“Gold Farming” is the pejorative that American gamers use for players in less developed nations who are paid to sit and play games all day:
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Ge Jin, a PhD student from UCSD, is making a video documentary of the gold farming phenomenon (preview here). The documentary preview shows some of his interviews with Chinese workers in various gold farming workshops. In our conversations over email, he has brought up some interesting points based on his observations. He’s also looking for feedback and suggestions for important research questions and different points of view.

This is an interesting phenomenon: In less developed nations, people tend to live cash-poor but time-rich lives. Which they then exchange with people in developed nations who have the opposite situation. There are Americans who are willing to exchange cash for these goldfarmed characters TO SAVE TIME. That is the whacky world we live in.

This is so sad and yet fascinating like watching a car wreck. [via Terra Nova]

In what is perhaps the most oxymoronic headline ever, the Guardian reports that the latest proponent of the death-of-dinosaur-media is none other than ol’ Rupert himself:

Rupert Murdoch last night sounded the death knell for the era of the media baron, comparing today’s internet pioneers with explorers such as Christopher Columbus and John Cabot and hailing the arrival of a “second great age of discovery”.

The News Corp media magnate nurtures a long-held distaste for “the establishment” but last night confided to one of the few clubs to which he does belong - The Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers - that he may be among the last of a dying breed.

“Power is moving away from the old elite in our industry - the editors, the chief executives and, let’s face it, the proprietors,” said Mr Murdoch, having flown into London from New York after celebrating his 75th birthday on Saturday.

Don’t you just love it when the man who symbolizes the most powerful and elite of all media barons rails against the power of the elite media barons?

This guy must hang out on Myspace too much.

If you’re in the TV business, you probably shouldn’t read the WSJ’s coverage of the American Association of Advertising Agencies’ annual conference:

Much chatter this year is likely to center on marketers’ increasing demands for better measurement of the effectiveness of their commercials. Advertisers are no longer content with simple measures such as circulation numbers or Nielsen ratings that measure how many people see a particular magazine, newspaper or TV show. Increasingly, marketers want an idea of how many consumers remembered an ad, for instance, or recalled it when making a decision to buy a particular item.

Driving this emphasis is the rise of increasingly measurable Internet advertising and a perception that mainstream ad outlets, like TV, have become less effective. Rising numbers of consumers have digital video recorders, which allow consumers to skip through TV spots.

Look, the WSJ is ripping quotes almost verbatim from us. It is amazing how much more data computers give you about your audience than the ridiculous voodo of the Nielsens. Goodbye TV, hello Net.

Sometimes you read about something so stupid it makes your brain hurt:

Earlier this week, NBC asked YouTube.com to take the video down. Web surfers wanting to see the clip yet again will have to go to NBC.com, where the network has posted a copy.

Bloggers—the ones who made the video a hit in the first place—are grumbling that “Lazy Sunday” now doesn’t play on non-Windows computers. Fortunately, NBC’s lawyers evidently don’t know about Google Video yet. Whoops.

Remember “Lazy Sunday”? The video clip from SNL that became an overnight internet sensation and was seen by more internet surfers than ever watched it on broadcast TV? Yeah, that one. Sometimes as we watch these TV executives slice open the golden goose we wonder to ourselves how much they will be kicking themselves a year from now.

Would someone please call up NBC and give them a clue?

A new age has begun to dawn: the TV networks are beginning to see the Internet as an opportunity rather than a threat. CBS just announced that they are dumping iTunes so that they can sell their own programming from their own web site:

CBS Corp. has spoken: When it comes to making its reality hit “Survivor” available for downloading, iTunes has been voted off the island.

The company announced Wednesday that it was experimenting with cutting out the Internet middlemen by offering downloads of its popular show for $1.99 an episode on its own website, CBS.com. The service is to be launched tonight, immediately after the show airs on the West Coast.

CBS would be the first broadcast network to sell its shows via its own Internet storefront. The move signals that CBS Chief Executive Leslie Moonves believes the network is a potent enough brand that it can go it alone — without Apple Computer Inc.’s popular iTunes software and website — and thus not have to split the spoils.

