Maroon Ventures Blog

It isn’t every day that I get to do the “I Told You So” (ITYS) dance twice.  Remember some months ago when I ranted about the release of the Apple iPhone and iPod touch API being a clear and present danger to major wireless carriers?  Remember? Remember when I pointed to the first VOIP application for the iPhone? Well, here’s another.  JAHJAH announced that now with microphone support for the iPod Touch you can essentially turn your iPod into a wi-fi hotspot “cell” phone. Yep. All you need is a hotspot and your iPod Touch is now a phone. And, unlike the iPhone, you don’t need to engage in any long term contract with AT&T Wireless.  All the benefits of the iPhone without the wireless contract.

Now, to make this really work we just need everyone to open up their wi-fi routers across the country. Ready? You go first…. 

“Everything is relative”

Okay, okay, context is important. Like much of the country, Crested Butte has been getting pounded by winter storms for the couple of weeks. In fact, I can only remember two days out of the last 14 that it didn’t snow. Yesterday, we woke up to 18 inches of fresh snow on the mountain. Like any good powder addict, I popped out of bed at the crack of 4:30, checked the snow report, gave thanks to Ullr (pagan god of winter/snow) and immediately made preparations for heading up to the mountain to catch one of the first chairs. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this wintertime ritual, avid powder skiers start lining up at the chairlift at least one hour before it opens in hopes of untracked powder. The higher the fresh snowfall, the greater the crowds and excitement.

So, as I stood in line for the fourth chair (I am such a slacker) I heard the following conversation take place.

“This winter is epic so far!” - New CB Resident

“This is nothing like last year. Last year we were getting 30 inches overnight, not 18” - Old CB Resident

“That was nothing like back in the 80’s when would get 50 inches overnight” - Older CB Resident

“Well, everything is relative I suppose” - New CB Resident

I started to think about that as I patiently waited another 30 minutes for the ski patrol to finish their avalanche routes and for the chair to start spinning.  Is that really true? I suppose it is largely true. Now that it is winter here in Crested Butte, the snow piles are starting to reach over 20 feet high in several areas. My 3 and 5 year old daughters eye these snow piles much as a mountaineer eyes 14,000 foot peaks. My daughters plot their routes up these snow piles and celebrate their successful assents with unabashed glee. They’ve started naming them and progressively picking harder routes to climb. That’s relativity in action.

I was speaking with my financial advisor the other day and he proudly proclaimed that my portfolio had out performed the index by 15% and his portfolio average by 10%.  That is to say, I lost 10% less money this year than his other clients. Ah…. the sour smell of success. That’s certainly relativity in action albeit painful.

This morning I woke up and it was –2 degrees outside when I walked to work (not counting wind chill). Two months ago I would have pronounced it a bone chilling frigid morning and driven to work. Now that I am in the full swing of winter I decided that is was delightfully balmy and walked to work. Okay, I didn’t really think that – I thought, “damn, it is cold outside but at least it isn’t –35”. Plus there was a 3 foot pile of snow that the city bulldozers left in front of my driveway overnight that prevented me from driving even if I had wanted. But that’s not important now. Back to temperature – that’s certainly relative.

The other week I was discussing the difficulties facing newspapers with a few colleagues. By any measure, these are trying times. However, as we cynically pointed out, at least newspapers can take solace that they’re not oh say US automakers, mortgage companies, investment banks, hedge funds and insurers – those guys are really screwed. Relativity at its finest!

So what isn’t relative. That I put to you is right in front of your face. Friendship, family, love, companionship and the sparkle in a child’s eye as they open their Christmas or Chanukah present. That my friends, is not relative. So on this Christmas Eve and fourth night of Chanukah, let us take time to reflect on the few things that we can all be certain are free from relativity.  

One more thing that isn’t relative – 18 inches of fresh powder will always, ALWAYS constitute a great powder day.

Happy holidays everyone! 

It is that time of year again here in the rockies - the annual unveiling of the White Ribbons of Death (WROD’s) all across the state. What’s a WROD? It is the one or two “runs” that a ski area opens up in November. A few open up a WROD in October. Basically, what they do is wait until it gets below 32 degrees F and make a ton of artificial snow.  

disclaimer: photo of a different ski area

The snow cats push the piles of artificial snow into a carpet or ribbon of snow that runs down a relatively low angle slope at the bottom of the mountain. When enough of the fake stuff has been pushed around they are then able to “open” the mountain.  If they actually open the mountain is another thing. (more…)

Ran across this on Technorati’s State of the Blogshere. It is a good read and has some interesting demo and revenue data. The thing that just jumped out at me was this quote:

Whether or not a brand has launched a social media strategy, more likely than not, it’s already present in the Blogosphere. Four in five bloggers post brand or product reviews, with 37% posting them frequently. 90% of bloggers say they post about the brands, music, movies and books that they love (or hate). …Companies are already reaching out to bloggers. One-third of bloggers have been approached to be brand advocates.

