can strappy start-ups survive on a new tiered internet? jonathan abrams weighs in on net neutrality. brendan broil talks kids, toys, and science. and jack conte, one half of the band pomplamuse shows us how to give financial support to your favorite artist. >> our reporters, sarah burr and joseph of reuters this week on "press:here." good morning, everyone. i'm scott mcgrew. i'm a product of sesame street. when you think about it, i probably had more intellectual growth watching sesame street from ages 1 to 4 than i did in college. engineers would say it was a

bigger delta. some of the same folks behind big bird are behind a new educational tv show called newsers. the tv show may not quite the right word because it's on hulu, the online streaming service. brendan broil is one of the world leading authority on kids and creativity. he's a partner at ido. he runs their toy lab, he's a professor at stanford and adviser as well. that's a lot of stuff. sarah and joseph, sarah, you may know her from usa today, now tech crunch. walkmy through the lineage of dosers. i would say sesame street is kind of their grandparent? >> it's from a really great property of henson home properties. if you're a certain age, you'll remember fraggal rock.

they were always building. they were just the beginning part, and now they have their own show and they're completely reinvented. >> so the point is to teach s.t.e.m., i assume. hundreds of ways we have tried to deech it. how is it different? >> this age, we're talking preschoolers. it's getting them familiar with s.t.e.m. concepts, then they have an affinity for it. then as they grow older, it will become more natural. >> i want to show a clip so my audience has a better understanding. here's a quick clip. >> if it runs out of fuel, it will stop flying and crash to the ground. >> we'll figure out how to catch it before that happens. >> any ideas, professor? >> there you go. that's on hulu. >> so i actually don't have children, so this is kind of a new show to me. i'm very familiar with fraggal

rock. i grew up in that era. what i found interesting in looking into it is that so duzers are a lot more like a socialist society where they don't want to take credit for doing any kind of, you know, outstanding thing. they share everything in common. no one wants to really stand out. i think that's really interesting jinterest interesting juxtaposition that is all about unless and creativity. >> where it's going, especially around innovation and design around teamwork, so it's collaboration. they all have different skills and they're working as a team, so it's a lot more about the we versus the me. >> i had no idea we would talk about that, but then again, i missed fraggal rock because i'm old enough for sesame street, i'll get it, you know what i mean. i missed fraggal rock. i was somewhere in my 20s. >> setting aside the invention and creativity, i think sharing is a pretty fundamental concept

at that age, one that parents spend a lot of time trying to drill into their kids. i thought it was really interesting, but it seems very new. we don't have a control sample to see whether this works, whether if you have kids watching a show about inventing and figuring out new ways to solve problems, that they'll start doing that. >> to bring it back to s.t.e.m. a little bit, you think of it for science. at this age, it's about curiosity, wanting them to be aware and explore. and then it's about team problem solving and then technology, skip that one. technology is around tools, and then engineering around building. just getting them building, and i love about that clip, it was actually something that failed and they work at it again. >> isn't that interesting in silicon valley how important it is, all over the nation, that it's okay to try something. to theorize this is going to work. if it doesn't, go back.

>> i love where they're failing and they work at it and they fail again, and they're learning. it's not fail and you lose or get a bad grade. you learn. that's 1 of the great principles of design thinking. certainly, we have tried to incorporate that in this young age. >> let's show you what a design thinker you are. 150 -- you have designed 150 toys, is that correct? >> probably a lot more, but those are the ones that made it to the market. thousands that haven't made it. >> give me an example of something maybe a parent would be like, oh, that guy? >> we did a neat project last year with leapfrog called creativity camera. it's a wonderful imagination camera for a 3-year-old. you take pictures like we did, but low and behold, it's an awesome case for an iphone or device. you on it up, put it in there, and it's a little kids camera. >> i love how you're encouraging young people to get into technology. creativity with technology. what do you see as a good --

what do you see as a good outcome, what do you see coming out of this? >> it's get kids into that field earlier. and really, it's about not drilling and feeling around things like math too early. it's about exploration and developing curiosity. getting kids outside or trying to experience the world in a way that is just a light bulb. >> i have heard that before. somebody who was discouraged we're teaching at an early age that engineering is about math. of course, it's about math, but let's not have a child discouraged. well, i get a b in math or i don't understand math well. i could never be an engineer. it's about problem solving. >> i'm passionate about this area. play, not in the sense of taking a break, but in the sense of behavior. getting out in the world and using constructive play to build things or to ideate and things like that. dr. stewart brown, i love his quote, i wish the world was such that parents would say you can't

