Where do you want to play? Where the economy used to be or where the economy is going?

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Today asset manager James Altucher writes in Wall Street Journal that The Internet is Dead (As An Investment). There has already been a solid response, most notably from venture capital investor Fred Wilson, writing The Internet is Alive and Well (As An Investment), as well as posts from HipMojo, Stephen Arnold, and Elias Bizannes.

The nub of Altucher’s argument?

1. “Internet companies now should be treated, at best, like utility companies” such as electricity.

2. “Nobody can figure out a business model.”

Given a six-month timeframe, which Altucher seems to be taking, these arguments could be valid. However moving beyond that, it is delusional to think that the Internet will not:

a) continue to transform existing industries, as it has for more than a decade;

b) create value both in current forms and new ways.

There is no question that most investors would prefer to invest where there are clearly understood, long-established business models. However just because business models are rapidly evolving and changing in a new space doesn’t mean that there won’t be massive value creation. In fact, given that an increasing proportion of economic activity is shifting into ‘virtual’ activities, we have every reason to believe that that’s where a large proportion of long-term economic growth will be centered.

It will be a hairy ride for those on board, no question about it. In return I expect we will get what in economic jargon is known as ‘supernormal returns’. Either way, I know where I’d prefer to play.

The overlap between tech and porn: an overlooked element in search optimization

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If you search for “multiplayer sex game” (and a number of variations on these words) on Google, this blog comes up #1.

In April 2006 I wrote a blog post Massively multi-player sex games, which discussed the launch of Naughty America: The Game, an MMORPG involving sex. As far as I can tell my predictions of great success for the game were wrong, though other similar players such as Red Light Center, which is essentially SecondLife involving graphic sex, powered by Utherverse, seems to be doing very well.

Partly due to my blog’s prominence, and I gather due to some links from Chinese websites, this blog post, three years later, is still deemed by Google to the most authoritative source on the topic, and the post consistently gets more traffic than many of my other long-term hits such as our Web 2.0 Framework and Extinction Timeline (though most of those visitors to these latter posts tend to stay and browse a lot longer).

For a long time I thought this was nuisance traffic. If someone is searching for multiplayer sex games, they are unlikely to be the audience I want for my blog. A couple of years ago when I was speaking on a panel I used the story to make the point that not all visitors to a blog are equally desirable.

However I then noticed that a significant proportion of visitors – in fact close to 20% – were staying to read more of my blog, sometimes spending over 10 minutes browsing around. It turned out that (some of) the sex game-seeking visitors were not single-minded, but could be distracted by insights into strategy and technology.

Further light on this has now been shed by Sam Niccolls of SEOMoz in a post on TechCrunch Upskirt: Why Michael Arrington Blogs about Porn.

Techcrunchporn.png

Image source: SEOMoz

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Going on holidays! Conclusion: we need multi-factor travel search…

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Just one month after the birth of our beautiful daughter Phoebe, we are going on a week’s holiday in Fiji. Both Victoria and I have busy schedules coming up, so it’s a good time to get away, rest, and enjoy being a family together.

Victoria did the bulk of the holiday searching, probably spending a few days in all, given we were comparing different destinations, pulling together resort and airline schedules, and finding many places booked in what is now peak season (particularly now most people are feeling less worried than a few months ago).

In short, current travel search is crap. One of our key requirements was a kids club for Leda who’s turning three. There is no way to find resorts that have a kids club, let alone by what ages they accept, so every possible destination has to be checked out individually.

Most people have a number of criteria in what they are looking for in a holiday, yet current travel search is very poor, particularly if you are looking at more than one possible location. I’m almost tempted to set up a service to do this better, though our companies already have enough on for this year. Certainly I think we are very early in where travel search capabilities will eventually get to. I look forward to this becoming far more efficient.

It’s a holiday from blogging too! Back soon.

A list of business applications for blogging in the enterprise

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We’re getting a great response to our Implementing Enterprise 2.0 report. We’ll get up a discussion space on the site soon.

In the meantime I’d thought I’d share a brief excerpt from the book, in chapter 10 on Blogs in the enterprise. You can download four other chapters from the website, including our Social networking in the enterprise chapter.

Selected applications of blogs in the enterprise

INTERNAL BLOGS

Executive communication

Blogs are increasingly used as a tool for CEOs and other senior executives to communicate within the organization. This provides a more informal communication mechanism that is a valuable complement to existing channels.

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A fundamental question: Are we evolving faster?

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Recent research suggests that ‘microevolution’ – that within species – happens faster in warmer climates – their DNA changes faster. This leads to the extraordinary tropical diversity of our planet.

Susan Kraemer asks: what happens if the planet’s climate gets warmer? Will we all evolve faster?

Which leads me to the bigger question: are we evolving faster? And if so, what is driving that?

We only occasionally think about human evolution, but now well into the 21st century it would be worth knowing if we were indeed evolving at a faster rate, and what that means.

That’s a good research challenge: determine whether and by how much the pace of human evolution is changing :-)

The extropians would of course say it’s accelerating, and I’d have to say I agree.

