My comment: mind-boggling numb-skullness:)
"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.
via thenextweb.com
Love it - nice to add some humor to this topic. Google + does seem to be taking off like a fire cracker - add me to your circles if you want :)
... could be potentially very powerful for my research work: just drop an image into the Google Images search box and find lots of related stuff. Nice.
This is a really interesting and often hilarious video of Google's Marissa Mayer interviewing Lady Gaga, found just now via FastCompany. Now, I don't care a whole lot about Lady Gaga's music (or did you really expect me to?) but this is indeed a very interesting and unique setting: über-celebrity-pop-cult meets micro-celeb-business-tech-super-girl. Note the slightly different outfits, to start with :). Nice, Google.
Google is the master of keeping us happy by constantly rolling out new features that add serious incremental value to our experience - but probably don't cost them very much: see the latest innovation in gMail, the priority inbox. I will add this to my future presentations on The Future of Business.
Here it is - video to follow soon.
Everyone: this is a biggie. Check out this video below and the announcement on the Google blog. Here are some quotes from the blog, and some comments from my end:
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Good coverage of this latest twist in 'change to digital' confusion, via Paid Content, below: Google has killed several blogs - hosted by the Google-owned Blogger platform - that were allegedly infringing on copyright by posting MP3 files. A long-standing tradition of music journalism online is severely endangered. To me, this is yet another example of why we urgently need new legislation in digital music, i.e. the creation of realistic, web-native standards and reliable permissions. Because this is the problem: while the marketing people at the labels love these blogs because they clearly spread the word very efficiently and reach the perfect target groups, the legal people at the labels file DMCA claims and want the sites to remove all MP3 files.
But to me, it also looks like Google is now, increasingly being forced to police blogger-powered sites for unlicensed music postings because executives across many sectors of the traditional media industry are now pointing their fingers at Google for the use of content that is not based on a clear-cut license, i.e. exists in what I call a gray zone - some use of content that is legally uncertain (yes, based on pre-Internet laws, mostly) but has become accepted social-cultural practice. Check out the debate via the Twitter Hashtag. Image: Gorilla vs Bear music blog.
"In what critics are calling “musicblogocide 2010,” Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has deleted at least six popular music blogs that it claims violated copyright law. These sites, hosted by Google’s Blogger and Blogspot services, received notices only after their sites – and years of archives – were wiped from the internet..."
via paidcontent.org
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Another brilliant post by Umair Haque via the Harvard Business Review - he spells out a lot of stuff that keeps coming up in my presentations, as well; so here's a bit of a remix of this juicy post, my comments are [...]
"On one side is the old high ground of the industrial era capitalism; on the other, the new high(er) ground of next-generation capitalism. The yawning chasm in between them is the gap between the 20th century and the 21st" [I call this the EGOSystem vs the ECOsystem, see more here and here]
"Currency intervention, breaking Copenhagen, crackdowns , collusion, corruption, coercion, and censorship: China's ongoing bad behavior as global citizen is, when we connect the dots, the gigantic elephant in the world's boardroom. What's driving it? The quest for monopoly, monopsony, and control" [I wrote about something quite similar in my 2007/2008 blog-book "The End of Control", check out the free online chapters here, and a related presentation, here]
"That's yesterday's high ground, and China's focused like a laser beam on it. China's moves are the textbook stuff of b-school's blackest arts. Through larger distribution, fiercer litigation, greater exclusivity, cheaper and faster production, a bigger cash pile, advantage is gained. But the high ground has shifted. The new high ground is an ethical edge. It's
not about having more; it's about doing better. It's not about
protecting exports, pressuring buyers and suppliers, price
discriminating against the powerless, and programming consumers to buy,
buy, buy — it's about making people, communities, and society
authentically better off. It's not about caring less — but caring more.
It's not about ruthlessness. It's about mindfulness" [Couldn't have said it better, myself; here are just a few things I would add: in this new ecosystem that Umair is describing, we will need to develop web-native economic models and entirely new metrics for evaluating them, friction will indeed be fiction (to a very large degree) and the importance of control will be utterly eroded by the steadily increasing power of trust, engagement and transparency]
"The old high ground was built for 20th century economics: sell more junk, earn more profit, "grow" — and then crash. An ethical edge operates at a higher economic level. It is concerned with what we sell, how profits are earned, and which authentic, human benefits "grow." It's a concept built for the economics of an interdependent world" [A key term, imo: an interdependent world, i.e. not a broadcast world but a connected and networked world]
"An ethical edge just might be the ultimate cause of advantage. It's how better distribution, production, marketing, and pricing — all just proximate causes of advantage — ultimately happen. Jim Chanos's investment thesis says: without an ethical edge, new value cannot be created — old value can only be shuffled around (hi, Wall Street)....So here's the single question everyone should be asking. The old high ground is the new low ground. Yesterday's mountain is today's valley. Are you ascending to the new high ground?"
via blogs.hbr.org
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There are a ton of really great kernels of wisdom and learnings in this open letter by Google's Jonathan Rosenberg. Be sure to read the whole thing; but here is the most essential part:
"Closed systems are well-defined and profitable, but only for those who control them. Open systems are chaotic and profitable, but only for those who understand them well and move faster than everyone else. Closed systems grow quickly while open systems evolve more slowly, so placing your bets on open requires the optimism, will, and means to think long term. Fortunately, at Google we have all three of these"
Coincidentally, in 2008, one of my my most popular speaking topics was "Open is King". Check out these resources, below.
