A funny thing happened the other day. We were listening to Pandora online, as usual, and the music stopped. We were not asked if we were “still listening” nor had we skipped too many songs.
Instead, we found out that the “free” Pandora that already hits you with both ads and a need to keep telling it you are still, in fact, listening, has a 40-hour-per-month listening limit. Once you reach 40 hours in a month you have to upgrade to a premium account to keep listening.
While 40 hours of music seems like a lot, that wouldn’t cover more than one full work-week a month. I can’t imagine this problem strikes many users but, considering all the other limitations already imposed on their “free” account, this new limitation is disheartening.
It also led to us moving on to use Slacker.com and Last.FM as an alternative. Now that a new month is upon us we are reluctant to return to Pandora.
Not sound business, Pandora.
Yesterday, I wrote about why I thought the Kindle DX was a terrible choice as a replacement for the traditional textbook. I also suspected the Kindle DX would be a terrible choice as a newspaper replacement.
Early word from CNet begins to confirm these suspicions:
Since most of us can’t simply increase the amount of time we spend reading the paper each day, I’m afraid that the Kindle approach to e-news will actually reduce the amount of news we read.
The issue is that neither the format nor interface of the Kindle DX makes the process of skimming feasible. With a dead-tree newspaper, it is a quick process to flip through all the content and dig deeper when you catch an article that interests you. The way the Kindle DX handles the content forces a constant “flipping” from screen to screen at a rate that is slower than physically turning a page. On top of that, each “page” only holds a fraction of the content one can capture on a page of the newspaper.
And what about the Kindle DX as compared to the iPhone or a laptop? Not good:
These devices have active displays with fast update rates, greatly reducing the page-turning delays. I use The New York Times application on my iPhone pretty regularly (once or twice a week, at least), and it’s really quite easy to flick through the day’s top stories, which appear on the iPhone with the headline, a thumbnail photo, and usually about half of the lede…At home, on my laptop, The New York Times Web site is even faster. It’s easy to skim the titles and ledes of about a dozen stories on the main page for each “section,” and loading a story takes no more than a second or two. Once loaded, again, there are no further delays.
So, not only isn’t the Kindle DX superior to a real newspaper, it is a far less capable newsreader than either the iPhone or a laptop.
Did I mention it costs $500 and only displays in greyscale?
It all started with the rise of the UGC video and YouTube. People went nuts. Look at all the viewers!
After watching from the sidelines for a bit some big media companies decided they should be getting those viewers. Following some deep study of internet content everyone decided that the thing that really worked online was comedy.
A flood of “pro” content hit the interwebs and suddenly everyone from Warner Brothers to Sony had their own dedicated comedy video website.
A year later and none of these sites or any of their shows have gained wide-spread acceptance or notice. Most have completely failed by any reasonable assessment.
One could argue that most of these efforts failed because, a) they weren’t very good and b) they weren’t publicized.
Of course, if you are a big media company, it can’t be your fault. It must be the genre’s fault. So, after a year of failing with comedy comes a big wave of Sci-Fi web shows:
“Not all of these will succeed, but science fiction already has a strong track record online. lonelygirl15 turned from a vlog into a thriller with tech overtones. Sanctuary was one of the early big-budget sci-fi series, it was even picked up to run on the Sci-Fi Network. And most recently, Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog darn near crashed the Internet.” (via)
Check out NTV’s whole post for a good look at what’s to come. When these fail, due to being not good, I’m sure everyone will move onto proceedurals – it’s what saved the networks, at least for a while.
After getting some good press and decent view-counts for their first two web series, IFC might have met it’s first flop in the form of “Good Morning, Internet,” created by the people who brought you the very successful viral video “Hipster Olympics.’
ReelPop says:
“Though groan-inducingly funny-less during the first three minutes, Internet’s unceasing awkwardness eventually evokes snickers through repetition of its visual puns. Sadly though, the subject matter here’s been mined previously by successful series like Goodnight, Burbank, which satrizes the format with a more deft and subtle hand. It’s early yet for Internet but if it’s to be successful, the show will have to do more than just be a Hipster Olympics for talk shows.”
Tilzy is slightly more optimistic:
“It’s all a bit too much. The morning talk show provides a cornucopia of material from which to parody and, in its premiere episode, Good Morning Internet has suffered from picking too much content ripe for comedy.
The anchors are entertaining, and the segments are watchable (the one on depression moreso than the makeover), but everything needs trimming. The show should focus on those morning talk show fundamentals that Good Morning World employs so well. It’s only the first episode, so the series certainly has time to improve. I’m sure POYPACK and IFC will find some flow. ”
As for me, I am tired of parody on the internet. What can be funny for a skit is almost never funny for a series, and by limiting yourself to parody there is no reason to commit to any of the characters or to care what happens on an episode-to-episode basis.
Check it out for yourself here.
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September 3, 2009 9:37 am | 
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