Maureen Johnson on the current state of eBook pricing:

It’s coming down to a lot of bedrock issues about how you VALUE things in general. What’s the VALUE in paying more? What should electronic items cost if the physical value is largely held in the device? How do we maintain a thriving literary life in the face of these new developments? Is this a sign that publishing is an outmoded business of “gatekeepers,” or is this a rallying point to stand up and say w’re willing to pay more for things that are of value to us? 

There is no word other than delightful to describe this post. Ok, maybe informative will do as well. Also, it could do with a little less screaming in all caps. Other than that, it’s perfect.

Paul Ford wrote the best article I’ve seen so far on the Facebook/Instagram deal. When Your Favorite App Sells Out includes gems like this:

Unfortunately everything about Facebook defies logic. In terms of user experience, Facebook is like an NYPD police van crashing into an IKEA, forever “” a chaotic mess of products designed to burrow into every facet of your life. The company is also technologically weird. For example, much of the code that runs the site is written in a horrible computer language called PHP, which stands for nothing you care about. Millions of websites are built with PHP, because it works and it’s cheap to run, but PHP is a programming language like scrapple is a meat. Imagine eating two pounds of scrapple every day for the rest of your life “” that’s what Facebook does, programming-wise. Which is just to say that Facebook has its own way of doing things that looks very suspect from the outside world “” but man, does it work.

Anyway, he goes on to explain why he thinks people are so upset about the deal. Just go ahead and read the thing – it’s worth it.

Tom Creighton, making us feel better about work that ends up in the trash can in Design is an Action:

Finding out what doesn’t work is still worthwhile work.

Design isn’t the end result, it’s the process of cutting and pasting, reconfiguring and recontextualizing the raw materials. Design isn’t a thing. Design is where things come from.

Sobering words from the one OMGPOP employee who didn’t go to Zynga when they were bought out. From Turning down Zynga:

It’s not easy to pass up a lucrative salary and solid benefits, of course. But I realized that ultimately I was letting myself be guided by simple inertia. I was part of a herd, and that herd was all going in one direction (and doing so with great urgency). I would really only be doing it for the sake of going with the flow, and responding to pressure to either conform to corporate expectations, or be left behind.

These are not good reasons to join a company whose values are the opposite of your own, or to compromise your ideals, or to give up control of something you rightfully own.

See also: Want to build great software? Get your culture right first.

Jon Mitchell in Websites Have to Get Better:

Read-later apps are competition for noisy, ad-ridden websites. They represent a simple fact: Users hate our sites.

Websites should think of Instapaper as competition. People are spending their reader-experience (RX?) dollars elsewhere, period. They don’t want to pay publisher sites with impressions on ads they don’t value, so they pay Marco Arment for a better reading experience. If publishers want to get those RX dollars, they have to deliver a great experience Instapaper can’t provide. It’s pure and simple competition.

I agree with the conclusion that web sites have to provide better reading experiences. But I don’t agree with the causal relationship being drawn with Read Later apps.

First, the main purpose of Read Later apps is revealed right there in the name: they’re for reading things”¦ later. So even though some people probably use the Instapaper web view to read articles immediately without ads, my guess is that most people use it to save articles for later reading.

What the DVR does for TV shows, Instapaper does for articles. And just like with a DVR, you get to skip the ads – but that’s just a wonderful, added bonus. The real benefit is having a place to store and watch/read all the things you want to get to without being bound to the time and place where you first discovered it. This means that if major ad-supported sites start to provide better reading experiences, I won’t suddenly stop using Instapaper. The need to save articles for later reading would remain. This brings me to my second point.

The reason web sites have to provide a better reading experience is not because Read Later apps are their competition, but because it’s the right thing to do. It’s how you show that you value and respect your readers.

Ok, so this has to change:

The vulnerability in Java that Flashback exploits was patched in February by Oracle. But Apple waited nearly two months to update OS X with that patched version.

This is the single biggest security issue for Macs. OS X includes a number of software components from third-party vendors and the Open Source software community, and Apple has a terrible track record in updating those components. When a vulnerability becomes publicly known because it’s been patched on another platform, but it isn’t patched on another, the bad guys have a straight-line roadmap to compromising that unpatched system.

It’s a fair, well-written article about the virus. Worth reading.

Jared Keller summarizes the results of a new study on online influence in What Fuels the Most Influential Tweets?:

According to co-author Vespignani, having millions of followers does not denote an important message. Rather, the messages with the most immediate relevance tend to have a higher probability of resonating within a certain network than others. Think of it as “survival of the fittest” for information: those tweets that capture the most attention, whether related to a major geopolitical or news event or a particular interest, are likely to persist longer.

This isn’t exactly earth-shattering news, but it’s an interesting study nonetheless (you can find the original research paper here). It shows that online influence is not so much about the number of followers you have, but the relevance the message has to existing current events. So it’s not really about guiding conversations, but about being good at joining whatever conversations are already taking place.

From Game of Thrones: How HBO and Showtime make money despite low ratings:

On the networks and basic cable, shows are a delivery vehicle for advertising””and if a program doesn’t attract a big enough audience for those ads, the consequences are clear: It’s pulled from the schedule, and a new show is dropped into the time slot. On those channels, viewer is just another word for person who sees a commercial.

This is contrasted with the subscription model that premium channels like HBO and Showtime use:

The premium networks are in the business of selling subscriptions. A Showtime spokeswoman told me that the channel’s goal is to satisfy subscribers and to entice non-subscribers to sign up. They keep their customers happy by allowing them to watch original TV series, exclusive movies, and sports programming whenever they want to.

I’m pretty sure you know where I’m going with this, but the situation is analogous to what we see in online publishing today. Ad-supported sites aim to rack up all the “eyeballs” in the world so that they can be resold to advertisers. Subscription-based sites aim to satisfy their readers by providing great content that will, in turn, entice more non-subscribers to sign up.