È possibile utilizzare il concetto del Long Tail (economia di abbondanza) per praticamente qualsiasi tipo di contenuto su Internet. Viene utilizzato in particolare da due categorie principali: alcuni aggregatori (Amazon, Fnac, Netflix …) e 6 miliardi di consumatori. E sono i consumatori la categoria più importante.

Per contro, il concetto di Long Tail è molto vario per gli artisti. Infatti gli artisti indipendenti sono piuttosto trascurati in questa equazione. La Long Tail aggiunge concorrenza e tensioni nel mercato e quindi un forte ribasso dei prezzi ha continuato verso il basso. E a meno che gli artisti diventano essi stessi aggregatori di altri artisti, la coda lunga può finalmente offrire loro le lettere di vendita.

Come sfruttare la coda lunga?

Una soluzione è quella di trovare i suoi 1000 “TRUE FAN”. In questa teoria sviluppata da Kevin Kelly, se sei un artista, musicista, fotografo, bastano 1000 TRUE FAN a guadagnarsi da vivere con la tua arte.

Chi è un TRUE FAN?: un true fan è qualcuno che compra tutto ciò che offre l’artista, uno che fa 500 km per vederti o che acquista le Super Deluxe Edition, che ha la pagina di eBay dei prodotti dell’artista fra i preferiti. Chi compra la T-shirt, la tazza, calzini…questi sono i TRUE FAN. E se si desidera espandere le vendite bisogna entrare in relazione con i true fan. O convertire i fan meno impegnati (fans normali) in true fan.

Il principio di Pareto afferma che l’80% delle vendite arriva dal 20% dei clienti. Questo principio illustra molto bene la lunga coda e la sua teoria di 1000 true fan. Esso consente di identificare il nocciolo del pubblico, quello su cui si dovranno concentrare gli sforzi.

In primo luogo, il vero fan, quelli normali e quelli casuali sono solo categorie. Questo è solo d’aiuto per riconoscere il pubblico di destinazione. Soprattutto perché queste categorie sono arbitrarie, e non definitive. Un fan casuale può passare a true fan, e viceversa.

Nella lunga coda di fan, in modo da separare i 3 gruppi di fan in 2 categorie. La parte superiore del 20% (true e normali) e 80% (casuali). Qui si trova il Principio di Pareto 80/20. Questi 20% dei tifosi sono quelli bisogna mettere a fuoco, quelli che sono più importanti per gli artisti, economicamente e socialmente.

Fan casuali: son quelli che conoscono (artisticamente) l’artista e che hanno sentito le canzoni, potrebbero aver comprato un album, ma nulla di più, magari hanno ascoltato tramite la radio e basta. Se questi fan seguono gli artisti sui Social Network è solo un caso, dato dall’impulso. Importa poco di quello che l’artista fa.

Spesso i “fan casuali” sono anche quelli che passano maggiormente attraverso la pirateria, quindi conviene concentrarsi sulle altre due categorie.

Fan normali: La maggior parte dei fan più importanti si trovano in questa categoria. Hanno già acquistato la musica e merchandising dell’artista. Lo seguono sulle reti sociali, e, soprattutto, amano la musica e sono interessati a sapere quello che fa. In più sono forti influenzatori. Il modo più semplice per vincere è quello avvicinarsi a loro attraverso la musica (accedendo alla musica attraverso i sito web, ad esempio, fornendo ciò che potrebbe corrispondere ad un esclusiva, parlando sui social networks, inviando informazioni ecc..).

I truefan: un 5/10% della fanbase (in termini di fedeltà e l’intensità) è composto da dai true fan. Essi sono disposti a spendere uno stipendio mensile per la vostra musica, i vostri prodotti, i concerti, il merch. Sono esigente ma preziosi. Vogliono entrare in contatto con voi in qualsiasi modo. Vogliono essere parte del tuo mondo. Ma l’aspetto più importante è la loro influenza. Sono d’aiuto nel vostro marketing e PR, fanno in prima persona di marketing e aiuteranno a diffondere la musica dell’artista.

I true fan comprano tutto ciò che viene prodotto dall’artista. Guardate l’esempio di Amanda Palmer. Ha venduto su Twitter una bottiglia di vino che stava bevendo da lei autografata per $ 320.

liberamente tradotto da digitalmusic.tumblr.com

Long Tail nella strategia SEO / SEM

La strategia della long tail consiste nell’ottimizzazione di un sito web per chiavi di ricerca più lunghe e specifiche (non singole keyword, ma vere e proprie frasi). Prendiamo ad esempio un sito web specializzato nella vendita di prodotti per il corpo.

Una tipica chiave di ricerca corta sulla quale ottimizzare il sito web potrebbe essere “prodotti corpo”. Ma tale keyword è molto generica. Non identifica un profilo utente preciso. Una chiave di ricerca da long tail potrebbe essere invece “prodotti idratanti e snellenti corpo”. In questo caso abbiamo un ben identificato profilo utente: l’utente che vuole un idratante che abbia anche azione snellente. Andremo a togliere tutti coloro che, ad esempio, vogliono un semplice idratante, o vogliono addirittura altri tipi di prodotti corpo (sono una donna, so bene quanti ne esistano! ).

L’idea della potatura, felice immagine utilizzata da Piersante Paneghel in occasione del Rimini Web Marketing Event 2009, è metaforicamente rilevante in questo contesto: non dobbiamo pompare traffico al nostro sito solo per fare numero, piuttosto dobbiamo andare a sfrondare tutto quel traffico che non ci porta alcuna conversione. Se vendo un idratante snellente, voglio che al mio sito arrivino solo utenti interessati a questo tipo particolare di prodotto, e non utenti interessati ai prodotti corpo in generale, perché questi ultimi convertiranno statisticamente molto di meno.

Per migliorare il posizionamento di un sito web, ed allo stesso tempo ottimizzare anche i costi, è quindi strategicamente migliore puntare su una keyword da long tail che vada in qualche modo a limitare e qualificare le ricerche da parte degli utenti finali e che porti al target esatto cui vogliamo indirizzarci (“prodotti corpo” 8.100.000 risultati contro “prodotti idratanti e snellenti corpo” – 23.700 risultati).

Se utilizziamo la keyword più specifica, ossia “prodotti idratanti e snellenti corpo”, i risultati si riducono infatti a 23.700, con la duplice conseguenza di una diminuzione della concorrenza web (e quindi una più alta probabilità di posizionamento nei primi risultati) e un più elevato tasso di specificità e pertinenza della richiesta rispetto al target cui vogliamo riferirci (che porterà statisticamente maggiori conversioni rispetto ad una keyword generica).

In sintesi, puntare sulla qualità del traffico web e non sulla quantità!

The long tail of search demand has been around since the dawn of web search and, since that time, search marketers have been attempting to tap into the powerful stream that high quantities of unique content can provide. I recently came across some great data from Hitwise (about 1 year old, but still highly relevant) showing off just how substantive the long tail can be. Bill Tancer’s post – Sizing Up the Long Tail – gives some stats:

…the head and body together only account for 3.25% of all search traffic! In fact, the top terms don’t account for much traffic:

• Top 100 terms: 5.7% of the all search traffic
• Top 500 terms: 8.9% of the all search traffic
• Top 1,000 terms: 10.6% of the all search traffic
• Top 10,000 terms: 18.5% of the all search traffic

This means if you had a monopoly over the top 1,000 search terms across all search engines (which is impossible), you’d still be missing out on 89.4% of all search traffic. There’s so much traffic in the tail it is hard to even comprehend. To illustrate, if search were represented by a tiny lizard with a one-inch head, the tail of that lizard would stretch for 221 miles.

