By now everyone knows that print journalism is in serious trouble. By "everyone knows" I mean "the story has been aired widely enough that it's time to file it away under a shorthand version and move on to something else." Might or might not mean it's actually the case.
Enter Politico.com, which looks like a typical case of new media uprooting the old. Founded by ex-print journalists, it is now a go-to place for anyone who wants to find out lots and lots and lots of the minutiae of Washington politics. It came to public notice during the 2008 election but has since carved out a niche, with more White House reporters (8) than any other single organization.
As a business, it is more or less at break-even, not bad for such a young startup in an inherently cut-throat field. The punchline? About half its revenue comes from its print edition. Without it, Politico would be losing fairly serious money.
Folks, I'll admit I really don't know what to make of all this. On the one hand, pushing bits over the internet has got to be much, much cheaper than putting ink on paper and distributing the paper, even over a geographically small area. So I would tend to expect a natural evolution from print toward bits with -- and this is where I beat my not-so-disruptive technology drum yet again -- largely the same structures forming online as off, and largely the same players.
On the other hand, are the facts. The facts (in my reading, at least) bear out the not-so-disruptive part nicely. The print-to-bits part, however, seems to be going remarkably slowly, even backsliding in some instances (Politico and books published from blogs, for example). Kindle does not seem to have taken the world by storm, yet.
The obvious next step is to try to quantify all this. How much money is going to bits and print, respectively as the years go on? The analyses are out there, doubtless. Perhaps Alpha can turn them up?
Monday, July 13, 2009
Saturday, July 11, 2009
How much money is YouTube not making?
I previously mentioned that YouTube is losing money. This was based mostly on having run across Credit Suisse's estimate of $470 million in losses. John Paczkowski of the Digital Daily disputes this, saying that Credit Suisse vastly overestimated YouTube's infrastructure costs and that Google has no incentive to correct this impression since doing so would lead its partners to demand a bigger share of revenue.
The argument seems plausible. One of Google's competitive advantages is its ability to buy bandwidth in bulk and its expertise in hosting hordes of servers cheaply. So, taking this into account, the picture changes considerably: YouTube is probably losing more like $170 million (the article says $174 million, but I'm not convinced I see three significant digits).
Now, if I had just told you that YouTube was losing $170 million, that might have sounded bad. But given that they might have been losing $470 million but it turns out it's only $170 million, surely that's not so bad, right? Kind of like getting a $470 pair of shoes for only $170. Such a deal, no?
The key question here is whether Google can afford it and if so, whether they want to. As far as I can tell, the answer to both is yes. With net income of around $4 billion, $170 million looks relatively small. $470 million would be harder to ignore.
The argument seems plausible. One of Google's competitive advantages is its ability to buy bandwidth in bulk and its expertise in hosting hordes of servers cheaply. So, taking this into account, the picture changes considerably: YouTube is probably losing more like $170 million (the article says $174 million, but I'm not convinced I see three significant digits).
Now, if I had just told you that YouTube was losing $170 million, that might have sounded bad. But given that they might have been losing $470 million but it turns out it's only $170 million, surely that's not so bad, right? Kind of like getting a $470 pair of shoes for only $170. Such a deal, no?
The key question here is whether Google can afford it and if so, whether they want to. As far as I can tell, the answer to both is yes. With net income of around $4 billion, $170 million looks relatively small. $470 million would be harder to ignore.
Wolfram Alpha on NPR
A while ago I was given a link to an interview between Robert Siegel and Stephen Wolfram about Wolfram Alpha (thanks, Earl!). I finally got around to listening to it (thanks, mp3 player!).
I liked both the questions and the answers. I particularly thought it was interesting that Alpha arbitrarily decides that Bill James should be answered by a statistical comparison between the two first names Bill and James, while Henry James turns up a statistical analysis of the author Henry James's output.
Given that Alpha can do both, it has to decide which to do, or offer a choice. Offering too many choices makes a powerful system hard to use, which is obviously not what they're after. Most likely Alpha has Henry James in its database of authors, but not Bill James, the small irony being that Bill James is a renowned baseball statistician.
There's also a cool if somewhat obvious easter egg at the end.
I liked both the questions and the answers. I particularly thought it was interesting that Alpha arbitrarily decides that Bill James should be answered by a statistical comparison between the two first names Bill and James, while Henry James turns up a statistical analysis of the author Henry James's output.
