Street Spirit is an independent Bay Area “publication of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) that reports extensively on homelessness, poverty, economic inequality, welfare issues, human rights issues and the struggle for social justice”. AFSC generously pays for this publication to be printed and then hands it out to homeless people to sell to support themselves. It’s a great idea, and I want to be clear that this post is not a criticism of AFSC’s goals – it’s an admirable organization, and I only want it to succeed.

The problem: people are not especially altruistic.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is an essential concept for anyone dealing with humans as part of their job. It’s quite simple: we have different levels of needs, and it’s hard to focus on the higher levels (example: creativity) when we don’t have the lower levels taken care of (example: breathing).

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Giving a homeless person money is arguably part of the “Esteem” level. While one might suggest that it’s self-actualization, I posit that most people like to advertise when they are donating to someone. While some morality is involved, a great deal of our motivation is gaining respect of others.

However, more important to humans than Esteem is Safety. This doesn’t just mean physical safety – it also includes financial security. And dealing with the homeless exposes our brains to the possibility that we too could, potentially, end up with no money and no home.

So the Safety requirement of our brain is fighting with the Esteem part of our brain…and most of the time, we just look down and walk by that homeless guy with the Street Spirit.

Part of the problem with Street Spirit currently is that it’s full of political articles about the homeless. While, again, it’s admirable that the AFSC wants to help inform us, this is again triggering the Safety-fearing part of our brain. Not only do we have to confront the potentiality of homelessness when buying Street Spirit, but we also have to read about it? No thanks. 99% of people I know who buy Street Spirit don’t ever read any of it.

The solution: make this a product that we want to buy. Appeal to both our need to seem like a good person AND our personal desire for entertainment.

Make Street Spirit an all-comics newspaper and the homeless will make a lot more money.

We all love comics. Pretend all you want, but anyone who reads a paper is just waiting until they have read enough of the real content to feel justified in reading the funny pages. The opportunity here is this: nobody reads newspapers anymore, but they still want to read the funnies.

Seriously. Find some independent comic strip artists (or see if you can’t get some big-name webcomic artists to contribute) and try this just once. I guarantee you’ll see a huge increase in sales. We get our Esteem, the homeless get some cash, and the world is a slightly better place.

If you’re not familiar, follow the link. I won’t claim any superiority here: I absolutely and completely thought this was real, and spread the story. It was clever and well-done, and the creators deserve credit. However, this is a terrible thing for people in the social media space.

Cheapo executives are now going to re-focus on the notion that if you hire the right people and post on Twitter enough, something is guaranteed to be viral.

I’ve been in this position before: “create something viral, Evan, and keep it cheap”. The problem is that you can’t fully predict what will become viral. Sure, there’s more and more science around virality that can increase your chances, but at the end of the day there is still too much chaos to be able to really predict what will go viral (one article states “Mind-opening and emotionally rich articles are more likely to make the most emailed list, as are more practically useful, surprising, and positive articles.” Wait, so you mean GOOD articles?). You can post at 11am, include pretty girls, make sure to make it lo-fi, etc…but you can’t guarantee a hit. Much like a musical hit, it’s part talent and part randomness (or part huge-amounts-of-money, at which point you can’t really call it viral).

Don’t point out Old Spice Guy – I think (thankfully) that most executives saw that there was both a great deal of effort put into this campaign as well as a staggering of the different parts – they were ready for the character not to catch on and to nix the YouTube campaign.

But White-board Girl is the epitome of cheap & viral: written on napkins, shot with a cheap camera, not promoted by celebrities. I wouldn’t be surprised if within minutes of the announcement that she was fake that executives were emailing their underlings saying “do this”.

Am I suggesting that viral content isn’t something we should strive for? Absolutely not. But viral content is fire, fire, fail, fail, aim, aim, fire, fire, fail, MAYBE win. Don’t bet on anything more than that.

A disclaimer: I don’t listen to a lot of new popular music because I’m weird and picky.  I’m sure there’s stuff that is better that I haven’t heard (or at least you think it’s better). These are my top songs, so take that as you will.

Them Crooked Vultures – No One Loves Me & Neither Do I

Choosing the best track off of Them Crooked Vultures was difficult.  If I were going for best groove I’d call out Gunman.  Most intruiging might be Bandoliers.  But No One Loves Me & Neither Do I is such a brilliant combination of pop, rock, and HEAVY that you can’t help but rock the hell out to it.  Just try.

Golden Shoulders – Little Nixon

Fantastic band from my hometown of Grass Valley.  Every song this guy writes is great, but this one stands out as one of the best on “Get Reasonable.”  Great digs at George Bush without being heavyhanded (like 95% of Bush songs).  Fantastic music that is hard to define from one moment to the next.  Makes me want to flail about.  Win, all the way.

(track can be heard at http://goldenshoulders.com/music.php)

Heartless Bastards – Could Be So Happy

There’s something so happy and beautiful about this song. It’s got a dark side, but the acceptance of one’s own issues is an important part of getting past them. Erika Wennerstrom’s vocals are not the most beautiful, but they strike me as completely honest and I can groove to that.  The Mountain was possibly the best surprise of the year.

Wilco – Wilco (the song)

Deny it all you want, but this song is great.  Wilco (The Album) is certainly not my favorite Wilco album, but “Wilco (the song)” is great.  For anyone who’s ever hid from the world in their headphones, this song proclaims “tired of being exposed to the cold/the stare of your stereo/put on your headphones/before you explode/Wilco’ll love you, baby”.  Amen.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Soft Shock (acoustic)

I was not a fan of the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs album.  I love the YYYs intensely, but I wasn’t a fan of their transition from raw and original to a ripoff of every hipster electronica band. However, the acoustic bonus tracks on the special edition of It’s Blitz! are strikingly beautiful in comparison to the fuzzy robotic tunes on the record proper.  “Soft Shock” has an incredibly unique set of instrumentation that suggests folks but then goes somewhere completely different with the melody.  I could listen to this song for a long time.