Illustrating the Long Tail

Top 10,000 Search Terms by Percentage of All Search Traffic

The truth is my research is still greatly understating the true size of the tail because:
• The Hitwise sample contains 10 million U.S. Internet users and a complete data set would uncover much larger portions of the long tail.
• The data set I used filtered out adult searches.
• I only looked at 3-months worth of data (which were some of the slower months for search engines).

To help put this in perspective, I made a few spiffy charts that can help to illustrate these points:

Long Tail Search Traffic Distribution

In this first chart, you can see a representation of Hitwise’s data from the four chunks Bill broke down.

The Search Demand Curve

In this next representation, I’m showing the classic “long tail” style curve, but color-coded to help show the various areas of keyword demand. Note that you could conceptually say that the 9,000 of the top 10,000 terms should technically fit into the chunky middle. Bill classified them thusly in his post, but I tend to think that at those demand levels, we’re still talking about “head” of the curve figures.

The Search Demand

For both of these graphics, there’s a large, high-res version available by clicking the chart. You can find lots, lots more on our Free Charts page.

Source: SEOMoz

Después de meses sin apenas escribir  (y sin leer tampoco la mitad de lo que quisiera) las cosas vuelven a moverse.

Algunas cosas interesantes con las que he tropezado estos días:

Por indicación de un tercero (que sabe de lo que habla) he buscado las presentaciones de Pere Rosales sobre márketing y comunidades online. En su versión y en la anterior (que no sé si es legítima), la última merece la pena. Sigue siendo una perspectiva de márketing y no de procesos de negocio, pero lo cierto es que todo lo que escribe sobre funcionamiento y promoción de comunidades podría suscribirlo sin pensarlo. No es extraño: le respalda la experiencia de haber construído un par de buenas comunidades… con dos buenos modelos de negocio. Además parece que Pere está haciendo lo que intento hacer en consultoría, de modo que tiene mucho más interes.

En tiempos de crisis, es interesante ver lo que cuenta Shawn Callaghan (y lo que muestra la Comunidad Foral Navarra). Que no se trata de despedir ni de jugar con flexibilidad de jornadas para reducir costes sin pararse a pensar en las capacidades que quedan (o no), ni de recortar presupuestos que no chillen mucho. Se trata de tener directivos que sepan para qué están ahí, y usen las herramientas que tienen que usar. Esencialmente, directivos y dirigentes que sepan dejar hacer y ayudar a los que hacen.

Fernando Tellado tocó (allá en Octubre) un tema curioso: el de la credibilidad de los medios online en España. A mí me sigue rechinando algo en todo ésto, leáse: la facilidad con la que se asume que la gente cree a los bloggers. No es verdad. Primero, porque no es verdad que un lector suela ver a un blogger como alguien “como yo”, cercano en perspectiva y experiencia. Y segundo, porque la mayor parte de los lectores se han dado cuenta ya de lo fácil que es modificar la perspectiva de muchos bloggers. Pero lo importante es que ningún blogger (al menos según la definición original) es ni pretende ser objetivo. Nos cuenta las cosas tal como las ve, influídas por sus gustos, su filosofía y su ideología. Por ejemplo, el bueno de Fernando es un entusiasta de los blogs, y por eso ni se plantea este tipo de análisis.

Lee LeFever y familia llevan tiempo rompiendo moldes con su serie de vídeos explicativos “in plain English”. Hace unos días han dado en intentar explicar ni más ni menos que el cloud computing. Aunque es muy básico y quizá menos intuitivo que otros trabajos de la casa, es un esfuerzo muy válido, y muy útil, teniendo en cuenta la cantidad de tonterías que distintas partes (generalmente ignorantes o interesadas) difunden sobre lo que es, lo que no es, y para qué vale. Están contribuyendo a retrasar una auténtica revolución en la productividad de los recursos informáticos.

Sean O’Driscoll recuerda, indirecta y cruelmente, que en EEUU la creación, gestión y optimización de comunidades online es una profesión desarrollada por una abundante colonia de consultoras boutique y empresas integradas. Aquí… Pero en fin, como se suele decir, si quieres que algo se haga, hay que hacerlo en persona.

Un blog que no decepciona es el de JP Rangaswami, de BT Design. Nunca sales con el mismo tema en la cabeza. Dos ejemplos: uno sobre la reutilización online de viejos contenidos (apuntando ligeramente a modelos de negocio), y el siguiente sobre el papel de la elección en el funcionamiento de los consumidores modernos. Serios. Y si estás diseñando productos o experiencias, importantes. (Ah, y tampoco es malo éste sobre las descargas de contenidos digitales).

Joitske Hulseboch ha escrito sobre selección de plataformas para grupos online. Buenos ejemplos, pros, contras, e información colateral. De hecho cita dos servicios de los que no tenía ni noticia. Y una empresa de la que tomar mucha, mucha nota. Aunque pille lejos.

Otro que nunca deja de tener miga es el blog de Jordi Graells. Aparte de información sobre el Personal Democracy Forum (y hasta streaming de audio de las ponencias), aporta los papeles de su reciente ponencia sobre “gobierno colaborativo“, y sobre todo comparte una presentación sobre las razones, medios y resultados de la reforma de la administración pública en torno a la colaboración y la gestión del conocimiento (hay un cierto matiz sanitario y algunas particularidades de la administración catalana, pero es de aplicación esencialmente universal). Y encima gracias a él me entero de que el blog de Gestió del Coneixement del programa Compartim ha recibido un premio importante dentro de la blogosfera catalana. Muchas felicidades.

Y también para Luis Suárez e IBM en su aniversario . Aunque si sigue visitando Madrid y librándose de la invitación a cañas, un día de éstos va a caducar. Que no todo puede ser trabajo. Creo .

Mario Lopez de Avila sigue con la serie sobre “preguntas Fermi” para ayudar a estimar variables en un plan de negocio.  Personalmente lo encuentro útil , y como armamento para cualquiera que tenga que hacer estimaciones sin datos suficientes, muy recomendable. Se agradece.

Y me dejo miles (desde que he descubierto el servicio “Leer Después” ni siquiera puedo alegar que se me han perdido los links), pero no llego.

photo by You Need Style

I’m very late into reading Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail: Why The Future Of Business Is Selling Less Of More, and I it’s one of the best (if not the best) I’ve read this year. All through the books were “aha” moments that make so much sense when you look at media and commerce on the Internet, and the physical world.
For those who’ve been preached to death about the Long Tail, please bear with me while I paraphrase Chris’ explanation of The Long Tail. The way I understood it, economies are shifting from domination by hit-based, one size fits all, to the emergence and success of niche goods that make up the true majority of any given market.
Three forces make this possible:

• Democratized production

• Democratized distribution

• Supply and Demand connected

The Long Tail Of Temple Worshipers

As a result of reading the book, I attempted to see long tail effects around me, and voila, saw a mini-long tail story in the local Straits Times yesterday.
For the most part, Buddhists in Singapore head to well-established temples in Singapore, the same way Muslims go to mosques, Christians to their churches, and Indians to the Indian temples.

