I assume this roundtable was practice for some real-life situation such as: a bra company CEO, a potential client, has a meeting with the web development company these guys work for. The CEO lays out the problem: commerce is moving online but women don't have a good way of buying well fitting bras online, which means the CEO knows his/her company is losing business. They want the web development company to come up with innovative solutions to this problem.
So if one of the guys in the roundtable were in that meeting, would they giggle and squirm at the subject matter? If they were going to be so juvenile and unprofessional, I'm sure their boss wouldn't allow them in the meeting. So that is the real issue here: if these guys' goal is to be at a senior enough level that they can be in the bra-company-CEO meeting where their company is trying to land a new client, then they really need to get over their juvenile mindset and start thinking about product and marketing issues beyond their own narrow personal experience or they'll do nothing but grunt-level web development for the rest of their careers.
If this group can't discuss products that relate to half the population, then that's the problem: they don't have the mindset or expertise to make the big decisions about e-commerce.
The example given - the difficulty of buying bras online - is a very good example since it represents a business opportunity that even today hasn't adequately been solved. An innovative web development group might come up with cool uses of technology to solve this problem and make a lot of money for their bra-company client.
The fact that this group didn't say "wow that's interesting, tell us more about the problems women have with buying bras and let's brainstorm ways technology can solve that problem" just tells me they weren't the right group to be creating business strategy and should just stick with developing web sites for clients who are the ones making the big product and marketing strategy decisions, which they hand off to the web developers to implement.
In the technology companies I've worked for, the people doing the web development are different from the ones who create the product and marketing strategy. If these web developers wanted to expand their horizons then first they'd have to get over their silly neuroses.
My take on it is, why do web developers even need to know about bras? If they take on a bra company as a client, then the decisions about bras will be made by the client and I would assume the decision makers are very comfortable with women's bodies and bras since they deal with them and think about them on a daily basis, regardless of their gender. They signed up to work for a bra company so obviously it wasn't an issue for them.
The missing paragraph would relate to the assumption that web developers need to know a company's product and marketing strategy before working on a website and I don't see why that would be needed. The client already knows their product and their customers. They hire a web development company to realize the vision they have already mapped out. Other than not fainting dead away if they encounter photos of bras in their job, web developers really don't need to know much about the products their clients are selling or their strategy.
The exception would be if this is an innovative web development company that can use technology to solve a client's problem, namely, the client comes in and says: women don't have a good way to buy bras online and we need you to help us solve that. In which case, the team that works on this project needs to be very comfortable with women's bodies and women's concerns and the bosses can find that team and assemble them. Anyone who can't emotionally handle the assignment doesn't get the opportunity.
Doesn't really matter what gender they are. What matters is if they are willing to get over their personal issues in return for a chance to work on an interesting technology challenge. Ideally, they have no personal issues to begin with (or are good at hiding them.) But anyone who wants to do innovative, cutting edge work needs to have mental flexibility as one of their personality traits, so why would web developers who were so skittish work for a company like that in the first place? They are only hurting themselves by letting their neuroses cut them off from opportunities.
Let's say some bra company decides to solve the problem of how to deliver well fitting bras to women. That would be worth money because in fact, the author is right: there's a huge missed opportunity for a bra-making business when women who otherwise might buy bras more often simply give up and wear old worn-out bras because nobody is delivering them in a simple, convenient and well-priced way. Commerce is going online and there's no going back so the company that can solve the riddle of how to sell bras online is going to rake in a lot of money.
But the group described in this article aren't the bra company and the people making product and marketing decisions. They're the web developers, who are brought on after the higher level decisions are made. And if they're so uncomfortable with bras that they can't work on a website where there are myriad photos of bras, then they might want to request a different assignment.
There could be technology-based innovations needed for the internet-bra-selling company. Is there a way to model various body shapes online so that women can find their shape and then find the right bra? Could you use camera phones to "scan" the customer and create a custom bra for her? That would be an interesting challenge for the web developers but wow they better get comfortable with women's bodies fast if they want that assignment (also the legal department might need to get involved if this company needs to process nude photos as part of their business.)
Sounds like that group of internet professionals were talking about business strategy and marketing. In that case, the fact that they were so unfamiliar with half the population, and half their customers, that they balked at a discussion of bras, is a very bad sign for whatever businesses they were running or hoping to start.
