Innovation in media

Business model innovation

Ever heard of Sonos? Based in the USA, Sonos & their partners provide the means to stream or download music from around the world, as well as hooking up to your own music stored on your computer. Using peer-to-peer mesh wireless networks, you can have music distributed to multiple rooms in your house. Currently available in North America and Europe, if you have Sonos you can access over 25,000 Internet radio stations, make up your own personalised radio station through an online service (eg. Last.fm) create your own playlists and access millions of songs online through online music service provider Rhapsody. Radio broadcasters with online channels can be accessed too – the platform provides another global channel for international players such as the BBC. Users can search by title, artist or genre. An obvious attraction is in not having to buy a CD again while having access to so much more choice.

Sonos seems to be a good example of a 21st century Internet business model. Sonos has an internationalised, horizontal business model providing technology coupled with content aggregation through partnerships and distributed over the top of broadband Internet infrastructure. Rhapsody too is a horizontal business player with web services open to third party developers. The consumer gets unbelievable choice. It’s legit. Professionals get paid – in fact given the potentially large customer base, profits from Sonos plays could be very lucrative. I understand that each time a subscriber listens to a song, the copyright holder gets US 1 cent. My understanding is that Sonos (and Rhapsody) revenue is from an ad-free subscription service. At about $12 US per month the cost seems reasonable.

Now, music online has been disruptive factor in the music industry for many years, but innovative plays keep coming. I feel that video and newspaper online business models could follow with Sonos-like business models too. As an avid consumer of news and information online, I would be happy to pay a subscription to an online aggregator so that I can access news and information from any device and from anywhere I am.

Innovative strategy

Mark Scott, Managing Director of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), has a posting called Media after Empire on Unleashed. It’s a very good read. But what I am particularly excited about is news that the ABC is creating widgets so that people can take ABC content and share it through their own social networks. Nice. As I’ve said before, social networks are a hub for news, information and communication for many people and I see no reason why that can’t go further to provide tailored entertainment to suit the preferences of individuals and their network of friends online.

There’s a lot about the ABC’s strategic thinking and emerging transformational strategies in Mr Scott’s posting. The ABC is striving to remain of relevance. Apparently the ABC is contemplating what life would be like for them in a world where viewers have 5,000 TV channels to choose from. Although Mr Scott says he does not have a pathway through to “…a more vibrant future for old media organisations”…and he knows of no one that does…he quite rightly observed that “the paths to the future are made not found [and there are] no solutions to be found in legacy thinking”.

Mr Scott comes across as a quite cynical of the News Corp strategy to figure out ways to make hay through charging for content…while staying in control. The strategy has parallels with the fall of Rome… or at least that is Mark Scott’s view.

Here is what firstdogonmoon though of it -

Social self-regulation

There have been some interesting issues around social media/social network self-regulation over the last few days. 

In the UK right now there is pressure on Twitter to lift their self-regulatory performance. As far as I can see, Twitter gets rid of users that post harmful or illegal content. Maybe not as fast as they could though.

I think it was Facebook (FB) that recently got rid of some 5,000 sex offenders from their site.

However, in an interesting twist, FB has gone social in developing a new set of self-regulatory controls. FB has proposed a set of principles and rights & responsibilities on their site and invited users to comment on them. I’ve copied the draft Rights and Responsibilities statement on safety to illustrate what is being proposed. There is clearly a significant burden of responsibility proposed on users.

3. Safety

We do our best to keep Facebook safe, but we cannot guarantee it. We need your help in order to do that, which includes the following commitments:

3.1 You will not send or otherwise post unauthorized commercial communications to users (such as spam).
3.2 You will not collect users’ information, or otherwise access Facebook, using automated means (such as harvesting bots, robots, spiders, or scrapers) without our permission.
3.3 You will not upload viruses or other malicious code.
3.4 You will not solicit login information or access an account belonging to someone else.
3.5 You will not bully, intimidate, or harass any user.
3.6 You will not post content that is hateful, threatening, pornographic, or that contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.
3.7 You will not promote alcohol-related or other mature content without appropriate age-based restrictions.
3.8 You will not use Facebook to do anything unlawful, misleading, malicious, or discriminatory.
3.9 You will not facilitate or encourage any violations of this Statement.

The question is, will self-regulation be effective? Where should the onus lie – on the service provider or the user: social self-regulation?

ITV joins Bebo’s ‘open media’ platform and possible implications for telecommunications

Yesterday Bebo announced that ITV is to join the ‘open media’ platform “giving free and open access to premium TV content to Bebo’s community of 40 million users worldwide”.  ITV will have a ‘member profile’ on Bebo that will host multiple channels, each promoting individual programs.  Bebo users could then choose to become ‘fans’ of programs and be notified when new content is uploaded to the ITV profile.

Users will be able to integrate video content into their own profiles. Interactivity elements include teaser clips, interviews, blogs, forums, galleries, a wall for users to post comments.

Imagine the possibilities:

• highly popular individual users (those with many ‘fans’) developing their own channels based on open media content?
• viral distribution/marketing?

Media companies can use their own video players which can carry their own advertising. Bebo gets to facilitate value-added experiences to their customers, increasing the likelihood of network extension and member-retention.

Somewhat ironically, I was reading about this idea in a Telco 2.0 posting this morning that questioned the sustainability of telcos morphing into media companies. In fact, Telco 2.0 stated that “Someone who isn’t a telco will have a smash-hit way of blending video, interactivity and social networking”. Rather than become a media business, Telco 2.0 say that the role of the telco is to become a logistics solution provider.

Key trends

For me, the Bebo/ITV announcement is another indicator of the symbiosis between traditional media and social media; it marks another important milestone in the migration from closed to open content distribution, and the use of social networks as a hub for entertainment and connectivity.

Internet TV slow to catch on despite BBC iPlayer – Times Online

Times Online have reported that according to research conducted by Entertainment Media Research (EMR) people still prefer watching scheduled TV over Internet TV. They like to talk about their favorite programs the day after broadcast. The article notes viewers may well shift towards video online with the development of home entertainment systems where content is transferred from PC to TV – and view it on the big screen.

In a related article by Telco 2.0 reported that ISP streaming costs in the UK may have tripled in January 2008, pointing the finger squarly on the BBC’s iPlayer 7-day catch-up service. Their conclusion – the ISP ‘all-you-can-eat’ model is under threat.  The Telco 2.0 article seems to portray a different view from the research reported by EMR i.e. that usage of internet tv is on the up. Telco 2.0 did note that the BBC’s iPlayer is funded by the BBC’s annual license fee, so the businesss model does not need advertising revenue.

In any case, the iPlayer 7-day catch-up model seems like a useful idea to me, and could be seen as a complementary service to broadcast TV (not a substitute) and offer enhanced convenience to BBC viewers.

read more | digg story

Google, Kodak, and the Localization of Content

“Location, location, location,” is increasingly becoming the mantra around new media services, and 2008 seems poised to be a year of growth for hyperlocal content delivery and other location-based services.

Recent developments such as Google News Local, EveryBlock and newspaper ‘microzoning’ are providing new media alternatives for communities and local businesses to create and distribute local content. Local content here means ‘hyperlocal’ content, where the target audience is the local neighbourhood, local sports competititon or local whatever – as is defined by users. Yet another example of the rapid development of the Social Web.

read more | digg story