With Buddhist temples however, Yen Feng and Feng Zengkun realized that many micro-temples are appearing in numbers throughout Singapore’s famous red-light district, Geylang. These have appeared for a number of reasons:

• Strict zoning laws for institutions registered as temples per se. (Scarcity of physical space) Micro-temples apply for more flexible zoning as associations instead

• Micro temples cater to the seniors who are unable to climb high temple steps that are a feature of the larger temples. (There is no one-size fits all solution)

• Having a large body of micro-temples in one area serves the varying needs of the community. (The same way CDBaby and ITunes does this for music fans online)

This shouldn’t be a surprise in the late 2000s, when people are exploring their own unique interests, rejecting the majority / mass media solution of “one-size-fits-all”. Micro-temples are a lot easier to set up as compared to the humongous temples we’ve seen around Singapore. We are seeing transportation getting efficient day-by-day, with the upcoming Circle Line and electronic bus-reporting times at bus stops. Having micro-services in one area adds too convenience too.
Chris Anderson simplifies the rules to creating thriving Long Tail businesses as:

• Make everything available
• Help me find it

Which can be expanded into:

Lowering your costs

• Move inventory way in… or way out
• Let customers do the work

Thinking niche

• One distribution doesn’t fit all
• One product doesn’t fit all
• One price doesn’t fit all

Losing control

• Share information
• Think “and” not “or”
• Trust the market to do your job
• Understand the power of free

Will this happen for the other religious groups in Singapore? Micro-churches, mosques and Indian temples?  The use of Facebook, Twitter, Meetup.com, and other social media? We’ve already seen the emergence of churchgoers attending services online, so it might become an emergent trend, probably by word of mouth.

I do think Geylang is Singapore’s most colorful quarter. For friends traveling in Singapore, stop by if you’ve only got one day here.

there is a new advertising technology on the way called Outbrain, and it seems like a really good idea, because it is connected to blogs’ comments, and that can link you related “what I call technologies”. Other’s blog’s and sites. It is still a first-in is probably the highest payer, but it is still getting to greater access to information.  A very good technology.

Slides della lezione del 15 e 16 novembre 2009:

Image via Wikipedia

Bill Wasik, senior editor at Harper’s magazine, makes several interesting and interlacing points in his talk (seen here). I feel that his assertion that “short stuff” will never be monetized is essentially correct. Short posts by an author or organization are too much like Twitter, and most of these same authors Tweet their short stuff, so why would I pay for that?

That said, over a period of consumption, other work by these same authors or organizations might become compelling enough for me to purchase it either by subscription or on a one-off basis. These authors build their reputations with me because of their short stuff. This methodology looks a lot like Chris Anderson’s “Freemium” model of consumption.

There are a couple of other things to consider when assessing the short stuff: how short is short, and where did it originate. The first consideration is a tough one. A 140-character post on Twitter is pretty short. Blog length is all over the place, from 200 words to novella length….so would I pay for the latter length? Perhaps…depending how valuable I think it is, which will be based on who the author is, what the post is about and my interest in that topic. Standard assessment gauges for content. Some content will be considered for purchase based on larger works and not smaller ones (for example, in our readings for MCDM, think about new white papers by Benkler, Shirky, Lessig….the funny thing is, these authors are much more likely to provide them for free anyway, but if they didn’t, I’d consider them for purchase).

I found what Wasik had to say about the Kindle mirrors my own experience with the device. While reading the New York Times on the Kindle may not be quite the sensory experience of reading the full printed edition, I have found that the news fulfills what I need ( a “good enough” experience) and having it wirelessly delivered wherever I happen to be is a big contributor to satisfaction. One thing I have not understood, though, is the option to purchase subscriptions to blogs on the Kindle. Perhaps it is just my personal preference for blog consumption (larger screen, color, etc.), but the attraction of having it updated constantly throughout the day seems to refer back to Wasik’s assertion of media distraction. When I am reading on my Kindle, I’m in much more of a focused mode of reading than I am when I am online going through the day’s blogs. In my current business, I am most likely to have my laptop or netbook with me, so I’ll continue to consume blog content that way.

One way that content consumption on the Kindle aligns with Freemium is the whole concept of Free Samples. From the Kindle Store on the device, you can shop for content, and if you see a book, magazine or newspaper that looks intriguing, some kind of sample chapter or a free trial subscription of some length. You download that onto the device, check it out and then either delete it or purchase the entire item. This is a potential business model for many different kinds of content, not just digital print.

ALEXANDER OSTERWALDER

In today’s blogpost I’m sharing a couple of reflections on long tail business models. It is be part of the upcoming book in a section that illustrates some popular management theories & concepts through the business model canvas.

Enjoy the slides:

Ovviamente non stiamo parlando di un’acconciatura, bensì di un prolungamento posteriore della colonna vertebrale. E non stiamo parlando di una codina a scopetto per tenere lontano le mosche dal fondoschiena, bensì della famosa coda lunga. Uno pseudopode snodato, che vi permetta di esprimere quelle gestualità caudali fondamentali come: scodinzolare, mettere la coda tra le gambe, e arricciare la coda a forma di punto interrogativo. Ma non fermiamoci qui: la coda oltre che bella è anche fondamentale per l’equilibrio e la locomozione, può essere uno scudo, un’arma e – inutile dirlo – una rivoluzione sessuale.

Ma prima di addentrarsi nello specifico, se si sta valutando l’opzione coda, le domande fondamentali da farsi sono le seguenti:

Nuda o pelosa? Certo, la coda nuda è bruttina da vedersi e vi fa sembrare un ratto, ma anche quella pelosa che effetto può fare, se poi per il resto siete glabri come normali homo sapiens? E dove deve finire il pelo? Alla base dell’osso sacro, o risalire su per la colonna vertebrale? Vale la pena rifletterci (1).

Obbediente o senziente? Vale a dire, la vostra coda fa solo quello che le dite di fare, o ha un grado di autonomia? Fa quello che dico io, sarebbe la risposta più semplice, ma non sottovalutate i vantaggi di una coda indipendente che rifletta il vostro lato più animalesco.

Naturale o cibernetica? Ovvero, preferite che la vostra coda sia il risultato di una mutazione umana o pensavate a una protesi cibernetica? In molti considerano la coda naturale più elegante, sebbene sia meno resistente e non possa essere usata per deflettere i colpi del nemico, ma considerate questo: un arto cibernetico è forte solo quanto la parte del corpo a cui è saldato. Per cui una coda cibernetica può essere usata come frusta, o come arto prensile, solo se il vostro osso sacro è in grado di reggere la sollecitazione (banalmente: se vi appendete a un ramo usando la vostra coda cibernetica, vi verrà comunque un gran mal di schiena). Molto spesso conviene accontentarsi di una coda naturale abbinata a una muscolatura lombare adeguata, e magari pensare a dei piercing affilati sulla punta per massimizzarne il potenziale offensivo.

____________

(1) Ma una cosa possiamo stabilirla da subito: niente triangolini alla fine. Non è Halloween tutto l’anno.

