Media Bands

For most of media history, the creation of a full media package has had to involve many professional people. Whether it was a book (or other forms of printed content), a recording (or other forms of audio content) or a movie (or other forms of video content), the production of media goods have traditionally involved multiple people, starting with the basic creator, continuing with his or her editors, and ending with the packagers who put finishing ancillary touches to the product.

Over the years, many such structures crystallized, providing gainful employment to all those involved in the content creation chain. This portion of media creation was then followed by a supply chain surrounding the complete packaging, marketing, sales, and distribution (and not always in that order) of media pieces.

In the early 1990s, with the rise of the Internet and development of web based media, many outfits started emulating the traditional models surrounding media creation, focusing only on the fact that distribution costs were lower than they were for traditional media. So people talked about online magazines, online TV shows, etc… attempting to replicate the old business templates on this new world.

In each case, an interesting phenomenon developed: the packaged output became the brands that were known, with the vast majority of the people who created that media brand being largely unknown. For example, a publication like Time magazine or Business Week would be recognized as a popular media brand but few of the people who wrote, edited, and generally packaged it were as well known. With the rise of television and movies, some sub-brands started emerging, with actors and directors getting more recognized and becoming more important as brands that the studios or channels that were carrying their latest offerings. As such, individual talent started getting some level of recognition, and it became possible to build brands around an an individual.

With the rise of the web and the lowering in the cost of media production and distribution, whether it is for printed media (blogs), video (YouTube), or audio (MySpace, LastFM, Pandora), it became possible to establish virtual teams that quickly banded for an individual effort and disbanded once that effort was completed. So individuals started getting more noticed, with certain blogs being single-man or single-woman operations and building new brands around that person (in this context, TNL.net qualifies as my own personal brand but could be considered as a sub-brand of Tristan Louis, which is spread across a wider audience).

Media Brands

Meanwhile, certain forms of media brands emerged organically because of the input of thousands or millions of individuals who contributed their effort for free. Think, for example, of the mostly anonymous contributors that wrote and edited most of wikipedia. I would call this category of people bands. The name on top (Wikipedia) can continue to exist with or without the current contributors as new contributors can come in to replace the ones who have left.

In a way, the people who have not established themselves as individual brands run the risk of being forced in an out from under other brands. A writer for Bloomberg today can easily be a writer for Business Week or Fortune tomorrow (this is precisely why Bloomberg became a content creation powerhouse by surprise as no one paid attention to who was creating the content).

Challenges

Depending on the side you are on, new issues are about to arise. On the media band side, the contest for supply and demand is going to get worth. Non-internet media brands are generally packed with tens or hundreds of people producing a very glossy, very professional package most of the time. By contrast, internet media is produced in an unfinished form, updating stories as they go along with feedback from other sources as well as from the people who read or view the content. In the battle between individual contributors, an equilibrium eventually arises, sorting the truth out thanks to the balance of input from different parties. This means that the process of editing is no longer in the hands of editors but it becomes a collaborative effort from everyone touching the media product at hand.

On the other side of the spectrum, the media brands now have to compete with a larger set of brands. As distribution costs move close to zero and the established structure of media creation can be replaced by a participatory model where the brand is mainly involved in the business of curating input from its consumer/producer, the rise of individual curators as individual brands is reshaping the competitive landscape. When a single individual can reach hundreds of thousands of people on a regular basis merely by writing and sharing in public, the economics of brand stardom start falling apart.

With content creation and content curation now getting so close to each other that they will soon embrace and form a new model of media, created in a much cheaper fashion, in partnership between the media initiator and his/her audience-communicators, traditional media organizations will have to get focused on creating media that is not only to be consumed but that cannot exist without active participation from its consumers/creators.

Shows like “America’s Idol” or “Britain’s Got Talent” are starting to present this media band approach, while wikipedia has already demonstrated it works in new gathering and efforts around user-generated content in journalism, whether it is of an entertainment nature (eg. Gawker) or investigative one (eg. the undoing of George Allen or the Walter Reade Hospital scandals being covered by bloggers until mainstream kicked in).

And now, I will turn it to you, my media band, to help me build on this scaffolding of a concept.

The many faces of subsidized media

Do you buy the media you consume or is the media you consume subsidized in some way?

For the most part, one could argue that, in the United States, media is subsidized. When mentioning that word, most people will think of government subsidies but, while such subsidies exist in countries like the UK (eg. the BBC) or France (eg. France 24), the subsidies tend to come from more commercial sources.

We will look into that type of subsidies a bit later but let’s first look at one form that people seldom consider as a subsidy: advertising.

In the USA, such subsidies come in the form of advertising, which often represents the largest part of the revenue pie for newspapers, magazines, television, radio, or web media. The cost of a particular item is generally lower than one could find in Europe and consumer behavior treats such media accordingly, as a potentially disposable consumer good to which little value is given. This creates a particularly tricky situation for most media outlet as they are seeing their advertising margin erode, the result of greater efficiencies and return on investment presented by web media.

Genesis of low ad rates

In a way, such wound is self-inflicted. Once upon a time, in the early days of the commercial web (a bit over a decade ago), traditional media looked down on the new media. They treated it as something of little value and many of the larger media outlets decided to toss their online space as a freebie in exchange for richer ad buys in traditional media. Of course, they continued to apply the same ROI metrics to this emergent form of media, forcing many of the online components of larger corporations to figure out way to make their cost structure more efficient while presenting advertisers with a better value than their offline brethens.

I remember finding myself in several meetings, when working either as a full-time employee or consultant to media outlets small and large, in meetings where traditional media salespeople would “toss in online for free.” Eventually, advertisers started demanding online media and continued asking for lower costs on it, creating a prisoner’s dilemma scenario for most media organization as they all knew that the ads could go to their competitors if they didn’t acquiesce to the deal. Online media was now seen as inexpensive and, save for a few publishers who argued based on the merit of delivering a narrow but highly targeted audience, cost remained low while inventory continued to be very high.

Then came Google, which not only showed that online media could stay cheap but could also be offered on a performance basis, leaving advertisers with close to a dollar’s worth of value for every dollar they spend, something that just wasn’t true in the offline space. It was then only natural that the price pressures that had driven online media down be applied to all media.

This is slowly sending media organization into a death spiral as low ad costs force a reduction in costs associated with producing media content, which results in a lowered interest in that content from consumers. Those consumer have eyeballs which the media companies are trying to sell to advertisers and when those go away, it puts even further pressure on media cost. I call this the ad rate death spiral:

Why ad rates keep going down

And that’s the first problem with the current crop of ad-subsidized media: the model is just not sustainable because the cost of production for most media can never go to zero.

So where does that leave most media organization?

