The Genie is out of the bottle – and is driving convergence between computing, communications, media and devices

The subject line of this posting paraphrases the heading of a paper on telecommunications/communications recently published by Oppenheimer, US investment bank (HT: David Isenberg). To those who have not been tracking ICT and telecommunications trends for a while, David Isenberg coined the term “stupid network” in calling the transition from the ’smart networks, dumb terminals’ Telecommunications Age, to ‘dumb networks, smart terminals’ of the Internet Age. Basically the message is that applications running over-the-top of underlying networks do not need “smarts” in the network provided by telcos. Just high bandwidth connectivity will do. This is the “dumb pipes” nightmare outcome that telecommunications vendors and network operators fear the most.

Indeed, a battle has been raging between telecommunications and computing industry interests for some years now. The telecommunications sector has a dream: “next generation networks”. Meanwhile, networked computing interest have lived their dream: the open Internet – or has Oppenheimer calls it, network-centric (NC) computing. NC is described as “….networking and sharing computer processing, storage and data, which can be accessed over the Internet using thin devices at the edge of the network” (page 25). Oppenheimer is calling the victory for NC computing. Oppenheimer summarise their analysis by saying “The migration to NC computing will…eventually lead to the break up of vertically integrated service providers along horizontal lines”. They support their case by pointing to the success of the iPhone, which in terms of its applications is separate to the cellular network.

Under a network-centric (NC) computing age, applications and smart devices have the advantage of global economies of scale. Applications and services innovation and deployment can happen much more quickly than services that are coupled to underlying network configurations. So these two forces at work – global economies of scale and rapid innovation development – are the most important dynamic that telecommunications service providers are likely to face over the next few years.

Oppenheimer point to a few examples of applications innovation in VoIP over mobile, such as Fring and Truphone. Fring makes it easy to connect to your favourite VoIP, social network or messaging application and WiFi hotspots. Truphone is a London-based but global provider of mobile VoIP – you can connect to Truphone’s social networking presence on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and flickr. Later this year Truphone is expected to launch a ‘Local Anywhere’ service where customers will be able to make and receive calls via a local number and at local rates wherever they are. Great for overseas travel! According to Oppenheimer, developments like that could potentially cannibalise telecommunications industry voice revenues (fixed and wireless) and text messaging revenues. Oppenheimer expect that the explosive growth in data traffic would provide some good news to network operators, but that in the longer-term carriers might be better off being transport wholesalers. Oppenheimer assume that carriers could anticipate a healthy share of applications and advertising revenues.

In other respects the NC value-chain is expected to evolve into a horizontally segmented structure with the three main layers being 1) service providers; 2) software companies; and 3) devices. Interestingly, Oppenheimer anticipate that software companies and telecommunications network providers will strive for an open mobile Internet to avoid being dominated by a monopoly operating platform.

Oppenheimer also expect carriers to continue with a strong presence in the enterprise market, providing integrated security, mission-critical execution, dedicated customer service and integration with other data systems.

Government 2.0 Taskforce is off to a great start

I was one of those who were impressed with the Australian Government’s decision to launch the Government 2.0 Taskforce (#gov2au) on 22 June 2009. The announcement came from Lindsay Tanner, Minister for Finance and Deregulation. Minister Tanner drew some leverage from another high quality gov2 initiative – the second PublicSphere held in Canberra on the same day.

My expectations

As someone with project leadership roles in participative consultation, can I say I’ve had many expectations. Oh yes, when it comes to drawing on multiple perspectives and values (tapping into the broad knowledge base of large groups of people, forging new awareness, better understanding, creative vision and pragmatic action) it all lies ‘out there’ in the crowd. I have known intuitively and know from experience that tapping into the wisdom of an organisation lies in cross-organisational coordination, co-operation and (when it really sings) collaboration.

The magic of Web 2.0 (interacting, sharing, innovating, creating and massive networking) makes organising the wisdom of the crowd much easier… and a much more powerful force. Potentially powerful enough to sit alongside the power institutions of the 20th century – Government and industry.

I’m also very aware that expectations among participants in public policy processes are diverse. The gov2au will be no different as is already evident in the postings and comments on the taskforce blog. Some see the taskforce as a vehicle to set government data free, others to improve e-services and e-accessibility. I too hope that the taskforce meets those expectations.

