Rejoice - the long tail is dead (atleast for now)

Between 2006 and 2010 there was this surge of excitement about the long tail because of which google became what it is today. In an earlier avataar (role - for the uninitiated) I built a company using the principles of harnessing the long tail by allowing people to take content from TV channels and indies to their own blogs and websites. The idea was that people knew what their audiences/readers wanted.  And  hence would take the appropriate video content and embed the widgets that streamed the videos on their blogs, which in turn would be relevant to the audience who would watch this content - paid for by the preroll video ads that would get dynamically inserted. 

Unfortunately the business had to slowly move away from the indie - long tail video content and start working with the mainstream video content coming from broadcasters and movie studios. 

Looking back from a vantage position today, I realize that the business I setup would have failed anyways because it was addressing a mass audience which was used to consuming whatever was popular. Hence the question - is long tail of content relevant? I think that the very notion of people consuming long tail of content is flawed and archaic with larger organisations, broadcasters and twitter and facebook and google and pretty much everyone else pushing the content that sells to the top of the display. It is a incestuous cycle which feeds on itself and does not allow the non standard to  surface at all.

So unless you have a business that harnesses and keeps the audience locked in, do not even try to get them to consume the content that you have by spraying across the net. However if you do have the audience locked into your service then be nice to them and personalise what you offer or suffer in the long run.


Please do let me know if anyone else has any suggestions that shows that there is indeed a business that can be built using the long tail model.

Cheers


Sunil Nair

First published on the Coursera discussion forums on Understanding Media by Understanding Google by Prof. Owen R. Youngman

Unsolicited advice to VOD platforms part 2: get over the Youtube fixation

Thank you everyone for the amazing response to last week's post about VOD platforms. Continuing on the same topic....

Youtube is for the masses, your VOD platform is for the ones with the money. It is quite simple, over time the rabid class of mass audience takes over the viewership on the Internet. One has to just read the comments to understand what I mean. Youtube adds an additional layer to the confusing mass by having everything under the sun under one roof. The closest analogy is that of a fish market. On the other hand a VOD platform that is curated and has hand picked content is more like a fine dining experience. There is no jostling crowds and insane elements trying to derail your experience. My take always has been that if you want to advertise to the audience that is mass and your product includes soaps and shampoos, then please go ahead and use Youtube. Your VOD platform has the opportunity to address the other side of the audience - the non mass guy who has willingly plonked money to experience a good service.

While advertising can never sustain revenue and ad funded VOD services will forever bleed, you can augment by allowing sponsorship and branded programming that is not obtrusive or offensive. I have been called naive for suggesting this in the past, but my argument is that I am the kind of audience you are addressing and if I am ok with seeing / interacting with ads before my content, then there would be more like me. Yes, it is a  task to get the media buyers to see beyond CPMs and cost per transaction, but they see reason when you go back with data - with solid understanding of your audience. I am never saying that there will be a pile of money on this type of advertising in month 3 of the service. By taking the pressure off ad funded revenue streams, you would be able to start small and grow.

Invent ad options - allow the advertiser to choose between the kind of content he wants to associate with on the 3/4 screens. The content and its derivatives can be delivered with different ad options / sponsorship options. I have seen Hulu do this effectively but am yet to see and Indian VOD platform go beyond the usual. Be bold, sell inventory to the advertisers who are looking at experimenting.

Use your VOD platform to go beyond the main content that you are so obsessed with. Go and ask the studios and channels for content that is discarded and create interactivity with live TV. Instead of competing with the large screens everywhere, try to be the supplementary screen that the audience goes to when they want to go beyond the first screen, integrate with the advertising on TV for the shows, with the in film advertising and extend the reach.

Finally, listen! Listen to the buzz, listen to the gut of the content acquisition guys, and the content that's bubbling under the surface on the social media scene. And then use that intelligence to manage the needs of the audience.

Running a VOD platform is akin to running several TV channels at the same time. Talk to the guys who run TV channels often. They may be of another generation but I learnt a lot from what they know and am sure the VOD platforms can gain from them too.

Hope this helps....

Unsolicited advice to VOD platform: get your heads out of the sand.

