Pirates Are Consumers, Too!

With anti-piracy and copyright infringement bills SOPA and PIPA indefinitely shelved after the wave of online protests earlier this month, the general consensus around the interwebs is we won!  Sure, illegal IP distribution is still running rampant, and there is not much IP owners can do about it, but we do not have to worry about the government treading on our internets!  Okay, so I admit—after a nice, long debate with a well-informed friend—I am actually glad these bills did not pass in their current forms.  While I still believe their ultimate goals are worthwhile, there were some issues with being a little too broad which could lead to trouble.  I am not yet ready to admit they would lead us to government censorship of the internet on a ridiculous scale like they have in China, but I can see the concern of some clever lawyers using the “slippery” wording to shut down undeserving sites.

 It is bad enough they already have the Chewbacca Defense!

(Warning:  Clip of said defense contains a wee bit of profanity; hence

the look of shock on Chewy’s face as it sullies his good, nonsensical name.)

Nevertheless, the issue still stands.  Companies lose millions to piracy every year, and they spend millions try to fight it.  I am sure we all have had to deal with ill-conceived (or, worse yet, poorly implemented) digital rights management (DRM) software on our legally purchases products.  As an avid gamer, I have seen some of the worst policies and software first hand.  Some have been so bad they actually stopped legitimate users from using the products.  I have to admit, all the hassles of these devices to thwart piracy have actually made me want to pirate IP just to spite some of these companies for making me work so hard just to use something I paid for.  Judging from online conversations I have seen or participated in, I am not the only consumer who is fed up with all this nonsense, even though we agree IP owners deserve to get paid for what they create and sell.  It just does not seem right to punish those of us who pay for the products when the pirates are just going to pirate anyway.

So, what is the real solution to the issue of piracy?  Everyone loves getting things for free, but there must be something identifiable which leads people who would never shoplift a physical item in a brick-and-mortar store to justify stealing thousands of songs, movies, games, software, etc. online.  Is it because it is easier and less public?  There is an illusion of anonymity online (truthfully, if someone wanted to find you, they could with minimum knowledge, tools, and effort), there is no need to hide the items you are taking, and there are no security guards to dodge.  That might be a factor, but it cannot be the determining one or else we would all be pirates.  I think the one thing the majority online pirates have in common is the fact they feel there is not enough value in what they are pirating to pay what the manufacturers/retailers are asking for it.  It is not they do not have interest in the products (or else they would not bother to even steal them), or they are not willing to pay anything at it; it is the fact these products are overpriced, underserviced, and/or a hassle to use (likely due to DRM).  On top of that, the vast majority of digital IP products have a “no refunds” policy.  Entertainment products, ironically enough, also happen to have a highly subjective level of value to consumers, so the risk seems dauntingly high when one cannot return an unwanted piece of IP.  All of these factors push consumers to piracy if only as a means to mitigate the risk of buyer’s remorse.

 It’s probably more shame than remorse for N-Gage owners.  All 4 of them.

It would seem apparent then the solution to the problem is to raise perceived value.  The most obvious way to do this is to lower the price of the product.  How do you compete with free, though?  As it turns out, one way is to fight fire with fire, and give away some of your product offerings for free.  This might sound counterproductive or downright crazy, but Valve Corp. co-found Gabe Newell does not think so.  In fact, he and his company have been experimenting with pricing via their digital game distribution service, Steam, for years now, and have seen incredible revenue increases (40 fold) both by heavily marking down products (75% off) and by giving away some for free.  The free-to-play games keep users online longer (which has shown to make them more prone to buy more often), and also adds to the overall value of Steam as a whole, in turn increasing the perceived value of all the games sold through it.  Just to make it perfectly clear, they did not see a 40% increase in revenue on the marked down games; they saw an increase by a factor of 40, or 4000%.  While these methods are indeed nontraditional, the results make Mr. Newell seem not so crazy after all.

 The face of crazy…like a fox.