Were they actually a bunch of engineers who aren't really in charge of making decisions about target markets and product strategy, but rather are in charge of building the websites to implement the strategies of others? If so, the basic problem is, they were way out of their depth.
I've worked in high tech for a long time and if I were working for a bra-making company that needed a website, I would expect the actual decision makers to include quite a few actual human women or at least men who understood a lot about what women want in bras, their problems with bras, finding bras that fit well, etc.
Then that group makes the decisions and maps out the websites that the web developers will build. The web developers could all be women or all men, doesn't much matter. And they don't actually need to know much about bras at all. Someone else is designing the site, choosing the photos, writing the copy, and devising the marketing plan to reach the potential customer base and direct them to the site.
Re: I happen to live in an area with actual ISP competition
Like millions of people, I work from home now so internet access is more of a work-related expense (and subsidized by my employer) than entertainment. Still, there should be more competition.
And my internet cost is well below what cable was when I dumped it, oh, about 10 years ago.
Netflix should think about what they want the end state of their gaming initiative to be. The form that makes sense is: you watch Witcher, then the Witcher game is one click away to play. They should adapt their interface so that Witcher or Stranger Things is a header that takes you to either the show episodes or the games or spinoff movies if they have then, and why not a link to buy merchandise too? They can try this out with one game in one test country if they like.
"People keep saying it's all they do. THAT is the problem. They didn't only want to do p0rn or be known as that kind of website. They started as a normal company. But the porn girls took it over. So yeah they went with it. Sure it made them money. For one thing it's very money intensive and manpower intensive to keep illegal content off it like underage girls. And it's a huge legal liability. They actually got caught by I think it was the BBC or something for not removing all the illegal content or being able to keep up with it. They probably don't want that liability and hassle and bad press. Not to mention legal costs.
They also want to bring in celebrities and bring in a much larger general population and base. And women that don't want to take off their clothes. Some normal business guy or lady doesn't want to use it or send clients to the site now because that is ALL it's known for. Do you understand the problem? They don't WANT to only be known as an adult site. Nothing wrong with that. And your general advertiser doesn't want to advertise on there either. There is FAR more money to be made when it becomes a normal website for the average person, big companies, etc."
Another factor is that when this company goes public, its share price will depend partly on institutional investors, which tend to be very conservative. There are massive funds being run for Teachers, Firemen, Policemen etc pensions and they are leery of investing in anything that will create controversy.
If a company makes a show or movie, they have total control over it because it's their property. If they didn't have total control over it, to profit from it, they wouldn't make it in the first place. Nobody is making Black Widow or Star Trek for our benefit. They are making it to make money.
The streaming industry is in the transition between licensed content and the days when licensed content will go extinct since all the companies making the content will also have global streaming platforms to use to distribute it.
Re: Re: Doesn't blocking service encourage piracy?
Scattering content is a win for the companies doing the scattering like Disney and Amazon. Maybe HBO Max too. It's all a mad scramble to grow and become one of the very few survivors of the streaming wars. In a couple years the losers will go under and the winners will go global. Then there will be no more reason for geoblocking except what governments do.
When and if Paramount+ expands into Canada, then they can make future Star Trek series exclusive to Paramount+ because at that point it would make no sense for them to license their content to anyone else in Canada. The point of making it is so they can profit from it.
The question is, will Paramount+ expand to Canada or get bought by Apple/Amazon first? In which case, Apple or Amazon will have the exclusive rights to Star Trek that they will be making from that point on.
Another question is, why watch Star Trek since ViacomCBS's version of it is so awful but that's another matter entirely.
Regional licensing isn't nearly as profitable as global streaming. When one company like Netflix can have a direct relationship with customers all over the world, taking their credit cards and making stuff they have global licenses on (because they made it) to stream to them, that's the most profitable possible model. It cuts out all the middlemen who used to siphon off profits.
That's why Netflix is taking over the world and forcing Hollywood/Silicon Valley to adapt to their model. There is no beating it. Disney can beat Netflix because they are copying their business model but using it for their hugely popular brands like Marvel and Star Wars.
And that is the winning model: huge global brands with Netflix style distribution. Too bad Netflix itself can't afford to buy any brands and is having a hard time building them from scratch. Jupiter's Legacy is no Marvel. I doubt Cowboy Bebop is going to be Star Wars either...
