Morten Reippuert Knudsen <spam@reippuert.dk> wrote:
> så har macfixit desværre gjort alvor af truslen, bye, bye.......
>
> <
http://www.macfixit.com/mfiprologin.shtml>
Der var en interessant analyse af hele "betaling for indhold" trend'en i
Macintosh Daily Journal <
http://www.macjournals.com> den anden dag. Jeg
gengiver den herunder.
Jeg fandt specielt delen om The Mac Show interessant, da jeg er en stor
fan. Og da jeg ville hente ugens show den anden dag og blev mødt med
"BETAL eller F.U."
og tænkte "det vil Shawn King da aldrig gå med
til" ... nix, han starter forfra på
http://www.yourmaclife.com
Pyhh, heldigvis. Macshowlive.com vil køre videre med Mark Stephens som
midlertidig vært. Han har en kanon radiostemme, men man siger om Shawn
King "He's got a great face for Radio"
Men det er også en ret sjov/anderledes holning MDJ har til MacFixIt's
måde at gøre det på - kunne det virke hvis ..?
Anyways, de af jer der kunne lide artiklen om Kognitiv Dissonans vil
finde denne lisså lang
... og tilsvarende god.
MacFixIt, MacObserver & The Mac Show ... kommer under kniven.
(PS: Macjournals betegner gengivelser som denne som "Fair Use" så længe
det ikke er hver uge, og det ikke er hele udgaver man re-poster. Nup en
gratis prøve på Macjournals.com hvis i synes. Som altid er jeg ikke
ansat eller på anden måde "i lag" med dem, jeg køber bare deres produkt
fordi jeg synes det er godt :)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
MDJ 2002.01.23 (January 23, 2002)
=================================
Copyright 2002, GCSF Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Top of the Day
--------------
* Press Watch looks at the business side of the Macintosh media
today with the sudden and nearly-simultaneous decision by three
outlets to offer paid subscriptions. The Mac Observer's service
offers to remove the ads from the site, but non-subscribers may
find that there are more annoying ads than before if they don't
pony up. MacFixIt remains free but searching and archives move to
fee-based access, something that could prevent new users from
understanding the site's benefits. And the Mac Show is in self-
destruct mode by restricting its broadcast to paying subscribers
in a way that all but guarantees scorn from listeners,
advertisers, and guests - it's already lost them the show's voice
and heart. There are benefits and risks as outlets look to replace
declining ad revenue, and we try to look at both sides and offer
some suggestions.
* Product Showcase offers the top 21 from Tuesday and Wednesday,
with looks at the disappointing Discribe 5.0, the nifty design of
the WiebeTech FireWire Keychain, and a plea for better services
through Contextual Menu Workshop (and we mean that literally).
Other picks include MYOB AccountEdge 2 v5.6.2, a 40X CD _burner_,
Renicer 1.0, a PDF stamper, an update to Manila Envelope and more.
===================================================================
Klip til artiklen - en lidt billig "teaser" at inkludere "Product
Showcase" - måske ... sue me
===================================================================
Press Watch: Fewer ads, more fees
---------------------------------
**Internet ad slump finally affects Mac online media**
It's no secret that Internet advertising revenues have fallen in
the past year. The phrase "Internet ad slump" is so prevalent you
can even find news stores about it at CNet News by searching for
"advertising" and "slump" in the same article. For example, you
can learn that after nearly doubling in 2000, "US Internet
advertising dropped [7] 7.8% in the first half of 2001 from the
same period a year earlier," says the site. You can also read from
last month that in the first nine months of the year, ad sales
slipped [8] 8.4% year-over-year.
[7] <
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-273400.html>
[8] <
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-276560.html>
These seem like small percentages unless they're how your company
earns all of its revenue. There are likely multiple reasons for
the slump, the foremost being the explosion of the dot-com boom.
Far fewer companies are flush with investment capital to throw
onto the Web in the form of banner ads that you're likely to
ignore. Second, the management focus on absolute measurability of
everything is, in our opinion, not always logical. Advertisers
have always paid to place advertisements based on how many people
_see_ the ads, whether in magazines or newspapers, on TV, on the
radio, in a sports stadium, or anyplace else.