With the proliferation of the Internet more voices are becoming part of the conversation.  The web 2.0 enables users to not only receive information, but also to produce content. With the increase of people participating on content production, concepts like crowd sourcing are emerging. Now it is possible to gather people from all over the world to join forces and perform tasks, such as improving products or building the world’s largest encyclopedia.

Having access to the knowledge of some many people is definitely something positive. Before, knowledge and information were provided by a limited number of sources, such as encyclopedias, newspapers, academic books published by experts. Now, we have easy access to a wider variety of experiences provided by people coming from all walks of life.

However, this immense source of information has its limits. Not all the information available on the internet is true. Therefore, people should also develop a sense of “wariness” and critical thinking..

A good example of what we should be wary is Wikipedia, which is an ambitious project of organizing the knowledge of the world in one place.  With more than 13 million articles in over 200 languages, Wikipedia’s success relies on being a platform which people can easily access, edit and contribute. However, this collective encyclopedia also has its drawbacks. The accuracy of the information and the amateur source are constantly a target of critics. Some academic institutions are no longer accepting Wikipedia references in students’ papers.

We can also find the Wikipedia supporters, such as Chris Anderson in The Long Tail who believe that the accuracy problems fall under the probabilistic theory and are the exception and not the rule. And that Wikipedia is even more accurate than Britannica Encyclopedia.

I see a great value in the collective wisdom and agree that Wikipedia does an amazing job putting it together. I also understand its accuracy limitations. However, here is my main concern: isn’t the “beauty” of Wikipedia about building knowledge coming from different sources and experiences?  If so, does the fact that the 83% of contributors are men, mostly white, put Wikipedia’s “representativeness” in check? Who is expressing the knowledge and experiences of the ones who have no access to internet: 93% of the population in African, 80% in Asia, 75% in the Middle East, and 70% in Latin and Caribbean American? Is Wikipedia articles biased by a limited perspective?

I was always fascinated by the fact that thinkers, inventors and artists like DaVinci had patrons, someone to pay the bills and worry about the little, annoying and boring details while the artist was free to dream, create and innovate.

The internet and social media today provide a perfect platform for artists to cultivate their followers, customers and now their own patrons.  Take for example Jamie Tanner, a graphic novelist.  Now, I don’t know Jamie or anything about his art, but I was struck by the ingenuity of the fund-raising program he developed for his future project.  Not only is Jamie asking his audience for money to fund his new project, but he’s offering fantastic rewards from sketch books and original art to inclusion in the new project as a named character, like a version of product placement for individuals instead of big brands.  Maybe this can be termed “personal placement” instead.

This isn’t the first instance of online fund-raising by a writer or artist, but it’s certainly an ingenious one.  Jamie should be applauded for his efforts, and for the fact that he’s already exceeded his fund-raising goal.

The artist and the audience are both winners here.

The artist can secure funding upfront for a project instead of relying on income once the project is completed and released to the marketplace.  The potential pain of self-funding a project is gone.  The artist can also involve the audience in the project early on and make the overall project more of a collaboration by building a bond between the audience and project itself right from the start.  Any interested parties would definitely enjoy the behind the scenes views of a work-in-progress.

The audience not only gets the joy of being involved in a project right from the beginning, but can actually become a part of the work.  What could be better than becoming a character in your favorite author’s new book?  Amazing.

And, again for the artist, building stronger relationships with your audience is key in this continually fragmenting, long-tail marketplace.  Instead of attracting a huge audience for your work by catering to the needs or desires of everyone (and thereby watering down your product), you only need to attract a small, passionate following to develop a wildly successful career.

Today, Techcrunch reports that Distimo has put out a report on the top 40 in-app  titles for the iPhone. in-App is the app store’s Freemium based offering that allows developers to offer a free version and then make money by having consumers pay for additional features or content.

This should be a must read article for anyone thinking about developing iPhone apps today.

You should also take a look at Chubby Brain’s reported on what the Venture Capital industry has been investing in: The iPhone Inspired 2nd Economy: Over $100 Million Goes from VCs to iPhone Startups.

Source Chubby Brain

It is interesting to compare what the VC’s are getting excited about with what customers are downloading from the app store.

Top 20 Paid and Free iPhone Apps

As I suggest in my post What’s on the Radar for Apple? it would appear that the trend is towards the iPhone becoming an entertainment platform first and an applications platform second.

I say this because, although developers and the media having been buzzing with iPhone fever ever since the app store was launched in mid-2008, it now appears that the iPhone Apps marketplace is just like the web. It suffers from a very,very long tail. 

The iPhone's Long Tail

When I prepared this chart earlier in the year it was immediately apparent that only the Top 100 apps were really delivering any kind of return on investment on any given day. So success in the app store, as always in the media industry, depends on how long you can stay on top of the charts.

At the time this chart was prepared there was only 40,000 apps in the store. Today there are over 100,000. So maybe today we are talking about Top 250 to 500 Apps but that is still less than 0.5% of the total iPhone App market. Plus I haven’t made a distinction between Paid and Free Apps in the Long Tail… but you would expect from our experience with the web the Free Apps would more popular than Paid Apps. 

Mobile Orchard prepared this chart to support their discussion on how 99 Cent iPhone Apps are not significantly more popular than $1.00+ Apps. You can see how at that time the Free Apps were more popular than the paid apps.

Mobile Orchard: iPhone Apps Market Price vs Popularity

The economics of Free vs Paid apps has also been discussed by Jonathan Wegener. While Pinch Media have posted a report on Paid Applications. In it they suggest that although paid applications make up 30% of the downloads, they make up about 77% of the 100,000 titles available in App Store. So I guess that means the 33% of the titles which are made freely available make up 70% of the downloads.

Again this should not come as a surprise to anyone who has followed the economics of the web over the past 15 years.

The harsh reality is, in their pursuit of the Gold Rush, most of the iPhone developers have been left prospecting the iPhone’s Long Tail.

The thing that always continues to fascinate me about Apple is the passion of the Apple developer community.  We saw it in the original Apple Mac, earlier this decade with OS X  and now the iPhone.

Most business people would have looked at the Mobile Phone market and thought “If we’re going to develop mobile apps we’re better off developing apps for the largest possible market”.

Apples market share was practically zero when the app store opened

Not Apple’s iPhone Developers and I guess that’s what makes Apple more than just a brand. It truly is one of the world’s great Lovemarks

“We make wine work online.” … Paul Mabray, VinTank Founder & Chief Strategy Officer

The Backstory

Against the background of the Wine Business Monthly lead story Tuesday, November 3rd, announcing ‘Wine Sales up 7% in October,’ is last weeks story of AmazonWine’s failure to launch. While the story of Amazon.com’s attempted entry into the online wine sales segment has been well documented, this quick summary will tend to facilitate the following discussion. The Financial Times reported on March 5th 2008 that Amazon.com planned to start selling wine online in the USA market. Amazon had in fact ventured down this path before, investing $30 million in return for a 45% equity stake in pioneer online wine marketer Wineshopper.com in 1999. But that investment evaporated as Wineshopper ceased operations within a year. And then continuing to keep their toes in the water through an association with the longstanding Wine.com selling gourmet food baskets without wine through Amazon.com. During the formative stages, AmazonWine chose New Vine Logistics as its fulfillment partner, but this arrangement was endangered when NVL abruptly ceased operations on May 29th, 2009. Inertia Beverage Group stepped in purchasing NVL’s debt obligation from Silicon Valley Bank, and then via auction on July 27th acquired the assets of the financially stressed NVL. IBG initiated an integration of the NVL fulfillment business into their existing operations. On October 23, 2009 both New Vine Logistics and AmazonWine.com made announcements. NVL filed for Chapter 7 in the US Bankruptcy Court in Northern California, winding down the closure of the corporate entity; and, Dini Rao, Senior Account Manager at AmazonWine, sent an email to potential winery partners stating, “ we have recently decided not to resume shipping. As you know we were excited to work with you to build the AmazonWine business. For that, this was a very tough choice for us.”

