A must watch: full-length video of my talk on the Future of Communications and Social Media at NBS Brazil

Here is a real must-watch: a 90 minutes tour-de-force on pretty much anything you'd ever want to know on the Future of Communications, Marketing, Advertising, and (Social) Media. This presentation (and the event that was put on by the NBS agency who have also graciously provided this video recording) got a lot of attention in Sao Paulo and in the Brazilian media, so give it a whirl.

Future of Communication and Social Media: Gerd Leonhard at NBS Sao Paulo

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Update: presentation from MIPTV 2010: Social Media & Building an Entertainment Brand Online: Push to Pull

As promised, here is a quick, direct upload of my presentation at MIPTV in Cannes: Download Social Media from Push to Pull MIPTV gerd leonhard LOW RES *5MB PDF Topic: Social Media & Building an Entertainment Brand Online: From Push to Pull. UPDATE: Slideshare version now available, see below. The video can be watched here.

Social Media: From Push to Pull, Building an Entertainment Brand Online (MIPTV 2010)

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Cross-posted from my Techdirt Guest Post: The Future Of Content: Protection Is In The Business Model - Not In Technology

Last month, Mike Masnick invited me to do a guest-post on Techdirt.com one of my favorite online destinations. It went live last night and is getting quite a few comments - check it out here. Comments and discussion is here.  Retweets are here.

Image by gleonhard via Flickr

If I received a dollar every time I get a question along the lines of "how can the content industries compete with FREE?" -- I would be traveling first class everywhere I go. Underneath this question I often find my favorite toxic assumption: "less control over distribution means less money."

This belief is as tired as it is poisonous: enforcing control (when trust is really what's needed) will yield instant disengagement, which swiftly and surely will translate into dwindling revenues -- as the music industry keeps proving again and again. If you believe in control rather than value and trust, the content business of the future is not a good hunting ground for you.

Take eBooks: despite clear and present proof that DRM has proven disastrous in selling digital music (and now is pretty much history), technical protection measures are still being looked at to 'secure distribution'. When will they ever learn?

The thinking that the digital distribution of content must be controlled to achieve any kind of reasonable payment is fundamentally flawed because of this not-so-futuristic realization: in our open, mobile, social and digitally networked economy, content publishers need to offer their goods in a way that no longer centers on the distribution of units (digital or physical) as the key revenue factor. The idea of just selling copies is toast - selling (i.e. offering) access is where the money is. Kevin Kelly said it years ago: we must sell what can't be copied, what's scarce, not what is ubiquitous.

The irrefutable trend is that the window of opportunity of 'selling copies' (be it iTunes, eMusic, the Kindle or the iPad) is rapidly closing. The real opportunity, the TeleMedia Future, is in selling access and presenting a constant stream of up-sells (i.e. added values and offering content-related experiences). Remember, as Mark McLaughlin so righly pointed out in the HuffingtonPost recently, consumers have never really paid for content - they paid for distribution! And now, distribution means Attention and Access.

Imagine when buying access to eBooks, you wouldn't just pay for the authorized enjoyment of the authors' words, but you would also gain instant access to highly curated and socially-networked commentary, a fire-hose of meta-content provided by your most important peers and friends that may also be reading these books, and their ratings, explanations, slide-shows, images, links, videos, cross-references -- and maybe even some direct connections with the author or the publisher. In an access-based, bundled and cloud-centric content ecology, being a legitimate and authorized user enables engagement, conversation, relevance, personalization, meaning... i.e. it unlocks really valuable benefits for the user. Connect with Fans + Reasons to Buy (as has been mentioned on this blog a few times, before, I believe) - that's where the money is.

In music, streaming-on-demand will without a doubt be available 'for free' (i.e. bundled and packaged by 3rd parties) or advertising supported, while many added values above and beyond the mere reproduction of music will not - no matter whether WMG's CEO Edgar Bronfman thinks it's a good idea 'for the industry' or not.

Just imagine where an access-to-the-cloud model could go next: if I want a high-definition version of my favorite opera or that Blue Note Jazz Club concert from last night I could buy a premium package that provides it. If I want to share my personal play-lists, ratings and comments with my Facebook friends, and get access to their content, as well, I can add the 'social network option' to my package. If the price is right (micro-transactions, anyone...?), I'll buy - because I am already hooked on the music.

