Twittering

I just got myself a Twitter account at twitter.com/henrikt.

Always look on the bright side of life

Monty Python's decision to create an offical YouTube channel is hardly revolutionary, but is a good first step in a business-centered approach to the fact that Monty Python video clips will be available online. And quite inline with the principles of Kevin Kelly's Better than free article from January.



On a somewhat related note, Atlantic Records is the first (?) label among the four major music groups to make more than 50 % of its revenue from digital (downloads and ring tones). For most media companies, the share of revenues from digital operations is still between 5 and 20 percent.

Timing is important

Financial Times didn't have perfect timing when it made this weekend's edition of How to spend it, the newspaper's magazine on expensive consumption, a special celebration edition. I wonder what they are celebrating. =)

The music keeps on playing, part 2

Shy of a month ago, I posted my then current Spotify playlist and invited all readers to participate in creating a collaborative playlist. The collaborative list introduced some new music to me, which was kind of the point. I've created a new collaborative playlist and seeded it with three songs (bonus point for finding the common denominator for the songs), please add more songs!

Sunday reading

Futuristic Play: Video up from Virtual Goods Summit, Metrics for Virtual Goods Businesses: The Whirled Case Study. My favorite blogger Andrew Chen and Three Rings CEO Daniel James giving a really good talk. Watch it. One point Andrew makes, which would be a good comment to the first paragraph of this post by Judith, is that CPM/CPA/CPC is not important except the difference in risk.

Webbstrategi.se: Kejsarens nya kläder. "Kontentan är att man vid webbanalys måste se helheten för att undvika suboptimering. När man blandar in kr och ören är det lätt att man drar förhastade beslut. Att använda tid som fördelningsnyckel är ett sätt att försöka ge en mer holistisk bild och passar en del och inte andra." Pretty long post by Robert Sahlin. Worth reading if you acquire customers online.

The Equity Kicker: Firefox?s billionth add-on download shows the power of extensible platforms. Seems like the browser, in some senses, is making the OS a set of device drivers (the quality level of the debugging I'll let some else comment on).

Searchblog: IAB: Online Is Still Pretty Healthy, But.... Online ad growth was flat, at best, the first three quarters of this year (and it was in October a.k.a. Q4 the shit really hit the fan with regards to the economy).

If you're going to Bangkok or Thailand

If the worsening economy hasn't made you cancel your trip to Thailand, you should check out my good friend Kristian's guides to Bangkok (sv) and Thailand (sv). Definitely quality guides and not lightweight SEO stuff.

Just Blog

Miriam had a blogging crisis (sv) after friends began asking her questions like Who are you blogging for? and What is the purpose of the blog?

I think her inclination to 'just' write about things of interest to her is a good one as the best blogs are more driven by the blogger's willingness to say something interesting than a desire to make the audience happy. Personally, the tricky thing for me with blogging the last year has been to find a good tempo (i.e. interval between blog posts) for blogging, resulting in quite some time in-between original posts as it is very easy not to blog once you started to blog less.

Videoplaza launches admin interface and third-party tracking

The team at Videoplaza has launched a nice looking admin interface and third-party tracking of campaigns for their video adserver. As a board member it is great to see the product improve in ways that make the customers' lives easier.

Good investment advice in stormy times

The savings and investment advice in Avanza's latest advertising campaign is really good in its simplicity. One does not need to be a customer of Avanza to take their advice.

Best Site Idea award from InternetWorld

Swedish Internetworld has placed Stardoll 9th on the magazine's Topp 100 list and given Stardoll special recognition for Best Site Idea 2008. Massive thanks for the recognition and the kind words!

I'd agree that it was a really good idea back in late 2005 when we started transforming what was then Paperdoll Heaven into today's Stardoll. However, after 3 years of work the saying that it is about the execution rings very true to me.

80 % paying for IRC-Galleria

Futuristic Play: What would Facebook look like if it sold out to ads? Click here to see.... "The point is, advertisers are used to buying something very specific - they want IAB standard ad unit sizes, they?d like to do homepage takeovers and roadblocks, etc. And of course these are units that Facebook does not emphasize in their ad revenue process, because they are often annoying and obtrusive. Again, let's take a look at ths mockup with the Facebook homepage covered with ads for the next James Bond movie."

Tane.li: IRC-Galleria remains the most active social media on the net. "How many of their registered users pay money for any of the services on the site? As many as over 80%. This number is significantly higher than any other conversion rate in any service I have heard of. I challenge you to find a service that would be "free, paying is optional" that would have a conversion rate higher than that anywhere in the world." Amazing percentage of paying members.

Bronte Media: Closest to the Decision Point Wins. "At the moment, current consensus seems to be that search will fare better and display will be hit hardest. But my problem with that is that it divides the Internet into two very broad categories: search and everything else (display).

What is a better framework for judging how different parts of display will fare? I have mostly seen by format (banner vs text vs video etc.) but again format is a very crude way of looking at things and does not correlate to gains and losses.

A better measure is some sort of behavioral index. With the consumer searching for 'asbestos cancer lawyer' on Google at index 100 to a group of High School girls chatting about life on Meebo at 0." A much better way of thinking about advertising spend than search vs display.

Lightspeed: Tips on A:B testing. "Some nuggets of goodness culled from the paper in no particular order (some sound obvious but read the paper to get more context). It will take you 20 minutes and you?ll use the lessons you learn for years"

Strategic implications

Futuristic Play: Virtual items design: Build it yourself or use UGC?. "At the end of the day, I'm of the mind that the best way to become a platform is to build a great application. If you're successful, other people will want to build on top of you and you?ll become a platform whether you want to (a la Facebook) or not (a la MySpace). Setting out to be a platform from day one (and that's what I think Linden and others have done) is just a much harder road. But it you make it work, you avoid all of the retrofit problems that happen when applications need to rework themselves to be platforms."

HipMojo: 20 Dumb Things About Web 2.0. "Much the same way that loose money and easy credit created the real estate and housing bubble, open source software and cheap hardware created an environment of over-supply of me-too products that have absolutely no bargaining power in M&A or fundraising."

Anek.com: Framtiden kanske inte var helt gratis ändå. "Det är i detta läge världens onlineaktörer börjar damma av sina gamla planer om att ta betalt från kunden. Man börjar inse att om man levererar verkligt värde till kunden så är kunden villig att betala. Och det blir också en trygghet att massan av kunder inte är så nojiga och labila som annonsörer."

Andie's Log: The importance of iTunes for the iPhone success. "Apple claims they?ve ?re-invented the phone?, but that reinvention I?d say is more about the natural connection to the computer than the functionality of the device itself. The OS, interface and touch controls are fabulous, but just like with the iPod a lot of people don?t seem to understand the importance of connecting the mobile device with limited functionality to a full computer desktop environment where it can be managed and connected to the important data that lives there."

Bret on Social Games: A Case for Cloning Games. "To sum up: cloning is necessary to serve the audience. In large markets, clones enlarge the served market, rather than cannibalize it. So to not clone, would not only be stupid, it'd be a disservice to the market."