Today we have a special guest on the show – Jeremy Chase, the Second Life mafia guy
Then we get down to business talking about:
- Hollywood is selling movies online
- Valueshacker #7 – Copying – is it theft?
- Newspapers cranky about scraping
- Newspapers seeing online growth
- How Bill Gates works
- Red Hot Pawn – play Cam at online chess “cameronreilly”
You’ll also here promos for The Digital Photography Show and The Atomic Show on TPN, both excellent shows that you should add to your subscriptions!
As always, our Intro / Outro music “D24″ courtesy of Melbourne band Spruiker and I record my Skype calls using Skylook.
And if you dig the show, pull your goddamn finger out and vote for G’DAY WORLD on
G’day Cameron and Rich! Thanks for having me on your show. One thing I forgot to mention in our talk is that this is just a game. Regardless of how real some players take these games (and yes, I am known to do this as well sometimes), bottom line is it is just a game. Sure I hope one day to have a career in gaming or telling my story in a book, but it is just a game and hopefully people won’t take me too seriously. =) Thanks again!!!
Jeremy Chase
Founder, The Sim Mafia
http://www.thesimmafia.com
Hey Cam and Rich,
I just went over and voted for you and noticed that I was the first for this month (or second). This would suggest you haven’t even bothered voting for the show yourselves.
So….”pull your goddamn finger out and vote for G’DAY WORLD..” (unless of course you guys don’t Digg the show!
Molly
PS. And don’t forget to vote for my show too!
Jeremy – yeah yeah you don’t fool us dude! We know this is life and death. This aint no game. You da boss. I’m not falling for that one!
Molly – voting for yourself is about as low an act possible. Almost as bas as asking people to vote! please don’t make me sink any lower….
Hehe, good point dude!
Oh and on the Stealing Movies by copying them, I am sure Steve Gilmore would tell you that your stealling there “attention” (he wouldn’t say its stealing it, but you know).
Also if you assume that you would watch a movie some way and also assume that where you see it (legally) would make some sort of monetary profit from that viewing, you are stealling money from them by not viewing it that way!
JMTC
Molly
(I could be very wrong about this but) Doesn’t Alexa stats only work for people with the Alexa (?Toolbar???) thing installed?
Isn’t this then a bit unrealistic measurement?
JMTC
Molly
Molly, correct, but Alexa’s argument is that their users represent a statistical representation just like any other survey tool.
How many Joe Averages (i.e. non-techies especially) would use Alexa? Aren’t they also the ones that would be most likely to use MSM sites?
I think you have to get better stat source, dude!
JMTC
Molly
Molly
I’d say several million users makes it fairly accurate, and as many agree, when you’re in the top one hundred list it’s likely to be very accurate. It might be slightly skewed, but not that much when polling so many for the top sites.
What do you recommend we use?
Rich
Hi Rich,
No idea, but I would strongly suggest if you survey 100 people randomly on the street 99 of them would never heard or used Alexa! Do either of you use the toolbar? I have it installed on my IE browser but to be honest I hardly use IE for browsing any more (and to my knowledge it isn’t supported on FireFox)!
Haven’t there also been evidence that people with Tech sites see a much great level of FireFox users then now tech sites as the average user is more likely to use IE and us techies tend to move to FireFox.
And anyway, Stats will tell you anything. 99% of people know that!
Molly
100 people isn’t a big sample, dude. Perhaps if you poll several million 😛
Yes as long as they are a cross section of the community and not just a bunch of geeks/Techies. My argument is that I wouldn’t expect the Alexa crowd to be a cross section.
Molly
PS. You didn’t say if you used it?
Here we go Molly. comScore did a recent study and provided a list of the top 50 web sites. You can check their methodology at their web site. It happens to match fairly closely the results of Alexa’s top sites.
Here’s a list to compare:
comScore Top 20 at time of publication-
1. Yahoo!
2. Google
3. MSN
4. AOL
5. Ebay
6. Microsoft
7. Passport
8. Mapquest
9. Hotmail
10. Myspace
11. Amazon
12. Go
13. About
14. MSNBC
15. Weather
16. AIMToday
17. CNN
18. Target
19. Wikipedia
20. Geocities
Alexa top sites today-
1. Yahoo!
2. Google
3. MSN
4. EBay
5. MySpace
6. Passport.net
7. Amazon.com
8. Microsoft
9. Google UK
10. Blogger
11. BBC
12. CNN
13. Go
14. AOL
15. Craigslist
16. EBay UK
17. IMDB
18. Alibaba
19. Google.ca
20. Comcast
I’d say this shows two things. Firstly, Alexa’s list is a good representation of the top websites. Secondly, it again proves Cam’s point, which is that the MSM is NOT represented very well in the top trafficed web sites.
I don’t use the Alexa toolbar.
Thanks for this Richard. I don’t necessarily agree with your first point. All the similar ones are obviously going to be popular (google, ebay, Microsoft, etc). Some of the ones on the Alexa list are more towards the Techie side of the street (I.e. Craigslist, IMDB, blogger (to a degree)) where as the other has something like target which.
The other point is that not many of the sites are purely News sites (and correct me if I am wrong, because I forget (in the process of moving houses and my brain is jelly)) that was the discussion. I mean, like google does have some news stuff but mostly (IMHO) the high result would be on the back of there search property.
The other thing is that most of these sites are services for a globe audience where as there are very few MSM that you would look at for all news (i.e. If I want to find out about the US event, I go to a US (or even the state/city) papers site. If I want to find out about local events I go to a local paper. So its not likely that as individuals, they will show in top 10/100 lists.
