(keitai-l) Re: From Japan.Inc: The Dirty Little Secret of i-Mode

From: Nick May <nick_at_kyushu.com>
Date: 09/07/01
Message-id: <fc.000f76100005cfaa3b9aca00cfcb094a.5cfb1@kyushunet.com>
keitai-l@appelsiini.net writes:

Note;
The title of the piece referred to the Japanese wireless web, not to imode
specifically as the title of this thread does. 

My original comments were on the original email, and only partially
directed at the article itself. 

>    Perhaps those whose feathers are ruffled by Daniel's assertion that
>most
>i-mode sites are not profitable

The claim was, as I recollect, that only about half in-portal sites were
profitable, and of the wild sites, he could find no evidence of
profitability ('though, it appears, evidence of small green bug eyed
monsters - which I would have thought is the REAL news!), while
acknowledging  that many of them were not intended to turn a profit in any
way. He also simply assumed that the sex oriented sites were profitable.
(From the fact they existed! "They are, therefore they profit!" My my -
Descartes WOULD have been impressed!) He was also foolhardy/prurient
enought to entitle the conclusions he bases on this farrago of assumptions
a "Dirty Little Secret" as though his "journalism" had uncovered something
that was otherwise hidden and "dirty". 

> can provide a few examples of sites that
>are. J@pan Inc articles notwithstanding, it is certainly my impression
>that
>very few i-mode sites are turning a profit. I'd be particularly interested
>in sites that are unofficial and not tied into a major brand in some way.

What exactly would this show? It is all just anecdotal.  (And what would
its absence show? I can certainly name two Japanese sites off the top of
my head (I developed them) that turn a healthy profit for their owners -
but I am sure as hell not going to share what is confidential information
with a third party. So my silence will be taken, presumably, as further
validation of the Skusa thesis. 

It isn't that I disagree terribly with the major claim - that many i-mode
sites, including the majority of a wild ones ( a lot of which are "just
for fun"), are not profitable. But who ever thought that they were? It
certainly isn't a secret, still less a dirty one. 

In his email Skusa entered a large amount of special pleading for his own
imode site. I suspect many companies knocked up imode sites for precisely
the reasons he gives for his own company's creation of one... Hardly a
justification for the small-town-America prurient moral superiority and
condescension implicit in his title.


Regards, Nick

PS - perhaps a course in elementary Aristotelian Logic is in order for Mr
Skusa.


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Received on Fri Sep 7 12:30:41 2001