Gigaom has some good comments on this topic, see below. I personally believe that curation is content, as well, and that meta-content ie content about content will become extremely valuable going forward. What do you think?
"Traditional media critics attack the Huffington Post for its aggregation, but as Nieman fellow David Skok pointed out recently at the Nieman Lab blog, aggregation is deeply embedded in the DNA of the media industry, and always has been. And as we’ve tried to point out before at GigaOM, aggregation and particularly curation are two of the skills that modern media companies need the most — or readers overwhelmed by information will go elsewhere, whether to apps like Flipboard and Zite or to new services that give them the tools they need to filter that growing ocean of content..."
"News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch has only been on Twitter for two weeks now, and I’m now dubbing him the new @ShitMyDadSays. He holds nothing back on the social site, and has already stirred up some stuff by admitting MySpace screwed the pooch.
A few days ago, I did a fairly lengthy and deep skype interview with Toronto-based Marie Germain from Branding 2.0 (see her Twitter channel here), touching on many issues including the future of commerce, selling, marketing and branding, so-called social media (I much prefer the term Social OS), current issues in technology and the Internet (such as SOPA - the deeply disturbing but nevertheless impending U.S. Stop Online Piracy Act), and media / content trends.
There are some quite juicy snippets in this interview, such as:
"In an truly digital society we probably don't need marketing as we know it"
"We are moving from a society, and an economy, based on EGOsystems to a society that is based on ECOsystems (i.e. INTERDEPENDENCE)"
"The old days of commerce were based on handcuffing consumers, now it's all about attraction, engagement and conversations (being a magnet rather than using handcuffs)"
This video uses an interesting format in that it is based on an audio track that was recorded on the phone, and superimposes some related images over it. Interesting. If you just want the audio track, here it is:
From the TribeRadio Youtube post: "World-renown futurist, Gerd Leonhard, in this interview speaks of the very serious challenges businesses and brands face; he offers solutions. On a more sombre note he exposes the ploys of controllers on internet freedom, SOPA to be clear. The Wall Street Journal acknowledges Gerd as one of the leading media futurists in the world. Powerful! Incisive! Gerd is simply delicious to the ears. Keynote Speaker, Founder of The Futures Agency, Advisor to top corporations and governments, author of five books, "The Future of Music", "Music 2.0", "The End of Control", "Friction is Fiction" and "The Future of Content". Gerd's background is in music; however, today he is a top game-changer, inspiring entrepreneurship and guiding us into a prodigious digital world. To reach the Host of Tribe Radio, Marie Germain: at her blog, http://Branding20.wordpress.com or her biz site, http://MarieGermain.com..."
Be sure to check out the other audio / video interviews on here channel as well, including Jeffrey Hayzlett ('Running the Gauntlet' book, former CMO of Kodak).
Attention is the new currency is one of my favorite memes. So: simply tweet about my 2009 book Music 2.0 (even if you already have it, in print or as PDF) and receive the link to the free download. Use this link to PAY WITH A TWEET and spread the word. If you really must get a dead-tree edition, the print version can be ordered via my bookstore at Lulu.com
About Music 2.0 (from the free mobile site): "This book was self-published in 2009 and is an edited collection of my best essays on the future of the music industry, and continues the work I presented in my first book, The Future of Music, co-written with Dave Kusek. It further describes what I think the next generation of music companies will actually look like – hence the term Music 2.0, a description derived from the now increasingly popular “Web 2.0.” I have been writing and blogging about digital music and the next generation of the music industry for almost four years now – in airplanes, taxis, trains, busses, hotel lobbies, conference halls, and at home. In Internet time (and it certainly feels that way to me), this is almost forever! In many ways my message and my opinions may have evolved a bit but the bottom lines and visions have not changed a whole lot.
Looking back at some 1,000 blog posts and over 20 essays it is evident that by far the most often covered subject is indeed what I (and many other people – I make no claim to having invented this moniker!) have come to call Music 2.0, the new principles that define the next iteration of the music business. All of this is also closely connected with a few other terms that I have co-coined and have come to be associated with: Music Like Water (MLW), the Flat Rate for Music, Feels Like Free (FLF), the Usator, Friction is Fiction, and the People Formerly Known As Consumers. In this book, I aim to just fine-tune the best of my writings from the past four years, while not altering the content too much, in order to preserve the timeliness and context of when it was actually written..."
You can also read the book on pretty much any mobile device just by going to MusicFutures.com.
Also, be sure to follow my music-business specific tweets via @music2dot0. To see all my blog posts on the Music 2.0 book (and the topics covered in the book) please go here. For the music-business specific videos, visit my Youtube channel. Slideshows are here.
A very meaty slideshow covering a huge number of key trends (see below... yes, it's a bit of overkill) and a pretty cool video - well worth checking out!
Access Everywhere 9. Electric Fleets 1 0. Leadership Shakeups 4 1. Rooftop Farming 6 3. Tokyo Sky Tree 8 2. Album Evolution 0. Facebook’s IPO 2 1. Lighter Cars 4 2. Roots Revival 6 4. Tom Daley 8 3. All Things Military- 1. Facial Recognition 2 2. Loosecubes 4 3. Scooter Surge 6 5. Toys for Tablets 8 Inspired Fury 3. Lytro 4 4. Screened Dining 6 6. TV Commerce 8 4. Antique Eats 2. Fat Taxes 2 4. Marques Toliver 4 5. Screened Shopping 6 7. “Ultra” 8 5. Anywhere, Any-Way 3. Flipped Classrooms 2 5. Mobile Security 4 6. Senior Cohousing 6 8. Unwrapping the 8 Shopping 4. Floating Yoga 2 Process 6. Motivational Objects 4 7. Silence 6 6. App Overload 5. For-Profit Chains, 2 9. Vdio 8 7. Mushrooms as 4 8. Silicon Valley Siblings 6 7. Apps for an Nonprofit Stores Functional Food 0. Video-grams 9 Aging World 9. Smaller SKUs 6 6. Fuel From Waste 2 8. Mushrooms Go Green 4 1. Virtual Fitting Rooms 9 8. The Attention 0. Smart Clothing 7 7. Garden Camping 2 9. Myanmar 4 2. Voice-Based 9 Economy 1. Smarter Check-ins 7 8. Gen Z 2 0. Nadine Ponce 5 Microblogging 9. Batuka 2. Social Seating 7 9. Gesture Recognition 2 1. Olympics’ New Sport 5 3. Voice Control 9 0. Benefit Corporations1 3. Solar Gets Simpler 7 0. Healthy Vending 3 2. Online Lives, in Print 5 4. Web Chat Everywhere 9 1. Book Club 2.01 Machines 4. Spiking Food Prices 7 3. P-to-P Experiences 5 5. Wii U 9 2. BYOD (Bring Your 1 1. Heirloom Everything 3 5. Split-Personality 7 Own Device) 4. The Personal Retailer 5 Smartphones 6. Women-Only Hotel 9 2. The Hobbit 3 Floors 3. Cloud Security1 5. Play as a Competitive 5 6. Stationery 7 3. Honey 3 Advantage 7. Your Public Story 9 4. Crowdsourced 1 7. Stripped-Down 7 Commutes 4. Hydration Stations 3 6. Pluerry 5 Products/Services 8. YouTube, the New 9 5. Indian E-commerce 3 Boob Tube 5. Crowdsourced 1 7. Public Bookshelves 5 8. Sundance London 7 Learning 6. Inhaling 3 9. Zimbabwe 9 8. Rainwater Harvesting 5 9. Sustainable Palm Oil 7 6. Curbing Food Waste1 7. Internet-Enabled Cars 3 1 00. Zink 9. Remaking “Made in 5 0. Tablets Replace Paper 8 7. Danger Zone Travel1 8. iTV 3 China” 1. Tap-and-Pay Incentives 8 8. Digital-Into-Physical 1 9. LCD Art 3 0. Rolling Stones’ 50th 6 Postcards 2. A Titanic Anniversary
Uploaded by SaladaCorporativa on Dec 15, 2011 (note: these interviews are in English)
Video em inglês. Nesse vídeo Gerd Leonhard, autor, palestrante, CEO da The Future Agency e Professor convidado da Fundação Dom Cabral fala sobre o que o é um futurista, a carreira e a profissão de um futurista e tendências para a educação no mundo.
Here is a new video with my keynote at the BDigital Apps Conference, November 16, 2011, in Barcelona (my part starts at 02:04). You can download the PDF with my slides here.
The topic: "SoLoMoVi": apps and the future of content, business and communication" Wireless broadband, mobile applications, smart mobile devices, social networks and over-the-top video are exploding and will dramatically change how we communicate, how we buy and sell, how we create and consume content, and how we do business or run our governments. Pre-mobile & social, the Internet was just in its infancy, now it's a rebellious teenager testing the limits and pushing relentlessly. Where will the mobile Internet - and apps in particular - take us, in the next 3-5 years, what opportunities will emerge, what will happen in sectors such as education, media, politics and culture, and what can we learn from how this is already unfolding in the developing countries?
"I am a longtime commentator on how the digital, mobile and social-media revolution has left Publishers reeling and in a state of total change or even disruption. This is a call to action to transform your business to embrace and conquer the digital age. Failure to do so will mean inevitable friction, market confusion and possibly a dysfunctional content ecosystem, when on the other hand you could stand to profit from long term revenue generating opportunities.
It is often said that where attention flows money follows (*Kevin Kelly kk.org), but the question is how, where and when to convert them. Today, digital natives are viewers, users, followers, friends, co-creators, co-producers or crowd-sourced collaborators, all-in-one. Going forward, data is becoming the new oil, and understanding, analysing, predicting and staying ahead of your ‘connected consumers’ is quickly becoming a MUST for your business in 2012 and beyond!
So far, technological content protection measures have not been successful. Instead, future ‘protection’ will need to come from the business models and from social cohesion. Delivering tangible value and inventing new free, freemium, feels-like-free models will be crucially important. Just look at Skype, Spotify, Amazon and the undisputed master of ‘free’ – Google. You need to asses the role ‘free’ will play in your business. How will you monetize your content and which new and innovative revenue generating concepts will transform the commercial prospects of your business? Yes, methods of monetizing content are fragmented, but also much more powerful, immediate and liquid than ever. This industry, this transitional period and the World e-Reading Congress 2012 are all key opportunities to harness your digital footprint and develop strategies that will pay dividends in solid revenue. I look forward to meeting you all at the World e-Reading Congress next May.” Gerd Leonhard, CEO, The Futures Agency – Opening Keynote Speaker 2012.
This is a self-recorded video of my keynote speech on 'TeleMedia Futures: Making the most of the Content Opportunity' at the recent Total Telecom conference in London, Nov 7 / 8, 2011. Apologies for the somewhat less than perfect recording quality (note that the crackling sound that starts at about 2 mins into the video will seize a minute later:). You can download the PDF of my presentation here: Download TeleMedia and Content Gerd Leonhard Total Telecom Public
More presentations (100+) can be viewed and downloaded via Slideshare
Amy-Mae Elliott interviewed my for this nice Mashable piece the other day. Here are some good snippets from me and from others that were interviewed:
Leander Kahney, editor of Cult of Mac and author of The Cult of iPod, sees the iPod’s primary impact in terms of the “connected device. “Gadgets are no longer stand-alone products,” Kahney says, “they connect to a range of software and online services. Think Internet TVs, stereos like Sonos, handheld gaming devices, GPS bike computers, in-car stereos, high-end watches, Internet radios, even printers — the list goes on and on — and the iPod was the first to do that...."
...Wikström says one could argue that iTunes has been more a hindrance to the industry than a help. Despite the billions of sales using the platform, the music industry has still suffered over the past decade. Did the dominant iTunes business model blind the industry to alternatives? “iTunes prolonged the industry’s dependence on the old model, and made them believe that it actually might be possible just to shift from CD to MP3, just as they had done in the past when they moved from vinyl to tape to CD,” says Wikström. “This is just speculation, but perhaps the most important impact on the music industry is that iTunes delayed the shift from a retail model based on control to what we now start to see emerge as various kinds of cloud-based retail models, such as Spotify and its peers.”
Futurist Gerd Leonhard, author of The Future of Content and co-author of The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution also sees iTunes playing a part in the decline of the music industry. “The genius of the iPod was (and still is, with the iPhone) that, while the music industry actually believed that it had found a good (i.e., closed and controlled) way to extract money from otherwise freeloading consumers, the iTunes/iPod/iPhone ecosystem became the dominant hardware solution for the consumption of free music.” |itunes / control image added by Gerd, source unknown |
Kevin Kelly is a major influence on my work, and this video from Wired's Network conference is one of his best. Dive in and you'll see why. All of his books are worth reading, as well.
Here are both parts (90 minutes plus 35 minutes) of my keynote speech on The Future of Content at Colombia 3.0 October 7 2011 see http://www.colombiatrespuntocero.com
The panel discussion afterwards can be viewed here, as well (all in Spanish). Note: even though I am actually presenting in English the overdup is Spanish and very much in the foreground. I will try and get an English version, as well - stay tuned.
El suizo GerlLeonhard, líder futurólogo experto en modelos de comercio electrónico, medios de comunicación e innovación fue el encargado del cierre de la Primera Cumbre Nacional de Contenidos Digitales, Colombia 3.0, realizada por el Ministerio TIC entre el 5 y el 8 de octubre. Después de cuatro días de análisis en los que se reunieron emprendedores, inversionistas, animadores, desarrolladores de aplicación y representantes de la industria de los contenidos digitales del mundo terminó Colombia 3.0. En la cumbre participaron 30 conferencistas nacionales y 50 internacionales, quienes se reunieron en 14 eventos simultáneos.Las distintas actividades y conferencias fueron seguidas en línea en 23 ciudades del país y 15 países. De igual manera se tuvo la participación de Siggraph, una asociación mundial de animación gráfica y técnicas interactivas, espacio en que 19 expertos en animación compartieron sus experiencias exitosas en las firmas más importantes del mundo de esta industria. Bogotá 7 de octubre de 2011.En su intervención GerlLeonhard, realizó un detallado análisis de los cambios que han sufrido los medios tradicionales al migrar a los medios sociales como Facebook, Twitter y otras redes sociales. Además,Leonhard anotó que en la actualidad se vive una cultura de la banda ancha y son los “prosumidores”, consumidores activos, los que producen contenidos digitales.
Mencionó el experto suizo que el mundo digital está regido por la relevancia y no solamente por la distribución, según Leonhard, los contenidos digitales deben ser depurados antes de ser distribuidos a los distintos públicos y subrayó que la nueva economía digital que se está viviendo en la actualidad debe iniciarse desde Internet y especialmente desde los dispositivos móviles. Anotó también Leonhard, que el usuario es quien genera los contenidos digitales en la actualidad através de distintos dispositivos móviles. En su intervención, señaló además que la tendencia actual se desarrolla a través de lo móvil, lo social y lo local. Ademásindicó, en este sentido,que para el 2015se esperaque 7.1 trillones de dispositivos móviles sean usados en el mundo.
We certainly live in challenging and exciting times. Disruption is a constant companion; permanent beta the default. Tablets, now-ness, social commerce, alternative currencies, multi-platform story-telling, augmented reality - every week something new may end up remixing our business plans.
Globally, telecoms and mobile operators are moving up the food-chain into media and advertising (someone coined this development 'TeleMedia':)), and social networks are quickly becoming the next global broadcasters – but without owning the cables or the satellites.
Soon, most of the world's Internet traffic will be generated by a huge variety of mobile devices instead of computers, and 'the other 3 billion' users aka consumers in the BRIC countries are coming online at a very fast pace. Remember: 10% more broadband and / or wireless equates to 1% growth in GDP – but also a 1000% percent increase in disruption:)
Give it another 3-5 years and it's very likely that almost 5 billion people will be connected with fast and very cheap (if not free) mobile devices - and they will not 'consume' media and so-called content in the same way that we did when renting a movie still meant getting a piece of plastic that embodied it, or becoming a faithful and constant visitor to the quite beautiful but nevertheless super-walled iTunes garden.
Most importantly, these digital natives, those pesky millennials, the inadvertent micro-pirates of our cherished digital files, are people of the screen, not people of the book, as Kevin Kelly right summa-rises. To them, the world looks and feels different and many pre-screen, pre-networked rules seem hopelessly antiquated - they won't buy if we don't change how we sell.
To add to Kevin's meme, I think 'people of the screen' are people that increasingly prefer access (i.e. not copies); they are people who want total and unfettered control over when and how they use their media and who they share it with, and they are people who often co-create and participate, as well.
We must embrace the reality that we are at the beginning of a global shift from copy to access: many of us will be happy with just having access to content, anytime, anywhere, on the best screen available, rather than wanting to 'own' (i.e. download) it. If 'the cloud' proves that it works we will make the switch - just like we switched from printed maps to navigation devices. Sure, it may take longer if you don't live in a major urban centre, but we are going from broadcast to broadband - or better, plus- broadband, from wired to / plus mobile, from 'the network' to / plus 'the networked' - and our world is no longer linear, it's not yes or no, it's… an ‘it depends’ world. Fragmentation, aggregation, curation - but not mere distribution.
This shift is impacting all media, starting with music (see Spotify, Simfy, Rdio etc), movies and TV shows (see Netflix, Amazon, Youview etc), to books, newspapers, magazines, games and software. This 'from ownership to access' trend is even visible in the physical domain of ‘stuff’ such as in the rise of car-sharing, home-swapping and 3D printing: if we can use it why do we need a copy of it, for ourselves? I believe that the switch from 'owning to accessing' will be an extremely lucrative turn of events for creators and their various middlemen and industries.
Once we have overcome the need to package media in expensive physical formats we will see tremendous growth here. In a digital world, our costs will be much lower, marketing will be done via those that love what we do and are yearning to tell others, and many new revenues will be generated via many new combinations of I Pay, You Pay, They Pay (to quote Shelly Palmer). We just need to allow it.
Be ready: value is shifting from distribution to attention, and while this is happening we are also swiftly moving into a complete reboot of advertising, i.e. to with-vertising not @vertising, to engagement rather than interruption, to conversation rather than yelling. I predict that between 30 - 40 % of the entire global advertising, marketing, PR and promotion budget (currently approximately $1 trillion) will merge to digital, mobile and interactive means of reaching consumers: advertising and marketing (and selling!) are being reinvented along with media. Exciting times.
In a totally networked and always-on society, skills, creativity, curation, filtering and expert-ship will be more important than ever before - and if we keep our eyes on what the 'people formerly known as consumers' really want rather than follow our own assumptions and outmoded orthodoxies, the media business has a great future.
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