Of course, it cannot be that simple, can it?  Even Newell concedes there is a lot going on with these experiments we do not understand as these results simply do not fit into traditional pricing models.  However, he realizes his customers are trying to tell him something, so Valve will keep working on getting the message right.  What is really interesting, though, is these experiments have shown what Newell has been saying for years:  piracy is not the real issue.  It is merely the result of poor service and value.  Pirates do not just pirate for the sake of pirating; they are underserved customers who can be won back.  They key is to give them a better experience (service) than they can get through piracy.  Personally, I would start with removing all the intrusive, frustrating, and overbearing DRM software from digital media.  Newell even noted DRM tends to increase piracy because it diminished the value of the service.  That is what digital content really is, after all:  a service.  As a service, the focus needs to be on continual value, and DRM often removes most, if not all, lasting value.

Another interesting way to win pirates back purchasing is by implementing a “pay what you want” system.  It is exactly what it sounds like:  you let consumers pick the price they pay for your service.  I would venture to say it is probably the best way to gauge the actual, unadulterated value consumers place on your products.  That said, there are ways to influence the price points people are willing to pay.  You definitely do not want to give the option of paying nothing, as—like I said before—we love free stuff, and will jump on the opportunity to get something for nothing.  However, while people may not be inherently generous, appealing to their sense of charity along with allowing them to freely choose how generous they want to be is an effective way to increase revenue.  One study showed flat rates had the lowest value, an adding the stipulation half would go to charity did little to increase the perceived value.  Allowing customers to pay what they want significantly increased total purchases, but the low purchase prices negated any increase in revenue.  Finally, when people were told half of their chosen price would go to charity the increase in purchases was only half as much, but the price per purchase was significantly increased to the point where overall revenue was triple that of the non-charity pay what you want option.  It turns out customers can be quite generous when they feel the value is high.

A great example of the pay what you want system with charity can be seen with the Humble Indie Bundle (Tweet @humble).  These guys there have done an incredible job raising money for charity as well as contributing to high sales and recognition for many small-time (indie) game developers who have an excessively hard time competing with all the large game companies out there.  Once again, we can see social responsibility saving the day for modern business!

Social Responsibility Part 2 (aka It’s Called ‘Giving Back’ For a Reason)

To borrow a line from one of my favorite games of the current generation, BioShock, “Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?”  This iconic question was posed by Andrew Ryan, the antagonist of the story, and was the opening to a speech urging people to work only for their own success with no regard for those around them.  To Ryan, “petty morality” only served to stifle progress.  He went so far as to build a fantastical underwater city wherein “the greatest minds” could do as they pleased in order to achieve their own measures of success for their own glory, supposedly realizing the ultimate capitalist’s dream.  In the end, though, lack of regard for their fellow dreamers led the citizens of Rapture to destroy each other, themselves, and their society, leaving the streets to be overrun by murderous psychopaths and scientific abominations.

 It would actually be less scary if he used that drill for dental work.

Okay, so that might be an extremely unlikely outcome of throwing social responsibility to the wind (even barring underwater cities and gene-splicing crazies), but it does paint a fittingly grim picture of doing so.  Last week I talked about the business merits of social responsibility.  Now I would like to focus on a common counterpoint to the subject; that is, “I worked hard, and I succeeded on my own!  Nobody helped me, so why should I help everyone else?”  I will be the first to admit this point seems like a valid one on the surface, and very much irrefutable outside of moral reasoning.  However, from a logical perspective, it is fundamentally flawed when you consider how our economic system, business in general, and society on the whole operates.  Success, by and large, is often measured by financial wealth, which can only be obtained by some practice of business (even at its basest form of simple buying and selling).  Business, by its nature, requires society.  It requires other people, to sell to, to buy from, and appeal to.  Like I said last week, we are all businesspeople.  Therefore, no matter what, you owe your success to society.

This is not to take away from those who made significant sacrifices to their social lives and mental health and risks to their financial stability in order to become successful—I am only pointing out you really were not alone in your success.  It is rarely an easy road to success, no matter how you define it, and it takes copious dedication and determination.  Entrepreneurs and business visionaries keep the world going ‘round.  There is no doubt they are invaluable to society, but yet they would have achieved nothing without society.  So, when you think about it, social responsibility is really social accountability.  A company is accountable to its stakeholders, and it just so happens we all have a stake in the business oils that makes the societal cogs turn.