In light of an apparent wine market uptick, the subsequent gnashing of teeth, and what to me was an overly pessimistic take by journalists and bloggers alike rang as an overreaction to the actual events. The collective ennui displayed by many in the wine industry seemed more reflective of recent difficult financial times, and of hopes unfulfilled. And, many of the comments tended to be colored by the respondents particular points-of-view based on their involvement and specific roles in the wine industry. To get a clear picture of the effects of the AmazonWine decision not to move forward, I reached out to experienced digital wine marketer, Paul Mabray of VinTank for his take on the wine industry’s ecommerce marketplace. What follows are key bits of wisdom from this conversation covering digital marketing and the online sale of wine in the United States.

The Conversation

TWM: What was the genesis of VinTank?
PM: After Inertia Beverage, I was looking for a way to continue to contribute to the wine business, to continue to add value, and I wanted to help wineries adopt an agile business process. The key idea was to provide thought leadership on the synergistic future between wine and technology, to keep innovating in the wine industry.

TWM: You have a significant background as one of the pioneers in winery e-commerce.
PM: I was lucky to work with some of the pioneers in DTT and DTC efforts at WineShopper.com/Wine.com, as a Beverage Industry Consultant with Sumitomo Mitsui Banking, and as the Founder/CEO of Inertia Beverage Group, but as the saying goes, most of the pioneers died with arrows in their backs and those that survived became the guides to help settlers safely go westward.

TWM: This history is somewhat mirrored by your VinTank partners/team members.
PM: Having assembled a very strong team with collectively over 50 years experience in the wine and tech industries most notably eSkye, BevAccess, Inertia and Wine Trade Network, Vintank is now the recognized leader in online sales strategies and execution. The partners include Eric Hsu/Director, Creative Strategy, Patrick Angeles/Technology Strategy, Clay Wallin/Business Development/Operations and Ashley Bellview/Marketing and Social Media Associate.

TWM: Looking at the Wine Industry today what do you see?
PM: Now, looking at the wine industry VinTank sees a product category mired by antiquated laws, complex distribution paradigms, unique product qualifications and innumerable complexities. Through technology and innovative strategies, we are dedicated to finding solutions.

TWM: So, what are the challenges facing wine marketers?
PM: The wine industry is tremendously fragmented and insular. It also suffers from one of the most antiquated, regulated and complicated distribution paradigms. It is an extremely long tail product with approximately 250,000 individual SKUs entering the market annually with many remaining in the market from 3-10 years. Plus there has been a tremendous proliferation of brands with ever decreasing market access through traditional distribution channels. Mix this with technology and you have a lot of complicated puzzle pieces to cobble together to help make a frictionless transaction occur.

TWM: Is there a key to a successful ecommerce strategy?
PM: To be successful in the digital end of the wine business you have to focus on the right things, focus on a multi-channel strategy, focus on a direct business model, and make your strategy consumer centric.

TWM: I’m thinking that the disparity of compensation between traditional sales management and DTC sales management shows a lack of awareness by many wine businesses of the potential of online wine sales.
PM: The disparity in traditional sales management salaries and DTC management salaries is a sad reflection of the myopia of traditional wine beliefs. DIRECT in all its forms (marketing, consumer and B2B sales) is the most profitable and important channel for the majority of US wineries.

TWM: I’ve heard traditional marketers say sales is sales, so, is a different skill set required by ecommerce managers?
PM: Out of 6,000 plus wineries in the United States there are only 20 dedicated ecommerce managers. Wineries view their primary DTC efforts as their tasting room, or their wine club, but like the broad market with on and off-premises requiring different skill sets there are different segments in DTC. Tasting rooms are DTC’s on-premise and the Internet its off-premise, and they each require different skills. Ecommerce requires a new type of online sales channel expertise and relationships. It also requires a commitment to creating and growing online brand presence, and a dedicated online sales and marketing strategy.

TWM: Given the new construct, just who’s the most important customer at a winery?
PM: All customers are important but I’ve been told by most wineries that their most important customer is the one who visits the winery and buys wine during their visit. An important customer, but your winery’s most important customer is the one who Googles your wine and through your winery store, and inspite of paying what is most likely the highest MSRP, buys the wine.

TWM: The adoption and integration of DTC and DTT technology solutions for wineries seems to be slow and fragmented.
PM: The adoption and integration of applicable software technology including CRM/POS/Accounting is very clumsy. There are as many as 20 different systems that have to be integrated between hospitality, CRM, ecommerce, wine club, compliance and accounting. Unfortunately accounting system integration usually drives the process in a winery. My question is do you want an accounting centric system driving your business or a sales centric system…?

TWM: It seems that grape growing and production are years ahead of winery sales and marketing on the adoption of cutting edge technology solutions.
PM: We are a production centric industry. Viticulture and winery production departments utilize bleeding-edge technology and software. However software vendors for other functions have to deal with such a fragmented industry and slow technology adoption that they have to struggle to support themselves with such a small market share to divide (6K US wineries) that it causes lesser investment in R&D and artificially helps to create friction for innovation.

TWM: Can you identify the various DTC market segments?
PM: Online retailers, marketing agents, consumer marketing portals and direct to trade.

TWM: What does VinTank see as future trends in the wine industry?
PM: We think you’ll see more B2B marketplace attempts. The industry sorely needs alternative routes to market. We also think you’ll see more market agents explode once they get confident in understanding the ABC Regulatory Advisory. Finally we see mobile continuing to grow to be a stronger force that drives wine education and point of purchase decisions. Mind you all these items require wineries to lead the charge and adopt the alternative channels but in this current environment, they have all the advantages, they just need to commit the resources.

TWM: Do online wine sales have a future now that AmazonWine.com has failed to launch?
PM: We believe it does in a big way. Without demeaning the approach and choice of partners that Amazon made, it only saddens us that Amazon did not launch. Anything that would have help catalyze online wine buy activity we are 1000% behind.That being said there are many other companies succeeding online with wine (both retailers and marketing agents like Vinfolio, Winelibrary.com, K&L, Wall Street Journal Wine Club, Wine Tasting Network) despite sub-optimal conditions(regulatory environment and compliance especially). And yet we are still waiting for one of the giants to emerge that would make our industry comparable to other luxury good verticals. We think that time will be soon and there will be more than one winner (probably a few of the companies mentioned above). However, one of the key challenges is winery participation. Only by supporting and feeding an alternative channel can it become healthy and the rewards will benefit the industry. We believe in wine online and we hope wineries start believing too. The internet is the most powerful and ACCESSIBLE tool we have ever seen in our lifetime. We (the wine industry) should be using it better.

