TechAddress

Moore Pulls a Radiohead; New Movie To Be Distributed Online for Free

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 10:30:58 +0000

Our friend Duncan Riley (you know, the Inquisitr guy) has received a limited edition Google Chrome comic book. Being the altruistic fellow that he is, he decided to put it up on an eBay auction and give the proceeds to charity.

You can check out the auction here, current bid is $127.50 (that’s Aussie dollars), and it ships to North America, Europe, or Australia/ New Zealand.

Source:Mashable!

Election time is coming in the US, and suddenly your votes are more important than your money. At least that’s how Michael Moore sees it, whose new movie, titled “Slacker Uprising”, will premiere on the net for free, on September 23, followed by a DVD which will be released through Amazon.com and Netflix on October 7. Blip.TV will host the download; hopefully, they’ve upgraded their servers, because the demand is going to be huge.

Moore doesn’t hide his intentions. “This is being done entirely as a gift to my fans,” he said. “The only return any of us are hoping for is the largest turnout of young voters ever at the polls in November. I think Slacker Uprising will inspire million (sic) to get off the couch and give voting a chance.”

The movie is basically a document of Moore’s tour through 62 US cities swing states during the 2004 U.S. presidential election; obviously, it didn’t work out as well as Moore intended it, so now he’s hoping he can recycle it for another go. It’s not a bad idea, though; his earlier movies, while being amongst the highest grossing documentaries ever, also sparked an immense interest on social media sites such as Digg and Reddit. This one will be no exception, as it’s aimed directly at twenty somethings who usually spend their time doing, well, not that much. Check out the trailer below.

[image credit: newsday.com]

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No, You Cannot Turn Facebook Into A (Decent) Movie

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 12:30:45 +0000

Source:Mashable!

Do you want to get your business in on Twitter, but you’re not sure where to start? Perhaps you’re in public relations and marketing, but don’t have the resources on staff to really learn all the nuance and detail that’s involved with the community and development concerns with utilizing Twitter to its fullest. If you answered yes, then perhaps you’re in need of the services offered at Cherp, a self described “Twitter Creative Agency.”

Is this something that’s really necessary, or even a viable business idea? That’s the question Chris Brogan asks with full sincerity in his post about the company. I certainly don’t blame him. To me, the idea that a firm has completely built itself around the idea of operating in the Twittersphere almost seems like a prank website. It isn’t that it’s impossible, it’s simply a very bleeding edge idea to base a company around.

That’s something I know quite a bit about. Contrary to the loud protestations of some, I’ve been an early adopter for a long time, and in the very first days of podcasting tried to build a growth-based business around the idea of podcast hosting. The time had not yet come, and would not come, for podcasting to be widely adopted enough by not just listeners and broadcasters but advertisers to build a growth-based business around the concept.

Similarly, it’s obvious that there’s something there with Twitter. There are very real ways to use the tool for a wide variety of professions in ways that can increase their bottom line in terms of marketing or simply increasing efficiency and access to information.

The problem is reliability. The system is continually in a state of flux and development, even by the company’s own admission. Until things stabilize not just in terms of uptime but in terms of permanence of features, it’s foolish to build any sort of long term company strategy that relies on the system’s longevity. The landscape is already becoming littered by the carcasses of companies that have been rendered obsolete or non-functional by changes in the API at Twitter.

Granted, a creative agency won’t be subject to the whims of arbitrary changes in API limitations, but while I don’t expect Twitter to go away any time soon, it has far from reached critical mass. Basing a company solely around Twitter is a still risky move.

Source:Mashable!

In what seems to be the worst idea in the history of television, West Wing writer Aaron Sorkin has his sight set on Facebook, claiming he’s interested in making a movie about the popular social networking site. He doesn’t understand Facebook, he says to BBC, but he’s ready to learn, thus creating his own Facebook account.

It’s not entirely clear whether he wants to create a movie about the creators of Facebook (boring) or the actual users of the service (more boring), but neither sound like a good idea. Well, unless you want to watch developers do their thing for an hour and a half. Or people choosing who they’re going to vampire bite next.

Sorkin himself sounds really enthusiastic and full of ideas about the project. “I honestly don’t know how this works, which is why I’m here,” he said. And if you did, Aaron, you wouldn’t be making a movie about it.

In other, more interesting news, Facebook’s All Stories feed is now called Live Feed, at least in my account (I’ve switched to the new design a while ago and I love it). Other than the name change, I don’t see any differences between the old and the new version, except for the fact that Facebook altogether has been very shaky in the last couple of days, with chat and various feeds going on and off all the time.

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Flixster Hits 10 million Registered Users

TechAddressBlog — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 14:11:12 +0000

By Michael Arrington of TechCrunch.

You don’t see this every day. San Francisco based Flixster’s growth, which shot up late last year, shows no signs of slowing anytime soon.

Joe Greenstein, Flixster’s CEO, told me by email that they now have ten million registered users and up to two million movie ratings completed daily (380+ million movie ratings to date). That’s a lot of (very valuable) user generated data. Comscore continues to show a sharp rise in page view and unique monthly visitors as well. Compare the charts below (U.S. user data only), which show data through February 2007, to the December stats we published in February.

There have been some complaints about Flixster’s aggressiveness in getting users to invite friends to the service as well. Like all services, they have to be careful about where they draw the line.

Flixster’s revenues will start to increase as large and highly relevant movie marketing budgets start to really focus on this targeted audience. Fandango now claims to generate only half its revenue from ticket sales, the rest coming from advertising and other sources. Comscore says Flixster is already bigger than Fandango, and moving in the right direction v. IMDB (see last table below).

LightSpeed Ventures was very smart to invest in this company, which is still just seven people. They are now hiring three more. If you’re looking for a job in San Francisco, apply. This thing has liquidity event written all over it.

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