Netflix Bouncing Back

Image via CrunchBaseI rooted for Netflix when it decided to bet on streaming. (Netflix Cut Off The Gangrene Limb) And then its stock price collapsed. And that surprised me.

But now looks like Netflix is bouncing back. That stock price drop was a sneeze it just had to wade through. But cutting off DVDs before the market cut off Netflix was a smart move. It was a life saving move, to put it more bluntly.

A drop in the stock price was the price Netflix paid to stay alive long term.

GigaOm: Netflix streaming users now outnumber DVD subscribers 2:1

even with its steep decline in DVD rentals, the overall number of customers is growing again. Netflix lost 810,000 U.S. subscribers in Q3 as a result of its unsuccessful attempts to spin off the DVD business into a separate company, as well as a price hike earlier in 2011. In Q4, that combined subscriber number once again grew by 610,000...... Netflix won’t enter any other territories in 2012, and might have to work on making more money with streaming if it wants to keep expanding in the future. Because DVDs may not be around for much longer.

Secretive Apple (2)

Image via CrunchBaseSecretive Apple
Apple: $10 Billion To $400 Billion In 10 Years
The Significance Of Eating An Apple

The Next Web: This is how Apple’s top secret product development process works

Every product at Apple starts with design..... Instead of the design being beholden to the manufacturing, finance or manufacturing departments, these all conform to the will of the design department headed by Jony Ive.

A start-up is formed....... Once a new product has been decided on, a team is organized and segregated from the rest of the company by secrecy agreements and sometimes physical barriers. Sections of the building may be locked or cordoned off to make room for the teams working on a sensitive new project. This effectively creates a ‘start-up’ inside the company that is only responsible to the executive team, freeing them from the reporting structure of a big company.

Apple New Product Process (ANPP). .... a document that sets out every step in the development process of a product in detail .... maps out the stages of the creation, who is responsible for completion, who will work on each stage and when they will be completed.

Products are reviewed every Monday. ...... no product is ever more than two-weeks away from a key decision being made

The EPM mafia. ...... The engineering program manager (EPM) and the global supply manager (GSM). ...... executives that spend most of their time in China overseeing the production process.

Once a product is done, it is designed, built and tested again. ...... a 4-6 week process that ends with a gathering of responsible Apple employees at the factory. ..... The EPM then takes the beta device back to Cupertino for examination and comments, hopping right back on a plane to China to oversee the next iteration of the product. This means that many versions of any given device have been completed, not just partially prototyped. This is an insanely expensive way of building a new product, but it is the standard at Apple.

The packaging room. ...... A room in the Marketing building is completely dedicated to device packaging. The security here is matched only by the sections of the building dedicated to new products and to design. At one point before a new iPod was launched there was an employee who spent hours every day for months simply opening the hundreds of box prototypes within in order to experience and refine the unboxing process.

The launch is controlled by the Rules of the Road....... a top secret document that lists every significant milestone of a product’s development up until launch. Each milestone is annotated with a DRI (directly responsible individual)

Related articles

• 'Inside Apple' offers a glimpse into Apple's secret unboxing room (9to5mac.com)
• Apple's Packing Is So Good Because It Employs a Dedicated Box Opener [Apple] (gizmodo.com)
• Apple's secret packaging design and testing room revealed (slashgear.com)
• Apple Tests Hundreds of Product Packages in Secret Unboxing Room [VIDEO] (mashable.com)
• Apple Really Does Obsess Over Packaging Reveals New Book (inquisitr.com)
• How Apple tests product packaging (tuaw.com)
• Highly Anticipated "Inside Apple" Book Now Available In The iBookstore (cultofmac.com)
• Isaacson interviewed Jony Ive in his bunker, here's what came out with him (9to5mac.com)
• Apple design guru key in post-Jobs era - Reuters (news.google.com)

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PlanCast Failed For Not Catering To Its Power Users

Image via CrunchBaseMark Hendrickson, CEO, PlanCast: The Uphill Battle Of Social Event Sharing: A Post-Mortem for Plancast

PlanCast is a liked service. And it is still going down. Why?

