Will the ABC be all spikes and no hub, or will virtual hubs rule?

Last month I blogged about innovation in media, including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) move to develop widgets for users to aggregate ABC content on their social network sites. As I’ve said before, this is a smart move by the ABC. In taking this initiative, the ABC appears to have recognised the reality that social networks are the new hub for news and entertainment.

So it is interesting to contrast this strategy with the ABC’s primary vision to become Australia’s “virtual town square” – a hub for user-generated content. In May 2009, Mark Scott, Managing Director of the ABC, described the virtual town square as “a place where Australians can come to speak and be heard, to listen and learn from one another”. By November 2009, planning had advanced to the point where the ABC is to employ digital media trainers around the country to teach Australians how to upload their own content to the ABC’s website.

What strikes me about the virtual town square idea is that conceptually it is not  a new. Local radio chat shows are a long-standing example of user-generated content in media. The town square idea also rests on media institutions continuing to provide the hub or the space for people to use.  I just wonder how congruent the strategy is with social media has it continues to grow in importance in the everyday lives of Australians.

For when it comes to creating and uploading content, people are already doing this for themselves. The emerging social media hub is a personalised place, one that is open to friends, family, coworkers and other associates in the work place and in the community. The social media hub has user-generated photos and videos, status updates and wall posts for expressing views about whatever is of interest.  It’s a place to join groups of interest and for political activism. It’s a place where users aggregate  news feeds, music and videos from third parties, updates from their other social media sites, and feeds from people they connect with. It’s a place that links data from all over the web. In Australia, that could well mean some content from the ABC. It may well mean that data is collated and shared within user-created and run virtual communities. Users doing it for themselves.

Where might social network site aggregation and sharing go? Steve Rubel has suggested that user preferences for personalised social network sites may mean that the next great media company will not have a website, they will be “all spokes and no hub”. I’d say that is a good call.  With the widget initiative, the ABC is positioning to play in the user-defined media hub space. The corporation is doing that as well as playing host to virtual town squares on its own website. It will be interesting to see how these two plays pan out over the next couple of years.

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.

Networked information society: what it means for your business

My blog posting activity has been on the light side recently. This posting marks the return of more regular postings.

Wealth of networks

If you have not yet read The Wealth of Networks by Yochai Benkler, can I recommend that you do. The main theme of the book – that the networked information society creates social value – is at once a great challenge for the 21 century, and is also one of the great opportunities.

It’s challenging to those that hold dearly on to the main elements of 20th century market economies: exclusivity, wealth measured in monetary terms, the organisational power of the firm, the nation state, consumerism and the media. The networked information society is challenging to accountants, economists and management consultancies, the rationale of all being bound by the main elements of market economies.

Information is not scarce. Knowledge is not bound by centralised control. Indeed, the value of knowledge and information grows with sharing. Networked social value is not exclusive property. Not only is it possible for people to be well-organised in networked relationships online, it is actually very easy – and adaptive and resilient too. The value of networks transcends organisational and jurisdictional boundaries. Can you put any of that on a balance sheet – or confine it to a national identity? Hell no!

The networked information society creates social value through connections between people. Social value is created through shared creativity, expression and reputation. In The Internet and the Project of Communications Law, Susan Crawford described it this way. “…the greatest possible diversity of new ideas that will support our country in the future will come from the online world, because of its special affordances of interactivity, interconnectivity, and unpredictable evolution” (page 6). Written in 2007, don’t those words seem that much more important in the global economic meltdown. Oh, and while referencing Susan Crawford, another take-away from her piece is: don’t treat the internet like a content-delivery supply chain. It’s greatest value is in human connections and relationships online.

Implications for the firm and other institutions: it’s about relationships, not things

Get networked! Participate and engage with your customers, stakeholders, citizens, people everywhere. Get to know them better. Anticipate their needs. If you have something of value to them, go directly to them. Avoid intermediaries.  Invite them to know you better. Collaborate with them. People are influenced by those they know about and trust. Share to grow. Use others data and platforms where you can.