Advocacy Media

One option is to go with a different subsidy source. For example, some organizations could get rid of the pretense of impartiality and look to get subsidized to advocate a particular viewpoint or philosophy. In Europe, for example, many publications receive substantial parts of their funding from political parties. They are propaganda tools of those parties used to further the party’s agenda. While they are not fully subsidized by those parties, they are known to present a viewpoint that’s in line with the party’s ideals.

While many would argue that this could not work in the United States, there are substantial precedent to highlight that this, in fact, is an avenue that more media organizations could explore. The federalist papers, for example, were largely embracing a set of ideals from a limited constituency and were largely funded by those who espoused the ideals presented. In fact, one could argue that most newspapers have, at one time or other, been tools of certain political forces. To carry such alliances on their sleeve might actually result in a more diverse and balanced set of stories.

Non-Core Media

A different solution is to look at media as an non-core adjunct to a corporation, there to give the corporation a sheen as a corporate citizen that does good. Where it not for its pre-existing history as media company, one could argue that the Washington Post is now such a corporation, as it derives better margins from the services it offers through its Kaplan test preparation organization than it does from its news and media operation. The issue one could find with such balance is that it works as long as the shareholders are happy with the idea of a non-financially optimal media operation. This situation does not seem like a sustainable model in the long run because it could expose such corporation to the chances of a take-over or change in ownership control through acquisition. No family, no matter how much of the corporation stock they control, is so virtuous that it might not break at a certain price point, as was witnessed with the takeover of Dow Jones.

Paid Media

Another route would be to change the public they serve completely by embracing their consumer as the people they sell to.

The reason I create that distinction is that currently, most media is not looking at their consumers as the customers they are serving. In advertising, the actual customers of media companies are the ad agencies and ad buyers, with the media consumer being the goods sold and the content being there solely as a way to deliver more eyeballs to the advertisers. By moving to consumer-focused media, organizations could radically redefine the relationship they have with the people who consume their content, treating them as customers instead of products.

Of course, the model may not work for everyone as it requires a change in the way the media product is marketed. When shifting to “paid media” where the consumers pays a fair value for the media they consume, the product position has to be one of value to the consumer. Bloomberg can deliver such value to the people who pay thousands of dollars yearly for access to their product because the content is of value to those consumers. NPR tries to position its programming as being a lifestyle choice by its consumers, asking them in pledge drives to join the NPR tribe by paying for some of the programming (but let’s not fool ourselves, NPR is more of a hybrid model as its “supporters” can include large corporations that contribute to show their “social responsibility”).

Consumer Reports is another example of such “paid media” as are smaller publications like Lapham’s Quarterly, for example.

What are the challenges?

The challenge presented by the paid media model is one of how much? How much can one charge and how much can one cover. And this comes back to the question of content value to the consumer. Certain tribes can exist but how does one cover the “important” stories? Is that something that can only be done via advocacy type media? Or is there a different model that mixes parts of subsidies with higher paid models?

How it started

When I first started classifying media as entertainment vs. information, I was looking for a basic answer as to how to resolve the contradiction of having organizations like CNN, MSNBC, and FoxNews, classified in the same category as Bloomberg News, the Wall Street Journal, or the Financial Times. Each seemed to appeal to a certain audience and each of the audiences seem to be very distinct and thus interested in very different things.

For example, the sexual behavior of many politicians may serve as great meat for the 24-hour-newscycle of cable TV channels but financial newspapers would pay scant attention to them. On the other hand, in-depth analysis of the decision making process around changes of 5 basis point in an interest rate might garner an audience in the financial world but may only merit a 15 second mention on some cable news channels. That disconnect seemed to only get sharper over the last year, as the world economy teetered on the brink of total financial collapse but most of the TV channels seemed more interested in attacking or praising a particular political point of view.

Why this axis?

Answering a question about where on the entertainment vs. information axis a particular media organization can fall gives us insights into some of their potential business strategy.

The production or discovery of facts or information is generally a more time-consuming and/or costly production than the production of opinion or entertainment. For a simple measure, think of the cost of a reporter doing an investigate piece either in a war theater or about a financial institution; Having thought of that reporter, now think of a different reporter interviewing a TV or movie star who is promoting the latest vehicle he/she is in. Because the motivations are different and the amount of work to feed those motivations is different, the business model needs to be different.

Entertainment

As I mentioned earlier, I consider organizations like Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN to be more deeply ingrained in the entertainment side of the house.

This, by the way, is no accident: Rupert Murdoch is a savvy media man first and a politician second. He was the first in his industry to realize that it would be cheaper to put opinion on the air and focused on delivering such opinions to what was then an under-served customer  niche: people who are of more conservative leanings. This is why Fox News can exist under the same roof as the definitely racier and more left of center fares delivered on the Fox TV network. The network appeals to a different audience but, by serving both, a near-full coverage is achieved in terms of advertising reach.

The recent success of MSNBC in reproducing the FoxNews model but for the more liberal audience seems to validate the model: Keith Olbermann is the Bill O’Reilly of the left.

But one must realize that the value of entertainment as a business model is driven by the idea of maximum return on investment: the production costs are cheap, the consumers are aplenty and while they may not be willing to pay, someone is generally ready to subsidize the lower costs in exchange for access to that audience. For example, book publisher love giving their authors away for free interviews if they can get them because it helps promote their books; movie and TV producers push their stars to give interviews for free too so the movies and TV shows they are in get an audience (a form of virtuous circle of entertainment); and political parties or organizations pushing a particular political agenda are happy to deliver “research” and “experts” that can be used to produce news-like segment.

Because most media organizations in the United States are profit-driven corporations, the appeal of those lower production cost is hard to resist.

The challenge to that segment of the axis is that entertainment is based on the available mind share one can capture. Every time an audience member is moved from one TV channel to another, or from an internet site to another, the place where he/she was loses some value. And, in recent year, the mind share and attention share traditional media used to get has been diminishing because new form of entertainment have arisen. The sheer volume of videos posted on YouTube alone means that, even if 99% of them are awful, 1% will find an audience and drive it away for whatever period of time the end consumer is engaged with that one percent.

So the margins on entertainment media are bound to become a little tighter in the future which will push that end of the media spectrum to move further and further into the sensational and traffic-generating space. This, in turn, could mean more of a focus on formulaic type of content that is known to appeal to a broad segment and hoped to appeal to a wider one.

Information

But information driven media is different. Information tends to be something that is actionable and therefore something that is more valuable. When people speak of information media, they generally focus on the business-focused content category. But why do so?