TWM: Can you recommend five must read books for digital wine marketers?
PM: Sorry, I couldn’t do just 5…

‘Purple Cow‘ and ‘Tribes‘ by Seth Godin

‘Free‘ and ‘The Long Tail‘ by Chris Anderson

‘Drilling Down‘ by Jim Nova

‘Wine Brands: Success Strategies for New Markets, New Consumers and New Trends‘ by Eve Resnick

‘The Cluetrain Manifesto‘ by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, David Wineberger and Mckee Jake

‘Trust Agents‘  by Chris Brogan

‘Crush It‘  by Gary Vaynerchuk

‘Wikinomics‘ by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams

‘Good to Great‘ by Jim Collins

The Take Away

Four years ago, Smoke Wallin in his 2005 Wine Industry Technology Symposium keynote address said “The time is right for each of us in the industry to take a strategic review of our business practices and make sure we are optimizing the business using the most appropriate technology tools and strategies available.” Well, four years later that time is now. Paul Mabray and VinTank are moving the digital online wine bar forward and upward. If your winery is not yet diversifying its channel strategies, and/or maximizing its execution within the ecommerce channel, then this should be part of your 2010 brand plan. However, the execution of your DTC and/or DTT strategy will require the allocation of resources, both human and capital towards the establishment of an ecommerce platform management position, either as a direct hire or through a digital business development partnership. Contacts matter, relationships matter, and experience matters. The skill set required for online sales and marketing efforts, while exhibiting some crossover capabilities, are unique to the channel and should be valued as such. As Paul Mabray recently tweeted “Twitter is not a strategy. Facebook is not a strategy. Customer service and communications need to be core to your strategy.” So, while it is laudable that some winecos are now developing social capital and evolving into savvy communicators by incorporating Social Media Management into their core tactics, what may be necessary for long term wine brand success is the establishment and execution by your wineco of a viable online ecommerce sales and marketing program.

Note: Copyright © 2009 Think Wine Marketing® All rights reserved.

The most valuable issue that I’ve learnt so far this semester is how social media is reshaping the way we communicate, and mainly how it shifts the power towards the people, resulting in a more democratic society.

In the Cluetrain Manifesto we’ve learnt a key lesson: markets are conversation. With the internet, the silence imposed by the mass production and mass marketing  advents, is coming to an end.

“On the Internet, markets are getting more connected and more powerfully vocal every day. (…) Connected, they reclaim their voice in the market, but this time with more reach and wider influence than ever.”(Chapter four) 

However, corporations are still dealing with the markets as something distance, as targets to be reached, and the internet is seen as just another channel to broadcast the message. They are afraid to join this conversation and lose control.

Nevertheless, we are entering a new era in which the one way communication model is becoming obsolete: the faith on advertising is declining; meanwhile the faith on individuals is increasing. According to Chris Anderson in “The Long tail”:

“we are leaving the information age and entering to the recommendation age.” (p.98)

Peer by peer review are getting and incredible importance. A study shows that 62 percent of consumers read consumer-written reviews online, and 82 percent of them said their purchasing decisions are influenced by customer reviews. 

This change reaches far beyond than just representing that we are now more empowered consumers. It indicates that we are more connected, and not only receiving, but also producing information. It ultimately represents a shift in the power, from big institutions to the people.  In “We the media” we’ve learnt more about how this power shift is impacting the media industry and the way we produce and consume information.

Clay Shirky, in “Here comes Everybody” goes further and tell us that:

“When we change the way we communicate, we change society” (p.17). 

Have a look on his thoughts on how collaboration technologies are changing the society, in this brilliant presentation.

The understanding of how this change in the media and technological landscapes has impacted the way people communicate and behave is crucial for communication professional. Whoever is trying to get a message out, can no longer work with the traditional media frameworks. Transparency and real two-way conversation are mandatory for those who want to survive this new world. Welcome!

How do some  webpages on the Internet become so ubiquitous that we are rarely ever less than two short links away from viewing that page? How have some webpages become so popular among the hundreds of billions of webpages that are on the Internet currently, not to mention the new ones that pop up almost every second? More importantly how do certain pages become the centre for web activity and lead us to other pages within their network? Albert-Lázló Barabási explored these questions about networks and the organization/disorganization of interconnectivity within his Chapter titled Hubs and Connectors .

Barabási begins the piece by explaining both the power and importance of links within the web. Quite simply the larger number of incoming links that direct visitors to your webpage then the higher the number of visitors you will have, which in turn increases your overall profile on the web. This sets your page apart from others, allowing for greater visibility and secures your place within the hiearchy as a destination site online. The perception of networks, its growth and mechanisms has traditionally followed the random worldview theory of networks as defined by Erdos-Rényi. Within this theory the interior of networks are connected at random, by nodes (this can be thought of as webpages online) and each node within the network is not distinguishable from another, meaning that they uniformly connect to the other nodes within the network the same number of times. (This example is presented in the previous post.) Hence the distribution of the links is equal between all the nodes thus abolishing any distinguishable character that one node may have over another. This distinguishable character within a network typically infers that there is “a few highly connected nodes, or hubs.” (58) According to the random network theory hubs could not exist because all nodes share the same amount of links to other nodes. Additionally the total number of nodes is static over time, leaving no room for growth in terms of the number of nodes existing within the network. Typically this theory has been represented by bell curves; in which various nodes are dispersed randomly and all connect to each other an equal amount of times, thus creating a peak within the middle of the graph. Accordingly within this random network theory all webpages would have an equal opportunity to be seen and heard. Barabási observes that this theory of networks is quite simply not true, and holds no ‘real world’ application and/or example.

He contests that the Erdos-Rényi theory of networks, which consist of nodes that are randomly connected with “roughly the same number of incoming links”, is not applicable at all to the hierarchal pattern of popular webpages prevalent within the web today. Barabási states that some webpages such as Amazon.com, Yahoo! etc. have an exceptional amount of incoming links and thus dominate the web through the sheer enormity and range of their incoming links from various networks across the web. Webpages like Amazon inherently become the hubs of the Internet. Additionally Barabási notes that just like actors within Hollywood (as observed within the Kevin Bacon phenomena, in which Bacon is only 2.79 degrees removed from everyone within the Hollywood network) the strength of these Internet hubs do not rely on the sheer size of the network but the range. This means that the links these nodes make to other various distant networks adds range to the network that the hubs possess. This adds variety and brings dissimilar things together. In contrast to hubs, Barabási points out that his own webpage is so insignificant within the web, due to the near infinite range of the Internet network, that the chance of a person viewing it is about forty in a billion. Within this contrast lies the main concerning question of the Internet and it’s network; how do some pages become these hubs of the Internet, in comparison to the majority of pages that exists in near obscurity?

