Communities Dominate Brands

Books we like - Constituency marketing

Books We Like is an e-commerce site with a social conscience, giving a percentage of all products bought through the site to non-profit organizations. A project of the Media Venture Collective, Books We Like uses the power of capitalism and profit to fund charities so they need not rely on donations alone.

The site uses "constituency marketing" to appeal to specific niches that will benefit from the independent media revolution, and uses a peer-recommendation system that changes advertising "from prostitution to recommendation."

Books we like

Via Robin Good

Jo Twist - of the BBC talks about Citizen Journalism

JO twist talks here about citizen journalism and facilitating two way flows of peer to peer communications.

Meet Tomi in Korea this week

Just a quick note. I'll be delivering a keynote at the iMobicon event in Jeju South Korea this week. My presentation on the emerging 3G customer (including Gen-C obviously etc) will be on Tuesday 29th. If you are in Korea this week (and/or participating in this event) then please come and stop and say hello. And as always, if you happen to have one of my books, I'll be most happy to autograph it for you, so bring the book along   :-)

And on the obvious question, this is the "official launch" of our Korean translation of our bestseller, Communities Dominate Brands, but in reality we don't have the books yet out from the printers. So we will only be showing mock-ups ha-ha, the actual Korean language book is expected early next year, with the German translation to follow next.

PS - anyone who might be interested - yes Alan and I do speakerships, seminars, workshops etc. Both separately and together, depending on your needs. So please don't hesitate to write to us.

JanJan following in the footsteps of ohMyNews

OhMyNews the Korean Citizen Journalist Newspaper is inspiring others around the world.

JanJan is a Japanese equivalent

The Japanese Media Review says

Frustrated with the complacent reporting offered up by Japan's daily papers, journalist and former mayor Ken Takeuchi recently launched Japan's first serious alternative online daily. He hopes to follow in the footsteps of OhmyNews, Korea's wildly successful online news publication

The article is worth quoting at length

Launched in February, JanJan is a free daily Internet newspaper "of, by and for the people," whose goal is to "completely rework the traditional concept of media," according to promotional material from Japan Internet News.

With nearly a million dollars in startup funding and support from a team that boasts a solid track record in liberal politics, JanJan appears to be the first serious alternative online newspaper in Japan.

The Japanese word jan-jan means "a vigorous, continuing activity," as in the constant ringing of a bell. The English meaning attached to JanJan is "Japan Alternative News for Justice and New Culture."

The English name, no doubt forged without intervention by native speakers, makes JanJan sound something like a cross between the Japan Communist Party and Greenpeace. But this is no strident radical rag. JanJan's antiestablishment bent is tempered with a polite tone; JanJan intends to coexist peacefully with the media establishment it hopes to change.

JanJan -- which is written by volunteer "citizen journalists" -- is everything that traditional Japanese newspapers are not.

The dailies operated by Japan's five media powerhouses lack a tradition of hard-nosed reporting; their articles often faithfully retain the original spin of press materials by released by government and business organizations. JanJan questions authority at every turn.

While traditional papers cover politics with "seikyoku" articles -- stories focused on interparty squabbles or on the rise and fall of politicians and their factions -- JanJan writes about what proposed laws will mean to consumers.

"Most Japanese couldn't care less whether Koizumi or Mori is prime minister," says Takeuchi. "More important is whether the government is continuing to waste money on public works projects and destroying the environment. We focus on issues of importance to the everyday lives of Japan's citizens."

The challenge of JanJan

UK Government goes wiki

The eGov monitor reports that the UK Government has launched its first wiki , on the topic of e-innovations,

Launched yesterday by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the e-Innovations Wiki is offering an electronic channel to further discussions on innovation in local government

David Wilcox reported via designing for civil society

Last week, e-Health Insider reported that NHS Direct is proposing to set up an online social care wiki to allow patients to contribute their experiences of coping with illnesses and offer a site to where they can find support and services.

This could fundamentally change the way we as citizens engage with our GP's, surgeons etc. and the health service per se. sharing, and colectively harnessing information that can empower the many people enabling them to better and more informed choices about their health care seems like a good idea to me

And also is an indicator of the trend towards a more direct involvement with democracy?

Video of Blunt single gets mobile premiere

This little ditty caught my eye this week

Video of Blunt single gets mobile premiere

the subtext: Wide range of artists to offer downloads first and Music trend is big driver in attracting 3G customers

The video for the new single from James Blunt will today receive its global premiere on mobile phones, part of a trend that the industry predicts will next year see them becoming as important as radio and television in promoting artists.

The Guardian article goes onto say, quoting Danny Van Emden from EMI,

Danny van Emden, digital media director at EMI, said that the opportunities were greater than those afforded by music players such as the iPod because nearly everyone, not just internet savvy early adopters, has a mobile phone. "I can't see a single campaign going forward that doesn't have a mobile element to it, from the lowliest act to the biggest global superstar."

And

John Reid, executive vice president of marketing at Warner Music International, whose artists include Madonna and Green Day, said that the mobile aspect could become as important in revenue and marketing terms as traditional formats.

Tomi and I know that music is one of the critical element in the development of mobile 3G services which is why we have devoted some time looking at developments on a global basis.

