A Networked World

The Media Talks in Code

Dave Weinberger has an interesting post on the status of a story on the front page of the Boston Globe, featuring a disabled vet back from Iraq and declaring the place a quagmire. Dave takes issue with the Globe front-paging the story;   

Why this soldier? Why front page? Because Sgt. Fountaine is now against the war? And if he had come through his experience thinking that his sacrifice was worth it, would that have consigned the story to an inner page? What do we learn from Sgt. Fountaine's change of heart? Does it point to a trend? If not, if it's so purely particular and individual, then why is it the headline?   

We need individual stories. We need overviews. But in choosing to put this particular story on the front page with a headline and lead focusing on Sgt. Fountaine's change of heart, the Globe uses his story inappropriately. IMO.

Yellow Pages Does it Again

Maybe there is something that happens when you are the predominant life form that atrophies the brain in the face of new, more agile, more distributed forms. Being the Yellow Pages certainly seems to have a blinkering effect.

   

She started it as a hobby - a listings website that was inspired by Wikipedia and Craigslist. But 15-year-old Rosa Blaus' initiative appeared to have backfired yesterday when she learned her website had infuriated the company behind Yellow Pages.

   

The teenager, who set up the Yellowikis site with her father Paul Youlden, has been accused of attempting to pass it off as a legitimate arm of the telephone directory. Yell, which owns the Yellow Pages brand in the UK, this week confirmed that it was taking legal action to force Miss Blaus to hand over the Yellowikis name and the site's contents.

The crucial mistake here was not to try and "protect" the brand, which in any case comes off as petulant and unjustifiable, but in trying to steal the intellectual property of the Wiki.

Not only does Yell not have any right to the information aggregated on Yellowiki, but Yellowiki doesn't have any right to it either. The infomration is added, updated and owned by the people who put it there; but Yell doesn't get that and couldn't resist the temptation to score an easy win and get someone else to do their work for them.

I mean, monstering a 15 year old? Stealing her candy? How hard could that be? Harder, and more damaging than it looked. First of all, there is no sign that Yellowiki is trying to pass itself off as anything but a business directory. As for stealing someone's brand, give us a break

It even looks as if Yell has abdicated its use of the terms Yellow Pages and even a claim to the name of the colour Yellow.

By the way, as Yellowiki helpfully reminds us, "the term "Yellow Pages" and the "walking fingers" logo were trademarks, but have been in the public domain since the 1950s when AT&T failed to renew the trademark registrations. This gave rise to a small but fast-growing "independent yellow pages" industry.

Tom Evslin at the Stanford Summit, talking about Telcos and VoIP (and worth a read in its own right) encapsulates the problem.

   

The telcos are afflicted with the incumbent’s dilemma:  they could embrace the new technology and hasten the death of their traditional wireless cash cow. They might survive better that way.  But they’ll be worse off next quarter and the quarter after that. And might have to write-off the assets currently on their books if they recognize the disruption.

That’s why upstarts who enable the disruption won’t have to worry about marketplace competition from the incumbents early on. Regulatory “competition”, of course, is another story.

By the time the incumbent feels the disruption, the problem is already too big to control and demands too many resources to compete and, in any case, wrecks the economics of the business model. The only recourse (taken by telcos, RIAA, MPAA, MS, the media businesses etc) is to call in the lawyers.

But in espousing the capitalist free market, they have already bought into the final stage of the process, (Evslin again) "the rates they’ll be able to charge in competition .. won’t pay the interest on the debt incurred to build those networks. So bankruptcies will be required to lower the cost basis of these assets and make them affordable.

It all sounds so simple when its someone else's business circling the drain, its not so much fun when the requirement for bankruptcy is pointing at you, and a 15 year old kid has her finger on the trigger.

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I Blame BagNewsNotes

Since I started tracking the Bag my whole attitude to imagery has lost its innocence. Jon sent me a link to a new site that offers to help me live to 100 so I check it out since I've always wanted to get a telegram from The Queen.

It's only in preview at the moment but what really caught my eye was the image it uses to promote its approach to life and the pursuit of happiness.

