Archive for April 1st, 2008
Quantity or Quality
The internet is all about quantity. Quantity of visitors, quantity of clicks, quantity of ads, quantity of subscribers, quantity of free stuff. But these often lead away from quality. It is a simple matter – there are limited resources the internet over. And when a large portion of them are diverted to generating quantity, there is little left to advance quality. On top of that, the ones that push for quantity only care about that anyway.
The free stuff you get is a bate, it is meant to pull traffic to a site and rack up the visitor count so that advertisers would eventually buy add space, or some big company would offer gadzillions to buy it, or to have bunch of other companies offer a bunch of useless “widgets” or to switch to a subscription base later. Either way, there is one goal - QUANTITY OF TRAFFIC. However, that traffic is more like the circular track of Nascar than a highway directing the morning rush hour. It’s traffic for the sake of traffic, and quantity for the sake of quantity. However, where is the benefit, the added value that anyone could enjoy?
Truly, there must some who’d rather pay for an uncluttered internet, just like they do for commercial free premium cable. And, therefore, where there is demand there is supply. So, there would be those who’d begin to care about the quality of content and experience more than the quantity. To put it another way, where the quality abounds, the quantity will follow.
So, here is the moral of the story: “Web 2.0 which is about silly widgets, mindless traffic, pointless interlinks, mindless forwards, and useless clutter – it is out; Web 3.0 is coming – and it is about QUALITY!”
The evertything and nothing in particular discussion
There is too much information and, naturally, too much missinformation. Most likely, there is more missinformation that information. The correct information could only be correct one way, however, missinformation on the same subject is only constrained by the imagination of the missinformer and, thus, could have infinite variations and possibilities.
So, how does one know what is correct and what is not, what is fact and what is speculation, what is reasonable statement and what is missleading hype or scam? Well, it is beyond the scope of this narrative to answer these questions, however, it is safe to state that questioning information/missinformation and attempting to reason through it, would likely help one develop and improve one’s abilities and skills to answer such questions continuously.
Internet Code of Conduct or the Freedom to Post
There is freedom of speech but is there a freedom to post? And if so, are there any strings attached or should there be? Today there are too many websites, too many emails, too many posts, too many comments…and then there is spam and there are scams and all of the rest. There is simply a junk overload on the Internet and it is not getting any better. But everyone can help it! Everyone, including you!
Just because it is so easy to post to the web, should one post irresponsibly? Or should there be some sort of “ethical” or “moral” obligation to post responsibly as to not “pollute” the Internet scape with junk? And then perhaps a “web junk collector” service is needed rather than “junk aggregator,” of which plenty abound.
Such “utopian” Internet could also be described as “ecologically” clean Internet or as a lean Internet. It is wonderful to have access to good and useful information, entertainment and whatever else, yet free of clutter, useless, misleading or wrong information.
The moral of this story is simple: “Think before you post and consider whether such post really adds anything beneficial. Be a responsible internetizen!”
Re: the MacBook Air
Much has been said about the MacBook Air. Some love it, some hate it. Those terms are rather strong, but are used extensively and superficially by most. By the very nature of the terms, it is not possible to love or hate something by reading about it, seeing it, or even interacting with it for a brief time. Indeed, it takes a longer time to develop a “feeling” about something that could more justifiably be classified as “love” or “hate.”
Therefore, this narrative will not use either word or concept. The free market is about innovation, choice, competition. It is a concept dominated by the rule of large numbers. Any product that contributes to the profitability of an enterprise is a “good” product for that enterprise. Whether the product sells in large numbers or at high prices or draws customers to the company and its other products, among many other reasons, are all factors that would eventually determine such product’s fate. The MacBook Air has just recently been introduced to market. Therefore, it is too early in the product’s life cycle for ANYONE to make statements that either “doom” or “long live and prosper” the MacBook Air. Such points are simply moot and irrational.
There are many many computers out there, many brands, many shapes, many features. As they say – “To each their own.” If one doesn’t like it for whatever reason, they are free to not buy it. If they do like it, they are free to buy it. There are of course, those, that would like to buy it but for whatever reason will not. They are not relevant to the success of the product, however. It is only those who buy it or those that choose not to buy it and buy a competitive product instead. To put it differently, each year there will be a number of customers who will buy computers. Each of them will spent a certain amount and all of them together will spend a total amount on computers. It is irrelevant whether such consumers are private citizens or corporations, whether they buy one, two or more computers, and whether they buy one or more brands of computers. What is relevant is that the “total amount spent” will be allocated among brands and models. Thus, each model from each brand will receive a portion of that “total amount spent.” Due to the complexities of the way companies calculate their profits, each such model will have a different impact on the bottom line. Due to the fact that companies operate on an annual basis and publish and evaluate their financial results on an annual basis for the most part, the “success” of each product from the company’s perspective may or may not be known for sometime.
On the other hand, for the consumer this is rather different matter altogether. For many different reasons, consumers choose a product. Those reasons could be price, availability, features, reliability, brand’s reputation, amond many others. The bottom line for the consumer is whether the consumer feels the money spent on a particular purchase are spent best on that particular purchase as opposed to any other that is within reach. If so, the consumer is likely content with the purchase at the very minimum. If not, the consumer is likely not, and may either return the product, if possible, or sell the product, or choose an alternative product, immediately or some time later. It is only these very customers that would relay the message to the respective companies through their purchases. In the meanwhile, there will be many opinions that will be and are vigorously circulated that may or may not sway potential purchases by customers to one product or the other. Thus, such opinions and reviews do have some impact, however, without scientific research it is not necessary to speculate on the exact importance of such impact; it should suffice to recognize it.
It is useful to recall, that opinions and reviews that are based on short or non-existent exposure to a product would have far less weight than those of long-term users of a product. Since the MacBook Air is still a very new product, the long-term user opinions are rather limited or non-existent. The “bias” opinions on the other hand, both “for” and “against” abound. The point here is that neither of these would matter much, if at all to the success or failure of the product. Likewise, even the long-term user’s opinions when they become available, won’t matter much either. What would matter is how much of the products sold actually contributed to the bottom line, whether they attracted new customers, whether they attracted repeat purchases, etc. Thus, to “each their own.” To those who “love” the product – Enjoy! To those who “hate” it – Enjoy the alternative!
It is unlikely, that there ever was a product that didn’t gather both praise and critisism, all at the same time…and no product is any different in that regard.
In any case, I happened to like both (PC and Mac) just fine…
So here is a suggestion: take it easy over the circuit boards – peace!
