That’s the question tossed out in Twitterland as Loren, ganza macher of 1938Media, extends a west coast tour of social media hotspots in search of an answer. Here’s the Twitter from Loren yesterday: So I’ll be charging $0.99 for certain content. A couple vids a week. More details tomorrow.
Loren is having big success with his new puppets. He moved quickly from Shel Israel to a hippie drippy paranoid Dave Winer, to an overzealous uber geekoid Robert Scoble. He’s shooting impromptu videos and bunking with Jason McCabe Calacanis and Mike Arrington but the new standard of A-List social media cache eludes those two icons - they still don’t have puppets representing them on 1938Media. Â
So, why would we possibly pay for 1938Media videos that we have grown accustomed to seeing for free? Three reasons off the top of my head:
- Loren needs the money. There has to be some way to monetize this creative font that amuses so many of us. I pay 99 cents for a bag of potato chips. Loren is worth that. Would that be ‘per-video’ or a time subscription?
- Support the puppets. Hey, the Shel Israel puppet is probably doing better than the real Shel right now. If I was Larry Ellison I would give the puppet stock options and sign him to a non-compete. Does that puppet have an agent?
- Let’s go off the deep end. How far would Loren go if he was behind a walled garden? I’ll pay to see the really good stuff … and it doesn’t have to be “Geeks Gone Wild.”
I spend a lot of time these days tripping around the incredibly rich and diverse New York theatre scene. Still, I flip on Jason’s Place just for kicks sometimes and think, wow, now this is entertainment. The web is desperately hungry for good, original content. There must be a way to encourage that with a little moolah.