Four out of five bloggers write about Proper Nouns/Brands/Products and 37% of them do it frequently. I mean, there is a “no duh” factor here to some extent. Sure, you pull up Paid Content, TechCrunch and Boing Boing and that-is-all-you-see, posts about Proper Nouns. But I guess I didn’t really expect that to translate to your run of the mill blogs. I expected that there would be a whole non-commercial sub tier devoted to… well… talking about ideas and concepts, belief systems and values. However, to get right down to it we’re humans and humans need context. So, even if we’re blogging about something nebulous as “values” we need context and to get context we talk about stuff. Stuff, for most people, involves products and brands. I once read a fantastic blog post on trust and how ultimately extending an altruistic flavor of trust to everyone you meet is at the end of the day profitable for you. Easy concept to grasp - hard concept to live by. To bridge this gap the author referenced two brands: Target and Craftsman Tools as evidence of just how right he was. So there you have it - inexpensive consumer electronics and hammers in a post about altruism. 

With this as an underlying truth in today’s world - if I were a product company why wouldn’t I pay more attention to what people are saying about my company and my products? In large part, they are. However, there is one segment that characteristically doesn’t engage in this proactive outreach: the media. Seriously, car companies take issue with blogs who give unflattering reviews of their new models. Software makers reach out to bloggers around releases and new product launches. However, the media is vilified and misrepresented each and every day in a multitude of blogs. My question is this: how are media companies managing the perception of their products in the blogsphere? For the longest time, there was a reluctance to “stoop to their level” implying that bloggers generally are one step below tabloids. Is that changing? I hope so.  So look above at my quoted text for the highlighted portion. I wonder it that applies to bloggers who review and discuss media?

I don’t like to toot horns that are reasonably in my proximity but this is a milestone to which I have to draw attention.  Yahoo! recently announced that it has provided over 100 million referrals to the newspapers of the Newspaper Consortium. Multiply that by a reasonable 2.5 or 3 subsequent pageviews, then multiply that by the number of ad positions on each page and that quickly nudges the total number of impressions generated by the Yahoo! partnership into well over 1 billion. Not to mix metaphors but that’s some serious wind folks. 

Here’s the beauty of it - this is a two part solution. Pageviews and impressions are meaningless from a revenue standpoint. It is what you do with the added traffic that matters. That brings us to AMP.

For years now we’ve been dealing with the placement oriented sale. That is to say, advertisers lust to appear on business and travel sections/pages of newspaper websites but for general news, opinion, sports, etc, not so much. Essentially, advertisers were making the correlation between what type of page a user is looking at to the type of potential customer the user is. Call it Cro-Magnon behavioral targeting. AMP changes that.

With AMP, newspaper inventory can be sold based on the behavioral targeting profile of the user regardless of the section the user is reading. So while such “windfall” traffic used to be regarded as low revenue because essentially you are monetizing these pageviews at a remnant or low CPM, now it can be effectively monetized at a premium or super premium CPM based on behavioral targeting. All the while delivering a superior advertising product to newspaper advertisers. Couple that with the national sales pressure brought by Yahoo to target non-local users and you not only create a lot of wind, you will create a lot of very profitable wind through this relationship once fully launched on AMP. And this thing is just getting started.

Okay, i’ll get down from my soapbox. Something to think about though…

P.S. I am still in iPhone bliss - wonky keyboard and all.

Social Networking - you hear about it everywhere. Just about anything that involves communication from one person to another is being branded as “Social Networking” these days. Tired of consultant-speak presentations about how Social Networking will do everything including balancing the budget and curing cancer? Still don’t see the “there” there in terms of revenue? You’re not alone.  I recently ran across a handy weekly digest from Jeremiah Owyang. Reading it won’t make your an expert but it will allow you to call BS when you hear it. Sometimes, that’s even more important….  Just saying.

I bought an iPhone. This goes out to all the ADD Crackberry heads out there. Gonna do it fast and tell you everything you need to know in 10 definitive statements.  Ready?

1. Email? not so much - keyboard still sucks
2. 3G Network? much better
3. Battery life? ‘meh
4. Web browsing? very nice. Never be uninformed again
5. GPS? the bomb! Read prior posts for Oliver Stone-like conspiracy theories
6. iPhone Apps? this is THE reason to get the phone. Would never go back until RIM gets stuff like this.
7. Phone? oh ya, that’s nice too. 3 way calling that actually makes sense.
8. Music and Video? Oh ya, It does that… so I hear. That’s so 2007.
9. Black or White?  Black
10. 8 or 16? 16 if you get the subsidized pricing.

MSNBC and others are reporting that journalist and NBC Washington bureau chief  Tim Russert died today of a heart attack. He was 58. We’ll miss ya! Thoughts go out to his family and coworkers.

In one of the worst kept secrets of the modern era, Steve Jobs announced the 3G iPhone slated for launch this Wednesday, June 11th. Entry model starts at $199. It also comes in white. Not sure about 2 way conferencing. 

Bummer: Charity Huff is going to own an iPhone before I do. Picked a bad time to be back in Crested Butte - 4 hours from the closest Apple store. 

As I ranted about a month or so ago, the VOIP iPhone app was finally built. The new iCall app for the iPhone does it. It allows the iPhone to hop on whatever open wifi network it finds - even in mid call. So there you have it, circumvention of the cell tower. One small issue - in order to use your iPhone you probably have the all your can talk plan from AT&T so the need for this won’t be as pressing and the adoption not as high. However, this is the first step towards a life without cell networks. We’ll see…