Birth of a Startup, pt. 2 (8/30)

Much of the problems facing Thoughtscream Media boiled down to “uniqueness.” E-zines are a dime a dozen, as are their originating paper mediums. Online aggregates too, even ones curated by human editors and sprinkled lightly with half-hearted commentary. Trying to eck out something that would stand out from the crowd is, to put it mildly, extremely difficult. Finding an absolutely guaranteed answer is the dream of every media mogul everywhere.

It is, however, Thoughtscream’s position that there are significant fields of possible design philosophies that have not been trod upon much by their competitors – even ones that would benefit more from human control than automation.

How the heck are you guys going to be profitable? At all?

An interesting question! And a dangerous one to ask, really, as I can probably go on for hours for what we’re planning to do.

We’re not an app developer, for one. So any plans for profitability requires us to consider many, many different means of revenue generation.

First and foremost is, of course, advertising. In fact, it’s very much first – a lot of our plans for original-content-to-profitability turnover first requires, well, content creation, and it’s a little hard to produce a vast range of multimedia production when your founding staff consists of an editor, an audiovisual expert, and one coder.

The idea here is simple and pretty much irrefutable – targeted advertising is more efficient than general advertising, and targeted demographics is more efficient content delivery than general demographics. Which is why Thoughtscream Media targets the Geek Demographic, or the 18-34 year old subculture enthusiasts, mostly male, that may very well be the marketer’s dream targets but get almost no focus, recognition or concern by the mainstream presses.

(Seriously. The last time Mercury News really concerned itself with the geek world was when Magic: The Gathering had its 10th anniversary. Talk about a crap deal.)

We then take that demographic’s interests, generate a flurry of content either directly related to them or sculpted in such a way as to best appeal to our shared sensibilities (and it really is shared – the best person to write to a demographic is somebody within it), and use an internally developed meta-tag system in which to assign advertising. All the while using a human editor to ensure best-fit.

Oh come on. It’s been done before, hasn’t it?

The skepticism is warranted. Google Adwords does something within the same vague phase-state of contextually targeted advertising, as does a plethora of competing systems. However, automated advertising has many problems – you know that the keyword system is fundamentally flawed when major news sites have adverts screaming “LOSE WEIGHT NOW” or “DON’T PAY FOR CREATINE” alongside stories relating to biomedical breakthroughs. Or swine flu.

What we do is take out the AI middleman. The advertising plan is to, instead, work directly with the companies seeking advertising – offer placement and even levels of customization based upon purchasing access to trending content metatags, of which are assigned by human editors in hierarchical order to pages and content.

The advantages to doing so are numerous – not the least of which is the fact that, vastly unlike print media, advertising space expands linearly with content. Any print editor would know what I’m talking about – the need to produce a paper whose pagecounts are determined by the number of adspaces bought up puts an intrinsic upper and lower bounds on content, both in terms of quantity and quality. An online news site can, with careful design, avoid this problem entirely – rather, ad space scales with generated content, not the other way around.

Of course, this is only true if you’re not exhibiting the same cycle feed of advertisements through the entire site.  Rotating banners are so late-90s. Rather, this is the second advantage of metatag advertising – content-specific advertising, in that ads purchased under access to a metatag or tag category only shows up in content that it relates to.

It’s pretty clear why this is important: given that a user clicking on a story is the closest guarantor you can have that they’re interested in that particular story or subject, ensuring that you only show up in content of that general, or even specific, discipline greatly enhances an advert’s chance to be noticed – and taken seriously. The additional element of a human editor for both assigning metatags and finetuning ad placement further deviates from common industry methods – all for the better.

The third, but far from last, advantage is simply its scalability – to budgets of nearly any size. The hierarchical nature of metatags, the inherent inclination towards increasing content creation, and the records we’ll keep regarding their trends over time all sums up to a plethora of available advertising “slots” instead of an exorbitant sum for lump, across-board, low-efficiency exposure.

Be it multibillion-dollar corporations or basement startup, advertising with Thoughtscream Media ensures that your message not only reaches your intended audience, but increases the your relevancy amongst them. You can’t ask for much better – and certainly not from AI systems.

Ph.Ds are only worth the person backing them

This isn’t a WTHX. Rather, this is a cross-post of a friend’s Facebook note – one that has amused me greatly, and is a prime example of why a degree is only worth the person backing it.

In this case, being a programming instructor isn’t shite if you’re the sort of person inclined to get into long flame wars with your students because they decided that their stress levels and course load meant that your class gets axed from their schedule.

