Para leerla comprá la revista o hacé clic aquí:
http://www.debate.com.ar/2009/04/03/1772.php
lunes, 6 de abril de 2009
¿Qué estás haciendo?
Un artículo que escribí para la Revista Debate sobre Twitter.
Para leerla comprá la revista o hacé clic aquí:
http://www.debate.com.ar/2009/04/03/1772.php
Para leerla comprá la revista o hacé clic aquí:
http://www.debate.com.ar/2009/04/03/1772.php
miércoles, 1 de abril de 2009
Show me the money!
Artículo publicado en El Cronista traducido al inglés.
The crisis of the newspapers in Internet
Show me the money!
In the movie “Jerry Maguire” an American football player screams in defiance at his representative with a very clear premise: “Show me the money!” The success and the adulation of his fans are not enough to conform this sportsman, who feels himself worthless unless he has millions in his bank account.
While visitors to the online versions of newspapers are multiplying, the time spent online and the involvement of users grows and the news is everyday a more highly valued asset (although unpaid), the digital newspapers begin to ask themselves that very same question. All very well but, “where’s the money?
The business model of the online newspapers just like that of the major part of the Web industry is to provide their content for free. The content is freely consulted by millions of users and the income from advertising is responsible for resolving the equation.
This is the reason for much concern about a model that still hasn’t taken off and the fear that has been brought about by the recent crisis. To charge or not to charge for digital content, and in what form to do so, that is the question.
Jeff Segal analyses this subject in an article published in the Madrid newspaper El País. In the article he affirms that “today everyone has a plan to save the press”. While many defend the current 100% free system with the conviction that advertising investment will grow sufficiently to cover the media’s needs, others assure that the model to follow is that of iTunes that charges small amounts for specific information content, or alternatively that of paid subscriptions.
A study realized by The Bivings Group has shown that the online newspapers in the U.S that require a prior registration (totally free but with the requirement of some minimal personal data and an e-mail address) have diminished from 29% to 11% in the past year. An ample majority of readers, when confronted with a minimum registration requirement, prefer to switch news provider and as a consequence the news media have chosen to lift their restrictions.
If The New York Times (whose online version represents just 12% of its total sales) should decide to charge its users just one cent to find out what Obama said in his speech to Congress, and the New York Post offers the same information for free the migration would be instantaneous. It is an impossible mission to convince somebody who has always received a service for free to now pay for it, especially if our competitor is offering the same or a very similar product totally free.
The possibility of the media grouping together and starting to charge simultaneously for their content would avoid this “unfair competition” but this doesn’t appear to be an easy path to follow.
Somewhat different is the case for specialized content. The Wall Street Journal for example earns € 92 million annually from online subscribers of its financial coverage. This would appear to indicate that in the case of detailed content, well differentiated from that offered by the competition (for example the economics column by Paul Krugman), that readers are prepared to pay.
Even so, the vast majority of the media with specialized content continue to offer everything in exchange for nothing. The technology magazine Wired, the most popular in the U.S, can be read in its entirety from their web site without paying a single cent.
The written press is going through perhaps the most critical period in its history. The News Corp group, owner of The Sun, New York Post & The Wall Street Journal has announced record losses of $6,400 million in the last quarter of 2008. And Internet, which grew up as a solution, is at least for now part of the problem.
While the online audience and consumers of news content continue to grow, the only thing that still needs to be found is the money.
The crisis of the newspapers in Internet
Show me the money!
In the movie “Jerry Maguire” an American football player screams in defiance at his representative with a very clear premise: “Show me the money!” The success and the adulation of his fans are not enough to conform this sportsman, who feels himself worthless unless he has millions in his bank account.
While visitors to the online versions of newspapers are multiplying, the time spent online and the involvement of users grows and the news is everyday a more highly valued asset (although unpaid), the digital newspapers begin to ask themselves that very same question. All very well but, “where’s the money?
The business model of the online newspapers just like that of the major part of the Web industry is to provide their content for free. The content is freely consulted by millions of users and the income from advertising is responsible for resolving the equation.
This is the reason for much concern about a model that still hasn’t taken off and the fear that has been brought about by the recent crisis. To charge or not to charge for digital content, and in what form to do so, that is the question.
Jeff Segal analyses this subject in an article published in the Madrid newspaper El País. In the article he affirms that “today everyone has a plan to save the press”. While many defend the current 100% free system with the conviction that advertising investment will grow sufficiently to cover the media’s needs, others assure that the model to follow is that of iTunes that charges small amounts for specific information content, or alternatively that of paid subscriptions.
