Avi Muchnick writes some interesting ideas on the Worth1000 blog about "Orbital Theory" which states that the value of users of web 2.0 sites is related to their interaction with the site AND the frequency of their visits.

As Orbital Theory goes, I like the idea.  It's reasonably intuitive, too.

I agree we're headed to a 'crisis' in metrics, but I'm not sure how this interacts with valuation (I'm *not* saying it doesn't).  The pageview is becoming useless as a measurement for plenty of Ajax-driven sites - they now have to work hard to show how they deliver additional ad impressions in the same page. 

I also agree that user affinity for a site should make the average ad impression on the site more valuable.[1]   But maybe the upshot is that ad impressions to high-gravity users are more valuable- how you get advertisers to buy that is the question.  Maybe you move entirely to CPA advertising? If advertisers never bite on that, how will the gravity of your user base ever translate into revenue dollars, and then to valuation?

I promise to think about that.

[1] I recall thinking about this in the context of woot.com but I never got into the math/econ of it- if people are glued to the site they'll be looking at your ad more intensely..</the_immigrant_song/2006/10/wootcom_and_the.html>

So, I'm not the first one to break this story, but I think we should remeber that Dana Carvey, while impersonating Tom Brokaw, predicted his death ten years ago.

This is one of the funniest sketches I ever saw.  I'm still trying to find a video clip-maybe NBC can find it in their hearts to release one.  In the meantime, courtesy of DanaCarvey.net, I offer these audio clips from the sketch. Brokaw wants to go on vacation, so they are recording Brokaw breaking every possible major news event.

Gerald Ford isn't going to be eaten by wolves.

Former President Gerald Ford was eaten by wolves. He was delicious.

Gerald Ford is dead today and I am gay.

Gerald Ford chopped into little bits by the propeller of a commuter plane.

UPDATE: Found it!

Would this be better as a list?

• Barista at Starbucks 86th and Columbus Ave.  (which I have always thought had awesomely executed beatnik lighting) asked if I was famous.  I am not famous...yet.  I admit I bungled the response, because I didn't just go with it.  The barista (jailbait- bless her heart) said I looked like an actor- which one?  From that show, "Home Improvement."  No, not  Tim Allen.  The other guy, co-host of Tool Time, Richard Karn as the accident prone Al Borland.  Would probably have been more fun if she had thought I looked like Jonathan Taylor Thomas.
• Had great evening on Friday at Woody McHale's on 14th street.  Chill atmosphere, music that won't drown out your attempts at conversation, and the best home made thin cut waffle fries I have ever had the pleasure of tasting.  You can be sure I'll be going back.
• One more fabulous Christmas eve dinner at Yeah Shanghai Deluxe in Chinatown. My initial confusion concerned whether calling ahead (which BLM said he did in the mid afternoon, I think) resulted in our near-immediate seating, but that quickly turned into the guilt of the fortunate.  There were plenty of people waiting, and it sure seemed like we ran a gauntlet of angry (and hungry) people speaking not English as we moved through the narrow entryway of the restaurant,  past the dim sum steaming area, and to the exact same table we sat at last year.
• Watched all DVDs purchased from Amazon, plus "Happy Endings" (weird but good) and "Homicide: Life on the Street Season 1 Disc 1" (as fantastic, as I remember it from Friday nights on NBC when I was a teenager, though perhaps even better without commercials).

Reading the recent Fortune article "Happiness is a Warm iPod" I was struck with the realization about the future of all music, not just the bands the author calls "luddites."

The Beatles held out against the sale of their music online (not to mention waging war on Apple Computer), as have AC/DC, Garth Brooks, and Led Zeppelin.  The 'Luddites' comprise  those three  plus the Beatles, and NPD Group estimates that there are 32 million illegal downloads of those artists alone each year).  Right now I'm listening to "The Immigrant Song" on my iPod- who profits from that (besides, er, me)?

No one, really- though perhaps I'll buy the 2002 Led Zeppelin DVD release for myself as a holiday gift- the DVD version has a performance of "In My Time of Dying" which comes with extra face-meltingness.  Which leads me to ask: what will kill piracy?

Havocscope quotes estimates that globally, 20 billion songs were illegally downloaded in 2005. Turns out, that data comes from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry - but let's not worry about whether it's inflated.

Where is the service that's going to make up that difference in demand and behavior? My 8GB iPod Nano can hold about 2,000 songs- there is no way I could afford to fill it at $0.99 per track.  I'm in the target demographic of 18-34 year olds with lots of disposable income and no family to support- if I don't have the money, who does?
So maybe the 20bn global downloads is skewed by heavy use by only a few people.  Fine.  But it averages out to 3 illegal downloads for every person on the planet last year.  And think of how many of those people got iPods this year.

Information wants to be free, they say, and the war on piracy amounts to an arms race between piracy networks/the Dark Net on the one hand, and lawsuits and p2p interdiction efforts on the other hand.  There is no clear winner- for every Trace Buster there will be a Trace Buster Buster [imdb].

Piracy will always exist alongside legitimate content.

