Example of How Activity-Specific Weblogging Can Help You

Just saw a commercial from Blockbuster pushing their "No Late Fees" campaign. They want everybody to sign up for the flat $19.95 per month plan wherein they can rent unlimited videos per month and can keep them as long as they like.

To breakeven on this plan I believe the number of movies you have to rent in a month is eight. Roughly two a week. Sounds like a no-brainer, right?

Well, be careful. Blockbuster is doing this for a couple reasons. First, they're scared by NetFlix and others with subscription models. Second, and probably more importantly, they like to make money.

They've got mega-MBAs with spreadsheets out the wazoo... they know how many videos people rent on average. And through test markets over the last year they know how many more people will rent on an unlimited rental fee basis. They know that there will be many people who go gangbusters and rent 50 movies a week. We talked to the people at Blockbuster and they verified this. But there will also be people who rent only one or two a month.

So, on balance it's a pretty good bet that on average people don't rent more than enough to break even.

(Also a quick note that I'm talking break-even as compared to the old model of pay-per-movie. Clearly, Blockbuster's cost of goods sold breakeven point is below this number eight.)

Where do you stand? Is it smarter for you to get the plan... or stay with the current pay-per-movie?

That's where activity-specific weblogging can help. If you're a dilligent logger and you keep track of all the movies you watch and how you watch them, you have all the data necessary to make the right decision. Reger.com's movie log includes an activity-specific field to keep track of how you watched a movie... theatre, rental, HBO, DiVX, etc.

So when an offer comes along from Blockbuster you can run the numbers and see how many movies you rent on average per month. Over time. It's a quick and easy chart to build.

The idea here is that by capturing and analyzing data from your own life you can make better decisions. Granted, the blockbuster decision is a small one.

What about health insurance. Not long ago I signed up for a new health plan with Blue Cross, Blue Sheild. They provide a number of plans. What I really wanted was the ability to look back at all of my doctor's visits in the last three years to get a sense of how often I visit. With that data I could have made a smarter decision. As it is, I guessed.

Corporations have massive data-crunching applications and analysts to create plans. Individuals should have the same power to analyze your own data. And now we do via reger.com. In the coming weeks I'll be launching a new capability wherein anybody can create a custom log type, meaning that they can track anything and analyze it with charts, etc.

I'm excited about the prospect of activity-specific weblogging and will continue to persue the concept further.

(In the interest of disclosure, Heather and I are part of the $19.95 flat rate Blockbuster plan. And we're not breaking even on the number of rentals. We may be breaking even on late fees though... we never got those things back on time.)