The music industry needs to ask itself this question: if a permanent, unprotected download of a song would cost only $0.10, or if an ad-supported version of a on-demand, all-you-can-eat music service would be seamlessly bundled into your mobile phone subscription - would anyone still bother to scour the web to find badly ripped, virus-laced tracks for free? Would we need 3-Strikes or HADOPI or Digital Economy Bills?

Yes, I know, that price point sounds ridiculous for those record label CEOs that used to sell CDs for 15-25 Euros a piece, but hang on a second: if they can get 95% of the users to buy access at a much lower price (and almost zero cost of duplication and distribution!), and in that process really engage with them, the fans would also do the marketing for them - i.e. share the links. Sounds like a great model to me. But of course: selling access at a much lower (or feels-like-free) price to quite literally everyone only makes sense if it actually connects directly and smoothly to a multitude of up-selling possibilities, such as interactive versions of eBooks, high-definition versions of online radio shows, albums or concerts, in-depth analysis and audio/video commentary for news, etc.

Now, content storage is starting to move from my own computer or my hard-drives into the cloud - and I think this is very good news for content creators, publishers and rights-holders because it makes it even easier to engage and up-sell to those new generatives. Crucially, the answer to the constant quest of monetization is also in the cloud: I believe most people will soon stop sharing the actual media files (since they are getting increasingly larger and larger, and therefore more unwieldy) and will share only the links, the bookmarks, the metadata or the tags, and that should be a boon for the content industries.

The perfect test bed for 'Media as a Service' (MaaS) may unfold soon, with Apple's new iPad or Google's Tablet (hopefully). Extending the concepts mentioned above, rather than blocking my wife or my kids from sharing an eBook with me it would be much more logical if I could easily read her book, as well; but beyond the 'copy of the words' all else would not be available without a micro-transaction on my part, i.e. I would not have instant access to the cool video clips, the updated links, the footnotes, the ratings, etc; i.e. all that valuable context that will make eBooks so much more powerful would be out of my reach until I validate my own access.

The bottom line: content sharing isn't the real problem: high price points, outmoded, pre-web toll-booth concepts, broken relationships and processes, low values for high prices, bad technology and service, and utter lack of conversation and engagement are.

Here is my message to publishers and content owners: lower the prices for access to your content to the point of unanimous excitement, use open standards and technology platforms that work for everyone, everywhere; bundle and package as attractively as you can (then: repeat). Team up with ISPs, mobile operators, advertisers and device makers.

Remove all the reasons that your users may have to avoid your new toll-booths and skip the desired conversion to 'paid' - the lower the hurdle for legitimate usage and paid engagement, the higher the added values, the less you will have to worry about 'competing with free'.

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Social Media and the Future of Football (Slideshow)

This slide-show is the public version of a presentation I gave for the pan-European football association yesterday, in Cyprus. Football (and most other sports businesses) needs to embrace the web as a platform for going directly to their target markets - in parallel to their traditional broadcasting deals - and help the players connect with their fans and followers, in every aspect of the game, and its production, marketing and distribution. It's no longer just The Networks that matter - it's also The Networked - and guess which one is shrinking in size, viewership and future relevance?

Mobile, social, real-time is where it's going; control fades as the top concern while trust becomes tantamount. Who owns the relationship with the fan and user fka 'the consumer' - the broadcaster or the football club...or the players, themselves? TV is completely converging with the Internet, and a lot of branding and advertising funds will shift towards digital, social, video and interactive in the next 2-3 years -so what does this mean for a the football ecosystem? Where is the new money? Why is selling the experience - in any and all its shapes, including augmented / virtual reality - more important than controlling the flow of 'copies' and raw content on the web? How to protect a club's intellectual property, content and media?

Social Media and the Future of Football

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Announcing my new book on Lulu: "Friction is Fiction" - write a review and get the free PDF!

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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Very cool: John Mayer's augmented reality experiment (video)

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UK's Channel 4 to air full-length TV content on YouTube: smart move

Very good news for Youtube and for the Future of TV, via FT, below. As you may have guessed, I particularly like the comment on the music industry;).  Well done, Channel 4 - you are on your way to web-native content economics: decentralization, syndication, next generation advertising and viral distribution on multiple platforms is the key to monetizing TV content in the future.