Only the Internet actually measures "click-through" - how many
people are intrigued enough by an ad to follow it for more
information. Now that advertisers have this information, they see
what they were always afraid to know: ads aren't very effective.
Single-digit percentages of ad viewers follow-through on ads,
usually _low_ single-digit percentages. This means, effectively,
that 97% or more of all ad dollars are spent to show
advertisements to people who are not enthralled by the effort.
Advertising is not cheap to produce or place, so such low figures
have been disappointing to many.
Advertisers and "content providers" (usually but not always Web
sites) have responded with typically dissonance reduction (yes,
the _Attitudinal_ still has us on that kick): if people aren't
responding to the ads, the ads are obviously too easy to ignore.
The first response, as you likely remember, was to replace simple
banner advertisements with tacky flashing banner advertisements.
When those proved equally ineffective over time, major sites like
ZDNet started accepting large interactive ads using Macromedia's
Flash technology. So far, these larger and more interactive ads
are more interesting and have higher-click through rates, but
experts warn CNet News that no one knows if the interest will
last. (CNet and ZDNet, two sides of the same corporate coin, first
introduced the larger ads in 2001.)
Far more annoying are "pop-up" ads - pitches that use JavaScript
to open a new window containing only the advertisement. Some
less-than-savory sites use JavaScript to try to "trap" you on the
site - as soon as you close one ad window, another one opens up,
over and over again until you can manage to close a window before
the JavaScript in it can activate to open yet another. Pop-up ads
are not only distracting and annoying, they interfere with window
ordering and placement. We often open multiple browser windows at
once, and if one of those windows comes with a pop-up ad, Internet
Explorer sometimes responds by making future windows the size of
the ad, thinking that window size is what we wanted. Ha ha.
The other response to declining ad revenue has been to eschew
advertising where possible and rely on other sources of income.
Sites that were previously supported by advertiser revenue, such
as Salon [9], now restrict much of their content to paying
subscribers. Others, like Microsoft-owned Slate [10], tried the
subscription-based model and reverted to advertiser support due to
lack of success. _Salon_'s very public attempts to build a revenue
model based on subscription revenue have met with mixed results,
but other sites have done the same. And don't think this is just a
trend for big Internet capitalist pigs out to exploit your
eyeballs: even the geek haven of havens, Slashdot [11], is
instituting [12] a subscription-based model.
[9] <
http://www.salon.com/>
[10] <
http://www.slate.com/>
[11] <
http://www.slashdot.org/>
[12] <
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-274965.html>
Slashdot's model represents a compromise between subscriber-only
content and smothering a site with ads to make up for lower
revenue. Slashdot remains freely available, but it is implementing
the larger Flash-based ads for which it can charge more money. The
site is also adding a paid service so that subscribers can read
everything on Slashdot without seeing any ads. The services are
scheduled to show up sometime early this year. Moving to a fee-
based model is risky: when American Greetings changed its sites to
charge for electronic greeting cards, free E-card sites saw a big
boost in traffic [13], helping the advertising model work. There's
capitalism for you - fewer providers reduces supply of advertising
venues even as demand remains the same.
[13] <
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-277263.html>
For the most part, however, Macintosh-specific content providers
have escaped these trends. MacCentral and _Macworld_ have added
pop-up ads, but they only show up when you leave the site and the
only product you're asked to buy is _Macworld_ magazine.
VersionTracker, a traditional-style dot-com enterprise with
venture capital and everything, has offered a "Pro" service for
more than a year that automatically identifies software on your
system that needs updating (like Insider Software's UpdateAgent,
one of our favorite utilities), along with notifying you about
updates to software you want to watch. And, of course, MDJ_ has
been ad-free since its first issue (MDJ_ 1996.08.12), but that's
not a change in direction for us - we just mention it so our own
biases are a little more obvious.
However, in the past several days, three major Mac media outlets
have seen changes away from the completely ad-supported model.
Today we look at those changes and the inherent risks that
accompany them, along with what the future of ad-supported
Macintosh media might hold.
**The Mac Observer: Slashdotly**
We've been confused about the appeal of The Mac Observer [14] for
some time. Originally founded as Webintosh by Dan Hughes, the site
was sold to other staff members just over three years ago (MWJ_
1998.12.31) and renamed "The Mac Observer." Since then, the site
has been mentioned in such prestigious publications as the
_Wall_Street_Journal_ and _New_York_Times_ as a source of
information, even though the original content isn't very
compelling and the news stories are almost always press releases
with minimal rewriting.
