Retailers Abandoning Facebook Storefronts

Posted on 2012/02/22 by admin

Around this time in 2011, several big name retailers like Gamestop and J.C. Penney opened up Facebook stores hoping to generate sales amongst their fans and customers on the social networking site. Gamestop, which opened its store in April, had 3.5 million “fans” on its page at the time and was hoping to cash those connections in with sales.

Other companies like J.C. Penney, Gap Inc, and Nordstrom did the same, planning to reap the rewards of diligently promoting their Facebook presence to generate millions of page likes and followers.

Of the four companies mentioned, none of them have a Facebook-based storefront today. Gamestop closed its down after only six months, and none of the other three had theirs for a full year. This is not good news for Facebook, which filed for its initial public offering (IPO) this month and included becoming a shopping destination on the Web as part of its valuation.

=== Value for Retailers?

Forrester Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts says that most of the major retailers who’ve opened Facebook stores have either closed them down or are reporting little to no income from them. This does not look good for investors and may lead to some analysts declaring the company over-valued and thus not a good initial buy.

Retailers are obviously not finding use for FB in terms of direct sales, though indirect marketing can do very well on the site. The social sharing of experiences and new purchases (or both) can drive a fair amount of word-of-mouth traffic from social networks, but apparently does not translate into direct sales on those networks.

=== Why Direct Social Network Sales Aren’t Working

The problem likely centres on the way the social networking site is perceived by its users. Facebook has worked hard to create an image of itself as the place to be for social networking on a friend-to-friend basis, with gaming and social-based plugins being its main attractions outside of information sharing and casual chat.

This does not translate well into retail, which is generally a more serious endeavour for people. Virtual coffee shops have little to offer, frankly, and most people aren’t interested in shopping for new shirts or video games with friends in a virtual climate. That’s really more of a real-life thing rather than virtual.

=== Facebook’s Push for Respectability

The largest problem Facebook seems to face is that it’s considered a social network for hanging out, not for professionalism. College kids post photos of their latest drinking binges, teenagers post “do you like, like him?” status updates, professionals unwind a little and get more personal with one another there, and everyone seems to be playing games and sending each other links to news stories and websites. Nobody is shopping.

For its part, Facebook for the past few months seems to have been trying to position itself as a more respectable place where people play games, sure, but they also socially interact in such a way that you might be able to get them to buy stuff from you.

They created FB-based storefronts for retailers, sold them advertising to push those storefronts, and got consultants and analysts to predict huge sales increases and e-commerce balloons based on Facebook’s 845 million users suddenly going on shopping sprees. Numbers jumped as high as $30 billion by 2015, from $5B today – quite a jump in only four years.

Some retailers are doing well, but usually they’re either only selling on Facebook or they are giving specific incentives for shopping there rather than their regular online storefront. It’s these types of stores that are the reason the social networking company published $1.13 billion in sales last quarter.

Given how new this idea is for Facebook, it’s not surprising they’re having such a hard time getting it off the ground. The trouble is, they may be burning a lot of bridges with potentially lucrative clients by pushing this new “F-commerce” idea so quickly.

As I’ve stated before, their main objective in-house is to get through this IPO and satiate their long-time hangers-on who’ve been reportedly clamouring for the company to finally go public so they can cash in on their options. This addition of e-commerce on such a fast rollout may have been driven in large part by a hunt for valuation boosts.

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Google, Amazon, and Apple Are Vying to Become Walmart

Posted on 2012/02/22 by admin

Big technology companies usually do one of two things: they either corner the market on a specific niche need by fulfilling that need very well or they try to be all things to all people all of the time. In the first scenario, they will do whatever that niche thing is so well that others who try to move in on the market will fail miserably because they cannot compete with the brand loyalty, impressive service, and perfect delivery the company offers. In the second scenario, they will nearly always bring in a huge amount of investment cash, do really well for a short while, then fall apart as the old adage ‘you can’t please all of the people all of the time’ hits them and levels their business.

There are plenty of examples of both strategies at work. Amazon began as a bookseller that outdid traditional booksellers because it was 21st century before it was the 21st century. They dominated most other bookstore chains by filling the online purchase niche so perfectly that by the time the established bookstores started trying to sell online, they had already lost. Amazon became synonymous with ‘online book buying.’

On the flip side, America Online is the most famous ‘we want to be it all’ failure of all time. The company began as an Internet service provider and, because the Web in those days was a new thing and relatively uncertain of itself, AOL quickly began building an empire by making their consumers believe that America Online WAS the Web and there was nothing else. It didn’t take long, of course, for people to see that the emperor wore no clothes and jump ship for better digs. We went from ‘You’ve got mail!’ to ‘AO-who?’ in just a few years.