Here is my list of tips that I think any VOD platform needs to survive:

Do you know who your audience is?

I know this is a very cliched questions but I must ask this one again and again. I believe that the common man on the street is quite some years away from becoming the audience for VOD services. There is no point in trying to be a single screen cinema when the audience you really want wants a multiplex. Your audience is much ahead of you and there is no point in trying to put large numbers in business cases and say that maybe you will get 5% of that number in the first year. Your first million customers are likely to be the ones who already are aware and understand what VOD is and are using it in some form. 

What is your real audience watching?

Surely not the Salman Khan blockbusters that you want to display out loud on the home screen of your app!!! People who have the time are getting their fix of entertainment via torrents already. The connected and aware audience is consuming entertainment even before the mavens of TV acquire them for Indian C&S audience. So if you segment the audience into slivers - the top thin layer would be the audience that you absolutely want. They are your evangelists - the first 1 million people who will sing praises if you just listen to them. The others usually follow in hordes when this first lot is happy. This slice is not watching Chennai Express, they are not watching the TV serials and are definitely not looking forward to Grand Masti.

This audience wants NH7 streamed live, they want content that is usually deemed too niche for the TRP fuel. I am part of that sliver and I do not watch TV, Hindi films do not excite me enough to go into the crowded multiplexes, but I do wish someone got me Ship of Theseus or The Supermen of Malegaon on my tablet. I wish I had easy access to the entire Godfather series. I spend a lot of time watching content between my work and while I am waiting for things to happen. If I watch a movie or an interesting series, I want to know more. I want an IMDB equivalent that I can go to when I want while I watch VOD on my connected TV. I want the same content in different forms on the 3 screens I am in front of most of my waking hours. 


Have you heard of Original Content?

Am assuming you do read the blogs and are aware that everyone from Hulu to Netflix is investing huge money into Original content. Do not get me wrong, am not even suggesting that you go to your VC with this plan – he will most likely throw a tantrum and ask for excels in triplicate.  The most common excuse that VOD platforms have is that original content is expensive - I say you have not tried hard enough. Not thought through the content ecosystem. There is content for the asking in all formats available if you look hard. The stuff that goes on TV is merely 5% of what is created. The rest is not available for audiences because of the existing structure. The day you stop calling yourself a VOD and start thinking as an alternate broadcaster who does not have the restriction of 24 hours time slots, you have got the secret sauce.

The art of enabling people

My crib with youtube is that there is way too much crap out there which they want me to sift through to find what I want, and when I find it is usually not available in my country.  If you want your audience to keep using your service then you need to enable and empower him to discover the things that he wants in 3 clicks. Ok 4!! Invest in a good discovery engine, a good recommendation algorithm, go find a bunch of IIT kids who can build it for you.  Find a system that enables you to allow people to tinker around with the app without requiring a PhD. Most VOD services assume that just featuring thumbnails on the home screen would solve the problem, please apply intelligence – get a human to map events, happenings and change that homescreen content every couple of hours.

Become an MVNO

This is a moon shot idea but the one who gets this correct will win the battle of survival. The biggest problem against the VOD services in India is the willingness of the audience to pay for the bandwidth. If a VOD goes out there and buys spare bandwidth and figures out a way to reconcile, they could do an Amazon Whispernet for VOD.

Stop paying MGs

There is no way anyone can sustain a business by paying MGs upfront for TV content – There are several examples of VOD services that are dead or dying because of the lure of the big TV channels on the service so that your investor is happy and valuation increases. Instead focus on working with the TV channels to expand their content beyond the 24 minutes that they currently work with. TV folks are not bad people, they just are greedy, don’t give in to them. Please get your heads out of the sand.

More tips coming soon …..

The coming age of Twitter

Every few years we have gurus and shamans predicting that the next big thing in ecommerce, human communication, innovation etc surprisingly close to the IPOs of these 'next big things'. Last frenzy and orgasmic rapture was around 6 months before the Facebook IPO. At that time we (yes me included) were talking about the Facebook social graph and the impact on advertising and ecommerce. What followed was amusing, debatable to death and like my younger colleagues say "Meh". So then why am I writing this piece about the coming of age of Twitter? Maybe it is because I believe this time we have some story that is heading towards that 'googlian' moment when there is a cataclysmic shift in the balance of power. I might have cake on my face in 2 years time, but I want to take my chances.