do your homework until you have gan out and played. wouldn't that be a great world? >> are there other models of other countries or private schools where they do this thing? >> there are a lot of experiments around private schools even here, where it's around team building. we have seen, i forget the name of the school, and it's much more like a start-up because kids are working on laptops and the teachers are all about trying to solve a problem together, and i'm not saying that's the right way, but at least the experiments are happening. >> montessori is very similar to that, but i can't remember what author, but they were writing about the founders of google, and notice that a grand number of founders were kids of montessori. >> you develop learners, right? you want people to feel like i want to learn versus i'm being taught to. >> you say the teachers are like bcs. i'm just imagining playground fights over the table. what's your preference? that's not fair.

>> the sesame seeds on the roll at lunch. something like that. what's your proudest toy? what's the thing where you said -- >> it's one we're working on and things of that nature. >> tell us all about it. it's fine. >> i'm just amazed at things that are out there and doing well. i'm really happy with those, but toys are one thing. i love talking about toys, but i'm just as happy when a kid is outside. when my kid would -- child would play with a refrigerator box, that was just as delightful for them. so i'm happy to talk about products, but really it's about play. >> you must be encouraged by the maker movement. >> i love it. >> it was exciting. we had a man on who wrote a book about 50 dangerous things your children should be doing or something along those lines. i'm that kind of dad where it's that sort of, get your hands in there, see what works. see what doesn't. >> you're encouraging risk. >> build a tree fort. you can't understand engineering

until you have fallen out of a tree. >> perfect example. start low. >> brendan of ido, your show or one you advise on, dewsers on hulu, watch it on the ipad and what not. thank you for being with us. >> thank you. coming up in a bit, we'll talk with jonathan abrams about net neutrality and his new startup when "press:here" returns. sna

welcome back to "press:here." the fcc stirred up controversy with a vote to create a fast lane to the internet. the commission voted 3-2 in favor of the idea. now, there are a lot of objections to a two-tiered internet, but one of the most frequent is it would give big companies like youtube or netflix too much of an advantage. scrappy start-ups could never hope to become the next youtube

or netflix. jonathan abrams is best known as launching the networking revolution, he has a scrappy start-up of his own called nuzzle, a social news aggregate where it has all of four employees. let me ask you about that argument. could a scrappy start-up start under these new rules, and i realize they haven't been implemented yet and there's going to be a lot of debate, maybe the fcc will have to walk back some of this, but let's say there is this fast lane to the internet that google could afford. could a start-up compete? >> i don't know. it's a good question. right now, we have lot of things we have to deal with. we just launched our iphone app last week. that's an industry where you have to get in the good graces of apple and google, and they featured our application, and that gave us a leg up. there's already things where some start-ups are getting advantages others did not.

>> it didn't used to be. in the early ages of the internet, and everybody but sarie dates back to the early days of the internet, it was pretty level. anybody could be anything. it is interesting you mention apple outside of the net neutrality argument. you have to get featured on the big page, don't you? >> if you're launching a website, you put up a website, maybe you get traffic, maybe you don't. it's sort of an even playing field, theoretically, today, you try to get facebook and twitter and social traffic. and if you're an app, you try to get featured in the app store. there's still things you have to cope with. the funny thing about nuzzle is what we're doing is sort of democratatizing news. if you have a blog or the "new york times" or techcrunch or usa today, nuzzle treats them the same. if your friends have a small blog, that's the one you're going to see above "new york times" and techcrunch. but it's kind of analogous to

the idea of, you know, this fast lane, like you said, because we're saying a small blog and a huge newspaper can compete on an even field. they just have that content that people are sharing. >> actually, if you don't mind me jumping in here. >> that's your job. >> so here i go. so i think that's really interesting that you mentioned you're creating an even playing field. not just how -- that's what happens with innovation, someone comes along and solves a problem, and that's the same thing with, you know, the app store that's not always going to be the key maker for apps. it's going to change. we have the fcc in this difficult dilemma working with comcast and at&t and trying to decide this big problem, however, you know, it's being seen by a lot of people and i agree with them, as it could be stopping innovation. here we're going to be changing things all the time, and then we have this major bump in the road that could be preventing any kind of change from happening. >> well, we don't -- preventing it or just giving it a