A lot of information is usable to someone. For example, I am sure that politicians enjoy sentiment-related information (poll numbers, data on how the population feels about an issue); gamblers find use for sports-related information; medical professionals and other scientists keep up with research in their field to come up with more breakthroughs; companies, of course, need industry-specific information to better position themselves.

But professionally created and vetted information is expensive to produce. In the past, such information was produced and vetted by a cadre of professionals with deep knowledge and some level of recognition within the arena they would cover. On the more extreme end, the producers were the subject of the news themselves (for example, most of the scientific journals are written by the scientists who have done the research in the first place).

And the other interesting thing about information is that it can have some stickiness.

But the tricky part is that most information is of no interest to most people. And some information may be of value in terms of public good but not necessarily of actionable value for most people. That, unfortunately, is the case for most of what is presented as “news” in newspapers. Town councils, officials corruption, issues surrounding policy making are things that need to be covered in order to create a proper functioning democracy but have little value outside of having a properly functioning democracy. And few people are willing to pay to keep democracy working.

Enter two new phenomenons: the wisdom of crowds, and the self-correction of personal interest. Let’s assume for a moment that crowds can actually be led one way or another. But, as we all know, for every action, there is an equivalent reaction. So we could extend on the idea that any system is bound to eventually become self-adjusting when all interests start fighting for its own share of whatever is at stake. On most policy issue, there will be two sides, with each side arguing passionately that its position is the correct one.

So one could assume that the self-interest of individual sides could lead to the rise of advocacy media or at least politically-aligned media. In such a model, “information” may be gathered and presented by self-interested parties. The consumer is then left to evaluate the pieces of information aimed at him/her and see if it confirms his/her own biases or is or isn’t more factual. This, by the way, is a model that exists in a lot of democracies around the world (France, where I originally lived, still has newspapers that are clearly aligned with political parties) and I would argue that the penny press was probably more akin to this model than what we know today as newspapers.

This brings another qualifier on the information slide, which would allow us to analyze the level of bias in a piece of information. Some may argue that doing so would be abandoning the concept of objective reporting but I would argue that such concept has been largely a chimera: whenever a reporter chooses one quote over another, or frames a questions in a particular way, he/she imbues the reporting with some form of bias.

What’s the take-away?

Entertainment and Information are important dividers in assessing media property. Understanding that divide can help us better under the potential risks or reward associated with such. Entertainment media is cheap to produce but does not necessarily create real value; Information media (which may have differential level of biases) is not only valuable in both short and potentially longer run but could be dependent on a self-interest effect.

In the next entry, I will examine how the media is paid for and what that may mean for some segments of the industry.

Media as a Mode of Delivery

In most of the conversations about media, the discussions centers on modes of delivery. People talk about television, radio, newspapers, magazines, or the Internet as media. Under that definition, the way a piece of content is transported appears to define what that piece of content is. It’s an odd approach that seems to put more emphasis on the how than on the what, that really believes that the envelope is more important that the message it carries and this offering seems like a flawed assumption in many ways.

It would seem foolish to consider the telephone a media form so why do we treat the television or paper as components? They are channels and nothing more and the hand-wringing around delivery to those channels seems based on the flawed assumption that the mode of transport is more important than what is transported.

There is an inherent danger in that flawed assumption as previous industries which failed to recognize the business they were in found themselves displaced and ultimately delivering value into the hands of a single player that concentrated its power by offering itself as the primary toll-gate on another form of distribution. The music industry circa 2001, for example, believed that it was in the business of moving plastic goods known as CDs and let Apple take what was written on those plastic goods, the music that is ultimately the value created, and delivered it over the internet. To this day, many in the music industry still believe that CDs are how music ought to be distributed, leading to such high performance act as Danger Mouse’s decision to just release a blank CD-R when the labels wouldn’t let him release the CD otherwise.

Today, newspapers are focused on finding better ways to move paper; magazines are focused on increasing profit margins against physical goods; TV channels are still arguing over number of viewers in a single sitting and radio is partly organized around two competing models: one where people and corporations pay in a coop form to get some form of programming created and distributed and another where advertisers count numbers of earlobes they are reaching. Even on the internet, some people still believe that the passage of masses by a web site has some level of importance.

In each case, the players are focused on the distribution and not the product and yet, the distribution medium is only one end of a relationship that needs too.

In the Middle

Because if you look at the core definition of a medium, it’s something that’s in the middle.

But in the middle of what? Trying to assess this becomes a little more difficult. Obviously, a good is produced and it is consumed. Focusing on that equation may get us closer to establishing the right model for media in the future because it forces us to admit that what we know today as media is not a single thing but a variety of things:

• On one dimension, it could be listed as going from entertaining to informative
• On another, it could go from being considered as purchased or subsidized
• On a third axis, it could be treated as mass generated or professionalized

In three simple dimension, we can break down most of the known media industry.

For example, take newspapers: They strive to be middle of the road between entertaining and informative, with a bias towards the front section of the newspaper being informative and the back section being entertaining; They also range from the completely subsidized approach (free advertising sponsored newspaper) to the heavily subsidized model (most newspapers). And most tend to be more professionalized, with professional editors and reporters building most of the content.

Magazines run the gamut, but largely focus on entertainment (the delivery of information is generally left to a much narrower portion of the market knows as newsletters); they are, for the most part heavily subsidized goods and mostly professionalized.

In the TV space, the news channels tend to be moving further and further into the entertainment arena (I would group opinion as a form of entertainment); They are 90+ percent subsidized as their main goal is to serve the advertisers and only a portion of their revenue is coming directly from consumers through some of the cable system carriage fees.

In radio, NPR is balancing between entertaining and informative; the interesting thing is that it is the closest thing to a purchased good as the group tends to attempt to get its consumers to ante up for their consumption; and it mixes mostly professionalized goods with mass-generated content (call-in shows, for example). Other “news” station tend to focus on the entertainment part of the equation (talk radio is focused on keeping its audience as engaged as possible) and fully subsidized (advertising based) and mostly mass generated (talk show host merely serve as the forum administrator ensure that like minds confirm their own bias or vent to each other).

On the Internet, diverse sites can run from pure forms of entertainment (celebrity or gossip blogs, for example) to heavy information delivery (generally more niche focused publication); they are also all over the place in terms of models, ranging from the fully subsidized model to the fully purchased one; and one could argue that they tend to also run the gamut in terms of mass-generated vs. professional production.

While I have given you a short preview of each of the dimensions, I would like to focus the discussion around particulars so I will delve further into each of the three dimensions in the next few entries.

Understanding iTunes LP and iTunes Extras

For the near future, Apple’s dominance in the mobile entertainment market will remain uncontested. Entering its 8th year, the iPod has successfully morphed from an interesting new player in a small category into an all-purpose platform spanning the breadth of the audio consumer electronic landscape, portions of the mobile phone business, and while its AppleTV business is still lagging, the introduction of iTunes LP can easily be seen as part of a revamp for that platform.

