June 2008 Archives

SmartCompany.com.au is one of the most interesting online media ventures in Australia. Established in February 2007 by Amanda Gome, formerly a journalist and editor at BRW, it is targeted at entrepreneurs and owners of small to medium size businesses.

While the site initially had both free and subscription content, within the first six months they decided to make the site entirely free. The site reaches a highly targeted audience, so attracts good advertisers, and has excellent content and resources.

As part of SmartCompany’s media partner role in the Future of Media Summit 2008, SmartCompany is running a free webinar this Thursday where I will be presenting on Six Driving Forces Changing Media, in conversation with Amanda Gome - click through to register.

The framework I present in the webinar will be in the Future of Media Report 2008 (following the extremely popular Future of Media Report 2006 and Future of Media Report 2007), so this will in effect be a sneak preview for the webinar audience. I’ll put it up in summary form on this blog shortly after.

Other special content being developed for the Future of Media Report 2008 include a Future of Media Participation framework (I think this might turn out be our most popular framework yet) and a Future of Media: Strategy Tools spread. Coming soon!

Mark Pesce is one of my favorite media visionaries. Back in the late 1990s I was a big fan of Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML), which was co-invented by Mark. I proposed using it as a tool for concept representation, among other applications. Mark has since focused largely on the media space, doing some great work. I wrote about a report on IPTV by Mark last year, and his insights at a conference on public affairs we both spoke at a month or two ago.

Mark will be speaking at our forthcoming Future of Media Summit 2008 in a couple of weeks on the Future of TV and Video panel, which will be run between Silicon Valley and Sydney. I’m particularly looking forward to this panel, which will uncover how existing broadcast and cable TV is intersecting TV and video on the Internet to form an entirely new landscape.

Mark spoke earlier this week at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York. A review of the event in The Huffington Post described Mark as “the best speaker at PDF”. A brief excerpt:

In the morning the digital ethnologist Mark Pesce gave a bracing corrective to crowd wisdom. Speaking from a sociological and philosophical perspective, Pesce talked about the hyper connectivity that the internet provides. We are being asked to believe this will help political campaigns, he said. We are asked to believe things and politics will be different. "Bullshit." Under an iconic image of Barack Obama, Pesce's PowerPoint presentation showed YES WE CAN HAS. In other words, the fact that Barack Obama now has over a million friends on Facebook (mentioned frequently at PDF) may not be such a happy portent.

We have just launched the Future of Media Predictions Markets, run in conjunction with the Future of Media Summit 2008. These will tap the collective wisdom of participants at the Summit in the US and Australia, as well as other media leaders globally. Anyone can participate in the prediction markets.

The predictions will be used during the Summit itself to help generate more pointed discussions and specific views, and to garner international attention and coverage for the Summit.

For those who haven’t come across prediction markets before, they mimic financial markets to aggregate a large group’s opinions on what will happen (see Wikipedia definition and Prediction Markets Cluster). Specific questions are posed on what will happen, and participants place bets on the outcome by buying and selling in the markets.

Our partner for the Future of Media Prediction Markets is Inkling Markets, one of a handful of commercial providers of prediction markets. Their clients creating public markets include CNN to predict the 2008 presidential elections, while many companies such as Cisco, Chrysler, O’Reilly, Procter & Gamble, and Wells Fargo are using their prediction markets for internal applications such as product development and sales forecasting.

In the Future of Media Prediction Markets we have just launched five markets:

* Which IPTV channel will generate the most revenue in 2009?

* Will The Bulletin be relaunched in Australia by 30 June, 2009?

If you have opinions on any of these topics, go to the Future of Media Prediction Markets and make your opinion heard!

Register on the site and you will be given $5,000 to place your bets on the markets. Either buy or sell whatever predictions you think are mis-priced. As the markets move with further participation (and maybe changing circumstances), you will make or lose money. As the markets evolve you can trade actively by buying and selling positions.

Let us know if you have suggestions for prediction market topics other than these initial ones. We’ll be expanding the range of questions as more participants join.

See you in there – may the best media futures trader win!

The UK Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has recently launched a discussion paper titled Web 2.0 and human resources, designed to help HR professionals to understand what Web 2.0 is and to contribute to organization’s activities in the space.

The paper is built around the key elements of my Web 2.0 Framework, which they nicely attribute me for, though also brings in a number of new elements, and wraps up with three case studies, including Pfizer’s Pfizerpedia, UK government departments’ use of forums, and T-mobile’s use of social networks for recruitment.