A study realized by The Bivings Group has shown that the online newspapers in the U.S that require a prior registration (totally free but with the requirement of some minimal personal data and an e-mail address) have diminished from 29% to 11% in the past year. An ample majority of readers, when confronted with a minimum registration requirement, prefer to switch news provider and as a consequence the news media have chosen to lift their restrictions.
If The New York Times (whose online version represents just 12% of its total sales) should decide to charge its users just one cent to find out what Obama said in his speech to Congress, and the New York Post offers the same information for free the migration would be instantaneous. It is an impossible mission to convince somebody who has always received a service for free to now pay for it, especially if our competitor is offering the same or a very similar product totally free.
The possibility of the media grouping together and starting to charge simultaneously for their content would avoid this “unfair competition” but this doesn’t appear to be an easy path to follow.
Somewhat different is the case for specialized content. The Wall Street Journal for example earns € 92 million annually from online subscribers of its financial coverage. This would appear to indicate that in the case of detailed content, well differentiated from that offered by the competition (for example the economics column by Paul Krugman), that readers are prepared to pay.
Even so, the vast majority of the media with specialized content continue to offer everything in exchange for nothing. The technology magazine Wired, the most popular in the U.S, can be read in its entirety from their web site without paying a single cent.
The written press is going through perhaps the most critical period in its history. The News Corp group, owner of The Sun, New York Post & The Wall Street Journal has announced record losses of $6,400 million in the last quarter of 2008. And Internet, which grew up as a solution, is at least for now part of the problem.
While the online audience and consumers of news content continue to grow, the only thing that still needs to be found is the money.
martes, 31 de marzo de 2009
Books that aren't books
Artículo publicado en Revista Debate y traducido al inglés.
Books that aren’t books
Stephen King has sold somewhere between 300 and 350 million books. His novels on terror, fantasy or science fiction are available in both paperback and hardback format. That’s paper with printed words on it. At then end of the day, books. However at the beginning of this year the well known author surprised the world by launching his latest novel “Ur” and his first book that isn’t a book. This very special edition will only be available on digital devices and can be purchased for just three dollars.
One of the world’s greatest and oldest cultural industries is going through a historic moment. The evolution of electronic books (eBooks), the great proliferation of titles in this format and their positive reception on behalf of their readers opens the debate about the future of the worldwide book publishing business.
Is it possible that in 10 years time we will not be reading any more books printed on paper? The first chapter of this story – still with an unclear ending – has now been written. An electronic device that can condense everything from the Bible to The Little Prince into one has now arrived.
On the 24th of February, Amazon.com one of the world’s largest e-commerce sites launched Kindle 2, the second version of its device for reading digital books commonly called eBooks. This slim device can store up to 1500 books and can also be used to download magazines and newspapers and to retrieve one’s e-mail.
For the moment Amazon has an accumulated offering of some 245,000 tiles for Kindle but it is just a question of time before the arrival of all books in this format. There are many candidates vying to digitalize whole libraries, while others such as Google have been doing so for years. This gigantic and costly task will undoubtedly result in an inevitable concentration of authors rights into fewer publishing houses.
The disappearance of the book in its physical form, and the enormous cultural changes that will come about, have already opened a lively debate that divides the interested parties into two distinct camps or libraries.
According to Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and Kindle, this device is not coming to replace the readership of books but rather to “preserve this great tradition and to make it evolve even more”.
Besides its nifty product attributes in terms of weight and storage capacity this technology launch stands apart from many others for one very improbable reason: its great impact among the adult population. Not just young people start to use it but also more experienced readers. That is why it can be considered as almost an ambivalent device, innovative sure, but also “conservative”. Amazon plans on selling a million units in 2009, and close to 3.5 million in 2010.
The reach of electronic books will not be restricted to these devices alone. The Apple iPhone places at the disposition of its users a similar book reading application and all the major brands have commenced the process of converting their mobile phones into walking books.
Hernán Casciari, writer and founder of Orsay.es, one of the most read blogs in the Spanish speaking world writes: “I am reading a marvelous book, heavy and fat (some 1,600 pages) and for the first time in my life as a reader I start to feel the urgency of the electronic book. We have become accustomed to the shift key, hypertext and having to manage three to five ideas at a time. Returning to the simple unidirectional book is like having to start a fire with a stick and a stone”.
In a technology blog a user asks and then answers his own question: In truth, do you want your whole life to be digital? Yes!
Quite to the contrary, Sven Birkerts, American essayist, critic and author of the book “The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age”, sustains in an article published in The Atlantic magazine that the book “is part of a cultural system” and his fear is that “Kindle will be to literature and the humanities what Wikipedia has become to information: a one-stop outlet”.