The company talked a fair amount about the ability to add extra content to music tracks, forming an experience that is much more akin to that of a music LP. But let’s stop for a second and think of what a stereotypical Apple customer might look like? Somehow, the immediate image that pops in my mind is not someone who was born prior to the late 70s.

Sure, now that the iPod line has established itself as the dominant line in the portable entertainment consumer electronics world, one can see a lot of people over 40 sporting the devices but truth be told, most of Apple customers are probably younger and, to them, LPs are either something that belongs in a museum or falls in the category of music snobs. The sit-back experience and add-ons that came with most LPs is not how they have ever experienced music and it is highly probable that they will not change their behavior because Apple believes that retro is cool.

The music experience is more of an ambient one, where the track itself is the thing and where even music videos have mostly fallen by the wayside (YouTube killed the video star?) In today’s short attention span world, extra attachments to media exists in two places: on DVD and on BluRay disks, technologies best experienced when dealing with a TV screen.

In fact, when delving into the details of the iTunes LP specification,developer Jay Robinson discovered the following:

The LP frame seems to have a width and height of 1280×720. This is nice, but means I get ugly scrollbars all over my 13″ MacBook screen.

The resolution seemed interesting as I remembered it from somewhere but had to think about it for a few minutes (I’ll get into that in a the next paragraph) but it was fascinating to me that one would experience ugly scrollbars on a MacBook. Say what you want about Apple products, ugly is not something that generally comes to mind. In find, the fact that things were ugly on a computer monitor immediately gives us clues into where Apple may be going next. Since we can safely assume that Apple would not push something ugly out the door, we can also assume that the 1280×720 resolution is no fluke. And since it looks ugly on a MacBook, we may think of where else this type of media can be consumed.

720p?

1280 x 720 is the kind of 16:9 ratio that is found in a 720p high definition video mode. That mode has become more or less the default low end mode for high definition and is how most television broadcasts in the US and Western Europe are handled. It is also a format that most plasma or LCD TV can handle. But also of note is that it is the highest resolution format offered in terms of movies and TV shows sold through the iTunes store, and the highest resolution HD video resolution now supported by AppleTV players.

So we now have a clear sign that the iTunes LP content seems specifically formatted to be best experienced on a TV screen and it seems that Apple’s recommendation would be to use an AppleTV to do so.

And then, this week, Apple retired its low-end AppleTV and dropped the price of its mid-range (now entry level) offering by one third. Such a move is not just based on the idea of moving units but appears to represent a potential need for disk space and anyone who looked at the size of a DVD or Blu-Ray disk can attest to the fact that such video offerings can chew up space relatively quickly. And extras tend to add a fair amount too, which seems to increase the need for space if you are intent on renting or selling DVD or Blu-Ray like content via the Internet.

Add to this the general reluctance Apple has had to supporting Blu-Ray in their computer hardware platform (the main advantage of Blu-Ray, according to its advocates, is the ability to display video at a higher resolution format than 720p) and it seems Apple is gearing up for an assault on that category (especially since the problem of extras is now solved by iTunes Extras).

720p Recording

Meanwhile, on the Mac, the new operating system came out with a version of Quicktime that removed ability to support plugins for extensibility. While Apple is already a strong player in the video editing world, offering both professional (Final Cut Pro) and consumer (iMovie) tools, it is also interesting to note that they are starting to introduce light editing video capabilities directly into the operating system.

We already know that the iPhone 3G S can record video, a key feature of the offering, and we’ve just witnessed the introduction of video recording capabilities within the iPod Nano (and we can assume that it’s only a matter of time before the iPod Touch gets its own video recording capabilities) but here’s where it gets interesting: the iPhone 3G S could theoretically shoot 720p video as all the hardware to do so is there.

The rise of YouTube and the success of Flip cameras have shown Apple that a portion of the consumer market is interested in recording and viewing video. While the YouTube offerings tend to be generally of a lower video quality, the introduction of 720p as a default recording chipset in Apple’s offerings appears consistent with the company’s attempt to cater to a higher end whatever market it enters.

So it would seem to be a normal progression for Apple to eventually move its product lines to producing 720p content that can then be redistributed.

Today, that exporting can happen via synchronizing one’s iPhone’s GS or exporting content to iTunes, YouTube, or MobileMe from Quicktime X. MobileMe and YouTube appeared to make sense but why export to iTunes?

A user generated marketplace

The success of the iPhone as a development platform has surprised many, myself included. In the short span of a few years, Apple has created a marketplace that is rumored to be selling US$200 million a month’s worth of application software in increments of about a dollar. If you’re making 30 percent of that revenue by hosting the apps and handling the distribution, you might notice.

I would venture that there are now a number of discussions around Apple as to how to reproduce this phenomenon across other categories. With the rise of YouTube, Last.fm, MySpace, and other, Apple is now also witnessing the rise of the independent and while the company has had some success in bringing video content to the iTunes store, it has not been able to get the rich margins it is getting from the music industry (something the music industry now appears to regret) and from iPhone developers (who, for the most part, are not large companies) from TV and movie producers.

True, the company now offers rentals and sales of video content but what if it could open up a marketplace where every independent content creator could distribute content? What if independent movie-makers or musicians could sell directly through the iTunes store and provide content on all the apple platforms (TV, iPod, phone, computer) with a single click. I suspect that many would be willing to give up 30 percent of their revenue in order to get to that public.

The components all seem to be there and it seems to me that it won’t be long before Apple starts pushing the idea that we are all content producers (an old idea at Apple, which was at the source of their creating the iLife suite) and we can all make some money at producing that content. Having done so, Apple would not only have control of the music industry but could also assert itself in the TV and movie space.

But this year is also a little different. Kubler-Ross no longer applies as most of us have cycled through all the stages by now. But, with the passage of time, it is possible to start getting an historical perspective and draw parallels to other times. Doing so might remind of us of Georges Santayana’s edict:

Those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it.

Cruel month

September does not seem kind on New York. While most of us will spend time remember the events that, for my generation, marked the end of innocence and forced us to grow up, there have been other disasters both past and recent that have befallen Gotham.

A few generations ago, on September 16, 1920, one of the deadliest acts of terrorism on American soil targeted Wall Street: 38 people died and 400 were injured on that day, thanks in part to the poor timing of the perpetrators, who detonated their explosives shortly before the lunch hour. In the next 24 hours, in an act of defiance to the terrorists of the time, the bodies were removed, the street was cleaned up, and the stock market reopened the next day, kicking off an era of continued speculation known as the roaring twenties, a run that would end a bit over 9 years later.