Barabási claims that the theory and research of networks as represented by Erdos-Rényi random network theory fails to answer this question because of it’s fundamental underlying assumptions; ¹ Static: the amount of nodes in a Erdos-Rényi network are set, meaning there is no room for growth, which is in exact opposition to the nature of the web itself and ² Equality (Random Interconnectivity): each node within the network contains an equal amount of links to the other nodes thus making each node indistinguishable from the last, hence the nodes are linked randomly and are equal (there can be no room for hub webpages such as Google!). Within the random network’s nodes are considered a “characteristic scale[,] embodied by the average node and fixed by the peak degree of distribution.” (pg70)

 Barabási dismisses this entire method of perceiving networks, and states that the actual distribution, connection and dominance (or lack thereof) certain webpages within the Internet is determined by inverting the two random network assumptions. The new foundations of network theory are ruled by the following;

“¹Growth: For each give period of time we add a new node to the network. This step underscores the fact that networks are assembled one node at a time

² Preferential Attachment: We assume that each new node connects to the existing nodes with two links. The probability that it will choose a given node is proportional to the number of links the chosen node has. That is, given the choice between two nodes, one with twice as may link as the other; it is twice as likely that the new node will connect to the more connected node”.  (pg 86)

These foundations are further represented not in bell curves but by the Italian Economist Pareto’s 80/20 Rule and the power law phenomena it produces. Within a power law ruled network the majority of nodes have only a few links (incoming and outgoing) and these tiny nodes co-exist with a few big hubs that are highly connected with many nodes that traverse various differing networks. The power law exemplifies Pareto’s Rule, which states that 80% of effects are derived only from 20% of causes. The approximate 80/20 rule applied to the web means that “80% of the links on the web point to only 15% of total webpges”. (66)

Pareto’s 80/20 Rule and the power law graph that is supports provides us with a very different perspective on networks, especially according to how Barabási perceives networks in the Internet. The power law graph shows a slope that rises and then declines running horizontally parallel out to infinity.  The nodes located with this horizontal section account for the 80% of wepages and the peak of the slope which is located on the left hand side of the graph closest to the vertical line is the 15% of webpages that account for hubs. This unequal distribution of incoming links as presented within the power law graph is a more accurate description of the current state of the Internet. 

 As Barabási describes;

“The power law distribution thus forces us to abandon the idea of scale, or a characteristic node. In a continuous hierarchy there is no single node which we could pick out and claim to be characteristic of all the nodes. There is no intrinsic scale in these networks. This is the reason my research group started to describe networks with power-law degree distribution as scale-free.” (pg70)

This principle that describes the web and its interconnectivity is not a phenomenon distinctive to the web but applies to a variety of situations within human life.

The effect of power laws and the study of its presence is not a new phenomenon at all. In the last few years the existence of the Internet has dramatically changed how some view the various power laws at work within out world. The Long Tail as it was coined by Chris Anderson has become a staple of what some believe will be the future for commerce, specifically within the music industry. Anderson felt that the hubs within the music industry were an effect of the old 20^th century system of hits culture which encompassed production, manufacturing and the distribution of music. These hubs within music could be seen as various major record labels, major publishing companies, big name acts, and their hit repertoire. For many years the music industry was ruled by power laws, with only 20% (termed by Anderson as the ‘head’ of the power law) of the products (the term products primarily refers to music recordings like CD’s. LP vinyl etc) accounted for 80%( termed by Anderson as the ‘tail’ of the power law) of the sales.  The 20%, of  the ‘head’, are comprised of the goliaths of the music industry such as Michael Jackson’s classic ‘Thriller’ or by more recent releases like Rihanna’s album ‘A Good Girl Gone Bad’. The other 80% of niche genre music (such as instead of the main genre of Rock, you want Acid Rock) was virtually inaccessible, because the justification of producing, manufacturing, distributing and stocking this niche music  would not be meet via mass profits…until now.

Anderson proposed that with the democratization of distribution via Internet retail sites like Amazon, anyone could find and purchase a piece of music that they enjoyed. By riding the tail of the power law to the outer reaches music lovers could find music that was deeper within the niche of music that they always wanted to own, and/or discover new music. Additionally if we are to take a look at Barabási’s notion of networks within the Internet, the hubs of music such as Jay-Z could refer music lovers to other musicians within that rap/hip-hop genre of music like Nas, and the links from the Nas node could lead to other lesser known acts.

The sheer enormity of information and access that the Internet provides would allow for music lovers (or a consumer of any product/service) to be able to find exactly what they want, and be able to obtain that item. Through the Long Tail Anderson argues that we could begin to focus more on the niche products (or in this case music genres) that for so long have been relegated to the sidelines as the hit parade came into town. In fact Anderson argues that in terms of commerce businesses could focus on selling ‘alot of a little’. For example Anderson starts with just exploring the ‘A’ section of music genres and discovers a niche of Afro-Cuban Jazz. Although this isn’t a big genre within the ‘A’ section, in it there are hubs  like artist Tito Puente. You could focus as a retailer on having Tito Puente in addition to other artists within the same genre, like the Buena Vista Social Club. You may only sell a few copies of each artist, but the total of that entire sale of those artists in combination would equate to a profit either equal or similar to that amount if you might have sold if you were just focusing on the ‘head. Accordingly this would mark the end of hits, or is it?

Kanye, Lil’Wayne, Miley Cyrus, Pink, Kings of Leon etc, are all still selling millions of copies of their albums (or at the very least a solid half a million). These are mass marketed and mass produced artists, and more importantly as hubs of the music industry they still influence alot of other artists that are developing. Although in our preferences we might become very niche, the power and influence of hubs still remains. Hence although the playing field has been leveled, and as consumers we can have access to music like never before, we still need some sort of guidance. Anderson calls this ‘filtering’, which sites like Amazon with its Recommendations technology and Google through its search engine provide by offering a means of shifting through all of the products available.

 However, once again he is missing the bigger point of networks and the position of hubs within that network. For many music lovers finding new music is a journey that starts with a hub like John Mayer and then through the connections that artist makes as a hub whether it’s through genre, featured artists on his album or label mates, music lovers had to start at the ‘head’ of the power law and then ride to the ‘tail’ to find that music. If those hubs didn’t exist then discovery would be highly difficult. The  Erdos-Rényi random network theory was disproved because of this very thing;  if all the nodes have scale and there are no distinguishable characteristics making any one node different from another than the same information is passed through that type of network. Within the music industry this would mean that no new music would be able to be found, and by only focusing on the niches the bigger picture of music trends and tastes would be ignored. Hubs need niches and niches need hubs. Anderson’s continued crusade against hubs or ‘hits’ destabilizes the entire network theory; and its applications within music, Internet and life in general. Anderson fails to realize that as within any network; when a node has a choice between linking between two other nodes it will most likely choose the node that has the higher amount of links. The same can be said for music fans and webpages alike; hits are still hits.

To begin any knitting project you must be able to cast on, the art of putting stitches on the knitting needle.

Materials:

1 pair size U.S. 9 knitting needles

1 skein of plain yarn (no fancy shmancy stuff-you need to be able to see your stitches)

To being we will be using the long tail cast on method.  It is by far the easiest to learn for beginners, in my opinion.

Take your skein of yarn and pull out or unwrap approximately 1 yard.   Grab the yarn at the point closest to the skein and make a slip knot.  Slip this on your needle.

Next, hold the needle in your right hand and both strands of yarn (the tail and that strand comming from the skein) in your left hand.  You will have to pull out/unwrap more of your yarn.

Holding your needle above your left hand, slip your first finger and thumb in between the two strands. Your tail end strand should be around your thumb and your working strand (from the skein) should be around your finger.  Now bring your needle down towards your palm.  This creates a loop over your thumb and first finger.

Bring the point of your needle to the far side of your thumb and slip the tip under that strand.  Next bring your needle tip over the strand on your finger to the right of it.  Hook the strand  with your needle tip and bring it through the loop on your thumb.