It is clear that the reading of books in digital format does not just mean a simple a change of habits for readers – or a cultural revolution – but rather augurs concrete reforms in the publishing business.
The price of titles has diminished considerably in the transition from paper to digital. On Amazon.com one can acquire the latest releases for ten dollars and download classics to the monitor for just two dollars. Numbers that diminish significantly, based on similar experiences in other industries always tend to lower, never to increase.
Piracy and the possibility of users sharing books from one device to another or the arrival of a new Napster (peer to peer system for downloading music without paying rights) for published material are just some of the phantasms lurking over the pages of this novel.
The experience of the music industry that invented the iTunes micro-payments model (by charging one dollar for each soundtrack) following years of dire hardship has possibly created a less rocky road to be followed in the conflict over books. Getting users accustomed to paying for content, even in much more modest amounts, appears to be the key. Since the leading cases provide the model to follow, the early beginnings of this relationship, in which readers continue to pay, would appear to smooth the way forward.
Finally, the approaching world of the digital book also brings with it some big news. Just like what happened on the Internet where anyone can now create their own media communications platform, launching one’s own book will be even easier than planting a tree. Amazon has created a digital text platform that allows any writer in a just a few steps, without intermediaries, to publish his own text and share in a percentage of the sales.
And in the very name of the product that will slowly revolutionize one of the most aged industries of our culture there is controversy. Some would claim that in the name chosen by Amazon they express their true mission, “to burn the books”. The word kindle is after all synonymous with igniting a fire.
Books that aren’t books
Stephen King has sold somewhere between 300 and 350 million books. His novels on terror, fantasy or science fiction are available in both paperback and hardback format. That’s paper with printed words on it. At then end of the day, books. However at the beginning of this year the well known author surprised the world by launching his latest novel “Ur” and his first book that isn’t a book. This very special edition will only be available on digital devices and can be purchased for just three dollars.
One of the world’s greatest and oldest cultural industries is going through a historic moment. The evolution of electronic books (eBooks), the great proliferation of titles in this format and their positive reception on behalf of their readers opens the debate about the future of the worldwide book publishing business.
Is it possible that in 10 years time we will not be reading any more books printed on paper? The first chapter of this story – still with an unclear ending – has now been written. An electronic device that can condense everything from the Bible to The Little Prince into one has now arrived.
On the 24th of February, Amazon.com one of the world’s largest e-commerce sites launched Kindle 2, the second version of its device for reading digital books commonly called eBooks. This slim device can store up to 1500 books and can also be used to download magazines and newspapers and to retrieve one’s e-mail.
For the moment Amazon has an accumulated offering of some 245,000 tiles for Kindle but it is just a question of time before the arrival of all books in this format. There are many candidates vying to digitalize whole libraries, while others such as Google have been doing so for years. This gigantic and costly task will undoubtedly result in an inevitable concentration of authors rights into fewer publishing houses.
The disappearance of the book in its physical form, and the enormous cultural changes that will come about, have already opened a lively debate that divides the interested parties into two distinct camps or libraries.
According to Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and Kindle, this device is not coming to replace the readership of books but rather to “preserve this great tradition and to make it evolve even more”.
Besides its nifty product attributes in terms of weight and storage capacity this technology launch stands apart from many others for one very improbable reason: its great impact among the adult population. Not just young people start to use it but also more experienced readers. That is why it can be considered as almost an ambivalent device, innovative sure, but also “conservative”. Amazon plans on selling a million units in 2009, and close to 3.5 million in 2010.
The reach of electronic books will not be restricted to these devices alone. The Apple iPhone places at the disposition of its users a similar book reading application and all the major brands have commenced the process of converting their mobile phones into walking books.
Hernán Casciari, writer and founder of Orsay.es, one of the most read blogs in the Spanish speaking world writes: “I am reading a marvelous book, heavy and fat (some 1,600 pages) and for the first time in my life as a reader I start to feel the urgency of the electronic book. We have become accustomed to the shift key, hypertext and having to manage three to five ideas at a time. Returning to the simple unidirectional book is like having to start a fire with a stick and a stone”.
In a technology blog a user asks and then answers his own question: In truth, do you want your whole life to be digital? Yes!
Quite to the contrary, Sven Birkerts, American essayist, critic and author of the book “The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age”, sustains in an article published in The Atlantic magazine that the book “is part of a cultural system” and his fear is that “Kindle will be to literature and the humanities what Wikipedia has become to information: a one-stop outlet”.
It is clear that the reading of books in digital format does not just mean a simple a change of habits for readers – or a cultural revolution – but rather augurs concrete reforms in the publishing business.