As I see and work with many organizations grappling with how to respond to and take advantage of Web 2.0, one of the challenges is that there is no one obvious place in the organization where these initiatives should reside. IT, HR, marketing, strategy, risk management and other functions all need to be involved, and the reality is usually none of them individually have the capabilities to successfully drive the full breadth of the potential across the firm. In successful organizations, often individuals who implicitly understand the issues help to define activities, and very importantly communicate across the wide variety of stakeholders.

The Future of Media Summit 2008 is designed to have a far broader reach and impact than for just those who attend. Part of the way we do this is to get contributions from the speakers beforehand on the Future of Media blog and websites, setting the scene for deeper discussions on the day, and providing context for those who can’t make the Summit.

The CEO Panel on predictions for the future of media will be held at 1:20 – 2:00pm in Sydney, just before the Unconference session, and will be the final session at 8:20 – 9:00pm in Silicon Valley, over drinks. Panelists for this session include Mark Scott, Managing Director of Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

Mark’s pre-event contribution is two papers:

* A recent op-ed on the role of the ABC in 2020 that appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald.

* The ABC in the digital age – Towards 2020, about the ABC’s shift to digital media.

The ABC shares with a few other organizations such as the BBC and CBC the special issues of public broadcasters in a rapidly shifting world. The papers describe the evolving role of publicly funded media in a world awash with information, and the steps the ABC will take to fulfill that role, including the new digital channels it will implement.

Below are a few excerpts from the papers that are particularly worth highlighting in the lead-up to the Future of Media Summit:

Below is the sidebar I wrote in for BRW's Web 2.0 feature, accompanying our Top 100 Australian Web 2.0 Applications list. The reason I was most pleased about getting the list into a mainstream business magazine is that it is a significant step in getting the broader business community to understand the value and transformative power of Web 2.0 (or whatever you want to call the participatory web). While the geeks and early online adopters are swimming in this world and engage in continual conversations with each other about what's happening, it is critically important that the messages spread beyond this community. That is central to what I'm trying to do.

Another sidebar in the report written by Technology Editor Foad Fadaghi on Start-up challenges is available online (though that's all - the rest is subscriber only :-( ).

Web 2.0 for business
The many applications of Web 2.0 in business include increasing employee productivity with collaboration tools and better access to information, gaining insights into consumer attitudes and behaviours, engaging customers in personal relationships and providing personalised customer service.

Web 2.0 for consumers
Some consumer uses of Web 2.0 tools are to communicate with their friends and family, find out what products and services others have liked and manage their lives more effectively.

Web 2.0 for creators
Creators of art, video, photos, music, writing and more can share their creations, collaborate with others in developing them and get rewarded for their creativity.

Web 2.0 for investors
Through Web 2.0 start-ups, investors can access the fastest growing sector of the economy, establish low-cost trial ventures and reach global markets.

Web 2.0 for innovation
Web 2.0 tools help innovators to collaborate across boundaries and connect their ideas to the global marketplace. They are central to Australia’s integration into the rapidly growing hyper-connected economy.

Techcrunch has just published a very interesting analysis of valuations of social networks. Here is its methodology:

Our model takes Comscore data for available countries and regions. We’ve graphed each of 26 well known social networks with the data we have been able to collect. We’ve then calculated the average advertising spend (estimated by PriceWaterhouseCoopers in a recent report ) for each person online in each of those countries. For example, in the U.S., the total 2008 estimated Internet advertising spend is $25.2 billion. We’ve divided that by the number of people online in the U.S. according to Comscore (191 million), to get an average Internet spend per person of $132.

I have charted the figures of interactive advertising spend per Internet user from this data below.

Source: Techcrunch, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Comscore

An article in Forbes titled What Privacy Policy? quotes data from a study by the Ponemon Institute, summarized below.

What it shows is distinctly fairly different attitudes and perception from privacy and security executives at large organizations, compared to those of marketing executives.

At the Future of Media Summit 2008 held in mid-July in Silicon Valley and Sydney we’ll be looking at the future of privacy and targeted advertising. Broad behavioral advertising requires either dominant players that have the breadth of relationships that they can serve relevant advertising to many viewers wherever they go on the Internet, or sharing of detailed information and profiles between market participants.

Erica Smith of Graphic Designer has done some great map mashups of US newspaper layoffs so far in 2008 (4,490+) and in the last seven months of 2007 (2,185+), as below.

While you can pick out trends from the maps such as a big rise in layoffs in the North-East, this is more about underlining the trends in newspaper jobs.

One of the key topics at the Future of Media Summit 2008 on July 14/15 will be the future of journalism. I absolutely believe that journalistic skills and training are immensely relevant in the economy today. However many current newspaper journalists will have to adapt their skills to new jobs and roles, often outside traditional media. We will explore, among other issues, how this transition might happen.