[14] <
http://www.macobserver.com/>
It seems fair to describe the Mac Observer as topping the list of
"Mac fanatic" sites. We're not talking about the mainstream
press's name for _all_ Macintosh owners (that's just dissonance
reduction: you stick with a minority platform they tell you that
you shouldn't want, so you must be emotional about it), but about
people who are rabid Macintosh fans in the same way some people
are rabid Oakland Raider fans or Green Bay Packer "cheeseheads".
(For international audiences: Raider fans usually dress in all
black, and the more intense wear pirate-style accoutrements of
questionable comfort; the Green Bay football team plays in
Wisconsin, America's cheese center, and so the "cheeseheads" wear
giant foam wedges that look like Swiss cheese as hats.)
These are the folks who, God bless 'em, bake cookies with Apple
and Mac OS logos. They jam Internet polls with Mac-oriented
answers, they run a SETI@home team designed solely to show off the
PowerPC's computational prowess; they excoriate game makers that
don't include Mac versions, and speculate to excess on how dreamy
the next Macintosh systems could be. Columns on the site criticize
Microsoft [15], criticize people who criticize Apple (like Jef
Raskin [16]), provide opportunities to fawn over Apple products
[17] - in other words, they're fans.
[15] <
http://www.macobserver.com/editorial/2002/01/17.1.shtml>
[16] <
http://www.macobserver.com/editorial/2002/01/22.1.shtml>
[17] <
http://www.macobserver.com/editorial/2002/01/21.1.shtml>
The site announced at the first of the year that it was following
the Slashdot model - people who subscribe [18] to the Mac Observer
for US$25 per year (US$20 per year for a limited time to "charter
members") can view the site without advertisements for one year.
Subscribers get no additional services nor access to exclusive
content - just an opportunity to pay about a nickel a day to view
the site without the ads. The promotional material says that
subscribers view the site "fast as fast can be," implying that
retrieving the ads from centralized servers does, in fact, slow
the site down for everyone else.
[18] <
http://www.macobserver.com/subscribers/>
You'd expect the Mac Observer to spin the decision, but the site's
explanation is pretty reasonable. "With the declining ad rates
that have gripped the content (news) industry in the last 18
months, however, we have had to increase the number of ad spots
throughout our publication. Many people are put off by the amount
of advertising that is beginning to permeate the Web, and a
subscription service offers those people a chance to avoid the ads
while putting their money where their mouths are. In short, if you
don't want the ads, you can pay for the site directly. What you
get in return is a less cluttered TMO that renders faster and is
easier to read. The advertisers get the chance to not pay for
advertising to people who don't want to see it. In short, we all
win."
The policy is a straight-up trade for readers: "If you don't want
to see the ads, make up the ad revenue we'd miss by not showing
them, plus a little more to make it worth our while, and you've
got it your way." Customization is good. The site is taking
nothing away from existing readers, just offering ad-free options
for those that prefer it to the tune of US$20 per year.
Or so it would seem. Unfortunately, the same round of changes has
made the Mac Observer _less_ friendly to non-subscribing readers.
As part of the change, the Mac Observer now implements pop-up and
pop-under ads, something that had not previously appeared on any
Mac-specific site we read (other than MacCentral and _Macworld_,
as noted). That makes the site not only much slower but more
annoying. There aren't pop-up ads on every page, to be sure, but
they're a rude awakening for non-subscribers.
**The risk?** -- The holy grail of advertising is the consumer who
will purchase a product - the one with disposable income who sees
something, says "I want that," and buys it. It's no accident that
you see more fast food commercials during dinner time than during
early-morning programming, or that you see more beer commercials
during sporting events. Advertisers target their markets, and they
all want to reach people who are ready to buy.
In the Web world, those who are ready to buy are the ones who
spend money online. The ones who prove they'll do that by signing
up for a subscription are exactly the ones that advertisers want
to reach - and the ones the advertisers will not reach on the Mac
Observer. The readers most likely to respond to the advertisements
are the ones who won't see the ads.
