The Net Neutrality Debate All On One Page

Very good summary: The Net Neutrality Debate All On One Page.

Kevin Kelly: The next 5000 days

Kevin Kelly is amazing - watch this. From http://www.ted.com At the 2007 EG conference, Kevin Kelly shares a fun stat: The World Wide Web, as we know it, is only 5,000 days old. Now, Kelly asks, how can we predict what's coming in the next...

The golden age of streaming, moving from the hard-drive to the cloud (Steve Gillmor): ACCESS first, not Copy

TechcrunchIT has a great post on 'the golden age of streaming', written by Steve Gillmor (yes, of the Gillmor Gang) - he always has some very sharp things to share.  Here are some highlights and comments, as usual:

First, some nice stats:  "As the Olympics drew to a close with big numbers - 75.5 million streams (NBCOlympics.com), 40 million (BBC), another 130 million from the European Broadcasting Union, and 100 million Chinese viewers - the networks were already moving on by serving the Democratic National Convention in HD.."

Now these kinds of stats will put some serious fear into broadcasters and cable companies - if this trend continues (and once streaming gets over its inherent bandwidth and bottleneck problems), who would want to spend all that cash on cable TV (even if the do have DVRs build-in)? P2P streaming, anyone?

Steve goes on: "It used to be that having physical control of entertainment and other software was critical to the user experience. Record and film companies kept accelerating the quality levels of their products to stay ahead of the pirates and the growing ability of consumers to capture and archive content off the radio and television networks..."

How true: physical possession is no longer really needed, in the very near future (right now this is still mostly geek-land stuff) - and copyright will morph into usage right based on revenue shares.

Steve goes on:  "This, of course, is the same shift software has undergone from shrinkwrap to service, from Outlook to Gmail, Office to Google Apps, and from the hard drive to the cloud. In effect, productivity apps are now streamed to and the data from the user. With the data stored redundantly in the cloud, we are more comfortable with a streaming situation than with the former illusion that we “owned” our data locally"

Yes!  And now some final marvels: "Once the user has undergone this reworking of trust, devices such as the iPhone and the Slingbox have extended the notion of streaming to the car, the hotel room, to a friend’s house, anywhere...The shift seems to be from ultimate quality to ultimate utility, to fit the data into the time available to consume it...Once the underground streaming economy reaches a critical mass, media companies will reach some form of accommodation. Whether it takes the form of advertising supported models or the emergence of viral talent going “direct” to consumers, the end result will be the Net-based delivery of high value content under user control"

Great stuff, Steve, all around. Despite some of the more negative comments on this post I think you are onto something really crucial here. Maybe someone will eventually come up with a good P2P streaming solution to solve the bandwidth paradox (i.e. the fact that the more people use the content the higher the cost becomes - unlike regular broadcasting where it costs the same no matter how many people watch). I also agree with some of the other comments that this is not at all about P2P vs Streaming - it's a question of radically changing user behaviors which will impact everything else including advertising, marketing and the entire entertainment ecosystem: now it's access first, then copy (if at all). And this does indeed signal The End of Control for a lot of the major players in current media ecosystem (i.e. studios, cable companies, broadcasters, mobile operators..). Read more at my End Of Control book preview site.

 

P2P Foundation: Does peer production destroy profits?

This is a crucial statement, below: P2P Foundation  Does peer production destroy profits?

How true:  "In my own formulation it says that we now have a society, where the creation of use value grows exponentially, but the growth of monetization of this use value grows only linearly.."

THAT is the real challenge for next-generation media business models.

Another quote:  "Is this perhaps what is happening in the Linux economy, of which it is said that it creates about $36b, but also destroys about $60b in the value of proprietary companies..."

Your take?

Kevin Kelly re-releases "Out of Control" as upgraded PDF (with Ads)

Kevin Kelly, someone I really admire and draw from, just released his 15 year old book "Out of Control" as a PDF, again - read more here. 

What I find very comforting, myself, is this statement: "Out of Control is selling better now than it was when first published 14 years ago. People "get it" now. The importance of decentralized systems, peer production, emergent behaviors, hive minds, and evolutionary systems are now obvious in a Web 2.0 world. Back then it seemed too wildeye, woo-woo, esoteric, and geeky. To my delight, it still contains relevance and news for most readers..." 