My good friend and entrepreneur +ashish bhansali has always claimed that Twitter never had a business model when they went around asking for money. It is his excuse for never wanting to write a bplan for anything he wants to do. Not having a business plan ( assuming Mr Bhansali is correct about Twitter) might have been a good thing for Twitter. All this while they were just a microblogging site where one ranted, after the Arab Spring they have earned their stars as a tool for revolution (We Indians are making a mess of how we use it for political gains, that apart).

Earlier this year they launched Twitter Music, Yesterday they say they have acquired Trendrr - a company that harnesses the power of  real time data for media and advertising. In addition they have launched the 'conversations' view which allows for people to read their tweets as a threaded view. Most importantly they announced that they have a new man on board for ecommerce - a new that seems to be well planned considering the movements Twitter has made in the last 6 months or so.

Ecommerce on Twitter would be absolutely great considering we users have a natural tendency to buy impulsively things like movie tickets and digital goods based on recommendations and conversations around us. Twitter for the last one year has been my sole destination when I want to read about reviews of movies - when Dark Knight Rising was released, I spent a few hours just reading what people were saying. OKListen can use Twitter to track the next concert of their indie artists and advertise and sell track right on Twitter. Today most of this means that there are 2-4 steps in between interest, intent and actual sale. With Twitter removing that middle layer, it can mean better conversions.

My prediction is that there would be a new way of selling that would come to Twitter through its program for retailers who would be able to target users who have tweeted in the past about goods or services. A sort of a Flash Sale exclusively available on Twitter that can be completed right on Twitter itself using payment platforms like Gumroad. So potentially since I tweeted about buying a phone earlier this month, Twitter could track the tweet and crunch that data to throw up a good deal when I am shopping next and tweet saying that I am in a mall, or I check in. Since we are already slaves to broadcasting our every move, it would be self serving to use it to the advantage of a product that wants to claim my wallet at the time when I am agreeable to spending. I guess the next stage would be to integrate with the offline retail stores and complete the fullfilment cycle. You can opt to buy the phone after paying via Twitter or by getting a discount at the local store. The potential is huge. 

My predictions for Twitter are as follows:

• Flash Sales becomes the new buzz
• Twitter will end up buying Gumroad ( +Mohak Gambhir - hat tip for pointing this out)
• A square like POS solution in the next 2 years
• A messenger service that leverages the conversations feature
• Buy a social listening company to help brands track the chatter better

Twitter has already shaken up the news business, with ecommerce and entertainment being next, the age of twitter has arrived. I hope they do not muck it up.

Maybe now Amazon must be thinking of entering the social micro chat space :)

Image courtesy: presta-ecommerce.com 

Rejection slips

It has been exactly 2 years and 4 months since I last posted on PushBottonThinking. I was gainfully employed with Star TV when the last post about whole wheat bread was done. In the time since then I quit Star TV (disputed as usual) and joined Reliance Jio. Been quite some ride(No I will not write about my work). I bought a new car, cleared two loans, invested in some more, finished 4 courses on Coursera, been a decent father to my 7 year old girl, cooked every Sunday, drove 20000 kms. in 8 months, took two holidays in as many years, struggled to find my feet and give back as good as I got.

Somewhere along I got lulled into a rhythm - salary comes in every month like clock work, loans get repaid on time, jokes can be made about the 'two punch, one lunch' dejavu every day 6 days a week. The challenges of work are nice, finding my way around issues, people, politics and situations keeps me going back but that hunger goes away. Took up a challenge 14 months ago of beating the living daylights of my diabetes - I won by simply remembering to walk up 13 floors twice everyday and do 25 minutes of assorted stretching. Gamified the monthly spends and now I know exactly how much is required in any week and can plan things accordingly. In short there are no great insurmountable tasks that remain (barring bringing up a daughter).

