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Perspective on the new Facebook announcements

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Sebastien Provencher has written a very good post about the new Facebook advertising opportunities that were announced this week: The Facebook Community is Worried. I was at the Montreal Facebook Camp on Wednesday night and was struck by the fact that no one seemed to have a clear idea on what opportunities might really exist within Facebook, other than for small app developers. There was a lot of noise about “we will go where our customers are, of course” – but from the same folks that spend most of the budgets they have on overwrought flash monstrosities.

Followup about Anderson and the PR folks

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At the beginning of last week, Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail and the Editor-in-Chief of Wired, announced that he was permanently blocking the email addresses of PR people who had sent him inappropriate email and published a list of those addresses. The post garnered a lot of attention, and a couple of days later (Nov. 1) he posted a followup: PR Blockage: The Aftermath. Definitely worth a read if you have any involvement with media relations.

More on the WGA strike

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Derek Powazek has written about the Writer’s Guild of America strike: Luddites on the Picket Lines? He’s right – the writers need to demonstrate that they understand the internet a lot better than they have so far.

But before you start talking about the internet, read up. Internet distribution is not the same as TV or DVD. A DVD buyer is someone who then owns a shiny plastic disc with stuff on it. Codifying a viewer online is a lot trickier. If I watch half a show on NBC.com, do you get half a royalty? What if I only watched 12 minutes, while the browser was in the background, while I was also chatting and texting and doing whatever it is the kids do nowadays?

There is a distinction between, say, a paid download from iTunes and a YouTube viewing, and if the writers want a percentage of the latter, well, they’re going to be waiting a long time.

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