[spam] Re: The Value of "IA" or Whatnot, was Re: [Sigia-l] The New Nielsen?

[Listera]

"cwodtke at eleganthack.com" wrote:

> Everyone from Jakob to members of this list (including me) want a simple
> answer we can use to work from.

Not so. 

The minute I find a "simple answer" that I can replicate, I'm done doing
what I do; time to move on to ply some other trade. It would stop posing any
challenge whatsoever. Therein lies the reasons for my periodic tirades
against the "I got this problem; does anybody have the research" phenomenon
often displayed here on the list. There are no simple answers. There's no
substitute for thinking on your feet. Pretty much all problems are unique.
Solving non-unique problems is no fun. :-)

> ...Shockwave.com / Atomfilms venture you bet your sweet knickers the web was a
> channel for entertainment and exploration. Financially and economically
> viable. 

If I recall correctly, Atomfilms wanted to go public, but given the market
conditions couldn't; looked for a buyer for quite sometime and couldn't find
one; and finally got hooked up with Macromedia/Shockwave, at nowhere near
the original valuation (of $400M once talked about). I wouldn't characterize
either company as profitable or viable. Virtually *all* the multimedia
companies from Sumeria to DEN/Pseudo/POP/Entertaindom/etc that pledged to
revolutionize web entertainment and exploration are dead as a parrot.

In fact, I can't think of many financially and economically viable
entertainment companies on the web or ones that have *ever* made any
significant profit at all. This doesn't mean we don't need entertainment (or
art, for that matter) on the web (after all, entertainment *is* business),
but I don't think you can justifiably say they are or have ever been
"financially and economically viable".

> next time: powerpoint!

No, please. I'd love to see another cascading line-endings type of
presentation; maybe in reverse order this time. :-)

Best,

Ziya