This video is part of a new series of 5-7 minute videos I recorded here in Basel, Switzerland in July. This episode shows about how I use social networks and mobile-optimized platforms / apps to spread the word about what I do. I also provide a few examples of the most efficient and viral online branding concepts that I have tried during the past decade. You can download this video if you go to my GerdTube.net video channel (on Blip.tv) or just subscribe to my video podcasts in iTunes.
TNN will be bigger than CNN, including video and audio on Twitter, produced by the masses with rich filtering
One of the key differences between TNN and CNN is the filtering – there is none on Twitter whereas CNN has editors and verification.
In the decade of the reputation economy we will have more ways to assess news validity, though we will also need more finely tuned senses on what is or might be correct.
Twitter is an ocean whereas mainstream news is a dripfeed so it is more manageable. It is the role of the ecosystem around Twitter to filter the news firehose. Flipboard, paper.li, Twittertim.es, Geneio and so on are seeking to filter Twitter and social media.
One of Twitter’s revenue models is charging companies significant amounts for access to the full Twitter firehose, but the ‘Spritzer’ feed of 2% of the firehose is available for free.
In a world of information overload, Twitter is one of the most useful information sources if you know how to use it well.
For the most current insights and trends in the living networks, follow @rossdawson and @gleonhard on Twitter!
Here is another episode from a series of videos I made with my friend and fellow futurist Ross Dawson, in Sydney, last month. Read his entire post here, and check out Ross's video channel here. And be sure to visit GerdTube:)
Via Ross's post: "Here are a few of the points we make in the video: * Many executives want to know whether and why they need to open up their business models and customer interactions * Open systems are faster, more viral, have more innovation, and are more fun to work in * Apple is the only prominent example of a closed system that is working well * There is a long and gradual trend to open systems, but progress is rarely linear and it hasn’t shifted as fast as we may have expected * Platforms and open source have been significant wins for open systems * There is a battle between ecosystems – you want to be open within the space but compete with other ecosystems * Android within the platform is open – arguably too open – yet it competes with other mobile platforms it in fact so has boundaries * Being too open can make things slower to progress, for example with quality assurance issues * The development of a highly interconnected world creates more need for open systems * APIs have provided a huge boost to the Internet economy * Google’s early move to expose APIs to many of its products provided the impetus for this to become standard practice across the net * A key issue is the pace at which commercial organizations should open out their models * Facebook has become more open over time due to customer pressure, however now that Google+ has provided a ready way to export personal profiles that changes the competitive landscape in social networks
I just ran across this video of my 2010 talk at USI (Paris) and I think it's still quite relevant, so check it out, below. The topic of my talk and presentation is TeleMedia, one of my most popular memes and speaking topics - see the links below. From the USI event page:
"Fast and powerful mobile internet devices, social media, real-time search and location-based services are bringing major changes to how we communicate, connect, interact, share, consume, buy and sell, and learn. The disruption has only just started. Telecoms are poised to move up the food-chain, into content, services and experiences, while TV is quickly and totally converging with the web, and mobile devices will become the way most people will experience the Internet. Soon, data is the new oil, and 'the cloud' is the oil-well.
The traditional EGOsystems are becoming ECOsystems and the big Networks must now deal with 'The Networked'. Where is the future going, where are the biggest opportunities (and for whom, and where), and how can we start to adapt to the future, today? Futurist Gerd Leonhard will present the key trends and foresights as well as the most likely scenarios in technology, media / content, communications and advertising, for the next 3 years..." You download the PDF with my slides here, btw.
18 minutes can be quite short, I think; I always feel a bit rushed as a consequence. But either way, I would love to get your feedback on what you think about this fast-paced presentation; so please leave your comments below or email me. To make this a bit easier, here is the PDF (18MB) of my slides: TedXWarwick Gerd Leonhard PDF. Provided under the usual creative commons attribution non-commercial license, just like all my other slideshows and videos. Most other TedXWarwick can be found here. You can download my book "Friction is Fiction" here (free and hopefully 'friction-less' PDF), or buy a dead-tree version here.
