"Twitter's not going to change the world. Twitter's never, ever going to change the world," says Loren Feldman in a recent video post.
Loren Feldman: Not buying the BS
(Credit: 1938 media)Amen, bro.
I think Tech's Last Angry Man--actually, he's a very nice guy in person--is on to something important. Of course, Feldman's cri de coeur is less about Twitter, per se, than about the increasingly banal state of tech "conversation," circa summer 2008.
Loren says that he's become bored by most of the debate churned out in the echo chamber. Chalk up part of this to the inevitable warp and woof of techdom. Great breakthroughs occur at irregular intervals, and you run across inevitable intellectual dry patches. (You don't invent something like the World Wide Web each year.) But I part company with Loren here. Actually, I think we're living through one of the more interesting times in recent years, what with the advent of cloud computing and the move, in fits and starts, toward a more intelligent Web. But that's debate for another time.
Back to Loren's main point, anyone who has followed the incessant bleating about Twitter's supposedly existential meaning to our lives--let alone the silly debate over Twitter versus FriendFeed--has to wonder whether tech's chattering class has lost its sense of perspective. Are we guilty of navel gazing to the point of silliness? (David Risley has a different take on the topic.)
For that matter, Loren could have extended his critique to the equally inane holy wars that periodically erupt between a familiar cast of bloggers. The squabbles would bore the other 99.9 percent of humanity to tears--that is, if they ever bothered to tune in. Happily, they've got lives to live.
1938 Media impressario Loren Feldman admittedly is an acquired taste. If you're on the receiving end of one of his skewering rants, I doubt you'll judge his monologue to be gut-busting hilarious. But the guy's fresh, and I confess to being a fan boy.
But would you pay for the privilege of knowing the latest bit of happenstance pissing him off?
(Credit:
Loren Feldman)
We're about to find out. Starting Tuesday, Feldman will begin charging 99 cents to people who want view some of his videos and posts. Here's the link to his video entry where Feldman outlines his thinking.
I have no idea whether he can make a side business charging for the occasional post. Neither, apparently, does Feldman, who acknowledges swimming against the tide.
"Why am I doing this? Because I want to. It's an experiment. I know that most of 99 percent of you aren't going to pay 99 cents ever. So it goes. But you know what? Content has to be paid for at some point."
He may have picked a propitious time to put that proposition to the test. In 2001, the Pew Internet and American Life Project, said that half of the people it surveyed said they looked for free alternatives when a site they used asked them to pay for content. "Just 12 percent of them pay for the service and the rest just decide to stop getting that content or service from an online source." But by late 2007, Pew found that 28 percent of the people it surveyed paid to access or download digital content online. (That compared with 17 percent the year earlier.)
In the end, it's probably less an issue of cost than quality. Publish something that's worth viewing or reading and you'll find an audience--in cyberspace or even outer space.
Loren Feldman of 1938 Media is twisted.
Twisted in a brilliant, kiss my tuchas kind of way.
Wolf Blitzer, eat your heart out.
(Credit: Loren Feldman)Here I am this morning, sitting in front of the computer with my earphones on, laughing my ass off. My wife walks over and she sees me cutting up over a rooster bouncing around on screen. Of course, she's not hearing Feldman's sarcastic voice-over in a hilarious lampooning of a Shel Israel video interview on Fast Company.
Feldman, who heads a Web video production company in New York, probably upsets a lot of people with his posts, but I think he's one of the freshest voices in digital media. It's a lot of inside baseball about the tech business but newbies to his shtick should leave any tender sensibilities at the door. This dude is raw...big time. (Check out Feldman's "People who should be Jewish" video riff. Steve Jobs will hate it, but it's inspired.)
It may not be Wolf Blitzer, but it's one hundred times more entertaining. The best thing about Feldman? He's got the cojones to upset the prissy assumptions of the TechMeme A-listers. Every now and then he leaves a verbal fart in the room and leers into the camera for effect.
Seriously.
Here comes my Sunday morning rant. This industry has always been a lot of fun to write about. But when it comes to conversations over future directions in technology, these days good humor is in short supply. I'm sure money has something to do with it. A lot of people who have big bets obviously have a vested interest in how things are going to turn out. But there's also a lot of passion even if you don't have any personal skin in the game. So it is that Twitter may be the most revolutionary advance in digital communications or the biggest waste of time since the hula hoop. FriendFeed may mark a major breakthrough in "conversational platforms" or "more hyped yawn."
I'm not smart enough to predict how this is going to turn out. Still, it's quite amazing to watch the opinion-making mandarins freak out on cue when someone has the temerity to put forward a counter-argument to the conventional wisdom. (As I write, they're burning Nick Carr at the stake for his take on Billy Bragg's Saturday op-ed piece in The New York Times.
Wonder how they'd react to Feldman growling about how big business is being "duped by this user-generated crap and how Andrew Keen was right about everything." That's not a popular point of view. Then again, he doesn't a damn what they think. And that's why he's got me hooked.
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