Eric Reasons

When I see something like the "Performance Rights Act" (or performance tax , as most are calling it), I can draw one of two conclusions: 1) Legacy media (and their partners in government) really don't understand that there's a fundamental flaw in their business model, and are trying to use the government to hold back the coming flood. 2) Legacy media understands perfectly well the doom that they are facing, and they are simply trying to suck all the blood out of a dying beast before moving on. There is a very big problem if the two biggest threats to your music business are having fans that want to hear your music and having those fans who want to share it with others. I truly feel bad for radio stations. Remember when record companies would *pay them* to play their music? Now they're trying to *charge them*. Astounding. Technically, even the idea of charging radio to play music isn't quite accurate. They want to *tax* them. Here's my suggestion to the RIA...

This will be the last I say about Buzz for a while. Two posts in a row is one too many, but I really want somewhere to put down this idea so I can just link it every time I get asked the question. Why is Buzz better than Foursquare/Facebook/Twitter/FriendFeed/etc.? It's not. Well, it is. But it's not really in competition with them. Asking the question is treating Social Media like a zero-sum game where each social network is a silo, and there can be only one winner, at the expense of every other competitor. But Social Media is not a zero-sum game. You think we'd have learned this already, given all that we've seen in the Internet's brief history. Once upon a time, our networks were mostly separate silos. We'd log into our favorite community, make contact with a few of our digital friends. Sometimes we'd trade deep conversation, sometimes just a few inside jokes, but mostly useless trash that just let them know we were around. Our friends would introduce us...

The title reminds me that I have an irrational fear of bees. Just sayin'. Where was I? Oh yeah... The Buzz about Google Buzz So a full 50% of all the buzz on day one of Google Buzz was, of course, the "Hello World!" of Social Media: "What's the big deal about this?". Everyone else is trying to figure out if it's a threat to Facebook. Or Twitter. Or Foursquare. Or Yelp. Or Google Wave, for that matter. Here's my take on the Potential and the Perils of Buzz: What it is, what it is not, and what it may someday be. The Potential: 1) Open Development Google has announced that the Buzz APIs will be protected under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. This means open and shareable development. Programmers like this . Furthermore, Buzz's APIs will take advantage of other open platforms, like OAuth, WebFinger, Salmon, and Activity Streams. What does this mean for you? Ultimately, smoother integration with many of the sites and services you alread...