sub-$200 HD-DVD player
Apparently Wal-Mart is offering Toshiba’s A2 HD-DVD player for $198. Pricescan’s trend graph on the product shows just how quickly hardware prices have come down (green = lowest price, blue = average price, red = highest price).
The entry level Blu-ray player shows a similar trend but notice the current price level of $400, which is not low enough for mass consumer adoption.
Playstation 3 sales and studio support has given Blu-Ray an early lead in the war. But HD-DVD will continue to gain traction from the demand side. The real question is, does anyone care? 80% of consumers already have a regular DVD player, and there isn’t much data to suggest that consumers are unhappy watching standard definition DVD’s on HDTV’s. Hard to believe from a video snob’s standpoint, but maybe upscaled 480p is “good enough”.
Name-your-price Radiohead album averages $8
Wow. 1.2M downloads of “In Rainbows” in the first week. And I ventured a guess of $5-6 avg. per unit sold, but the average was $8/each! Higher margin for the band than a record contract, and significantly higher volume (1.2M units in the first week is more than the last 3 albums combined). No doubt the PR boost from their innovative experiment helped with the volume. Over time it will be interesting to see how sustainable a model like this is. Seems like something that any band with a large and established fan base should consider.
Yahoo and MSN’s search behavior belies Google’s weakness
Compete.com has an interesting post on “navigational search”. In a nutshell, navigational search happens when you type “amazon” in a search field instead of just typing amazon.com into your browser. What was intriguing was how Yahoo and MSN users perform navigational searches nearly 2X more frequently than Google users.
Why is this? I think it’s the same answer to the question a lot of Googlers ask: who in the world still uses MSN and Yahoo to search? The answer is something that sometimes surprises the Google fanboys. Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail each have 5X the users that Gmail has. All of those Yahoo and MSN users are captive to their legacy email accounts and a lot of them just use Yahoo/MSN search because it’s there. Navigational search is a bit easier for some than typing in a URL. When those same users come to Google, they’re generally really looking for something. Some may even enter “Google” into the search bar on Yahoo so they don’t have to mess with the URL bar.
If this theory is correct, Google would love to be where Yahoo/MSN are at on this metric. Google is king of search, but long term competitive advantage requires that your users/customers have higher switching costs. If Google has an achilles heel, this is it. Their installed base needs to be more firmly installed. Gmail may continue to gain share, but it’s still not enough. They need to dominate social networking. We’ll see if Google’s November 5 announcement brings any hope for them.
Facebook taking on LinkedIn
It was only a matter of time before Facebook made a run at the professional crowd that LinkedIn has dominated. While I’m sure LinkedIn is not excited about this, I wonder how effectively Facebook can overcome the branding association it has of being a “social” network. LinkedIn is unabashedly about making professional connections, including those senior to you. Facebook is more peer-oriented.
Time will tell if the current trend in Facebook’s growth in the 35+ demographic continues. Personally, I think that’s the key to legitimizing Facebook from a professional standpoint. I think that most of those in the 35+ demographic are more interested in professional networking rather than social networking, and it will take a critical mass of professionals with seniority to legitimize Facebook as anything other than a social entertainment vehicle.
Shameless self-promotion
I can’t resist posting coverage from HackingNetflix on a recent product my team launched at Blockbuster (Widgets and enhanced RSS feeds). I see this is as a small (but symbolic) win in a concerted effort to break Blockbuster Online out of Web 1.0.
Radiohead’s new album has infinite price points
Bold move. Radiohead lets you name your price on their new album. I’d like to see the pricing data after this experiment is over. I think there will be a lot of freeriders, as everyone expects, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a few generous benefactors partially offset the effect. Kevin Rose over at digg gives a useful suggestion:
I really wish I could preview the album (even streaming) before deciding how much to spend. So, I just bought the ‘download’ version for $0.00. If it’s good, I’ll go back and buy it again for $15. If it’s just OK, I’ll go back and give them $5. I really like this idea.
I hope this phenomenon is accounted for when they assess the experiment. Unless they give a free streaming preview, a lot of people will do what Kevin Rose is doing: pay nothing just to hear it, then decide how much to pay afterwards. That may be fine in the end, but every person doing that makes the free rider issue appear worse (unless they factor that out). I just hope this is accounted for when Jonny Greenwood tabulates the results and presents them in the quarterly Radiohead board meeting. If not, then the word “bollocks” will be tossed around a lot, and possibly worse.
Hey Radiohead…I know you’re reading this blog, so listen up: I would like to help. Forward me the transactional data from this experiment and I will do a full free analysis, complete with PowerPoint slides. Don’t let Jonny do it, he has music to make. And whatever you do, just don’t let your webmaster do it, he’s on crack.
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