Reach out and use the scale of the internet to go beyond your town, your region, your country.

Use mulitmedia. People are more passionate, more emotional with video interaction. There is far richer connectivity. Tell stories about you, your service or product.

Key degrees of difference: mainstream and social media

The Weekend Australian has an article on differing views about global warming. Global warming sceptics have taken to the blogosphere it seems. The title of this posting is a play on the heading used by The Weekend Australian to signal the opposing views about measures of global warming.

Well, for me the article raised more questions than it answered. I felt frustrated by the focus on temperature measurement. I’d like to have seen views on melting ice caps and drought and the inter-relationship between the various indicators captured in the article as well. Maybe there is no inter-relationship between those phenomenon. I would have found discussion around that very interesting.  I was frustrated there were no links to the bloggers sites (neither in print nor online) or to the research centres whose views were outlined. The article was not open to interaction, not inviting of reader participation. The only action I could take was to bookmark the article – and to write this blog posting.

Openness and participation are key differences between social media and mainstream media. Global warming is a very topical subject, strongly lending itself to social media. This was an opportunity for mainstream media and social media symbiosis. The opportunity was not taken.

Less is more. Simplicity is the key

Great posting by Stan Schroeder in Mashable a couple of days ago – Why less is more and how to unlock the Web.Stan uses Twitter, FriendFeed, Google and WordPress as examples.

I’ll cover the last bit first. I agree with Stan: unlock the power of the Web and be influential in as many important networks as possible. I am new to Twitter (@conem) but so far, I’m really impressed with the scope and reach. To me, Twitter is more than a ‘one-to-many short message broadcast’. It’s a conversation. It’s about knowledge creation and knowledge sharing. It’s about sharing your life with others…which is a very powerful basic social need. It crosses organisational, geographic and cultural boundaries. Twitter’s track-record in emergencies is outstanding (Katrina, Sichuan).

The power of the Web lies also in it’s open, distributed and global connectivity, over multiple platforms and terminals. Opening up applications to the full distributive power of the Web is a no brainer.

Now for the ‘less is more’ bit. Enough has been said…by many, many people…about Google’s home page. There is a magic in simplicity.

Twitter is also really easy to use. I determine the level of my engagement with others. I am connecting with people that I may not have (or not very likely to have) otherwise. I can put up with the technical issues because the benefits outweigh the irritations. Remember, people used to put-up with brick-sized mobile phones, poor coverage and low battery-life.

And Twitter links to FriendFeed. I’ve just started with FriendFeed, but his looks to be very promising too. Easy to set up. FriendFeed may be the social networking/lifestream aggregator I’ve been waiting for…the inter-connections are amazing.

For application developers, Stan’s message is clear: create a service that meets a basic need in the simplest way possible, and open it up.

Broadband pricing and useage caps

Susan Crawford’s posting on ‘Bit caps, consolidation, and Clearwire’ makes some interesting observations:

• Koreans rate their (nearly 100 Mbps) broadband connections as being ‘ordinary’
• Australians say having fixed caps and overage charges is misery
• The Japanese have discarded metered access in their post unbundled/separated regime
• In the US, carriers are looking at moving away from ‘all you can eat’ access pricing to metered access; but the Sprint/Clearwire natioanl wireless network proposal may provide an alternative

So there are quite distinct broadband pricing strategies and market structures in the above – some shaped by regulation and others not.

Meanwhile, the world watches US wireless policy closely (including operationalising the ‘open access’ specs for ‘C’ band spectrum).

Mobile Internet Type II

Following on from my recent “Mobile Internet’ posting, a message (some would say ’vision’) - that the future is mobile – is one that the wireless industry has been on about for about four or five years now. It’s only recently that there are signs in Australia of the promise coming to fruition. But there are two distinct offerings at play.

