I saw Arianna Huffington speak at the AD:Tech conference last week, and she had a great quote as to why subscription models for Web content (think the New York Times or Wall Street Journal’s original online models) have failed:
"Subscription models don’t work, unless it’s porn, and it has to be weird porn."
So, this gushing piece in The Atlantic on how Facebook is the future of the Internet convinced me to join. Let’s see, I’m too old for MySpace … LinkedIn is just for people who need jobs … I don’t get Twitter … Friendster is so 2003. So this must be the place for me. Not sure why, but it it is and I MUST be a part of it.
Anyhoo, I just joined.
Let’s see what the new Internet is like …
… Still waiting …
… Seems pretty much like the old Internet …
(cue crickets chirping)
… but I now have a Twitter site: www.twitter.com/harrison3. Who knows, maybe I’ll use it to provide real-time updates from the birthing room for Harrison Child #2. Juliet should love watching me fiddle with my BlackBerry to send text updates on her epidural.
I have been reading a lot about Twitter, particularly since it exploded at SXSW — I have a client, 80108 Media, that plays in a similar but very different space (check them out too — their site is great and they’re doing something very interesting with highly localized "insider" content served up via SMS, huge potential there). Robert Scoble reported that Twitter users actually beat the USGS to report the Mexico City earthquake last week …
This AP Review pretty much says it all: "(I)n the meantime, I’ll stick with my other five means of keeping in touch."
I wish I actually owed a Canadian some money, because that would be a great headline were it in context. I really enjoy writing headlines, particularly for boring press releases. My all-time favorites: Referencing MC Hammer in this SPSS release headline ("Ring the Bell, School’s Back" — he says it after one of the breakdowns in "U Can’t Touch This"); and, dream come true, when some U.S. Team at the 1996 Paralympics (forget the sport) beat the Czech Republic, the incredibly trite "US Bounces Czechs" (in the daily newsletter … believe me, even if the Czechs had won, I would have somehow used that).
Anyway, I was trying to come up with a clever headline today that includes Canada because my Canadian client contact came to town for a brainstorm meeting, and since we don’t have an office yet, I hosted him and a colleague at my home. It seemed odd to be having a positioning discussion on the future of WordPerfect (and the future looks bright!) in front of my cats, and having the ability to throw in a load of laundry during a client-meeting break. One bit of upside: we ate a buffet lunch at Diva, and since I spilled chicken tika masala on my shirt, I was able to change when I got home. Another upside: since I was hosting the meeting in my house, I changed into a Celtics sweatshirt. I wasn’t able to join everyone’s favorite Ottawaphile for tonight’s Bruins/Maple Leafs game (given that I’m away most of next week, I felt another night out was probably a bad idea) but given that the B’s lost 10-2, it doesn’t seem like a bad decision to offer my seat up to Mr. Watson.
Next week, I will be at the incredibly crazy CES in Vegas (as a gadget guy, I am incredibly geeked up although I won’t have a lot of time to see much other than the Corel booth) followed by a quick trip to Eden Prairie, Minn. for a meeting with Corel’s digital-imaging unit. Speaking of CES, I guess I need to get back to work on the CES writing on which I have been procrastinating. *Sigh*.
One other note — banks, dry cleaners, stores: if you regularly offer up lollipops for the kids, for the love of God, please make sure you keep your supply stocked. Jacob enjoys our treks to the dry cleaners because of the lollipops … and tonight, they didn’t have any. And come to find out, preschoolers don’t really understand retailers’ lollipop supply-chain issues so much.