Open is King (video), presentation at the Experience Economy Lab in Amsterdam (January 25, 2008, get the pdf / slides here)
And here's a German video (Telekom Trendforum 2008)
Link: 
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I have been very busy compiling my best essays, blog posts and other writings from the past 3 years, and have finally uploaded the most recent version to Lulu (my favorite print-on-demand book store). The new book is now called 'Friction is Fiction' and is available in 3 versions: 1) 158 pages, 6x9 inches / U.S. trade format, full-color, for $60.40, here (yes, it's quite pricey because of the cost of printing 4-color, on-demand) 2) the same dead-tree version, but in black & white only, for $19.98, here (much cheaper but a lot less cool;) 3) as a PDF, for a token price of $7.50, here.
I would be delighted if you would consider buying whatever works best for you - what better Christmas present could you possibly think of! Please note that this book will be updated every 3 months, to include my latest writings. If you want to share the book page please just send people to www.frictionisfiction.com - thanks.
As to giving away the free PDF, here is the deal: you can contact me anytime (via email, Facebook or Twitter) to request a free copy of the PDF if you just don't want to (or can't) spend the $7.50, and I will send you the download link. In return, what I ask from you is to pay me with attention, i.e. to write a review on Lulu, a blog-post, or a tweet about my book, with a link (all 3 is best;). Deal?
As to the title: I used to simply call this compilation 'The Best of Media Futurist' but while looking through all those posts - and spending a lot more time revising them - I found an important thread that goes through almost all of it and which therefore has become the new title: Friction is Fiction. So what does that mean? It means that if you are currently basing your success on maintaining or even constructing hurdles, difficulties or other bottlenecks somewhere in the system - i.e. if there is something that impedes the flow of information, or a transaction or purchase so that a higher price point or some other form of control over the can be obtained - then you are very likely to face diminishing revenues in the next few years. Building obstacles for users (fka consumers) used to work just fine but... no longer. Building walls is the fastest road to suicide in the digital economy.
The web has been utterly ruthless about finding these glaring points of friction, such as paying for eMail (remember that?), paying a ton of money for long-distance phone calls (remember those pre-skype days?), or consumers not having any access to travel booking systems, flight information or seating. These hurdles are being removed, one-by-one, and those 'people formerly known as consumers' are getting more powerful every single day. Banking on friction to increase your revenues has become like throwing matches into the river and asking it to stop - it's useless.
Friction was, of course, the main money-maker in the media, entertainment and content business, for a long time: certain CDs were only available in certain stores at certain times in certain countries, DVDs with those movies you really wanted were only available in certain countries and within certain 'windows', books had to be printed and shipped, and ring-tones could only be purchased from your operator. Basically, at every turn the consumer encountered have-to's and must's which essentially allowed a substantial level of control by the media and content companies - and thus, higher prices. In many cases, the more friction the higher the price you could ask for.
No longer. Read the book!
Related: my blog-book "The End of Control": download the first 6 chapters here. Also: My Music 2.0 book is available via Lulu, here
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Another quite ingenious, somewhat obvious-yet-still-missing-until-now innovation by Google was just announced: Google Fast Flip. I totally agree with Scott Karp over at the Publishing2.0 blog who blogs: "Google knows a lot about the future of news — more than many publishers. It’s evident in Google’s new product, Fast Flip, which allows news consumers to “flip” through news stories. What’s striking about Fast Flip is that Google is innovating precisely where publishers used to lead innovation..." Totally spot-on: why did this rather obvious idea not come the publishers, themselves? Where is their in-house innovation? I guess one reason is that many publishers don't seem to want to actually collaborate with each other... or am I wrong?
I test-drove Fast Flip, myself, and it really adds good value if you are not searching for complex stuff (since many magazines aren't indexed yet, I guess?) So what about the money? eCommerceTimes reports: "For the first time, Google is sharing ad revenues from advertisements served up alongside the stories, and the company says it hopes the service will help increase traffic at those sites. Previously, Google paid only wire services for content. "We think publishers who participate in Google Fast Flip will benefit in the form of additional exposure, Web traffic and revenue," said Google spokesperson Chris Gaither. "That additional traffic offers another opportunity for a publisher to win loyal readers and show ads if they'd like. While it's too soon to tell if Fast Flip will graduate from Labs status, the company is may allow publishers to embed the Fast Flip technology on their own Web sites in the future, Gaither told the E-Commerce Times..."
2 key points: a) sharing ad revenues from ads served ALONGSIDE the stories (this is new, and crucial), and b) participating publishers benefit of additional exposure, web traffic and revenue (i.e. all three benefits are to be considered -- this is not just all about immediate cash revenue sharing. This is crucial, imho).
Scott Karp has another nugget in that really drills down to the bottom line: "In digital media, on the web, the news package is now a function of software — which is why Google is innovating precisely where publishers are not. Fast Flip is, more accurately, an attempt to create a new UI for news — a better way to consume publishers’ content than publishers provide on their own sites"
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