One of the most important realizations that has recently transpired via my Twitter pipeline is how much I am gaining from the ever increasing Sharism i.e. by what others are sharing with me. I am indeed very, very lucky to be connected to so many brilliant and like-minded people that are publishing their thoughts freely and openly, using platforms such as Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook, Slideshare and of course, their blogs. All of you deserve a big THANK YOU.
So I figured it's time to give some more explicit credit to all those great people that have influenced me, and I maybe a good way to do that is to list them on a special, Twitter-API-based site such as Futerati; and maybe send some attention their way, in return. Futerati went online a few days ago, and much like Electric Artists' cool TrackingTwitter site (but a lot more personal) Futerati is presenting 6 constantly updated categories (Futurists, Thought Leaders Authors, Activists, StartUps and Others) with people that I follow, their latest tweets, the current number of followers, and with some brief comments on why I like them. With each featured twitter user, you can click straight through to their tweets or their profiles and easily connect with them, as well.
Please note that Futerati is a constant work in progress and therefore not complete at this time; I will be adding a lot more people as I dig through my 7400 network connections, during the next 4-6 weeks. So, if I should have listed you but have not done so yet please post something on Twitter (use @gleonhard) or use the hashtag #futerati or DM me via Twitter, or email, or comment on this blog. If we haven't 'met' yet but if you still want to be listed please ping me with your details so that I can take a look at you; in any case please note that every single connection I list on Futerati is personally selected by me. Enjoy - and RT!
Joi Ito is a great resource and inspiring thought leader. Here is a great video with 2.6 Minutes of solid wisdoms. The nuggets:
People now want to pay to express themselves - not just to consume (and yes, this is generational)
Open, mobile platforms will come, soon, for sure, and will become even more of a key trend, going forward
Things that help you express, things that are mobile, things that are global, are the key to future success
We are shifting emphasis from Content to Context; content commerce becomes less 'copy' and copyright-oriented and more personal and timely (Twitter has little content value but lots of context value!)
Sander Duivestein, senior analyst at Sogeti's VINT, and one of the co-writers of this powerful ebook that provides a huge amount of both information and inspiration for anyone pondering the Future of Media, just send me the link to where his great book can be downloaded as a free PDF. Go get it before they run out of server juice;)
The full title is: Me the Media: Rise of the Conversation Society - Past, Present and Future of the Third Media Revolution
The authors are Jaap Bloem, Menno van Doorn, Sander Duivestein. There are some pretty cool illustrations in the book as well (see below).
I will be chewing my way through this during the next few weeks - hey, I may even take advantage of this opportunity and start using my new Sony Reader, i.e. without printing all 292 pages.
The main topic of the book (as far as I have read it, at the time of this blog post) is how drastically things have changed because WE 'the people formerly known as consumers' are becoming more empowered by the minute, i.e. it's increasingly more about MEMedia than about THEIRMedia; about conversation and engagement not (you guessed it) about Control. The video below provides a nice intro as well, more vids are
here. This is a must-read, imho! Be sure to pass on the news of the release.
Incidentally, I have found a few slideshows on Slideshare that are also a very good fit with this book, including this one (not mine:), and, naturally quite a few of these PDFs might also make a good fit (yes, they're mine;). Enjoy. Don't print.
Chris writes: "Gratis can be a good business. How? Pretty simple: The minority of
customers who pay subsidize the majority who do not. Sometimes that's
two different sets of customers, as in the traditional media model: A
few advertisers pay for content so lots of consumers can get it cheap
or free..."
Back in late 2008, I wrote something very closely related to what Chris is saying, here: "To me, the bottom line is that most of what used to work just fine in a disconnected world of 'totally segregated consumers and producers' will simply not work in the future". In other words, the traditional media model will not work in Online Media, going forward - the mechanics are entirely different. And this is where Free or Freemium plays a crucial role - and it's a huge mission to figure out how this ecosystem will generate rivers of cash, not just data. And it will involve Collaboration between content companies and creators, telecoms, social networks, search engines and device makers.
Chris goes on: "With physical stuff, samples must be doled out sparingly -- there are
real costs to be paid. With bits, the free versions are too cheap to
meter and can be spread far and wide. That's why so many people
businesses (expensive!) are turning into software businesses (cheap!),
which is why your cranky tax accountant has morphed into free TurboTax
online, your stockbroker is now a trading Web site and your travel
agent is more likely a glorified search engine..."
