Signal to Noise

Apparently, this Commodore 64 emulator, complete with on-screen game controls and several officially-licensed games, has been denied access to the Apple iPhone appstore because it violates terms of use that ban interpreted code.

Apple, it’s official.  You SUCK.

I had somebody inadvertantly suggest to me that even though solar and wind power offer only a fraction of the efficiency of nuclear, oil, and especially coal-fire, an abandonment of those technogies in favor of “renewables” is in order.

Just what we need — to pay 5x more for an even scarcer supply of energy because the production is more expensive and the yield is tiny. Hmph.  We talk so much about Green.  Why aren’t we talking about the Green that creates jobs and pays bills?  “Renewable” energy is vastly wasteful of that very Green.

Gary’s excellent synopsis of the Netneut debate points out that:

In that sense, network neutrality aims to prevent anticompetitive conduct; a worthy goal.

But while preventing anticompetitive conduct sounds sensible enough, it is also possible for a network neutrality rule to have the intent or effect of “commoditizing” broadband transmission and Internet access services by limiting the ability of broadband service providers to differentiate their service offerings from those of rival firms…

Such rules might also quash the emergence of faster delivery transports, something Internet needs more now than ever.  When Internet last-mile over Ethernet emerged a few years back, you paid a premium for it.  Nothing illegal about the premium, as it was a physically different class of service.  Same thing when DSL showed up, and so on.

But the knuckleheads at the FCC (and, Heaven help us, Congress) probably don’t know the difference between physical classes of service (which vary in speed due to the laws of physics) and arbitrary classes of service (which vary in speed due to a human decision).

So I contend that this notion of regulating network neutrality still seeks to solve a problem we don’t yet have (the “problem” is networking companies busting the content companies without actually competing against them, ie. anticompetitive behavior). That’s strike one against the Netneut idea.  Strike two is the dominion of the FCC, which does not include considerations for illicit trading, racketeering, collusion, or other methods of anti-competition. That’s the dominion of the Federal Trade Commission, not the FCC.  Strike Three. Consumers don’t care–and consumers are the citizens of this great nation. Their voices matter.

So why is Obama’s FCC trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist in an area where they’ve no business sticking their nose when the population at large could give a crap?

Hit me on Twitter if you can answer that.  @bitterted

The appeal of the smalltown newspaper is its proximity to the community.  Smaller papers, circulation 50,000 and below, cover news in a focused, informed, hyperlocal manner–and the survival of the small media’s ink-and-paper business plans hinges upon their ability to continue connecting their home community with content that nobody else can deliver.

In other words, the Cleveland Plain Dealer can’t deliver relevant hyperlocal content to citizens of a smaller neighboring county (Lorain County) the way the Chronicle-Telegram, a smaller, more locally-focused paper, can.  Who won the high school hockey tournament is at least as important to the local news consumer as who won the Stanley Cup, if not more important.

So when we apply this idea of hyperlocalism to social media, we begin to see that Facebook, the predominant social network ecosystem, may indeed have a flaw.  Moreover, we see that Facebook despite its basis in geographic and interest-based “network islands”, isn’t actually as great a facilitator of localism as it gets credit for.

First off, there’s a vast, vast swath of community members with whom Facebook has absolutely no connectivity.  Most news consumers born in the 1960’s or earlier have not ever used Facebook.  How do I know this?

Well, it became apparent to me that building a structured social community around the local newspaper’s web sites would be the ideal way to enhance traffic, build loyalty to the news product, and create a more cemented hyperlocal role for the newspaper publisher within its community.  In other words, we built a social network for the readers of the newspaper’s web site.

And, while I expected the majority of people joining this social network (northcoastnow.com) to be in their 20’s and 30’s, what I discovered was quite the opposite:  Most of the people reading the newspaper web site are, in fact, in the same age bracket as those reading the newsprint.  The bulk of the people who signed up were born in the 60s, 50s, and 40s.

So I was surprised.

But also elated.  Our social network has reached a group of people Facebook has been unable to reach–and we’ve done so by applying simple localistic concepts. This vindicates the notion that hyperlocalism is the answer the newspaper industry is looking for.