The price of titles has diminished considerably in the transition from paper to digital. On Amazon.com one can acquire the latest releases for ten dollars and download classics to the monitor for just two dollars. Numbers that diminish significantly, based on similar experiences in other industries always tend to lower, never to increase.
Piracy and the possibility of users sharing books from one device to another or the arrival of a new Napster (peer to peer system for downloading music without paying rights) for published material are just some of the phantasms lurking over the pages of this novel.
The experience of the music industry that invented the iTunes micro-payments model (by charging one dollar for each soundtrack) following years of dire hardship has possibly created a less rocky road to be followed in the conflict over books. Getting users accustomed to paying for content, even in much more modest amounts, appears to be the key. Since the leading cases provide the model to follow, the early beginnings of this relationship, in which readers continue to pay, would appear to smooth the way forward.
Finally, the approaching world of the digital book also brings with it some big news. Just like what happened on the Internet where anyone can now create their own media communications platform, launching one’s own book will be even easier than planting a tree. Amazon has created a digital text platform that allows any writer in a just a few steps, without intermediaries, to publish his own text and share in a percentage of the sales.
And in the very name of the product that will slowly revolutionize one of the most aged industries of our culture there is controversy. Some would claim that in the name chosen by Amazon they express their true mission, “to burn the books”. The word kindle is after all synonymous with igniting a fire.
How to get a divorce, win your first million or to die in style
Artículo publicado en Revista Debate traducido al inglés.
How to get a divorce, win your first million or to die in style
In Germany if both parties agree on a separation the divorce settlement can be done over the Internet.
In China hundreds of people who have been recruited via the Web gather together in front of an electronics store to obtain a better price on the purchase of a flat screen TV. “Hello, there are twenty of us out here in all and we each wish to purchase an LCD monitor. What’s your best price offer? And if the price isn’t right we’ll check out another store just around the corner”.
The Internet is offering outrageous and innovative options for being entertained, boring oneself and even for falling into or out of love, and its growth has motivated cultural changes both small and large and the appearance of some very surprising new services.
Just ten years ago the idea of having one’s own web page appeared impossible. It was common to hear excuses like “I don’t know how”, or “who do I ask?” and “I don’t know anything about Internet”. At that time the Internet was just a small planet with a few million pages and its visitors a select global minority.
Finding the website of a newspaper that was updated on an hourly basis; or an e-mail service that allowed one to avoid the trip to the post office with letter in hand and the eternal queue; or enjoying the possibility of downloading music (with apologies to copyrights) were sufficient to make us all marvel at its wonders.
It didn’t seem that we lacked much else. At that time the scope of the Internet appeared to be infinite. Today in MyHeritage.com, a website with over thirty million users one can create a family tree and find long lost relatives scattered around the globe.
In Needaproblem.com we can discover a very peculiar philosophy. According to this site a quiet happy life without problems can be boring.
As a result they invite you to buy problems so that everyone has something to keep themselves occupied.
From one dollar to five thousand dollars, simple problems to more complex ones are offered for sale to the public. There is also the option of giving a problem on birthdays and anniversaries. “Hi, Happy Birthday.
Here goes a complicated problem as a gift so that you have something to do”.
A webpage for every eight people that surf is a sufficient number for everyone to find what they might want.
With over 1,500 million users across the globe and the possibility of just about anyone being able to create their own space on the net and publish their own content in just seconds, the Internet has multiplied its offering in almost incalculable form. Everyday, new projects are launched backed with multimillion dollar investments that surprise us and that even the most fanatical surfers are able to keep up with.
One of the great landmarks in the history of the Internet is The Million Dollar Home Page. In 2005 a 21 year old English student launched a website to help finance his university career. He created a web page and divided it into a million pixels (a minimum unit of color) which he then sold for one dollar each. He made his first million in less than a year and his funny and generous creature still lives on in www.milliondollarhomepage.com
The calculations are not precise but studies by Netcast estimate that the number of websites has doubled over the last two years and that there are now more than 182 million web pages competing for our attention
In the movie “The Holiday” Iris (Kate Winslett) and Amanda (Cameron Díaz) decide to exchange homes for their vacations.
In HomeExchange.com for an annual subscription of a hundred dollars one can consult more than 26,000 houses and apartments for exchange with one’s own. An active community formed by thousands of people that vacation this way every year and allows one to swap one’s house for another.
“Participate in creating a better World, one couch at a time” is the slogan of a very special service. If sleeping on a couch for a few days does not seem too much when its time to cut costs in Couchsurfing.com one can find more than a million people in more than 50,000 towns and cities around the World who are prepared to lend their couch with the sole interest of helping out.