Today, tech companies who have up to now been really good at really specific things are suddenly all vying to become the Walmart of not just the Web, but our entire lives. Google, Amazon and Apple are hard at work trying to make themselves into the company that is with you for every waking hour of every day, providing you with every service you could ever want.

In Google’s case, this seems to be some kind of Star Trek fantasy wish in which Captain Kirk, instead of saying ‘Computer…’, says ‘Google, how far is it to the Andromeda Galaxy?’ Their approach has been in fits and starts and nearly all Web-based with no tangible products included. From Android, the most dominant mobile operating system today, to office and cloud services we use daily like Gmail and Docs, Google has basically taken over the Web. Now, the company is entering Klingon territory by preparing to release its first physical Google-branded device, a music streaming device for use in the home or office.

Amazon, for its part, owns the online sales market, with warehouses and partnerships (and even private sellers) selling everything imaginable through Amazon.com. All around the globe. It’s already the Walmart of online sales, having done everything but open up a warehouse store equivalent of itself online (Zam’s Club?). The company’s recent release of the Kindle Fire changes things. Until now, the Kindle was just an extension of the company’s book sales. Now, however, Amazon has entered into the tablet zone and is directly competing with gadget sellers outside of its own core markets. Rumours say that Amazon has bigger plans and hopes to release branded set-top boxes and other devices that can reach into the Amazon cloud and pull streaming videos from Amazon Prime and music from your Amazon Cloud Drive.

Then comes Apple, which has long been the 2001: Space Odyssey odd-one-out of the tech giants. This is a company whose core business was, until just a few years ago, all about computers that were harder to customize, harder to upgrade, cost a lot more, but were heavy on looks in comparison to its competition. It wanted desperately to be the Maserati of PC sales, but was failing because it missed an important point: Maserati builds stylish sports cars, not just stylish cars. Then Jobs had a ‘My God, it’s full of stars’ moment and realized that it wasn’t about speed, but design. A sort of re-think of the original thought. So instead of trying to sell Maserati computers, Apple began selling Maserati phones. Only this time, they paid some attention to performance too. Now, the term ‘smart phone’ and ‘iPhone’ are interchangeable in our lexicon. When we think of high-end gadgets, we invariably think of Apple. Naturally, since these gadgets were capable of all kinds of things and developers came out of the woodwork to make the apps that allow those things to be done, Apple cornered the market on its own app delivery system too. This expanded into music, since digital music was also new and few (if any) sellers were offering them conveniently. Then Apple did something extraordinary, but perfectly in-line with the Mac days of yore: it made everything on its devices proprietary so that it couldn’t be used anywhere else. In other words, iOS became another way to say ‘AOL’ only this time, the model didn’t fall apart with an ‘I’m sorry, Steve. I’m afraid I can’t do that.’

All three companies seem to be riding down the same track, though some are more advanced along the trail than others. Google, Amazon, and Apple all appear to have a vision – Google calls it ‘beautiful,’ Amazon calls it ‘Fire’, and Apple calls it ‘business as usual.’ That vision is to be the one place that people go to literally get and do everything.

For now, most of us go to the separate services to get and do the things we need. Tomorrow? We may only go to one of them and then, instead of boundaries like ‘U.S. or Canada’ being our division points, it might be ‘Apple or Google’ instead.

Honestly, I think Abraham Lincoln was right. You can’t please all of the people all of the time.

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Don’t Confuse the Movie Industry With Facts:

Posted on 2012/02/21 by admin

Study Shows BitTorrent Piracy and Box Office Returns Aren’t Connected

A new study paper from researchers at the University of Minnesota and Wellesley College examines the link (or lack thereof) between BitTorrent downloads and box office returns. Their conclusion? Contrary to what the movie industry claims, there is no evidence that BitTorrent piracy hurts U.S. box office returns.

The only link the study could find was in international movie sales and researchers pin that on release delays, which studios often build into their release times in order to maximize residual profits. In fact, the paper makes it clear that the reason for most piracy is so obvious and simple that only the movie industry itself has the power to curb piracy. That reason? The delay between U.S. and foreign box office premiers.

Their study found that the longer it takes for a movie to release internationally after its release in the United States, the more the movie will be pirated. There are a lot of reasons for that, the biggest being that the world is a lot more connected now than it was just ten years ago. A decade ago, most movies were released to the theater, then to special contract secondary theaters and foreign theaters, then to paid television distributors (HBO, Showtime, and the like), then to DVD.