The crash of 1929, which is often seen as the start of the great depression, did not actually happen in September but it is interesting to note that the beginning of the decline started in September with the stock market reaching its peak on September 3rd, 1929, followed by a 17% decline for that month. In other words, the speculative bubble brought on by increasingly complex financial instruments (margin positions came of age in the 1920s) for the time and speculation in the real estate market (the 1920s also marked the age of the skyscrapers, with such towers as the 40 Wall Street and the Chrysler building rising above the city).

Last year, in the first weeks of September, a bubble brought together by increasingly complex financial instruments (Credit Default Swaps) and increasing speculation around the real estate market, similarly brought the world economy to the brink of financial disaster. In those short weeks, the US government had to bail out Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG; Lehman Brothers went under, eventually bought out in bankruptcy court by Barclay’s. Wachovia, Merryl Lynch, and Washington Mutual all ended up being gobbled up by other banks; Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley changed their legal status to allow them better government protection; Similar economic activity quickly spread to the rest of the world, almost pushing some countries to go bankrupt (eg. Iceland).

The still on-going economic destruction arising out of that catastrophic month will continue to have a toll not necessarily calculated in human lives lost on a single day, as we did on 9/11, but it is very possible that the toll it will take on all our lives (and potentially on some lives lost) will be a strong and as long.

Parallels?

After the towers fell, on 9/11, and after the world had managed to cripple his operation, Osama Bin Laden swore to bring the US to its knees economically. And yet, it was the recklessness of our own people that almost became the tool of our own demise.

To say that 9/11 scarred us is to ignore a deeper, and somewhat more uncomfortable truth: much like the terrorist attack of 1920, the attack of 2001 did not stop us from becoming agents of our own financial demise. And while many of us will still grieve today and remember the friends and family members we have lost, the rest of the nation will look to this as an aberration, asking people why they have not moved on yet.

The answer, sadly, is that we, New Yorkers, we, the survivors of 9/11, we, the ones who lived through those horrible events and can still tell their tales, have yet to receive what we were promised. Sure, one will point to the fact that there is, finally, after 8 long years, a foundation for new buildings at ground zero, the truth is that there is still a hole in our skyline and a hole in our hearts.

We may or may not have liked the towers before 9/11 but we are still missing them. And so, as a sign of healing, the nation had promised us that it would never forget and that it would build new towers, maybe even higher and more magnificent, as a defiant sign that America does not give, America does not give-up and that terrorists may tear down our buildings but they could not tear down our optimism nor could they destroy our ability at turning adversity into triumph. The new towers rising above ground zero were supposed to be our phoenix, rising ever more beautifully out of the horrors of that day.

8 long years later, we are still waiting.

Scraping the sky

In the olden days, things were different: 90 percent the New York subway system was built, using private funds, in 4 years; the Woolworth Tower: 3 years; the Chrysler Building and 40 Wall Street: 2 years; and let’s not the city icon, which was built after the wall street crash.

Between its excavation starting on January 22, 1930 and ribbon cutting ceremony on May 1, 1931, the iconic Empire State Building was built in a mere 13 months, helping lift the spirits of New Yorkers as it showed that financial crashes may devastate us but that we, New Yorkers, we, symbols of American power, can still build amazing thing amazingly quickly. In a way, the Empire State helped lift the spirit of an earlier generation when it needed it most and that is what I would have liked to see happen at ground zero.

Sure, many people will say that the rules are different now, that workers’ protection and union powers slows things down. The argument might hold water if it weren’t for what happened over the rest of New York: The Time-Warner center was built in under 3 years. Same for the New York Times building; The Bank of America tower: 5 years, injuring more people in the process than were injured during the Empire State Building’s construction.

3 major skyscrapers since 9/11/2001, none of which is at ground zero. So why can’t we get a single tower over ground zero?

In 1931, a shinning beacon of hope rose above the city when the city needed it most. After eight years, WE are still waiting for ours.

In Memoriam

Carlos Dominguez, Mark Ellis, Melissa Vincent, Michael DiPasquale, Cynthia Giugliano, Jeremy Glick, David Halderman, Steve Weinberg, Gerard Jean Baptiste, Tom McCann, David Vera.

The Valley: Detroit for Technology

The claim center around the fact that New York is not keeping up with technology because the technology industry in New York is not moving as fast as it is in the silicon valley. And so, I’d fully grant that it’s true. In fact, New York is also not keeping up with the car industry because Detroit seems to be doing a better job of that and has been since the 1940s. Sure, it has a tower named the Chrysler building but let’s face it, Detroit is producing many more cars than New York. In fact, Detroit’s impact on the car industry is much larger than that of New York.

Reading the previous paragraph, you might be thinking that it’s a very silly analogy. And it is there not only for effect but also to point out that any comparison of New York to the Valley is based on a flawed assumption. The assumption is that such comparison can have merit. For the last 40 years, Silicon Valley has been a single industry area: the technology industry. Most major technology innovations have come from the valley (with the exception of software licensing, which came from a place a bit north of that: Seattle).

So, as New York is not and will never be the leader in the car industry, nor will it ever be a leader in the technology field. I’m just hoping that the valley will never suffer the same fate as the epicenter of the car industry is feeling right now. Being based on a single industry, in the long, is a pretty scary concept and the lack of diversity can sometimes be fatal.

New York: Diverse by choice?

Interestingly, it is New York’s diversity is part of what has made it more resilient than most cities in the United States and the increase of one industry over another is what generally hurts it. The rise of the financial world as a substantial employer in New York has hurt the tax base and lowered the employment opportunities in the city. The bubble and subsequent explosion of the real estate market in the late 1980s and early 1990s did the same thing to the city, lowering property values to the point where real estate was cheap enough for 20somethings like myself and others to think about starting new companies, giving rise to what came to be known as Silicon Alley.

Embedded in New York’s success is the abandonment of industries: New York could have been the nation’s capital but Madison, a quintessential New Yorker sent the US government further south in exchange for control of the economy. New York could have been the center of the movie industry (most of the early movies were made in New York) but that title went to Los Angeles, where real estate was cheap. New York was, for a few decade, the center of the advertising world but the title ended up getting shared with Chicago and London.

The truth is that New York creates industries, takes a portion of them, and lets others become single industry towns:

• US Government: Started in New York, now in DC
• Oil: Consolidated in New York (Rockefeller), now centered around Houston
• Steel: Consolidated in New York (Carnegie), now centered around Pittsburgh
• Media: Started in New York, Movies (and some TV) now in Los Angeles, Radio diffused, print
• Advertising: Started in New York, now shared with Chicago and others

The result is that each brings something new, including new tensions and conflicts as one industry tries to dominate the others or establish a place of prominence for the heart of New Yorkers. However, in each case, they end up being put back in their place and shown that diversity is what makes New York what it is and that rule from a single industry would hurt the very fabric of what made it one of the truly global centers.