On the idea of adding ads to a PDF, Kevin says:  "this is a free PDF which also has the option of displaying contextual ads if you want to see them...briefly it goes like this: if you have Acrobat Reader 9 you can opt in to allow context appropriate ads delivered by Yahoo to appear adjacent to the pages of the book. If readers click on the ads, I share some small fractional revenue, just as I do on my website ads. You won't see these small text ads off to the side unless you opt in via the dialog boxes on opening the file"   Sounds like a great idea to me (I did not manage to find the ads in the PDF that I downloaded, though ;)

A favourite quote by Alvin Toffler: Is it more important to be imaginative and insightful then to be one hundred percent right?!?

“In dealing with the future, at least for the purposes at hand, it is more important to be imaginative and insightful then to be one hundred percent right.  Theories do not have to be right to be enormously useful”  Alvin Toffler - Future Shock - 1970

Structuring a Decentralized World

Great read: Structuring a Decentralized World.

Openness also has subtler, yet more profound, benefits than pure cost-cutting. Whenever there is any new conceivable space, virtual or real, that can be owned, there is usually a frenzied rat race to own it. People love to copyright or patent everything under the sun (see: Amazon.com’s 1-click court case). To maintain this ownership, the owners require strong enforcement. Often, governments acts as a proxy for that enforcement. This inevitably results in restrictions for users.

Companies are beginning to realize the futility of placing restrictions on users with schemes like DRM. These restrictions are always reverse engineered and bypassed. Thus, the companies that use them do not prevent piracy, and the companies that do not use them are applauded by their customers for a hassle-free experience.

An iPhone App that really rocks: Instapaper (read bookmarked websites offline, on your iPhone)

While there are many things I really hate about my new iPhone 3G (which is why I am still using my trusted Nokias and SEs and the Blackberry, too ;), the applications really make it worthwhile to experiment with it. My current favorite is Instapaper which allows you to bookmark a webpage and read it on your iPhone later even if you are offline (!), and in a much easier to read mobile screen format. This makes it really easy to catch up on some website reading when traveling, and not even have the usual costs associated with roaming (here in Europe, that's still huge) - and a much reduced temptation to click away, too.  Since this can be done with PDFs, too, is this a new way of reading (albeit still with a very small screen;)   The PRO version is well worth it btw - tilting the phone will scroll the text - cool!  Some more details from another blogger, here

Mobile version of my blog now available (iPhone users rejoice!)

Mofuse now offers a pretty good version of my blog, here - bookmark it for your iPhones and Nokias and Blackberries... and let me know how you like it.

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BRIC Countries: Mobile IS the Internet (Rising Economies and Web-enabled Phones)

EMarketer presents some good snippets on "Rising Economies and Web Phones". Some snippets

Five of the world's 10 largest cities are located in the fast-growing economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China (the so-called BRIC countries), along with four of the five top markets for new mobile subscribers. Moreover, mobile is not simply viewed as an extension of the Web in BRIC, as it is in the US, Western Europe and parts of Asia-Pacific. Mobile is the Internet for an increasingly large and attractive consumer segment.

""High mobile Internet penetration in the BRIC countries is all the more notable since none of them has yet launched third-generation (3G) mobile services, although each one has either licensed 3G services or will do so by 2009," said John du Pre Gauntt, senior analyst at eMarketer. "Once that happens, marketers can expect even higher mobile Internet penetration rates, with the commensurate ability to conduct more sophisticated and widespread mobile marketing campaigns."

Indeed - and what will they do with their web-powered mobiles?  Get, share, edit, remix, forward... CONTENT. Another huge sharing explosion coming our way - we are still at the tip of the iceberg.






















Watch my "what will happen when we are all connected" movie, here.

How to Use Friendfeed for Better PR (via socialTNT) - PR agencies: Stop emailing me!

Good stuff here:: “Chow Down: How to Use Friendfeed for Better PR  -- socialTNT.

I wish all those PR agencies emailing me stuff all the time would READ THIS FIRST. Please. My friendfeed is below so that's where you get started

Soon: Widgets on your TV (talk about Changes for the TV Business!)

TV-Widgets are here: Samsung just announced their first series of TVs that will be connected to the Internet, by default (see a demo of  Samsung's See'N'Search set-top box here). But here is the real big deal, imho (quote): "The Widget Channel - its official name - will be powered by Yahoo Widget Engine, allowing you to sit back on your sofa like a lazy couch potato, and enjoy small internet applications such as news and weather, all from your remote control." "Content will be accessible through an integrated Ethernet port or a Samsung wireless adaptor...." says ShinyShiny. 

