Flux Research

Ellen McGirt is Confused by Ashton Kutcher, Businessman

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:36 GMT

Lots of nice business model and social media marketing bits in this Fast Company piece on Ashton Kutcher and partners in Katalyst including this highly quotable takeaway:

"'When I have a conversation with someone and they say, 'I'm not worried about monetization yet,' that scares the sh*t out of me,' he says."

But, given the amount of attention Kutcher has received for his social media and funny content business model activities, Ellen McGirt seems to be playing dumb for an audience that she apparently assumes to be baffled by Kutcher's activities with such lines as:

"Kutcher, 31, is not exactly the image of a business visionary."

[at this point in history?]

"If this all seems far-fetched, hang in there."

[here speaking to the Katalyst approach to leveraging Kutcher's brand on the web. i missed the far-fetched part.]

"even if Kutcher turns out to be more style than substance and Katalyst doesn't become the Next Big Thing, Kutcher's experiment points toward a new model for the evolving media business that connects Hollywood, tech, and Madison Avenue. No kidding."

[not so strong an example of disbelief but isn't this why everybody in tech and entertainment business media have been writing about Kutcher for what seems like forever?]

"he goes on, settling into an unexpectedly credible argument."

[given the amount of credibility Kutcher has developed why would a credible argument be unexpected?]

Maybe I'm being too hard on Ms. McGirt but what's up with that clueless attitude? An attempt to ally herself with the common wo/man? Or another example of how journalists are overrated?

Update:
I'm realizing that McGirt's perspective is most likely based in confusing the actor for the role as well as the related eye candy factor. Which means that she's flipping a well-worn gendered script without really achieving anything.

Whatever. It's almost always a mistake for me to look too closely at such issues since most people don't really care. Besides, anything that implies that doing smart things online is foolish helps keep the competition down.

Jason Calacanis on How To Kill Google

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:48 GMT

Jason Calacanis on How To Kill Google

Monetizing Documents

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:28 GMT

This Business of Blogging:
Monetizing Documents: Ecommerce, Advertising, Paid Services

Valuing ExecTweets, Facebook Revenue, Target Google, MySpace Ads Down

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:58 GMT

Most of the above links that aren't on Chas Note were discovered via Chas Note. That's why he's ranked 311th on the Ad Age Power 150! :)

EVE Online: Virtual World Bank Gets Fleeced

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:24 GMT

From the NY Times, Rob Cox writes about A Virtual Bank With Real Woes, in the virtual world of EVE Online:

Central to Eve’s strategy, players develop economies within an "anything goes" free-market framework that allows them to expand their fleets, buy weaponry and equipment and bolster defenses. Indeed, Eve has 66 marketplaces for some 5,000 items, with more than a million transactions a day.

Enter Ebank, this virtual universe’s online bank. Because players often do not have the interstellar credits...they need to expand their fleets, an enterprising player created a bank that would accept deposits and lend to players who would pledge assets, like their spacecraft, as collateral.

The bank was a success....Ebank accumulated about 8.9 trillion ISK in deposits in 13,000 accounts belonging to 6,000 users. That was far more than it was able to lend out — there were around 1 trillion ISK of loans.

Somewhere along the way Ebank’s top executive, who went by the online handle Ricdic...made off with deposits, which he then sold for real cash to gamers on a sort of black-market exchange separate from Eve.

[Game developer] CCP kicked Ricdic out...Ebank has temporarily shut down while its board of directors...tries to sort out the mess. Depositors, meanwhile, appear to have pulled 5.5 trillion ISK of deposits.

Virtual world economies are pretty fascinating systems and definitely worth following. I think if such arenas interest you, you've just got to get in there and start learning the lay of the land. But, as the above tale indicates, bringing in knowledge from the outside world will be necessary if you plan on such ambitious schemes as virtual world financial services.