nickconfer
4k streaming will be more of a norm, and that will likely be enough for most users.
If the trends in ticket sales continue, it seems like theaters by and large could be a thing of the past. It really is not about whether a large group see it as still relevant, its can the theater business maintain a profitable industry if it loses x% of its patrons.
If ticket sales decline, profits shrink or losses grow. Changing the model another way might increase revenues for theaters (say a all-you-care-to-watch pass, which would likely increase food sales), but only if Holywood changes its revenue model as well. If they continue to charge theaters the same rates, that model likely wouldn't work well. Further, if Holywood had to lose revenue, would it be more interested to work with other streaming services first, or create a competing service, versus go to the theaters?
To me the MoviePass subscription company is almost a Trojan Horse. While they continue to burn and lose money, and grow subscribers, they are making their subscribers see their experience as the new norm. If they go out of business, these subscribers now have to chose if they want to pay for each pass again individually (very expensive in comparison). Likewise, if theaters and Hollywood make a deal, it cuts their own revenue significantly. Its almost a lose/lose situation.
All this is just some of whats hurting Hollywood and the theaters. You also have personal politics growing sharper, a Millennial generation that doesn't value these experiences as highly, a fundamental change in how reviews are looked at, no longer being as easily controlled (RottenTomatoes), 3D movies not holding peoples interest, etc..
Its a bumpy road that doesn't seem to be getting much smoother.
Fixing movies is a bit more difficult. It requires in some cases larger and maintained budgets, and possibly even eventual increased subscriptions costs, or new revenue models to sustain it. However, all indications seem to indicate this is a path they are willing to go down.
In terms of quality material though, or gaining knowledge in how to improve it, or updating the interface to highlight bigger must watch films vs smaller films, I don't think this is an unsolvable problem for them.
If they act aggitated, aggressive, nervous, rushed, etc... Thats most likely either their true personality or a real problem of their workplace.
When you ask to meet your coworkers are they nervous or friendly. Does their boss say anything nice about them... Etc...
They either take the deal Google has given them which is bad, or say no, and risk getting removed from YouTube and having their music uploaded by fans as lower quality streams. In other words, they take less money, or possibly lose everything while paying huge fees to send YouTube take down notices.
This is bad for the consumer in my opinion. I want indie musicians and labels to be able to make more money, not less. This further incentives musicians to look for another path of work.
Its disappointing that while technology is making it easier than ever to record and produce music, its becoming tougher and tougher to make a living off it.
You may want to send a follow up email with a quick link for the user to add a noindex meta tag to the page, or even password protect it.
1) If I search "self storage columbia mo" I get place results but if I "search self storage 65203" I do not get place results. I noticed this does work for food using a more familiar zipcode like 90210.. but maybe still a little zip code work to be done.
2) What about when I search "thai" or "self storage" in general. DuckDuckGo is known for not tracking the user, but if I search something that with location information would most likely provide place results, shouldn't I be given some type of indicator that with just a zipcode or city name I could be given better results? That way you are educating new users while still providing them the results they need and the privacy DuckDuckGo is known for.
I think you've started a very interesting discussion here with you're comment. The 10x cost reference was a good point, but computers not dropping value over time also seems more feasible.
1) You need capital to buy the machines to give out and slowly collect $60 on. Once the capital runs out, more is needed, but without getting capital quick enough, new customers have to be turned down, growth slows, and capital becomes even more difficult to acquire.
2) Since the tech and product can be easily purchased by anyone, there is room for other businesses to enter the space quickly and drive a pricing war. If large chains got involved they could offer a lower price and push local same day service.
3) Machines break. Without a hassle-free return / warranty, customers will likely get frustrated, refuse to pay, and make collections very difficult.
Not to say it can't be done, the leasing industry is fairly large, but I'd thought I'd share my thoughts on the problems that might arise. Reminds me of when they did PCs for 19.95 a month plus internet for a contract term.
They've created an interesting model here though.. Its basically free or one price, unless you're really big. If you're really big, they ask you to talk with a sales person, but clearly state a starting price (which I've seen few sites with a "contact us" do) to get the ball rolling.
Ala Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Vine, Pinterest, Path, OKCupid, Github, etc...
When you compare the apps currently out that have been updated, you can see a lot of companies are struggling with flat design. Something that seems simple, is actually very complex to pull off, but when done right, can be fantastic.
I think it will be a while before the ecosystem fully recovers and most of the best apps around have figured out how to execute flat design well.
It usually gets fixed pretty quickly though.
1) something useful they need 2) cost is low enough that they don't need to get approval
Keep in mind your dealing with programmers on Hacker News, but most non-programmers don't think anything is necessarily simple or easy to recreate.
Great job, and good luck on future sales.
1) Apple has more active credit cards than Amazon.
2) If someone were to purchase a book on an iOS device it is more likely they have an active credit card on their account than an Amazon account with an active credit card.
3) One payment system is easier for customers to understand and trust.
Steve's wording here may have indicated better technology in his mind, but I doubt that is true, given amazons incredible focus on taking credit card payments accurately and quickly. Reasonably though the reasons outlined above would be good reasons it was better overall, even if it really wasn't consumer friendly in the end because of the lock-in.
I have to agree with Microsoft here. It seems they are doing everything they can and getting no clear responses. It's funny because this is the same type of junk that happens to small dev companies submitting to app stores in general, however that doesn't make it right. And when you are talking YouTube, which pretty much has a monoppoly on many different types of video content online, it's quite ridiculous to say its ok for Google to do this in the long term.
It doesn't seem like this would go away though. Each of the big streamers are building a specific base set of streamable content.
Amazon is focused on newer films more so than Netflix and Hulu.
Hulu is focused on new television content, with some original programming from overseas shows mostly.
Netflix is focused on older television and movie content, with stronger original programming.
HBO Go will be new movies and strong original content.
Right now there is certainly room for all of these services... I think in the future its highly likely we'll see other channels make a stronger stream crossover (like Comedy Central, Food Network, ESPN, etc..) and we'll basically have content streaming channels. In that world, Netflix, Amazon and HBO GO are still strong, but Hulu might start loosing content or have stronger competition, and that could be problematic.
If you paid for anything contact the companies that are already tired of us and have them solve your problem. Oh and by the way, try our new Google Play Game Service! Hurry, before it's gone!
David Morin appears to want to build a company for the long term, and so selling to Facebook (his old workplace) to kill the project seems unlikely.
They definitely pose a threat to Facebook's stream quality if they do continue to grow. They could pull an Instagram and take away the Facebook share feature, or make it less useful. Something that could backlash on them, but doesn't seem to have affected Instagram's growth. If they grew too large and did something like this, it could effectively reduce the number of quality posts on Facebook, something you could argue it already suffers from depending on your current Facebook friends and likes.
I agree that spam can be used by companies sometimes in desperation, but there doesn't seem to be much evidence this was the case. Of course, we have no idea what really happened behind the scenes.
So they upped it to 150, and now they are seeing users in the 50 range they originally wanted.
First, I'd imagine a second double tap will instantly unlike something or something similar to that nature. Secondly, users will just get used to the feature and work with it.