Some, including the Chair, Nicholas Gruen, see the taskforce as having a transformative role where the business of government is gone about new ways. It’s that expectation that gets me really excited about the potential of this taskkforce. For, despite the tranformative potential of Web 2.0 (and other cultural, social and economic drivers of change – it’s not all about Web 2.0) to change the way people work and how organisations function, the most fundamental change is cultural. Cultural change that embraces facilitation, transparency and shared outcomes. Change of that nature calls for the agencies of government to go about their internal and inter-agency practices in new ways.

btw, it’s great to see four of the taskforce members having already posted to the gov2au blog. The quality of comments to the postings are rich signals of the type of change I really hope the taskforce will become known for driving, more than anything else. For if the taskforce achieves that goal, all other expectations will be met over time.

Largest increase in expressing capability in history

Clay Shirky’s latest presentation is inspirational.

How cellphones, Twitter, Facebook can make history

What is changing is that the people formally known as the audience (in broadcasting terms) or the user (in telecommunications terms) can connect to one-another to talk and ‘do media’. It’s these networks of inter-personal connections that is the driver of change.

The ‘Telecommunications Age’ was one of one-to-one communication. The ‘Broadcasting Age’ was one of ‘one-to-many’ content distribution. The ‘Networks of Inter-Personal Connections Age is ‘many-to-many’.

Those institutions that were in control are no longer. They can convene groups of networked people but cannot control them. Adapting to that change involves a mature realisation of that social phenomenon.

Identifying New Influencers

As time goes by there is more research published on social media and social networking use. Here are some examples on identifying and measuring influence.

Research firm Sysomos has released some interesting data on Twitter use. In round numbers,10% of Twitter users make up 90% of the activity and 1% of Twitter users update more than 10 times per day. Approximately 90% of Twitter users post less than one update per day. Only 1% of Twitter users follow more than 1,000 people. About 90% of twitter users follow less than 100 people. Now this is all consistent with Dr Jacob Nielsen’s 90.9.1 rule:  “In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a littel, and 1% of users account for almost all the action”. As I’ve mentioned before, the 90.9.1 rule is a well-established pattern in social groups.

There are a couple of observations here. One is that the term “hyperconnectivity” needs to be taken in the context of how much attention is paid to “followers” or “friends” on social networks. Facebook’s own analysis shows that, while the average Facebook user has 120 friends, people maintain regular contact with only about five or six those. The rest are “weak ties” as it were. Those people who are highly active tend to have more connections (eg.1% of Twitter users are most active & 1% follow more than 1,000 people). The two may not be the same set, but based on my own use of Twitter I would say that they are the same. Sysomos data backs this up too: once someone has 1,000 followers the number of tweets/day rises from three to six.

Here is another piece about Twitter, this time as a leading source of real-time information. Time and again Twitter has demonstrated its strength as a source or real-time eyewitness news, heading off  the big media brands, this time in Iran. But there is a downside. To quote Inquisitr “When recognizing Twitter as the best outlet for the latest on the ground, you can’t ignore that the data coming from Twitter is raw, unfiltered, and at times difficult to follow”.  This is where adding value comes in through channelling attention to particular content. According to the Inquisitr article, that is exactly what the Huffington Post (an online newspaper) did to good effect in using data on post-election Iran that had been distributed over Twitter.

Nielsen has reported that time spent on Facebook in the US increased from 1.7 billion minutes in April 2008 to 13.9 billion minutes by April 2009, a growth rate of 700%.Time spent on the top 10 social network and social media sites increased by 212% over the year to April 2009. Interestingly, time spent on MySpace was down 31%. Some previously popular sites (such as Friendster) are no longer in the top 10. The assumption is that users find it easy to migrate from one site to another. I’m not so sure that it’s as simple as that. Facebook now has the largest number of photos of any site and there is no easy way for people to take their data with them right now.

MySpace seems to be more popular with teens, and more popular for viewing online video. Nielsen reported that: “In April 2009, visitors aged 25 to 34 and 35 to 49 were the highest indexing age groups on Facebook, being 27% and 23% more likely to visit the site than the average user, respectively. In contrast, the highest indexing demographics on Myspace.com was people aged 18 to 24 and 12 to 17″.

Identifying social media influence looks like it will be no trouble: focus on the top 1% of users (by activity and number of friends or followers).

The hard part is in measuring influence. According to the Sysomos sample, ‘Twitterfluence’ (as I call it) adds up to about 120,000 people. Time spent on sites is another measure of influence, a more straightforward task. Demographic analysis is another way of measuring influence. For example, tracking teenager social activity would involve more analysis of MySpace relative to Facebook. Tracking the use of social networks like Twitter by other media brands and by individual bloggers of note would also be another measure of influence.

Radio business models, attention and hyper-influencead

For some reason there was a bunch of news about radio matters yesterday, traversing the UK, USA and Australia. This was too much for me to resist. So this is a longer posting than usual, but hopefully of  interest.

Digital Britain

Firstly there is news from the Digital Britain Forum (having an online forum is at least something that Digital Britain has got right). In the latest posting, given the dominance of analogue radio over digital radio and the growth of radio content online (speech and music) a question is posed “Is there a case for broadcast Digital Radio?” It seems the Digital Britain final report to be released later this month will provide some sort of response to this question.

The comments in response to the posting make for interesting reading too. One was steadfastly a broadcast radio enthusiast (there is no viable alternative to radio for mass audience listening). Another from an internet enthusiast (people are moving to more personalised forms of entertainment). East is East and West is West, never the twain shall meet. Personally, my substitutes for radio are my iPod, early morning news on TV, digital radio on Foxtel and the Internet.

Why NPR is the future of mainstream media

The subject heading of this section is from yesterday’s Mashable . NPR (National Public Radio) is a non-commercial broadcaster in the USA. NPR seems to do a great job in sourcing and creating content for localised radio stations, helping to fill a growing local news and information void as traditional newspapers and broadcasters cut costs or exit the industry. Hyperlocal content is targeted a relatively small and discreet geographic spaces (eg. neighbourhoods, small communities). Hyperlocal news and information services could be sponsored by advertising that is highly relevant to local information users.

NPR is chasing social media. Their nprpolitics Twitter account has over 793,000 followers ranking it in the top 25 Twitter profiles. Their Facebook page has over 400,000 fans. NPR puts out podcasts, mobile phone applications and blogs and their own social network.

So NPR’s value proposition is allowing people to access content on their own terms. Of course being non-commercial seems to lend itself to being more risk-taking in terms of digital media than commercial media. Nonetheless, all media need to go where the attention is.

Comparing the Regulatory Models of Net-Radio with Traditional Radio

Andrea Baker (Monash University) has had an article with the subject as above published in the International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society. In the introduction Baker notes that traditional radio is a linear system of mass communication that is domestic in scope, whereas net-radio (streaming over the internet) is a non-linear system of digital-networked information technologies that is international in scope. I support Baker’s emphasis on the globalised reach of net-radio as an important distinction, particularly given expectations around hyper-localism.

In terms of net-radio, Baker makes a distinction between online radio (regulated, traditional radio that have incorporated the internet into their business models) and net-only radio which webcasts exclusively over the internet and is generally unregulated. There are some interesting statistics on the net-radio reach with the USA accounting for over 42% of online radio stations in 2006. Australia hardly registers, although that is not to say Australian’s are not listening to USA-based or other international online radio. In comparison with net-only radio, well it was reported that there were about 5,000 net-only radio stations internationally by 2009 (still with the majority in the USA). That’s a significant difference to online radio.

Baker has an interesting section on regulatory pressures, including extensive reference to Australian regulation. Amongst other things there seems to be a realisation that the internet is adding substantially to competition and diversity and provides increased flexibility. Recognising the fast and unpredictable nature of change, Baker concludes by coming out in support of designing regulations that are flexible: “policies should be flexible enough to compete with new technologies and cope in the modern business environment”.

Observations

Defining and measuring ‘influence’ in the digital/networked economy has become complex. The shift from mass media to personalised media is real. The shift from one-to-many to many-to-many is real. Media has become social and there are a whole bunch of new influencers. At the same time, media creation and distribution is both hyperlocal and hyper-distributed, depending on the user context (their location, activity, connectivity & social networks) and what they are paying attention to. In other words, information is likely be targeted by geography and context in order to get user attention. Media diversity considerations may go the same way, i.e not by platform (TV, radio, newspaper – or even by mobile or some other device) but by location and context.

In my view local will continue to be important, but the influence of highly distributed groups – where geography does not matter – is also expected to rise. Distributed groups define what is of interest to them. That’s why mainstream media outfits and internet start-ups are chasing social networks.

Putting the citizen at the centre of public service

Australian Public Service Commissioner Lynelle Briggs gave what I feel is a landmark presentation at the John Curtin Institute of Public Policy on 21 May. In signalling what I take to be a move away from designing and delivering programs on an inputs/outputs basis, Lynelle Briggs declared that a “new paradigm has emerged” about “putting the citizen at the centre of public service”. Public sector effectiveness ought now be measured in how well programs address the needs of those to whom it is being delivered. This posting provides a summary of my take on the presentation, and suggestions about possible implications for government agencies.

Leading

A key challenge for the public service is to become public facilitators. A key challenge for the public is to take on responsibility and to express their values and preferences to government. In both cases is requires a more open culture of decision-making. Recognising that increasingly complex problems are beyond the ability of governments to manage alone, being open to the knowledge and experiences of citizens, and to sharing data and intelligence across the public service, will improve the effectiveness of the public sector. As noted in the presentation:

“Innovation in the first decades of the 21st century is more open and pervasive, characterised by skill in collaborating and making connections so that knowledge flows and grows, and so becomes available to meet customer and community needs”.

Taking an open, facilitative approach means allowing for some managed risk and to be accepting of failure as a result. As Lynelle Briggs said “We have to try new things, and we have to learn and move on. Our accountability and responsibility regime needs to let us do that”.

A number of best practice solutions were identified. Lynelle Briggs would like to see them all in place. In particular, I would like to see:

• a greater focus on systems thinking and collaborative policy and program design as a critical capability to be developed and valued. As part of this, we need to understand the impact of complexity and the fragmentation of services and related requirements on citizens
• use of communities of interest across public sector agencies
• better sharing of data and intelligence across the public service.

Implications for government agencies

One immediate take-away in the formation of 2009-10 business and operating plans is for citizen engagement processes to be integrated into business outcomes and service inputs (eg. training and development).

In terms of service delivery, there are two aspects for government to consider. One is in the effectiveness of information and education awareness programs. The other is in the effectiveness of service delivery.

There is scope to review the effectiveness of processes and procedures to see how well they meet the needs of citizens rather than how well they are tailored to meet the structures of government.

Beyond that, the Netherlands e-Citizen charter referred to by Lynelle Briggs provides guidance on the practice of citizen engagement and what citizens can expect from it, through principles covering things like choice of communication method – an important issue in considering what collaboration tools to use. The question to ask is, what relationship do you want? Then select the right tools and processes.

Future of communications

I’ve come across a presentation and a qualitative research study exploring the future of communications in a high speed broadband/networked economy context.

Gerd Leonhard, a media futurist based in Switzerland, gave a presentation on the future of content and telecommunications. Gerd anticipates the emergence of a new ecosystem where content and applications creators, search engines, web portals, social networks and telecommunications collaboration will determine a new balance of power. What is driving that?  The web has removed barriers to content copying and distribution. New forms of IP-based communication  – like email, IM, chat, text messaging, social networks – are substituting for voice, particularly traditional voice over the public-switched telecommunications network. Growth (in terms of use and revenues) is coming from creating added value around content, not from content. The wheels are falling off traditional business models based on centralised networks and centralised distribution of content.

Getting attention (via platforms, applications and location) is increasingly about taking user context into account. For the advertising industry, this means display ads are the past and engagement, involvement & interactivity are the future. It’s about pulling attention to ads rather than pushing ads out broadcast-style. Getting attention means developing trust. The new ecosystem is a convergent system based on collaboration between all of the industry players in the value-chain. The beneficiaries of trust are those than can collaborate.

Accenture (a management consulting and technology services company) released research on the future of the telecommunications industry earlier this month. My source and a link to the research results are here. Views expressed in the study are consistent with taking a more collaborative approach, although there are some interesting twists. Accenture postulates that companies are likely to “find themselves collaborating and partnering one day and competing against each other the next”.

According to the Accenture study, many telecommunications executives still assume they will retain control through “intelligent networks” (i.e middleware like IMS). To quote a telco exec “We will be delivering and controlling a great deal of multimedia…” (i.e. in response to declining revenues from voice services, telcos want to control content). Contrast that with an IT executive view noted in the Accenture paper: “I don’t think the carriers are on top of IP transformation”. And then there is the IT view, that nodes on the network will be communicating with each other quite nicely without the need for middleware. Accenture concluded that “the stifling effect of legacy business models and cultures is another obstacle to be addressed by the carriers” (page 2). I think that is right. In fact it was five years ago now that telecommunications culture was identified as a barrier to change.

New Media Futures

Well, it’s been a while since I took notes of the New Media Futures event held at the RSA (UK) on 8 April 2009. I’ve have not had the time to share ’til now. There were some very interesting points about emerging business models and shifts in consumption. There is an audio of the event here and a video of one of the speakers (Media Futurist Gerd Leonhard) here. Other speakers were David Smith (Global Futures Forum) and Richard Titus (Head of Future Media, BBC). 

Some key points 

In a digital, IP world, technology becomes a commodity. What then has value? 

•    data and relationships between data 
•    events 
•    user experience (eg. mobiles know who and where you are, offering a  more personalised experience; advertising morphing over the next 3 – 5 years  to become interactive) 

The BBC’s iPlayer is available on mobiles now. There has been 300 million downloads/streams in the last seven months. Real-time information is displacing stored information  - Google is old information, Twitter is right now. 

In an age of an “exaflood” of information, where the internet has removed barriers to distributing content – including copying – what comes in place of selling copy is attention. Content distributors are dis-intermediated. The objective of those with something to offer over the web is to get attention. Money is made around the content, not from the content, through 
things like: 

   - packaging 
   - time-shifting 
   - personalisation 

The current situation for the media industry is described as being in a state of transition from an age of control, domination & power, to an age of collaboration. Everything is going to the cloud (music, video, print). No one is in control of the cloud. Content owners, telecoms carriers, brands, advertisers all need to collaborate to create a new eco-system, maybe 
supported by a collective license to access and share content – similar to a radio broadcasting license to play music. The system would legalise what people are already doing on the web (copying and sharing content ). Payments would be made according to popularity (eg. clicks on YouTube). 

Gerd Leonhard referred to a piece by Kevin Kelly, The Technium: Better than Free  It’s a thought provoking piece on where value lies the networked economy. The answer lies in what can’t be copied or reproduced. The new generatives add value, say be interpreting or finding stuff, or just by making more accessible. Publishers, broadcasters and recording labels aren’t needed for distribution over the net, but they do have a role in channelling attention to particular content. The more that new media generatives know about people (where they are and what they are doing) the more likely they are going to get their attention. 

Writing this posting got me thinking about “regulation 2.0″ as it where. What are the new generatives for you to consider going forward? Ideas anyone?

Participation Divide

I gave a presentation on the social web to a professional services firm yesterday. My two key messages to them were about:

• the fast pace of change; and that
• massive networking changes everything

On the first point I looked back to the early 1990’s – before the public internet and in the days where the few people that had mobile phones carried around what looked like bricks.  Today, there are over 1.6 billion people connected to the Internet and over 4 billion mobile phone users. And we are on the threshold of fundamental change in how people communicate, work and how organisations operate. With the “Participative Web” (Web 2.0) now mature we are moving toward the “Personalised Web” (Web 3.0) where context rather than content is more likely to be king.

The mobile internet space is growing rapidly. Take iPhone for example, with over 1 billion applications downloaded in the last nine months. As I recall, the Skype app is the most popular, helping to spur the Skype user base past 400 million. Such is the ubiquity and potential utility of smart phones, some expect that 80% of Internet connectivity will be through mobile devices.

There are now over 5 million Australians using Facebook at least once a month, half of them using Facebook everyday. Internationally there are over 200 million people on Facebook with 500,000 people joining every week. Then there is MySpace, Bebo, Orkut, Goofy2 and many other social networks and bulletin boards around the world. Part of my presentation yesterday was The Conversation by Brian Solis that shows how many apps there are and their diverse use, all based around that very human activity of conversations. Twitter growth has been just amazing over the last quarter. FriendFeed appears to be on a winner with the introduction of real-time multiple person conversations. During my presentation I spoke about the benefits of the social web to productivity. I spoke about a re-balancing of power between institutions and distributed groups of people.

Now, I had a mixed reception to my presentation. Most of the younger people present were nodding their heads. Some of the older people just shook their heads. They have choosen not to participate, perhaps just regarding the social web as a fad, preferring to assume it will not make much difference to them. Perhaps they just don’t realise that having conversations – that very real and powerful human activity – is happening online as well as offline. It is better to integrate the two, far better, than to assume online conversations are not hear to stay.

Now that is a serious issue. This participaton gap may well be looked upon as a productivity gap, and sooner rather than later.

Public Sphere in Australia

Tomorrow, 7 May, will see the launch of Public Sphere in Australia on the topic of High Bandwidth. Organised by Senator Kate Lundy, the workshop/online discussion and interaction will centre on the use of high bandwidth and not the issues around National Broadband Network (NBN)  implementation. The workshop involves short 10 minutes talks from invited speakers which will be streamed live online.

Australian netizens are encouraged to participate through the Public Sphere website or by making reference to the online interaction in blog postings, tweets (Twitter) and the like. All feedback will be summarised and put into briefing papers for distribution to relevant channels in government. 

The event marks an important milestone in Government 2.0 initiatives and has the potential to showcase the capacity of Web 2.0 as an effective and cost-efficient means to interact with stakeholders. I don’t know of anyone planning to attend the workshop at the Australian National University, but I’ll be keeping an eye on proceedings online.