Whether or not this is a smart move remains to be seen. Just like Google admitted last week, it is awfully difficult to compete with Apple when it comes to the slickness of the iTunes video store. We applaud CBS nonetheless for their bold foray into internet TV sales.

A cute WSJ piece on the death of TV:

Audiences are splintering off in dozens of directions, watching TV shows on iPods, watching movies on videogame players and listening to radio on the Internet. All these activities cut out the usual forms of sponsorship and take place when and where consumers—not media executives—choose.

The upshot is that any advertiser with an urgent message needs to start planning now to reach consumers in new and unexpected ways. Some already have.

Unfortunately, their list of newfangled advertising techniques amount to nothing more than product placement and integration, the same thing we’ve been harping on for a while now. No new surprises here other than the WSJ repeating what you already know.

The good news is they have finally found a way for tightwad studios to support upgrading to digital projection in theaters:

The digital projection guidelines, published in July by a consortium of Hollywood studios called the Digital Cinema Initiatives, say every five-minute chunk of video must contain a 35-bit “forensic marker” specifying the date, time and location at which the movie is shown. The guidelines don’t say how to get that information into the movie, but they require it to be “visually transparent to the critical viewer” and “inaudible in critical listening” tests.

The bad news is that the studios will never be able to justify the upgrades once they discover that steganography won’t stem the flood of piracy.

Let’s hope they upgrade all our theaters before they notice.

Did you think that people with Tivo were skipping ads? According to the TV industry, you thought wrong!

Contrary to some anecdotal evidence and many industry forecasters, new research indicates that the use of digital video recorders - gadgets that allow users to record TV shows and zip through commercials - actually increases the amount of viewer exposure to ads because people with the devices end up watching more TV, executives from major TV networks said in a presentation to reporters Wednesday.

New research shows that homes with DVRs watch 12% more TV, and could boost the average prime-time audience for a show by an average of 4%, exposing viewers to more commercials.

Although most DVR users zip past ads, proprietary research from the TV networks found that 58% pay attention to commercials while fast forwarding and 53% have gone back to watch commercials they mistakenly skipped.

We are glad those TV execs stepped in to provide this helpful research that is in no way biased to help them generate more revenue. Everyone we know is constantly hitting rewind to see the ads they missed. Sometimes we even just watch the commercials on an endless loop!

What does this mean for you?

Updated: IEEE standards body has approved the 802.16e standard and with that, what is commonly known as Wireless MAN or WiMAX has gone mobile. (More information here.)

It means the death of the cellular phone companies. Remember you heard it here first.

NYTimes had a little piece on the new economics of studio filmmaking by investing Warner Brothers’ techniques:

A shift has already taken place at major studios: last year, their spending fell for newspaper and television ads in the United States and increased for the Internet and trailers. For Warner’s part, it combined its domestic home video and theatrical media buying - which includes television, radio and newspapers - so it would have the flexibility to adjust marketing campaigns and negotiate better rates. The studio has adopted a similar strategy in Britain and Germany, said Sue Kroll, president of international theatrical marketing.

But perhaps the biggest driver of changes in marketing is the speed at which DVD’s are coming to store shelves. Some DVD’s are now arriving in stores less than four months after a movie hits theaters. Instead of creating two campaigns - one for the theater and another for home video - Warner is considering whether to consolidate its marketing operations under one umbrella.

Seems the studios aren’t quite ready yet to abandon their traditional marketing blitzes but it seems the shift away from traditional media is well underway.

The latest johnny-come-lately TV to Internet broadcast:

NEW YORK (AP)—NBC News said Monday that it would begin making its “NBC Nightly News” broadcast available for free on the Internet starting next week.

Past broadcasts will also be archived at the http://www.nightlynews.msnbc.com Web site, the network said.

It’s not necessarily news on demand, though. The newscast, aired at 6:30 p.m. on many NBC stations on the East Coast, won’t be available on the Web until after 10 p.m. ET.

“Many of our viewers tell me they often miss the broadcast because they’re not at home or tending to their busy lives and families,” anchor Brian Williams said. “This new service reflects the fact that the pace of our lives has changed.”

The first newscast available on the Internet will be on Nov. 7.