It's not the same as DVD region codes at all. Streaming has been the wild west but now it's all becoming more rational if perhaps more frustrating. Disney won't license its content to Netflix, HBO Max won't either. The big competitors are all going global or planning to soon. With ViacomCBS it's unclear whether they want to go global or get sold to a bigger competitor before that. But if Amazon or Apple buys ViacomCBS then the content is global anyway.
Streaming businesses are being forced to go global by competitive pressures but it's happening in the usual chaotic style. Some of it will be because a company really did expand globally and some of it will be thru acquisitions. Of course none of this involves China, which won't let streaming companies in, but that's another issue: government censorship causing geoblocks. No good solution to that.
They're catching up. When Paramount+ yanks its content off Netflix and plans global expansion, that means Netflix isn't going to license content from them in some countries and not in others. Star Trek is a prime example of this. When Paramount+ is global, I'm sure then they will have a monopoly on their future shows.
However the good news is that Paramount+'s Star Trek series suck so who cares where they are. Seriously, what a horrible job they've done with it. I hope Amazon buys ViacomCBS just so they can fire everyone who has anything to do with their utter butchery of Star Trek.
Geofencing exists because Netflix gets a license to Show A in Country B but not Countries C, D and E. But since everyone is taking their content off Netflix to make their own streaming platforms, that should be the end of geofencing (in favor of content being scattered around various platforms, each of which either have the same libraries worldwide, or will. Because the economics of streaming don't work unless you have the biggest possible subscriber base. If a platform like Paramount+ doesn't figure out how to go global, then Amazon will buy them and their content will be global that way.
When all this equalizes, the only remaining source of geoblocking should be national governments, which already are starting in on quotas and censorship. And unlike business-driven geoblocking - which makes no economic sense and will eventually be eradicated just by market forces - government-driven geoblocking is impossible to effectively battle. Netflix et al aren't going to risk being booted out of countries entirely just to defend free speech. So, VPNs will have a purpose some places forever.
I figured out Facebook's business model a long time ago. Their customers are advertisers and users are the product they sell to advertisers. That was enough for me. Not having anything to do with that.
If I can spend decades on the internet while completely ignoring Facebook, so can everyone else. I don't get it. Do people like being treated like a product?
Remember when Republicans were the party of capitalism, libertarianism and big business? They wouldn't dream of squelching the right of corporations to decide to do as they see fit. Once Republicans start in on government interference with corporations, they've really lost all justification of their existence, to the extent they ever had any.
I think the complaint is that Netflix is inherently a rental model. Which is fine by me; I rarely want to watch a show or movie more than once. But it's also obvious that Netflix offers nothing but rental, so what's the issue? If you don't like rental, then you wouldn't be a Netflix customer anyway.
I own my own home, because real estate increases in value (here in SF anyway). But I never bother to buy TV shows or movies. I rarely want to watch anything more than once. Rental model works great there.
On the post: A Guy Walks Into A Bra
Re: Re: Discomfort, Bras, Men, Etc.
I assume this roundtable was practice for some real-life situation such as: a bra company CEO, a potential client, has a meeting with the web development company these guys work for. The CEO lays out the problem: commerce is moving online but women don't have a good way of buying well fitting bras online, which means the CEO knows his/her company is losing business. They want the web development company to come up with innovative solutions to this problem.
So if one of the guys in the roundtable were in that meeting, would they giggle and squirm at the subject matter? If they were going to be so juvenile and unprofessional, I'm sure their boss wouldn't allow them in the meeting. So that is the real issue here: if these guys' goal is to be at a senior enough level that they can be in the bra-company-CEO meeting where their company is trying to land a new client, then they really need to get over their juvenile mindset and start thinking about product and marketing issues beyond their own narrow personal experience or they'll do nothing but grunt-level web development for the rest of their careers.
On the post: A Guy Walks Into A Bra
Re: Re: Discomfort, Bras, Men, Etc.
If this group can't discuss products that relate to half the population, then that's the problem: they don't have the mindset or expertise to make the big decisions about e-commerce.