And as is my habit I cribbed about this to a couple of friends and one of them (you know who you are, lady) reminded me about this blog and a novel that I have been threatening to write for the last 10 odd years. So over the next 3 weeks I will try to write 1500 words everyday. If I am able to put together 30000 words in these 3 weeks I will go on and finish the novel. And send it out to experience rejection. Its been sometime since I pitched anything to anyone. The last time I got rejected was because the person wanting to fund me found an excuse that my reputation was not clean. That cleared my senses and made me look for a job, that was almost 4 years ago. I am grateful for that rejection slip in the form of an email. It made me see reason. It made me understand that rejection slips are needed, the are divine love notes that slap you out of your hubris.

Coming back to the novel - if I am able to write and get someone to publish it, I would be making peace with myself. I will start believing again that big things happen in small ways. And maybe I will be tempted someday to start something new. ....maybe even write 2 posts every week here.

S

Homemade whole wheat bread: nirvana for the soul

Ever since I started cooking seriously around 3/4 years ago, I was told that if I can make bread at home in my LG microwave-convection oven, I would be considered as a good cook. The people who told me this included a few of my 'know-it-all' friends (who by the way cannot boil an egg, even with instructions), a semi serious individual who specialises in French cooking and a few sundry souls.

I read Mark Bittman's no knead whole wheat bread and wondered if I could manage to ever make that crusty, porous bread that they say can be made if you have magic in your soul or a french baker's daughter for a wife! Bread making has intimidated me. I would look at recipies and curse every one of them that demanded me to have patience for a couple of hours.

I had attempted bread a few times at home, it never ever worked. Each time I was left with a leaden mass of dough that could be outsourced to rioters world over to throw at the establishment.

This time was different.

The ingredients:

Whole wheat flour : 1 - 1/2 standard measure cups ( use any atta, I used Ashirwad ) plus 1/4th cup for dusting
Yeast : 1 tablespoon
Salt: 1/2 teaspoon or to taste
Sugar: 1 teaspoon
Dry herb mix : 4 tablespoon ( I used a mix of Oregano, rosemary, pinch of thyme, chilli flakes, dry coriander leaves, dry garlic flakes)
Olive oil : as required ( I used about 1/4 the standard measure cup / use virgin and not pomace)
Water: 1 standard measure cup / as required ( half room temperature and half lukewarm)
Egg wash: 1 egg beaten with a smidgen of milk
Sesame seeds: 1 teaspoon - or as per need
You will need a large flat bottomed vessel for the dough, a moist clean kitchen towel and a brush. Also a oiled cake tin or a bread tin.

Time required, including baking time: approximately 90 mins

Preparing the yeast: This is where it seems people make a mistake. Take a cup of luke warm water (water thats hots will kill the yeast, and water thats tepid will not allow those organisms to bubble, so lukewarm it should be. Test it by pouring a bit in the back of your hand, if it burns, its hot, it, ideally should be comfortable warm). Now dissolve half the sugar in this lukewarm water and then add the yeast into this mix. Cover with a lid and let it rest. The yeast will form a pasty mix, give it a stir after 2-3 minutes and then leave it alone for 10 mins)

Prepare the dough: mix the salt, remaining sugar and the herb mix throughly. In ten minutes your yeast mix would have started to form a nice bubble layer or a forthy layer on the top surface. Add this to the dough and get to work with your hands. Gather the flour and keep kneading, there is no speacial way to do this, when the dough starts to come together, add water in little spashes, keep kneading till it becomes a sticky mix. If it is too watery, please use the spare flour to give it some dryness. At this stage you will have sticky dough on your fingers, do not try to remove them or wash your hands. Now add olive oil and start to use the fleshly part of your palm to push the dough and stretch it from one end to the other while in the vessel itself. The oil will incorporate into the dough and the stretching will ensure that the gluten breaks down and gives the dough the elasticity (ok, I read this up). Use up all the oil, it helps. You will notice that the dough that stuck to your fingers now have vanished into the dough. Turn the cup that contained the olive oil onto the cake / bread tin and use it to oil the bottom of the tin well and then sprinkle flour on the bottom.

