I really love the idea of sponsored courses/tutorials. This type of thing makes me more likely to use Git and GitHub more, and evangelize more.
I have a tough time wanting to pay for a course at a place like code school when I know if I go through the docs/tutorials I'll get it. It's not that I don't think the experience is better, or even (for a certain definition) worth the money. I feel like it is an unnecessary indulgence.
Isn't it true that strong vision that people have a true emotional response to and believe in can move 100k people (or even more)?
Maybe an expensive "true rebrand" is a way to make a promise to your people and help build trust in your new direction. Also making it so visible and present can help remind people of this direction when they make every day decisions.
I didn't completely understand on the first read what your app did. I read it as taking video of websites -- which is silly, but I thought I'd mention it.
Maybe "Pick your favorite sites" is unnecessary right up front? You mention later it integrates with my favorite sites and I see YouTube etc...
I heard Google Plus's Vic Gundotra say the same thing at SXSW. There is definitely a time and a place for ads, and while you're viewing intimate social content might not be that time.
However... recently I've been seeing facebook ads where they are simply reshowing old status updates from my friends where they have linked/liked products, and pages. I'm not sure that reminding me of things my friends have liked and linked to isn't a more meaningful advertising experience. It's certainly not sufficient to support Facebook, but it feels like a new, possibly more valuable, kind of ad.
The question isn't whether music and information are property or not ... the question is whether or not our government is protecting it in a way that makes sense for its citizens.
The examples that PG points to are all examples of massive societal and social change (moving to the moon, changing from hunter gathering, and in a comment he nodded to the abolition of slavery). These were situations where we did have a fundamental shift in what our society believed was property. This simply hasn't happened here. Citizens still believe that an idea is yours, that creative works have value and belong to the person who creates them. We desire to protect that.
Where it has all gone wrong is our laws and the industries. Perhaps the value of this property has decreased and the law still protects the ability of the media giants to price beyond that value. That's not working for citizens. Citizens are being held to licenses and contracts they haven't read and don't understand. They can't trade an ebook from their device to their spouse's. When I switch between android and iphone do I no longer own angry birds? The real problem is that the legislature isn't working for us to protect these property rights in a way that makes sense for us as the citizens who made the property a right in the first place. Could this be keeping the market from adjusting to valid pressures?
Smells are currently being sold -- as advertisement for products held within stores (big box stores are known to pipe in smells of baked goods at the front etc...)
What if consumers don't pay for music? There have been many suggestions about how this will play out, but maybe it will be that Pepsi and McDonalds will decide the music that is best suited for selling their products. Brittany Spears will stick around for sure (love her), but I'm not sure where this leaves us.
Here is an important tradeoff between speaking and writing. Writing allows the user more room to color the information with their own experiences. For example the words "a very long time" conjures up some concept for a reader -- but when a listener hears "a very long time" from an old person versus a young person they may hear those as two different things. It's important and possibly absent information here that "if [you] didn't say it, [you] didn't say it." Inference is an incredibly powerful tool of persuasion and used often.
Gesture, tone, emphasis, etc... can give an incredible amount of information that people may process quickly and easily. It may alleviate some confusion created by the readers personal interpretation of words.
I think this thread well covers benefits and drawbacks of written versus spoken word. For me, I think of it like I think of various technologies available for a project. There are different tradeoffs and I must consider what I am trying to accomplish, what the pain points are going to be, who my users are, what is available, and make a careful choice.
How is G+ different? What does it do better? Here's what I want to see: Facebook took media, Google+ should take mobile. It seems to me that it is a positioning problem.
Facebook has made big moves recently to be the place to share all media (news papers, music, movies, tv etc) through their announced partnerships. Sharing media is something we've been waiting for and users have been doing themselves for years. For all the complaints, privacy concerns, user experience changes -- it seems to be going quite well.
However, Facebook's mobile apps have been atrocious. They are just recently approaching usable. How long did we have to wait for an iPad version of the Facebook app? Considering how often and how long people access Facebook from mobile devices it is astonishing that the mobile experience is what it is. Where is the innovation?
Google has an army of Android devices -- just take mobile and make the most awesome, seamless, integrated mobile experience ever. Partner with everything that's cool in the physical world. Social people get out and do things. Google+ should bridge the gap between offline and online social experiences. Android android android.
Absolutely agreed - phenomenal. I also have enjoyed the additional content they sometimes add for HBO Go users.
Showtime has started doing this thing where you logon to their website while the show is premiering to do/see something but I've never done it because I DVR Showtime shows. Showtime had a press release that they were going to launch their own version of HBO Go but I've not see anything.
I'm excited. I think premium channels like this are going to be the change.
It seems to me the biggest issue with these sites activity is when they replace a user's desire/need to visit the content creator's site. It's no longer collecting URLs or sharing favorite things -- it's recompiling copyrighted work into a new work and leaving out the original content creators. It seems that's the infringement (at least in my gut).
What if, instead, Pinterest were to behave more like google images and provide only thumbnails. Where to see that "12 uses for baking soda" you had to click through to the blogger's site? Could that preserve the service and the community, but protect content creators as well?
There is certainly an experience trade off here. Discussion is less likely to occur on Pinterest, the user may have no further reason to go to that blog -- they only wanted to see the list. These sites might not be able to handle the traffic...and on and on.
But it would seem you'd be closer to sharing your favorite things while not taking advantage of copyrighted material (possibly even being more legal about it), and often providing a marginally better experience. As a user I've now discovered this blog not just the uses for baking soda. For pins where the image wasn't enough, I didn't have to deal with the second click.
Google images has been litigated and the result is incredibly pertinent to this discussion. Check out the section on fair use...
"(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work."
And in addition, the court considered what the service was offering to the public. They seem pretty concerned about the fact google never deals with the full sized images... etc. etc.
The whole case seems pretty relevant. It includes discussions on the other types of infringement as well including material contribution.