Given that Alpha can do both, it has to decide which to do, or offer a choice. Offering too many choices makes a powerful system hard to use, which is obviously not what they're after. Most likely Alpha has Henry James in its database of authors, but not Bill James, the small irony being that Bill James is a renowned baseball statistician.
There's also a cool if somewhat obvious easter egg at the end.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Anyone(*) can become president ...
... but only 44 have. If that doesn't work out you can always put together a hit viral video on YouTube. Chris Wilson explores the odds on that one:
Note also that Wilson is sampling all YouTube videos, including videos from record labels, clips from commercial broadcasts and so forth, not just potential viral videos.
So how does YouTube make its money? Well, actually, it doesn't.
*I feel compelled to state the obvious: Quite apart from the hurdles of actually getting elected, or even nominated by a major party, this particular sweepstakes is only open to "natural born citizens" of the US who are 35 or older (If you were a citizen when the constitution was ratified, you're also eligible regardless of where you were born. You'd probably be also able to draw a lot of YouTube hits.).
On Friday, May 22, I used Web-crawling software to capture the URLs of more than 10,000 YouTube videos as soon as they were uploaded. Over the next month, I checked in regularly to see how many views each video had gotten. After 31 days, only 250 of my YouTube hatchlings had more than 1,000 views—that comes out to 3.1 percent after you exclude the videos that were taken down before the month was up. A mere 25, 0.3 percent, had more than 10,000 views. Meanwhile, 65 percent of videos failed to break 50 views; 2.8 percent had zero views. That's the good news: Your video is slightly more likely to get more than 1,000 views than it is to get none at all.The theory behind the "long tail" is that it can be just as profitable to go after (in this case) the many videos with few hits as the few with many hits. Maybe. But the 280 with no views are unlikely to bring in much. Given that there's at least some overhead per video, it's not even clear that the 6500 or so with 50 views or fewer are worth going after. So that leaves the top 32% or so, pretty much the opposite of the long tail.
Note also that Wilson is sampling all YouTube videos, including videos from record labels, clips from commercial broadcasts and so forth, not just potential viral videos.
So how does YouTube make its money? Well, actually, it doesn't.
*I feel compelled to state the obvious: Quite apart from the hurdles of actually getting elected, or even nominated by a major party, this particular sweepstakes is only open to "natural born citizens" of the US who are 35 or older (If you were a citizen when the constitution was ratified, you're also eligible regardless of where you were born. You'd probably be also able to draw a lot of YouTube hits.).
Sunday, July 5, 2009
The new NASA/METI map
NASA and Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) have just released the most complete topographic map of Earth, ever. The dataset covers 99% of the Earth's surface, from 83 degrees north to 83 degrees south, with elevation measured every 30 meters. Put this together with a good GPS and adequate storage, and you've got a never-lost device that would have seemed like sheer magic during most of recorded history.
In purely technical terms, cartography and navigation have seen revolutionary changes in the past few decades. In practical terms, the picture is a bit less clear. Most of us spend most of our time in a few, fairly small, well-known areas, a fact which leads to some interesting implications on privacy. Outside that comfort zone, a GPS can certainly be useful in finding one's way through unfamiliar streets, but a printed map will do in a pinch, or in cases of absolute desparate need, stopping somewhere and asking directions.
Similarly, commercial shipping and aviation follow well-known routes and for decades have had specialized equipment for staying on course. Radio navigation is about a century old. Satellite navigation works better and has been taking over, particularly on the seas. I'm not an expert on shipping and transport, but I have no doubt it has opened up and will continue to open up new possibilities.
For example, the FAA and its sibling agencies are working to enable point-to-point "air taxi" services which forgo the established flight corridors and fly directly between small airports. This has been in the works for years, though. The hurdles are not only technical, but legal and economic.
So ... the new map database is definitly cool, and making it freely available to the world is even cooler. If I'm planning an expedition to Patagonia or the Yukon, I'll definitely want to consult it. For my morning commute, not so much.
In purely technical terms, cartography and navigation have seen revolutionary changes in the past few decades. In practical terms, the picture is a bit less clear. Most of us spend most of our time in a few, fairly small, well-known areas, a fact which leads to some interesting implications on privacy. Outside that comfort zone, a GPS can certainly be useful in finding one's way through unfamiliar streets, but a printed map will do in a pinch, or in cases of absolute desparate need, stopping somewhere and asking directions.