Today, that staggered release plan doesn’t work as well since the world is much more connected. Someone in the U.S. who sees the latest Hollywood release can often either film the show with a relatively cheap handheld camera (or even a phone), find a black market seller with a bootleg theater disc, etc. and distribute it around the world in a manner of hours.

Sadly, the movie industry is so tied up in yesteryear’s profit margins and the release schedules that made them possible that they can’t let go. What they can’t see is that this failure to change is what’s causing them to lose money in the first place, not the pesky pirates. The pirates are happening because the movie execs won’t change their policies, not in spite of those policies.

Even more telling is that the report shows that BitTorrent downloads have a negligible, if any, effect on U.S. box office returns. That’s directly contrary to the claims being made by the Motion Picture Artists Association (MPAA) and other supporters of SOPA and other legislation. Despite the rallying cry of lobbyists to the effect that the evil pirates are costing American filmmakers money, research from an American university shows differently.

Another interesting thing to note is that in many European countries, including Switzerland and the Netherlands, authorities will do nothing to curb the piracy of a film until that film (or other media) is legitimately available for purchase in their markets. In other words, if a Hollywood studio wants to close down a torrent or other site hosting files containing its latest releases, it cannot do so through legal channels until it releases that movie into that country.

As I’ve said before, the real problem with online piracy is not pirates stealing the content of the producers (be their music or movies), but the producers themselves clinging to old distribution models that are outdated in today’s modern, connected world. Until these companies change themselves, they will not curb piracy and should have no complaints about the piracy they are encouraging.

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When Slow and Steady Wins the Race

Posted on 2012/02/16 by admin

Technology is awesome, but I personally enjoy looking at the companies behind the technology even more. Especially when those companies are well-handled startups with a lot of promise and who are quietly ‘making it’ at a time when most of the focus is on the flashy up-and-comers who will probably burn out before really becoming businesses.

=== What makes success.

A startup is defined as any business that is just beginning and is not self-financing. An amazing number of startups are begun every day and to be frank, no matter the industry, the failure rate for them is very high.

What’s the difference? Most of it, I think, is in the long-term planning the founders have done and are continually doing. Some startups have a flash-in-the-pan mentality from the get-go, aiming purely to make a big splash (and a lot of investment funds) and then hope for a buyout from someone bigger. Other startups are probably thought of as long-term businesses by their founders, but do little to facilitate this or collapse because the owners (including angel investors) begin fighting over control. The successful startups, though, all have the same kind of founding mentality: they plan to slog through until they’ve reached success and have plans for how they’ll get to that success point. Then they follow those plans.

Other things, like luck, markets, and so on all play a role as well, of course. Not every well-planned startup makes it, but every poorly-planned startup fails.

=== A current example: Instagram.

If you own an iPhone, it’s almost guaranteed that you have and use this app. Instagram is the most-used photo-sharing app on the iOS platform. Yet it’s made by a company that no one has heard of and a company that, two years ago, didn’t even exist.

But by all accounts, Instagram as an app and a startup company is a huge success. I thought of them because one of the founders, Kevin Systrom, appears in Best Buy’s Super Bowl commercial. He’s teamed with a Brazilian-born programmer named Mike Krieger and the match appears perfect. Where Systrom is tall, sedate, and very business-direct, Krieger is the quintessential hacker nerd.

It didn’t hurt that Systrom was an intern at Odeo where he met Jack Dorsey and Ev Williams of Twitter. Dorsey later put in a chunk of investment funds for Instagram’s startup.

The app itself is straightforward and very obvious. It would qualify as a ‘feature’ in most respects, except that it works on every major social network instead of only one of them. On the other hand, it has a glorified brochure as a website and the founders rarely, if ever, appear in media or make big pronouncements via special conferences or press release.

Instead, Instagram plugs along. Its offices are a conference room rented from the company now occupying Twitter’s old office space in San Francisco. Not an office, just a conference room. The entire company is a handful of programmers and a collection of vintage cameras in a room about the size of the average garage.

Yet the company and its little app have attracted some of the biggest names in both technology and Hollywood – people like President Barack Obama and Justin Bieber. Celebrities and techies both use ad love the Instagram app. It’s feverish development has, interestingly, been countered by slow company growth.

This means the company is moving along at a turtle’s pace in terms of expansion and acquisition (when compared to other tech startups), but that it’s building a solid foundation that will matter most when the company either goes public or expands into new markets – such as its plans for Android and then Windows Phone entry.

So while Instagram has been quietly building for over a year now, adding functionality to its core (and only) application while at the same time laying a solid business foundation as it passes the 15 million users and 500 million photos mark. Yet investments in this startup have only totaled about $7.5 million so far – a tiny sum for a startup in Silicon Valley.

What does it all mean? Expect Instagram to be the next big thing that comes out of nowhere, despite having been around for a while and having been built stolidly. Also expect a lot of the tech press to be ‘astounded’ at the company’s estimated values because what they won’t see is the bedrock base that Systrom and Krieger have built.

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Learn How To Stay On Top With SEO

Posted on 2012/02/15 by admin

Avoid using improper SEO! This article has some great tips to help you better your site’s visibility by applying techniques that work for you and search engines.

Before committing to an outside SEO company for promoting your site, get a feel for what they do before you make a commitment. Ask solid and direct questions about their results, their success in SEO promotion, their best practices and most importantly, ask how long before you start seeing results. Ask to see proof of their claims. Any company that is trustworthy will be glad to share that information with you.

Optimizing your SEO will optimize your business. Many new business owners do not realize how important this really is. Be active on your blog – you will increase your search engine ranking by doing so. You will see an increase in traffic to your site.

Create original content frequently, and publish it to your site. Set weekly goals and keep the promise to yourself to publish a certain amount of content. Websites that produce fresh content generally appear more useful to search engines than those who barely update their sites. Sites that have new content on a regular basis tend to rank higher in the search engine results

If you don’t know how to optimize your website content, then work with a company who specializes in SEO services. Search engine optimization is the process of making your site as noticeable and relevant as possible to search engines. There are several companies that provide this service at a very reasonable cost.

It is very easy to make mistakes when trying to deal with search engine optimization. Avoid being blocked by search engines and increase your visibility with these tips.

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How Many ‘Active Users’ Does Facebook Really Have?

Posted on 2012/02/15 by admin

Facebook currently estimates its monthly active users at 845 million people and its daily active users at 483 million. This means that more than half of all active Facebook users access the site daily. They key here is the term ‘active.’

=== ‘Active’ in FB literature means…

When the world’s largest social network talks to advertisers, investors, and now very likely the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), it always mentions the ‘active users’ it has. For investors and advertisers, these are potential viewers of ads and thus potential for income. That’s important.

Anyone with a website knows that if you have active users on your site (visitors who come daily), you can make money selling advertising. The more active users you have, the more money advertisers will pay you for the ad spots you’re selling. This is true whether you’re using something simple like Google’s AdSense or something complex like direct sales via an Internet marketing firm specializing in website advertising. It is also true if you’re a mega-network like Facebook.

They key here, as I said, is the term ‘active.’

Facebook doesn’t include an asterisk when they use the term, so you have to dig down to find out how they are defining it. On its face, ‘active users’ sounds pretty impressive. Especially when the numbers after it are in the six figure range like they are for FB.

On page 44 of Facebook’s recent prospectus for sale of stock to the public (the first step in an initial public offering, or IPO), the company defines an ‘active user’ as not only people who visit facebook.com or its mobile version (which would be the standard definition of ‘active user’ in most Web marketing circles), but also as anyone who actively engages with the site through one of Facebook’s APIs (application protocol interfaces) through a third party site or tool.

This means that anyone who uses a tool like a built-in ‘like’ button on Firefox or the millions of those buttons embedded directly into websites and blogs, or even just an auto-update tool that meshes a Flickr account with your Facebook Wall… All of those things are counted as ‘active use’ of FB, even though the user would never have been actually visiting facebook.com and thus not seeing any advertising or other engagements. Hence they are not, really, revenue generating by any stretch.

=== Why this matters.

Obviously, for most of us, the reaction to this news is ‘And I should care because?’ Truly, for most of us, that’s probably a good response. It probably doesn’t affect us all that much as individuals or small businesses. But it does mean something big if you are either using Facebook to advertise or are intending to buy stock in the company when it goes public – something likely to happen later this year.

It also means that Facebook itself may not be worth as much as people tend to give it credit for. If it has 486 million active daily users, but half of those are just ‘likes’ from websites or logins using the Facebook API on other sites, but not actual visits to facebook.com.. then that would mean that in the traditional sense, FB only has about 240 million active users, not 486.

A lot of users, sure, but there’s a big difference between the two numbers. A difference that, to advertisers large and small, means a lot.