Hamster wheel analogies just seem irrelevant now that they all drive Kias.

Of course, there will always be those who abuse the system.  Not every person is going to be a productive member of society, and some will gladly leech off the sweat of others their entire lives.  The savvy businessperson understands people who do this are like defective units at your production plant in that they are an inevitability given an imperfect manufacturing process (in this case, the great many variables of life experiences which may produce such perspectives), work against you by being expensive (by leeching off society) and unprofitable (by not contributing), and require you to always be working on ways to minimize their occurrence.  Since we have already established society and business are one in the same, the logical solution to reduce the amount of unproductive people is to make society better.  This, of course, is done by increasing quality of life through social responsibility programs.  Giving back to society to educate people, as well as keeping them healthy and happy, will only make them more productive and successful.  As we talked about last week, this creates wealth, which leads to increased spending, which leads to the creation of more wealth, and so on.

So, there you have it:  a logical reason why we should all care about each other, if only because we care about ourselves.  I tried to be impartial when presenting this argument, but the reality is I am not only a businessperson, but also a proponent of progress.  What else is the ultimate goal of life other than progress, anyway?  Be it for our own progeny or the mankind as a whole, really everything we do is to make life better.  Progress stems from innovation, and innovation is an organizational process these days.  That is a good thing, too, as I think working as a team generally makes things easier.  Besides, like all worthwhile things in life, success means nothing without people to share it with.  In the words of Albert Pike, “What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.”  We are all in this together, people, and it is in all our best interest to work together to be successful together so we stay successful together.

Social Responsibility Part 1 (aka Nice Guys Finish Wealthy)

As the Holidays wrap up, and the proverbial “season of giving” is over, I cannot help but think of all the times I have debated the merits of social programs, higher taxes for the wealthy, and general social responsibility.  Unfortunately, said debates are rarely constructive since these issues are often attached to deep-seeded politics, bloated egos, and misinformed sentiments of self-entitlement.  Some people believe you are only allowed to what you earn through your own labor, while others feel they deserve just as much as everyone else regardless of their own successes, and others still think we should all work together for the greater good of the species.  Regardless of your own thoughts on the subject, I will now present why social responsibility is a good thing from a simple business perspective.

 Makes every topic more exciting!

Social responsibility is a popular cornerstone of modern business, but it is not really a new concept.  Adam Smith—considered by many to be the father of capitalism and modern economics—observed the idea in action way back in 1776 in his quintessential socioeconomic study An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (or The Wealth of Nations, for short), wherein he introduced the world to his famous concept of the “Invisible Hand.”  Simply put, the concept states businesspeople, as agents of the creation of wealth, usually promote the best interest of the community they operate in, regardless of whether or not they intend to, as if some benevolent “invisible hand” was secretly guiding their actions.  In other words, even the greediest business owner/operator serves the community with his successes, if only because his success creates jobs, which, in turn, create wealth for those workers to spend elsewhere in the market.  Of course, what they spend creates wealth for others who get to go spend it and create wealth for others, and so on, thus creating the endless cycle which drives our economy.  On a side note, this is exactly why you should never be afraid to spend money during a recession, as this only serves to exacerbate the issue.

Now, you are probably thinking to yourself the default positive side effects of some jerk’s narcissistic actions do not seem much like any sort of social responsibility, and you would be right.  The fact is, though, you can only really be a jerk for so long before the people rise up to smite thee, or, worse yet, wallop your brand image.  I know it seems like sometimes there is no justice for those who take advantage, but we live in the glorious Information Age.  People tend to take notice more of when businesses do wrong than when they do right, and with the advent of social media these wrongs will become public knowledge faster than the best PR department would even know something is amiss, which is why successful companies know it is much more profitable in the long run to invest in and protect their image than it is to repair it.  More so, if you treat your employees poorly, their morale will plummet and they will perform poorly.  Poor performance leads to low product quality and lackluster customer service, both of which leads to consumers going elsewhere and the downfall of your business.  The same result is yielded from cheating your customers, destroying the environment, or taking advantage of citizens of developing nations.  Sooner or later, the truth will hit the Internet and the aforementioned smiting will commence.  No matter what, the jerk businessperson will not last.

