[Sigia-l] Lynch Mob Wanted: Flight Booking Interface Behaviour

Skot Nelson skot at penguinstorm.com
Tue Jun 7 00:06:05 EDT 2005


On Jun 6.2005, at 20:02, Listera wrote:

>> Just as the iTunes Music Store is not, and never will be, the be all
>> and end all of electronic music
> You seemed to be missing the import of iTMS in its entirety.

Actually, I didn't. I also advocated for the iTunes Music Store's  
business model heavily in the early days. The seamless integration of  
purchasing and portability is what made it work; much more so than  
any idea that "all the major labels" are participating. They're not,  
and their participation is hit and miss, as evidenced by the absence  
of a major new release on its first day (and not the only one, I  
might point out.)

I want to emphasize a point here, so that it doesn't get skipped over  
(and it's one that has consistently framed my view of succesful  
technology for some years): the smooth integration with the iPod  
HARDWARE was what made iTunes Music Store a huge success. I could  
cite the chronology of a number of events to back this up but I think  
one key one demonstrates this: would we even be talking about the  
iTunes music store if the iPod hadn't been made Windows compatible?  
The business model as you define it was the same, and yet the final  
result would have been irrelevant.

> I invite you to
> recall what legal digital music industry was like before iTMS and  
> after.

And I invite you to think about what online travel was like before  
Encarta existed; like the digital music market, it essentially didn't  
exist. A few hit and miss airlines were selling tickets online; many  
many more were preserving traditional sales channels, arguing that  
customers would always want to purchase tickets through an agent and  
would refuse to buy online (which, btw, a recent airline bankruptcy  
in Canada demonstrated still had its advantages.)

Seems substantially the same to me.

> The
> iTMS story is not about technology...[It's about] what
> we label as the overall user experience.

Unless you can elaborate on what you felt your "major customer" was  
lacking, I'd still argue that the online travel industry has more  
than its fair share of aggregrators. If your argument is the  
"business model" than it's irrelevant to suggest that the reason they  
fail is 'a poorly architected back end' or even 'a poorly architected  
web interface.' Encarta does huge business, and online travel as a  
market segment is far far ahead of digital entertainment (a number  
which is, admittedly, skewed by the much larger average purchase value.)
--
Skot Nelson
skot at penguinstorm.com




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