US newspaper layoffs: 2008 to date

Some quick thoughts on the Top 100 Australian Web 2.0 Applications launch and event last week:

* Everyone seems to have had a good time at the launch event – I certainly did! A great bunch of people

* For me the primary reason to create the list and get it into BRW was to help link the tech entrepreneurial scene in Australia with business. I think that mainstream business is starting to recognize the many ways Web 2.0 is extremely relevant and important.

* This space is – I hope – at some kind of tipping point where it has reached critical mass and will surge from here. Expect plenty more activity from me and others in helping this along.

* The big themes that came out of the panel discussions on the day for me were about the role of these kinds of applications and entrepreneurship in the economy (see also link to Elias Bizannes’ thoughts below).

Will be back soon with some thoughts on what we can learn from the list about the global Web 2.0 space.

Online event coverage:

I set up my rossdawson Twitter account this morning. I know I’m very late to the party, but will now be exploring this space.

I’ve followed Twitter and its peers from the beginning as well as I can as a non-participant. My attitude has always been that my primary online presence is my blog – everything flows out from that. I don’t have enough time to write anything near as much as I’d like on my blog, so I felt that starting to Twitter would take away from the little time I have to devote to blogging. I do have a very intense schedule almost all the time, with major events, speeches, and deadlines succeeding each other in rapid succession, on top of a stack of travel. I consider it my top priority doing my client work and events as well I possibly can, and while creating content is a core activity for me, it can't take over other things (for now).

Clearly momentum has built over time in my intent to get onto Twitter, and have been playing with the idea for a while. I actually decided to get on after last catching with Shannon Clark in a San Francisco café earlier this year. He told me that Twitter was at the center of his life, and gave a compelling description of the benefits to him in being across and in the conversation.

However I’ve been so busy that I never quite found the time to get it going. I’ve certainly been active on FriendFeed, and using tools such as AlertThingy in fact has given me much of the functionality of Twitter, in allowing messaging across my activities, following Twitter feeds, and responding on FriendFeed.

Download Chapter 5 of Living Networks on Emerging Technologies

Every chapter of Living Networks is being released on this blog as a free download, together with commentary and updated perspectives since its original publication in 2002.

For the full Table of Contents and free chapter downloads see the Living Networks website or the Book Launch/ Preface to the Anniversary Edition.

Living Networks - Chapter 5: Distributed Innovation
Intellectual Property in a Collaborative World

OVERVIEW: Innovation and intellectual property increasingly dominate the economy. As technology advances, no firm has the resources to stand alone, and collaboration with others is becoming essential. This means that new business models are needed for developing intellectual property and sharing in its value. Open source software provides us with valuable lessons that can be applied to many other aspects of business and innovation.

This chapter on innovation and intellectual property was one of the most important in Living Networks, I thought, and is absolutely as relevant today as five years ago. Innovation is the source of the majority of value-creation in a networked world, and how we deal with intellectual property can either enable or block human progress, on every level.

The nature of the intellectual property landscape is that the structures are highly rigid, by definition being set by legislation. However attitudes are rapidly changing, and new approaches such as Creative Commons have gained enormous traction over the last years. Certainly innovation is seen more today than as something that happens across boundaries, though most organizations are still hesitant to open up. The critical next phase is in innovation in innovation models.

The chapter begins by explaining a few basic shifts:

The Top 100 Web 2.0 Applications list is now officially launched – the full list is below, after appearing this morning in a feature section in BRW magazine on Web 2.0. A few quick comments:

* See the scope and criteria for the list.

* No doubt many will disagree with what has or hasn’t been included in the list. That’s inevitable in drawing boundaries around defining Web 2.0 applications. We have been strict in applying our scope, and many very worthy applications have not been included in the list, not because they’re not excellent, but because they haven’t met our judge’s view of what constitutes a Web 2.0 application.

* A few more applications have come to our attention since the list was finalized. In a very dynamic landscape we cannot hope to cover everything, but we are continuing to build as comprehensive a view of the landscape as possible. Please let us know what we’re missing.

* Despite the caveats above, we’re very happy with the list and what has come out of our efforts in creating it. It provides the broadest coverage of the Australian Web 2.0 landscape available, and we are sure will achieve its intention of supporting and drawing attention to the value created by Australia’s vibrant online entrepreneurial community. I hope and expect that the 2009 list will once again represent a far deeper and richer landscape featuring many global success stories.

