Here are three noteworthy developments that are relevant to your practice of career and/or your practice for adapting to/anticipating change.
Game Crush
What it is
Online Video Game meets Online Dating meets Porn
GamesBeat reported on a new online service called GameCrush that offers young hard-core video-game-playing males, the opportunity to indulge their addiction without compromising their basic need to have sex – or at least to masturbate.
Game Crush displays profiles of hot babes (or alien beings pretending to be hot babes) to the thousands of repressed and socially inept young men who spend many hours a day playing video games. “OMG! You mean I can also pretend that I can have sex with a girl who is pretending to like what I like – or at least pretend that she’s hot? Sign me up”
Why I think it’s noteworthy
Aside from the huge comedy potential for late night talk show hosts, this business is noteworthy for 2 reasons:
- Game Crush shows that underneath successful businesses are primal and very emotional connections to basic human needs – in this case the need to play and the need to have sex.
- There really is no end to what the human imagination can come up with, and sometimes there are opportunities under your very real nose, just waiting to be seen. Very much like the Geico ad of the money that could be saved that is just staring you in the face.
ChatRoulette
What it is
Social networking (Facebook) meets online dating (Match.com) meets Las Vegas
TechCrunch recently reported on ChatRoulette. ChatRoulette is an online chat room where you can literally spin the roulette wheel and get a completely random person appearing in front of you (clothed or unclothed) prepared for anything from light social banter to hot video sex.
Not good news for bar owners the world over as now you can have the thrill of meeting the opposite sex without the expense of buying them drinks. Also not good news for parents of young children who have not taken the time to learn how to control what their kids have access to over the internet.
Jon Stewart did a very cute skit on this (not his funniest) that gives you an excellent sense of how ChatRoulette works.
Why I think its noteworthy?
- Same reason #1 as for GameCrush above.
- It pays to keep up with technology and the pace of technology adoption as it affords you the potential to unleash your imagination. This is a business idea that is only now possible because of the widespread adoption of not just broadband connection but video cameras both built-in and added on to computers. No doubt the widespread adoption of Skype has made the possibility of Chat Roulette into a real business opportunity for its investors.
So what else is possible? Perhaps combining eco-tourism, with, gambling … and sex? How about recipes with online dating … and sex, or online banking … and sex (hot online teller or account manager); I’d be withdrawing money and applying for loans every day.
Possibilities are endless, just don’t forget the one basic ingredient. Begins with S.
Times to begin Charging their Online Subscribers
What it Is
News Organizations Last Chance to Survive
The Times and Sunday Times in the U.K. will begin charging subscribers for their content. The NY Times also recently announced plans to place much (not all) of their content behind a paid wall in 2011.
Why I think this is noteworthy?
(1) The survival of professionalism and trust in news and information
The newspaper business model is dying largely due to the death of classified ads (thanks Craigslist) and to the availability of free news on the web. While on the surface this sounds like great news for us – after all we’re getting for free what we had to pay for before – it’s not sustainable. The people who produce the high quality news and editorial articles need to pay their mortgages just like us and unless they can find a way to earn money from their art they will have to abandon it for alternative businesses that allow them to take care of their need to earn a living. This leaves our news to be sifted from among the crazed opinionated, propoganda specialists and the lazy mis-informed.
Us paying for this content facilitates the continued existence of professional organizations (the ones that do the research, and present in-depth analysis that we can trust). We’ll continue to have access to free news content for sure, but paying for a certain standard of news is important to the continued existence and flourishing of trustworthy and timely news.
(2) It sets a precedent for your earning a living from your own information content
Another reason I think this is noteworthy is because we now exist in an information age. Not breaking news for you I’m sure, but news that you may not have seen the relevance to your own career.
Your ability to monetize the quality of the information you produce or have access to is vital to your earning a living free from people and situations that you merely tolerate or detest. In other words, having flourishing markets where people are earning a living from the content they produce is in your best interest because it means you can do the same.
If professional journalism (whatever you think of what it has become) died because of people’s unwillingness to pay for it; it would not bode well for your ability to flourish by carving an information or content niche for yourself. This does not mean your charging for every article you write – I clearly don’t – but it does place you in a better position to charge for some of the content you produce however you choose to deliver it.
By the way, have you chosen your content niche? Are you developing your practice of whatever it is you will become known for? If not, what are you waiting for? Freedom requires effort and dedication; the essential ingredients of practice.
This was an interesting article. It is interesting to note the quality of the newspaper coverage when one is travelling outside the US; and likewise the quality and content of television and radio broadcasts. We here in the US are bombarded with editorial content and what basically is gossip – much of it even cruel. We very seldom learn of what is going on both inside and outside our country. It is sad to watch the deterioration of true “news” writing and broadcasting.
When I was in Israel I actually watched an international news company which I prefer not to name wait for the shots that would match “their story line,” not what was actually transpiring on the ground.
Keep up the good work. Am enjoying your blog and love the Monarch butterfly, Peter.