 Although merely looking like a pompous jerk makes you unstoppable, apparently.

Smith’s “invisible hand” theory alludes to the importance of social responsibility in business.  It points out how the two concepts naturally go hand-in-hand.  Even when a business is operated in a selfish manner, it still does the community well.  However, since society and business essentially feed each other, it makes sense to purposefully incorporate social responsibility into your business strategy to keep the cycle going strong.  Successful companies recognize this connection, and this is why we see multimillion dollar campaigns by corporations to increase education and literacy, fund charities for the sick and research cures for diseases, develop infrastructure in budding industrialized nations, keep kids off the streets, or even to simply provide some entertainment for families.  You can argue until you are blue in the face about whether or not these companies have altruistic motives, but either way they know it is in their best interest to increase the quality of life of the people living in the markets they service and plan to expand into.  Education leads to more productive members of society, both as employees and as consumers (because unemployed people have little money to spend).  Healthy people are also more productive, and have fewer bills (particularly medical bills) to worry about, again leaving them with more money to spend on consumer goods and services.  Humanitarian programs serve as positive public relations, and a strong brand image leads to more sales.  Developing the infrastructure of nations opens the doors for whole new markets of consumers.  It all leads to more revenue, regardless of more “noble” intentions.  It just so happens it also leads to a higher quality of life for everyone involved, again regardless of intent, much like Adam Smith noticed some 235 or so years ago.  Maybe it is just me, but I could always use a little bit of improvement in the Quality of Life department.

Seriously, I should hire this guy to run my QoL department.

Now, to bring this back to my original point, it really does not matter what your personal politics are; as members of society, we are all businesspeople.  We all depend on the successes of those who comprise our communities, both small and large, because we all use each other to reach our success.  Subsequently, it makes good business sense to support social programs which help put those in your community in the position to help ensure your personal long-term success.  We need to stop thinking of these programs as handouts, and look at them as what they really are:  investments into our collective, personally successful futures.

Facebook Politics

Have you ever noticed your Friends/Connections/Followers number decrease on one of your favorite social networks and wonder who you offended this time?  Oh, maybe that is just the most likely scenario for me.  It could be an accidental unfriending, such as a few too many haphazard clicks whilst cleaning out their friends list.  Possibly one of your drama-filled friends deactivated their account…again.  On the contrary, perhaps you have so many online friends you would not notice if 100 of them deleted you.  That would never happen, though, because a social media deity such as you would never deprive your friends of your every mundane action, lest they grow confused and become unable to continue on with their own lives.

 So true it hurts.

Why do we choose to virtually follow the lives of some but ignore others?  Well, according to a recent study, it turns out online social networking works a lot like offline socialization.  Most people tend to stick with people they know, but are also more likely to chat with friends of friends than perfect strangers.  Also, most people do not like people who offend them, are boring, or are simply annoying.  So, as with real life, it would seem getting somewhere online is all about who you know.  Also, being a bit of a downer causes others to quietly push you out of their lives.

 Philosoraptor might be on to something here…

What is really interesting, though, is men and women have different requirements for their online social circles, much like in everyday life.  Women are most likely to friend people online who they actually know outside the internet.  Men, on the other hand, are more likely to accept a friend based off of other factors, such as who said “friend” knows, what they look like, what business they are in, or even for no reason at all.  On the flipside, women are more prone to unfriend people who post offensive comments (commit social faux pas, if you will), or who they just do not know very well, while men are more apt to delete someone who pesters them to buy something.  The study also points out men are more prone to use social media for business networking and dating, while women use it as a creative outlet and to participate in the marketing efforts of businesses who utilize social media, particularly to provide positive feedback.

 The "Like" Button = catnip for the ladies.

On the surface, the numbers make it seem like men and women use social media in mutually exclusive ways.  However, the study points out most of us—men and women alike—use online social networking primarily for the reasons it was invented:  staying in contact with family and friends, reconnecting with old friends, and finding for new friends.  Even with technology altering our day to day interactions, and completely overhauling how we communicate with each other, our social constructs appear to translate perfectly.  While social politics vary from culture to culture and generation to generation, our innate need to provide order and context to our interactions with each other prevail regardless of the forum.  After all, man is by nature a political animal, as Aristotle observed some 2400+ years ago.  Some things never change.

