Joi Ito's Web

Joi Ito's conversation with the living web.

Lockers lower churn for Japanese love hotels »

Joichi Ito
Nov 30, 2003 - 00:18 UTC »

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I was listening to a marketing presentation the other day and learned an interesting fact. As most of you know, Japanese homes are very small so even married couples often go to "love hotels" to make love. Churn was high and customer retention was traditionally very low because most couples like to experiment with all of the interesting features in the variety of hotels. Recently some love hotels started providing rental lockers, which at first sounds a bit counter-intuitive. Married couples found it convenient to store adult toys and other things that they didn't want their children to find in these lockers. These lockers created a relationship between the customer and the hotel and dramatically increased customer retention. Now these lockers are used to store all sorts of "Not Safe For Home" things.

Apparently, lockers in almost any industry are a great way to lower churn.

   
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Off to Helsinki »

Joichi Ito
Nov 29, 2003 - 10:04 UTC »

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Off to visit Marko in Helsinki.

   
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Larry Page and Sergey Brin parody blog »

Joichi Ito
Nov 29, 2003 - 06:30 UTC »

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Larry Page and Sergey Brin Parody Blog

I've wanted to do a blog for ages but Sergey couldn't manage to set up MovableType. Apparently it's "Just too difficult".

Anyway, the other day he suggested that it would be a thousand times easier to just buy Blogger.com.

So we did.

Via Aaron Swartz on the Google Weblog

   
4 Comments & Trackback

Docomo phones will become your wallet »

Joichi Ito
Nov 28, 2003 - 13:44 UTC »

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Sony and Docomo have announced that they are working together to put contactless IC chips in phones. Sony's FeliCa (type C contactless IC chip) is slowly becoming a defacto standard in Japan. (The government is backing a different standard, type B.) Currently the Japan Railways, AM/PM and others are using it for payments. Many companies use it for company ID's. The problem is that you can't see how much is left in your card and it's a pain to "charge" the card with more money. Putting it on a phone lets you download money from your bank and see how much is left. I worry about the privacy and security issues, but connecting an RF payment system with a phone totally makes sense.

I have a theory that Docomo has to become an identity/payment company and dump the voice and other bit-pushing businesses and go flat rate or free on the network. Docomo should buy a credit card company and use the bit-pushing business as a stick when collecting money. There are some regulations regarding payment businesses that make it difficult, but I'm sure the government would waive this if there was enough of a social need. Right now, the transaction business that credit card companies do doesn't make money. This has driven credit card companies to become loan companies that lobby the government to allow them to charge crazy interest rates. These interest rates cause people to end up in debt hell and commit suicide. If Docomo replaced credit cards as the primary non-cash transaction, credit system and could use network service termination to lower the collection costs, I bet they could make enough money on the transaction business to cover the bit-pushing.

Docomo is Japan's biggest mobile carrier that does about $8B / yr in data revenues.

   
13 Comments

Being vicariously giddy on a good day »

Joichi Ito
Nov 28, 2003 - 07:33 UTC »

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Cory just had the best day of his writing career. danah was a "giddy little girl" yesterday. I get vicariously giddy when my friends are giddy on a good day. As Cory points out, his day was the best day "so far". That's key. Wouldn't it suck if you started your life with the best day ever and it kept getting worse? Much better to start with the bad days and have each day get better.

Does this mean that people who are born into luxury have a harder time having a good life than someone who starts out below average and ends up developing a great life? I guess it depends on what makes you happy.

The mundane parameters of my life (money, attention, health...) are cycling like crazy, but I definitely feel like my life continues to get better. I would say that the primary source of happiness for me is the quality of the human beings I get to spend time with. Although many of my favorite people have passed away, I think I am hanging out with more interesting people today than any other point in my life.

So in the spirit of the weird American holiday thank you. All of you.

   
8 Comments & Trackback

John Patrick on blogging »

Joichi Ito
Nov 28, 2003 - 06:41 UTC »

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Interview in eWeek with John Patrick on blogging. John Patrick, the former vice president of Internet technology at IBM, is an old friend and an advisory board member of Neoteny. He helped IBM embrace the Internet. He's a great voice in this discussion because he's very familiar with corporate CIO behavior.

Via Gen Kanai

   
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Voices in my head »

Joichi Ito
Nov 28, 2003 - 06:22 UTC »

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I'm chatting with Loic right now. Loic has a very distinct French accent. I hear his voice in my head. I've always had a problem reading and I think it's because I tend to hear text rather than read it directly. The interesting thing is that when I know the voice of the author, I hear the author's voice. The voice can cause a very emotional reaction. The other day, when I was reading an email, I got so excited I even noticed a taste. It was a kind of email induced synesthesia.

With iChat, maybe because of the real-time nature and the icon/face, the voice seems much more clear.

Am I crazy?

   
15 Comments & Trackback

I hope my cosplay didn't start all of this... »

Joichi Ito
Nov 27, 2003 - 17:40 UTC »

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Andy Baio pointed out that maybe my costume party influenced the cover of the bloggers book. Hmm... What a scary thought. At least that would make Kuri-chan the guy with the poo-poo on his head...

   
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Mimi's bento moblog »

Joichi Ito
Nov 27, 2003 - 16:32 UTC »

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Xeni chats with my sister Mimi on NPR and Mimi talks about her bento moblog. The bento moblog reminds me of when my mother used to make bento for me when I was growing up in Birmingham, Michigan. I was HORRIFIED when she would pack onigiri for me because everyone would make fun of my rice ball or call it a bomb. Yikes.

   
8 Comments & 1 Trackback

danah in the NYT »

Joichi Ito
Nov 27, 2003 - 15:13 UTC »

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I've recently been communicating with danah quite a bit about her identity related work. She's got a very unique research style which I identify with. I like to immerse myself in what I'm trying to learn and use myself as the test subject. It must be harder to do this as an academic, but danah seems to be able to do it. She immerses herself, but leave enough room to be objective. Good article about her and her work in the New York Times.

   
2 Comments & 1 Trackback

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