Yes, indeed: this is why I think that the content business - starting with music - is turning into a software business, too - witness the explosion of app stores for mobile devices, and how much $$ people are paying for iPhone apps. Now imagine that content (starting with music) will be bundled into such apps, and people will perceive it as BUYING SOFTWARE or buying a cool app for their phone but in fact the content is included (yet paid for i.e. packaged). I think that if permitted by the rights-holders Pandora could easily sell a mobile device application that could include video, audio, feeds and images - I am dead certain people will pay for that. I will have a separate post on this sometime later this week.
Chris then hits the nail on the head: "Expect the shift toward open source software (which is free) and
Web-based productivity tools such as Google Docs (also free) to
accelerate".
Totally. Then, Chris warns (and I agree - that's why I am also hard at work on next-generation advertising models): "The standard business model for Web companies that don't actually have
a business model is advertising...Two problems have
emerged with that model: the price of online ads and click-through
rates. Facebook is an amazingly popular service, but it also an
amazingly ineffective advertising platform..."
And I also like his conclusion (and this is the first time that I see it spelled out like this, from Chris): "Does this mean that Free will retreat in a down economy? Probably not... "Free" has as much power over the
consumer psyche as ever. But it does mean that Free is not enough. It
also has to be matched with Paid. Just as King Gillette's free razors
only made business sense paired with expensive blades, so will today's
Web entrepreneurs have to not just invent products that people love,
but also those that they will pay for. Not all of the people or even
most of them -- free is still great marketing and bits are still too
cheap to meter -- but enough to pay the bills. Free may be the best
price, but it can't be the only one"
I call this challenge the '21st century content economics' challenge (yes... borrowed from Umair Hague's brilliant post on this topic), and it's the main topic for my work this year. If we can figure out how to generate many new revenue streams based on Feels Like Free access to content, then we can start modeling the business plans for the next 5 years. More soon! But what do you think? Comment below.
Image via Wikipedia
Jeff Jarvis is a leading thinker as far as the future of media is concerned; I have been reading his blog and his books for a few years already, and I can guarantee you: he's inspiration pure! So, I just ordered his new book "What would Google do" and really look forward to reading it - the topic is a perfect theme for anyone looking at future trends, obviously. Here is a short video with Jeff where he talks about the lessons we can learn from Google ("make mistakes and make them well")- check it out.
AlwaysOn's Jonathan Handel has published a nice column on what is happening with the content industries, and what the future holds for Hollywood and the 'big content' companies. Here are some of the best snippets and, as usual, some comments (links and images
are mine, too)
First, Jonathan defines the issue: "This battle turns on whether it’s true that “content is king,” as many
people believe, or whether content is becoming a mere commoner while
the technologies that distribute it become ever more valuable"
I have written about this juicy topic several times, and even made a few videos on it: the question is somewhat academic - I think that in the future, everyone gets to be king at different times. Sometimes it's Context (and filtering) that matters the most, sometimes it's metacontent (i.e. tags, ratings, bookmarks etc), sometimes remixes, sometimes the packaging, sometimes the platform. What's more, content does not need to be King any longer in order to make money - lots of new revenue streams around content (rather than solely off or within content) are in the oven - we just need to tune them up a bit more. And that's the tough part: we will need to let go off the old vine before the new vine has proven trustworthy; this trend is faster than our revenue modeling.
Jonathan writes: "There’s no doubt that traditional content is in trouble. Theatrical box
office and admissions ...have generally been flat for a number of years. The DVD
business is declining... The
network television business is harder than ever, and also in trouble
are other traditional content industries, such as those centered on
music, newspapers ...books, and magazines. People still consume media the old-fashioned way, but fewer and fewer do so every day, especially younger people" A key phrase: fewer and fewer do so every day. Chew on that. The question is not IF but WHEN this sea change will flood your beach.
