Creating the Future of Media: 4 Driving Forces, 4 Strategic Issues, 4 Essential Capabilities
I very rarely find the time to write magazine articles, but I was delighted to write the opening feature article for MediaTitles 2010, an annual publication which covers the media and magazine industry.
To see the article in the full splendor of the print version, go to the MediaTitles website, which has the full publication viewable using Realview Technologies (with the article reformatted to take out the lists of four, which I think is a pity). My article is on pages 7-10.
The (original) text of the article is below.
CREATING THE FUTURE OF MEDIA
These are the best of times, these are the worst of times. The global economic crisis, coming on top of a dramatic transformation wrought by the rise of the Internet, is creating the swiftest change in media industry structure ever experienced. Newspapers and magazines are being shut down at an extraordinary pace all over the world, journalists are losing their jobs, and broadcast media are under threat as sliding advertising revenue hit an unmoving cost base. Yet as the world shifts towards what will be truly an all-encompassing media economy, there are extraordinary opportunities ahead for media organisations.
This is a critical juncture to examine the future of media. Magazines have and will continue to be central to how we learn, socialise, entertain ourselves, and make buying decisions. Yet the magazine industry will undoubtedly look very different scant years ahead. It is our role and responsibility to create the future of media, rather than to let it happen to us. To do that, we need to examine the most central driving forces, strategic issues and capabilities in the evolving media landscape.
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Case study: hitting the Billboard charts by free online streaming of the album
I notice that Imogen Heap is continuing with the free streaming of her album Ellipse . And no doubt significantly because of the free streaming, Ellipse is charting at #5 on Billboard. It is a glorious album, though I think we can pretty definitely count the free streaming of the album on the web as a very effective strategy. Perhaps it will become commonplace to stream music for free in order to maximize sales.
I’d be keen to know the proportion of sales of this album and the songs on it online versus through CD. It would almost be surprising if she sold much in CDs at all, because her presence is so online..
I notice Imogen on Twitter now has over a million followers.
A bit tangentially, I just found this beautiful video of a beautiful song by Kate Havnevik, who I found through collaborative filtering and Imogen’s music. If you like Imogen you’ll absolutely like the extraordinary Kate. (note that it doesn’t start for 10 seconds)
ABC Radio National: Discussion on the future of influence
ABC Radio National Future Tense this morning featured a discussion on the future of influence (click here for the podcast of both the radio program, and the unabridged discussion between Duncan Riley and myself). It kicks off with a quote from Chris Saad saying that influence and reputation are the currencies of the day, even more than attention.
When asked why we rebadged Future of Media Summit as Future of Influence Summit this year, I explained why “influence is the future of media”, and the five key trends in how influence is transforming society.
Duncan pointed to how the rise of Internet and social media means that influence can now be global. He also raised the issue of trust agents, and what it takes to be trusted as a publisher. We have more choice in what we look for, and so we need markers of credibility.
On the topic of business models for influence, I talked about two key ideas. The first is whether and how individuals can profit from their influence, and how that will develop. The second is the emergence of influence as a currency, and the companies that profiting from making influence explicit for companies.
Listen to the long version of the interview for more details.
The future of social networks and television distribution channels
Last weekend’s Sunday Telegraph published an article titled Tech to the future that looks at what’s coming next in consumer and social technologies. Unfortunately it isn’t available online, however here are the sections where I was quoted:
Futurist and author Ross Dawson says the next big shifts will pivot around how we connect to other people and “how we share the content of our lives with others. It’s all about the social use of technology.”
Analysts predict that rather than a new Twitter-styled platform emerging, social networks will move towards being meshed or interconnected. They say private and public data will blur together and an advanced version of the social networks of your choice will be your browser of entry point.
Now that we have as a society discovered sharing the content from our lives, the floodgates are open. Interoperability across social networks is evolving slowly, but is what we are coming to expect. Then later in the article:
The emergence of mobile augmented reality
A new mobile app called Layar has been launched recently. It will initially only be available for Android, with the intent of getting it onto the iPhone 3G S as a priority. At this point it only functions in the Netherlands, but will be available in Germany, UK and US this year. The video below shows how it could work, giving an example of identifying vacant real estate simply by scanning around.
One of the phone features required for this app to run is the magnetometer (compass). This has been available on many Nokia and some other handsets for a while, and makes its iPhone debut with the 3G S. Magnetometers are actually very inexpensive, but allow a wealth of new mobile applications that depend on knowing which way the camera is oriented.