disadvantage. certainly, in that era, someone who wants to start a new news site like politico, doesn't have to have newspapers and all the things that a newspaper used to have to have. >> they wouldn't have to have crazy band width. >> like youtube. >> fair enough. what about the idea that most start-ups, and let me show my ignorance about most start-ups, are so well funded that i say, well, you can't compete with google, but we see the amount of money rotating around san francisco, and maybe the counter point is name me a start-up that doesn't have millions and millions of dollars. >> we have millions, but we don't know what the big isps ar going to charge. it's going to be more than millions, wouldn't it? >> who knows. it begs the question, with these fancy venture capital firms, would they strike a deal so their company could get in the fast lane? >> aggregating two-tier band

width. >> what a fantastic kwliidea. i hadn't thought about it that way. again, a luge advantage to an industry, that other companies wouldn't have had. >> it could be. mark could make a few calls and say all their -- >> invest in the internet. may i please get in the fast lane. >> are you taking any sort of political stance on neutral or a not neutral internet? >> i don't know, it's so exhausting because there's so many things, patent reform, immigration, that it seems impossible to get progress done. so when you're working on a start-up, we're working on so many things for the next six months. we launched our iphone app, we need to do an ipad app. we're thinking of the next six months, trying to reform government stuff. that's on a multi-year time scale. for start-up, it started immaterial because we're probably going to succeed or

fail before these things come to a culmination. >> i wanted to ask with your founders head on, there's been a lot in the past few days, a lot in the past few months about the impact on the big tech companies who do lots of business overseas, the ciscoes, ibms, is there anything at the start-up level, or your peers and meantees worrying more about this thing? >> it's probably affecting big companies more than start-ups because you have to get to a certain size probably before the nsa comes knocking on your door asking for your users' data and not letting you tell anybody. that's probably a bigger problem for bigger companies than start-ups. i think, though, that the whole, you know, nsa, all that stuff, a lot of people are in denial about it. >> jonathan abrams is the ceo of nezzal, nezzel. you can find it on the app store as well. i like your ios. i thnk that's where it hits and i wish you the best of luck with it. >> coming up, supporting independent music and music

videos when "press:here" continues.

♪ >> the san francisco area band pomplamuse with one of the most amazing videos shot using foam core boards and a projector. i know you want to see more of it, but i ask you holding off going to youtube for a minute. it's a mostly independent band most known for youtube videos, more than 94 million views total. the band is natalie dawn and jack conte. conte is helping other performers raise money with his start-up where music lovers can fund music makers. they call it one of the most

innovative crowd funding companies in the world. jack conte is the less glamorous half of the band. thank you for being here this morning. i'm a big fan. explain to me what this is. the easiest thing is to say it's a kickstarter for artist said, but it's not exactly kickstarter. >> it's not just for musicians. it's for anybody releasing digital media on the web. whether it's people who make web comics or bloggers, musicians, video makers, anyone who is putting out digital media and trying to monetize that. and yeah, half of our creators are youtubers. the other half is built up -- >> kickstarter, the idea is i contribute money and we get above a certain level and then i launch my product. this is different in that sense, too. it's kind of a tip jar. >> pat reonis rekerring donations from fans.

kickstarter is can i have $50 for this project? boom. this is, can i have a dollar per video i release, or two dollars per web comic that comes out or $5 per article. >> so going back to the days of the patronage. >> it's recurring donations from fans. >> if it's really cool. there's really interesting stuff on the site. what's the take-up been? do you have lots and lots of patrons or not so many yet? >> yeah, when we launched, we launched with three people. it was me and my girlfriend and my roommate. within two weeks, i was making 100 times what i was making through my youtube ad revenue. i had over $400 pledges per video. >> i found that astounding and i read some of the statistics where your youtube trend is enormous and then you get a paycheck for like $50, it doesn't translate. >> i got my check for a million views, it was $249. >> wow. >> now we have 20,000 creators