1. mig33

Website: http://www.mig33.com/

Person/Company: Project Goth (Steven Goh/ Mei Lin Ng)

Description: Global mobile and web-based community, including social networking and messaging such as IM, email, text and photo sharing. Founded in 2005 in Perth and now based in the US. Has raised US$23 million, and has over 7 million users across 200 countries.

2. Confluence

Website: http://www.atlassian.com/

Person/Company: Atlassian (Mike Cannon-Brookes/ Scott Farquhar)

Description: Enterprise wiki with 5,000 clients in over 80 countries. Based in Sydney and San Francisco. Atlassian has over $22 million in revenue with no external funding.

3. Red Bubble

Website: http://www.redbubble.com/

Person/Company: Martin Hosking/ Peter Styles/ Paul Vanzella

Description: Art gallery and creative community where artists can upload art and sell it in many formats. Over 100,000 items sold in 71 countries in the first financial year. Has raised $3.7 million in funding.

4. 3eep

Website: http://www.3eep.com/

Person/Company: Rob Antulov/ Nick Gonios

Description: Social networking platform covering sports from national to school level for sports enthusiasts, players, teams and parents, allowing discussions and photo and video sharing. Has licensed the platform in Australia, Canada and Germany, and is also run as a stand-alone social network.

5. Engagd

Website: http://www.engagd.com/

Person/Company: Faraday Media (Chris Saad/ Ashley Angell)

Description: Web service application that creates 'attention profiles' of users, and enables these to be used in customising services and content for users.

[UPDATE:] Complete list now up.

The Top 100 Australian Web 2.0 Applications will be launched tomorrow morning. I’ve seen the BRW issue, and the 8 page feature titled The New Web Revolution looks great, including a couple of articles by technology editor Foad Fadaghi, and a few breakouts on the value of Web 2.0, challenges for Web 2.0 in Australia, and the venture capital perspective, as well as the list.

The list will also be released on this blog and the Future Exploration Network site first thing tomorrow Australia time.

Do NOT be put off by the cover of the BRW magazine – we were earlier told that the cover would be on the Web 2.0 feature, but a late editorial decision changed this to a headline on agribusiness :-(.

One of the most important developments underlying the transformation of media is the emergence of advertising networks, that sell advertising and place it across a wide variety of online media properties. Back in the Future of Media Report 2006, describing the role of ad aggregation in supporting the growth of the long tail, I wrote:

“… now anyone can publish online and get advertising revenue without having to sell [the advertising]. This is transformative in enabling the many of the “long tail” to move towards becoming viable – though small – media properties.”

Getting others to perform the advertising sales function means media becomes completely scalable. Certainly many of the ad networks are targeting major media properties. Sixteen of the 20 online advertising groups with the greatest reach are ad networks, with online four (Yahoo!, Google, AOL, and Microsoft) distinct online properties (more on this in a subsequent post).

In this world, Technorati, still the leading blog search engine, though far more precariously than before, is today launching an ad network, Technorati Media, according to Techcrunch. Techcrunch says:

Last Thursday’s Media Report on ABC Radio National features an extended interview with me on the state of Australian Web 2.0 and major online media (there is both a podcast and transcript available from the link). Some of the points we covered:

Major online media players

* The well-publicized challenges of NineMSN (the Australian 50/50 jiont venture between Microsoft and PBL Media) are partly company-specific, and partly a reflection of the difficulties of the incumbent position.

* Australia’s major media companies have done far better than their international peers in dominating online news (and other aspects of the online space including classifieds). Blogs and micro-publishing are now finally taking off, taking market share from the majors, leading to the major online publishers losing readers in a growing market. The long tail is the natural distribution of readers, and it has always been inevitable that the majors would lose their dominant market share.

* In media conglomerates that are experiencing revenue challenges in traditional channels such as TV, newspapers, and magazines, expectations for growth in the online business are often unrealistic, leading to disappointments when budgets are not met.

* PBL Media, which owns 50% of NineMSN, is 75% owned by private equity company CVC Capital Partners. Private equity companies, for reasons including their debt structure, are often biased to short-term over long-term revenue, relative to their listed company peers. This leads to pressures on management and staff, which can make attracting and retaining staff more difficult when other companies are enjoying participating in a rapidly growing market. The 50/50 ownership structure doesn’t make things easier.

The Future of Media Summit 2008 is now open for registration in both Sydney and Silicon Valley. After the great success of the Future of Media Summit 2006 and Future of Media Summit 2007, the third annual event is quickly rolling up!

See Future of Media Summit 2008 website for full details.

Note that there is an early bird offer for the Sydney Summit until June 16, then full price applies.