Similarly, commercial shipping and aviation follow well-known routes and for decades have had specialized equipment for staying on course. Radio navigation is about a century old. Satellite navigation works better and has been taking over, particularly on the seas. I'm not an expert on shipping and transport, but I have no doubt it has opened up and will continue to open up new possibilities.
For example, the FAA and its sibling agencies are working to enable point-to-point "air taxi" services which forgo the established flight corridors and fly directly between small airports. This has been in the works for years, though. The hurdles are not only technical, but legal and economic.
So ... the new map database is definitly cool, and making it freely available to the world is even cooler. If I'm planning an expedition to Patagonia or the Yukon, I'll definitely want to consult it. For my morning commute, not so much.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Stealing the pot
This one is old news, but it touches on two themes of interest here. The story is the online poker cheating scandal of 2007.
Under not-so-disruptive technology, consider the very existence of online poker. Many people want to gamble. Governments tend to regulate gambling. There's a lot of money in gambling. Ergo, there is a strong incentive to exploit any available gray area to get a game going, for example by running it in an area where no particular government has clear jurisdiction. This has traditionally included rivers and the high seas, but the internet will do nicely.
Under anonymity, consider how the cheating happened and how it was detected. In online poker, as with message boards and other online games, you go by a handle. Someone named, say, Potripper could be anyone. Your next-door neighbor, a dentist in Saskatchewan, the prime minister of a G8 country, anyone. In this particular case, Potripper was someone with special privileges who could see all the cards on the table. This was of considerable help in knowing when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em.
Back under not-so-disruptive technology, the reason Potripper could get away with this is that the game was operating in a legal gray area, but players, at least once they'd become comfortable with the setup, assumed the game was on the level. Most of the time it was, but most of the time isn't all of the time. Again, this is not new with the internet. It's very, very old.
And finally, back under anonymity, how did the cheats get caught? They got greedy (strictly speaking, this should also go under not-so-disruptive). Players started to notice that some accounts were playing suspiciously. Experienced poker players soon learn to play conservatively most of the time. Potripper was making wild bets, bets that should have failed often enough to lose significant money. But Potripper's big, reckless bets never managed to lose.
You could see it on a scatterplot. Everyone else at the table was in the same general area. The good players were in positive territory, but not very far. The poorer players were in the negative territory, but not very far. Potripper was way, way off from the norm. About fifteen standard deviations off. The odds this would happen by chance were beyond minuscule.
Anonymity requires cover. For a person to remain anonymous, there need to be plenty of people who could possibly be that person. Looking at a scatterplot, there was no way to single out a particular skillful or unskilled player. If the cheat had been content with winning a little here and a little there, sometimes losing a bit, it would have been much harder to detect that there was something amiss. But when there's one, and only one, data point in the "so unlikely it's not even funny" area, it's dead easy to identify Potripper with the cheat.
Matching the handle to the cheating was easy. That left matching the handle to the person, and for that the players investigating caught a break. In response to a complaint, the poker site sent out an exceptionally detailed history of the game play, one that included IP addresses of the participants. That linked up behavior, handle, and IP. The IP was owned by the poker site.
The claim was made that a consultant had cheated "to prove a point". Well ... white hats do routinely try to exploit systems with the intent of passing the information on to the interested parties, for example in the case of MD5 SSL certificates. Oncwe they find the weakness, they make a concerted effort to ensure that it doesn't get exploited for ill. The cheats didn't exactly do this. They instead used a number of handles over the course of months or years to steal millions of dollars. So no, sorry. That's not proving a point. That's out-and-out fraud [I should point out that I take no position here as to who was defrauding whom, but clearly someone was defrauding somebody].
Had they been less greedy, they would probably never have been caught. Conversely, less greedy cheats (or the same ones, having toned it down) may still be at it. Caveat bettor.
Under not-so-disruptive technology, consider the very existence of online poker. Many people want to gamble. Governments tend to regulate gambling. There's a lot of money in gambling. Ergo, there is a strong incentive to exploit any available gray area to get a game going, for example by running it in an area where no particular government has clear jurisdiction. This has traditionally included rivers and the high seas, but the internet will do nicely.
