In the past few months I have enjoyed xkcd . However, my top new favorite is the new (to me) Noise to Signal strip, written by Rob Cottingham. Satire crossed with all the social media hype crossed with technology, and wrapped up in a memorable graphic. That’s what I love.

(via Noise to Signal)

I am in the market for a smart, chic, mobile-web capable phone, and having held out for so long for the faster version of the iPhone, I think I will hold out just a little bit more. Not for me the midnight vigils, shivering in the cold, as some of the NZ folks did [via Kedrosky ]. Not for me the early adoption of iPhone 1.0 and the subsequent post-purchase dissonance anger at the $200 price drop. I like my hardware tried and tested, though I’m game for early software.

So.. as a result, I will not be in the line for iPhone tomorrow. However, I just might be in the store on the weekend. Let’s see the likes and dislikes.

Likes: Faster, cheaper, better. Lots of software. The AppStore is already open and folks have already downloaded, ahead of the release of the phone itself, plenty of games and applications. Super Monkey Ball? Hmm. Maybe worth buying. Facebook mobile and Google Mail? Definitely.

Dislikes: Total Cost of Ownership. Let’s see how this stacks up.

Phone: $300 (I like the 16 GB model)

AT&T Plan: an extra $30 for data (that’s 10 bucks/month more than iPhone 1.0)

Text PlN: $5 (for a paltry 200 texts), to $20 for unlimited. This is, as others have pointed out, an extortion, in which all carriers are quite happy to participate. At 20 cents/text, up from 15 cents/text, this would amount to almost $1500/Megabyte . Yikes!

In the US, texting has caught up in the last 2-3 years. And there is little alternative if you maintain a really mobile lifestyle. Which is why carriers have upped the prices in the past 2 years. Let’s hope some new apps will reduce the burden of (vastly expensive and inefficient) texting.

Total operational cost: $1,080/ year, not including taxes.

Here is more on what the iPhone will cost.

Many bloggers have commented on Twitter’s downtime . I’ll restrict mine to a little haiku.

"Too many tweets"
says Fail Whale. Seek inner peace
Time to do real work.

[Image courtesy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurita13/2625253306/]

Twitter announces funding  by Jeff Bezos and Union Square Ventures

Of course, this is all related to the oil price at the gas stations. Crude oil price topped $135 per barrel today, and have been on a roll since early this year, and especially since the analysts on the Street predicted $200/barrel by the end of the year.
The causes of this meteoric rise in oil prices aren’t unknown. In fact, they are all around us. The big fat SUVs, the measely 10-15 mpgs vehicles and the quaintly American penchant of driving 5 minutes to grocery stores, gyms and banks all add their 2 cents worths to come up to $100 and beyond. A BBC chart shows how oil got to $100/barrel in the first place.

If you are looking for gas prices at the station across the US, this map (via GasBuddy.com) is helpful.


Of course, this is old familiar “arm, leg and a first born” refrain.

[via National Geographic]
Citizens of Europe would perhaps happily give their arm and leg for a rate as cheap as $4/gallon.

So what’s an average commuter to do?
As both NY Times and Wall Street Journal reported, commuters are heading to scooter dealers in hopes of finding the 60-80 miles per gallon alternative: that old, humble, even humorous relic of the WWII era - the scooter.

NYT has a good review of the Vespa S, the old style 150cc version.


[via NY Times]

The Wall Street Journal goes one step further. It compares the cost of ownership
(well, the cost of fuel, mainly) of a Vespa, a Honda Accord and a large SUV. See here:



Meanwhile, in the other part of the world, the Indian car market is booming. Indian market analysts are “jubilant” over the fact that now India is the fastest growing passenger car market, per Automobile India.

I find it mildly ironic that in the United States, the land of the plenty, the land of the free and free trade, this idea of a small, personal fuel-efficient vehicle, nay, scooter, may actually be taking root. Having driven one for almost 10 years in India where scooters sometimes seem to outnumber people, and where the vastly growing middle-class and the burgeoning noveau riche are now spending their millions of dollars and rupees on premium and luxury cars, while also eagerly awaiting the $2,500 Tata Nano, it does indeed sound a bit ironic.

What makes it so cheap? The Nano has a 2-cylinder, 33 bhp / 625 cc engine mounted in the rear. The engine is about the capacity of some commercial lawn mowers. It has no AC, no power steering, no power windows, no power bells and whistles. It does have, though, 4 wheels and a continuous variable transmission. There is no boot, but the front cavity does have space for a briefcase. And somewhere in there the designers have managed to squeeze in 4 doors and 5 seats. All in a car that’s about the 3.1 meters (10′) long and 1.6 meters (5′4″) high. The International Herald Tribune calls it a feat of “Gandhi engineering“, a scarcity mantra that spurns superfluous doodads.

