The New “Journalism”

I was going to title this entry “Lady Gaga Hits Steve Jobs Using  iPhone ”. Why?   Because, Lady Gaga, Steve Jobs and iPhone is currently trending and if I wanted my entry to be seen via SEO (Search Engine Optimization), I should be writing something about Lady Gaga, Steve Jobs and the iPhone in order to move my way to the top of the list of articles about either Lady Gaga, Steve Jobs or the iPhone.  I decided against it because the article really has nothing to do with Lady Gaga, Steve Jobs or the iPhone.  In fact the title would be misleading and possibly libelous. 

If anything, if I could write an article about Lady Gaga, Steve Jobs and the iPhone, and do it fairly quick, then I might be able to find a place on AOL’s staff of journalists, or as I call them “hacks”.  You see, AOL just recently came out with a fifty eight page memo, called “The AOL Way”, which breaks it down like this:

• Each article should be profitable and generate at least 7k PVs/story
• By March: SEO checker to be used on 95% of stories
• Decide What Topics To Cover based on:

1. Traffic Potential
2. Revenue/Profit
3. Turnaround Time
4. Editorial Integrity

• Use freelancers sparingly unless paid for by advertiser
• Carefully craft headlines to grab users’ interest by incorporating in-demand terms and entice them to click onto the article [e.g.] ‘Lady Gaga Goes Pantsless in Paris’.
• Use editorial judgment & insight to determine production. Ex: “Macaulay Culkin” & “Mila Kunis” are trending because they broke up -> write story about Macaulay Culkin and Mila Kunis.
• In-house AOL staffers are expected to write five to 10 stories per day. (Apparently writing differing versions of Lady Gaga going pantsless and Macauly Culkin and Mila Kunis breaking up in about 45 minutes to an hour and a half per story per day, because, really how much trend change is there within the course of the day.)

And this, dear readers is only the tip of the iceberg.  Please note that “Editorial Integrity” lags behind everything. If you get through the memo without wanting to punch a certain CEO in the face (Not Steve Jobs though.  And certainly not with an iPhone.  And certainly not allowing Lady Gaga to do it for you), it becomes clear that content is the least of what AOL really wants.  They want Carnival barkers to get the eyeballs on the next click-through.  The more insane the headline, the better.

Lady Gaga Hits Steve Jobs Using  iPhone  

I know you got bills to pay, AOL. You used to be known as where innovation goes to die.  Must you carry professional journalism along with it?  Why not just lay it on the line:  AOL is going to become the Weekly World News of the internet, regardless of how much you try to burnish you image by buying up groups like Tech Crunch and the Huff-Po. 

Hopefully, real journalism will eventually win out.  After all, there are stories out there that need to be told that the populace does not know about.  When you see a “breaking” story, that means it wasn’t trending to begin with.  And there are a lot of people out there who do not care about Lady Gaga, Steve Jobs or the  iPhone. But this idea of following what everyone else is following does no service to anyone.  Certainly, it does no service to Steve Jobs, Lady Gaga or the iPhone.

Maybe I should write a story about Steve Jobs never having met Lady Gaga next.  I could title it “Steve Jobs Uses iPhone  to Meet Hit Maker Lady Gaga”.  Two stories with the same SEO tags.  Hey, I can play this game too.

UPDATE 2/22/11:  As of today, if you go to Google and Type “Lady Gaga”, “Steve Jobs” and “iPhone”, this story is the first one up.  Just saying, AOL. 

Android to Apple: Eat My Dust

When Apple unleashed the latest iPhone onto the world, I mentioned that Apple was making the same mistake they made with Microsoft all those years ago, only this time with Android.  And that mistake was simple:  With Apple, you have the iPhone and with Android you have almost any type of phone you want.  Given the choice, what would most people do?