Robert Scoble's comments to the post are enlightening. Scoble is a power user. PlanCast needed to cater to his needs to take off.

PlanCast needed to engage people who create events, promote events.

PlanCast's Facebook, Twitter, EventBrite, MeetUp Integrations

Robert Scoble's Comment

Image via CrunchBaseI'm really sad that you are killing this. Unfortunately there were several other things you did wrong:

1. You didn't have ways to share a calendar of things for my readers that's SEPARATE of those that I'm actually attending.

2. You never improved it and you didn't listen to users.

3. It wasn't integrated with Facebook events. I would hear about things on Facebook and adding them to Plancast was a real pain.

4. Whenever I heard about events almost always I would be mobile. But the mobile version of Plancast sucked.

5. Searching for things or adding them was difficult.

6. You never really got to the business model. That should have set off red flags for me. Yet no one else knew about my travels. I'm in Europe right now, which meant I spent more than $4,000 on travel and you couldn't monetize that at all? Nope. Why? Because you never made deals with AirBNB or Kayak or Hipmunk or other travel sites.

7. I couldn't create calendars for specific kinds of events. For instance, I could never create a calendar of just Barcamps around the world.
It bums me out a service I actually liked using won't be improved and, even, will disappear. So sad.

The Solution Is Tech Heavy, Data Heavy

Hollywood Might Not Get Killed, Any More Than Silicon Valley Might
What Price A Movie?
MegaUpload, SOPA, PIPA
SOPA Went Down
SOPA Has Egg In The Face
SOPA Is So Going Down



TV ads are not as effective as Google ads. On TV you could be showing me beer ads and I don't even drink beer. But you are hoping many of the million people who got bombarded do.

When I search for beer on Google and you show me beer ads, that is way more effective. You already know I am interested in beer. TV ads not as effective. Search ads more effective. Social ads even more effective. You are more likely to buy something a friend bought and recommends. The engagement on Twitter for ads is more than on the Google platform.

Big Data ads should be 10 or more times more effective than even social ads. And at that point the freemium model really takes off. All you want as content people is people's attention. You don't want their money, at least not directly. I think that is the real solution to the piracy problem.

Fred Wilson: A Post PIPA Post
Clay Shirky: Pick up the pitchforks: David Pogue underestimates Hollywood
O'Reilly Radar: The week the web changed Washington

Hollywood Might Not Get Killed, Any More Than Silicon Valley Might

Paul Graham: Kill Hollywood

SOPA brought it to our attention that Hollywood is dying .... What's going to kill movies and TV is what's already killing them: better ways to entertain people.

Technically speaking Silicon Valley could be anywhere, the magic that happens in Silicon Valley could be replicated anywhere. But instead of Silicon Valley getting parceled out, what has happened is Silicon Valley has gone on to do the next big things like clean tech. It is amazing to me how many of the new energy companies are based in California.

I guess geography matters. It takes some time to build that optimum ecosystem. People meeting people in person is magic. You can't take that over to Skype or a Google Hangout.

I mean, I am a huge fan of Hollywood. I love watching movies. And I think there is a magic happening in Hollywood that is not going away any time soon. As far as the production of movies goes, they have nailed it.

Silicon Valley has staying power. Hollywood has staying power. But innovation and creation will get replicated across the country and across the world. I hope the movie houses adopt to the Internet better. And I think it will end up happening one way or the other. But something tells me it will not be a smooth ride. There's just something in the nature of change. Disruptions by definition are not smooth.

In the far future good movies could come out of anywhere, and could be seen anywhere. Hollywood could end up a rust town. As could Silicon Valley, theoretically speaking.

Movies have their place in the grand scheme of things. And software will not take that place. Although it is hard to imagine a future where software is not key to every single aspect of movie creation and distribution.

What Price A Movie?
MegaUpload, SOPA, PIPA
SOPA Went Down

We need a new generation of movie production and distribution companies. Just like we need a new generation of finance companies.

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