This may be more of a perceptual problem than one based in
reality, but advertisers work in a perceptual world. If they
believe the most lucrative readers aren't exposed to their ads at
the Mac Observer, they may take those ads to other sites. Also, if
some percentage of Mac Observer readers immediately subscribe to
the site, that necessarily means the number of advertising
impressions goes down by the same percentage, so advertising
revenue declines. The subscription revenue is supposed to more
than compensate for that loss. The site has also affiliated with
DealsOnTheWeb.com [19] for more revenue, cross-promoting deals on
the Mac Observer's news page, and started a daily mailing list
[20] with "headlines, teasers, and special offers," meaning you
don't get all the stories but you do get ads, something unlikely
to attract many people.
[19] <
http://www.dealsontheweb.com/>
[20] <
http://www.macobserver.com/dailylist/>
At the same time the Mac Observer becomes more annoying to non-
subscribers, the subscription program removes the most lucrative
group of potential ad-viewers from the site's reach. The addition
of the more intrusive pop-up ads would seem most likely to drive
away readers; subscription revenue would then have to make up not
only for the lost ad revenue of subscribers but also for any loss
triggered by pop-up advertising. Also, we note that browser like
iCab already have preferences that foil pop-up ads (by not letting
JavaScript code open new windows); if the preference percolates
through more browsers, even these advertisements may become less
lucrative for content providers.
The Mac Observer risks losing revenue by making the site more
difficult for non-subscribers while simultaneously making the
readership less attractive to the advertisers. The way around it?
Get lots of subscribers. US$0.05 per day is more revenue than one
visitor would bring to the site through advertising each day, we
believe, so the risk is that advertisers and readers will defect
from the free version without generating enough subscriptions to
make up the difference.
We have no idea how likely this is - we just note it's a risk. So
is sticking with an entirely ad-based model as ad revenues
continue to "slump." The move would have been less of a risk
without the pop-up ads - in other words, making the subscription-
or-not decision a true straight-up trade for viewing ads or not.
Making the ads more onerous at the same time muddies the decision
and increases the risk of losing marginal readers. If the Mac
Observer's new policies drive more fans to purchase subscriptions
to get rid of the ads, though, it will work.
**MacFixIt Pro: The Salon Model**
MacFixIt [21] is one of the top two Macintosh troubleshooting
sites on the Web (Ric Ford's MacInTouch [22], in our opinion, is
the other). The site was purchased from founder Ted Landau in July
2000 (MDJ_ 2000.07.18) by TechTracker, the same company behind the
leading Mac OS software update site, VersionTracker [23]. Since
then, there's been some more integration with TechTracker:
MacFixIt's software URLs lead to VersionTracker pages more often
than not; VersionTracker lists MacFixIt at the top of each page
and on the front page of the Mac OS software listings, and the
sites share a user list so you can log into either site with the
same username and password. (A full site redesign that the company
promised [24] a year ago has yet to materialize, though; MDJ_
2000.01.13.)
[21] <
http://www.macfixit.com/>
[22] <
http://www.macintouch.com/>
[23] <
http://www.versiontracker.com/>
[24] <
http://www.businesswire.com/webbox/bw.010901/210090132.htm>
TechTracker has long looked to its sites for revenue streams.
VersionTracker makes money through the "TechTracker Pro" service
mentioned earlier, including customized VersionTracker software
lists and software to download updates to your watched programs as
updates become available. MacFixIt content is somewhat harder to
"monetize," to borrow another hideous business verb formation.
TechTracker is now in its third round [25] of financing, having
now collected at least US$4.6 million in venture capital funding.
Much of it has gone into development of enterprise-level products
like TechTracker ITX [26], a system to monitor (Windows) software
deployment and performance, and an upcoming unnamed product that
tries to predict software performance by analyzing lots of crash
logs.
[25]
<
http://208.185.43.170/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=TheDeal/TDDArtic
le/StandardArticle&c=TDDArticle&cid=1007409482530>
[26] <
http://www.techtracker.com/products/itx>
In such a company, each product needs to earn its keep. MacFixIt
is an award-winning site with an amazing reputation; we've even
allowed the site to reprint some of our own coverage and, in the
distant past, advertised there (not that we have any clue about
how to make ads that work), but the infamous ad revenue slump has
made the site just as vulnerable as its competitors. MacFixIt has
both publicly and quietly asked readers for quite some time what
options they might like for better support in the face of
declining ad income, and this week, borrowing language from parent
TechTracker, introduced MacFixIt Pro [27].