This defines it very well: the hunger for content is bigger than ever but the way that the digital natives consume it is totally different. And with a change of 'how' comes the shift of payment; i.e. with time-shifting, place-shifting and device shifting comes a much more troubling control & money shifting. While working on my next book I have looked at this trend in great detail, and it seems that if we compare traditional revenue models (such as 'selling copies') with the emerging new models (such as 'selling access' or advertising-as-we-know-it) we may be looking at a revenue reduction of 5:1, i.e. what made a dollar then makes 20 cents now. The NYT is not going to make as much money with their online ads as they made with their print ads, and they certainly won't sell RSS feeds for $1.50 per day. This is the challenge: new revenue models (as Kevin Kelly calls it, the New Generatives) must be developed than can lead to entirely different sources of remuneration and monetization, many of which we don't even know of, yet, and worse, which will become only apparent after the dismantling of the current revenue model. I sometimes call this the YouTube curse: we know we need it, we know we want it, we know it will work, we know it can make $$ but we (they) don't have the recipe yet!
Jonathan then talks about why traditional content is in trouble: "One [reason] is supply and demand. Demand for entertainment is relatively static, because leisure time is constant, whereas supply (online content) has grown enormously. Some of this is professional content, but even more is user-generated content (UGC). Other factors are the loss of physical form... the low-friction nature of the Internet ...and ad-supported new media business models....Market forces are also key: Computers, Web services, and consumer electronic devices are more valuable when more content is available and, in turn, these products make content more usable by providing new distribution channels. That encourages the growth of UGC and pirated content, reducing the market share of paid professional content, and, not incidentally, increasing the sales of new technological devices and services"
Brilliant explanation, and ending with a fitting if somewhat worrying quote: "As NBC Universal’s Jeff Zucker lamented, the content industries are
being forced to “trad[e] today’s analog dollars for digital pennies.”
I had to chuckle while reading the next few sentences: "In contrast to the stagnation and decline of the Los
Angeles content industries, the technology business is marked by
innovation....The pace of change in Silicon Valley is breakneck; in Los
Angeles not so much. Hollywood now finds itself yoked to an industry
that evolves at a much faster
rate, and the result has been a struggle over revenue, distribution
channels, and control" - simply because it sounds so much like a quote / snippet from my many keynote speeches and presentations on the topic of control. This struggle over revenues and control is what we are seeing everywhere around us, right now, and it's going to get even more brutal.
Jonathan's final paragraphs conclude: "Whether Hollywood will thrive, rather than just survive, is a harder question... While experiments with new media may yet bring profit to old media companies, the question remains: Will Internet-based distribution (much of it ad- supported) and mobile ever generate as much gross and net revenue as traditional distribution? If so, how much of that revenue will be captured by Hollywood, and how much by the technology companies that own the new distribution platforms? No one knows, but there’s been little good news in these areas for Hollywood. If the studios continue to lose their grip on distribution...they’ll be left with content as their core business. That’s a problem because, fundamentally, the economics of content creation are inferior to those of distribution. The former is an industrial process, painstaking and manual. The latter, in the digital age, is post-industrial and automated. ...Like the British, whose monarchy is now a mere appendage to a parliamentary government, content may find its kingdom ever more circumscribed by technology" Gotta love that one!
Here is my take on this: the telecoms' future plans need to converge or at least intersect with those of the studios so that content and distribution can work hand-in-hand; albeit at the utter mercy of the people formerly known as consumers - since it will be them (us) that will dictate what they like to both the telecoms and the content producers; and they will be talking about it very loudly, on 3 Billion connected and socially-networked devices. I agree with Jonathan that this is the challenge of course: now that CONTROL is on it's way out, and mere copies lose their meaning as chief instruments of money-making, what will take its place, where will that other 80% of the 'disrupted value' come from... and who will get to feast on these new pies?
Clay Shirky hits the nail on the head with the statement, below - not much more I can add. Read his newest book "Here comes Everybody". Image via Flickr (Will Lion & B Tal)
via the WSJ. I will comment in more details later but... READ THIS. Excerpt:
"Deregulate "the copy": Copyright law is triggered every
time there is a copy. In the digital age, where every use of a creative
work produces a "copy," that makes as much sense as regulating
breathing. The law should also give up its obsession with "the copy,"
and focus instead on uses -- like public distributions of copyrighted
work -- that connect directly to the economic incentive copyright law
was intended to foster.