Oh, and if you really have ever wondered who, exactly, was the person who unfriended you, you will be happy to hear there is a Facebook app for that!  Well, so long as you use Firefox, that is, as it requires a companion extension to work.  There probably is a version out there for other browsers, and you can find out right here.

Protecting IP Rights...No, the Other One

Recently, a friend of mine (Nate) and I had a nice little debate about the anti-piracy laws being introduced to Congress this year.  Specifically, we talked about the PROTECT IP Act of 2011 (S.968, otherwise known as the PRevent Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property act) introduced to the Senate back in May.  However, we may as well include the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA, H.R.3261), introduced to the House in October, since it includes PROTECT IP.  That’s right; we’re not talking about Internet Protocol again here, although you would never know if you read the plethora of comments around the web regarding this bill.  This is all about updating copyright and trademark law to account for modern technology.  Sounds sensible, yet it has caused a torrent of rage across the internet—even from those who don’t actively visit places like The Pirate Bay–resulting in the mass voicing of fear of government censorship, loss of privacy, and the end of the internet as we know it.  Now that sounds like serious business.

  There’s a 2 parrot minimum for serious piracy.

 

Nate had originally posted a link on my Facebook wall to a site very much against these new laws, going so far as to  claim they would “break the internet,” and “stifle free speech and innovation, and even threaten popular web services like Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.”  Well, I guess that explains the hysteria because that would be pretty terrible.  Admittedly, this seemed a bit sensationalist to me, so I went ahead and read the proposed bills, and my suspicions were confirmed.  The bills simply seek to hold those who create sites dedicated to stealing IP to be held liable for their actions.  It stops there, as well.  There is no liability for advertisers and financiers, and there is no mention of prosecuting those who use the site; it is all about going after the owners and operators of the domain name.  Considering currently the RIAA sues individuals for each song they download, this seems like a better deal for the average pirate…err…consumer.

 “Yargh, but now where me be downloadin’ the latest Family Guy?”

 So what is this really all about, anyway?  Intellectual Property, the other IP, is all around us:  music, art, literary works, software, movies, any and all intangible properties created through intellectual processes.  We, as consumers, spend billions every year on IP, but yet it’s no secret virtual piracy in this digital age is rampant.  Illegal copying and distribution of IP has existed since the means to copy various forms of it were made commonplace in households (copy machines, recordable cassettes, VCRs, CD burners), but piracy really only became mainstream in the late 90s with the advent of digital music (.mp3 format) and the godfather of P2P (peer-to-peer) file sharing programs, Napster.  While Napster was ultimately shut down after just 2 years of service, the notion of “free” IP was already instilled into a significant portion of our society (at its peak, Napster had 80 million registered users, which was about 22% of worldwide internet users back in 2000).  Countless offshoots of the program were created, and are still around today due to legal loopholes including outdated law and jurisdictional issues.  Now billions in revenue are lost every year to piracy, and billions more are spent by companies to try to protect their IP.

The list of supporters of these bills to extend legal protection of IP to the internet makes perfect sense: the music industry, Hollywood, game and software developers, and basically anyone that offers digital content which is commonly pirated online.  Surprisingly (to me, at least), Google is against this bill.  I find it odd because they already willingly do so much with YouTube and their many other services to remove copyrighted material.  I guess this somehow fits into their novel idea to “make money without doing evil.” 

 Not even a little evil?

Unsurprisingly, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is against these laws just as they are against any sort of regulation of the internet.  Really, though, the EFF are the anarchist of the digital world; that is, their theory of absolute freedom sounds good on paper, but—once you realize laws exist because people naturally tend to group themselves with others who share similar beliefs (the basis of the many levels of society), and, as such, come up with agreements about how we all should treat each other with a certain level of civility (as low as said level may be)—absolute freedom just seems silly.