[27] <
http://www.macfixit.com/mfiproabout.shtml>
MacFixIt Pro follows the _Salon_ model: services that were
previously supported by advertising and available for free will
now be available only to subscribers, who may view the entire site
ad-free. Specifically, MacFixIt's extensive archive and special
reports will be accessible only to people who pay an annual
subscription fee of US$25, the same asked by the Mac Observer (a
discount to US$20 is also available for a limited time, in this
case through 2002.02.28). The home pages for both Mac OS and Mac
OS X troubleshooting will remain free, each with a couple of days'
worth of news, and the MacFixIt Forums [28] also remain free,
supported by ads and open to the public, including forum
searching, though you must register (for free) to post any
messages.
[28] <
http://www.macfixitforums.com/>
MacFixIt is more truly following _Salon_'s model: the subscription
fee gains you access to all content, a search engine, and displays
the site without ads. MacFixIt's own spin is reasonably good as
well: "MacFixIt is staffed by two full-time editors and another
six part-time editors. To keep the site running, it is necessary
to charge for premium content." We know full well that employing
talent is not cheap, and with advertising revenues slipping, the
choice is either to downsize or find new revenue models.
**The risk?** -- MacFixIt Pro undertakes the same risk the Mac
Observer does - removing the most desirable readers from the
ad-viewing pool. Unlike Mac Observer, MacFixIt has not implemented
pop-up or pop-under ads, so the viewing experience is no worse
than it was before the subscription plan started. Of course, that
could change in the future, making the picture just as murky as
for the Mac Observer.
MacFixIt director of content (and founder) Ted Landau told MDJ_,
"Most of our ad revenue comes from the pages that remain free. And
we suspect that most people coming to these pages will still be
seeing ads. Thus, it is our hope that the new policy will not
significantly affect ad revenue. Or at least that any minor effect
is more than compensated by the subscription fees we get. ... Only
time will tell if this works out as expected or not. There is no
way to find out unless we try." He's got a point. Slate found out
that a subscription-based model didn't work, and reopened the
entire site to the public. If MacFixIt does the same, most
subscribers will probably feel happy that they supported the site
and readers will be thrilled to gain access to the extra material.
There's little harm in trying.
It's blocking off the archives that represents the biggest risk
for MacFixIt Pro, in our opinion. A troubleshooting site is
valuable if it addresses problems you're having right now. Not
even we can remember troubleshooting information from two weeks
ago that we didn't need at the time, and our brains are crammed
with useless crud so we're pretty used to filing things away in
our minds. If you have a problem that wasn't mentioned in the past
couple of days, and you have no experience with MacFixIt, you're
unlikely to shell out US$25 just to see if there's a useful
answer.
What's more, a policy of making only two days' worth of
information available makes deep-linking all but impossible.
Individual items on MacFixIt have been available only through
anchor URLs attached to an archive page. Anchors to individual
items on the main page expire the next day, but the archive page
URLs have been constant over the years, and items on the main page
show up in the archives within 24 hours. Now all of those links
point to pages accessible only to subscribers, and there is no
real way to link to any individual item on the site.
That's not a problem for MacFixIt with you, the advanced reader,
because you're already aware of the site and its capabilities. New
users, however, won't get to see much, nor will they be able to
read MacFixIt content linked from other sites unless they do it
quickly. A Tuesday post on MacFixIt is available through Tuesday
and Wednesday, but then is off to the archives. If MacInTouch
editors (just to pick some people at random) see an item they like
on Tuesday afternoon, they might include it in their Wednesday
update, giving you about 20 hours to read the link before it
becomes invalid. It certainly makes us think twice about including
MacFixIt links in MDJ_ because, by the time each week's MWJ_ comes
around, the links are likely to be closed to everyone but MacFixIt
Pro members.