Let the strands off your thumb and first finger and pull gently.  You have created your second loop on your needle.  Repeat this procedure until you have the required number of loops on your needle.

Here are some photos followed by a little video to further explain this procedure.  Please forgive my amateur video production.  It’s the first time I’ve used the video application on my camera.

Please practice this until it becomes second nature.  Yes, that means to remove those stitches and start again, repeatedly.

Next post will be the garter stitch.  You will be making a garter stitch scarf.

The reading for this week, Linked by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi disproves the idea of randomness in networks and champions the idea of hubs and connectors that function to bring together society. The idea behind linked and being connected to others is not new nor is it phenomenal: it is in our blood. This is our history and thus, inevitable. The Bible clears demonstrates this connection as in the beginning, there was Adam, then Eve, then Cain and Able. After that, humanity arises and creates towns to settle and we develop. Thus, we are all connected or linked in some way. If one is agnostic or believes in science, then think of evolution. People evolved as running from animals to hunting them in groups. Once in groups, they became nomads, and then quite surely, someone decided to settle down in a location, therefore forming a town. Thus a hub is created and with it, streets, other towns, etc…

It is divided into 3 chapters. I will discuss each chapter separately by its part and tie it together at the end. They are all connected; rather, they are components of a larger truth.

The Fifth Link: Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point notices an interesting phenomenon: “sprinkled among every walk of life…are a handful of people with a truly extraordinary knack of making friends and acquaintances. They are connectors” (55). This brings in the idea of connectors as highly relevant components of our social lives. Another way to define connectors is by calling them hubs. These hubs have a large number of links. One can create the analogy of a large city, such as Los Angeles and the suburbs that surrounds it. Many highways enter and go out of Los Angeles, connecting many different cities along the way. This discovery has basically disproven Erdos-Renyi’s theory of random worldview and Watts and Strogatz’s simple circle network model. Social networks exhibit clusters and hubs, both points that demonstrate a worldly rule that applies.

We can also apply the theory of links and connectors/hubs to cyberspace. The World Wide Web is the ultimate space for freedom, an environment that represents and defines the meaning of space without limits, boundaries, nor rules. Anyone can publish their work online and allow anyone to see it. Problem is, there are billions of websites. The question that arises is visibility. On the Web, the “measure of visibility is the number of links. The more incoming links pointing to your Webpage, the more visible it is” (57). As such, only websites that become hubs are highly visible (Amazon, Google). These are hubs: connectors with enormous links to other nodes.

I can create a website, thus it becomes a node. Google has grown, thus it has become a hub. Without a link, both websites exist and move in different worlds, or just space. The internet is as big as the universe, each node moves on its own, until it makes contact. This is the link. My website can function in its own galaxy as networks tend to form a cluster. Clusters are “nodes that are linked only to nodes in their subculture or genre” (61).  As a cluster, it is easier to find a common connection to a hub. For example, if my website is about knee pains, then I would like to create some link to a popular website such as WebMD. This in turn, can allow me to link with Google. In two links, my website has escaped randomness and can be visible.

The Sixth Link: Vilfredo Pareto may be a well known Italian economist, but I feel that his thought process behind the 80/20 Rule is sheer brilliance. It is all around us, and yet, he is the first to notice that it applies to the world. This is Simple Genius: understanding a law within the world that is so visible, and yet, invisible to the eye. 80/20 Rule applies to many things, but is generally regarded as 20 own rest of the 80. This also applies to network as well. It can be proven through a mathematical expression called a power law. In contrast to a bell curve, which is a “distribution rather similar to the peaked distribution characterizing random networks,” (67) the power law is by definition a special kind of mathematical relationship between two quantities. The exact definition is as follows: if one quantity is the frequency of an event, the other is the size of the event, then the relationship has a power law distribution when the frequency of the event decreases at a greater rate than the size increases. In layman terms, think of 20% of the population ruling 80% of the world.

Power laws basically functions to prove mathematically the fact that in most “real networks the majority of nodes have only a few links and that these numerous tiny nodes coexist with a few big hubs, nodes with an anomalously high number of links” (70). Again, this relates to Gladwell’s idea of connectors, but proving quantitatively that it exists within the realm of the World Wide Web. It demonstrates that real networks are not random at all, but exist under the power law. The interesting idea that Barabasi proposes is that in the beginning, nodes tend to be chaotic and without any form or order. However, through time, this disorder turned into order through self-organization. Under the theory of phase transitions, real networks demonstrate self creation from disorder into the 80/20 Rule. Barabasi’s idea is highly compelling, as he demonstrates quantitative analysis and by using the Web, a blank space which is like a universe unto itself, to explain a simple law that applies to the world. Everyone is intricately linked, because we are social beings. Networking is only a function of humanity, which always existed, but has now been proven through the power law. A question that arises is why do hubs and links form and how does it form in such a manner that to the naked eye is so random and chaotic, and yet, has order.

The Seventh Link: Erdos and Renyi’s model of networks rely on two principles. First is the idea that all nodes are fixed and remains unchanged throughout the network’s life. Second is that all nodes are equivalent. However, this is obviously not the case as there exists hubs/connectors, links, and change from disorder to order through self-organization. To understand how it does this, we must understand that the web is constantly growing. It is changing and growing. This is quite self-explanatory. There has been exponential growth of websites on the World Wide Web. As there is growth, we can safely disprove the static nature of Erdos-Renyi’s model of networks. We also do not randomly decide on which websites to link. We choose based upon our knowledge and social upbringing. We prefer certain websites over others because we are comfortable and familiar with that certain product. Thus, rises the concept of hubs. Barabasi brings up the idea of preferential attachment: “when choosing between two pages, one with twice as many links as the other, about twice as many people link to the more connected page. While our individual choices are highly unpredictable, as a group we follow strict patterns” (85). In many sense, this is true. We are all sheep and follow the leader.

In truth, randomness does not really exist unless it is the role of a die. Linking between networks is not random. Though unmentioned as third criteria, I believe that popularity and attractiveness plays an important role in the addition of links and creation of hubs. Webpages that have more links are more likely to be “linked to again” (86). Thus, there exists first person advantage. Older nodes have greater chances to become bigger and eventually rise as a hub. As a senior member within a link, this node has greater links and more nodes want to be linked to that certain node. Barabasi has given compelling evidence that real networks are not random, but constantly evolving and growing, attracting more links through the legitimacy of the power law.

We are living in a complex world and yet, guided by the invisible hand or law that is, in my opinion, inexplicable. The idea of real networks applies not only to websites, but to humanity in large. I believe that Barabasi’s point is that humans are social beings and we are followers. There are different people: some are leaders and some are followers. This difference guides the principle of 80/20 Rule as well as the power law. Barabasi has done something quite remarkable: take a simple, obvious, and yet invisible rule, and proved it scientifically and gave it a name. Kudos.

Aquí van los capítulos que deben leer para la prueba sobre “La economía Long Tail“:
1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 11 y 14.

El libro está en biblioteca.
Suerte!
Héctor

Amigas y amigos,

Tenemos nuevas fechas para las pruebas:

-  ”La economía Long Tail”, de Chris Anderson: MARTES 3 de noviembre.
- “Why business models matter”, de Joan Magretta: MARTES 10 de noviembre.