As previewed a few weeks ago, the new beta version of my crowd-sourced tweeple aggregator and tweet-reader "Futerati" is now online and open to all. Futerati is basically a curated site that displays my favorite Twitter people, presented in 20+ categories such as Futurists, Authors,Thought-Leaders, Bloggers, Visionaries etc. You can review all the latest tweets on one page, including the images and videos (much like the Power-Twitter plug-in for Firefox), and you can follow all of them with just a few clicks.
I quite like it - in fact, I am reading a lot of my Twitter updates via Futerati now, myself. Do let me know how you like it. I am still adding people all the time, btw, so... stay tuned!
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?"
Spend 10 minutes watching this speech by Saatchi & Saatchi's CEO Kevin Roberts - there is a ton of great stuff here; the most important one, for me: we now all are Connectors not Directors. Think about that.
This is from the Wharton Youtube channel, worldwide CEO Kevin Roberts shares his vision for the company and
gives Wharton students a primer on his unique leadership style when he
visited the Wharton School as part of the Wharton Leadership Lecture
series, founded by Management Professor Michael Useem (2008)
Fellow mobilist and DotOpen Founder Rudy de Waele has drummed up some great predictions, bottom-lines and other assorted wisdoms from 20+ really great people (including myself...for some odd reason; in any case I am really delighted to be asked to contribute - thanks Rudy!), asking us to provide input on out top 5 mobile trends for the next decade.
This effort produced a very nice slideshow that really packs a punch, see below. It includes some serious nuggets of wisdom from people such as Howard Rheingold, Douglas Rushkoff, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Gerd Leonhard,
Timo Arnall, Carlo Longino, Katrin Verclas, Atau Tanaka, Alan Moore,
Marek Pawloski, Ajit Jaokar, Nicolas Nova, Inma Martinez, Tony Fish,
Jonathan MacDonald, Willem Boijens, Carlos Domingo, Russ McGuire, Raimo
van der Klein, Michael Breidenbruecker, Robert Rice, Steve O’Hear, Ted
Morgan, Martin Duval, Andreas Constantinou, Fabien Girardin, Matthäus
Krzykowski, Rich Wong, Andy Abramson, Ilja Laurs, David Wood, Stefan
Constantinescu, Henri Moissinac, Kevin C. Tofel, Enrique C. Ortiz,
Felix Petersen, Tom Hume...
Here is my stuff, excerpted (from slide #9)
1. Mobile advertising will surpass the decidedly outmoded Web1.0 & computer-centric advertising - and ads will become content, almost entirely. Advertisers will, within 2-5 years, massively convert to mobile, location-aware, targeted, opt-ed-in, social and user-distributed 'ads'; from 1% of their their budgets to at least 1/3 of their total advertising budget. Advertising becomes 'ContVertising' - and Google's revenues will be 10x of what they are today, in 5 years, driven by mobile, and by video.
2. Tablet devices will become the way many of us will 'read' magazines, books, newspapers and even 'attend' live concerts, conferences and events. The much-speculated Apple iPad will kick this off but every major device maker will copy their new tablet within 18 months. In addition, tablets will kick off the era of mobile augmented reality. This will be a huge boon to the content industries, worldwide - but only if they can drop their mad content protection schemes, and slash the prices in return for a much larger user base.
3. Many makers of simple smart phones - probably starting with Nokia- will make their devices available for free - but will take a small cut (similar to the current credit-cards) from all transactions that are done through the devices, e.g. banking, small purchases, on-demand content etc. Mobile phones become wallets, banks and ATMs.
4. Quite a few mobile phones will not run on any particular networks, i.e. without [I mean unlocked] SIM cards. The likes of Google (Nexus), and maybe Skype, LG or Amazon will offer mobile phones that [may eventually] will work only on Wifi / WiMax, LTE or mashed-access networks, and will offer more or less free calls. This will finally wake up the mobile network operators, and force them to really move up the food-chain - into content and the provision of 'experiences'
5. Content will be bundled into mobile service contracts, starting with music, i.e. once your mobile phone / computer is online, much of the use of the content (downloaded or streamed) will be included. Bundles and flat-rates - many of them Advertising 2.0-supported - will become the primary way of consuming, and interacting with content. First music, then books, new and magazines, then film & TV.
You may have seen my first announcement on Futerati, back in July 2009. The idea was to list and display the latest updates from those Twitter friends that I like the most, thereby acknowledging how important they are to my work, and directing some attention back to them.