Let's see. Late middle aged white guy with a wife (if you really want to get mythical, The Madonna whose element is the sea to which she is nearest and in traditional blue) on one arm and the virginal but soon to be mistress looking adoringly at HIM while the others are all paying attention to anything but other people.

The White Guy is the centre of attention, not least of which because he gets to carry, and presumably provide, the wine. Wait, the champagne. You know, full of foamy bubbles and about to pop its cork. You can do your own stuff around that.

Meanwhile, the virgin "includes" the black guy who is apprently suprised by this intimacy because his body curves away from contact. And he gets to carry the glasses. He is the servant.

Social weather forecast, not much change predicted.

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Nunchaku at Effect Measure

The guys at Effect Measure are a great source for Pandemic stuff but a couple of days ago they moved into my territory with Chinese Checkers and had a little flail about.

The irony is too delicious. Boingboing reports that Yahoo China will be sued by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries for enabling the pirating of music by disclosing to its users where to get it on the internet. In effect they are being held responsible for the copyright status of everything they point to:

[...] This is truly ridiculous and qualifies more than anything else I can think of for the title, "Frivolous lawsuit." But irony?

Yahoo.com along with Google and MSN have all made a bargain with the devil to block searches from China that contain certain offensive language -- like democracy, freedom, Falun Gong, you know.

Now they are being stuck for not blocking non-political stuff that offends another despotic group, the copyright mafia.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government is trying to explain to the foreign press why they shouldn't be concerned about proposed laws that will make it illegal to divulge "sudden events" (like disease outbreaks and pollution spills) without authorization, and worse, gives local officials the power to bring the charges,.

As I mentioned the other day, restricting information in that way will be suicidal and lets hope that the continued exposure of the process has the effect that Dan Harris suggests.

But to go back to the search engine idiocy, if I was Yahoo I would be going to all the sites that claim to have been licensed by the Pornog.. Phonographic Industries and demand that they prove, with full, hard copy, documentation, that every file they make available is in fact legally there and demand that no new files are added unless they have the same documentation and that they don't change any of the legal files to a new URL unless they notify the search engine before hand.

iTunes and others will then demand that the music people produce the same and so forth.

In the meantime, slap warnings on ALL non-fully-documented sites to say that the linked material may be illegal because it has not been documented. I'd bet it would take about 5 minutes before the call went out to the IFPA to pull its head in.

Sometimes all you need to do is give people what they think they want.

Its Not the Numbers - Its the Rate

Thanks to Johnnie Moore for the link to Ben McConnell at Church of the Customer who has been keeping an eye on the effects of change in a couple of websites.

   

Three months ago, we compared the online reach of YouTube to the New York Times. Back in those olden days the 6-month-old, video-sharing-cum-social media site was on the verge of surpassing the traffic of the 155-year-old icon of traditional media.

   

       

   

   

The Times underwent a minor redesign, added videos to its front page and created a list of "most blogged" stories. Traffic declined.

   

YouTube added channels that made it possible for anyone to program the site's content, a sort of favorites list of videos. Traffic surged three-fold.

The issue is not, as a couple of the commenters pointed out, a competition between YouTube and the NYT, but rather the effect of making changes to the site. The difference in age means nothing, the times has been on the net a few years, the YouTube has been there less than a year but, in effect, both are newbies. And both should be able to generate significant increases in traffic.

YouTube did not create more "content" for its viewers" to "download", the Time did. YouTube handed even more control and more tools to their users, the Times did not.

How many more lessons do big media have to receive about the way to work in this information environment? Its not about content, its about control, its about tools, its about enabling communication and connection among people. That's it. Nothing more. The "content" is absolutely nothing more than Doug Rushkoff's social currency that we exchange among ourselves.

More Media Mashups

Jon Husband pointed me this morning to Thermo[SAT] which touts itself as

an initiative from The Society for Arts and Technology [SAT], explores the evolution of internet-based media and the ways it is enabling individuals and groups to produce and share what they create. It will also offer analysis and opinion on the related potential for social, cultural and economic impacts.