The inevitability of such developments is obvious to us and the mobile will become the channel whereby bands of the future will have no choice but take the mobile and mobile internet seriously.

As we pointed out the Artic Monkeys got to Number 1 in the UK pop charts off the back of their digital platform and allowing their fans to download and share content. Rapidly building a loyal fan base.

No more epic stories of driving around in beaten up old transit vans up and down the country, well not quite anyway. LIVE music will always be live - but today their is a very different way to reach your audience.

We like to think about this as "flowability"

Or, that we’re tired of the 20th-century model of being passive consumers of mass content. We’re transitioning to a new kind of culture. More participatory, more open, more interactive where the locus of control passes to the people.

The language od post modern culture is based upon - Flexibility - fluidity - portability - permeability - transparency - interactivity - immediacy - facilitation - engagement.

I think that companies are still in their infancy in understanding what the new digital world can bring them. I think it is life affirming, and optimistic. And, enabling or facilitating peer-to-peer flows of information and communication will transform business models.

The mobile and the internet are central to that.

Question: What happens when the data flow is asymmetrical - but in favor of creators? What Happens when communities dominate brands?

What do say when you read something life affirming - scary - radical - informative?

You tell your friends from Kevin Kelly at wired some highlights of a very provocative piece of thinking

Via Simon Waldman

Here are some highlights ...

The accretion of tiny marvels can numb us to the arrival of the stupendous. Today, at any Net terminal, you can get: an amazing variety of music and video, an evolving encyclopedia, weather forecasts, help wanted ads, satellite images of anyplace on Earth, up-to-the-minute news from around the globe, tax forms, TV guides, road maps with driving directions, real-time stock quotes, telephone numbers, real estate listings with virtual walk-throughs, pictures of just about anything, sports scores, places to buy almost anything, records of political contributions, library catalogs, appliance manuals, live traffic reports, archives to major newspapers - all wrapped up in an interactive index that really works.

ebay
Take eBay. In some 4,000 days, eBay has gone from marginal Bay Area experiment in community markets to the most profitable spinoff of hypertext. At any one moment, 50 million auctions race through the site. An estimated half a million folks make their living selling through Internet auctions. Ten years ago I heard skeptics swear nobody would ever buy a car on the Web. Last year eBay Motors sold $11 billion worth of vehicles. EBay's 2001 auction of a $4.9 million private jet would have shocked anyone in 1995 - and still smells implausible today.

Nowhere in Ted Nelson's convoluted sketches of hypertext transclusion did the fantasy of a global flea market appear. Especially as the ultimate business model! He hoped to franchise his Xanadu hypertext systems in the physical world at the scale of a copy shop or café - you would go to a store to do your hypertexting. Xanadu would take a cut of the action.

Instead, we have an open global flea market that handles 1.4 billion auctions every year and operates from your bedroom. Users do most of the work; they photograph, catalog, post, and manage their own auctions. And they police themselves; while eBay and other auction sites do call in the authorities to arrest serial abusers, the chief method of ensuring fairness is a system of user-generated ratings. Three billion feedback comments can work wonders.

Peer to peer flows of communication
What we all failed to see was how much of this new world would be manufactured by users, not corporate interests.

Open Source
The open source software movement is another example. Key ingredients of collaborative programming - swapping code, updating instantly, recruiting globally - didn't work on a large scale until the Web was woven. Then software became something you could join, either as a beta tester or as a coder on an open source project. The clever "view source" browser option let the average Web surfer in on the act. And anyone could rustle up a link - which, it turns out, is the most powerful invention of the decade.

Connectivity
Linking unleashes involvement and interactivity at levels once thought unfashionable or impossible. It transforms reading into navigating and enlarges small actions into powerful forces. For instance, hyperlinks made it much easier to create a seamless, scrolling street map of every town. They made it easier for people to refer to those maps. And hyperlinks made it possible for almost anyone to annotate, amend, and improve any map embedded in the Web. Cartography has gone from spectator art to participatory democracy.

Participation
The electricity of participation nudges ordinary folks to invest huge hunks of energy and time into making free encyclopedias, creating public tutorials for changing a flat tire, or cataloging the votes in the Senate. More and more of the Web runs in this mode. One study found that only 40 percent of the Web is commercial. The rest runs on duty or passion.

From Industrial Age to Generation C
Coming out of the industrial age, when mass-produced goods outclassed anything you could make yourself, this sudden tilt toward consumer involvement is a complete Lazarus move: "We thought that died long ago." The deep enthusiasm for making things, for interacting more deeply than just choosing options, is the great force not reckoned 10 years ago. This impulse for participation has upended the economy and is steadily turning the sphere of social networking - smart mobs, hive minds, and collaborative action - into the main event.

What could be a better mark of irreversible acceptance than adoption by the Amish? I was visiting some Amish farmers recently. They fit the archetype perfectly: straw hats, scraggly beards, wives with bonnets, no electricity, no phones or TVs, horse and buggy outside. They have an undeserved reputation for resisting all technology, when actually they are just very late adopters. Still, I was amazed to hear them mention their Web sites.

"Amish Web sites?" I asked.

"For advertising our family business. We weld barbecue grills in our shop."

"Yes, but "

"Oh, we use the Internet terminal at the public library. And Yahoo!"

I knew then the battle was over.

Communities Dominate Brands
"By 2014, use of the Internet will increase the size of people's social networks far beyond what has traditionally been the case."

Are you a Socialight?

I am now on a quest to find out just how far our theories of communities replacing advertising as the primary medium for businesses to connect with their audiences holds water.

This research has already begun and we are collecting some very interesting data and information.

Todays offering is a company called Socialight

A little hard to explain to best to let the guys do it for themsleves

Using Socialight Creating and Receiving StickyShadows™

Each StickyShadow that you create can be made public or available only to specific people - like your Contacts or members of your Groups.

As you travel around the world, you can find StickyShadows that are tied to the places you go. The system can notify you via your mobile phone any time you step on a StickyShadow. As your phone buzzes, it will display the media, along with some information about the person who set it. From there, you can instantly respond, leave your own StickyShadow or just move on.

How's it Used?
- I leave a note for all my friends at the mall to let them know where I'm hanging out. All my friends in the area see it.
- A woman shows all her close friends the tree under which she had her first kiss.
- An entire neighborhood gets together and documents all the unwanted litter they find in an effort to share ownership of a community problem.
- A food-lover uses Socialight to share her thoughts on the amazing vanilla milkshakes at a new shop.
- The neighborhood historian creates her own walking tour for others to follow.
- A group of friends create their own scavenger hunt.
- A tourist takes place-based notes about stores in a shopping district, only for himself, for a time when he returns to the same city.
- A small business places StickyShadows that its customers would be interested in finding.
- A band promotes an upcoming show by leaving a StickyShadow outside the venue.

We'd like to let people share their experiences in these ways, and to discover new ways of sharing, communicating and connecting.

I had a go and because Socialight hooks up to Google maps you can be INCH PERFECT with where you leave your hanging data.

Adriana Cronin-Lukas has influenced my thinking recently wher she talks about replacing the word consumer with audience . Naturally you change your mindset as to how exactly you engage your audience vs. persuading your consumer.

The experience for both will be richer and more memorable.

So anyway back to the research and the sticky shadows. I like the examples Socialight give. Its on the edge but its viable. Someone recently said pioneers get shot - and thats true. But, also without the pioneers there would not be progress.

There would be no: James Dyson, Robert louis Stevenson, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, Tim Berners Lee, the internet, no mobile phone, no mass production of cars or other goods, no advances in science, society or government.

What we are witnessing is a whole bunch of pioneers doing a whole bunch of pioneering things.

That affect everybody. Its up to us to make it for better or for worse.

But my belief is that communities are more self regulating, more optimistic, more self organising, more consensual, more sharing, more discursive, more engaged - than tradtional notions of mass media broadcast.

Mobile content soon 10 years birthday

We tend to think of the mobile internet to have been born six years ago when NTT DoCoMo launched i-Mode in Japan. Most Western countries had to wait a few years longer until we had WAP based mobile data. But actually third-party content providers had joined the mobile phone opportunity almost 10 years ago.

In early Spring 1996 Finland saw the launch of two data services to mobile phones by third parties, using SMS text messaging. The big Finnish bank of that time, Merita, allowed its "Solo" customers to access account info via SMS - the birth of mobile banking (and thus mobile commerce) two years before the first coca cola vending machine working with SMS was installed in Finland. And the first media company to use SMS was seen launching at that time as well. Finnish newspaper group Aamulehti started to deliver headline news, sports scores etc for a monthly subscription of 35 old Finnmarks, or about 6 Euros in modern money. We've come a long way in the past nearly 10 years.

Innovation in schools

I came across this site this morning The department for education and skills

The Innovation Community can be accessed by over 50,000 practitioners in education. It is generating lively discussion that is contributing to knowledge sharing and the exchange of innovative practice.

The Community is open to all practitioners and offers the opportunity to:
talk to practitioners from all sectors of education, to share innovative ideas - there are a wide range of debates currently running in the Community; engage with experts in their field in the hotseat;
collaborate with colleagues on projects and engage in action research; raise your own issues for debate.

To join, the first step is to register for the Innovation Community. Once registered you can join the conversations by logging into talk2learn on the NCSL website and choosing Innovation Unit from the drop-down list at the top of the page.

We've created 3 new conversations in the Community for you to talk to others about your ideas:

in the Online Innovation Cafe talk to someone about an initial idea you'd like to develop;
in Innovation Noticeboard find someone else who has been working on a similar idea;
in The Power to Innovate find out and discuss how this piece of legislation might help you innovate.
Are you interested in setting up a federation, or are you already involved in one? Our new section on Federations on this site is a resource for federations compiled by practitioners. We aim to provide a gateway for everyone engaged in, or interested in creating, a school federation to share their knowledge and experience for the benefit of everyone in the system. Please tell others about your experiences and discuss federations with colleagues in our online Community discussion.

By sharing knowledge in these ways, you will enable other federations to flourish.

As my friend Tomi says, "Sharing knowledge is power."