The example given - the difficulty of buying bras online - is a very good example since it represents a business opportunity that even today hasn't adequately been solved. An innovative web development group might come up with cool uses of technology to solve this problem and make a lot of money for their bra-company client.
The fact that this group didn't say "wow that's interesting, tell us more about the problems women have with buying bras and let's brainstorm ways technology can solve that problem" just tells me they weren't the right group to be creating business strategy and should just stick with developing web sites for clients who are the ones making the big product and marketing strategy decisions, which they hand off to the web developers to implement.
In the technology companies I've worked for, the people doing the web development are different from the ones who create the product and marketing strategy. If these web developers wanted to expand their horizons then first they'd have to get over their silly neuroses.
On the post: A Guy Walks Into A Bra
Re: what am I missing
My take on it is, why do web developers even need to know about bras? If they take on a bra company as a client, then the decisions about bras will be made by the client and I would assume the decision makers are very comfortable with women's bodies and bras since they deal with them and think about them on a daily basis, regardless of their gender. They signed up to work for a bra company so obviously it wasn't an issue for them.
The missing paragraph would relate to the assumption that web developers need to know a company's product and marketing strategy before working on a website and I don't see why that would be needed. The client already knows their product and their customers. They hire a web development company to realize the vision they have already mapped out. Other than not fainting dead away if they encounter photos of bras in their job, web developers really don't need to know much about the products their clients are selling or their strategy.
The exception would be if this is an innovative web development company that can use technology to solve a client's problem, namely, the client comes in and says: women don't have a good way to buy bras online and we need you to help us solve that. In which case, the team that works on this project needs to be very comfortable with women's bodies and women's concerns and the bosses can find that team and assemble them. Anyone who can't emotionally handle the assignment doesn't get the opportunity.
Doesn't really matter what gender they are. What matters is if they are willing to get over their personal issues in return for a chance to work on an interesting technology challenge. Ideally, they have no personal issues to begin with (or are good at hiding them.) But anyone who wants to do innovative, cutting edge work needs to have mental flexibility as one of their personality traits, so why would web developers who were so skittish work for a company like that in the first place? They are only hurting themselves by letting their neuroses cut them off from opportunities.
On the post: A Guy Walks Into A Bra
Re: Good Points
Let's say some bra company decides to solve the problem of how to deliver well fitting bras to women. That would be worth money because in fact, the author is right: there's a huge missed opportunity for a bra-making business when women who otherwise might buy bras more often simply give up and wear old worn-out bras because nobody is delivering them in a simple, convenient and well-priced way. Commerce is going online and there's no going back so the company that can solve the riddle of how to sell bras online is going to rake in a lot of money.
But the group described in this article aren't the bra company and the people making product and marketing decisions. They're the web developers, who are brought on after the higher level decisions are made. And if they're so uncomfortable with bras that they can't work on a website where there are myriad photos of bras, then they might want to request a different assignment.
There could be technology-based innovations needed for the internet-bra-selling company. Is there a way to model various body shapes online so that women can find their shape and then find the right bra? Could you use camera phones to "scan" the customer and create a custom bra for her? That would be an interesting challenge for the web developers but wow they better get comfortable with women's bodies fast if they want that assignment (also the legal department might need to get involved if this company needs to process nude photos as part of their business.)
On the post: A Guy Walks Into A Bra
what a weird example
Sounds like that group of internet professionals were talking about business strategy and marketing. In that case, the fact that they were so unfamiliar with half the population, and half their customers, that they balked at a discussion of bras, is a very bad sign for whatever businesses they were running or hoping to start.
Were they actually a bunch of engineers who aren't really in charge of making decisions about target markets and product strategy, but rather are in charge of building the websites to implement the strategies of others? If so, the basic problem is, they were way out of their depth.
I've worked in high tech for a long time and if I were working for a bra-making company that needed a website, I would expect the actual decision makers to include quite a few actual human women or at least men who understood a lot about what women want in bras, their problems with bras, finding bras that fit well, etc.
Then that group makes the decisions and maps out the websites that the web developers will build. The web developers could all be women or all men, doesn't much matter. And they don't actually need to know much about bras at all. Someone else is designing the site, choosing the photos, writing the copy, and devising the marketing plan to reach the potential customer base and direct them to the site.