The funniest thing: later on, after the events of the below, he tries to brag by referencing Slashdot and ten Amazon reviews as a metric of how great his programming text is. Other commentators on her Facebook’s noted that his Amazon rank means that he gets around five actual sales a year…

Mainly, I’m posting this because I love schadenfreude, and Anna’s deconstruction of his hysteria-laced email exchange – which she did not initiate – warms my blackened little heart. For the sake of my readers, it’s all behind the cut – read if interested, pass by if not.

(also noted: given that later emails has him explicitly state that he doesn’t give a shite about whether or not she emails to others… sorry Professor Perry, it’s aaalllllll on the internets now. Welcome to the Cirque du Critique.)

WTHX: Why the Hell is Rupert Murdoch Threatening to Pull News Corps Out of Google? (7/30)

In a move unprecedented by any major publication of any kind, much less the audience-starved newspaper industry, News Corporation founder Rupert Murdoch threatened to make the entirety of his media empire “invisible to Google users” when it launches its much-anticipated paid-content strategy.

It has been noted that to do so is extremely easy, as all it takes to prevent the indexing of a website is to include a robots.txt file explicitly telling automated search “bots” from, well, indexing the site. However, despite this ease of implementation, News Corporation media sites such as Fox News and Wall Street Journal remain fully indexed by Google’s news aggregate.

What are Murdoch’s motives for doing so?

The driving force behind Murdoch’s decree is almost certainly ideological in nature. It has been speculated that taking News Corporation off of Google’s search engines amounts to a nearly 25% decrease in readership, amounting to a loss of readership numbered in the millions across the world.

However, two key tenets to Murdoch’s media philosophy could very well overshadow this fact. The first is simply that Murdoch believes that news aggregates are a form of intellectual property theft. This is despite the fact that aggregates like Google News only “samples” the first paragraph or so of an article and provide a link to the actual website, driving readers directly to the news publisher.

However, to Murdoch, even this sampling of the first paragraph or so amounts to theft. While such samplings have traditionally been legally considered “fair use,” Murdoch heavily disagrees with the practice.

To quote him directly, “There’s a doctrine called fair use, which we believe to be challenged in the courts and would bar it altogether… but we’ll take that slowly.”

What are the consequences of News Corps pulling out of web searchability?

Pure numbers. Physical media now only penetrates roughly 13% of US households, and the loss of the online audience threatens quite clearly to turn the News Corps owned publications obsolete.

As noted by Twitter commentators, it is expected that the loss of News Corps’ presence on online aggregates would give more focus and attention to its rival businesses.

WTHX: What the Hell’s Actually On That Congressional Health Care Bill? (6/30)

On Nov. 7, 2009, the Democrat-led House of Representatives passed a bill calling for a massive overhaul of the health care industry, including plans for a government-run “public option.” Many controversies surrounded the bill, which passed with a five-vote margin that saw many Democrats capitulate and a sole Republican vote in favor, including the addition of a clause that prohibited government-run insurance from covering the cost of an abortion except in the case of rape or health-related conditions.

What is actually in the bill?

Covering every point of the 1.5k+ pages of the health care bill’s text is infeasible with the WTHX format, but here are a few key points:

• Opening Medicaid access to all individuals and family making under 150% of the federal poverty rate, along with $600 billion in subsidies.
• $25 billion in company-level subsidies for small business insurances.
• Federally enforced law prohibiting insurers from rescinding coverage on the sick.
• Closes a gap in Medicare’s drug coverage provisions, making cost of prescriptions cheaper for Medicare recipients.

What are the drawbacks of the bill?

The funding mechanisms of the bill is, of course, its most hotly disputed aspects, given the trillion-dollar size of the Congressional version (the Senate bill, which will be merged with the Congressional program, has yet to have been voted on).

Like with automobile insurance, the Congressional health care bill mandates universal applicability – everybody must have health insurance, or be fined for it. However, as stressed by President Obama and Democratic leaders, there is a “hardship exemption” from the bill – the fines are not enforced with threats of incarceration.

Some of the 39 Democrat votes against the bill have noted unfavorably on the 2.5% taxing of  medical device manufacturers, as well as a stipulation that prohibited paper mills from taking a $1.01/gallon bio-fuel tax credit. The bill also adds a 5.4% surtax upon individuals and couples making $500,000 and $1 million per year respectively, along with a $400 billion cut on Medicare payments to hospitals, nursing homes and insurance companies that provide Medicare Advantage plans.