When asked if he knew what the ‘internets’ were, Brian Williams responded “It’s that thingy that brings in money.”

IWantMedia’s summary is about as good as it gets:

This year Google will sell more advertising than any newspaper chain, magazine publisher or television network. By next year Google is expected to have ad revenue of $9.5 billion, placing it fourth among U.S. media companies in ad sales—ahead of Time Warner and NBC Universal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/business/yourmoney/30google.html

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113071868808083821-lHYE_q4_9IruWTJLYMwtu5MWiUs_20061031.html

That sound you just heard was the sound of Madison Avenue shitting bricks.

In case you live under a rock:

The new iPod is has 16x9 screen, 320x340 pixels and 260,000 colors and does realtime decoding of MPEG4 and H.264 at 30fps. It has video out. The 30GB for $299 and 60GB for $399 will be out next week. The 60GB model is thinner than the current 20GB. The 30GB holds 75 hours of video. They come in white and black. They go on sale late next week—the new tagline is “watch your music.” The new ad has Eminem in silhouette campaign.

Very cute. About the same size and resolution as the new Sony PSPs, good choice. Now let’s hope the screen is as bright and clear. But really, the video iPod isn’t the biggest story here:

iTunes 6. Hey, didn’t they just do 5 like, last month? Video podcasting is here, now. The iTunes store will have 2,000 music video. $1.99 each. Six Pixar short films will be available as well, for $1.99. Each video is the size of six songs.

You can buy TV shows through the iTunes store. Desperate housewives and Lost from ABC—which is owned by Disney. “I know those guys,” says Jobs. Going to offer 5 shows on itunes—Lost, Desperate Housewives, Night Stalker and two Disney Channel shows. You can buy current episodes the day after they are broadcast on the air. Shows are downloaded commercial free, no ads! About a 10-to 20-minute download for one episode. $1.99 per episode of for current and previous season tv shows. Watch them on your computer or iPod.

That’s right. Apple has just brought friggin’ Vodcasting into the mainstream. Hollywood, Apple just invaded your turf. The ball is in your court.

Now that Eisner is stepping down he thinks he is sitting pretty:

In his parting words to a gathering of Hollywood executives on Tuesday, Walt Disney Co Chief Executive Michael Eisner told an industry facing major technological change: don’t panic.

“Don’t panic over the latest techno jargon like ... peer-to-peer, wi-max, 80211, bittorrent ... the only thing that gives purpose to all these remarkable delivery systems is the kind of creative content we all produce,” Eisner said

On the one hand, Eisner is correct that at the end of the day everyone wants Hollywood’s content. We here at BBB would recommend that anyone thinking of listening to his Douglas Adams-esque “don’t panic” to reconsider.

The music industry didn’t panic when napster came along. Look what happened to them. Hollywood hasn’t faced this yet simply because the bandwidth isn’t there. But one day it will be. What will you be doing then? Eisner doesn’t care because its not his problem anymore.

As any regular reader of BBB is aware, Japan is the mirror that the rest of the industrialized world looks at when it wants to see its own future (minus the extraneous tentacles of course):

Throughout August, 133 Japanese TV stations are airing commercials to promote the importance of…commercials. Japanese advertisers, like those in the U.S., worry about growing use of digital video recorders, now in 15% of Japan’s homes. By letting users skip ads, DVRs have knocked $489 million off the value of commercials to advertisers, says the Nomura Research Institute. To win back advertisers, the National Association of Commercial Broadcasters in Japan named Aug. 28 TV CM (commercial) Day. In one spot, a singer Aya Matsuura works a puppet that says, ‘Commercials are fun, aren’t they?’ adding, ‘It’s ventriloquism, so of course I’m made to say so.’ Viewers, of course, may skip these ads, too.

Interesting to note that DVR penetration is about double that of the U.S. market so you TV execs should start planning accordingly. I wonder if Aya Matsuura’s puppet resembles something similar to the pets.com sock puppet because that would be awesome.

OK. Here comes the BBB official prediction: in order to compensate for lost 30-second spot revenue the entire model of TV will change to a PPI system (Product Placement and Integration). Remember the Texaco Star Theater that aired back in 1947? TV is going to start going back in time, to the land before 30 second spots.