On the post: Another 1.2 Million Consumers Ditched Traditional Cable TV Last Quarter
Re: I happen to live in an area with actual ISP competition
Like millions of people, I work from home now so internet access is more of a work-related expense (and subsidized by my employer) than entertainment. Still, there should be more competition.
And my internet cost is well below what cable was when I dumped it, oh, about 10 years ago.
On the post: Netflix's Announced 'Video Game Streaming' Foray Fizzles Into Some Mobile Games Using Netflix IP
lame, Netflix
Netflix should think about what they want the end state of their gaming initiative to be. The form that makes sense is: you watch Witcher, then the Witcher game is one click away to play. They should adapt their interface so that Witcher or Stranger Things is a header that takes you to either the show episodes or the games or spinoff movies if they have then, and why not a link to buy merchandise too? They can try this out with one game in one test country if they like.
On the post: Content Moderation Case Study: YouTube Deals With Disturbing Content Disguised As Videos For Kids (2017)
Ella and Spidey get married and have ice-spider babies?
That's crazy!
Everyone knows Ella is batting for the other team.
On the post: OnlyPrudes: OnlyFans, The Platform For Sexually Explicit Content, Says No More Sexually Explicit Content (Except For Nudes)
money money money
I wondered if the impetus behind this is financial - this company wants to do an IPO someday right? So I checked this investors site:
https://seekingalpha.com/news/3732711-onlyfans-to-prohibit-any-sexually-explicit-conduct
I think this commenter has it right:
"People keep saying it's all they do. THAT is the problem. They didn't only want to do p0rn or be known as that kind of website. They started as a normal company. But the porn girls took it over. So yeah they went with it. Sure it made them money. For one thing it's very money intensive and manpower intensive to keep illegal content off it like underage girls. And it's a huge legal liability. They actually got caught by I think it was the BBC or something for not removing all the illegal content or being able to keep up with it. They probably don't want that liability and hassle and bad press. Not to mention legal costs.
They also want to bring in celebrities and bring in a much larger general population and base. And women that don't want to take off their clothes. Some normal business guy or lady doesn't want to use it or send clients to the site now because that is ALL it's known for. Do you understand the problem? They don't WANT to only be known as an adult site. Nothing wrong with that. And your general advertiser doesn't want to advertise on there either. There is FAR more money to be made when it becomes a normal website for the average person, big companies, etc."
Another factor is that when this company goes public, its share price will depend partly on institutional investors, which tend to be very conservative. There are massive funds being run for Teachers, Firemen, Policemen etc pensions and they are leery of investing in anything that will create controversy.
On the post: Netflix's Ramped Up War On VPNs Comes With Collateral Damage
Re:
If a company makes a show or movie, they have total control over it because it's their property. If they didn't have total control over it, to profit from it, they wouldn't make it in the first place. Nobody is making Black Widow or Star Trek for our benefit. They are making it to make money.
The streaming industry is in the transition between licensed content and the days when licensed content will go extinct since all the companies making the content will also have global streaming platforms to use to distribute it.
On the post: Netflix's Ramped Up War On VPNs Comes With Collateral Damage
Re: Re: Doesn't blocking service encourage piracy?
Scattering content is a win for the companies doing the scattering like Disney and Amazon. Maybe HBO Max too. It's all a mad scramble to grow and become one of the very few survivors of the streaming wars. In a couple years the losers will go under and the winners will go global. Then there will be no more reason for geoblocking except what governments do.
On the post: Netflix's Ramped Up War On VPNs Comes With Collateral Damage
Re: Re: Re: Re: Its going to get worse
When and if Paramount+ expands into Canada, then they can make future Star Trek series exclusive to Paramount+ because at that point it would make no sense for them to license their content to anyone else in Canada. The point of making it is so they can profit from it.
The question is, will Paramount+ expand to Canada or get bought by Apple/Amazon first? In which case, Apple or Amazon will have the exclusive rights to Star Trek that they will be making from that point on.
Another question is, why watch Star Trek since ViacomCBS's version of it is so awful but that's another matter entirely.
On the post: Netflix's Ramped Up War On VPNs Comes With Collateral Damage
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Regional licensing isn't nearly as profitable as global streaming. When one company like Netflix can have a direct relationship with customers all over the world, taking their credit cards and making stuff they have global licenses on (because they made it) to stream to them, that's the most profitable possible model. It cuts out all the middlemen who used to siphon off profits.
