Blockbuster 2011: Time to Pack Up

by Aanarav Sareen on February 21, 2011

Blockbuster

At one point, Blockbuster used to be the go to place for renting videos. Although their collection was fairly limited, it was the only big player in town. The transition from VHS to DVD was easy. Same content on a different physical medium. Recently, despite desperate attempts, the company has failed miserably to transform from the physical generation to the online generation.

Of all the physical media businesses (books, music CDs, etc.), Blockbuster should have seen it coming a long time ago.

iTunes became popular.

eBooks came onto the market.

People started renting DVDs online.

So why did a company the size and negotiating power of Blockbuster not do anything? They continued to rent DVDs at almost double the price of their nearest competitor, had ridiculous late fees and failed to form partnerships at a time where every medium was going digital.

They should have predicted it by looking at CD sales. They did not. They should have learned from Netflix’s model. They did not. They should have come up with a streaming model. They did not.

When Hulu, a startup has come so far in the past 3 years, it’s baffling why a multi-billion dollar organization failed to sign any deals with their long-term content partners.

Out of everyone remaining in the current playing field, Blockbuster had the best leverage — content. Comparatively, Netflix and Hulu are newcomers.

As someone who used to visit Blockbuster quite frequently a few years ago, it’s still shocking to see that the company hasn’t learned. Their retail stores are packed with junk and there’s no ability to request content that isn’t in store. Even free public libraries have that feature.

As one of the leading forces of content less than a decade ago, why didn’t Blockbuster partner up with hardware manufacturers to leverage a full-fledged streaming service?

Nearly every new device today has Netflix. Hulu is also striking deals at a rapid pace. So, why didn’t Blockbuster?

Over the past 3 years, there has been no improvement in how Blockbuster operates and what it offers. In the digital space, that’s an entire generation.

As much as Blockbuster enjoyed its past, it’s time to pack up. A company that can’t innovate or experiment is a company that consumers don’t want.

Social Media Advertising Budgets

by Aanarav Sareen on February 7, 2011

Social Media

Advertising has come a long way. Something that was once a true luxury is now affordable, thanks to Google, Yahoo!, Bing and many others.

Small businesses can create an account at either of the fore mentioned sites and start creating highly targeted ads. And, it works.

A new addition to that category is social media advertising, the largest being Facebook. As a site with hundreds of millions of visitors that relies on personal information, it’s a good tool to measure brand loyalty and awareness.

However, when annual reports about advertising spend are made public, social media advocates are usually the first ones to say that big brands aren’t spending enough on these new platforms.

They’re wrong.

One of the reasons traditional advertising is expensive is because it’s exclusive. There’s a process to get an ad on TV or in print.

That process and barrier of entry doesn’t exist online. Facebook advertising can be as low as $0.05 CPM. TV advertising is at the very least 100 times more expensive.

Given the significant cost difference, there’s no reason for advertisers to spend the same amount of money. Allocating 50% of spend towards digital and 50% of spend towards analog is foolish and doesn’t accomplish any business goal.

Advertising is bigger than platforms. It’s about reaching the end user. And you reach a user with a combination of different mediums. Not by listening to a social media advocate.

2011: Focusing on Sync

by Aanarav Sareen on January 1, 2011

iPhone. iPad. Laptop. Desktop. Home Computer. Work Computer.

As the number of capable and connected devices have grown, it has become even more important to keep data across all these devices in sync. Rather than having a primary computer, all these devices have become complimentary for day-to-day use. However, managing these devices and making sure that no content gets lost in translation is a significant issue that very few companies have managed to address. Here are a select few ones that are doing it well:

  • Dropbox: Dropbox has been around for a while and their introduction video makes it clear as to what the service is capable of. Dropbox can be installed on a number of devices and any content added to the Dropbox folder will automatically get synced across all devices.
  • Simplenote: As a relative newcomer in the sync space, Simplenote is a great way to sync text files across various devices. Supports a number of different devices.
  • Jungledisk: Perhaps the most complex and robust option is Jungledisk. Primarily designed to be a backup tool, once configured correctly, it could be ideal for large files with great reliability (I currently back up over 100GB+ of data via Jungledisk).

2011 should see a lot more sync services that bridge the gap between different devices.

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