URL: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/news/20020925.html
Date: Not supplied
Eddie Kessler describes programming at Napster[1].
Ray Ozzie has more on platforms[2]. "Finding the 'right' price point for a
software platform is critical." To me this sounds like a fancy way of saying,
"I groove all that stuff about how platforms need to be cheap and ubiquitous,
but I can't bring myself to do it." The price, Ray says, "must be high enough
both 1) to maintain a perception of value in the platform, and 2) to create
significant margins well before ubiquity is assured so that the ecosystem is
assured of the platform's ultimate viability." What he doesn't mention: if you
lower the price on the only product you're selling, you have a revenue hit,
which will not make your investors happy, and you may run out of money and have
to close. But that must be what he's thinking.
[1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/WorstProjectEver.html
[2] http://www.ozzie.net/blog/stories/2002/09/24/softwarePlatformDynamics.html

from localhost (jalapeno [127.0.0.1])
	by jmason.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7C70616F03
	for <jm@localhost>; Thu, 26 Sep 2002 16:40:44 +0100 (IST)
from jalapeno [127.0.0.1]
	by localhost with IMAP (fetchmail-5.9.0)
	for jm@localhost (single-drop); Thu, 26 Sep 2002 16:40:44 +0100 (IST)
from dogma.slashnull.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by
    dogma.slashnull.org (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id g8QFSRg24432 for
    <jm@jmason.org>; Thu, 26 Sep 2002 16:28:27 +0100
John Robb has an interesting perspective on trust-based,
    targetted advertis
From rssfeeds@jmason.org  Thu Sep 26 16:41:28 2002

URL: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/news/20020913.html
Date: Not supplied
John Robb has an interesting perspective on trust-based, targetted advertising
[1] based on his experiences at Gomez during the heady days of the Internet
gold rush.
Nobody believes advertisements[2] any more. There's a lot of evidence that
advertising just doesn't work, no matter how targetted, so if you have a
product to sell you have no choice but to get into the editorial side, where
consumers' defenses are lowered. Product placements are one example of this.
There is an unfortunate tragedy of the commons, here. When advertising first
rose to prominence, advertisements _did_ work. We hadn't built up our
immunities yet. As more and more advertisers used the opportunity of the medium
to lie, we learned not to trust advertisements. But we still trust editorial.
And once editorial gets polluted by desperate marketers using PR instead
of advertising to promote their message, nobody will believe it either.
[1] http://jrobb.userland.com/stories/2002/09/11/trustbasedAdvertising.html
[2] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060081988/ref=nosim/joelonsoftware