TWiST Episode 22 “The Chatroom Yawned”
TWiST with John MacFarlane Review
Yesterday’s, TWiST episode featured John MacFarlane of Sonos on location at New Noise Santa Barbara. For those of you who don’t know what Sonos is (I didn’t) in basic terms it is hardware that allows you to play music throughout your house (using zone controllers and a main hand-held controller) by tapping into the internet. I wish they would have started the show off by showing the “See how Sonos works” video on their homepage, bringing us up to speed on the product.
Here is a small list of some of the topics:
- Why they got into the hardware business
- How they compete with Apple
- Thoughts on Apple and their monopolistic feel concerning iTunes and IPhone
- DRM
- Next step for Sonos
- Dark Labels
- Subscription vs purchased music
From there they move to “The News” discussing Mylie Cyrus, SpiffBox, Stumbleupon and app. addiction. They wrap up the show with the (Aug 28th) Episode 13 review contest with the winner being Minority Feature chosen by Lon and Alex, not Jason. One little point here, Jason if you are going to run a contest at least have the respect of the 25 people who took the time to write a review to choose the winner.
My recommendations: When taking the show on the road make sure it benefits the viewer. When TWiST traveled to Sequoia we got to hear from Mark Arrington and Roelof Botha two individual we may not have heard from on a regular show in LA. By this I mean that Roelof is in touch with the leading edge of the industry through his firm and to have the opportunity to gain insight from him is worth missing other segments. This episode consisted of “The Interview” and “The News” lacking was the “Ask Jason”, “Shark Tank” and the “Homework” segments. If their was an episode that needed these segments this one did, the show had a few interesting points but it felt slow and overall was never compelling. Usually during a regular show the chatroom is a buzz with the normal personalities, not so for this episode, they were present but not participating like normal.
I rate this show a 7 out of 10, even Babe Ruth didn’t hit a homerun every time at bat.
