cases help monetize it. This will likely result in a small revenue decline, but that’s of little concern to me.

Currently, I’m achieving this conditional ad serving by setting a three month cookie every time someone clicks on a link from my RSS feed. As long as that cookie is around, you should see no ads. I’m also considering extending the ad-free experience to every visitor who doesn’t come in with a referrer. That way, people who have Mike Industries bookmarked won’t see ads either.

That’s it. Happy Thanksgiving!

Experimenting with Ads (and Legitimate Asbestos Writings!)

Last night, I don’t know what hit me, but I decided to throw a Google Ad on this site. You can see it right up there at the top of your screen. It’s the first ever (and probably last ever) ad on Mike Industries and it’s there as an experiment more than anything else. I know a lot of bloggers who have experimented with ads only to take them down days, weeks, or months later, and I’m sure I will follow suit, but for now, there it is!

So far, I’ve been pretty impressed with Google’s targeting capability, not only applying “real estate specific” ads to posts about condos, but actually geo-specific as well, serving up spots for new condo developments in my home town. Good stuff.

So speaking about ad targeting and experimenting, what better time to write about the high-cost-per-click-topic of asbestos! Seriously!

In preparing to move into the new Mike Industries Global Headquarters, I had to take a sample of the popcorn ceiling down to an asbestos testing lab yesterday. Since my building was built in 1963, I was told there was a greater than 95% chance there would be asbestos in the ceilings. If the test turned out positive, I’d have to call a professional abatement crew in there in order to ensure the place was properly cleared of mesothelioma-causing fibers. The stuff is pretty nasty and is the cause of many ugly lawsuits and cancer diagnoses.

Shockingly, however, everything came back negative! No asbestos. So now it’s just a question of taking down the popcorn ceiling as fast as possible and repainting the concrete slab ceiling above it. Does anybody have any experience with painting and resurfacing concrete slab ceilings? Is it a day job? Two days? Three days? A week? Any good recommendations for contractors in Seattle?

Buying in a Softening Real Estate Market

That’s a lot of “For Sale” signs! This condo conversion near the Newsvine Global Headquarters has been on the market for about six months now.

Up until last month, I had been happily renting a great condo in the Lower Queen Anne area of Seattle. I had owned another condo until 2003 but sold it because of an extremely loud construction project breaking ground next door (another condo building). Rent was extremely reasonable at about $1300 a month, and when compared to the payments on a presumed purchase price of about $360,000, it was a comfortable living situation for someone who had just taken a 50% paycut to start their own company. A couple of months ago, however, the owner of the condo decided to move back to Seattle from North Dakota and hence, back into the condo. I was given plenty of notice and looked feverishly for a place to buy during the following two months, but the Seattle real estate market just didn’t produce anything I wanted for under a half million bucks.

During the last couple of weeks of my tenancy, I found an extremely nice place to purchase. It was a condo in the newly converted Queen Anne High School building. It’s a historical building like no other in Seattle and the unit I put a deposit down on had a great view of the Space Needle and was well situated in the building. Truly a one of a kind if you place great importance on historical significance in your living quarters. There were two problems with the unit, however, which caused me to bail out only a few days before my 20-day contract-binding window: it was just over $400k for 655 square feet and it wasn’t going to be ready until January or February. So even if I was able to rationalize living in such a small place, I’d have to move into an apartment for a few months while I waited for the unit to be done. Moving once sucks. Moving twice really sucks.

It was a tough decision to bail out, but since that day several weeks ago, I’ve noticed some things in the Seattle real estate market which have convinced me I made the right decision:
Read more…

Jesus Christ Has Registered For Newsvine

Ok, maybe not that Jesus, but who knows (e-mail exchange on the right).

Some good stuff has been happening around here lately though. Certainly not the second coming, but enough to warrant a post:

• We just released August’s earnings and the top Newsvine earner netted $414.27 for the month! Certainly beats AdSense! Hey, maybe letting users earn their own revenue might actually work.
• Newsvine made the front page of the Seattle Times today, paper and electronic editions. It’s an article by Kim Peterson about emerging forms of journalism and it’s worth a read.
• We also made Scrivs’ list of the Top 10 Web 2.0 Winners, so we’re obviously quite thankful for that praise.
• The summer has been great to us, which is rare for news sites. While most news sites experience seasonal downturns when the weather turns nice and people are out of school, we did almost a half million unique users in August and have been up month-over-month for the entire summer.
• If anyone’s going to be in Washington D.C. in a couple of weeks, I’ll be speaking on a Washington Post moderated panel with Jeff Jarvis, Mike Arrington, and Herndon Graddick at the Online News Association Conference… apparently the largest journalism conference ever produced. I’m psyched.
• Newsvine user Zaki is now reporting from Kabul. Good stuff.
• We have some really good stuff to release in the next few weeks. Biggest release since the customizable user columns.

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The Future of Web Apps Summit

If you’re going to be down in the Bay Area on September 13th or 14th, grab yourself a ticket to the Carson Workshops “Future of Web Apps” Summit and come discuss what changes are in store for the web applications and services of tomorrow.

I’ll be the lone idiot on the bill, surrounded by the likes of The Crunchmaster, The Diggmaster, The FlickrMastr and several others.

I’m extremely psyched about this particular conference not only for its interesting and relevant subject matter, but also because it’s the first conference in about a year where I haven’t drawn “the hangover slot”… or, the first session of the morning. My session will be between 5pm and 5:45pm on September 13th and we’ll be talking about user-driven content. Particularly, what about it is working, what about it isn’t working, and what the current state of things can teach us about where the whole movement is going. It’s also the last session of the day so after it’s over, we can all walk over to a bar and user-generate some drinks. We can even use the wisdom of the crowds to decide what to order. Should be fun!

Blockbuster Blockheadedness

Excerpt from a conversation I just had at my local Blockbuster Video store:

Clerk: “You’re not in our system. Have you rented here in the last three months?”

Me: “Ummm, no, it’s probably been about six.”

Clerk: “We’ll have to ask you to fill out an application for a new account then.”

Me: “You mean you just delete accounts if people don’t rent for three months?”

Clerk: “Yes.”

Me: “Why would you ever do that?”

Clerk: “You know… to keep the database small.”

Somehow I don’t think Blockbuster will have to worry about that for too much longer.