The exception: Money

But New York understands that two things make the world go round: Money and influence. Ever since the political leadership was taken out of town, New York has defined itself as a city based on commerce (one could argue that even before the revolution, New York was always about commerce, something that becomes evident when you realize that the dutch sided with the British when they realized that it could hurt their economic interest to not do so and did so again during the revolutionary war when it became clear that war could be profitable business).

Due to both geographical advantage and the foresight of its administrators, New York became the first port in the country and, in the process, became the place where trading and financial management were done. The country came to New York for money and New York dispensed its money to the country. During the robber barons era, this lead to New York helping consolidate industries and create monopolies. When those were dismantled, New York held on to the financing aspects of those industries, even if the other portions went away. Through that, it gained control.

So while the valley is leading in tech, the financial aspects relating to financing all those technology efforts are still based in New York. Yes, most of the tech VCs are sitting on Sand Hills but the truth is that their funds are generally funded outside the valley. Of course, it makes no more sense to argue that the valley is behind New York on funding technology than it does to argue that New York is behind the valley on tech innovation. Each has developed a long history and set of capabilities around one area so such comparisons are moot.

The crash and what next?

With the rise of increasingly complex financial instruments in the last few years, it is true that a lot of programmers ended up being hired by Wall Street. However, the other thing that is true is that such phenomenon has been a hallmark of Wall Street since the 1980s. Yet, a portion of the Internet industry did grow in New York in the 1990s. And to be honest, a similar phenomenon happened in the most current (aka Web 2.0) cycle.

The big difference is in the way Internet people in New York and Silicon Valley comport themselves. Because New York is so diverse, our local media is not as focused on what happens in the tech scene as the local media is when it comes to the valley. And because our tech scene is generally quieter, it also tends to be more insular than the valley scene: people who innovate on financial applications in the Internet space may not necessarily rub shoulders with people who innovate in the media space relating to the internet or people who innovate in the commercial space on the Internet.

In fact, the closest thing to a center, as far as the Internet crowd is concerned in New York, is the New York Tech Meetup, which meets once a month, as it has done for many years now. Each month, 5-10 local start-ups get  a chance to showcase their wares. Small companies like Etsy, delicious, fotolog, kickapps, or thumbplay (and many others) have all demoed at an event organized using technology provided by local company Meetup.

But truth be told, none of them really advertises their affiliation with New York that much because, to a large extent, that affiliation is insignificant. They do not define themselves based on WHERE they are but rather based on WHAT they do.

And, almost more importantly, none of those companies were created by people from the financial industry. The techies in the financial world are happy in their sphere and few actually cross path with those in the internet space. Different groups, different industries, different people.

So will the collapse of many Wall street firms mean the beginning of an exodus from the financial tech community towards startups? I doubt it: there is little cultural fit, and there are still ample opportunities on either side. People who are naturally drawn to finance-related type of computing will find positions in that field, even if its remains more competitive; and people who are looking to launch start ups will continue to do so.

New York will continue to have a tech community that is smaller than Silicon Valley’s and, truth be told, that’s just fine. Because each have advantages and disadvantages but ultimately, each can serve as the host to the next big thing, no matter whether they are based on El Camino Real or on the L line.

It has a relatively low but highly dedicated audience and is garnering good press both in the blogging community and the mainstream media.

The service is suffering from growth related issues which force it to be down at unexpected times but users put up with it because of its supposed transformational nature.

The service allows people to build things on top of it, offering external parties a greater chance to generate revenue than the company providing the service.

And, establishing further proof that service is going to be important in the future, a lot of mainstream stars are establishing presence quickly, only to slowly abandon those points of presence after a while.

But those stars are no different from most of the service’s users, which tend to abandon it only a month of two after trying it out.

What is that service called?

If you said Twitter, you are clearly reading this in 2009. But, only two years ago, the answer would have been Second Life (something I learned first hand, having been part of the hype around it back then).

of course, I have no doubt that this post will probably receive a high amount of flames because supporters will tell me how Twitter is different. But is it?

The Coral Reef

I’ve always had an affinity for Dave Winer’s Coral Reef analogy. However, even the coral reef analogy seems to eventually break down, leaving people like Winer to think of ways to move out (in a way, Winer fell into the same trap with Twitter as Scoble did with Friendfeed).

The issue here is that a lot of energy gets poured by developers into supporting an ultimately closed system. While artificial coral reefs exists, they are generally part of the larger ocean and tend to be pushed into creation by sinking boats or subway trains. But an important distinction is that the creator of an artificial reef is generally present at the creation but then lets the ecosystem take over and doesn’t try to control anything.

In the tech field, the best analogy for an artificial coral reef would be opening sourcing an important source of code (for example, the apache web server) or making a set of protocols or ideas open to all (eg. HTML or RSS) without requiring that the implementor cede any control to the party which made the code or idea available. Today, you can fok the httpd server if you feel like it or you can adapt parts of HTML or RSS to your heart’s content.

Fauxpenness

But there’s a different set of ecosystems out there that becomes more of a venus flytrap of technology. I would describe this as fauxpenness:

Fauxpenness: Calling a system or platform open while it is, when more closely scrutinized, under the tight control of its provider.

Fauxpen system (or fauxpen platform): a system or platform that claims to be open but, upon closer examination, isn’t.

It’s the kind of approach that pretends to be open but provides some level of lock-in.

In 2006-2007, we saw that happen with SecondLife, as many developers (myself included) built software code that could run within the SecondLife world but was ultimately stuck there because you could not run it outside that world and/or run SecondLife servers on your own machines.

in 2007-2008, we saw that happen with the F8 Facebook platform, which locks your applications inside of Facebook and, while many developers have pushed to force the company to open up, tends to stay there. In 2007-today, we’re seeing the same thing with Twitter, which allows you to build whatever you want on top of it but doesn’t decentralize their approach, leaving developers potential slaves to the whims of the company. The same is true of the iPhone, which provides unusual access to the phone operating system and allows to develop interesting software on top of it but still keep developers away from being able to access basic things like calendar information via an SDK.

The endless cycle

Interestingly enough, it’s not an unusual phenomenon in the technology world. It works like this:

It happened with SecondLife; it happened with F8; it will happen with Twitter and it will happen with the iPhone at some point. It appears that the natural course of locked API is to get to a point where the developers get so annoyed that they decide to go look somewhere else.

But there’s hope.