Having said that, there is not doubt the growth on NM companies. I just think that we (techies) need to relise that we are not a good representation of the overall comunity when it comes to techie things!
JMTC
Molly
One thing I want to point out/ask is why is Passport.net listed in Alexa as a top site? I mean god knows how many people use passport indirectly to log onto things such as hotmail, msn, etc. The website itself really has no content for people to be going to. Seems to me that this is a bit skewed by Alexa or they are incorrectly pulling data to come up with these statistics.
Jeremy Chase
Founder, The Sim Mafia
http://www.thesimmafia.com
My guess is they messure URL’s not content. So as I say it really isn’t a good measurement of Top Websites, just top URL’s used.
Molly
Founder, The Malone Show
podcast.mollyzine.com
When you have some proof maybe I’ll agree. But at the moment you’re guessing. I’ve offered some pretty firm facts, that show Alexa’s top list is accurate.
By the way, IMDB appears at 29 on ComScore. Blogger appears at 27. So that blows away your “techie” theory.
To remind you of the conversation, and I assume we’re talking about the same one, Rod Adams suggested that the most heavily traffic web sites are still old media (i.e. : CNN, BBC, NBC, New York Times, etc). Cameron suggested that 5% of the top 100 consisted of this.
Old media isn’t just news. New media, certainly isn’t just news.
Local news doesn’t play in this, because they’re not heavily trafficked. That’s verging on long-tail, and the dynamics are way different.
However, I do agree that techies are not a good representation, and I’ve been saying that a lot lately when discussing web 2.0. But that’s not what we were talking about. In dispute was Alexa, which I think I’ve show has a fairly accurate top 100 that represents the overall Internet population.
As a side note, many VCs use Alexa as an indicator. They’re betting millions of dollars on these stats, so it offers another indicator that the quality of the list is sound.
I did do a little research, but couldn’t get the data I was after (hitwise).
Just because they are similar doesn’t mean they are right, just they are similar. If 100 isn’t a good sample size, hows bad is 2 (i.e. Two lists of top websites)!
😉
I will admitt that its not totally wrong, but its not totally right either!
Molly
Oh come on. Now you’re being silly. It’s not a sample size of 2, but several MILLION Internet users that this is based on. Both services charge significant money for their findings, and are relied on by people who are investing millions, if not billions, of dollars.
As I said, come back when you’ve got something substancial to look over. In the mean time, we’ll use Alexa because there is a good indication that the list is a fairly accurate indication of Internet traffic.
Due, yes I was joking (notice the smilely face)! (although I stand by the fact that your sample size of “Top 20 lists” (i.e. the list, not the sites they report) is 2 not millions!
I have said it once, and I will say it again:
I will admitt that its not totally wrong, but its not totally right either!
Molly
Cam, interesting about the Hollywood movie downloads, if ONLY you had a movie podcast show to discusss it 😉
I thought this quote could apply. It’s from Get Rich or Die Tryin’
“Its like when I’m right I’m right, when I’m wrong I coulda been right, so I’m still right cause I coulda been wrong.”
Jeremy Chase
Ahh fuck it, you know my signature line.. lol
Interesting discussion on statistics and sources. Nothing really to add to that one, but I was intrigued by the definition of ‘stealing’ on the show.
If copying and sharing music or movies is not stealing, can you tell me how you feel about copying and sharing software like Office and Windows?
Hi Rod
Cam referred to an episode of Values Hacker, in which they discussed the use of the terms “stealing/theft” in relation to copying movies, etc. Graham Mann, the co-host, explained that stealing/theft refers to the removal of property, and the owner doesn’t have it anymore. However, he doesn’t suggest that copying isn’t unlawful or right, just the term stealing/theft is being used in the wrong context.
Cam suggested it was a great episode, and summarizes Graeme and Graham.
In that light, I think software if the same. Still unlawful for certain software (such as Microsoft Office), but not the removal of property. Having said that, it’s about time some software companies adopted new models, like Google for example. They produce software, but operate it as a free service, monetized by advertising. Clever, I think.
Cam might have a completely different opinion of course.
Rich
yeah Rod I highly recommend listening to that episode (and all of the others as well) of Valueshacker on TPN. In the episode I referred to, the boys defined “stealing” as when you take something out of someone else’s possession (I’m paraphrasing). Whatever crime copying software or films might be, it certainly doesn’t fit THAT description. Personally, I believe we need to move to economic models which ENCOURAGE people to copy and share. If I’m a true artists, I want as many people as possible to read, watch, listen, view my creation, right? Same thing if I develop software. I want as many people are possible to use it. So having economic models and copyright law in place which DISCOURAGES the behavious I really want is dysfunctional. Yes – I want to earn a living from my creativity as well. But, as Rich points out, there are other models. On TPN, most of our shows are licensed under CC. Why? Because I want as many people as possible to listen to them. What if someone takes our shows and copys them and re-distributes them? Well it’s up to me to make sure people want to get the original shows from the source – I have to find ways to build incentives into the material and the model. It’s up to TPN to figure that stuff out.
I saw an interesting article regarding the rampant software piracy in developing nations.
One rather surprising spin was Microsoft’s attitude. They were actually pretty happy that their software was frequently pirated – they though that would help them in the long run since eventually they believe that businesses and some individuals would begin buying software and but then the “standard” would have been established.
>”How Piracy Opens Doors for Windows:
Bill Gates may not be entirely dismayed by software thieves. They seed the world market and make Microsoft a standard.”
I found the following comment about Microsoft’s attitude very enlightening.
The article quoted Gates from a 1998 speech: