Kara Swisher spanxed Mark Zuckerberg in a manner that would make Fake Steve Jobs jealous:

Facebook has succeeded so far, in part because people are simultaneously natural stalkers and shameless exhibitionists. So we thought they’d jump at the chance to tell all their friends they had bought, say, a year’s supply of Viagra or downloaded songs from Air Supply or ordered several pairs of Spanks.

Me. I’m just impressed. Also, googling ’spanks’ is NSFW. The real term is Spanx. Google that.

RoughlyDrafted and I are both on McQuivey (what a name!):

McQuivey bet on Microsoft and Adobe ushering in a new world of video with embedded commercials. He said consumers would “applaud” these efforts granting them the privilege of watching video for free in exchange for forcing them to sit through ads.

Consumers substitute. Free and simple beat cheap and easy. Cheap and easy beat costly and hard.

I disagree with McQuivey. He thinks watching ‘free’ content on a computer is truly free. I think it’s both costly and hard.

Costly: On iTunes I can by an ‘hour-long’ TV show for $1.99. Its actually only 42 minutes long. So I can pay $2 or pay 18-minutes of time to watch ads. I will always pay $1.99. My time is even more costly.

Hard: I cannot watch ad-based, platform-restricted programs on my iPod. I cannot watch those programs on my TV. I cannot watch many of those programs on my Mac. Those problems are hard to solve when starting with ad-based, platform restricted programs.

So I will substitute. I need a distribution model that accommodates my needs. If I start with iTunes or with torrents, content acquisition is easy / simple. Great improvements, both.

McQuivey - fingers in ears - won’t listen to these points. He will argue until no one will listen that ad-based, platform-restricted content is free. Never argue with an arguer. It’s bad for your health.

One final point about my point: I am not talking about Apple anything. I am talking about the dis-intermediation of old media distribution. iTunes might languish, but old media is getting an old-fashioned snot-kicking.