Mashable.com ponders on leaking of American Gangster
Kristin over at Mashable.com writes on Denzel Washington Film Leaked: Whose Fault is it This Time?
My question would be just how many people will actually end up viewing this “leaked” film prior to (or after) the release of the film in the theatres? My guess is not nearly enough to make a single dent in the box office gross.
Another relatively “educated” guess is that the people that do end up seeing the leaked film are NOT people that would spend a dime to see the theatre version. And if that (risky) assumption is true (lets just agree for now it is) then again, the film is not losing any money from the fact that it was leaked.
In fact, I believe there is a certain amount of “leakage” (not sure why I’m fixated on leak today!) that is allowed to transpire solely for the press coverage that gets afforded to the act itself, and consequently to the project. Now I’m not saying this is the case with AG at all. But think about it: if my above assumptions are true, and Universal is NOT going to lose any real money to speak of, and will net a bunch of media placements (this mashable story is but one of the many to come) then the only other derivative aspect of this “leak” (there it is again!) is that the people illegally viewing the film early are going to talk about it to all of their friends.
So, my conclusion (long and drawn out as it has been!) is that the only way (in this case) Universal is really going to be upset about this film showing on the Net early, is if it is not a very good film. If it’s bad, it will get negative “early reviews” and THAT is what will really hurt the box office sales; not the fact that a dribble of folks downloaded and watched it ahead of time.
Of course these are just my thoughts. I could be in left field (on Pluto!)
Wendy’s growing her blog network
You should definitely read eMoms at home founder, Wendy Piersall’s “What have I learned in 6 weeks of running a mini blog network
” if you have ANY desires whatsoever of growing your blog into something larger than a singularly focused collection of posts.
Why do I recommend this to you? My friend and former business partner, Joseph Cizek and I had hoped when we launched this site at the beginning of 2007 to immediately be able to have our own mini blog network focusing on 8 areas we had decided were core, necessary “attributes” that would allow for one to get better at doing whatever they wanted to be doing online (or offline for that matter).
We spent a lot of time figuring out our game plan. We spent even more time figuring out how to highly modify our WordPress Themes in order to display our content in unique and interesting ways. We spent a lot of time discussing the focus of the 8 bgAttributes and what sort of content should be generated in each area. We spent a lot of time learning that we wanted to make a distinction between shorter posts, which we decided to call “Notes” and longer posts that would be known as “Articles”. We thought long and hard about how we would monetize the site, and eventually came up with the idea of our very own marketplace called Trader Jim’s.
In case you’re not catching the drift here, we spent a lot of time doing everything but what Wendy and countless others have done with their online endeavors: create content. There’s no way eMoms could even consider creating a mini network of blogs if they didn’t have the bloggers in place creating the content they have been doing for as long as they have been. That was our challenge.
And now the “magic is gone”, and Joseph and I have decided to go our separate ways on the blogging network stuff. We continue to develop on client projects together, as well as collaborating on some potential business ideas. But what we don’t have is a growing thriving blogging network.
And that’s okay. Not everyone can create and maintain such beasts. Wendy is right to be a bit outside of her comfort zone, but I say good for her. Go for the expansion of your sphere of influence, and grow your business, whatever it is. I look forward to her continued success and am very excited that she has problems like whether or not to take on a partner (with money, I imagine!), a loan or equity financing. If you are building a business, you want these sorts of “challenges”. Trust me on that one!
View from Verde Santa Fe Driving Range
Still learning how to use the new Samsung NV7. It does SOOOO much! But like my golf game, I just have to continue to work on one small thing at a time. Master each element and then move on.
And I definitely hit the ball very nicely today (well, about 85% of them, anyways!)
Pay attention to the river of (garbagey) news!
While agreeing mostly with Anne Zelenka in her post today, “A World of Information Possibility
” my impression is that she really states the obvious with her comment “think of watching a river rush by”. She’s specifically referring to how to best consume all subscribed news and blog posts. Supposedly, according to Ms. Z, there is just too much information and that “most of it is garbage”.
Now, I don’t think that most of it is garbage and if it is and you have a lot of it in your feed reader of choice, what does that make you? A garbage man (or woman)? We all subscribe to a sites feed only to later remove it when we become disillusioned about the quality (or quantity) of the content. Heck, I’ve removed feeds because I have found that the truncated posts did not provide me enough motivation to click through to their site to finish the read. Is that a source of garbage? Probably not. More like an irritation if nothing else. But not garbage.
Oh, and since my subscriber numbers are pretty much non-existent, my words evidently fall into the garbage heap as well. Not sure how one would ever get off the heap if what they post is all crap and no one is ever to subscribe to them, and their numbers never grow to the Scobleizer level.
Onward. My friend Eric Norlin of defrag fame 
has an interesting, short post about a new activity coming to be known as “lobbyconning“.
Now anyone who subscribes to the very non-garbage posts of Robert Scoble realize he spends vast amounts of money to attend conferences all over and seems to NEVER actually attend any seminar or speech, but just hangs out in the hallways. I’m going to have to go to one that he is at just to see if he even rents a hotel room ;).
Isn’t this sort of focusing of attention the same thing that Anne Z. is referring to in her post? Aren’t those who are lobbyconning simply choosing what part of the river they want to consume? I think so. And the water is more expensive from those rivers than from the readers (but I’ll assume the after parties are better too!)
