I often write on this blog about the fabulous things I come across in the wonderful living networks in which we exist. In this case, I have to write about something that sucks real bad.
From back in the mid-1990s I have thought that one of the most awesome applications of the Internet is for everyone to be able to listen to any radio station on the planet. Back in the bad old days of crude electronic distibution technologies (AM and FM radio), we could only listen to high-quality radio from stations in our immediate locality. As soon as the first internet streams were made I started listening to radio stations in the Netherlands, LA, Nigeria, New Zealand, anywhere where there was an early desire to gain listeners farther afield. How fantastic to be able to listen to them all, finding unique DJs and hearing local news from across the globe! I envisaged that soon anyone would be able to find and listen to their very favorite radio stations from the tens of thousands across the planet.
Since then a whole new space has arisen, with not just existing radio stations streaming their sounds onto the net, but a whole new cadre of internet-only radio stations. Soma.FM, out of San Francisco, is my very favorite DJ-selected station I’ve found. Listen to their Groove Salad station – I love it. In addition, an entirely new offering has arisen, in which technology enables us to listen to personalized music. I have written many times before about collaborative filtering music stations like Last.FM and Pandora. Other interesting ones I’ve discovered lately include Finetune and Musicovery.
Now all of this may disappear. In a shocking decision last Friday, the Copyright Royalty Board announced new Internet radio royalty rates, doing exactly what was suggested by the RIAA’s lobby body, effectively tripling the cost of streaming music, effective retroactively from the beginning of 2006, and increasing every year until 2010. Bill Goldsmith of Radio Paradise, a leading Internet radio station, does the math, working out that he will now have to pay out around 125% of his revenue, meaning he immediately has to consider closing down. Mark Cuban says “goodbye to webcasting.” Om Malik asks “Last.FM, Pandora KO’ed by new royalties?” Mike Masnick talks about “internet radio royalty rates designed to kill webcasts.” Indeed, there some bad craziness in the business logic here. In the first instance, putting music webcasting stations out of business isn’t going to increase revenue. Secondly, recording companies make the majority of their money from hits, and hits happen because people hear them. There is massive investment in promoting music to traditional radio and music TV stations, yet for no good reason the opposite attitude to online music streaming.
Now this isn’t to say that Internet radio will die completely. Those with big pockets or associated business models may still do OK. Indeed, new business models will be found. But it is an extraordinary pity that innovation in how all of us discover and listen to music is being stymied. It would be criminal if Last.FM and its peers were forced to close down, leaving us all impoverished. I hope that sense will prevail and this decision will before too long be changed.
[UPDATE] A few resources: Save Our Internet Radio, Save Internet Radio, Online petition to US Congress, email your Congressman about this, and Bill Goldsmith’s blog post about it.
Enterprise 2.0 – are the differences philosophical?
By Ross DawsonA vigorous discussion continues on whether Enterprise 2.0 happens by itself or by design. Andrew McAfee says that he and Euan Semple agree “vociferously”. He also makes the very relevant point that “doing nothing” will only work well if companies don’t block access to online collaboration tools.
Dion Hinchcliffe points to organizations where the use of wikis and blogs has proliferated simply through user demand. He also notes that data is at the heart of corporate applications. As such, having many collaborative tools without a way to aggregate the information results in balkanization of corporate information. This is part of my point that higher level planning helps to unleash the power of participatory applications. He concludes his comments by saying:
Dave Snowden distils the discussion to a “Weltanschauung for social computing”.He says:
I absolutely agree. Corporations cannot design in detail emergent systems – this is an oxymoron. Yet they can influence these systems, by creating an environment that supports these high-value yet unpredictable outcomes.
Update on Web 2.0 in Australia
By Ross DawsonThe Web 2.0 in Australia event announced a few weeks back, to be held 6 June, is shaping up to be an absolutely terrific event. BEA Systems is the Gold sponsor. BEA acquired the major content management system vendor Plumtree in October 2005, and has made a number of other related acquisitions since then, positioning the company in the content space in addition to its traditional middleware offerings. BEA is now readying an Enterprise 2.0-style suite of products, which it will providing a brief preview of at the event. KPMG has shown its thought leadership by taking on the role of Venue sponsor, providing their sleek conference site as space for the event.