I have met some really great people through Twitter, and have already booked quite a few speaking gigs through Twitter as well - so the benefits cover the entire spectrum; and yes, they are monetizable (if you should care about that). Here is a screen-shot of the new Futerati:
After the initial launch of Futerati (see the old site, here), I was very fortunate to hook up with NZ programming wiz and Tangerine Works Founder Nick Taylor (via Twitter!) who offered to help us to make Futerati a lot more attractive by actually displaying the images and videos within each tweet, and by turning the whole project into a really fancy feed aggregator and powerful tweet-reader. Nick was joined by my designer and web-master Benjamin Blust (of B2Media) and a really nice, crowd-sourced effort was underway. Thanks, guys!
The new Futerati now features 20+ categories of personally selected futurists, visionaries, bloggers, journalists, authors, VCs, startups, entrepreneurs, thought-leaders, artists, film-makers, technology experts, social media gurus etc. Every single person that is listed here is included because I really value their contributions and because I read their tweets constantly, myself. You can ask to be included but there is no guarantee as to if and when I can add you; right now it's based solely on showing up on my own radar screen.
Because we are still testing quite a few features such as the automatic updates and the importing of images etc, we will provide the public URL on February 1, 2010; however, in the meantime you can request the beta-test link if you want to check it out right away.
Don Tapscott - the Wikinomics guy - is just a great speaker, with seemingly endless knowledge, and one of the people that constantly inspire me in my own work (check out the new Futerati.com for all the others...) This video has so many great pieces of wisdom in it that you'll just need to watch the entire 62 minutes! Thanks to Sander Duivestein at VINT / SOGETI for sending this my way. From the Vimeo site:
"The global economic crisis is a wakeup call to the world: we need to rethink and rebuild many of the organizations and institutions that have served us well for decades, but now have come to the end of their life cycle. The financial services industry, for example, does not just need fresh infusion of capital or some new regulations; it needs a whole new operating model — one based on transparency, sharing of intellectual property and global governance.
As the crisis has spread to other sectors in the economy and even other sectors of society, it is exposing structural weaknesses and modes of operation that no longer nurture social and economic growth. The recent collapse of many newspapers is just one storm-warning of more to come: conventional wisdom isn’t going to cut it for success in this century. We need to reinvent our institutions..."
Unfortunately I could not make it to this year's Monaco Media Forum because of another speaking gig so I am now watching some of their videos via their Youtube channel. So far, this one is the best: USC Annenberg Professor Jeffrey Cole's keynote on "The State of the Mediasphere". Jeff presents his keypoints very clearly, with great examples, and it is obvious that he has this topic (i.e. the future of content and media) nailed down way beyond most people. Great stuff! MUST WATCH.
"Finding and connecting with local social media 'superstars' can be a
valuable short-cut for anyone trying to ramp up quickly in online
social environments. These enthusiasts are knowledgeable about social
media tools, are highly-connected, and understand well how to succeed
in the online social environment. But how do you find the local social media superstars? Today, many of these individuals use Twitter.
The "Local Twitterstars" mini-application below takes any US geographic
search area that you provide and returns a feed of the top five most
followed individuals on Twitter who have been recently active in the
region..."
I tried it and it works great for non-U.S. too! Latest update from Keith is here Original Yahoo Pipe here (thanks @bentrem)
Via http://www.ted.com Brewster Kahle is building a truly huge digital library -- every book ever published, every movie ever released, all the strata of web history ... It's all free to the public
"Universal access to all knowledge is within our reach"
Fascinating conversation with technology expert, consultant, teacher and author Mark Pesce. Pesce recently spoke at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York, and in this discussion he provides his thoughts and opinions on where we are with web and mobile technology, and most importantly, on its critical social and political impact on us all today. (PS: Blip.TV really rocks I think! - check out my channel on Blip)
Great video via http://www.ted.com Tod Machover of MIT's Media Lab is devoted to extending musical expression for everyone -- from virtuosi to amateurs, and in the most diverse forms -- from opera to videogames (Guitar Hero grew out of his group). At TED2008 he talks about what's coming next, from new tools for music creativity to the world's first robotic opera. Machover then introduces Dan Ellsey, a young man with cerebral palsy who has found his voice through music created and performed using Media Lab technologies. Ellsey plays his "My Eagle Song" in a soaring rendition that underscores music's power to heal, to communicate, and to inspire.
One of the best videos on this topic that I have ever seen - lots of great nuggets here.
Law professor Yochai Benkler
explains how collaborative projects like Wikipedia and Linux represent
the next stage of human organization. By disrupting traditional
economic production, copyright law and established competition, they're
paving the way for a new set of economic laws, where empowered
individuals are put on a level playing field with industry giants.
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