That's why Netflix is taking over the world and forcing Hollywood/Silicon Valley to adapt to their model. There is no beating it. Disney can beat Netflix because they are copying their business model but using it for their hugely popular brands like Marvel and Star Wars.
And that is the winning model: huge global brands with Netflix style distribution. Too bad Netflix itself can't afford to buy any brands and is having a hard time building them from scratch. Jupiter's Legacy is no Marvel. I doubt Cowboy Bebop is going to be Star Wars either...
On the post: Netflix's Ramped Up War On VPNs Comes With Collateral Damage
Re: Re: Re:
It's not the same as DVD region codes at all. Streaming has been the wild west but now it's all becoming more rational if perhaps more frustrating. Disney won't license its content to Netflix, HBO Max won't either. The big competitors are all going global or planning to soon. With ViacomCBS it's unclear whether they want to go global or get sold to a bigger competitor before that. But if Amazon or Apple buys ViacomCBS then the content is global anyway.
Streaming businesses are being forced to go global by competitive pressures but it's happening in the usual chaotic style. Some of it will be because a company really did expand globally and some of it will be thru acquisitions. Of course none of this involves China, which won't let streaming companies in, but that's another issue: government censorship causing geoblocks. No good solution to that.
On the post: Netflix's Ramped Up War On VPNs Comes With Collateral Damage
Re: Re: Re: Re:
They're catching up. When Paramount+ yanks its content off Netflix and plans global expansion, that means Netflix isn't going to license content from them in some countries and not in others. Star Trek is a prime example of this. When Paramount+ is global, I'm sure then they will have a monopoly on their future shows.
However the good news is that Paramount+'s Star Trek series suck so who cares where they are. Seriously, what a horrible job they've done with it. I hope Amazon buys ViacomCBS just so they can fire everyone who has anything to do with their utter butchery of Star Trek.
On the post: Netflix's Ramped Up War On VPNs Comes With Collateral Damage
Re: geofencing should be on its way out...
Geofencing exists because Netflix gets a license to Show A in Country B but not Countries C, D and E. But since everyone is taking their content off Netflix to make their own streaming platforms, that should be the end of geofencing (in favor of content being scattered around various platforms, each of which either have the same libraries worldwide, or will. Because the economics of streaming don't work unless you have the biggest possible subscriber base. If a platform like Paramount+ doesn't figure out how to go global, then Amazon will buy them and their content will be global that way.
When all this equalizes, the only remaining source of geoblocking should be national governments, which already are starting in on quotas and censorship. And unlike business-driven geoblocking - which makes no economic sense and will eventually be eradicated just by market forces - government-driven geoblocking is impossible to effectively battle. Netflix et al aren't going to risk being booted out of countries entirely just to defend free speech. So, VPNs will have a purpose some places forever.
On the post: Facebook Is NOT The Internet; Stop Regulating As If It Was
Facebook what?
I figured out Facebook's business model a long time ago. Their customers are advertisers and users are the product they sell to advertisers. That was enough for me. Not having anything to do with that.
If I can spend decades on the internet while completely ignoring Facebook, so can everyone else. I don't get it. Do people like being treated like a product?
On the post: Louisiana & Alabama Attorneys General Set Up Silly Hotline To Report 'Social Media Censorship' They Can't Do Anything About
remember the olden days?
Remember when Republicans were the party of capitalism, libertarianism and big business? They wouldn't dream of squelching the right of corporations to decide to do as they see fit. Once Republicans start in on government interference with corporations, they've really lost all justification of their existence, to the extent they ever had any.
On the post: The End Of Ownership: How Big Companies Are Trying To Turn Everyone Into Renters
Re: Huh?
I think the complaint is that Netflix is inherently a rental model. Which is fine by me; I rarely want to watch a show or movie more than once. But it's also obvious that Netflix offers nothing but rental, so what's the issue? If you don't like rental, then you wouldn't be a Netflix customer anyway.
On the post: The End Of Ownership: How Big Companies Are Trying To Turn Everyone Into Renters
rent sometimes makes sense
I own my own home, because real estate increases in value (here in SF anyway). But I never bother to buy TV shows or movies. I rarely want to watch anything more than once. Rental model works great there.
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