Finally Nick Bradbury somehow got into my river of news stream (thanks to Scoble’s shared feed) with his talk about various feed reader applications supporting APML. Nick captures the sentiment of this post and its referrer posts when he states “I’ve long been convinced that RSS aggregators can help people overcome information overload by first paying attention to what a user is reading, and then using that information to make better decisions about what might (or might not) be important to that user.”
Admittedly, I have to learn more about APML and just exactly how it will help me to know what “everyone is paying attention to…” but clearly this will help to “uncover new and potentially important trends”. But will I have to do that? Or will there be a new wave of helpful garbage men women that will sort through the trends and help me to pay more attention to what I should/need to be paying attention to?
Very interesting day. And it’s just the start of the week!
L.A.Update
I’ve been here in Los Angeles for one full day, now. And I have to say that I am really, really bad at remembering to carry my camera with me. Perhaps I feel that there will be an air of “tourist” look about me if I am carrying it all the time?
Need to think about that. I do know that if I set aside specific time to go for a photowalk, then I’ll at least start getting more into the routine of specifically having my camera with me for the express purpose of taking photos and improving my shot taking skill.
And speaking of shot skills, I was able to hit a nice LARGE bucket of golf balls today and while not a pro yet, I am continuing to improve small little increments of various parts of my game. My last time out, I really was able to work on keeping my head very still, which is so important for allowing you to strike the ball well.
This time I suddenly was very aware of my grip on the club. For several moments I really felt like I was able to hold the clubs without choking the life out of them, and at the same time maintain very nice control of the club head at impact. Maintaining consistency with the grip wasn’t as constant as my head and shoulder control, but I’m imagining that is going to come as well.
Neil also pointed out that I should keep my feet a little more quiet and work on balance. So, I’ll have plenty to follow up on when I get back home.
Oh, we met with GlobeCast today. An interesting experience sitting in a room with Rosie, the account manager, and two very French technical engineers. Half the fun was getting them to understand my concepts, and then figure out if we might be able to make that happen within their facilities. Not sure at this point, but we’ll have to get some information back from them to make any further decisions.
Tomorrow we are supposed to meet with Vic to talk about taking his company’s content online with Narrowstep. That should be an interesting interview. Will update you afterwards 
London Sightseeing for next to nothing
56 FREE attractions that would cost you much, much more than NOTHING if you don’t have a London Sightseeing 
pass the next time you are on that side of the pond?! Even if each site cost you a minimum of 5 bucks (not sure what that converts to in pounds or euros or whatever wampam they use over there 
), FREE is a heck of a deal. Especially for the frugal at heart (me!).
As we are getting closer to launching The Fight Channel, I realize that a good part of my job is going to be traveling around the globe to participate in fight broadcasts near and far. When I start thinking about this, I realize there is a great opportunity for me to start seeing the world. When I come across offers like the London Pass I get excited. Then I bookmark the opportunity. And if I really have a high opinion of it, I’ll write up a quick little post sharing it with my friends.
Oh, and lest I forget, there are at least as many discount op’s on everything from eating places (that they don’t have in Cottonwood, AZ USA) to photo walking and brass rubbing. Not really sure I want my brass rubbed, but with the London Pass you can get £4.50 worth of it for free. I might have to try a brass rubbing when I get over to England just because I can.
I think my favorite part of the London Pass website, however is the map mashup with all of the attractions listed. I tend to be one of those types that likes to have everything planned out, mapped out, printed out, and clean itineraries created. Heck I can do all of that before I even leave the good ol’ USA. Me likey!
Implicit Web 3.0 Defragged!
Today was my “uh huh” moment. I guess it actually started yesterday with Jason Calacanis’ rather simplistic attempt to get the 3.0 definition space going. I can only imagine he now gets tons of back links and juice from that post and declaration. And that’s cool, don’t get me wrong.
And this morning I read Josh, the Redeye VC’s take on The Implicit Web. While longer, it is clear, and gets much more to the heart of what the next wave of evolution online is to be about. We clearly are in that slow dissolve from the 2.0 paradigm to whatever Web 3.0 Nonsense (according to Fred) title will be bestowed upon the phase.
And I’ve just read about Brad Feld’s emotional response 2.0 (to) Labels that mean nothing. And I think he has a good point, however, I also believe that those of us participating in these conversations are clearly the leading edge. The moniker is NOT for us! It is for all of the rest of the curve beyond the chasm we are going to help bridge. Those people need something short and sweet and descriptive in order to participate in the conversation (and all else which follows!)
However, for me, I’ve been wondering what the hell defrag “really” is to be about, as well as that concept of implicit web. All I can say is that if you are not “getting it” just keep receiving it. Subscribe to this site, and Jason’s feed, and Fred and Josh’s as well as others. Eventually all of the nebulous concepts will gel and you’ll get it.
Of course, just like college algebra and trig, you’ll probably lose the concept pretty quickly! (I still don’t know how I passed those classes!) But continuing to read about it from various sources will add layer upon layer of knowledgeable understanding.
Do you get it? If so, please share what your take on the next wave of online evolution might look like!
What will the next 5 comments be like?
Have you ever just tried to think about what the comments your posts were going to get? I try not to write with that in mind, and at the same time, I do think about creating posts that not only elicit responses, but certain types of response.
Not sure what sort of responses, if any this conversation might get, but let’s see!