(acoustic version not available for streaming)

Monters are not Myths Song I’m Most Proud Of – Netcat

It’s impossible for me to objectively rate my own songs, but I’m extremely proud of how “Netcat” turned out on our new album, Corporate Grown.  Most of this is thanks to the brilliant band behind me, including the awesome banjo of Clide Lynne of The Paper Crocodiles.  Call me a shameless promoter, but I want everyone to hear it.

Hope you all a happy new year with lots of great music!

I’m not joking, not really.  While this is only speaking from my personal experience and conversations with others, I suspect that most piracy is not for profit.  People grab their favorite clips and post them online because they think that they are hilarious and need to be shared with the world.

In the last few years the struggle between studios and privacy has been one of threats, inaction, and bitching.

This year we’ve seen a dramatic turn from the bitter fighting over video rights online to an embrace of the open nature of the web.  It’s truly amazing, and not something I expected to see happen so fast.  Let’s look at two examples.

Hulu

Hulu is a project that I (and many others) harbored intense skepticism towards during it’s development.  The whole concept of the television studios ganging up to create a rival to YouTube seemed childish, and we all expected them to do a horrible job.

Whatever the intentions, the people who actually built Hulu did an amazing job, and my personal TV watches has almost entirely moved to Hulu.  I’ve heard many others raving about it, including the usually skeptical Michael Arrington.

Why do jaded Web 2.0 users like Hulu?  They’ve done a few things right, and a few more great.

Giving The People What They Want
Hulu could have gone the cowardly way and only offered up lame, old shows that nobody was interested in.  Netflix faced this issue with their “Play Now” option…studios only OK’d stuff that was unlikely to get rented anyway (although their selection continues to improve, and I love watching SeaQuest on Netflix).

Instead, Hulu has provided some of the top shows on television: The Office, The Daily Show, House, The Colbert Report, The Simpsons, 30 Rock, Saturday Night LIfe, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and Family Guy (a YouTube favorite, which currently has 88,100 probably illegal results).

Don’t Be Stingy
When you hold all the power, it’s tempting to stingily hand out goods at the slowest rate possible.  Hulu managed to resist this, and their shows often show up the next morning.  It’s hard to beat the experience of waking up on a Wednesday morning and watching The Daily Show from the night before while still in bed.

Hulu does sometimes set experation dates on their shows, but they make this very clear.  I think the average consumer understands that if they want constant access to a whole season they should buy a DVD.

Monetization Is Changing
In a move that is in some ways more innovative than any monetization work YouTube has done, Hulu has started offering the option to watch a full-length trailer or ad (like the Tropic Thunder trailer seen in this image) in exchange for not showing any other ads during the episode.  I assume (and hope) that they’re tracking this and adjusting their advertising appropriately.

Innovation
One of the most innovative features to come out of online video in the last few months didn’t come from YouTube or any of the newer “Web 2.0″ video sites…it came from Hulu.

Being able to select any part of an episode and send/share it as a clip is probably the most obvious and brilliant answer to the multitude of Simpsons clips on YouTube.  And Hulu does it very, very well, making sure to suggest that you might want to watch the rest of the episode after your clip is over.

Monty Python on YouTube

Along with Family Guy clips and embarassing teen confessionals, Monty Python is a common search on YouTube. With over thirty thousand results on YouTube, it’s safe to say that this is money lost for Monty Python, who aren’t exactly actively promoting their old (and brilliant) material.

But, in a move humerously described by John Cleese as “deeply disappointing”, the comedy troupe has started a YouTube channel and is offering high resolution versions of their videos for free. This is a brilliant move for several reasons.

If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em
In their introductory video (embedded below), Monty Python jokes that “for three years, you YouTubers have been ripping us off, putting tens of thousands of our videos up on YouTube.” It’s funny, but it’s also true, and probably a bit irritating for them. Yet instead of throwing a tantrum, the Pythons made the smart move to work with the existing trends and technology instead of uslessly flailing against them. In admitting this, they give YouTubers some credit and foster a sense of belonging instead of reluctant surrender.

Transparency In Advertising
A lot of advertising I see online feels like an apology. “Sorry, I had to slip this in to be able to keep doing this for a living”. Worse, they are often purposefully ignored. “Ads? What ads? Oh, how did those slip into my blog?”

Refreshingly, Monty Python has ignored this. They know they have a piracy issue, and they know that online video does not monetize nearly as well as TV.

The solution? Ask.

Monty Python simply asks their raving fans to do them a favor and click their ads. Simple as that. During a the “Ministry of Silly Walks” video I clicked a Bombay Sapphire ad. Would I have done that on a normal video? No. But I did it for Monty Python, and actually discovered a cool recepie widget on the Bombay Sapphire site.

Listen To The Wisdom of the Crowd
Again, instead of taking the stingy path and only putting up the less funny Monty Python skits (if there truly are any), our British friends took a look at the most popular Monty Python videos on YouTube and worked to get those up as the first hi-rez videos on their new channel. They listened, and will likely be rewarded by a number of views.

Is The War Over?

Nah, of course not. Many TV studious (notably ABC) have not gotten involved in Hulu, and many companies still work to try to sue people who are “stealing” their videos instead of working to satisfy these people. Still, it’s impressive to see the progress made this year and encouraging to think that even large companies can wise up and come up with something as smart as Hulu. Next up, the music industry?