So the next time you are bombarded with something explaining to you why you NEED an active Facebook presence and the potential hundreds of millions of FB users you’re missing out on if you aren’t the most diligent social marketer on the planet.. grab the salt shaker. Facebook’s user numbers should include plenty of grains.

Posted in Business, Internet, News, Social Media | Leave a comment

Why We’re Not Building a Mobile App For That

Posted on 2012/02/13 by admin

FlagWe believe (and so does Jakob Nielsen) the mobile strategy field is shifting away from Apps.

“But haven’t you heard … build an App, upload it to the iTunes store and you’ll be rich!”

Maybe. Probably true if the App you create is funny, cheap and viral … like the infamous iFart. Probably true if you’re a business and can afford to promote the heck out your solution.

But we digress…

The issue isn’t whether you can make successful apps, it’s whether you should even start down that path.

We’ve always believed the whole App route was a bubble on the development highway. Cool, profitable, but temporary.

As professionally trained developers we understand the path a problem takes through the code build – and it’s the way that path winds and ultimately FORKS (to deal with the divergence of technology) that makes us believe the future of mobile is NOT in Apps … but back where it belongs: on the web.

Now, this is not some gut feel here. This is 20+ years development experience at work. Moreover, Jakob Nielsen has written an excellent piece that clearly shows why this strategy is shifting.

Here’s the link to Jakob Nielsen’s article: http://bfmx.me/wEd5CB

We suggest you read it once… then read it again. Yes, it’s that important you let the facts and the reasons behind the shift, soak into your mind. Then review your mobile strategy.

In summary:

Mobile apps currently have better usability than mobile sites, but forthcoming changes will eventually make a mobile site the superior strategy.

***

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Amazon Reverses the Outsource Trend To India

Posted on 2012/02/10 by admin

The term ‘outsourcing’ is an interesting one. Sometimes, it’s spit out like some kind of expletive and at other times it’s used as the latest ‘smart thing’ a company can be doing. When most people hear the word ‘outsourced,’ they think of phone calls to call centres for a company whose office is in the same city they’re in, but whose phone banks are halfway around the world in India or Pakistan.

Amazon, for its part, has not gone the outsource way. Much of their operation can’t be outsourced realistically, since they have fulfillment centres around North America that ship products to consumers daily. But what if you have a large and growing number of customers halfway around the world?

Well, in Amazon’s case, you outsource to them.

Amazon is busy setting up and building its first fulfillment centre located in India. That centre will supply books and other products purchased in that part of the world to the people who purchased them there. In other words, instead of buying and having it shipped from American shores to India, customrs in India will buy and have products ships from their own country.

To be built in Mumbai, Amazon will open the centre once it’s staffed and ready. The company’s website now features an ‘Amazon India Careers’ section where they’re looking for IT managers, warehouse workers, and an operations manager for the new facility.

So while 10 new fulfillment centres are underway in the United States as well as some operating or in the works for China, Germany, Japan, Spain and the United Kingdom, this new one will be based in India.

India sports a $550 billion a year retail market and Amazon obviously wants a piece of that. The company already has software development centres around the world, including Bangalore and Chennai, India. A customer service centre in Hyderabad will also see expansion to handle the new Indian traffic.

Currently, Amazon sells to India through its U.K.-based website and fulfillment centres.

Amazon is a great company to watch as it’s one of the few that is not only doing well, but that is growing extremely fast and expanding into a multi-national presence almost overnight. Technologically, it’s also a company that is innovating and changing whole markets (I’ve discussed this before) and introducing them to a new paradigm that is shattering old traditions in some of the oldest ways of doing business we’ve ever known.

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Google is Beautiful

Posted on 2012/02/10 by admin

The new marketing trend coming out of Google will emphasize the word ‘beautiful.’ Recent remarks from several of Google’s top executives and in company blog posts and even the new privacy policy updates being sent to all Google users have had something in common: the word ‘beautiful.’

The word first caught my attention when reading the Search Plus Your World explanation given by CEO Larry Page. He used the term ‘beautiful’ two or three times in that short presentation. Now, insiders are saying that the word is being used in all of the company’s current internal meetings.

So what does this new, beautiful Google mean?

Back in December, Page did an interview in which he said that ‘All of us at Google want to create services that people in the world will use twice a day just like a toothbrush. And we strive to make those services beautiful, simple and easy to use.’

Wait.. Google makes toothbrushes?