There is no question that augmented reality will be a key feature of our technological future, and clearly this will be primarily relevant when we are mobile. Annotation of our environment, including detailed information about its features, and particularly user-generated content, will be extremely useful as well as fun. The pervasive nature of the iPhone means this is the platform which is likely to popularize mobile augmented reality. Layar is a player and no doubt there will be more.
Additional commentary from TUAW, IntoMobile, ReadWriteWeb, AndroidGuys, and MacRumors.
Top Twitterers: US, Canada, Norway, Australia, UK, New Zealand
Sysomos has just released extensive research on Twitter use, filled with all sorts of fascinating information, such as 72% of Twitter users have joined since the beginning of this year, 53% of Twitterers are women, and marketers are 50 times more likely than normal people to follow over 2000 people.
I am always interested in comparing countries, so I pulled out and analyzed their statistics on where Twitter users are located to calculate the proportion of the population that are use Twitter. I used the Sysomos data on Twitter usage, the ever-handy Nationmaster for population figures, and a combination of the recent http://rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2009/04/at_current_grow_1.html combined with Sysomos data on recent growth, as well as our own estimates.
The US is in the lead, not surprisingly, though by a far lower margin than even just six month ago. The global growth of Twitter has accelerated recently, making usage in a number of other countries not far behind that of the US. The English speaking countries – Canada, Australia, UK and New Zealand – follow close behind, with Norway the stand-out in non-English speaking countries, together with the Netherlands and Sweden. The figures suggest Twitter is a truly niche interest in other countries, including France and Germany.
Keynote: Transforming Aged Care with Technology
Tomorrow morning I am doing the second day opening keynote at ITAC09 – Information Technology in Aged Care conference.
Here is my presentation – as always these are intended to accompany my speech, not as stand-alone slides.
I hope to write some more on this blog on this topic before long, though it depends what I can fit in…
Quick review of TEDxAdvance on Future of the Enterprise
On Tuesday I spoke at the TEDxAdvance event in San Francisco on Future of the Enterprise.
In short, it was a great event, with close to 80 very interesting people in attendance, and excellent energy during the presentations and ensuing conversation over drinks.
I won’t replicate the fantastic write up of the event by Andrew Mager on ZDNet’s The Web Life blog – check it out for a great overview of the proceedings and some of the ideas that flowed through the evening.
A video of my presentation was taken – I hope to post it up here soon.
Q&A: Twitter’s retention rates: will Twitter be pervasive or a niche app?
After my TV interview about Twitter the other day, I’ve just been interviewed by ABC Radio about the Nielsen research just out that shows that Twitter’s second-month retention rates for new users are 40%, compared to retention rates of 50-60% for Facebook and MySpace when they were at a similar stage in their growth.
I was asked some interesting questions in the interview, so to paraphrase them and quickly respond:
Is this a concern for Twitter’s executives?
Absolutely. It’s one thing to get massive numbers of new users. It’s another thing to retain them. Unless Twitter can change this, it will never conquer the world as some suggest it might.
Availability of talent drives entrepreneurial innovation – the story of Silicon Valley unemployment
The human toll of unemployment is stark, as is being experienced around the world.
The most recent unemployment statistics for Silicon Valley below illustrate how the region has greater cyclicality in unemployment than almost any other region in the US. In good times unemployment can fall to almost nil, in bad times unemployment rises faster and higher than most regions.
The recent dramatic upturn in unemployment is likely to be far from peak, with for example the mooted IBM – SUN merger potentially leading to 10,000 layoffs, a large proportion of which would likely be in Silicon Valley.
What is bad news for some is great news for others. Bringing ideas to market takes talented people. In good times those people are either not available, or cost too much for start-ups to engage. Today there are once again fantastically talented people who are looking for opportunities, and willing to work for lower – or even no – income in return for a share of what might become big later.
This balances out to a large degree the far more constrained availability of investment capital. The money may not be flowing into start-up companies at a massive pace, but they need less.
So don’t expect innovation in Silicon Valley (or anywhere else) to dry up. The spigot of one of the key enablers of innovation – talent – has just been turned up high. Entrepreneurship is being democratized as more people with ideas and energy are able to execute their vision, rather than being constrained by lack of resources.
This is just one key driver today resulting in the pace of technology innovation going up, up, up…