Simplify: If copyright regulation were limited to large
film studios and record companies, its complexity and inefficiency
would be unfortunate, though not terribly significant. But when
copyright law purports to regulate everyone with a computer, there is a
special obligation to make sure this regulation is clear. It is not
clear now. Tax-code complexity regulating income is bad enough;
tax-code complexity regulating speech is a First Amendment nightmare.
Restore efficiency: Copyright is the most inefficient
property system known to man. Now that technology makes it trivial, we
should return to the system of our framers requiring at least that
domestic copyright owners maintain their copyright after an automatic,
14-year initial term. It should be clear who owns what, and if it
isn't, the owners should bear the burden of making it clear.
Decriminalize Gen-X: The war on peer-to-peer file-sharing
is a failure. After a decade of fighting, the law has neither slowed
file sharing, nor compensated artists. We should sue not kids, but for
peace, and build upon a host of proposals that would assure that
artists get paid for their work, without trying to stop "sharing."
Very nice slideshow by Jo Sanku, VP Business at KTH (Korea Telecom), found via slideshare (the best place for connecting with other people that share their work - a real treasure trove of great ideas). My shared shows are here.
I ran across yet another Paolo Coelho marvel today; a very interesting approach to movie-making that I found via fellow Swiss blogger Bruno Giussani's LunchOverIP blog, here.
Bruno says: "Another is called "The Experimental Witch" and is a film competition/movie crowdsourcing project based on Paulo's novel "The witch of Portobello" [PC:]" I’ve been visiting the pages of readers this last year and I’ve seen excellent works by actresses & actors, musicians, directors, etc. That’s why I thought: why not make a movie together?", he asks. How would that work? The book is divided into 15 narrators' perspectives. Paulo is inviting filmmakers to sign up, pick a narrator, and shoot a video including all the scenes in the book in which that narrator interacts with the main character, Athena.....
After the scenes are shot, and the videos uploaded to a private YouTube account, the best ones will be chosen to be edited into the final movie -- all the rights will go to Coelho, while the filmmakers will get 3000 euros each, plus a share of fame if the experiment works out..." This was in May 2008, so I looked around a bit and Paolo has posted an update, here. The whole thing is sponsored by HP. Related: my previous post on Coelho, a few days ago
Not only is Paolo Coelho my absolute favorite writer, he's also very clued-in as far as the Internet is concerned. The video, below, from DLD 2008, is well worth watching. Some highlights:
On copyright: "There is this tendency to protect content... and I think this is a lost battle"
"For the first time of my life I get to interact with my writers"
"Life is all about sharing"
"For 3 hours a day I now talk to my readers via Facebook and Flickr", and best:
"We cannot control - so let's be generous"
The 'official' Pirate Coelho site is here (download PDFs of his books). Torrentfreak has some other good numbers, here
I just ran across this truly brilliant essay on Wired.com - it's from 1995 but it reads like a perfect answer to today's issues facing content creators and providers. Esther Dyson is truly amazing - and this was 13 years ago! So, here are some of the best nuggets - if you are in the content business, the is a must-read. Quoting Esther (links and underlines etc are mine, and go to some blog posts that I think are related):
The problem for providers of intellectual property in the future is this: although under law they will be able to control the pricing of their own products, they will operate in an increasingly competitive marketplace where much of the intellectual property is distributed free and suppliers explode in number
On the Net, there is an equivalent change in "gravity" brought about by the ease of information transfer. We are entering a new economic environment - as different as the moon is from the earth - where a new set of physical rules will govern what intellectual property means, how opportunities are created from it, who prospers, and who loses.
Chief among the new rules is that "content is free." While not all content will be free, the new economic dynamic will operate as if it were. In the world of the Net, content (including software) will serve as advertising for services such as support, aggregation, filtering, assembly and integration of content modules, or training of customers in their use. Intellectual property that can be copied easily likely will be copied. It will be copied so easily and efficiently that much of it will be distributed free in order to attract attention or create desire for follow-up services that can be charged for.
But in the one-to-one world the Net promises, advertising will often be tailored and of higher quality. Those with more money to spend will get higher-quality advertising.
The likely best course for content providers is to exploit that situation, to distribute intellectual property free in order to sell services and relationships.
The way to become a leading content provider may be to start by giving your content away. This "generosity" isn't a moral decision: it's a business strategy.
There are 12 pages of one nugget after another - be sure to read it all.
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