Blogging the Bloggers – Twitter reshuffle at the top
In an announcement that’s weirded out some of the web and set the other half yawning, Twitter’s CEO and chairman have swopped roles. As it stands, the move seems related to Twitter’s continuing search for a business model. More analysis of this as it develops.
Digital distribution shocker: Tip jars are profitable!
Radiohead’s experimental distribution model for its album In Rainbows,
which was met with equal parts skeptimism, incredulity and the faintest
flutterings of hope when it was first announced last year, has been
deemed an unrivalled success. Unrivalled in the sense that the band
actually pioneered the idea, but also because if Radiohead follows the
adage of only competing against oneself, In Rainbows pretty much wiped the floor with Hail To The Thief.
as a (potentially free) digital download was higher than the band’s
entire previous digital sales income and made more money than Hail to the Thief did in all formats."
Mashable’s Stan Schroeder sums up: "Essentially, Radiohead has shown that – in some cases, at
least – it’s possible to completely cut out the middleman (read: the
record label) and still have a very successful record. Furthermore,
they’ve proven that alternative business models are possible, and that
fans aren’t all mindless zombies who are only looking to get as much as
they can for as little money as possible. Now, it’s time for the record
labels to start changing their business models – or perish."
In search of future-proof business models
One can only hope that in the wake of Radiohead’s success, John Buckman’s open music baby Magnatune
will get the mainstream love it deserves. Magnatune is an independent
record label which a) treats its artists to a much bigger share of
royalties than any other record label on… er… record (50%, to be
exact), and b) offers its members unlimited DRM-free music downloads
licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.
Back in 2005, Mike Arrington tipped Magnatune as being "the answer to the music problem".
Arrington wrote: "Today was the first time I heard about Magnatune …
but I agree entirely with their business philosophy. I really think
this is the music business model of the future."
And that was even before the site improved its pricing model,
something it did last month. Previously, it offered an $18/month
all-you-can-download membership offer. Now, members pay whatever they
feel strikes the balance between being kind to their budget and fair to
the label and artist – a decision based on research showing in general,
people pay more when they’re allowed to set the price themselves.
Btw, FYI and just so you know, Buckman has the best CEO portrait ever.
Flickr and Yahoo follow the feeds
two major social media players launch their newly revamped sites on the
same day, is it akin to two people turning up to a party wearing
exactly the same outfit? Regardless of who stole whose thunder, both
Yahoo and Flickr yesterday flicked the switch on their sexy new skins.
That Arrington bloke rounds up some of the changes at Yahoo: "Over the next few months, they say, Yahoo properties will begin to
integrate with the new profile. So if you answer a question at Yahoo
Answers, for example, the activity will show up in your feed update.
Eventually the front page of Yahoo Mail will show what your friends are
up to as well. And one thing I really like – emails from your
connections will be highlighted, so you can read them first."
Mashable‘s Leslie Poston reviews the changes at Flickr: "It seems Flickr took a page from Twitter and FriendFeed’s
recent design upgrades and chose to make changes that would drive us to
the social features of the site and increase time spent on Flickr
overall, but not turn off the regular Flickr crowd. That is a smart way
to handle it, and should make the transition easier for those users who
have trouble with change."
In the wake of the revamps, ReadWriteWeb‘s Marshall Kirkpatrick
declared the humble newsfeed: "the dominant internet metaphor of the
day; the cascading waterfall of updates from your friends, with
comments swirling even around those – that model is everywhere now! …
XML syndication is incredibly powerful technology, but everyone
agreed that it would make a much bigger impact ‘under the covers’ of
something more user-friendly. In effect, that’s what’s happening with
news feeds."
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