So, it's almost four in the morning, and I'm awake, and thinking about the business model of Amie St, an online music store.  Artists (mostly unsigned or indie artists) upload their music to the site, and the site offers the music for dowload on a revenue share basis.  The price changes over time (from TechCrunch):

• All songs are free to start. Prices fluctuate over time based on demand for the song
• Users who have purchased a song can recommend it to their friends using a limited number of “rec’s” that they receive (users get one per dollar they add to their account).  Once recommended, users will get account credit if the price of the song increases, giving them an incentive to find and recommend good music.

I like demand sensitive pricing.  Everyone should check out the UK movie theatres run byt the Easy corporation (of easyinternet and Easyjet fame) where excess inventory (read: empty theatres) is liquidated at the market-clearing price.

I have also benn known to advocate from time to time the idea of digital content markets where artists of every variety can set the prices for their content and connect with buyers who are willing to pay that price for the content.  No matter if these prices are fractions of a cent- a rights holder ought to have more control, no?

The critical difference is scarcity.  There is no meaningful scarcity in digital music, no limit to the number of copies of a song.  So the rise in price for the same good absent scarcity or constraint of supply ought to be confusing.

I suppose that one could think of this model as "effective scarcity" in two ways:

1. The number of initially free tracks is very large, and the site's recommendation and buzz creation process promotes a much a subset of tracks, so they go up in price as they become the smaller number of "high quality tracks)
2. The recommendation process is actually an engine for differentiation and value creation.  The products aren't the same

I was pleased to accept an offer of employment from Avenue A | Razorfish, the largest interactive agency, in their New York office.  As a Strategist, I will provide vision and business case analysis on individual client engagements, and formulate overall strategy for reaching target audiences.  I think this is exactly the kind of work I have been looking for- the opportunity to apply my broad knowledge of the media world and the strategies and technologies which make it flourish. 

It will be a tremendously rewarding experience.  I plan to continue to write about life, New York, and technolgy here on this blog.

As I look back on three years at the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information, I feel satislfied that I have built strong and true relationships thoughout the media and telecommunications industries, and gained a healthy perspective on the business of bringing information to consumers.  I'm thankful for the incredible cast of CITI friends and former employees who have provided me with advice, backstory, and occasionally beer.

As far as that last is concerned, I will join Razorfish after their move to Times Square from TriBeCa- catching an after work beer at the Nancy Whiskey Pub would have been a perk in and of itself ;-)

Today I had a really excellent job interview with an interactive advertising and strategy company, which I think went really well.  It sounds like they are looking for a complete person- someone who can see the big picture issues as well as get down and dirty with numbers and technlogies.  I'm excited about this opportunity and I'll post more if it comes to fruition.

Also, the street I live on was rated number 11 on Time Out New York's Top 50 Blocks in New York City.  Never thought living so far uptown would rank so high on anyone's scale, let alone a major publication, but I continue to like just about everything about Inwood-except perhaps how far away it is.

Lately things that start as an interesting question have turned into something more than that.  A blessing, probably.  Original thought is nice. 

Today, knickknack and 1-day closeout e-tailer woot.com is running a woot-off; instead of the typical woot.com sale, where a single item is available for purchase until it runs out, a seemingly endless stream of woots, with each sold-out item replaced with a new item, of which there is an unknown-or rather, undisclosed- but limited quantity available.

When an individual woot gets close to being sold out, I imagine server load runs to a peak, because users frantically attempt to refresh the page, in the hopes of being one of the first to see the next woot.  Frequently, under these conditions load times for the woot.com homepage  rise, and users are left smacking their F5 keys or hitting Refresh on their browsers, but nothing happens.  Woot's servers clearly cannot easily handle the peak load.

But do they want to?
This is an interesting question.  I bet there is an advertising ROI trade-off between being able to serve up more ads because you can keep up with people hitting reload every .5 seconds, and keeping them queued up so that they stare at ads like "Point Break DVD one day sale" with extra interest and longing.

One thing that makes ad time valuable is if people are really interested in the product/ad vehicle- the ads purportedly have a bigger effect.  I postulate that if you could create some kind of irresistible content like the woots and measure things about them...but it probably depends on lots of factors.  i mean the page itself ius static- once you see the next woot you wiull stop reloading.  I wonder what the situation on the Amazon gold box ads (well, the stuff on the page that wasn't the gold box) were like in terms of clickthrough.

I have seen this problem from a different angle with a video distribution platform
we have modeled- how much server capacity do you need in order to serve your users- which is a factor of each user's acceptable wait time in a queue (and the likelihood that they will abandon the transaction entirely), and the profitability of each transaction.

I think modeling this would be really interesting.

Last night a revamped version of "Overheard" the sketch show I am in, debuted at the Magnet Theatre.  See our cool flier below.  The show was trickier than any of the previous stagings, mostly because the Magnet has virtually no backstage area, but the new material we added went well.  I was pleased but look forward to doing a better job with a more impressive audience this coming Sunday, October 15, 9:30pm.  Just $5.