Breaking Free of Fauxpenness

Because of the lock-in, it is possible for companies to break free of the cycle. In order to do so, two things need to happen:

• First, the company needs to find a way to establish a business model that does not require lock-in
• Then, the company needs to start removing the lock-in components it offers.

I’m not saying that either of those step is an easy one. In fact, few companies have successfully managed them and, even when they do, the developer community will keep asking for more.

For example, Microsoft’s history is one of establishing initial lock-ins, weeding out the competition and, when its lead is established enough, relaxing the choke-hold it has on the developer community and playing a little nicer until it tries to enter another market. That was the case with Windows; it was the case with Office; and it is the case with IE today.

IBM also took the same approach, initially being a provider of proprietary systems and slowly, over the last 15-20 years, moving to become one of the largest supporters of the open source movement.

So let’s delve into the list:

Text (SMS Messages)

The main challenge to the “Text” application was due, in large part to the fact that it was initially submitted as “SMS Messages”.

For every application that goes through the rigorous approval process at Apple, the first thing that is done is reviewing whether the functionality of the application is provided by an application that was previously approved. In the case of “SMS and MMS Messages”, the word “Messages” triggered all kinds of alerts as Mail had previously been approved. It was thus decided that any messages could be sent via email.

The developer resubmitted the application after removing MMS functionality, pointing out that this application would not be able to send pictures, thus not replicating mail functionality. The argument failed the appeal and the application was rejected again.

The approval only came when the developer resubmitted the application as “Text” describing it as an application that allowed a user to take notes, as long as he/she didn’t have to cut or paste anything. This was considered OK and the application got to green light.

Calendar

Calendar was another application that had multiple difficulties in getting approved. Initially called “Rendez-Vous” to evoke the French’s aesthetic design sometimes appreciated in certain corners of the Apple world, the application was rejected when it was discovered that Rendez-Vous had once been another Apple trademark.

The developer proceeded to resubmit that application as “Calendar”, figuring that the Microsoft-sounding name might pass some of the constraint of the fascist-like approval board. At that point, the application passed two thousands levels of sign-offs but, as it was about to get its last needed signature for approval, someone pointed out that a calendar could be used to schedule illicit behavior. This led to an immediate rejection.

It is unclear as to how the application was reinstated but the names Schmidt and Bohner appeared to have something to do with it. Our assumption is that those are top secret projects related to devices we have yet to hear about.

Camera and Photos

The Camera and Photos application ended up being submitted as part of the same package. Internal notes point to the fact that they are one and the same.

When first submitted as “iPhoto”, the application was quickly rejected because it reproduced functionality available in the Apple product line and infringed on an Apple trademark.

In order to increase his chances, the developer decided to cut the application in two and offer them as separate ones that would hopefully go to different app-rovers. Little did he know that all applications are treated equally in the world of Apple approvals and denials.

In the case of Camera, the application was initially rejected because it could be used to take pictures of future Apple products. After code was changed to ensure that the iPhone was explode if such pictures were taken, the Application was approved.

Photos was a little trickier. It was thought that “naughty pictures” could be stored using it, which make endanger the fragile nature of some iPod and iPhone customers. But after the developer explained that the limited space available on an iPod or iPhone would primarily be taken by illegally copied music, leaving little space to such naughty content, the application was approved.

YouTube

The primary product of YouTube is to show user generated content. But few people know that the initial YouTube application allowed users to upload videos of their cats to YouTube. Because that “upload” feature was included into the application, it was initially decided that it would endanger AT&T’s network, end the world as we know it, and probably destroy the very fiber of society. As a result, it is only natural that such application would initially be rejected.

Apple’s legal department stepped into the fray to help rescue this application based on the little known legal statute establishing the tattle doctrine. The legal department assumed that if the RIAA or MPAA were to come after them for the amount of illegal content they’ve enabled users to use without controls, they could always point out to YouTube as being even worse, therefore driving the RIAA or MPAA lawyers away for a long period of time (or at least until everyone in the world had bought an iPod and subsequently upgraded to an iPhone.)

Maps

Due to Apple’s close relationship with Google (at least, at the time), Maps was seen as an easy thing to implement. Not only would it demonstrate the greatness of the iPhone but it would also show developers that there were two classes of citizens in the Apple development community: those who have a market capitalization still north of Apple’s and are not named Microsoft, and everybody else. Members of the first class could initially have applications available on the device. Smelly developers (aka everyone else) could develop web applications. This only worked for the first release and eventually, Apple had to relent to offer the App store we’ve all come to know and love, freeing the Apple development from the shackles of… oh nevermind.

So back to the Maps. They were initially rejected because certain towns had names that cannot be repeated in polite conversation. After Austria and Pennsylvania were removed from the maps, the application was approved.

Stocks

This application was considered dangerous to many users as it might lead them to invest in companies other than Apple. Submitting the application, the developer figured that he would default choices to Apple and Google. The choice of Apple helped internal discussion but the application was initially rejected on other grounds, as can be attested by the following rejection letter:

We’ve reviewed your application Stocks. Because the stock market has been on a downward cycle and tends to make our users cry, we have determined that this application is of limited utility to the broad iPhone and iPod touch user community, and will not be published on the iPhone.
If you choose to provide additional features that utilize iPhone functionality while tending to the mental well-being of our customers, your application can be reconsidered for reinclusion on the iPhone deck after you resubmit a new binary to us.

After agreeing that the only stocks that can be listed in the application are stocks that go up, the application was approved.

Weather

Sometimes, the weather can get you into trouble. When the developer of this application submitted it, it was assumed that few things could be consider as plain and boring as the weather. The rejection came in less than an hour after the application was submitted. Here’s the text in full, with attributions being removed:

Thank you for submitting weather to the iPhone approval process. We’ve reviewed your application and determined that we cannot include this version of your iPhone application at this time because it contains objectionable content which is in violation of Section 3.3.12 from the iPhone SDK Agreement which states:

“Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users.”

The objectionable content referenced in this email is the use of the words “Hot and Wet”. These words tend to appear in many salacious sites on the internet so we suspect that your application would fit into that cesspool. Since the app is already available on any iPhone, please make the necessary changes to the application as soon as possible, and resubmit your binary to us. Thank you

After many emails going back and forth, it was agreed that weather could be hot or humid but never at the same time.

Clock

Apple’s unfortunate history of collusion with terrorist was responsible for the rejection of the clock, because the timer function was felt to look too much like the timer on bombs in many Hollywood movies.

After ticking sound was removed from the application, it was approved.

Calculator

Deep in the heart of every iPod user is someone looking to hide collections of pictures you do not want to see. It has been documented that the iPod and iPhone calculators are really just secret doorways to Sodom and Gomorrah. Unbeknowst to the developer who initially submitted the innocuous (or is it?) calculator, the approver assumed that nothing as boring as a calculator would be included on an iPhone and that, therefore, it must be an application that nefariously hid its true intent. Since such intent was not specified, it could only be bad so the approver rejected the application.

As was the case for Calendar, it is unclear how Calculator ended up approved. Through what appears to be purely coincidences, any witnesses we tried to discuss this with died within seconds of agreeing to talk with us.

Notes

This one was caught into the unfortunate Snafu that allowed Text to be approved. As approvers assumed that Text was a notes taking application, due to the fiendish way in which its developer had managed approval, they just assumed that Notes was providing duplicate functionality and rejected it.

The application developer then resubmitted it, claiming it was a tool for making shopping list. That was enough to get it approved.

Settings

When this application was submitted, the iPod shuffle was a great success. It was thus decided that providing settings was “of limited use to iPod and iPhone users.”

However, when someone pointed out that this could be used to sell users ringtones from the iTunes store (and allow them to change them), it was approved.

iTunes and the App Store

Nah, just kidding on those two. They were always part of the phone and always approved. However, it is interesting to note that iTunes came first, followed by the App Store later. The initial application called “Send more money to Apple” was judged to have to lengthy a name.

Following is the first part of a list of the first 18 applications to have been initially banned on the iPhone, along with relevant information related to the rejections. Those bans were eventually reversed, allowing applications to make their ways into the phone. In this first part, we will look at the big 4: Phone, Mail, Safari, and the iPod (the next entry will examine the other ones).

Phone

It comes as a little known fact that the approval process almost killed phone functionality on the iPhone. The original developers had a hard time getting the application approved, as can be seen in this initial rejection letter:

Thank you for submitting Phone to the iPhone approval process. We’ve reviewed your application and determined that we cannot include this version of your iPhone application at this time because it contains objectionable content which is in violation of Section 3.3.12 from the iPhone SDK Agreement which states:

“Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users.”

We have heard that so called “phones” can be used in a number of ways including communicating secrets related to the internal working of large Cupertino-based companies located on Infinite Loop to people outside said companies. Please make the necessary changes to the application as soon as possible, and resubmit your binary to us. Thank you

After many emails going back and forth, it was agreed that any mention of words picked from a still secret list of product names and companies names would result in the phone immediately losing signal and the call being dropped. A secret message would also be sent to an undisclosed location identifying the people involved with that call.

Mail

The second rejected iPhone application was a little more understandable. After all, Apple is known for its simplicity and the fact that the company tends to remove redundant functionality from its devices in order to ensure the best user experience. While little visibility is given into the decision process around defining what what gets approved or banned, TNL.net got hold of internal transcripts of the discussion that led to eventual ban of the Mail application. Here is the abridged version, as we wanted to protect sensitive information:

Reviewer 1: Hey, we’ve got this mail application here, looks like it does (shuffle of paperwork to review what information has been submitted)… uh e-mail.

Reviewer 2: I’ve heard of that. I understand you can contact your friends with that and write them notes.

Reviewer 1: Why would you want to do something like that.

Reviewer 2: (pauses) uh.. well, let’s say you wanted to tell a friend a joke

Reviewer 1: You mean like call them on the phone and tell them a joke, looks like it’s reproducing existing functionality.

Reviewer 2: Hmmmm. Maybe but you could also use it to communicate information to a lot of people in one shot. For example, if you were a Nigerian prince looking for someone to help you move money out of your country…

Reviewer 1: Why wouldn’t you use a phone for that?

Reviewer 2: Well, long distance costs, for starter. And then, it would take a lot of time to call people individually.

Reviewer 1: (looks up list of countries in which the iPhone is slated to be sold) Well, Nigeria doesn’t appear on the list so let’s reject this.

Reviewer 2: Oh, I didn’t realize Nigeria was not on the list. Definitely reject then.

After several phone conversations, three international meetings and sign-off from half of the company, it was agreed that mail should be allowed because pictures of lolcat just don’t seem as good when recounted over the telephone.

Safari

At this point in the iPhone’s development cycle, getting applications approved was still getting tough but Safari, slated to be the third icon on the device also had its own uphill battle. The submission of this application came to established the short-lived record of being denied in under 10 minutes. The denial did not even come by email but was delivered in the form of a message on the developer’s voice mail system:

Reviewer’s Manager: Thank you for submitting Safari, your “web browser” for inclusion on the iPhone. After researching this web thing via our macs, we have come to the conclusion that it is too obscene, offensive, riddled with pornographic and other useless material to warrant use by iPod and iPhone users. Furthermore, we have discovered that some of the content seen there is replicated content that can be bought in the iTunes store and stored on iPods. Should you make changes to the application that would ensure this internet thing is sectioned off, we would be happy to re-review after you submit a binary to us.

In this particular case, Steve Jobs himself intervened, providing a note in an internal memo (and reiterating the point when the device was released):

We have been trying to come up with a solution to expand the capabilities of the iPhone so developers can write great apps for it, but keep the iPhone secure. And we’ve come up with a very. Sweet. Solution. Let me tell you about it. An innovative new way to create applications for mobile devices… it’s all based on the fact that we have the full Safari engine in the iPhone.  You can write amazing Web 2.0 and AJAX apps that look and behave exactly like apps on the iPhone, and these apps can integrate perfectly with iPhone services. They can make a call, check email, look up a location on Gmaps… don’t worry about distribution, just put ‘em on an internet server. They’re easy to update, just update it on your server. They’re secure, and they run securely sandboxed on the iPhone. And guess what, there’s no SDK you need! You’ve got everything you need if you can write modern web apps…”

With Steve’s seal of approval, the app was approved.

iPod

The last of the big 4 to be issued such rejection was unsurprisingly the iPod functionality. It has long been rumored that the reason for such rejection was largely due to the head of the iPod division sending out a company-wide voicemail to express his frustration at the inclusion of iPod functionality. However, due to the offensive nature of the language used in that message, few have been willing to provide any information about it. An iPod-compliant file was provided to TNL.net and, after spending several months trying to clean up the language, we are providing the cleanest excerpt we could, blanking out offensive words (reader’s discretion is advised):

iPod division head: Why you #### ##### ##### ##### ######## ######### ###### ####### ####### ######### cannibalize the iPod market #### ###### ############### ####### ###### hurt margins ######## ####### ###### kill the company ####### ####### Steve will hear about this.

While we do not traffic in rumors, some people sayhat, after his meeting with Steve Jobs, the manager was never heard of again.

In the next entry, we will review some of the other applications that felt the sharp edge of the reviewer’s pen, providing even further visibility into the otherwise opaque approach.

Update: Part 2 is now available.