(Images: Tata Motors)

As if to prove the point, the steering wheel is hollowed out. Plastics and adhesives have replaced many of the nuts and bolts. The headlight leveler is removed, so the lights do not follow the ups and downs of the road. There is no tachometer for the revver amongst us, and the speedometer is an analog one instead of a digital one, thus showing only approximate speed. Not that it would matter much; the car can barely zoom past the 70 mph mark.

Target Market

Who would drive one? The low-cost car is clearly intended for the masses. For the family of four that would otherwise ride on a scooter, precariously balancing a tiny tot on the front and a baby on the wife’s lap. For the first-time car buyer in India - a huge market despite the increasing number of cars in the urban and semi-urban areas. For them, it promises a safer ride than the usual balancing act of 4 people on two wheels.

Will the Nano succeed? There is no doubt that Tata is uniquely qualified in bringing the car to the market. Tata is already India’s largest auto manufacturer, with over $7 billion in sales. They have tremendous experience in designing for the “Indian roads”, defined generally as roads with large potholes, dust, tropical weather conditions and autos that take abuse at the hands of drivers, passenger and animals. They also have a vast distribution network throughout the country. Those in the West, particularly the UK, are concerned about Tata’s takeover bid for ultra-luxury brands Jaguar and Land Rover. While these may be genuine concerns, they also smack of a case of sour grapes.

Car of the Future?

Is this the car of the future? Quite possibly, this is where other car makers may be headed. IHT notes that Ford may be planning to launch a $3,000 small car in partnership with Bajaj auto, a maker of those perennially favorite, but often-derided, two-wheelers. Toyota, Honda and Fiat are already considering small cars for emerging markets. Tata itself may consider exporting these cars to Latin America, Africa and other places.

Market-wise, Indian has 7 cars per 1,000 people, compared to 550 per 1,000 in Germany and 476 per 1,000 in France. So there is only one way for car density in India to go: up.

No doubt, the Nano is a tremendous feat of engineering, Gandhian or not. But is that necessarily a good thing? Already, environmentalists are sounding alarms about the Nano’s emissions. While Tata claims that the car satisfies all the current (Euro III) environmental standards and is better than the ubiquitous two-wheelers in India, experts claim that emissions are likely to worsen depending on its life. Indian cities are already chokeful of smoke and pollution and my experience of just one week in the Bangalore traffic last month was enough to make me wish stay indoors. India’s major cities plan to adopt the Euro IV emissions standards, requiring a 1/35th reduction in sulfur emissions, a costly endeavor by any means. Whether the standards will actually be implemented is a whole different story.

Secondly, given the cheap parts of the Nano, there are serious reservations about the car’s longevity, in particular because in India vehicles are supposedly used for eternity. They are driven until they sputter and die, and then bandaged together to make them run in their next karmic incarnation. The value-conscious Indian masses are loathe to purchasing a new vehicle every 3-5 years the way Western families typically do. (And that may be a *good* thing. One shudders to contemplate the state of roads and traffic if every Indian family did actually buy new vehicle every 3 years.) Although, to be fair, the new riches and the rising economy means that there already are far more vehicles than the current infrastructure will bear.

Is it fair to blame the Nano for the (upcoming) ills of Indian road infrastructure? Probably not. But like it or not, the increased affordability of cars means an increased strain on the environment, roads, traffic and stresses. One positive aspect of the Nano, as I see it, is that like the One-Laptop-Per-Child project — which has risen in cost from its marquee $100 to about $170 but has introduced the possibility of cheap(er) computing for the masses — the low cost engineering solutions may actually force innovations that will one day provide a safer transport for the masses. Perhaps the constraints of low-cost engineering will actually force other car makers to consider their own safer, cleaner alternatives. And even if the Nano does not succeed in the market, perhaps it will have started a safe ride along the way.

What do you think? Is the Nano a car of the future? Or just another Yugo debacle waiting to happen? Would you drive one?

The Web is no different. The evolution of Internet and advertising has shown, very clearly, that this ad-supported model is well entrenched. Internet advertising is about $24 billion a year market, and growing faster than you can say “Stop! Spam!”. Users / readers / listeners have consistently shown that they prefer “free” content on the web over over paid content, even if the cost of that “free” content is consuming ads. The New York Time has abandoned its paid subscription model (reportedly earning less than $10 million a year) in favor of an open, ad-supported business. Rumors are persistent that even the Wall St. Journal may offer free, ad-supported access to its content. Even the BBC has started displaying ads on its website for out-of-the-UK users. Perhaps the media are seeing the online message.

But the larger question is - who clicks on these online ads? And more relevantly for this post - who clicks on mobile ads?

BBC commentator Bill Thompson writes that that the writing is on the wall for ads.