Making items last longer has issues for the subscription model,
though. Landau said, "Some people suggested that if we made a
week's worth of recent archives free, they would have liked it
more (or some similar suggestion). I understand. But the logical
conclusion of that line of thinking is to have so much of MacFixIt
free that there is no point in subscribing. That would be self-
defeating."
It is, as Landau says, a work in progress. "If we post something
that we believe will get significant linking from other Web sites,
we have the capability to make that link remain free for
additional days. We will certainly do so. More generally, we will
likely revisit at some point the issue of how many days of
archives remain free. If we believe the current policy is not
working, we will change it." We hope individual items become more
hospitable to external links, but that's a convenience issue for
us more than a reader issue.
We see MacFixIt Pro's biggest risk as one of familiarity. If you
already know the site's strengths, the subscription decision is an
informed one. If Apple's strategy of expanding the market works,
though, millions of new Mac users will log on to the Internet and
not see much of MacFixIt to know if paying for five years' worth
of troubleshooting information is worth it. Links from other sites
will grow fewer due to the short life of free information, and the
site may become more marginal.
The risk is minimal given Landau's and TechTracker's stated
commitment to flexibility, and there are steps they can take to
expose more of the site without compromising the subscription
model. Specifically, we think the search engine should be free but
that the links it returns could be limited to subscribers. That
way, new users can see if MacFixIt has relevant content for a
problem at any time and subscribe on-the-spot for relevant
content.
Since MacFixIt is offering access to a library of troubleshooting
information, it also makes sense to consider subscriptions of less
than a year, such as by the month or even small fees for
individual articles. We know first-hand that's a much better
proposition for readers than for publishers. Most payment
processing services have a small fixed fee for every payment
authorized; if the payment amounts are too small, you wind up
spending a ridiculous percentage of income on the payment fees.
The standard way around this for immediate-access services is to
charge more for shorter periods: instead of US$2.50 for a one-
month subscription, MacFixIt might charge US$4. Finally, we would
suggest free trial subscriptions. When people can see what you
have to offer, they can make a more informed decision about its
value.
If the Mac Observer can overcome the problem of advertiser
perception by gaining enough subscribers, MacFixIt Pro can as
well. If the service can make its value clear to people who aren't
intimately familiar with MacFixIt already, the model could be
sustainable. There are risks, but a willingness to change parts
that aren't working definitely helps minimize them.
**The Mac Show: Misreading the audience**
The biggest change of the week probably comes from The Mac Show
[29], where founder and host Shawn King has left to start his own
new radio program, called Your Mac Life [30]. Mac Show Productions
said [31] King left over "philosophical differences." These
differences, in a dispute more public than either side wanted, are
over how the show should respond to declining advertising revenue.
[29] <
http://www.macshowlive.com/>
[30] <
http://www.yourmaclife.com/>
[31] <
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0201/21.macshow.php>
Online radio shows are in a more difficult position than Web
sites, because the ads are harder to create. A Webmaster can't
create a radio ad with Flash and Photoshop, even a cheesy one. A
radio ad requires a script, usually background music, voice
actors, and a production timed so that it fits into the available
slot, usually about 59 seconds (granting half a second on either
end for transitions). The ads are therefore more expensive to
create and of more limited use - they can't be reused except on
other Internet radio shows. There are a few of those now, but the
Mac Show is clearly the leader in the field. Mac Show Productions
has often mentioned that around 100,000 people listen to some or
all of the show, either live or in the weekly archive; that's
quite an audience, and perhaps worth the costs.
But like other venues, the Mac Show has had difficulty filling its
ad inventory lately, at least at the prices that make the show
worthwhile. There are only a few ways a radio show can go. Raising
prices isn't feasible in the current market. Inserting more ads in
the show quickly reaches the point of no return ("this subordinate
clause brought to you by the fine folks at MacPlay"). Charging for
content is difficult on a radio show because it's an active
listening experience - unlike the random access of a Web site, you
usually need to experience a radio show in sequential order. You
can jump from one segment to another if you know where they start,
but it's all but impossible to make a QuickTime movie that locks
people out of specific segments.
The Mac Show has implemented the MSL Club [32] in response to
these issues. By paying US$30, you get access to discounts from
"Mac-related vendors," access to contests and a mailing list for
members, access to the Mac Show archives - and access to a
"premium extra hour of program every week." The Mac Show is not
expanding to three hours - starting next week (2002.01.30), the
first hour of the show is all that non-club members can hear. If
you want to hear the second hour, you'll need to be a club member.