Minor Hiatus

I’m currently at Stockton, and am having trouble with the hotel wireless. I’ll have WTHX caught up on Monday, worst comes to worst.

Birth of a Startup, pt. 1 (5/30)

So, instead of WTHX today, I’ll summarize why the hell I’ve been making these oddly formatted, politically focused posts.

…oh, what the hell. I’ll do it in the WTHX format while I’m at it. This’ll be a rough draft of our future PR piece, I guess.

Thoughtscream Media was, on one hand, birthed in an instant. An online discussion between Sean McBurney and James Chen meandered to a mutual dissatisfaction with the state of modern media – between the legal bullying of the RIAA and MPAA, the swift decline of the printed media empires, and especially the lack of representation of the so-called Geek Demographic. Thoughtscream Media – the name and web address of which Chen already owned at the time – was thus concocted as a response to all three issues.

On the other hand, Thoughtscream Media was perhaps long in coming. These issues didn’t come out of the woodworks in all of a night. The problems with media and representation has persisted for as long as they’ve known. And Chen, having worked on a journalism degree at the time, was very much invested in the developing ideas of New Media at the time.  The inclusion of Shea Clifford, the technical cofounder of Thoughtscream Media, helped solidify over time all the discontent into an actual course of action.

On the gripping hand, sudden or prolonged, there was no better time to found Thoughtscream – and plenty of worse times, past and future. The news industry will wisen up eventually – the question is whether or not we can beat them to the punch.

Why are you making these oddly formatted posts in the first place?

WTHX, or “What the Hell X?” with X being a placement variable for any subject at hand, was formulated to address a consistent concern amongst our international – and even domestic – peers: newspapers suck at context. The lockstep monomaniacal approach to event and development coverage gives plenty of information specifically about the subject… but routinely fails at enlightening a non-native (and often even local) readers as to the background, the importance, the consequences, et al.

Thus, WTHX, whose entire rationale is to fill that absence of context. Which sounds easy enough, up until you realize that a story’s context is many, many times bigger than itself – no matter how big the story.

WTHX’s format must therefore have a number of key features: it must be laid out in such a way that the information’s easily processed (summary, question 1, question 2), it must be pithy enough to delivery max information value without losing the reader’s interest (and who wants to read a wall of text anyhow on their coffee break?), and it must be easily expandable. Plans are in place to convert it further with a wiki-like backend – followup WTHXs on issues would then have their questions archived in an easy-to-track wiki page, with summaries of ongoing events updated as we go along.

We mean to give context – all of it, as thoroughly as possible. Because the whole reason for journalism is to give the literate individual the information they need to function, whether on a daily basis, as a voter, or as a human being in general.

So, what, is this just Yet Another Link Blog?

…if it wasn’t me writing this, I’d be a touch insulted. But, no. This is not just another link aggregate. Not only is there a strict use of human-written and edited narrative to elicit the context (because, even if pithy is a virtue in a writer, tweetlike sentences don’t do context justice), but while most WTHXs thoroughly cross-link other sites, there is all the intent in the world to generate original material in the form of research, interviews, on-the-ground factfinding, even videoblogs.

This is a journalism venture. First and foremost.

WTHX: Experiment 4 – What the Hell is with the Rural/Urban Voter Demographic Divide in Maine?

Pre-vote polls and preliminary reports from the Maine gay marriage ballot, “Question 1,” suggested a heavy split between “rural” and “urban” voters.   Specifically, rural voters were far more likely to vote for the ballot measure, which repealed state legislation that officially recognized same-sex marriages.  This makes Maine the 31^st state to have rejected gay marriage at the voting ballots.

Why is there such a voting discrepancy between the two demographics?

According to the California demographic studies done in the aftermath of Proposition 8 (ref. WTHX: Ex 3), there is a strong correlation between the urbanization levels of a population and its age, religious tendencies, political affiliation and education.

Specifically, urban voters, which were most likely to vote in favor of gay marriage, also trend as younger, more likely to hold a college degree, more likely to vote Democrat and were, on the whole, less religiously inclined than their counterparts on the other side of the issue.

The racial trends are also worth noting: from the California studies again, non-Caucasian groups (which also tend to trend as more religious or more socially conservative) were actually slightly less favorably inclined towards same-sex marriage. However, the statistics for this indicates across Latino, Asian and Black communities, and do not further break down along specific communities.