What does this mean? Well, if you are into widgets (i.e. embeddable content objects, both web-based or desk-top based) on your computer or your iPhone (I think this crowd counts about 170-200 Million people right now - so this very early, still - but all of us brave consumers that buy those cool iPhone apps are basically widget users, now, too!), very soon you can, and probably will 1000s of widgets available on your 50+inch TV screen in your living room (or wherever else you "like to watch"). Imagine: stock tickers, tweets, RSS feeds, music widgets, social network messages, video streams, contvertising ;)  Now what will THAT do to the TV industry? Talking about competing for attention - a real challenge, imho.

Contagious Mag adds: "Yahoo! and Intel have joined forces to develop a Widget Channel which will allow users to access their favorite internet content whilst watching TV. The Widget Channel will utilise a comprehensive software network, built around the Yahoo! Widget Engine and delivered via an Intel set-top box. The result will be a series of TV Widgets, or as Yahoo! describes them - 'small Internet applications designed to complement and enhance the traditional TV experience'.  What this means, is that viewers will have instant access to news, sports results, weather reports and even feeds from websites such as Flickr. In order to make the fusing of internet and TV as seamless and intuitive as possible, there will also be a Widget Gallery function made available at a later date. This will allow users to customise each widget and how it is displayed, as well as publish them across multiple TV's and related devices"

Truly, we are heading into the Attention, Conversation and Participation Economy at mindboggling speed. This will also help to boost interactive services, 3D and Virtual World Experiences. More via the Yahoo/Intel press release, Video here (quality is not so hot but it's a good start)

Cool: YourMinis Widgets: get a widget with my blog posts, with one click

YourMinis rocks. This is their RSS widget displaying my latest blog posts. You can just copy and paste it onto your iGoogle page, blog page or wherever you want. Finally!

Book Publishing lessons - Kindle to become a $1.1 Billion business - Making Books 'Liquid' (and soon, flat-rated?)

Businessweek has a good feature called "Book Publishers: Learn From Digg, Yelp—Even Gawker: Book publishing could keep itself vital by taking a page from Web 2.0 technologies, but it has a long way to go..."

The first amazing thing they mention is this:
"Amazon (AMZN) is laughing now. The Kindle, a device that lets people download, store, and of course read books in a digital format, could become a $1.1 billion business for the company next year, accounting for 4% of sales, according to a widely read Aug. 11 note by Citigroup..."

So Amazon has succeeded of building a nice new business by making something that was fixed, physical and controlled by scarcity into something that is LIQUID and can flow easily. Once the Kindle's display technology improves, some of the (no doubt publisher-mandated) security provisions are loosened, the design is improved, various little bugs are ironed out, and it works worldwide (3G/4G, Wifi, Wimax?), it will be huge, no doubt. Yes, of course, that's quite a list, but Bezos will do it!

And then, what's next: maybe a flat rate for digital books (ha: books like water..?), both paid-for in cash and paid-for in attention (i.e. next- generation advertising) - and there will be many variations of such a flatrate depending on location, culture, legal frameworks. But just imagine a digital book flat rate in China - just like Google is making music 'free' in China, as you read this, maybe Amazon will make books 'feel-like-free' in Asia, as well.

Sarah Lacy at Business Week offers some more good input for publishers to stay relevant:

• Make it social
• Take book tours out of the stores
• Create stars—don't just exploit existing ones
• Go digital from the get-go

Widgets: The Marketer’s Recession Survival Tool (Michael Jones)

Great post by Michael Jones of UserPlane / AOL - if you want to know about widgets, quickly, read this: Widgets: The Marketer’s Recession Survival Tool. Some high-lights:

"In April 2007, comScore estimated that widgets reach 177M people every month, or 21% of the worldwide online audience. Currently, only a fraction of widget traffic – perhaps as little as 0.5% - is being monetized. And that 0.5% is being monetized most frequently through traditional CPM models. In order for widgets to pay off in the long term, however, new models are required that will drive revenue beyond the top few widget providers and generate significant returns for all customers investing ad dollars...."

"The convergence of behavioral intelligence, distributed advertising models, and micro-markets is helping to create a sweet spot for widgets. eMarketer predicts an increase in the behavioral targeting market to $3.8B by 2011 from $350M in 2006"

"The very definition of CPM is also changing as new models for media buying emerge. New ways to purchase and monetize connections between brand and consumers will emerge, including opportunities to move the point of purchase to these distributed applications. Not only will widgets incorporate ads based on individual behavior and areas of interest, but widgets will likely become e-commerce services as well"