“The growth of the internet, and the availability of content, services and even software, would seem to depend on the continuing stream of advertising revenue that flows across the network… This growing reliance on advertising over other forms of income carries with it the same dangers as any other dependency on a single source of revenue in business. While it is unlikely that Google, Microsoft or Yahoo will vanish, changes to their business models could threaten the deals which currently keep many sites alive.But the real problem is that the flow of funds into the advertising networks could diminish, especially if there is an economic downturn.”

And it indeed is. The downturn of 2000 - 2003 is a persistent reminder. It would seem that users who click on these ads are indeed serving an important purpose, namely, keeping the online content (mostly) free for the rest of us.

So who are the people who click on ads? I, personally, have only clicked-thru while doing a focused product / service search. Something like the Canon 800 IS, or Garmin Nuvi that I recently bought. I rarely click thru the banner ads largely because I don’t see them in the first place, thanks to AdBlock Plus, the super easy Firefox extension that blocks most visual ads. (Not being part of the MTV generation who were constantly fed the erratically moving images that I find utterly distracting, not to mention head-ache inducing, I have never gotten accustomed to these distracting, fast-moving images, even on shows like “24″ or movies like “Bourne Ultimatum”. So, no dancing people or annoying graphics for me. Wonder if NYT will now let me access their site? What about BBC?? Hmm…) And I’m pretty sure, I’m not the only one of the not-clicking kind.

Quoting dana boyd, one of the first people to research online communities and their social interactions and networks, Bill says the ‘heavy clickers’ form roughly 0.2% of web users and they are largely older folks, predominantly women, and predominantly mid-western, with some from New England and mid-Atlantic. They tend to click on sweepstakes more than any other content. (See danah’s interesting post here.) The results were part of an AOL study. (I’m assuming this study was US-based.) Danah goes on to add that these users are likely to be:-

• More representative of lower income households than the average user.
• Less educated than the average user (or from less-educated environments in the case of minors).
• More likely to live outside of the major metro regions.

In other words, these are “more likely to trend lower in both economic and social capital than the average user.”

Hmm… now if you are an average web advertiser, would this be your target market, broadly speaking? I thought so.

Now, it’s entirely possible that there are richer segments (financially speaking) that are heavy clickers, or that different sites would have different consumer characteristics and therefore varied click-thru concentration. The question, though, is still quite valid - who are the more frequent clickers?

I am looking for more research on this, and would appreciate any studies or links you may have come across. Thanks!

Mobile

In the mobile space, this question is even more relevant. Mobile advertising is still in its infancy, with roughly $870 million spent in 2006 (Informa estimate). Estimates of its growth vary dramatically, from $5 billion in US by 2011 (eMarketer estimate) to $11 billion globally by 2011 (Informa estimate) to beyond $14 billion globally by 2012 (Strategy Analytics estimate).

One mobile firm that is offering ad-subsidized mobile services is Blyk. Analysts and industry watchers have keenly followed the launch and rise of Blyk. Blyk offers 16-24 year olds (in the UK) free “217 text messages and 43 minutes” per month, in exchange for 6 SMS texts per day. Users fill out a questionnaire about their habits and the brands they like, and receive ads based on their taste. Blyk’s Timo Ahopelto writes about its business model:

First, the need to lower the phone bill is universal among young people. No matter where you go, young people are students or early in their careers, needing to save money for both necessity and fun. Second, Blyk links young people up with brands they like. Access to brand messages is social capital among young people. Third, advertising in traditional media is losing its power exactly like in Europe. Street corners are packed with billboards, and television programs are testing the limits of advertising per hour. A mobile media where themes, frequency, timing and pace of advertising are designed to deliver the best impact for brands and user experience for consumers does play very well in this environment.

Looks like Blyk has its bases covered. The youth market is a hot commodity in advertising, and if Blyk succeeds in targeting them, well, the industry will likely follow. All the best to Blyk, people are closely watching.

In other research, Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) has written that it’s not just the youth who may be clicking on mobile ads, but also the older, more professional crowd who form the bulk of the Blackberry crowd, paying $10 per month or more for email access. Indeed this segment would be a good catch, if the advertisers can entice them to click on the ads in the first place.

So, if you are a mobile user, have you clicked on ads? Which ones? What types (SMS texts, coupons, videos, etc.)? Let me know!

Also, I would love to see more non-vendor supported/sponsored studies on mobile advertising. If anyone has any links, please do share. Thanks!

What trait do teenagers share with Facebook?

An inability to see the long-term consequences of their bad short-term decisions.

This is, of course, with respect to the Facebook Beacon and the ensuing brouhaha. Not that I don’t want Facebook to succeed; on the contrary, it would interesting to see it success (as if 40 million users isn’t successful enough). But for those who are concerned about the privacy issues of FB Beacon and are looking to stop the FBook beacon, here’s a quick link on how to do it.