Well, not exactly. But they do make a lot of products and services that I, people I know, and that likely you and people you know use daily. Gmail is one of those. Google+ is another. Analytics, Webmaster Tools, Google.com… many of these are things that most people who are connected use daily – usually multiple times a day. In fact, I can definitely say that I use Google products more often than I brush my teeth.

The new emphasis on ‘beautiful,’ however, is not exactly what we’ve been seeing from Google up to this point. The company has, to be frank, been kind of a nerd paradise with a lot of really great innovation happening thanks to a more or less unfettered approach to engineering. Google’s driving philosophy, ‘Do No Evil’ was kind of an afterthought next to the unwritten mission statement: come up with really cool stuff and then let other people figure out how to sell it.’

This model seemed to work for them really well. It’s an old adage amongst inventors that if the invention is awesome enough, the marketing and sales just kind of take care of themselves.

Google took that to the extreme sometimes.

Still, the new emphasis of the term ‘beautiful’ is a little disconcerting. With the closing of the company’s major innovation house, Labs, many are wondering if their new direction is going to be more Jobs-like. Will Google become the Apple of search?

This would mean a huge change in corporate philosophy for Google, which has up to now been pretty open and encouraging to innovation – no matter its source.

If that’s the case, then the fear that Google will close its doors and become more insular and PR-focused is not unjustified. If Google becomes a walled garden akin to the way Apple walls in its users to their (admittedly far-reaching) proprietary products and delivery services for them, then the Google as we know it will definitely be dead.

Or maybe this is just the mid-life crisis for Google, similar to what happened at Microsoft in 1995 when Bill Gates and Co finally saw that the Internet was the way to go and that they were going to be left far behind if they didn’t embrace it. That’s how Internet Explorer, still the world’s most-used browser, was born. Perhaps something huge is about to awaken at Google and come out of its shell.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Hopefully, it is beautiful.

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What the Movie and Television Industries Need to Learn

Posted on 2012/02/03 by admin

Recently, while talking to a friend, I found out that he and his family had turned off their cable TV and were not planning to go to movie theatres for films anymore except on special occasions. Why? Because they are tired of spending money on things that are no longer relevant.

Now, my friend isn’t any kind of strange ‘the media just brainwashes us’ types, he has a smart phone, uses the Web, is active on Facebook, and is what most of us would consider to be ‘normally connected.’

‘We were spending $200 a month on our cable television and trips to see the latest at the theatres,’ he said. Turns out, during a recent illness, they had an epiphany.

The Game Changer

One of my friend’s family members got sick and the rest of them succumbed to the same flu. So for about a week, members of the family were, from one to the next, sick in bed. They would each turn on the television to find that nothing was really worth watching and the stuff they wanted to watch was not on until later.

On demand? Ya, right. If you’re into sports or old movies, maybe, but for today’s TV shows and new movies? Nope.

So their change of heart came while they were talking about this. During her sick days, his wife tried to watch a new movie that had released about three months ago. No dice. It’s not on any cable channel, but it was on Netflix, where she streamed it. His kids wanted to see various TV shows that were, of course, only on in the evening, but they were also available on Hulu.

No Longer Paying Into the ‘Scarcity Scheme’

As my friend put it, they decided to shut off their cable and go with streaming services. ‘We were paying into this scarcity scheme that the movie houses and TV producers have. They make a show and then keep it from being released to anywhere useful, like Netflix or Amazon rentals, until they’ve milked everything they can out of box office and exclusive cable deals. We’ve decided not to make that profitable for them anymore and walked away.’

It’s a growing idea. It turns out, many people are no longer paying cable TV bills, going to the theatre for every release, or paying premiums to get high-cost extra channels on cable or satellite. Instead, they’re supporting instant-gratification streaming services like Amazon, Hulu, and Netflix.

If enough people begin to do this, it’s obvious that the big studios and producers will have to notice eventually. Instead of fighting technology, which appears to be their intent, they should be embracing it. These on-demand services could have some real profit in them if the studios were to take hold and use them in a more creative way.

What if Netflix had a premium service where you could pay a little more or pay per view to stream brand new releases that aren’t even out on DVD yet? Would you pay three bucks to see a movie that just left theatres last week? What if Amazon offered streaming rentals as soon as the DVD released instead of having to wait like they do now? Would you be more likely to use their service?

This is just another example of how Hollywood hasn’t awakened to the change that is happening. Independent studios have realized this and are largely embracing new technology. As more and more people like my friends walk away from the old guard way of thinking and support new ideas instead, things will continue to change.

Would you consider shutting off your cable or satellite and going pure stream?

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