Under anonymity, consider how the cheating happened and how it was detected. In online poker, as with message boards and other online games, you go by a handle. Someone named, say, Potripper could be anyone. Your next-door neighbor, a dentist in Saskatchewan, the prime minister of a G8 country, anyone. In this particular case, Potripper was someone with special privileges who could see all the cards on the table. This was of considerable help in knowing when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em.
Back under not-so-disruptive technology, the reason Potripper could get away with this is that the game was operating in a legal gray area, but players, at least once they'd become comfortable with the setup, assumed the game was on the level. Most of the time it was, but most of the time isn't all of the time. Again, this is not new with the internet. It's very, very old.
And finally, back under anonymity, how did the cheats get caught? They got greedy (strictly speaking, this should also go under not-so-disruptive). Players started to notice that some accounts were playing suspiciously. Experienced poker players soon learn to play conservatively most of the time. Potripper was making wild bets, bets that should have failed often enough to lose significant money. But Potripper's big, reckless bets never managed to lose.
You could see it on a scatterplot. Everyone else at the table was in the same general area. The good players were in positive territory, but not very far. The poorer players were in the negative territory, but not very far. Potripper was way, way off from the norm. About fifteen standard deviations off. The odds this would happen by chance were beyond minuscule.
Anonymity requires cover. For a person to remain anonymous, there need to be plenty of people who could possibly be that person. Looking at a scatterplot, there was no way to single out a particular skillful or unskilled player. If the cheat had been content with winning a little here and a little there, sometimes losing a bit, it would have been much harder to detect that there was something amiss. But when there's one, and only one, data point in the "so unlikely it's not even funny" area, it's dead easy to identify Potripper with the cheat.
Matching the handle to the cheating was easy. That left matching the handle to the person, and for that the players investigating caught a break. In response to a complaint, the poker site sent out an exceptionally detailed history of the game play, one that included IP addresses of the participants. That linked up behavior, handle, and IP. The IP was owned by the poker site.
The claim was made that a consultant had cheated "to prove a point". Well ... white hats do routinely try to exploit systems with the intent of passing the information on to the interested parties, for example in the case of MD5 SSL certificates. Oncwe they find the weakness, they make a concerted effort to ensure that it doesn't get exploited for ill. The cheats didn't exactly do this. They instead used a number of handles over the course of months or years to steal millions of dollars. So no, sorry. That's not proving a point. That's out-and-out fraud [I should point out that I take no position here as to who was defrauding whom, but clearly someone was defrauding somebody].
Had they been less greedy, they would probably never have been caught. Conversely, less greedy cheats (or the same ones, having toned it down) may still be at it. Caveat bettor.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Still not twittering
I recently said that Twitter was a crucial part, but not the only crucial part, of getting information out of Iran (and in similar situations). Since then, this has only been reconfirmed. Twitter, FaceBook, YouTube, Flickr, the blogosphere and other "new media" have played a central role in events.
So why don't I have a Twitter account? It's a simple case of the general vs. the particular. In general, Twitter has been highly useful (so far, the Iran story still seems to get more traffic Celebrity du Jour). But I still don't see a particular need. I just don't have a pressing need to send short messages to an indeterminate group of interested people.
If I want to send a short message to a co-worker, I walk over and tell them, or send an email. In a previous job, not everyone was in the same office, so we used IM a lot. If I want to send a short message to a personal friend, I call them or email them. If I want to fire an arrow into the virtual air for anyone to catch (watch that sharp point -- this is what comes of mixing metaphors), I write a blog post. I find I have time to do that every few days (the baker's dozen was a bit of an anomaly).
Your milage may vary. If you're a news provider, a minor celebrity, a street protestor, someone with an active online social life, or probably many other kinds of person, it does vary. So far, though, I haven't found myself in any of those groups.
So why don't I have a Twitter account? It's a simple case of the general vs. the particular. In general, Twitter has been highly useful (so far, the Iran story still seems to get more traffic Celebrity du Jour). But I still don't see a particular need. I just don't have a pressing need to send short messages to an indeterminate group of interested people.
If I want to send a short message to a co-worker, I walk over and tell them, or send an email. In a previous job, not everyone was in the same office, so we used IM a lot. If I want to send a short message to a personal friend, I call them or email them. If I want to fire an arrow into the virtual air for anyone to catch (watch that sharp point -- this is what comes of mixing metaphors), I write a blog post. I find I have time to do that every few days (the baker's dozen was a bit of an anomaly).