It was a pleasure to give a talk for my alma mater, Berklee College of Music, in Nashville (TN) yesterday, on the topic of monetizing music in a networked society (see the Facebook page). You can now browse the entire thing via Slideshare, below, or download the low-res PDF directly from here. Provided under creative commons attribution non-commercial license, as usual. Feel free to share and re-use.
I was invited to do the opening keynote at Ericsson's 'Shaping the Networked Society' event at this year's mobile world congress (MWC) in Barcelona, on February 14, 2011, see my blog at http://gerd.fm/i9Dh9I. Some of the topics I covered include the challenges and opportunities of convergence (TV-Web, Mobile-Fixed, real money - virtual money), new currencies and paying with facebook credits, companies becoming platforms not empires, what is beyond the current social media enthusiasm, the new paradigm of 'interaction before transaction', the tough but inevitabe switch from ownership to access (both in content / media as well as in general), the rise of the 'following paradigm', how the media and content industries are changing, and much more.
Take a look and please spread the word if you like it. Thanks.
"One of the most important trends is the transformation from a Copy Economy to Access Economy. Traditionally media business models have been based on selling copies of content: A printed newspaper, a book, a DVD, a music record, even a digital copy of a song. That model is about to disappear, claims Leonhard. He compares Internet to a giant copy machine. Selling “copies” is a model of the past. Instead the entire world shifts to a world of access. If you are in the media industry you better get used to this. It is a whole new industry...." Read more.
This is a good one - loads of information in here, and pretty well recorded. More details and PDF with all slides, here. Enjoy and spread the word. Subscribe to my video RSS feed, here, if you want (download all videos directly to iTunes, watch on your iPod etc).
Update: my new book "The Future of Content" was just released on the Kindle
I want to start 2011 in a renewed spirit of generosity and sharing, so here are the complete PDFs of my last 3 books, for free; provided under a Creative Commons,non-commercial, share-alike, attribution license (see below). If you still want to buy the dead-tree versions of these books (or donate something for the free PDFs - yes, that's an option, too;), you can visit my Lulu Store, or go to Amazon.com, or check out my 'Paying for Gerd' page. You can also return the favor by blogging or tweeting of Facebook-liking my stuff. Thanks, and enjoy, and have a great 2011.
Pay with a tweet: Music 2.0
Pay with a tweet: Friction is Fiction
Update: my free videos (50+ keynotes and presentations) are here, the iTunes podcast feed is here (just subscribe to download all videos to your iPod / iPad / iPhone, or computers), and my free slideshows (90+) are here, on Slideshare :)
It seems like every single day I read about how Internet and mobile companies are struggling to obtain the rights for what they want to do, whether it's about music, videos, TV shows, films, articles, text and images.
Netflix seems to have been more successful at tackling this wicked problem of content licensing, at least to some degree, by - as cnet aptly puts it - 'building relationships in traditional means' (I guess this means playing nice with Hollywood? Read the article - those are good, old-fashioned golf-club paradigms I'd say)
Spotify is a fantastic music service, no doubt; very much along the lines of what Dave Kusek and me envisioned as 'music like water' in our 2005 book 'The Future of Music', and subsequently expanded on in my follow -up book, Music 2.0 (free PDF here). Spotify is not officially available in Switzerland but I have been successfully using it via a UK paypal account (after trying simfy.de and not getting anywhere with their really awkward and crash-prone iPhone app). Unfortunately, Spotify just can't seem to get the music labels and national rights organizations to bless their launch in many other territories, including the U.S. (read this Slashgear piece for more details ). All of this - you guessed it - because the record companies and the music publishers have not agreed on the licensing and deal terms for those countries, yet, and despite the fact that Spotify is already spending most of its VC money on paying for the music licenses. The fact is that there are no compulsory licenses available for on-demand streaming and flat-rate access services so unless these deals are negotiated nobody can touch it. Read about it here, or here (my Spotify-related blog posts), or via my July 2009 blog post on specifically why I think Spotify is unlikely to survive, or peruse the Zemanta-enabled links below for more enlightenment by some smart people
So here is the point I am trying to make: I don't think a purely free-market-driven and unregulated approach will work, in the future. Many large, incumbent media companies, publishers, record labels and other traditional intermediaries (i.e. the 'industry' as opposed to the actual creators) have every reason NOT to be flexible or even slightly forthcoming with their licensing terms and thereby support the deployment of new cloud-based, access-on-demand and flat-rated services. This is simply because their very existence may quickly and irreversibly change the entire playing-field, and may make it very hard for the incumbent rights-conglomerates to continue to effectively control distribution (and by extension, advertising prices) in the same way as before. These changes aren't for the better when you currently run the entire show, so why should you agree?