"Andy Duncan, Channel 4's chief executive, said the deal would be a good way for Channel 4 to maximise its audience. The 4oD service on channel4.com served around 10m streams of full-length content in September, and has served around 365m in the three years since launch. In comparison, YouTube serves more than 1bn video streams globally each day."There is no point in being Canute-like. We have got to go where the consumers are and some members of the public increasingly want to consume programmes online," Mr Duncan said. "It will be a step change in the number of internet viewers we get."

He added that making programmes easily available on a popular platform such as YouTube would discourage people from seeking out pirated copies of shows online. "We are trying to avoid some of the mistakes that the music industry made in failing to make deals with popular platforms," he said."

via www.ft.com

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The Future of Branding in a connected world (my Canvas8 presentation in London)

I contributed to a fun event at the Host Gallery in London tonight, organized by Canvas8 (where I am involved as one of the adjunct thought-leaders): "Twitter, Facebook, Spotify, Tripadvisor, Augmented Reality, Smartphone Apps, YouTube – the range of technology choices for brands wishing to engage with consumers is  huge. For many these are uncharted waters, and these technologies can raise more questions than they answer. This time the theme of ‘The Changing Face of Media’ is emerging technology. Based on the speakers’ experiences it asks the question: how can brands best use technology and not be used by it..."

As promised, here is the PDF from the event, below (click on the Slideshare link to download it, or embed it on your blog) Enjoy. RT. Superdistribute. Mix & Share.... Picture on the right by James Cridland via Flickr

This work by www.mediafuturist.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

The Future of Branding in a Connected World

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Nice FreedomLab Video with me (Future of Content & Media)

This interesting video was created by the cool Amsterdam-based crew of FreedomLab and is part of the "Penny for your Thoughts" series which has a great selection of key people and influencers contributing their thoughts on many current issues. I am tickled to be part of this (this video will be added on their page soon - so you are indeed getting it on my blog first!)

This video juxtaposes some sound bytes from an interview with me with some cool graphics, ticker-text animations using my spoken words, and various illustrations. Topics: well, as you may have expected, this is mostly about media and the future of content: distribution is no longer the core business for media companies. Why open licensing platforms are so important. The move from selling copies to selling access - how will that be monetized? How will content be curated, recommended and then... monetized by the Creators?

Apart from my Youtube channel (click below to go there), you can find many more videos at my Blip.TV channel (includes downloads to iTunes for offline viewing). My entire Futuretalks DVD with my collaborator Glen Hiemstra can be downloaded here (yes... for free)

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The price of freedom: Reinventing the online economy (RSA Journal July 2009)

I was delighted to be invited to make a contribution to the RSA Journal's July 2009 edition, the printed version of which was just send out I believe, and the online edition that just went up on their website.

The complete title of my piece is: "The price of freedom - reinventing the online economy: Gerd Leonhard explains why ‘free’ content can still pay in the long term" and I really enjoyed writing this for them.

Following my last presentation at the RSA, in April 2009, on 'The Future of Content and Creativity' I have had many good conversations about this topic. The audio track from this event is here, btw; and the video is embedded again, below. Enjoy. And RT;)

I definitely recommend that you check out the other great features in the Juy 09 RSA journal, as well, there's some great gems in there.

Update (January 10, 2010):

English Version as downloadable PDF: Download RSA Gerd Summer 2009

German Translation by Rainer Classen : RSA German Translation: Preis der Freiheit

Spanish Translation by Carlos Perez Vellila: Spanish Price of Free RSA

Italian Translation by Federico Ciappi: Download Il prezzo della libertà RC1

You can read the entire thing on the RSA page, so here is just an excerpt:

"Free information, free music, free content and free media have been the promises of the internet (r)evolution since the humble beginnings of the World Wide Web and the Netscape IPO on 9 August 1995. What started out as the cumbersome sharing of simple text, grainy images and seriously compressed MP3s via online bulletin boards has now spread out to every single segment of the content industry – and even into ‘meatspace’ (real-life) services such as car rentals. Without a doubt, ‘free’ has become the default expectation of the young web-empowered digital natives and now the older generations are jumping in, too.