More specifically, the first phase of Thermo[SAT]’s life will focus on a set of developments that is already underway - the Web-based transformation of the traditional radio, TV and cinema industries and the emerging arena for services like IPtv, podcasting, photostreaming and videoblogging

These developments are creating an environment in which individuals and small groups can produce and distribute their work as easily as the large networks. This capability is a recipe for creative disruption and innovation. At the other end of the changing distribution channels … the increasingly interactive media users, who can choose what they want to watch or listen to, and increasingly when, how and where.

They are going to be V Busy as we all try to figure out what on earth is going on in the media space. After years of declaiming, "The Internet Changes Everything" we really are seeing what that means, in the business models of media companies on the money end through to the democratisation of production and the distribution of distribution.

The World Cup is already a testbed for FIFA, now it looks like its also an R&D project for Lycos. Frank Barnako reports that

Almost nine months ago, the CEO of Lycos Inc. said he had plans to turn his company around and eventually take it public. One strategy would be to earn money allowing people to upload homemade video. Back then, few people had heard of YouTube.com, but what Alfred Tolle described sounded a bit like what YouTube is today.

Except that it accepts files. Lycos, Tolle said, would provide audio and video editing and production tools for people to produce their programming online.

Tomorrow, when FIFA World Cup kicks off in Germany, Tolle's company will have four "embedded" reporters who will be the focus of an effort by Lycos to do more than report scores and show highlights. "They will be testing new technologies, kind of an 'alpha' platform, for products to be introduced in the next three to four months," explained Brian Kalinowski, operating chief of the Waltham, Mass.-based company.

Their job is to produce daily vignettes, "with a lighthearted and satirical approach to the culture of World Cup," Kalinowski said. "They will also be testing techniques to let us deliver high-quality, even high-definition, video from our platform, which consumers may eventually be able to use to distribute and monetize their content."

What? Can we read that again please? Consumers get to use these tools to distribute and monetize their own content?. Is this what Rupert Murdoch meant when he said that he wanted his site to "be the destination" for bloggers? It certainly looks a lot like Shirky's Mass Amateurisation of Publishing from 2002. It might even be the kosher offspring of the Chevy Tahoe Fiasco.

"We need to position ourselves as the content destination for creators and consumers," he continued. "I would like to give people the opportunity to share in advertising revenue we would get from people watching and listening."

Suddenly the idea of a "content destination" has a different ring, not a place I go to get content, but maybe a place to which I take content.

In light of the development of YouTube.com, Tolle clearly saw the wave before many other people. His idea, however, includes something extra -- a profit incentive.

I'm sceptical about the last bit, I think if his tools are good, he will see all the traffic he could wish for as people upload their stuff and have fun, and other people take the stuff that is already there and make something else of it again. And what will it be for, all this endless mashing?

Snacks. Consumers Turn to Web for 'Media Snack' Fix. From TechNewsWorld.com.

"Consumer-generated content [such as] YouTube is the millennial version of 'America's Funniest Home Videos,'" said Jack MacKenzie, senior vice president of Frank N. Magid Associates, a media research firm. However, now it's portable and offers users a huge community to interact with.

Charlie Todd, 27, posts to video sites because he enjoys "the ability for your users to rate and comment on your work," he said. He also posts because he doesn't have the server space or bandwidth to host memory-intensive video. Todd is the founder of Improv Everywhere, a New York-based improvisational comedy troupe that organizes heavily planned "missions" around the city to make people laugh, and then posts the results on the different video Web sites. They garner high ratings in the process.

Higher ratings means more views, which push the videos onto the front pages of the sites, which then guarantees more views. If it's good, it stays on the home page, said Arik Czerniak, CEO of Metacafe. At Metacafe, a top video could get half a million views in 24 hours. "You don't need to get lucky ... because we've streamlined the viral process, if something is good it will be noticed by the community. You don't need to have 1,000 people on your mailing list," he said.

