Famine City

Bigger Web, Smaller World

by Marty

A bigger web is driving a more physical, yet smaller world. While the web is driving more transactions than ever, they are increasingly acute both online and offline. As our fiscal and behavioral transactions are more targeted (than ever), life is following this trend, from relationships to media.

Look at dating, how did you browse for your mate? Dating today starts with micro-targeting potential relationships before you ever start the going out with anyone. You start with your 99 dimensions of compatibility to exclude all of the potential relationship pitfalls.Then you move into potentials, but your target is so much smaller. Is it good or bad, I don't know. But the trend is real, micro-targeting everything is making the world a smaller place, especially in dating habits of today. Sidenote: What will happen to music if relationship pitfalls go away? The trend is not limited to our dating behavior, but our media and physical purchases as well.

Ah, the TiVo. What did I do without you? You recommend programming that I like and more fab-reality TV for my wife. Thank you. You detect my preferences and make recommendations then recordings on what “you” think I’ll like. I love you little box. You’ve taken the vast  channel surfing behavior and changed it all. it’s simple watching TV (now). And it just did not happen to television, our music has followed. From Napster to Pandora, we take the bajillions of artists and tell me if I like this, I’ll probably like this too. Our entire collection of media transactions are being more defined for us, so marketers and technologists are goig to have to determine how to isolate their specific target behaviors more than ever.

In the physical world, we research product, their costs, and/or places before we ever visit them. Generally, we tend to know exactly what we want from all things considered nouns. We research product options choices and costs on the web and go to the store to purchase that one item. Christmas and groceries may be the last bastion of browsing.The end of browsing or casual dating may be nearing all the time? Perhaps that is what vacation will be in the coming years, just browsing.

Our transactions are more targeted than ever and our behaviors, media habits and physical world purchases are as well. I don't know what this means to me as a marketer or technologist, except to further refine and target my consumer base. The biggest bang for the dollar may be smaller targets with greater focus. We'll see.

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Fyre makes your collage de porn easy

I just read a great piece on Wired for the CES 2008. Fyre TV unleased a new porn service this month. You subscribe to the service and it is essentially a video on demand porn service through your TV--$10 per month. It's a fairly generic black box that serves as a VOD through your Internet service. This isn't a great innovation for porn on demand, but you can tag and select your scene to create your own little collage. So porn is getting more selective, you don't have to scroll through your fav scenes and what not. Scrapbook your own little filth blanket just for you.

While porn might be the start, they always innovate and mainstream catches up. Clean Flix, a company that edited out questionable content (they went out of business) would have benefitted from this service. Parents could buy set top boxes so that kids can watch Einstein only content, whatever. Again, the porn industry is leading for all of us. I never feel so conflicted over innovation, except when the smut peddlers do it. And they do it better than most.