A French website soon to be launched will do the homework for those students prepared to pay.
For many Internet has now become a digital filing cabinet containing their photos, documents, videos and e-mail accounts. When a person dies the mechanisms for transferring that information become obsolete and generally the terms of service of the many sites where the information is stored do not permit the transfer by any unauthorized third party. A newly launched service aptly named LegacyLocker.com takes charge of resolving this problem and very simply organizes a person’s digital inheritance.
How to get a divorce, win your first million or to die in style
In Germany if both parties agree on a separation the divorce settlement can be done over the Internet.
In China hundreds of people who have been recruited via the Web gather together in front of an electronics store to obtain a better price on the purchase of a flat screen TV. “Hello, there are twenty of us out here in all and we each wish to purchase an LCD monitor. What’s your best price offer? And if the price isn’t right we’ll check out another store just around the corner”.
The Internet is offering outrageous and innovative options for being entertained, boring oneself and even for falling into or out of love, and its growth has motivated cultural changes both small and large and the appearance of some very surprising new services.
Just ten years ago the idea of having one’s own web page appeared impossible. It was common to hear excuses like “I don’t know how”, or “who do I ask?” and “I don’t know anything about Internet”. At that time the Internet was just a small planet with a few million pages and its visitors a select global minority.
Finding the website of a newspaper that was updated on an hourly basis; or an e-mail service that allowed one to avoid the trip to the post office with letter in hand and the eternal queue; or enjoying the possibility of downloading music (with apologies to copyrights) were sufficient to make us all marvel at its wonders.
It didn’t seem that we lacked much else. At that time the scope of the Internet appeared to be infinite. Today in MyHeritage.com, a website with over thirty million users one can create a family tree and find long lost relatives scattered around the globe.
In Needaproblem.com we can discover a very peculiar philosophy. According to this site a quiet happy life without problems can be boring.
As a result they invite you to buy problems so that everyone has something to keep themselves occupied.
From one dollar to five thousand dollars, simple problems to more complex ones are offered for sale to the public. There is also the option of giving a problem on birthdays and anniversaries. “Hi, Happy Birthday.
Here goes a complicated problem as a gift so that you have something to do”.
A webpage for every eight people that surf is a sufficient number for everyone to find what they might want.
With over 1,500 million users across the globe and the possibility of just about anyone being able to create their own space on the net and publish their own content in just seconds, the Internet has multiplied its offering in almost incalculable form. Everyday, new projects are launched backed with multimillion dollar investments that surprise us and that even the most fanatical surfers are able to keep up with.
One of the great landmarks in the history of the Internet is The Million Dollar Home Page. In 2005 a 21 year old English student launched a website to help finance his university career. He created a web page and divided it into a million pixels (a minimum unit of color) which he then sold for one dollar each. He made his first million in less than a year and his funny and generous creature still lives on in www.milliondollarhomepage.com
The calculations are not precise but studies by Netcast estimate that the number of websites has doubled over the last two years and that there are now more than 182 million web pages competing for our attention
In the movie “The Holiday” Iris (Kate Winslett) and Amanda (Cameron Díaz) decide to exchange homes for their vacations.
In HomeExchange.com for an annual subscription of a hundred dollars one can consult more than 26,000 houses and apartments for exchange with one’s own. An active community formed by thousands of people that vacation this way every year and allows one to swap one’s house for another.
“Participate in creating a better World, one couch at a time” is the slogan of a very special service. If sleeping on a couch for a few days does not seem too much when its time to cut costs in Couchsurfing.com one can find more than a million people in more than 50,000 towns and cities around the World who are prepared to lend their couch with the sole interest of helping out.
A French website soon to be launched will do the homework for those students prepared to pay.
For many Internet has now become a digital filing cabinet containing their photos, documents, videos and e-mail accounts. When a person dies the mechanisms for transferring that information become obsolete and generally the terms of service of the many sites where the information is stored do not permit the transfer by any unauthorized third party. A newly launched service aptly named LegacyLocker.com takes charge of resolving this problem and very simply organizes a person’s digital inheritance.
lunes, 23 de marzo de 2009
¡Muéstrame el dinero!
El Cronista publicó el viernes un artículo que escribí sobre la crisis de los diarios en Internet. El espacio que se sostenía sería el futuro de los medios escritos, hoy también entra en problemas. Grandes masas de usuarios, pero pocos dispuestos a pagar por los contenidos, y una pauta publicitaria que no llega a cubrir los costos.
Suscribirse a:
Entradas (Atom)