The panelists will be absolutely awesome. I’m particularly excited that Richard MacManus, editor of Read/ Write Web, one of the top 10 technology blogs in the world, will fly in for the event. He knows the Web 2.0 space like almost no-one else. We also have Sheryle Moon, CEO of the Australian Information Industry Assocation (AIIA), the premier industry body in the country, Allan Aaron, General Partner of Technology Venture Partners, one of the top few technology venture capital firms in Australia, Brad Howarth, who I consider the journalist in Australia who understands this space the best, and a few more of similar calibre to be announced soon.
Event partners now include AIIA, Australian Private Equity & Venture Capital Association Limited, Smart Internet CRC, and Innovation Bay, with several more expected soon.
The showcase members won’t be announced for a while. Right now we’re looking at the more obvious examples. However we’re actively tyring to look beyond that, so please provide suggestions or put your hand up. I will be posting specific criteria on what we’re looking for shortly.
The Web 2.0 Strategic Framework will follow in the footsteps of the extremely popular Future of Media Strategic Framework (over 60,000 downloads) – I think this will help provide a useful map of the territory. It will be released before the event.
The major challenge we’re going to have with the event is that it is an invitation-only, closed door event with limited capacity, and we will have to turn away the vast majority of the many requests for invitations we’re receiving. The event is designed to be primarily for very senior executives to provide them with a pragmatic understand of the field and state of play.
So… we’ve decided we will also run an informal Web 2.0 in Australia drinks function that evening, including a little discussion, likely a broad-based showcase, and much conviviality, open to all. Details later, but you can put it in your diaries now.
Creating the future of documentaries
By Ross DawsonThe February issue of Inside Film magazine focuses on the state of industry in documentaries. An article DOC2012 examines the shape of documentaries in Australia over the next 7 years. The piece quotes me as follows:
There are many ways in which new technologies are likely to transform documentary making. As more and more high-quality cameras become available, there will be more footage that will be invaluable in documenting our life and times. Most people will be happy to make available their video content for use in documentaries. We just need better mechanisms to match videographers (all of us) with those that wish to use that footage. In the last paragraph above I was referring to approaches such as Swarm of Angels, which are arguably more relevant to documentaries than feature films. Documentaries are often of interest to particular groups, who can not only choose to support the creation of something they will want to see, but may also actually profit from it. In short, social media platforms are likely to have far more impact on the future of documentaries than on more mainstream content such as feature films.
Is Enterprise 2.0 easy or hard?
By Ross DawsonEuan Semple, formerly head of knowledge management at the BBC, has written a blog post titled The 100% guaranteed easiest way to do Enterprise 2.0?. His answer (in summary) is:
DO NOTHING
GET OUT OF THE WAY
KEEP THE ENERGY LEVELS UP
So is it that easy? Last week at Barcamp Sydney I bumped into James Robertson, who had recently been at FastForward conference (and been one of the writers on its the excellent conference blog). He told me that at the event there had been a fundamental disagreement between Euan and Andrew McAfee, the Harvard professor who has popularized the term Enterprise 2.0. Euan said that it was easy to make Enterprise 2.0 happen. Andrew said that it wasn’t. Andrew has written a great post about it that is well worth a read for the counterpoint. He says:
Very interestingly, Andrew brings up a analogy with the (lack of) success of knowledge management, a movement I was associated with back in the 1990s before I endeavored to distance myself from it (see my thoughts on the future of knowledge management written in 2004). Andrew says:
James Dellow goes into this comparison in more depth, and seems to suggest that he’s prepared to back Enterprise 2.0 over knowledge management’s success.
I have to say that I’m on Andrew’s side on this one. I count myself as a true believer in Enterprise 2.0, but I’ve seen enough of organizations to know that the status quo has enormous power, and making good changes happen is never easy. In particular, unstructured implementation of social media tools in organizations will yield only a fraction of the value of a planned one. Yes I believe in emergence, but leadership is required to create fertile fields. If people try something once and it’s not useful, they won’t try it again. In particular, there are ways to structure how social media works so it creates valuable results in collaborative filtering and enabling useful connections. You don’t know what the results will be, but clear vision and specific planning and actions will make it far more likely to be valuable than just letting it happen.
