The future of social networks and television distribution channels

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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:

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A short video review of MD80 – smallest video recorder in the world (no not the iPod Nano)

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A few months ago I bought an MD80 video recorder – supposedly the smallest in the world, and smaller than the iPod Nano, which David Pogue reviews today as the smallest camcorder.

I thought I’d do a video review of it, discussing both its use and demonstrating its video quality. In fact the biggest problem is the audio quality. I love how I can just clip it on my jacket and take ambient video as I walk around, but the audio is not good enough for doing interviews of people. A very nifty device and certainly with its uses, but not quite there.

Paris Hilton and the iPhone – I said it first

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A CNN blog titled its story Is the iPhone really the Paris Hilton of mobile phones?, referring to a recent report saying that iPhone’s are not profitable for telecom firms.

It says that the term first appeared on December 5, 2008 in a newsletter from Strand Consult, referred to in an ITWire story titled iPhone – the Paris Hilton of mobile phones?

Well, for what it’s worth, I said it in September 2008. Following is an excerpt from my opening keynote for a five-city national roadshow for Optus Business, just after the iPhone was launched.

I don’t think I was making quite the same point though – the iPhone was enormously glamorized, feted on all sides for a couple of months, truly the center of attention, just over a year ago. However the difference with Paris Hilton is that the iPhone has great social value.

BTW I haven’t managed to track down the author of the photo in the movie – please get in touch if you want attribution or for me not to use it.

The quality of the audience is the heart of Future of Influence Summit

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Throughout all our events, including among others Future of Media Summit, Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum, and now Future of Influence Summit, our intention has been to have top-level participants who are themselves creating the future, and generating useful insights from interaction with their peers.

This is not supposed to be about the audience coming to hear wisdom from those on the platform. The person sitting next to you should often have as much to offer as the invited speakers.

As such, we always include “audience roundtables” and other approaches that help participants to have conversations, building their own insights from the ideas proposed by the speakers and panellists. At Future of Influence Summit, we will step up a few notches the video interaction between the audiences at the San Francisco and Sydney events to again create something unique in terms of participation.

As importantly, we have a quite extraordinary audience line-up in both locations. Without checking with everyone we can’t generate a list of star audience members, but be assured it matches the calibre of the invited speakers. At a highly participatory event like this, the quality of the audience is what makes it exceptional. Based on who we have coming, we can expect it to be spectacular.

I hope you can be part of the Future of Influence Summit experience!

You (or your favorite charity) can make money from your tweets! Participate in an experiment on making money from influence

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You (or your favorite charity) can benefit from your influence! To find out how, read on…

One of the key themes of Future of Influence Summit, on next week in San Francisco and Sydney, is ‘business models for influence and reputation’.

There are many angles to this particular topic, including:

* Will it be possible for individuals to effectively monetize their influence and reputation?

* What new mechanisms will allow people to make money from the influence?

* How will influence intersect with spending on advertising? (some of the leading players in this space will be speaking at the Summit)

* What are business models for the measurement of influence and reputation?

I recently wrote about Sponsored Tweets, which is one of a number of platforms for people to make money by tweeting sponsored messages and links. There has been extensive discussion on this concept, with a high level of polarization in the community as to whether or not this is a good idea (see for example the comments on Mashable, and thoughts from David Risley, White Hat Crew, and AdWeek).

In the spirit of experimentation and learning how paid influence may work, we are introducing a rewarded tweeting system for promoting Future of Influence Summit. Here is how it works:

1. People using an approved discount code get 25% off the full price of registration (US$199 in San Francisco, A$600 in Sydney). For any registrations with that code, an additional 5% of the registration fee (US$10 for US, A$30 for Australia) is paid to you (or your favourite charity).

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This is my current favorite album – listen to it here!

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Ellipse by Imogen Heap is my current new favorite album – absolutely delightful!

Very generously given away by Imogen a few days ago on her website, and also available as an embed, as below.

Have a listen!

I discovered Imogen Heap when listening to the Kate Havnevik channel on Last.FM – Kate’s music is lovely. Kate and Imogen’s music is indeed very much in the same vein.