If you woke up this morning and listened/read the news you could be forgiven for thinking you were teleported back to 1998:

Ebay in talks to buy Skype: reports

Shares of eBay Inc. fell nearly 4 percent on Thursday following published reports the online auction company was in talks to buy online telephone company Skype Technologies SA.

Google hires ‘father of the Internet’ Vinton Cerf

Cerf, 62, whose official title will be chief Internet evangelist, was hired away from telecommunications company MCI Inc. and charged with exploring new Internet applications for the Web search company.

News Corp expands Web grasp

News Corp. said on Thursday it would buy IGN Entertainment Inc., a Web network for video game fans, for about $650 million as part of a rapid-fire strategy to expand its online entertainment and media.

This is just the beginning of the craziness. Rupert Murdoch is on an internet buying spree freaking out about having missed the boat. Ebay has decided that it wants to take on phone service? Why not? That’s one of many areas that Google is aiming for especially now that they’ve hired Vint Cerf to come up with even wackier plans.

Too bad no one has any money left to play the stock market.

This cute little Reuters piece is one of the latest journalistic commentary on the death of journalism.

The Wikipedia, which has surged this year to become the most popular reference site on the Web, is fast overtaking several major news sites as the place where people swarm for context on breaking events.

Traffic to the multilingual network of sites has grown 154 percent over the past year, according to research firm Hitwise. At current growth rates, it is set to overtake The New York Times on the Web, the Drudge Report and other news sites.

Journalists seem to be exhorting their own demise with praise such as:

The business model of Wikipedia is a constant work in progress. Wikipedia Foundation, its Saint Petersburg, Florida-based parent organization, is a nonprofit that depends on donations and has no plans to accept advertising.

But by relying on the power of community, Wikipedia poses a stark contrast to the top-down editorial approach at Yahoo News or the computer-driven story selection of Google News, not to mention traditional media.

Despite all the praise that is heaped onto Wikipedia by the mainstream press, they leave out an important weakness. While it is awfully nice that everyone is a volunteer for a non-profit entity, they will never be able to achieve the investigative reporting that traditional outlets have. The New York Times may seem old and stodgy but they can pay journalists salaries that allow them to fly off to distant lands and do full-time research on a complicated topic. Without the resources to allow “wikipedians” to dedicate more time to the quality of their info, they are doomed to remaining a “light” reference.

Just when you thought the war between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD was about to heat up:

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co. will bring out a DVD machine next year capable of playing both Blu-ray and HD DVD if backers of the rival standards fail to agree on a unified format, a newspaper said.

Competition between the two camps has hampered the launch of the next generation of optical disks, which will have greater capacity and higher definition, as movie studios hesitate to commit to printing disks on either standard.

That war was over before it could even start. Damn you Samsung! We were all looking forward to wasting all our money on a soon-to-be obselete format.

Of course, it will still probably be cheaper to just hook up a Mac Mini to the TV and forget the whole standards war to begin with.

A frightening glimpse into the future:

Meanwhile, computers will continue to be used more and more to watch digital streaming video, eventually turning them into televisions. With no computers available to solve complex math problems, people will have no choice but to return to the abacus. Within a few months, this ancient device will be abandoned when it’s realized that there is no good way to make “abacus porn.”

However, these minor setbacks will soon be overshadowed by a stunning scientific achievement: Mars is finally explored and colonized simply because it’s an even cheaper place to produce television shows than Canada. Producers cheer this cost-saving move but, typically, some New Yorkers complain when the latest “Law & Order” series depicts Manhattan as having a jagged red landscape and two small moons.

It seems that dumping old and broken business models is coming a bit late to the music industry:

Warner Music Group is creating a new music-distribution mechanism that will rely on digital downloads instead of compact discs.

Edgar Bronfman Jr., Warner Music’s chairman and CEO, said Monday that the new mechanism will be called an “e-label,” in which artists will release music in clusters of three songs every few months rather than a CD every few years.

It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that people like paying less for fewer songs rather than being forced to purchase whole albums. You’d think with all the success Apple’s iTunes music store has had that record companies would be falling all over themselves to rush to the digital future. Alas, it is still slow going.