The vast potential of Internet radio is in jeopardy
By Ross DawsonI often write on this blog about the fabulous things I come across in the wonderful living networks in which we exist. In this case, I have to write about something that sucks real bad.
From back in the mid-1990s I have thought that one of the most awesome applications of the Internet is for everyone to be able to listen to any radio station on the planet. Back in the bad old days of crude electronic distibution technologies (AM and FM radio), we could only listen to high-quality radio from stations in our immediate locality. As soon as the first internet streams were made I started listening to radio stations in the Netherlands, LA, Nigeria, New Zealand, anywhere where there was an early desire to gain listeners farther afield. How fantastic to be able to listen to them all, finding unique DJs and hearing local news from across the globe! I envisaged that soon anyone would be able to find and listen to their very favorite radio stations from the tens of thousands across the planet.
Since then a whole new space has arisen, with not just existing radio stations streaming their sounds onto the net, but a whole new cadre of internet-only radio stations. Soma.FM, out of San Francisco, is my very favorite DJ-selected station I’ve found. Listen to their Groove Salad station – I love it. In addition, an entirely new offering has arisen, in which technology enables us to listen to personalized music. I have written many times before about collaborative filtering music stations like Last.FM and Pandora. Other interesting ones I’ve discovered lately include Finetune and Musicovery.
Now all of this may disappear. In a shocking decision last Friday, the Copyright Royalty Board announced new Internet radio royalty rates, doing exactly what was suggested by the RIAA’s lobby body, effectively tripling the cost of streaming music, effective retroactively from the beginning of 2006, and increasing every year until 2010. Bill Goldsmith of Radio Paradise, a leading Internet radio station, does the math, working out that he will now have to pay out around 125% of his revenue, meaning he immediately has to consider closing down. Mark Cuban says “goodbye to webcasting.” Om Malik asks “Last.FM, Pandora KO’ed by new royalties?” Mike Masnick talks about “internet radio royalty rates designed to kill webcasts.” Indeed, there some bad craziness in the business logic here. In the first instance, putting music webcasting stations out of business isn’t going to increase revenue. Secondly, recording companies make the majority of their money from hits, and hits happen because people hear them. There is massive investment in promoting music to traditional radio and music TV stations, yet for no good reason the opposite attitude to online music streaming.
Now this isn’t to say that Internet radio will die completely. Those with big pockets or associated business models may still do OK. Indeed, new business models will be found. But it is an extraordinary pity that innovation in how all of us discover and listen to music is being stymied. It would be criminal if Last.FM and its peers were forced to close down, leaving us all impoverished. I hope that sense will prevail and this decision will before too long be changed.
[UPDATE] A few resources: Save Our Internet Radio, Save Internet Radio, Online petition to US Congress, email your Congressman about this, and Bill Goldsmith’s blog post about it.
Internet advertising revenue soars – how much further to go?
By Ross DawsonThe latest Interactive Advertising Bureau statistics show almost $4.8bn in internet advertising revenue for the fourth quarter of 2006, with full year figures reaching $16.8 billion. The graph below shows that the sustained uptrend of the last 4 ½ years, post the dot-com bust, is now being exceeded. One thing that irks me about the IAB figures is that I have never seen them specify whether these figures are for the US or global. I suspect it is the former, which begs the question of the scale of internet advertising revenue in the rest of the world. Given total global advertising revenue is estimated at $406 billion, the IAB figures suggest there is plenty of room for upside, and no immediate likely fears of a plateauing in revenues. Yet the recent exponential growth will be very hard to sustain for an extended period without a subsequent fall or tailing off of advertising spend. The global economy has shown its brittleness in the past weeks. It would certainly be interesting to see where advertisers would cut their spending if forced – perhaps it would be less on the internet, and more on the traditional media channels that are continuing to struggle. Valleywag calls the chart “statistical porn”, promising that every startup will now include it in their presentation…
On reading the release, I was surprised to see that Randall Rothenberg is now CEO of the IAB. He was previously at Booz Allen Hamilton as Senior Director of Intellectual Capital, where I caught up with him last year to chat about some of my research into influence networks and high-value relationships. He was previously editor-in-chief of the excellent Strategy + Business magazine, though ceded that role to Art Kleiner a couple of years ago to be more involved in the firm’s internal strategic initiatives. Randy’s a very talented guy, so it will be interesting to see which way he takes the IAB.