Apparently, given the choice, people choose choice.  Android moved up the charts faster than a Lady Gaga song this past quarter, becoming the top-selling US smartphone OS, according to research firm Canalys.  How fast is fast?  34% of the 14.7 million smartphones sold in the US.  Apple?  21.7%.  Considering that a year and a half ago, Android was Apple’s poorer sister, Steve Jobs better be thinking about what the heck just happened.

Of course, the bottom line is this: Apple is making a couple of bils on the iPhone, whereas right now, Android is making money for Samsung, HTC and Motorola.  But that is not Google’s concern at the moment.  The number of people using Android is.  From the Business Insider:

Last week, Google CEO Eric Schmidt posited that Android could eventually be a $10 billion annual business for Google. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he said, “If we have a billion people using Android, you think we can’t make money from that?”

The WSJ’s Amir Efrati continued, "All it would take, he said, is $10 per user per year. Among other things, Google might earn such sums from selling access to digital content from newspapers."

Now I’m not saying that the iPhone is going to fade into obscurity like HD-DVD.  The market is too fragmented for that and the fact there are more than enough fanbois who  pay however much for whatever Steve tells them to buy.  But this now puts the ball in Apple’s court.  Expand to Verizon?  T-Mobile as well?  Its a start, but face it, free is a choice that everyone likes in this economy, especially when it works as well as the iPhone. 

And there is where Apple lost out the last time.  Selling software in a specific package is one thing.  Selling software that can be used anywhere is another. 

But giving software away that can be used anywhere?  It is going to be interesting to see how this plays out.

WordPress Tags: Android, Apple, iPhone, Business

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Apple’s Very Bad Week (or Two)

It is always interesting to see a company that is so strict about being on message look like it is suddenly coming apart at the seams.  You know that sooner or later the ship of state will right itself, but there is still that waiting for yet another shoe to drop.

That’s the feeling I’m having with Apple.  Ever since the “Vulcan Death Grip” iPhone came out it has been one un-Apple moment after another.  First was the “You’re holding it wrong” moment from Jobs himself.  Then it was the realization that the software had not been accurately displaying the weak AT&T signal your phone was receiving.  Then came the duct tape fix.  And then, yesterday, Consumer Reports came out and said that while the iPhone was indeed the greatest thing since slight bread, they could not recommend it and called for Apple to fix it:

Ironically, aside from these reception glitches, our other tests placed the iPhone 4 atop the latest Ratings of smart phones. But we did not feel comfortable listing a phone with such a problem as "recommended," and therefore have withheld that tag.

Our stopgap fix for the issues of applying duct tape to the phone—while inexpensive and easily done—obviously isn’t meant to be a permanent solution. The real fix, we believe, should come from Apple. The company has said it will issue a software update that will make the phone’s bars more accurate, though it remains to be seen if fixing metering inaccuracies will address the problem of dropped calls. The company will also provide a full refund to users who return their iPhone within 30 days.

But for those who prefer to keep their iPhone, we encourage Apple to step forward soon with a remedy that fixes the confirmed antenna issue, and not one that requires additional consumer expense

Ouch.  But it really doesn’t stop there.  No.  It gets worse.  It certainly doesn’t help when you have an over-enthusiastic forum manager deciding to send all mention of the problem down the memory hole, especially when the bloggers notice.  And finally, a federal judge in Chicago ruled that the monopoly abuse class action lawsuit against Apple and AT&T can continue (But really that is merely a side issue).

Oh yeah, the share price for Apple slid four percent today. While the price will recover, it boils down to one simple question:

When is Apple going to issue a recall?  The point is this-it doesn’t matter if every fanboy in Christendom screams on every forum on the web that their reception is immaculate, this story has gotten bigger than that.  Flawed science, whatever you want to call it, it doesn’t matter.  Ignore at your own peril.  This story will not go away until something is done that does not include duct tape, bumper guards or cries of  “Leave Steve Jobs ALOOOONE!”

WordPress Tags: Failure, Apple, Business, iPhone, Recall

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Jobs to Left Handers: You’re Doing It Wrong

Apparently the Jesus phone hates those with the Devil’s hand.  You see, the way the antenna in the latest iPhone is designed, you can lose reception if you hold the phone a certain way in your left hand.  This in addition to the mystery yellow bands and dots on some of the screens.  Oh yeah, that really pretty glass backing can shatter as well. 

Did I mention you still have to use AT&T? So now you two plausible reasons why you can’t use your phone.  Happy?

Now in Apple’s defense I will say they have a work-around on the dropped calls.  It reminded me of an old joke about a man who goes to see his doctor and tells the doctor that his arm hurts when he raises it.  The doctor looks at him and says “Well, don’t do that!”  Actually, Apple’s solution is just that:  don’t hold the phone like that and everything will be fine.  Or buy a $28 dollar case that makes your minimalist streamlined baby look like a ‘77 Gremlin.

What a crock.

Of course it wouldn’t have been half bad, except the doctor giving that advice on how to avoid dropped calls was none other than Steve Jobs himself.  Nice job, Steve.  What’s next, telling some kid that daddy drinks too much because he cries? 

Sometimes there is an advantage to waiting.

WordPress Tags: iPhone, Rant

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No Sex Please, We’re Apple

Apparently there has been a coup d’etat at Apple and Steve Jobs has been replaced by Oliver Cromwell.  In the past couple of days, Apple has been pulling apps referring to sex like a Puritan on a witch hunt.  The count so far is more than five thousand apps. 

Now, the history of this has its basis in Facebook.  Apparently, parents didn’t like the fact that their kids could purchase an app like “Epic Boobs”.  I don’t blame them.  If I had a ten year old, I wouldn’t want that on his phone either.  Anyway, there are a number of fan sites in Facebook that parents can join to pressure Apple to do something about the number of sexually provocative apps in the store that kids have access to.  And people have been doing so in large numbers.  Enough people to cause Apple to start acting and acting fast.  And apparently, that isn’t fast enough for some.  But I digress. 

There is one slight problem to this narrative, however.  The iPhone offers a full set of parental controls.  Yep, all Apple had to do was utilize what was all ready available and block the applications from view of anyone who wasn’t old enough to see them.  Problem solved, without tossing out the livelihood of some legitimate developers with those that are a little more shady.  But sometimes it isn’t good enough to hide the Hustler behind the counter in a brown wrapper.  Sometimes, you just got to burn the thing in front of an angry crowd. 

So what are the new rules in Applestan?  Hard to say, as there is no official rulebook out there at the moment, but developer Jon Atherton, who is behind the popular application Wobble, (and I will eye roll on this app because it is a ridiculous app that “allows realistic 3D wobbly bits to your iPhone photos”), also spoke to an Apple employee, and posted this list of rules to his blog based on what he learned:

1. No images of women in bikinis (Ice skating tights are not OK either)
2. No images of men in bikinis! (I didn’t ask about Ice Skating tights for men)
3. No skin (he seriously said this) (I asked if a Burqa was OK, and the Apple guy got angry)
4. No silhouettes that indicate that Wobble can be used for wobbling boobs
5. No sexual connotations or innuendo: boobs, babes, booty, sex – all banned
6. Nothing that can be sexually arousing!!
7. No apps will be approved that in any way imply sexual content (not sure how Playboy is still in the store, but …)

As I stated, Apple is currently being tight lipped about all of this, so the new policy is fluid at this point.  Better to err on the side of sounding like a repressed Baptist preacher than give even more conflicting reports.  While I kid about it, I understand the logic.  But I have a problem with a company that one day tells developers, no you can’t do this, then the next day say, yes you can, then the next day closes down everything they said was OK the day before.  Pick a policy and stick with it.  Don’t be Sybil.  Most on the list of banned apps should never have been accepted as they were “crapps” anyway.  A slideshow of bikini-clad women?  I guess I’m too old to see the plus in that. 

Besides, if you want to see that sort of stuff that’s what the internet connection is for-or did Apple just ban the browser as well?

WordPress Tags: Applestan, Sex, iPhone

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