On top of the already disruptive force of the good old computer-based Web1.0, we are witnessing a global shift to mobile internet – a WWW that is, finally, so easy to use that even my grandmother can do it. While five years ago, we needed a ‘real’ computer tethered to a bunch of wires to port ourselves to this other place called ‘online’ and partake in global content swapping, now we just need a simple smart phone and a basic data connection. With a single click of a button, we’re in business – or rather, in freeloading mode. 

As users, we love ‘free’; as creators, many of us have come to hate the very thought. When access is de facto ownership, how can we still sell copies of our creations? Will we be stuck playing gigs while our music circles the globe on social networks, or blogging (now: tweeting) our heart out without even a hint of real money coming our way?

Daunting as it may seem, we can no longer stick with the pillars of Content1.0, such as the so-called fixed mechanical rate that US music publishers are currently getting ‘per copy’ of a song ($0.091). Nobody knows what really defines a copy any longer when the web’s equivalent of a copy (the on-demand play of that song on digital networks) may be occurring hundreds of millions of times per day. No advertiser, no ISP and not even Google has this kind of money to pay the composer (or rather, the publisher), at least not until the advertisers start bringing at least 30–50 per cent of their global US$1 trillion marketing and advertising budgets to the table.

Traditional expectations and pre-internet licensing agreements are exactly what are holding up YouTube’s deals with the music rights organisations such as PRS and GEMA: this is what the rights organisations used to get paid for the music that is being copied, and this is what they want to get paid now. This impasse is causing significant friction in our media industries worldwide. Yet, below the top-line issue of money, there lurks an even more significant paradigm shift: the excruciating switch from a centralised system of domination and control to a new ecosystem based on open and collaborative models. This is the shift from monopolies and cartels to interconnected platforms where partnership and revenue sharing are standard procedures. In most countries, copyright law gives creators complete and unfettered control to say yes or no to the use of their work. Rights-holders have been able to rule the ecosystem and, accordingly, ‘my way or the highway’ has been the quintessential operating paradigm of most large content companies for the past 50 years.

Enter the internet: now the highway has become the road of choice for 95 per cent of the population, the attitude of increasing the price by playing hard to get is rendered utterly fruitless. Like it or not, a refusal to give permission for our content to be legally used because we just don’t like the terms (or the entity asking for a licence) will just be treated as ‘damage’ on the digital networks, and the traffic will simply route around it. The internet and its millions of clever ‘prosumers’, inventors and armies of collaborators will find a way to use our creations, anyway. Yes, we can sue Napster, Kazaa or The PirateBay and we can whack ever more moles as we go along. We can pay hundreds of millions of dollars to our lawyers and industry lobbyists – but none of this will help us to monetise what we create. The solution is not a clever legal move, and it’s not a technical trick (witness the disastrous use and now total demise of Digital Rights Management in digital music). The solution is in the creation of new business models and the adoption of a new economic logic that works for everyone; a logic that is based on collaboration, on co-engagement and on, dare we mention it, mutual trust – an ecosystem not an egosystem. Once we accept this, we can start to discover the tremendous possibilities that a networked content economy can bring to us.  

Free, feels-like-free and freemium

Much has been written on the persistent trend towards free content on the net. It is crucial that we distinguish between the different terms so that we can develop new revenue models around all of them. ‘Free’ means nobody gets paid in hard currency – content is given away in return for other considerations, such as a larger audience, viral marketing velocity or increased word of mouth (or mouse). I may be receiving payment in the form of attention, but that isn’t going to be very useful when it’s time to pay my rent or buy dinner for my kids. Free is... well, unpaid, in real-life terms.