Knead the dough to a nice round ball and leave it to reast for 45 mins while covered by the moist towel (moist is not wet!). The yeast will get to work and will make the dough double in size in 45 minutes. Use the time to play with your kids, they will love you for it or your dog. Or just read the newspaper, dont go peeking at the dough every five minutes, the yeast will not work faster because you are in a hurry. After 45 minutes, take a good look. The dough will look like a bloated ball. Gather all your hatred for whovere deserves and punch the dough to release the air inside. Now quickly knead it once again for about 5 minutes and let it rest again for 15 minutes.

Preheat the over to 200 degrees cel. Pop the dough in the cake tin / bread tin and brush the top with the egg wash. Sprinkle sesame seeds on top and use a sharp knife to cut shashes into the top of the bread dough. Put it in the preheated over and bake it for 20/25 minutes. The bread will puff up and the egg wash will turn golden brown. At the end of the 20 minutes / 25 minutes you can test the bread, it will give out a hollow sound if you knock it with a spoon. Now let it cool on the kitchen top while you prepare the tomato salsa or the roasted almond basil pesto that would go with it.

Your kitchen and if you like in a Mumbai flat, the entire flat will have the fragrance of heaven. When the bread at room temperature cut it with a serrated knife or just tear it into chunks and eat it. No bread ever made will taste the same after this.

My bread was eaten within 10 minutes of serving by four people - 3 adults and one 5 1/5 year old. This little girl asked me in all seriousness, can we start a bakery at home?

I am not sure if it was the best bread that money could buy, I have not eaten enough good quality bread to know. The closest it came to in flavour was the bread that we sometimes buy from Nature's Basket and a couple of times from the BBC at Juhu Marriot. In terms of achievement, for me it was a glory moment, I could bake a decent bread, at home, using home ingredients. I had the dry herbs because I have been buying them for my Saturday / Sunday cooking, but you can experiment with fresh herbs like finely chopped onions and coriander, you can also try using a bit of garam masala to give it that Indian flavour. You can use butter or cooking oil instead of olive oil. When you add fresh herbs, please reduce the quantity of water used.

Hope you are proud of your bread when you take it out of the oven. You will feel liberated and will have attained that Buddha inside you!

Two Status Messages about startups

Ramanath Bhat, someone I met during a business meeting and Senior Manager Google TV Project at Sony this morning posted the following as his Facebook status:

"I think one of the toughest adjustments to make, particularly if you are coming from an established company, is entering a world where you have infinite needs from people around you, and no one needs you. That predicament in some ways defines the challenge of a startup. You have an idea, but no leverage, so you have to start making water into wine. You have to attract a team, attract money, attract customers etc. with nothing more than your vision and powers of communication. Entrepreneurs who succeed are those who don't get demoralized by that asymmetry, but instead view it as a challenge. Occasionally, someone hits on an idea that is just so brilliant or timely that it quickly creates leverage, but that's rare."

-- Tim-Westergren Founder of Pandora on moving from Big company to Start up 

I posted it in turn on my Facebook page later in the day with acknowledgements to Ramnath and to Tim-Westergren, adding that the same is applicable to someone who has to move from a startup to an large organisation. The corporate mavens are not kind to startup entrepreuners who move back and the road blocks are many. This post is not about this issue. 

 Pranay Srinivasan responded with a passionate comment and says:

There is more to this as well. Sometimes, as an Entrepreneur, you end up being a lone negotiator, who's cajoling his own troops to work for close to no money for long hours to attempt to succeed at pleasing completely unyielding customers who think they are doing you a favour by passing business to a relatively unproven vendor. You have to build relationships by destroying your ego, your self-image and come across as humble, but not needy; enthusiastic but not aggressive; foreceful but not arrogant; ambitious but not reckless; you have to find the money to sustain your vendors, your overhead and manage your growth while ensuring you dont create white elephants. You have to forge long term business links with clients based on your flexibility and your superior quality at rates which are lower than that they already pay. You have to make sure you dont compromise on payment terms or else you might end up in a cash crunch. And at the end of it all, no matter what your bank balance or your fears are that keep you awake at night or make you wake up suddenly in a cold sweat, you have to remember to Always Keep Smiling. 

Maybe the ones who are in the midst of this startup dream are fools. Or maybe the ones like me who gave up and decided to play it safe are the smart ones. One thing is for sure, there are no easy answers.