Imogen is here providing very open access to her music, with prominent buy buttons on each of the tracks.

While you can listen to streamed music when at your computer, you won’t do that on your iPod or mobile. So you will quite possibly buy the song to pull into your iTunes and listen to as part of your personal music stream.

I’m certainly very happy to allow her to sell her music on my site, and I hope she makes lots of money from this! I think she’ll do just fine.

For more insights into how to create and tap online influence at Future of Influence Summit 2009.

A futurists’ dinner: the future of content and remote engagement

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Last night media futurist Gerd Leonhard , Richard Watson, author of Future Files: A History of the Next 50 Years, and I caught up for dinner. Gerd is in Sydney for the first time for a couple of events, including The Insight Exchange’s Creating Value With Content on Tuesday (see the event review), and Richard happens to be in Sydney amidst a hectic global speaking schedule.

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We had a fascinating discussion, largely on the future of content, and in particular how to leverage our own content. As futurists (I will write a blog post soon on ‘why I am happy to be called a futurist’ – that’s another story) what we sell is content in a variety of formats.

The most prominent monetizable channels we have are speaking, consulting (which can take a variety of forms), and books and reports (which now also can be packaged and sold in multitude of ways). Of course we all throw out plenty of free content on the web as part of the mix.

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Insights and notes from Creating Value With Content event

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The Insight Exchange’s Creating Value With Content event on Tuesday was a fantastic success. As so many of the attendees observed, this topic is at the heart of many businesses today. While content in the broadest sense is more and more central to the economy, there are many challenges, not least with pricing and distribution, whether the content is music, film, books, news, advertising, or simply the flow of communication that sustains human and business relationships.

Gerd Leonhard and I have been trying to do something together for a few years now, so it was great The Insight Exchange was able to take advantage of his first visit to Australia to run this event. In addition to Gerd’s far-reaching insights and global perspective the event brought together top-level views on the world of content from Agency, Brand, and Publisher perspectives.

Below are my rough notes taken during the event. In addition definitely read Gerd Leonhard’s blog post Creating value with Content: The Future of Marketing and Advertising (my Sydney presentation), and see his presentation slides here.

Creating value with Content: the Future Of Marketing & Advertising, by Gerd Leonhard Sydney 8-18-2009

View more documents from Gerd Leonhard.

We’ll shortly add links to the other presentations made at the event.

NOTES FROM CREATING VALUE WITH CONTENT

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Who are the most influential media journalists in the world? Help us compile the list!

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Leading up to the Future of Influence Summit held on August 31/ September 1, we will release a ranked list of the Top 50 Most Influential Media Industry Journalists in the world.

The list will analyzed and created using the platform of influence ratings startup Repyoot. However we need to provide a list of candidates to be analyzed for the ratings to be generated.

We have created an open spreadsheet with a list of over 100 prominent journalists covering the media industry in the English language.

Please add to the spreadsheet anyone that you think should be included for consideration in the most influential media journalists list. We will continue to add names ourselves until we submit those names for analysis by Repyoot this weekend.

One of the reasons we are creating this list is to make concrete the idea that “influence is the future of media”. While it is true that technologies of participation are making all of us influencers, mainstream media still affords a different scale of influence and impact. Journalists can now communicate not only through established media, but also through new channels such as Twitter and personal blogs. Together these provide multiple facets to how they exert influence.

Influence research: Duncan Watts and the debate on whether “influentials” really matter

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We continue our Influence research series, paving the way for in-depth insights and breaking new ground on the topic at Future of Influence Summit 2009 in San Francisco and Sydney.

Duncan Watts is one of a handful of scientists instrumental in developing the study of networks as a key scientific discipline. He tells his story in his book Six Degrees, which begins by recounting how he found a subject for his Ph.D in mathematics in biological phenomena, which turned out to be based on networks, and to apply to subjects as diverse as society, technology, biology, infrastructure and beyond.

Duncan co-wrote a paper in 2006 titled Influentials, Networks, and Public Opinion Formation. This used mathematical modelling to examine the dynamics of how influence could disseminate.

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The paper’s abstract summarizes their findings:

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