There’s too much to cover in one blog post, so I’ll be providing more detail on everything that’s happening in coming days and weeks. However some of the key features of the event include:

* Simultaneous events in Silicon Valley and Sydney merged seamlessly by video, online discussion, and cross-continental panels and conversations

* Highly participatory Conference AND Unconference formats at both Sydney and Silicon Valley events

* Discussions on global media strategies, future of journalism, future of privacy, and the future of TV and video

* Peer video discussions by participants across continents (world-first)

* Prediction markets on the future of the media before and during the Summit to tap collective wisdom of event participants and global media leaders

* Future of Media Summit blog for insights and discussion by all speakers and participants

* Detailed content and analysis, including the Future of Media Report 2008

[UPDATE:] The complete Top 100 list is now up.

The compilation of the Top 100 Australian Web 2.0 Applications list has now been completed. It will be made public on 19 June, when it will be the cover story on BRW magazine, accompanied by feature stories on some of the leading applications. It will be released the same morning on the Future Exploration Network website and this blog.

The Top 100 Australian Web 2.0 Applications Launch Event at KPMG will include a panel discussion by Australian online notables, a showcase of five leading Australian Web 2.0 applications (3eep, BookingAngel, Engagd, Plugger, RedBubble) (Note that the showcased applications are NOT the top five on the top 100 list, but have been selected to demonstrate the diversity of successful Australian Web 2.0 ventures; companies that were showcased in last year's Web 2.0 in Australia event won’t be duplicated in this year's showcase), a panel of the founders of these applications, and one-hour of semi-structured roundtables for participants to discuss current issues in Web 2.0 in Australia. IBM, Adobe, and Starfish Ventures are sponsors. We are getting close to fully booked, so register soon if you’d like to attend.

No information about who is on the list or rankings will be released until 19 June, so don’t ask! :-) However it’s probably worth clarifying the scope and criteria for the list.

Jay Cross, who has been on the leading edge of learning for well over a decade, will be running one-day workshops on Making Informal Learning Work in Melbourne on 17 June and Sydney on 19 June. Jay has been a leading light of elearning since the outset, was CEO of eLearning Forum for five years, and has more recently been driving the informal learning movement, recently publishing a book titled Informal Learning: Rediscovering the Natural Pathways That Inspire Innovation and Performance, in which he says that 'Most corporations invest their training budget where it will have the least impact.' I’m sure these will be great workshops (but don’t overlook our Top 100 Australian Web 2.0 Applications Launch Event on the same day as Jay’s Sydney workshop :-) )

I first met Jay many years ago, probably when we were both speakers at KMWorld, and we’ve kept in touch and regularly bounced ideas around. He is one of a handful of people in the world who are consistently pushing learning into new spaces. I still refer to his ideas on workflow learning, while he is now integrating the lessons of Web 2.0 into how organizations support learning.

Jay and I will catch up for a drink on the evening of 19th – I may post details here for others to join us if they’re interested.

I just got an email from Tom Stewart saying he is leaving Harvard Business Review – this was announced today with the press release below. He has been editor-in-chief for six years, during which time he maintained a strong consistency in HBR’s established editorial approach, but also injected his own highly innovative perspectives. I find HBR an essential read, not least through the pronounced focus on forward-thinking perspectives. I sincerely hope HBR doesn’t move away from this style with Tom’s departure.

I first met Tom in 1998, when I was organizing an Intellectual Capital seminar in Sydney, primarily intended for the funds management community. Tom had published his landmark book Intellectual Capital in 1997, after writing cover stories for Fortune magazine, where he was a writer for many years, on Brain Power in 1991 and on Intellectual Capital in 1994. At the time, drawing on my background in capital markets, I saw an immense opportunity in applying the nascent ideas of intellectual capital to financial markets and investor relations. (Some of these ideas are described in a 2002 speech I gave at KMWorld titled “A Financial Markets Perspective on Intellectual Capital”). I took Tom to visit many of the top fund management teams in Australia. At the time it was great to see the very positive reaction to his ideas, but the reality is fund managers globally have been rather slow to take up the ideas. The response from the broader investment community is improving, but it’s slow going.

Two months ago Wikio launched a ranking mechanism for the top blogs in the world, appearing to use a more sophisticated algorithm than the incumbent leading blog search engine Technorati. In the latest monthly reclassification by Wikio, Trends in the Living Networks has been ranked #27 of all business blogs. In part the high ranking is due to the fact that there are relatively few blogs about business, with technology and politics the dominant subjects. In fact the blog is ranked #761 out of all blogs for this month, still not bad considering I don’t get to post on here nearly as much as I’d like – a few posts weekly recently. However I intend to start posting quite a lot more as our research for this year's Future of Media Summit gets under way. Thanks for being a reader!