Your milage may vary. If you're a news provider, a minor celebrity, a street protestor, someone with an active online social life, or probably many other kinds of person, it does vary. So far, though, I haven't found myself in any of those groups.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Why are there blogs in print?
A while ago I asked "Why is there still print?". Asked, but didn't really answer. If books area test case for going digital (again leaving aside that text is fundamentally digital), then a blog, which is already available online for free, has got to be the acid test. Why on earth would one put a blog in print?
In Conversational Reading, a blog in form if not name, Levi Stahl examines the role of self-publishing (that is, print self-publishing) in putting blogs in print and tells why he has bought not one, but two self-published books adapted from blogs. Essentially, there's something about a book.
It's nice to have an index in the print edition, though.
In Conversational Reading, a blog in form if not name, Levi Stahl examines the role of self-publishing (that is, print self-publishing) in putting blogs in print and tells why he has bought not one, but two self-published books adapted from blogs. Essentially, there's something about a book.
It's nice to have an index in the print edition, though.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Your blog post published successfully! Now look at these ads.
Somewhere along the line, blogger has started advertising to bloggers. Every time I publish a post now, I see a prominent box in what used to be a nice, empty space to the right of the page. In the box are a handful of Google ads driven by the content of the just-published post [The box has been there for quite a while, but it's only lately that I've seen ads in it. This may be because I happened to post on a couple of topics people are actually interested in. I promise it won't happen again.].
Google itself may be a brilliant example of "dumb is smarter", but Google AdWords are generally evidence that sometimes dumb is just dumb. That's probably not just due to AdWords as a technology, but to the business model of selling words to whoever will buy them up, and to some advertisers' practice of buying up anything and everything. Put it all together and Lucky's speech in waiting for Godot can start to look strangely coherent.
I'm only slightly annoyed at seeing my nice pretty blank space sullied by ads. What strikes me more is that Google has determined that bloggers are a market. This seems obvious in retrospect, as there are millions of us, but it wasn't supposed to work that way, was it? Put up a blog, watch millions of people read it, clean up by selling ads. Wasn't that the story? Come to find out that in a world where there are hordes of writers and no gurantee of readers, going after the writer seems the more sensible approach. Ironic, dontcha think?
Google itself may be a brilliant example of "dumb is smarter", but Google AdWords are generally evidence that sometimes dumb is just dumb. That's probably not just due to AdWords as a technology, but to the business model of selling words to whoever will buy them up, and to some advertisers' practice of buying up anything and everything. Put it all together and Lucky's speech in waiting for Godot can start to look strangely coherent.
I'm only slightly annoyed at seeing my nice pretty blank space sullied by ads. What strikes me more is that Google has determined that bloggers are a market. This seems obvious in retrospect, as there are millions of us, but it wasn't supposed to work that way, was it? Put up a blog, watch millions of people read it, clean up by selling ads. Wasn't that the story? Come to find out that in a world where there are hordes of writers and no gurantee of readers, going after the writer seems the more sensible approach. Ironic, dontcha think?
Spartacus in Iran
Anonymity requires cover -- people who could plausibly be the anonymous person, but aren't. I've called this the "I'm Spartacus" effect, and real researchers have studied it more rigorously.
One of the most-repeated tweets regarding the Iran election is a plea for everyone to change their profile, time zone, etc. to say that they're located in Tehran, in order to provide cover for people who really are.
I wouldn't expect this to be completely effective. I'm sure there are ways for the authorities to track down the source of tweets before they make it to the Twitter servers, just as there are countermeasures to avoid detection at the source. However, once the tweets reach the server and are redistributed, it probably does make the job somewhat harder for the authorities. At least they have to read through more tweets to decide which ones are likely to be home-grown.
If nothing else it provides a way of showing solidarity, on a par with tinting one's icon green.
One of the most-repeated tweets regarding the Iran election is a plea for everyone to change their profile, time zone, etc. to say that they're located in Tehran, in order to provide cover for people who really are.
I wouldn't expect this to be completely effective. I'm sure there are ways for the authorities to track down the source of tweets before they make it to the Twitter servers, just as there are countermeasures to avoid detection at the source. However, once the tweets reach the server and are redistributed, it probably does make the job somewhat harder for the authorities. At least they have to read through more tweets to decide which ones are likely to be home-grown.
If nothing else it provides a way of showing solidarity, on a par with tinting one's icon green.
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