An archive of my writings from 2007 till 2011. If you're interested in the recent stuff, visit my Tumblr at dvirreznik.com.
Season 8 of Israel’s leading comedy/late-night show, Eretz Nehederet (A Wonderful Country), starts shooting soon, and in the meantime they started publishing short clips online.
The latest one is a parody on the world’s famous mobile game – Angry Birds, with a Middle-eastern twist 馃檪 The English version was published 4 days after the Hebrew one and already surpassed it by # of views. Even received a share from Jeremiah Owyang on facebook.
Enjoy!
I was very excited to hear the 2010 Emmy Winners, specifically Jim Parsons’ (Dr. Sheldon Cooper) win for The Big Bang Theory, Mad Men’s 3rd consecutive win for Best Drama and Modern Family‘s double win, for聽Best Comedy and Best Supporting Actor. Well deserved!! Watch them.
Picture part of a photo gallery, by Rolling Stones, ‘Inside Mad-Men‘.
I came across this story a while back and faved it for later, which is now. Innovation is defined as聽a change in the thought process for doing something or “new stuff that is made useful” (from Wikipedia). The following example focuses on the change in the thought process of a company’s CEO, and the actions he’s taking to keep his company in the lead.
Netflix Strategy - The Future
Reed Hastings, Netflix Co-founder and CEO, uploaded a presentation last month, called Netflix Business Opportunity (RSS readers click here). In the 40-slide deck, Reed quickly reviews Netflix performances to date and shifts to the future – threats and opportunities, and what his company must do in order to continue the growth and lead the market.
Netflix - The Future
In a candid inside look into his own company, Reed is saying ‘Our main revenue stream is dying, we need to find and cultivate a new one’. That’s not an easy statement to read, yet alone write, for a CEO. The DVD-by-Mail service will grow for 3 more years, but streaming will eventually replace it. If Netflix wishes to grow, it must focus on ‘a single segment of the streaming market, where we can gain and maintain leadership’.
Netflix segment - to lead and maintain leadership
How Netflix intends to gain and maintain leadership? By Democratizing Innovation, meaning leveraging the company’s assets – its customers and employees. Reed explains the threats to the company’s new strategy (Pay-Per-View, Piracy, Cable/Sat/DVRs, Direct/Online/Free, etc), but also how to compete with them – providing superior customer service, improving subscribers’ satisfaction, creating amazing user experience, and keeping subscribers raving about Netflix (among others).
Democratizing Innovation
The complete deck is embedded here, definitely worth the reading time. I know that once Netflix launch in Israel (expanding international begins 2010) – they have my vote, and subscription.
Although I stayed up for the first 45min of the game last night, I saw no commercials.. 馃檨
Luckily, there’s the internet.
Lior Zoref wrote about his favorites, Bilal did the same, Jon Borg talked about Hulu’s revolution – Mitch Cohen went all the way and provided the link to all of them, over at adweek.com. Thanks Mitch!
Here’s my (and Lior’s) favorite, Hulu with Alec Baldwin:
The local internet scene is humming and buzzing for the last few months now, with new portal designs and the annual TV/Internet festival.
Only yesterday I read several posts and comments about Channel 2 latest announcement – mako.co.il, which was suppose to be the new face of Channel 2 online and instead reduced to ‘just another news portal‘.
The internet has definitely changed the way we consume content – my single source for information is definitely the web, being internal or external. Thanks to bandwidth and UGC I can now watch complete episodes/sketches of The Colbert Report, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, SNL and others anytime I want to.
Why this intro? Well, I’ve been following Gal Mor‘s blog, Holes in the Net, for some time. He’s a savvy internet producer/consumer, and although (or maybe bacause) managing the Dev. dept. of Ynet.co.il, his insights into the space of content, internet and UGC is a must read. The new mako.co.il got low reviews from Gal, who put together an excellent post, disecting the different parts of the site. One might say that Gal is a bit biased, as mako.co.il competes with Ynet.co.il, but as Gal (and the comments) concludes, mako.co.il should be more focused on video, rather than ‘plain’ content. We want Video On the Internet.
What interest me is the fact that Channel 2 already has a video presence online – it launched IsraelNews at YouTube a month ago, with some clips on the ‘behind-the-scene’ action at a news room (and watching Yonit Levy up close and personal for 2:16min can’t hurt either.. 馃槈
That’s the kind of VOI I’m talking about. Even Yonit is saying that the internet provides the extra screen time they need, putting the full 15min interview instead of the 4min cut for the news item.
Bottomline – nice to see Channel 2 are taking risks, leaping into the VOI space, but they need to walk carefully. Already there’s some confusion between mako.co.il, israelnews, ch2news2, reshet.tv – some strategy and direction may be needed.
Danny Koshmaro welcomes YouTube viewers:
Why IsraelNews at YouTube is important (Yonit Levy):
Videoblog with Aharon Barnea at the US Elections:
