The Google guys have just published a video with my talk at Authors@Google, in San Francisco, March 2, 2009 (see the details here Pdf: The End of Control Gerd Leonhard at Google SF PDF
*22MB). Due to some technical issues my fancy slides (i.e. the stuff on the screen) come across very nicely in this video while I am left a bit 'in the dark' - but if you use the HQ version on the Youtube site you can still get a much better idea of what my face actually looks like (I guess always wearing black is not ideal when the lights are bad;). Anyway, I do think this is one of my best talks, so... watch the entire 55 Mins 22 Secs. As far as the End of Control Book is concerned, I will have an announcement on my plans within the next 10 days...stay tuned.
Here is the official Google Talks description:The End of Control & The Future of Content: The tough
issue of control emerges, again and again, as the key contention point
within TV companies, publishers, record labels, and broadcasters: How
can a commercial venture that is based on so-called intellectual
property thrive and prosper in an environment that seems to
continuously and progressively remove control from the
creators/owners/providers of content, and hands it over to the people
formerly known as consumers (aka the users), effectively making them
more powerful every single day? But the reality is that every
click inadvertently makes another case for the consumers
ever-increasing rise in importance. Within all the conversations I have
had about things like commercial content versus shared content, about
the read-only or the read-write web, and about copyright versus Fair
Use, the crucial question always seems to boil down to WHERE IS THE
CONTROL HERE, i.e., questions such as Who will control this new media
universe and How much control do I need to run a revenue-generating
business?
Read: E-Commerce News: E-Commerce: Amazon: Only Copyright Holders Can Unzip Kindle's Lips. This is an interesting debate that once again shows that many rights holders will need some serious hand-holding when it's about understanding new technological implementations. I think this will be a major task, and very powerful if somewhat tedious opportunity, for the likes of Amazon, Google (Youtube), Yahoo and Facebook (yes... why? Stay tuned!) and very soon, the big agencies such as DDB, Ogilvy and Saatchi, as well as for all those Telecoms that want to play in the content & experience business (and which one does not?).
The creators and rights holders urgently need to understand and embrace the web-fueled paradigm of 'giving something' in return for 'getting something' - and the increasing empowerment of the people formerly known as consumers (aka the users) means that the creators will have to give more before they can get something back. Some people would call that the pressure of the Attention Economy - but this is the undeniable reality of the hyper-connected and mobile world we now live in, and it is not something we can switch on or off as we see fit. Ignore this trend at you own peril - witness the music industry's refusal to give more value before the purchase, and where it has taken them.
Now, Spotify, Last.fm, Myspace and iMeem provide free music on-demand, Hulu and Youtube provide free TV shows on-demand, Amazon and Google let people search-and-read-inside-the-book. And now the new Kindle will allow you to listen to a robotic voice rendition of a book - hardly a competition with the audio book, I would argue. In fact, this feature would probably drive people towards buying more audio books - free added values convert to sales based an getting better interfaces and higher quality. Sounds familiar?
This whole debate is very much like, years ago, the issue of Amazon's Search-Inside-The-Book feature. After a lot of deliberation, the publishers found out that the new feature really did increase sales (I think by something like 10%) and what's more, it got a lot of people 'addicted' to the book right there and then - which is usually the best way of snagging a new customer.
I think that Amazon should consider offering an additional, small monetary incentive to the publishers as well as some clever reporting on who is listening where (based on opt-in), and maybe even some promotional, highly targeted audio 'advertising' options to the participating book publishers, and thereby sweeten the deal.
But most importantly, the publishers need to start looking beyond their constant fears of cannibalization of existing revenues, and look at all these new options with less toxic assumptions (as social media expert and fellow bloggerati Neil Perkin likes to calls them). In addition, drastically lowering the price on digital books (the audio versions, too) would go a long way in boosting the take-up of electronic reading. And beyond that: what if you could use Kindle to have actual conversations with the readers - wouldn't that be a boon to writers and publishers?
The bottom line: switch to Openness and find new revenues. Now. Look at Nokia / Symbian, Firefox, Apache, Adobe, Android... Openness is tough but it always wins the users.
Ceck out this video on 'Compensation not Control' (MidemNet 2009)- this Lessig-inspired meme applies here, too!
Some snippets: Bottom Lines: The fight for Control was a fight for Distribution. The flight for Attention is a fight for Trust. The beneficiaries of Control were Monopolies.
The beneficiaries of Trust are those that Collaborate. Advertising 2.0: Information becomes Conversation. Interruption becomes Engagement. Annoyance becomes Entertainment. 'This is an Ad' becomes 'This is Content'. The Sharing Economy Logic: Sharing...the Output (i.e. publish, re-mix, co-create, life-stream...) the Input (i.e. remuneration in cash, attention, reputation...) ... the Thruput (i.e. usage data, meta content, attention trails >> New Data Economics)
Read Zuck's post: Facebook | Governing the Facebook Service in an Open and Transparent Way. When Facebook changed their Terms of Use last week, making it look a lot more 'controlling', all hell broke loose. Even in Switzerland (where I live), the national TV news reported on the uproar that followed. Everyone hated Facebook's new ToUs and lots of
people were considering ditching their accounts. Even though their new ToUs did not surprise me, and I already consider everything I do on Facebook to be kind of 'in public domain' (under the Creative Commons license I use for pretty much anything), I do think that they way they have gone about this left a lot to be desired. Their brilliant and decidedly Web2.0 move was to immediately back-paddle and return to the old ToU - very smart, and something that probably got them extensive media coverage all over the world (hey - there's a lot more room to grow, from their measly 160 Million or so users;).
So Zuck wrote in this blog-post: "Our main goal at Facebook is to help make the world more open and
transparent. We believe that if we want to lead the world in this
direction, then we must set an example by running our service in this
way. And... we came to an interesting realization—that the conventional
business practices around a Terms of Use document are just too
restrictive to achieve these goals. We decided we needed to do things
differently and so we're going to develop new policies that will govern
our system from the ground up in an open and transparent way. Beginning today, we are giving you a greater opportunity to voice your opinion over how Facebook is governed"
Well-done. Sure sounds a lot like Facebook will be more like a 'Public Utility' ... kind of like the BBC, maybe? Now, there's another blog-post, right here!
But here is the key point, for me: It is now abundantly clear that the WE-THE USERS can control and influence what happens - not (just) the 'Network Owner' or 'Provider' or 'Media Company' or 'Studio' or 'Label' or "TV / Radio Network". If we-the-users, the people formerly known as consumers, don't like it, we'll leave, taking all our friends with us, deflating the platform's value very quickly - just imagine what would happen to Google if we pulled our trust from them. Control has now shifted to the Users - and that's a good thing.
This is,
of course, the topic of my next book (download some previews, here). More soon. Facebook ToU tag cloud by Flickr, AuntieP
I am continuously working on my new book "The End of Control", even though I have lately been wondering quite a bit about whether it still makes sense to publish a dead-tree version of a non-fiction epic these days - I may yet decide to remain entirely in the realm of bits and bytes. Stay tuned. Or better yet, tell me what you want!
In any case, a big part of "The End of Control" is about how, all around us, Control is declining in importance (as well as in feasibility!), and our emphasis is gradually shifting to Trust. Not to become too Obama-ish here but I have observed this trend pretty much in all sectors that I work in, from media & content to travel to telecom, and it is an amazing change. And a real challenge.
So, rather than trying to control what people do with a service or product they get from a company, many businesses are now starting to focus on earning, keeping and expanding the users' trust in what they do and how they do it, so that at the right time their users will indeed make the choice to pay them. Because that is pretty much what it comes down to, now: people make implicit (bundled) and explicit (i.e. voluntary) choices to pay for what we offer them. This is especially true for content, software, media and entertainment, of course - given that many of those goods are already digital and thereby payment can often be avoided if you so wish.
Examples for how trust is starting to replace control abound - here are a few:
Twitter users make the choice to follow me (hey... don't ask me why), and now I have to constantly earn their attention with what I share on Twitter. If they like what I do, they will retweet my stuff (apparently the highest honor these days) or forward the links to other people via email or the various social media sharing tools. Yes, in case you were wondering, I have indeed been booked for speaking gigs via connections I made on Twitter (just like those that I make on this blog) - something that was a total miracle to me when it happened but now I am starting to get it. In any case, I'll be the first to advertise on Twitter when they offer it.
Flickr: they offer a fantastic platform for sharing images (and now, video), and once people trust them, quite a few of them end up buying the Flickr Pro account for $30 or - in fact, being a Flickr Pro user has become a bit of a status symbol among 'sharers'. The bottom line: earn my trust and attention with the free stuff, and then ... allow me to pay for something else.
Amazon's best-selling MP3 album in 2008 was 'Ghosts' by Nine Inch Nails, even though that very same album was made available under a creative commons license and free downloading by the band, itself - people made the choice to pay for something they could have had for free. Think again - compelling people to pay is starting to look like a real alternative to forcing them to pay (music industry readers, take note;)
Google. Of course, Google is the Master of this new art of business; constantly adding value, wielding ever higher attraction and receiving copious amounts of attention - all of which converts nicely into people trusting Google, and subsequently giving Google their money; whether it's AdWords, Apps, storage space, search tools. Google is indeed the master of giving control to us, and then have us return the ultimate favor of trust. Loads of Attention which, you guessed it, turn into serious cash for them.
Thinking cap on. A quick illustration below, borrowing Wired's Tired or Wired fancyness.
More on this soon. Please comment below. And retweet. now. yes, you.
I just finished my presentation at Emergence 2009, a really interesting and engaging e-Tourism event in Limassol / Cyprus. I spoke on the topic of how the tourism and travel industry is changing because of the Internet and the new habits of those hyper-connected 'people formerly known as users'. From the program:
The participative Economy by Gerd Leonhard Adopting
customer-centricity and connecting through experience - access, usage, sharing
- an inevitable future scenario for differentiation and competitiveness.Gerd is
an expert on the drastic changes that are impacting content, media and
communication companies as a consequence of the rapid deployment of new,
disruptive technologies, and of convergence.
Here is the PDF (15MB) - hopefully we will have a video soon, as well. Slideshare to follow as soon as bandwidth (not so hot, here) allows!
A crucial post on Wired popped up in my reader this morning: After a Decade of Secrecy, Apple Reluctantly Tries Out Transparency | Gadget Lab from Wired.com. These paradigm changes at Apple are indeed a big deal since in my view Apple is pretty much the only market leader and 'cult brand' that still banks solidly on a Total Control paradigm - and the bizarre thing is that I like their stuff, a lot, regardless. So...Wired's Brian Chen writes:
"The tight-lipped corporate giant recently made a move toward transparency when it lifted its iPhone non-disclosure agreement.
The
unpopular policy prohibited iPhone application developers from
discussing
their coding techniques. Lifting the NDA may hurt Apple by exposing the
inner workings of the iPhone to competitors like Google and Nokia. But
increasingly open competitors and disgruntled developers may have
forced Apple's hand..."
This last sentence is important - this is happening everywhere: openness trumps closedness, trust trumps control, and increasingly so. Give it another 18 months, riding on the crest of the wireless mobile broadband explosion fueled by powerful mobile devices, and everyone will be busy showing us - the people formerly known as consumers - how open they are, and how much they will empower us and deserve our trust.
Look at this key sentence in Apple's explanation why -until now- they required NDAs for the iphone app store developers: "We put the NDA in place because the iPhone OS includes many Apple
inventions and innovations that we would like to protect, so that
others don’t steal our work"
The fear of being ripped off caused them to want to control the people that worked with and for them - their biggest fans and most important users! Sound familiar? In the future, this is a risk that you'll just have to take - you cannot publish something and then build a remote control safe 'catch' into it. My prediction: watch for Apple dropping the DRM from iTunes in the near future, as well -because now, really, Friction is Fiction.
More from Wired: "So what gives with the openness? One
of the things that's happening to Apple is that it's less able to keep
secrets than it used to be, because it has a broader supply chain and
broader distribution," said Roger Kay, an Endpoint Technologies
analyst. "And because it's dealing with parties that need plans --
partners as well as some customers -- they need to disclose their
plans. Kay explained that Apple isn't alone anymore; the
company is now working more closely with partners, such as iPhone developers, mobile
carriers and so on. That inevitably forces the company to open up..."
In other words, you can't go it alone anymore, you can't keep the lid on people that are adding value to your enterprise, and you can't dominate a decentral ecosystem - anymore.
From the BBC's excellent coverage of VirginMedia's plan to enforce the bizarre 3-strikes+out plan presented by the French Olivennes commission (and now under consideration in the UK): "BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor told BBC News that the body was prepared to ... take ISPs to court. "There is a phenomenal amount of piracy out there and we believe that the idea that 95% of content on the net is free is not sustainable. We don't believe that society can allow the free consumption of content to persist"
Now here is the problem, Geoff (and I think you know this): a free society does not have the option of disallowing something that is easy to do and undertaken by a majority of the population IF there is a plausible alternative that could make it legal without harming either party, i.e. just because your economic model of selling copies is broken it does not mean the government should protect you by turning the Internet into a police-state. The solution is a LICENSE to everyone that cares to have it, everyone that wants to offer music, everyone that wants to add music to their offerings. A license that RADIO has had for almost 100 years. Get on with it and make that happen rather than trying to enforce the unenforceable.
"It further validates our vision and the importance of openness"
Crunchgear has some good comments here, and the NYT has a good, related story on Nokia here. Highlights from the NYT:
Nokia wants to transform itself into a next-generation entertainment company
Nokia is also positioning itself as a promoter of social networking,
with photo and video sharing and games for users of its cellphones
“Change is painful, but you have to figure this out in order to be
successful,” said Mr. Ojanpera, who is based in White Plains. “The
question is, are you willing to play by the new rules?”
Very interesting path Nokia is taking here - and true to their mantra I guess:
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