The fundamental question is why this is so much better than traditional media fare and an answer is that it lets us do something that has been smacked out of our lives for too long, it lets US Play. Call me a Philistine if you like, but there are no redeeming social or humanitarian values to be gained from "Everybody Loves Raymond" and its ilk, none. Numa Numa, or the Brokeback Mountain trailer for Back to the Future or many of the hard case snippets on YouTube are no better as great art, nor any worse; but they are great generators of social currency, both directly for their creators and for those who email the links to their mates or blog about them or talk about them over the water cooler.

The revolution may not be televised, it may come in a torrent instead.

Community at work. Content as byproduct

Johnnie's The success of an ugly make-up site leads to Umair at bubblespace who

"draws attention to the success of MakeUpAlley. Here's a nice irony: a site about cosmetics that looks pretty scruffy but is hugely effective - because it provides a simple way for its participants to connect about something they're passionate about.

Umair sees big lessons here for VCs and geeks, and I see big lessons for marketing. What a stunning example of the declining value of pretty packaging and making yourself look good, in favour of helping your users look good.

The Death of Radio

Just had this link to Tod Maffin predicting the death of radio from the very au fait Mark Bradley. Great piece, and even more inflammatory than me, which says a lot. U.S. lawmaker Mike Ferguson has drafted;

an audio broadcast flag bill that would let the FCC force radio stations to provide “so-called “flag” technology be used to prevent content on HD Radios and satellite digital radios from being re-distributed.”
[...] Here’s the issue. If the signal is digital, this lets people control it more. But rather than doing cool, enabling things with it, rights holders are trying to extract more and more from less and less. One day, probably quite soon, one of these idiots are going to wake up and realize that nobody wants to have 30 “But it’s only $9.95 a month!” licence fees or subscription packages.

Frankly I hope they succeed, we wont pay for their crap when we can get free crap and they will go broke.

I have this theory that culture creates itself out of whatever bits and pieces it finds lying around freely available, you are either part of that or not, the culture that results really REALLY doesn’t care.

Those who want to withdraw their production from the meme pool from which culture is created, are not only entitled to do so, they should be encouraged do so and leave more room for the rest of us.

Update: There is something else that will kill off radio and it is people like the repellent Bill O'Reilly. Lately he has been running a petition to get news commentator Keith Olbermann replaced by his predecssor Phil Donohue. Mostly because Olbermann has the temerity to quote the frothing rubbish that O'Reilly spouits on his various media outlets.

There is, to put it mildly, bad blood. Including an online campaign by DailyKos regular to retaliate on O'Reilly's radio show. Today Stark got through and mentioned the now forbidden name of Keith Olbermann. Big deal, but what O'Reilly did next is a shinign example of why corporate media is in the can and sinking.

Listen to it here. Priceless, if he was my jock he would be out in the street so fast his shoes would still be under the desk when his butt hit the kerb. That he is paranoid and stupid is one thing, that Fox continues to employ the guy at all is much more important, and tells the real story of the failure of corporate media.

Valuing the Un-Monetised Asset - Blogs

I can see how the constitutionally timid might find this piece by Roland Piquepaille on ZDNet to be a bit demoralising. The economic weight of the blogs

what exactly is the economic impact of the millions of blogs? Let me provide some answers, like a research company would do, except I haven't seen many studies about this particular aspect. And like the research firms, my estimations below are almost certainly wrong. In this column, I'll look at the different actors of the blogging world: the companies that sell publishing tools; the advertising market; the consumer market; and the impact on companies.

He goes on to point out that blogging software and hosting companies make a pittance, advertising revenue is derisory and direct income is miserable to OK. He concludes with:

As a summary, the blogging phenomenon is just marginal economically speaking. But bloggers themselves are different because they're writers, they have a voice and they're real customers of real products.

Damnation with faint praise and hard to argue with, but wrong. He can't help but look at money as the measure, but in a knowledge economy, the flows are NOT monetised most of the time, he'd have had the same problem assessing the economic weight of voluntary work, or "women's work", on the other hand he'd be committing economic suicide if he suggested that it stop.More to the point he would get the same answer to the question, "what is the economic weight of environmental services provided by the planet?" Standard economics treats it as zero, and we know that is a lie.