using the platform. some were sending $15,000 a month to. so that's why we've had this kind of natural viral growth. because we're literally paying people 100 times to 200 times what they're making through other revenue circle. >> i don't think i would live long enough to see somebody challenge youtube with a new idea. ubtube has gotten to be -- obviously, the videos still have to go out on youtube, but this idea that they've sort of left this behind, and somebody has found a better way of doing it. >> hoorz the bottom line, that eight years ago, google made a choice to monetize the free web through advertising. that's a choice. i think people need to realize that's a choice. one thing that kickstarter proved is there's tremendous power in the crowd. people want to pay for a beautiful thing. we can populate the web with beautiful music videos and long form journalism, web comics, photography essays, it doesn't have to be monetized through ads. that's an indirect method of

monetization, and a lot of value is lost in that. when people are paying for it themselves, they pay more. it's $9 per patron, and we're taught to think, a buck a think makes sense. 99 cents for a song. that's not what people want to pay. we have patrons paying $1,000 per video that gets released. there are people paying a lot of money to help artists on a recurring monthly pass. >> tell me more how people can make money through long-term journalism, not that i have any bias. >> sure, that's what i'm excited about. we have writers making over $2,000 per article they release, articles you think would have very niche, small audiences. game criticism, articles on video games, we have one lady making $2,200 per article she releases. >> per article? >> she says, guys, i know you

like what i'm reading, even if she only has 5,000 or 10,000 uniques a month, she has a community around her work. what we have to retrain ourselves to think is it's not about the number of views. >> right, because otherwise it becomes click based. if it's an advertising based system, i click base, the top five ways or the one surprising way, et cetera. >> how sick are we of that? >> very. >> everybody is sick of that. >> because it's not about real human connections. we're forgetting that the web, on the other side of the web is people. >> i have been surprised at how long the advertising model has been the thing that aids the internet. 98% or whatever of the business models are about advertising. it doesn't surprise me it's moers of it and it has been for a while, but we were here at the beginning and that's what it was then and it's still that, and it seems like 98%, 99%, and gosh, it would be nice if there were different ways to make a living.

>> alexis ohinnian was telling me -- >> the founder of reddit. >> he called it egg mcmuffin day, the day he knew reddit was going to be big. he saw the first two thirds of the big website with an advertisement for egg mcmuffin, and he said, we have done it, we're going to win, because there's a certain disassociation with your community when most of your real estate is an ad. the purpose of the ad is to steal your focus away from the thing you went there for. you take your eyeballs and you detour to that instead of the thing you wanted to watch. >> i do this all the time. something pops up that is very important in the process, maybe i'm checking out, you know, buying something online and i close it, like as it's popping up, which i think it's going to be an advertisement and it's not, and i'm like, oh, i shouldn't have killed that window because it was super important to whatever it was i

was trying to do. can we talk just a second about your success? how much of this is just you being unbelievably creative? i mean, the music videos are always so clever. and other bands can't be that clever. how much of it is clever and how much is you're a damn good musician? >> i would like to take a lot of credit for this, but it's just not the case. despite the fact that youtube has chosen to monetize the web through ads. it's one of the most powerful, incredible pieces of software ever created for artists and creators. the vision behind youtube is extraordinary. the recommendations engine, that audience, the fans of youtube that help us get our views and generate an audience, it's the power of that software, of free publishing. >> that was my question. how much is you being clever and how much is you being a good musician. there's a compliment in there. i don't know if you're hearing

it. >> i studied music my whole life. you can have all the software you want in the world and nothing is going to happen unless there's something behind it, right? so i think there's something behind it, but yi'm not a great musician. i'm a decent muziegz, and i work really hard, and my partner natalie works really hard, and we're both in it. it's that -- it's that just in it sort of sense that makes it work. >> it comes across immediately that you guys are very much into it. >> we love what we do. >> you're clearly having fun. and pomplamuse, french for grapefruit, right? i encourage you to check it out. the best one i think is lorde's remix, we showed a bit off the top, absolutely phenomenal. jack, thank you for being here. we'll be back in just a minute.

that's our show for this

week. my thanks to our guests. i'm scott mcgrew. thank you for making us part of your sunday morning.

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