 ‘Feels-like-free’, on the other hand, means that real money is being generated for the creators while their content is being consumed – but the user considers it free. The payment may be made (ie sponsored or facilitated) by a third party (such as Google’s recently launched free music offering in China, Top100.cn); it may be bundled (such as in Nokia’s innovative ‘Comes With Music’ offering, which bundles the music fee into the actual handsets) or the payment may be part of an existing social, technological or cultural infrastructure (such as cable TV or European broadcast licence fees) and therefore absorbed without much further thought. Feels-like-free could therefore be understood as a smart way to re-package what people will pay for, so that the pain of parting with their money is removed or somewhat lessened – everyone pays, somehow, but the consumption itself feels like a good deal...."     Read on.  PDF: Download RSA - The price of freedom Gerd Leonhard July 2009

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"Where Is It Going": new Twitter-based video show with Futurist Glen Hiemstra: ready for your questions

I recently started a brand-new project with my friend and fellow futurist Glen Hiemstra, entitled Where Is It Going (WiiG). The concept is simple: we are taking questions from anyone, via Twitter, on any future-related topic, and we will record 5-8 minute long videos of Glen and myself attempting to answer as many questions as we can, on a weekly basis. We will also add a few other futurists from our network once we have solved a few technical issues. We have also started discussions with a potential partner that will help us with producing better videos -stay tuned.

 This is how you can participate in WhereIsItGoing (WiiG):

1. Be sure to follow @gleonhard and @glenhiemstra on Twitter
2. Tweet your futuristic questions to us, anytime, but be sure to use the hashtag #wiig (this way we can find your questions via Twitter Search, no matter if you addressed them to us or not)
3. If you want your tweets to be included on the live video of the twitter stream (#wiig) please be sure to tweet at 9 am PST / 12 noon EST / 6pm CET /12 midnight Singapore, and follow the live tweets via twitter search; we will publish the finished video on WhereIsItGoing.com soon afterwards. We will be on the tweet streams for at least 20 minutes.

Spread the word!

 

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TV generation vs Internet generation: no more monopolies of attention, the new control is...Trust!

The Net Generation (some call them the digital natives) is indeed drastically different than the TV Generation - see my bullets below. There is no way anyone can sell or market to them in the same way that still worked (well...somewhat) only 5 years ago. There is no way anyone can still monopolize their attention in the same way that mass media (TV, Radio, Print) did until now (sorry, IFPI and MPAA;). There is no way that anyone can 'own' or 'control the customer' any longer, period. The more you try to control your users, the less you will receive from them.

It's the End of Control and the beginning of Trust. If you want to know more - well, yes, you remember, I did write half a book on this in 2008, and it's still quite accurate, so check out the End of Control chapters (free PDFs, too), here. And please 'pay' for the book by spreading the word  - use the sharing tools provided below. Thanks!

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Broadband Culture and the Future of Broadcasting (new video)

Here is a new video that I have just uploaded to my GerdTube.net channel on Blip.tv (which offers full iTunes download feeds so you can watch all of my videos offline, too) . The topic: Broadband penetration is rapidly increasing around the world, and Internet access is no longer depending on computers but increasingly available on mobile devices such as smart phones. Soon, the kids i.e. the 'digital natives' will run the show, and they expect Radio & TV to deliver content in much the same way as the Net does: time-shifted, interactive, engaging, shareable and via any and all platforms. The imminent total convergence of the Internet and Broadcasting will bring many challenges to traditional broadcasters (commercial or public) but there are also  unprecedented opportunities - this video discusses the key trends and future scenarios.

Please note that for some reason some of the transitions and animations are a bit delayed and don't sync 100% correctly with the voice; I have not yet figured out what how to solve this (I use Apple Keynote; and this problem happened when I exported the .key file with the voice-over to Quicktime - if anyone has an idea how to fix this please comment below - thanks). In the meantime, here is a pdf file with every single animation as one page so that you can click along with the video as I speak.  Download Broadband Broadcasting step by step slides Gerd Leonhard

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Content to Context: The Future of Media (short video)

Content to Context: The Future of Media (Gerd Leonhard)
Originally uploaded by gleonhard

As the web becomes ubiquitous, everywhere, and mobile access dwarfs computers, we are seeing a key shift in the way that people use (fka consume) content. While it used to be good enough to present high-quality and professional content (think traditional TV, Radio etc) now people aka USERS want and really value good CONTEXT, too, i.e. links, recommendations, ratings, comments... and the conversation around the content. Social media brings this into sharp focus: all the stuff around content (I like to call this meta-content) is now just as important as the content itself. This has significant impact on every player in the content industries.   Download the MP4 file: Download Content to Context shift MP4 (35MB)

More videos on my Youtube channel, iTunes video downloads via Blip.tv

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Joi Ito on Technology's Next Investment Opportunities (some key messages for the content industry)

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!)

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