This is the direction with which host Shawn King vehemently
disagreed, and over which he and the other people involved with
the Mac Show parted company.
[32] <
http://www.macshowlive.com/join.html>
It's a creative way to bring in additional non-advertising
revenue; it seems like the audio equivalent of what the Mac
Observer and MacFixIt are doing. Unfortunately for Mac Show
Productions, Internet radio is an inherently different medium from
a Web site, and what works in virtual print won't work over the
virtual air. The new model is fatally flawed in several important
respects.
First, the content model is wrong. Charging for access to the
archives is fine, but a live radio show is even more time-
sensitive than most Web pages. MacFixIt's troubleshooting
information for Mac OS 9.1 will be valid for that OS forever, but
ten minutes of the week's news is harder to listen to four months
later when you just want one tidbit. Unlike text, audio is not
searchable; the archive would require a minute-by-minute
description of what's covered in each show, and that's incredibly
labor-intensive each week. Audio archives are also much more
expensive to serve up than Web pages, given that a given show is
30MB or more while a Web page usually less than 50KB. The archives
are therefore not the attraction they are for a site like MacFixIt
or MacInTouch, and decline significantly in value after the
content is a few weeks old.
Second, because the medium is audio, it's hard to tease the
premium content unless you spend much of the free content time
doing so. In other words, the first hour has to be devoted to
convincing you that you can't miss the second hour. This is like
the _Salon_ model but different - _Salon_ keeps news and politics
stories for subscribers only, but all other features are available
to everyone. Non-subscribers can see the first few paragraphs of
news or political stories, but have to subscribe to see the rest.
Since the Mac Show is in audio, the only way to "tease" the
premium content is to talk about it during the first hour of the
show. That reduces the value of the first hour and, in turn, makes
people less likely to stick through to the second hour.
Third, it alienates the guests. MDJ_'s publisher has been a guest
on the Mac Show several times, but would not want to be a guest in
the second hour of the current show. It's bound to reach a much
smaller audience, probably no larger than 1% or 2% of the older
show's base, and is therefore not an effective medium for reaching
people - all the listeners will be in the first hour, the one that
the Mac Show must (by design) fill with less content to please the
premium subscribers. Interview subjects that want to reach the Mac
Show's traditionally wide audience will want a slot in the first
hour, leaving the premium hour a bit weak. Radio guests are not
traditionally paid for appearing, and if the show has to share
revenue with guests to get quality material in the second hour,
that has an even bigger impact on the revenue stream.
Fourth, it has the same impact on advertisers as the other plans
we've mentioned. The customers most likely to purchase products
are subscribers, but ad rates in the second hour will have to be
low to accommodate for the much smaller listener base. More
advertisers would want the first hour, but if the first hour
becomes fluff to push the second hour's content, even that hour
will become less effective. If the listener numbers for the first
hour fall due to lack of content, that also affects revenue.
There's no winning placement for an ad in the new Mac Show format -
you either get the fluff hour that people will abandon or the
real hour that few will hear.
Fifth, the subscription model is wrong. If you do tune in live for
the first hour and want to hear the second hour, you can't
subscribe in time to hear it - processing via PayPal ensures
enough of a delay that you won't get to hear the show except in
the archives. You can't listen to one show, or a month's worth,
just six months' worth. The chance to ask questions in the chat
room and have them answered on the air is only for subscribers in
the second hour; if you really want to hear a guest and ask a
question, you'll have to pay US$30 a few days in advance of the
show. This is not what people expect in today's wired world.
We don't have all the answers, and we don't know how to generate
subscription streams from a once-a-week Internet radio show, but
we're convinced the model the Mac Show has adopted is completely
wrong and won't sustain. That's all independent of the sixth
problem: the show _is_ Shawn King. He knows the Mac, he knows
radio, he knows how to be a host. Now that he's left, the show is
replacing him with executive producer Mark Stevens, a name that
will generate a collective "huh?" from most listeners. The show
will only have a week or two to prove that Stevens is as effective
a host as King, and if he doesn't, there's nothing worth paying
for at all.