Regardless, we already established the fact these bills are only after those who run sites which serve no other real purpose than the illegal distribution of IP.  Social media sites do not fall under this category in the slightest.  So, that leaves the stifling of creativity and innovation, and the loss of privacy as the issues driving the outcry against this legislation.  However, since the legislation is only after domain owners, there is no reason (or even permission) to look into users of these services, meaning the privacy issue is non-existent.  Unless, of course, you are the owner of one of the soon-to-be-deemed-illegal domains, and your ISP will be legally obligated to turn over your information and block access to your site.  Beyond that, search engines like Google would also be obligated to remove you from their search results, but they don’t want to take part in your ill-gotten gains anyway.  As for stagnating creativity and innovation, I would think stopping the illegal use of other peoples’ creative and innovative property would promote us to create our own, original IP.  Maybe what qualifies as art eludes me, but setting a song you did not write to Japanese anime you did not draw to add to the other thousands of dubbed anime videos on YouTube does not seem all that innovative.

 Music only detracts from the profound revelations anyway.

In the end, PROTECT IP and SOPA are only trying to ensure those talented folks who provide us with countless hours of entertainment are properly compensated for their work.  It gives them a reason to keep creating.  It just so happens to be a beautiful side-effect less convenient access to other peoples’ hard work will force us to bring our own visions to fruition.  That is if the legislation is properly implemented, interpreted, and executed well enough to be effective.  Hey, it could happen.

Of course, the ultimate solution to stem copyright infringement would be to only come up with terrible ideas nobody would want to steal, such as a strap-on bovine “gas factory” designed to turn cow farts into biofuel.  Seriously.

The Internet of Things…Made in China

Internet technology is steadily improving by becoming faster and more adaptable while bringing more and more new internet-based technologies to the table.  Logically, internet penetration to users will continue to grow even beyond its current levels.  Earlier this year, the last of the 4.29 billion addresses of Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) were sold, but yet internet usage rates keep going up.  Fortunately, this was a long foreseen issue, and IPv6 is already up and running in some places to take over for the 30+ year-old IPv4.

Wait, what happened to IPv5?  It was developed in the late 80s, but it was never released for public use.  It was more of a stepping stone for modern internet applications, particularly streaming data.

Anyway, IPv6 offers 2¹²⁸ addresses, or around 30 quattuordecillion (45 zeroes), which is nearly 600 quadrillion (15 zeroes) per every square millimeter on the planet.  Seems like overkill, right?  Well, not so much when you consider the possibilities of every device you have being assigned an IP address.  A true worldwide web, if you will.  “No way,” you say, “that’s just crazy.”  Preeminent technology developers don’t think so.  IBM, as well as many others, expects The Internet of Things to be the future.  All of our technology will communicate with each other to make our lives more efficient and easier.  Corning, one of the largest glass and optical fiber manufacturers, has a wonderful vision of what the future can be with all of our tech working together.  It is not just a pipe dream, either; it is already happening as RFID (radio frequency identification) chips are included in all kinds of consumer goods these days.  IPv6 provides the platform for all this to become possible.

Of course, there are some potential downfalls to this new technology, but that is always the case with major advances in technology.  Technology, no matter how noble its intent, can always be used for “evil,” so to speak.  If all of our devices and goods can be tracked on the internet at any given moment, we have to wonder if we will ever have privacy again.  Not to mention I’m pretty sure I saw a movie about this sort of über network of machines.  It had to do with terminating oddly designed time traveling robots which were predisposed to terminating waitresses and annoying teenagers for some reason.  The title eludes me at the moment, however.

With a grin like that, how mean could he be?

Still, we cannot fear what might go wrong.  If our species was ruled by fear about what could be, we would have died off long ago, while we still lived in caves…naked, dirty, and cowering in our own filth.  Besides, we humans have done rather well so far in terms of inventing new things while managing to avoid completely unraveling society and life as we know it.  Well, mostly.

The powers that be may never forgive us for this.

Beyond the extra space, IPv6 is more efficient in just about every way, is more secure, and offers better support for mobile devices, use of which are on the rise globally.  IPv6 is not yet the primary platform for the internet in most places, but China happens to be one nation which is already putting it to use.  Particularly, they make use of IPv6’s ability to keep an IP address assigned as you move from network to network, essentially creating a sustained mobile connection across great distances.  Additionally, the overabundance of IP addresses offered by IPv6 solved China’s problem of having more high-speed internet users than they did IP addresses, and now China has plenty of room for growth in the next generation of internet technology.