This is why Warner Music Group's Edgar Bronfman has said many times that he will not license any unlimited streaming-on-demand service, why Netflix - despite of (or because?) its vast growth - has been back and forth with the Hollywood studios on getting more content deals done, and why Hulu is losing steam because of the studios' concerns over future cable-TV revenue streams. Clearly, this is all about controlling and milking the market (i.e. the 'people formerly known as consumers') as long as possible. Yes, sure, just like the big telcos used to do before they had to let competition in. This is not about 'getting the artists / creators paid' or about fighting digital piracy - it's about maintaining a comfortable and lucrative monopoly position for the longest possible time. Which is OK, too - if it wasn't for the criminalizing effect it has on every single Internet user.
Most large, international media companies (disclosure: many of which are or have been my clients in some way or the other) and almost all major TV, film and music rightsholders are used to absolute control over the distribution of the works (and artists / producers) that they own or represent, and this simple fact used to result in getting much higher license fees - the other party had no choice but to take it or leave it; no license simply meant no (legal) business. This may sound somewhat reasonable in a mostly offline world (i.e. until just recently, when the mobile Internet started to take of), but on the Net, in a truly networked society, this kind of thinking plays out quite differently: refusal to license at a price that is affordable(and / or financially viable for a new, potentially huge but legally unprecedented player) simply encourages and produces piracy, because the desired content will become available anyway, legal or not, one way or the other. The reality is that there is no real control of distribution of digital content, any longer, and all models based on re-achieving that control will fail miserably. Witness the 100s of illegal movie sites that now stream pretty much any movie on-demand, or the many new IP-cloaking and re-routing services (commonly used to access locally restricted content services) that are currently flooding the market. Not licensing content to new players on actually survivable terms simply lets other, parasitic entities prosper by offering it without permission. Everyone loses.
My thesis is that - just like telecom deregulation - we urgently need new, open and public mechanisms that first significantly encourage and then possibly even enforce the licensing of copyrighted works for new services that require a new and more experimental approach, and that may end up serving the consumers much better than the traditional services. A 'use it or lose it' rule may be useful to that end; and as far as music is concerned I have been proposing a new, public digital music license for a long time.
In any case, I think that a system that continues to be based on deriving future benefits ONLY for the largest and most powerful rightsholders (again, by that I do not mean the actual creators, but the industries that represent them) is, in my view, simply unsustainable and socially indefensible in this dawning broadband-culture and in a connected, networked and interdependent society. We need better and more transparent EcoSystems and less EgoSystems; less empires and more Open Networks.
Let me have your feedback please!
Note: if there is some kind of problem with my comment box on this blog, please use Facebook or Twitter for comments, for now, or email me and I will post them.
I just received the video of my talk on Social Media and The Future of Business at the Schwab Impact 2010 conference in Boston, and it came out quick well, 14 minutes or so, well worth it I think --- but you tell me! The Youtube version is here. PDF is on Slideshare.
Keynote Speaker, Think-Tank Leader, Futurist, Author & Strategist, Idea Curator, some say Iconoclast | Heretic, CEO TheFuturesAgency, Visiting Prof FDC Brazil, Green Futurist
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