Once we start to determine our own DNA, as we are beginning to do, we are playing a hand ourselves in our evolution.

We are shaping ourselves, at an increasing pace.

The story of my life: reflections on how my interests were shaped

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I just discovered that an extended profile piece on me that appeared in Inside Knowledge magazine in October 2006 is now available online under the title The Knowledge: Ross Dawson.

It is fascinating to me to read it a few years later and consider what has and hasn’t changed. It provides an extremely good overview of my life story and how my work interests have been shaped. It also picked up on my personal interests such as improvisational music and recording as well as my family.

Please have a read of the full article if you’re interested – it’s a good story. Below are a few quotes from me taken from the article.

“The network approach to open innovation is very powerful, especially when you can uncover the nodes, find out how these domains are connected and how you can link people more usefully,” he says. “Some people don’t understand the idea of open innovation. They had better get it soon as you haven’t a hope if you rely solely on your own internal innovation capabilities.”

…

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Influence in launching start-ups – who do you go to?

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One of the most important applications of influence is in launching start-ups. This is often a make or break situation – you have a great opportunity to get attention (and on the back of that revenue) when you launch a new company. If it doesn’t work and you don’t get much attention at that point, it doesn’t mean you never get another chance, but it’s going to be a lot harder when you’re yesterday’s news.

The New York Times has a long feature today about PR in Silicon Valley, which has brought an extended response from Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, bringing into focus the question of who the REAL influencers are when it comes to getting word out on start-ups.

The New York Times piece, describing the formation of the PR strategy for word-focused start-up Wordnik, says:

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Who will provide the credibility ratings for the journalists of the planet?

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Citizen journalist site Allvoices.com has just moved out of beta. CNet provides a story of the site, its founder Amra Tareen, and Allvoices’ features including a map of the world showing where the latest stories are emerging. A Reuters story, Allvoices happy to pay popular posters, focuses on how the site pays contributors and its ‘crediibility’ algorithm.

Contributors are free to post almost anything and their credibility is rated by readers and an in-house algorithm which measures postings against traditional media and other sources.

But throwing the site open to the public has its pitfalls.

One recent post with a high credibility rating said the Ark of The Covenant was about to be unveiled. Other stories cite no sources at all.

Mr Sundelof said he had not looked at the Ark posting, but the in-house computer evaluation depended on feedback from many users and there had not been enough feedback on that piece.

Allvoices did not practice gatekeeping.

“We haven’t worked out how to deal with these kinds of situations,” he said. “Basically, we can only determine credibility based on the input we have.”

In a world awash with information, having credibility or reputation ratings for information sources is becoming increasingly important. While most people have focused on the media channel as the brand, this is going to shift to the individual journalist. You may trust the New York Times, but after you’ve read it for a while, you’ll place more credibility on what some journalists for the paper write than you do for others.

Allvoices is one of the early players in this space. There will be many more.

How reputation measures will evolve, particularly those for content, will be one of the important themes at Future of Influence Summit 2009.

The border between blogging and Twittering

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Shall I tweet it? Shall I blog it?

If you’re both a blogger and Twitterer, when you get an interesting thought you want to share, you have choices.

Do you tweet it? If it’s interesting enough to let people know, then sure – very easily done.

Or do you blog it? If it’s compelling enough, competing with lots of other stuff, and it’s time-sensitive, then yes. I have a list of over 60 blog posts I’d like to write, so something has to be compelling to get in front of that queue.

This decision changes over time. I’ve blogged for seven years, and was slow to get on Twitter because I thought I had plenty on my plate with blogging. Now more and more idea sharing happens over Twitter. Of course, there’s only so much you can say in 140 characters and sometimes you have to flow beyond that. Comments and blog posts can do that – they’re part of the content creation landscape.

I will explore this issue more later. I’m working on a blog/ Twitter framework that will show how they relate to each other.

It certainly seems to be an interesting topic to explore: what is the border between blogging and Twittering?

Twitter and the ever-faster moving news landscape

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Associated Press has just released a story titled Is Twitter the news outlet for the 21st century? which examines the role of Twitter in the news cycle.

It examines the role Twitter played in the news of Michael Jackson’s death, in the Iranian election, and in the Mumbai terrorist attacks, and goes on to quote tweeters such as Ashton Kutcher and Lance Armstrong, and commentators including TechCrunch and Andrew Keen to explore how Twitter is changing the news landscape. It also draws on my comments from an extended interview:

“Twitter absolutely changes the media landscape,” said Ross Dawson, author and communications strategy analyst. “I like to refer to Marshall McLuhan’s description of media as `an extension of our senses.’ Now, Twitter is extending our senses to tens of millions of people who are often right on the scene where things are happening.”

My views are expressed in more detail in a recent post How Twitter impacts media and journalism: Five Fundamental Factors, which reviews in particular the role of Twitter in breaking news.

I’ve had a few other thoughts on the topic recently so will post more on this later.