King is staying on the air in his normal time slot with his new
show, pledging to implement new QuickTime features that make the
show even better (simple slides with the audio would be pretty
cool and easy to implement with QuickTime). For this week, King's
new show is "tape delayed," meaning it won't be streamed live, but
next week he'll be back doing his normal thing, just under the
"Your Mac Life" banner. When listeners have a choice of his free
show and the deeply-flawed subscription Mac Show model, the latter
probably won't be around long to compete.
**Free to fee**
The Mac media is not the first segment of the Web to go through
this crunch; a prominent Weblog [33] has been tracking free
services that move into fee-based access. We're interested to note
that we're not the only ones who think the Internet focus on
click-through rates is inconsistent with the rest of how
advertising works. _Wired_ news also covered the same issue [34]
on Tuesday, describing how Babylon, a language-translation site,
has morphed its free site into a paid service.
[33] <http:/
www.theendoffree.com/>
[34] <
http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,49646,00.html>
Our hope is that advertising-related sites can find ways to grow
that honor the Macintosh community traditions. For example, the
Mac Observer is now accepting those larger CNet-sized ads, but the
only ones we've seen are simple animated GIF images that look like
rotating banners. And yet you'd be hardpressed to find a Macintosh
browser user who doesn't have the QuickTime plug-in installed.
Where are the ads taking advantage of QuickTime? Wired sprites,
text tracks, interactive content - Totally Hip Software's Blue
Abuse [35] site showcases what QuickTime can do, including Apple's
great demo movies.
[35] <
http://www.blueabuse.com/>
Despite a long history of great design, most Macintosh-oriented
Web ads are about as exciting as used tea. The platform has the
technology to make great ads, but no one seems to be taking
advantage of it. Some sites are also moving towards what
MetaFilter calls "TextAds," [36] inexpensive non-graphical ads
aimed at people who don't appreciate the trend towards ads trying
to grab more and more attention. We believe that ads wanting
graphic attention should get it because of good design, not by
throwing themselves in your face where you can't avoid them.
[36] <
http://www.metafilter.com/textads.mefi>
Absent such advances, the search for other revenue streams will
continue, and sites must be careful how they implement such
choices. Offering new features for fees is usually fine; offering
_existing_ features for fees is riskier; making existing features
less useful for viewers who don't pay fees is riskiest of all. Of
the three major changes, MacFixIt's stands the best chance of
working in the long run; Mac Observer's addition of pop-up ads is
riskier, and the Mac Show's different medium makes its strategy
almost completely unworkable.
While subscription fees are reasonable on a site-by-site basis,
they add up across the Web. If you're a regular view of MacFixIt
and the Mac Observer plus a listener of the Mac Show, you're now
being asked to pay US$100 more per year (US$60 for the Mac Show,
US$20 each for the two Web sites at introductory prices) to see
what you've been seeing free - over US$8 per month. If four more
major Web sites add US$25-per-year fees, that's another US$200, or
close to US$17 per month. As more sites implement fees, most
readers will have no choice but to drop reading some fee-based
sites as they prioritize their online spending. That will
seriously affect the sites that make free reading more onerous or
significantly less useful, dropping their existing advertising
rates. In turn, that will cause such sites to fail, reducing
advertising exposures, which may help the remaining sites gain
more revenue from existing advertisers.
How sites choose to proceed with fees is far more important than
an experiment. As the entire Mac content market changes, the sites
that keep ad-viewing readers while enhancing paid services will
survive; others shall fall by the wayside. If you want to help
your favorite sites in addition to subscribing, provide them with
feedback. It's a tricky balance - even if your views aren't the
majority, good site management works best when they have as much
data as possible to consider. Don't be shy with your opinions, but
do be constructive. Fewer advertisers mean fewer ad-based Web
sites can thrive. Make sure the ones you care about the most make
the cut.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
MDJ_, The Daily Journal for Serious Macintosh[tm] Users, is
published by GCSF, Incorporated.
Publisher: Matt Deatherage <mattd@macjournals.com>
Contributing Editor: Justin Seal <justin@macjournals.com>
Contributing Editor: Jerry Kindall <kindall@macjournals.com>
MDJ_ contains news, information, strong opinion, parody, biting
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