What does this mean for the same-sex marriage movement?

While winning their 31^st battle against same-sex marriage has boosted the confidence of conservative elements, the outlook for the gay rights movement as a whole remains, at most, ambivalent.

To put the loss in context, while Maine has not had a gay marriage challenge before, they did have a healthy 47% turnout in the defense of same-sex marriage. This is almost exactly parallel to general American views on the issue, according to the National Constitution Center Poll of Sept. 2009. According to Gallup’s historical statistics, that is a 12% increase from a decade ago, though the Gallup poll also indicates a lower favorable view of gay marriage, reducing the gain to 5%.

Gallup indicates that the relative lack of change in recent years is due to the increasing number of states that have indicated approval of gay marriage, reducing the prominence of the movement within the states.

WTHX: Experiment 3 – What The Hell is Going On with Maine’s Gay Marriage Ballot?

If you detect a particularly “liberal” bent in this WTHX, I won’t even try to deny it. I am incensed – pissed – absolutely enraged at the bigotry espoused by 53% of Maine’s voting population. While I strive for professionalism, I won’t degrade myself by pretending objective impartiality. You can look to Hollywood for actors.

The ongoing Maine ballot regarding the legal status of gay marriage is currently looking bleak for proponents of gay marriage. As of this writing, the majority vote remains against the act’s legalization, though last-minute ballot counts may yet swing the vote around.

The vote difference between the two sides currently hovers at roughly 3%. The ballot measure in question, “Question 1,” would repeal Maine’s currently pro-gay marriage statutes, and remove legal recognition and rights between current same-sex marriages.

Why is gay marriage being voted against in Maine?

Maine had voted to legally recognize same-sex marriages during May of 2009. However, the passing of this legislature prompted an immediate challenge from the socially conservative aspects of the state’s political field, prompting the November ballot on “Question 1.”

Gay marriage opponents are rallying under the ideological flag of “protecting traditional marriage and values,”  stressing the traditional interpretation of marriage as between man and woman. They are also highlighting the fear that the passing of the May 6 legislation will mandate the teaching of gay marriage in schools – though same-sex marriage proponents and the state attorney has denied that any part of the bill has such a provision.

While the campaign against gay marriage rests on the grounds of its perceived threat to the traditional institution of heteronormative marriage, legal experts “don’t know” what the threats actually are.

Polls have indicated that the vote on the issue splits along rural-urban lines. Historically, from California’s passing of Proposition 8, the demographics most likely to support a repeal of gay marriage statutes are Evangelical/Born Again Christians, those without a college degree, Republican, and/or over the age of 34.

Why are 47% of Maine voters in favor of same-sex marriage?

In contrast to the arguments made against gay marriage, the arguments in its favor are rooted in its casting as a civil rights issue. Namely, establishing rights regarding separation, divorce, child care, medical visitation and decisions, health insurance and pensions, and economic protection.

Many states have “civil union” statutes that afford most or even all of the rights of marriage – however, these statutes are only applicable within the state hosting such laws, and are not recognized on a federal level. The legal recognition of gay marriage would make such unions legally recognizable and enforceable across all 50 states.

Conversely, 30 states of the United States of America have, instead, voted to ban same-sex marriages.

As of the conclusion of the writing of WTHX, the pro-gay marriage “No on 1” advocates have conceded defeat.

WTHX: Experiment 1 – Why The Hell is Cheney Fighting the CIA Investigation?

This is the original WTHX, made after promptings by a number of friends regarding the chronically contextually ambiguous nature of mainstream press reports. It dates itself, I think – Cheney’s dramatastic emotional flare-up at the ongoing CIA investigations occupied the news for all of a week, maybe less, and hasn’t been heard of since.

Note to self: do a followup when possible.

The ongoing controversy between Dick Cheney, former vice president of the United States of America, and his criticism of the investigations of alleged misconduct by the Central Intelligence Agency, is centered around two primary claims.

The first is that the CIA have been involved in the use of coercive interrogation techniques banned by the Geneva Convention – or, more succinctly, that they have been torturing prisoners for information. This is most aptly demonstrated in the waterboarding controversy of years just prior, where the documented use of simulated drowning aroused protest regarding the mistreatment of prisoners under the CIA’s control.