Simply having near endless IP addresses is just the tip of the iceberg, however.  By developing IPv6 early, China is expected to move into the forefront of internet technology, as well as becoming a science and technology force to be reckoned with.  We all are aware of the whole outsourcing phenomenon which built China’s position as a manufacturing leader, but their work with the international organization that deals with the development of the internet—the Internet Engineering Task Force—to develop new standards has allowed them to have substantial input on the development of IPv6, which, in turn, provides China a significant advantage in the coming age of internet technology.  China is expected to have the capability of transferring data 100 times faster than currently possible, to stream video at unprecedented levels, and to have companies at the forefront of IPv6 infrastructure worldwide.  Besides global positioning, China will be able to launch CERNET2, linking over 160 various educational, government, and research institutions with the technology to conduct research and experiments in ways the world has never seen before, further securing China’s role as a science and technology leader well into the future.

I think this is a clear sign America needs to step back up to the plate.  If China can manage to stay on the cutting edge of technology while in their industrial revolution, we should be able to lead the way.  IPv6 technology will allow companies to operate at unheard of levels of efficiency than ever before.  Supply chain management would be flawless if companies knew exactly what we needed to buy before we go to buy it.  Easy integration of mobile applications will allow workers to do more while out of the office, as well as offer more ways for businesses to interact with customers (both to attract and retain), and open up whole new location-based markets.  We need to look forward to pull ourselves out of this economic slump.

On a side note, translation technology is on the rise in order to prepare for the inevitability of the various dialects of Chinese will become more rampant online.  Currently, English rules the internet, but the rise of Chinese text online will not mean English-speakers will be left in the dust, however.  I think we are on the verge of having on-the-fly universal translators straight out of science fiction.  Plus, cultural exchange online should increase exponentially with the language barrier decimated, and learning about other cultures is never a bad thing.

Why Hello There...

Greetings to the blogosphere!  I've been an avid internet user for over 15 years now--since the days when online social networking meant message boards, AOL chatrooms, and sending angry IMs to the guy on Napster who kept canceling your pirated song at 99% (we all used it, so don't look at me like that).  The point is, I've been spewing my opinions about a great deal of things to an untold number of faceless people (likely angsty teenyboppers for the most part), and I think it's about time I started sharing all my vast knowledge of the interwebs in a single place.  You know, uniformity never leads to bad things...*ahem*.  Oh, and here's a grain of salt to go with all my "vast knowledge."  Go ahead, take it.  Trust me.  You'll need a lot more.

Honestly, as a wistful, up-and-coming marketer, I really need to have a larger social media presence online.  A truth which was painfully made obvious to me when I missed out on a great job opportunity today just because I could not prove I spend most of my waking hours online.  So, it's time I stop lurking so much (for the uninitiated, that's net slang for the creepy guy who stands in the corner watching everyone else talk...or, uh, who simply reads a lot online without posting many comments), and start sharing.

My goal for this blog is to have a lighthearted sharing of information about marketing and business development, the modern job searching process, technology, and various other things which interest me at any given moment (I'm an avid gamer, so expect to see a lot regarding that industry).  Basically, if I run across something on the web I think warrants sharing or debunking, it will likely end up here!  You can take my opinion as you will, but, even if you do not agree with my reasoning, the information provided is probably worth a good look.  Remember, "There is no greater mistake than the hasty conclusion that opinions are worthless because they are badly argued." - T. H. Huxley.

I'm not here to persuade the masses to any particular cause; I'm just hoping to share some useful information and perhaps a couple of laughs.  That does, of course, mean the title to this blog is a bit contradictory.  Hard selling is a direct, high-pressure approach to making a sale, after all, and I'm not even try to sell you on anything!  With any luck, you'll find something useful amongst all my tomfoolery.

Thanks for reading (and helping me get that much closer to landing a marketing job), and stay tuned for my first real topic in the next couple of days!

Regards,

Mike Pergola