3G operators like ‘3′ and Virgin offer mobile broadband dongles (modems) for as little as $20 month for 1GB (upload + download). Just plug the modem into your PC or laptop and away you go – just like fixed network broadband access. There is an article in today’s The Age about the high demand for this form of wireless broadband in preference to fixed-line broadband. What’s more, the networks seem to have plenty of capacity to make these offerings – acting to stimulate demand rather than building more capacity (as the fixed line networks must do) in response to demand.

 

Meanwhile, 3G operators continue to offer mobile phone plans including voice, video/TV and data services…oh, and the mobile Internet.

 

The distinction is that mobile phone plans are run over the GSM cellular ecosystem (i.e. integrating service access, addressing and billing systems). This operating systems enables carriers to charge for every transaction, differentiating based on what the traffic is. It’s that charging capacity that carriers want to take forward to the brave new world of 4G with the IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) standard. That appears to be the issue of so much concern to Joi Ito.

 

Virgin’s advertising captures this interplay between the two offerings well in its blurb ”The Internet should be free”. Get their mobile modem for no charge….as long as you purchase the bundling home or mobile phone package.

In summary, there are two ‘mobile Internet’ offerings available – one that may well have content and voice service provision tethered to the network and one that is just another broadband internet access service (but one that is mobile). The broadband internet accesss offer resembles a commoditised utility service. The mobile phone plan offering is consistent  with the more familiar telecommunications offering of any-to-any connectivity for voice, video, messaging and some data.

Broadband incentive dilemma

This posting draws together a few threads on the so-called ‘broadband incentive dilemma’: the incentive for network operators to support bandwidth-intensive applications and services of other service providers or users (eg. peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing and pod-casting).
 
There are a few sticky issues you see, one of the main ones being the lack of network pricing schemes that efficiently monetise usage of underlying networks. Current pricing arrangements (such as data caps and throttling user traffic) are effectively ways to control network operator costs rather than attempts to reflect efficient pricing (which would encourage application and service innovation as well as high bandwidth broadband access networks).
 
Then there is the issue about replacing revenues from traditional telecommunication services (about 80% of network operator revenues still come from traditional voice and text messaging). As Telco 2.0put it, “..there’s a dramatic explosion of new kinds of voice going on – embedded in games, mobile VoIP, IM clients growing voice capability, web-based click-to-call, extensions to enterprise VoIP systems – and none of them are by default inside the telco”.
 
The response preferred by many network operators is to stick with vertical integration and offer-up ‘value-added services’ such as IPTV. Perhaps…but there seem to be a few uncertainties in developing content services over IP networks. Andrew Odlyzko claims that approach is a reflection of a “deeply ingrained myth: that content is king”. What’s more, Odlyzko observes that “…the most promising avenues for stimulating interest in broadband by users is by promoting social interactivity” (p16).  
 
So reliance on ‘content value-added services’ may not give network operators an incentive to invest in bandwidth-intensive broadband. In fact, it could be said that operators (such as Comcast) have a rational response to block or degrade third-party or P2P traffic  – an action that has furhter stimulated the the so-called network neutrality debate. Blocking or degrading traffic does not square with the principle that the internet should remain open. Instead of encouraging innovation and creativity, current pricing models and traffic management practices may stymie it.
    
Perhaps there is a market-based alternative down the track. That is, network operators might ditch vertical integration and focus on managing the transport and transmission layers. Perhaps there are some potential  ‘value-add’ services here - such as authentication, data security and digital ID management?

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.

JamBase – an emerging, sustainable business model

Interesting overview in today’s Mashable about Jambase, a music/concert information search/social networking service. JamBase has been operating for 10 years now and things seem to be coming together for them. Latest stats are:

• over 500,000 users
• 40,000 artists
• 50 genres
• 50,000 venues covered

What got me thinking were the core elements behind JamBase’s success. They are global, offer near real-time, host social networking where users can personalised their JamBase, share information & upload user-generated content as well as having easy access professional artist music. Revenues are from advertising and concert/artist promotion. Joining-up is free…but you have to nominate at least one friend’s email address to complete the registration.

My impression is that the numbers indicate network effects gaining momentum…the reach is global and participative…seems to add-up to a sustainable new business model.