In fact the business world is laden to the gunnels with value assessments based on thin air. The economic weight of your brand, your goodwill, even your client base is mostly prestidigitation and BS, and blogs are in the same arena. But even so, it would be nice to be able to answer Roland with something more than "he just doesn't get the net dahling".

Fortunately, the net, and the blogs, come to the rescue almost immediately in the inestimable form of Johnnie Moore who turns to a completely different delivery vehicle and asks, essentially, the same question. The value of the book in you

Periodically, people inform me that I should write a book about... well whatever it was I was talking about that they'd probably heard enough of. I dare say this happens to a lot of us.

I find this suggestion easy to resist because I know how hard it is to write just one chapter of a book. I rationalise that writing books is a waste of time, based on purely anecdotal evidence from one or two disillusioned authors I know.

But I have been given pause for thought by this survey: The Business Impact of Writing a Book. This is based on a survey of 200 authors of business books. Here are a few fab facts. I always take these sorts of percentages with a generous pinch (huh?) of salt, but looking at the whole report, a coherent picture emerges.

39% of authors reported a strong or very strong influence on improving relationship with current clients
84% of authors reported a strong or very strong influence on brand improvement
74% of authors reported a strong or very strong influence on publicity and PR
53% of authors reported a strong or very strong influence on their ability to charge higher fees

Bingo! Writing a book is, as Johnnie points out, a waste of time, as long as you count only the direct economic and financial return on investment of that time. But there is a powerful economic process at work as you improve relationships with clients, strengthen your brand, build your PR and TahDaaaaaah!! Charge Higher Fees.

Said clients and business partners almost certainly haven't read your burblings and prognostications, and couldn't understand them or apply them if they had. It doesn't matter because what they are buying is not information but the glamour of being published, and the reputation that goes with someone plunking down a buck to print and distribute your bon mots. Publishing a book is the Air Jordans, the chunky gold necklace, the pierced nipple of the business world.

Now there is not much glamour in blogging, anyone with a net connection can do that. But it has a real business value. It lets me think outside my head where potential clients can see what I know, see how I think and behave, not just for a few hours, or on a carefully edited page, but every day, for months. I need only a couple of people every year to grok that stuff and think its a good idea to give me some work and the economic weight of the blog gets a serious paunch.

And it lets me join in conversations that I would never have access to any other way. I was talking to a mate last year and mentioned that I was on Dave Isenberg's blogroll. Turns out he knows about David and the reaction to that was worth bottling. I can't trade on my links and trackbacks, but that doesn't make them worthless.

I'm having lunch next week with Mark Bradley at the Australian Technology Park, if I had just cold called him and suggested it would be worth his while having lunch, I'd have expected to get the bums rush. But he's been reading my stuff for a while, lifted some pieces for his podcast and in the last week or so I've recorded a couple of pieces for him. Now we have lunch to talk shop.

The economic power of blogs is like the mechanical power of ivy, it takes a while to smother your house and tear it to bits, but don't doubt that it can, and will, do it.

You Have to Admire the Transparency

The other day I fired off about the moribund music industry shifting its target from downloads to target lyrics websites, in essence offering to litigate them into oblivion. But I was wrong about their attitude.

The music business knows one thing better than anything else on the planet; money. How coincidental that 36 hours after they launch their latest assault on the Internet and its capabilities, comes this little gem from Frank Barnako. Searches Of 2005: Music Lyrics, Paris Hilton

A Web service that returns results from several leading search engines announced the most popular Internet search terms of 2005 included music lyrics, Paris Hilton, poetry, and names and their meanings.

Jon Nolz, director of marketing for InfoSpace Inc.'s (INSP) Dogpile.com said, "Seeing 'lyrics' in the No. 1 position is surprising given the number of huge headline news events over the year, but points to what online search is all about, finding information that does not have a readily known source."

Just as they salivated over getting paid for every "illegal" download, so now they are licking their lips at being paid for every copy of every lyric of every song. First shut down the free sites, then put all the lyrics, even the ones that are out of copyright, behind a paid login and behold, instant profit in the billions. Open champagne, order new Ferrari, dance on table top.

Oh, and don't think you can get round it with technology either.