Playing with new event formats: Mobile Meshwalk
By Ross DawsonShannon Clark, networker extraordinaire and organizer of MeshForum, among other claims to fame, is organizing a neat event with a very innovative format. The Mobile Meshwalk will be held on March 20 from 9am to 9pm. The morning is a “Design Crawl”, where participants visit a number of design companies in San Francisco’s South Park area. In the afternoon a “Walking Camp” small groups will drift, take photos, and brainstorm about mobile advertising based on what they’re seeing on their stroll. Drinks at the end of the day will accompany sharing findings, general discussion, and much jollity. The whole thing is free, enabled by sponsorship by Orange.
The closest thing to this I’m aware of is the “learning journeys” organized by Global Business Network, where participants visit organizations, events, and sites to learn through direct experience of innovation. The concept has been copied and adapted by a range of organizations to help senior executives grapple with emerging ideas and business models. This is a nice variation on the theme – I won’t be able to make it but look forward to hearing back from participants.
Five global trends for 2007
By Ross DawsonIn the February issue of Voyeur, the inflight magazine of Virgin Blue, I was interviewed for an article about the major trends of 2007. The article is below – as usual allow for journalistic interpretation in the quotations…
FUTURE FOCUS
Ross Dawson is the founder and chairman of Future Exploration Network – an innovative company that helps multinational organisations understand the future technological and social changes that will affect the way they do business. Here Dawson lets us in on the top five trends that will shape our 2007.
1. Web 2.0 revolution
“What we’ve seen in the past five years is a whole new phase of the internet. One of the most important principles of this is participation – everyone can easily set up blogs, upload videos and create music and podcasts. For the first time we are not just consumers but are enabled to become creators, so we have this doubling of media space leading to a world of infinite content, of infinite entertainment.”
Read more →
Announcing Future of Media Summit 2007!
By Ross DawsonFuture of Media Summit 2007 is on the way! Echoing what we did in a world-first at the Future of Media Summit 2006, the conference will be held simultaneously in Sydney on the morning of 18 July and San Francisco on the evening of 17 July, linking cross-continental panels and discussion by videoconference.
The partnership document which describes the event is available below. As last time, we’re looking for partners and sponsors to help bring this fun event to the world. Let us know if you want to chat about this.
Click here to see the Future of Media Summit 2007 Partnership document
More details will be available shortly – keep posted! In particular, we will soon start to release some of the content which will be at the heart of the event – and we’re always seeking partners for creating extraordinary content about the future of media. For now, here are some excerpts from the document (excuse the corporate-speak…):
Read more →
USAToday takes mainstream online news into social networks
By Ross DawsonA month ago, in a piece on mainstream media merging with social media, I described how USAToday was one of only two mainstream online news sites that allowed users to select their own feeds from any news source. Now USAToday has announced a massive site revamp that includes features such as user commentary on all stories, story recommendations and ‘most popular’ listings, story tagging, personal spaces with avatars that can be shared with other readers, photo contributions, and exploring network connections between stories.
In a recent strategy project we did for a major online news site, the senior executives kept asking what their major competitors (i.e. online news sites owned by major media corporations) were doing in social media, in order to justify why they should pay any attention to it. They weren’t interested in blogging, commenting, tagging, recommendations, and the like, because they didn’t perceive social media sites as their competition. It was a very frustrating experience. Now a major online news site, owned by a major news corporation (Gannett), is firmly in the space, taking away any excuses from other major players to look at this functionality. Online news sites are in many ways commodities, yet actually have strong loyalty (or rather habitual usage). Adding superior functionality on the lines of USAToday’s revamp is a key point of differentation that can create consistent usage by readers.
Steve Rubel wants USAToday to allow external blogs and feeds to pull into our profiles, while Stowe Boyd thinks that the social networking functionality needs to transcend the news from any one source. Matthew Ingram points out that while there are a minority that want these features, some do (and these are the most loyal!) The point is that USAToday is breaking new ground among its competitors, and this is an experiment. It doesn’t need to be a perfect solution as long as it is a step forward, and it is a major one. Now, hopefully other mainstream online news sites will follow this lead, and the battle for social functionality around news will create more value for everyone.