The second claim, asserted by Cheney, is that the methods used by the CIA were, in fact, invaluable sources of information for the American intelligence community, and that those involved in the CIA’s practices against captured prisoners should not be punished for following given, and legally backed, orders. Backing his claim is the rumors, some given by Cheney, that an as-yet still classified Department of Justice report recommends the disbarment of a number of lawyers involved in the sanctioning of some forms of the CIA’s interrogation, as reported by the Los Angeles Times.

Why the hell is the Department of Justice investigating the CIA?

The allegations of prisoner abuse and the use of torture contravenes US law and international treaties. Federal Prosecutor John H. Durham, appointed by US Attorney General Eric Holder, seeks to inquire as to whether CIA officials and supervisors were aware and/or authorized the use of interrogation techniques not approved by the Justice Department, as reported by UPI.com

However, Cheney and Republican officials are claiming that the investigation is an overtly political act, and that prior scrutiny towards CIA activities were already sufficient, and that further investigations would be damaging to the CIA’s abilities. “I worry about the morale and effectiveness of the CIA. I worry about this thing getting out of control,” said Senator John McCain, an outspoken opponent to torture.

Why the hell is Cheney protesting the investigation?

According to Cheney, the investigation will “do great damage, long term, to our capacity to be able to have people take on difficult jobs, make difficult decisions, without having to worry about what the next administration is going to say.”

However, Cheney is not without a personal stake in the outcome of the investigation. As noted by Harper’s Magazine, Cheney is known for his somewhat unusually in-depth involvement with the CIA, during his terms as vice president. Reports have shown Cheney’s direct responsibility and intervention in both the policy-setting of detainee treatment, and in the control of information relating to such activities.

WTHX: Experiment 2 – Why The Hell Is There A Sit-In Protest In UC Santa Cruz?

Yes, experiment 2. Experiment 1 was a closed beta trial amongst one of my online communities – preliminary response was positive, and the article was regarding Dick Cheney’s infamously harsh response to the declassification of intelligence memos and possible judicial action. I’ll post it later – first, to get my feet wet again…

Warning: Text copypasted from OpenOffice Writer. I could push the links into the text, but it’s almost 2 AM and I’m tired.

WTHX: Experiment 2 – Why The Hell Is There A Sit-In Protest In UC Santa Cruz?

The ongoing demonstrations at UC Santa Cruz (http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_13600941) have involved the occupation of lecture halls, the tagging of graffiti on campus property, and the pepper-spraying of members of the student body by campus police. Loud music shakes the occupied halls, and students are reportedly dancing the night away – all in protest over the continuing increases to University of California’s tuition costs, along with the reduction of scholarships across the nation (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-07/07/content_11668059.htm).

The protests are not bound only to Santa Cruz, nor do they only involve students. A conference has been held in UC Berkeley regarding protests over the budget cuts and tuition increases (http://www.dailycal.org/article/107222/conference_held_at_uc_berkeley_to_protest_budget_c), of which has garnered significant cross-university faculty support.

Why are they protesting?

Note that the tipping point of the protests seem to originate not from domestic, Californian, education policies. Though the ongoing education cuts are certainly the focus of the protest, much of the actual trigger (as displayed in various student activist Facebooks) seems to have been generated from the ongoing protests in Austria (http://de.indymedia.org/2009/10/264499.shtml). Sympathetic activists (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=163329887062&v=info&ref=search) are using the Austrian protests as a memetic rallying point in which to build solidarity.

Thus, the rationale for the protests differ, depending on groups interviewed. There is a strong socialistic bent amongst major groups that regard the developing policies as a detrimental economization and increasingly authoritarian restructuring of public education. Others are specifically aimed at the possibility of a 30% increase to the cost of UC tuition (http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-09-15-university-california_N.htm), as well as the increased cost of education throughout California’s higher-education system, for both CSUs and community colleges.

Why is California cutting its universities’ budget?

Simply put: the recession. As written in La Voz Weekly News (http://media.www.lavozdeanza.com/media/storage/paper911/news/2009/10/26/News/How-Much.More.Can.We.Cut-3813629.shtml), regarding the ongoing budget cuts at Cupertino City’s De Anza College, “…the district expects further cuts in January and May of 2010, making the current decision more of a stopgap effort than a conclusive decision.” The cuts are a reflection of the California state government’s ongoing budgetary issues, of which has not improved over the last year (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/us/01calif.html), despite many cuts across the board.

The outlook for the world economy at large remains mostly negative (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hixr2M_Qx1JQ-RsMvvAlU1RwLPiwD9BK83Q82).