Communities Dominate Brands

Super-localised communities

I found this on techcrunch talking about the E27 summit

Place site add their software to a standard wifi router and distribute them to cafe’s, events, etc. The result is a portal that all users of the network see that shows them current users of the network, allows instant messaging, etc. Their idea is to build more online community in these real world settings.

Placesite is up and running at one location now - Cafe Couleur in San Francisco (16th and De Haro). The revenue model is super-local advertising, customized versions for venues (this is great for conferences), and permission based licensing of user data.

Terry Semel and Social Anthropology

Like most media executives of a certain age, he looks to his kids for inspiration. In his speech, mainly concerned with plugging a new service called Yahoo to Go that works seamlessly across a variety of devices including mobile phones and TVs, he points to the way his teenage daughter will juggle three mobile devices to stay in touch with friends, listen to music and contribute to communities on the move.

Via the Guardian

The question you have to ask yourself is; are you a digital immigrant or a digital native?

The passion of fans part deux

Fans will fund our next movie say film-makers

A British film company is hoping to revolutionise the way independent productions are made by appealing to the public to finance its next movie.

Vertigo Films, which has built up a cult following with releases such as Human Traffic and The Business, based around aspects of youth culture, plans to raise the money to make its film Outlaw from fans of its earlier movies.

The innovative funding mechanism will be launched today through the company's website. It is thought to be the first time a British cinema release could be entirely funded by filmgoers.

Investors will not get a cut of film profits but in effect will buy a copy of the movie when it appears on DVD and receive an executive producer credit. They may also be offered other film merchandising and benefits. The packages will cost £10, £50 or £100, and will enrol contributors into a club allowing them to be involved in a film's production. They will get regular updates on the movie's progress, see videos of casting sessions, and have the chance to be an extra.

I think I would want more return for my investment. However the article states that More than 1.6 million fans had already signed up on the website to receive updates and three-quarters of them had bought the films on DVD.

also read the Passion of fans

News is a conversation

Jeff Jarvis writing in the Media Guardian today says

Interactivity isn't easy. I must confess that when I wrote for large publications, I said that I loved my audience ... but that didn't mean I wanted to actually meet or talk with them. The people who reached out to me as often as not did so with crayons and crackpot conspiracies, and that helped set my view of interactivity. I think the same is true for much of mass media. The old forms of interactivity helped make us into - or rather, gave us an excuse to be - isolated snobs. The internet changed all that. Online, for the first time in my career, I developed eye-to-eye relationships with readers. And I learned to respect the knowledge, intelligence, goodwill and good taste of those I saw as a mass. I embraced interactivity with obnoxious fervour and would not stop repeating, "News is a conversation ... "

Jeff sums up

Q: Is interactivity worth the price?

A: Yes. It may not bring in much advertising (yet) and may take effort (though less than creating content). But if you treat interactivity, and the people who do it, with respect, good things will come of it: traffic, engagement, content, collaboration.

Rather than restricting interactivity, I would find ways to expand it. The Post already is a pioneer in linking to outside blogs that write about its stories. Such linking, I believe, can yield more productive conversation, since these people are writing their opinions on their own websites, under their own names, and not just lobbing anonymous snark grenades into comments. But papers should also stop thinking that the world revolves around them and what they write. Instead, they should listen to hear what the public is talking about that the paper is not writing about. And papers should make readers into collaborators - not just sending in photos from news events but suggesting and reporting on stories. Interactivity isn't just a gimmick. It is a key to a new journalism.

I wonder though how many newsmedia executives agree with Jeffs views?

I do. As Thomas Friedmann argues

The world is moving from a place where value was created in vertical silos of command and control to a world where value is increasingly going to be created horizontally by how you connect and collaborate.

Whilst Emily Bell in an opinion piece in the same edition of media Guardian believes Citizen journalists should not be ruled off limits

Quite right.

Waiting for the bubble to burst

2929 Entertainment

are an interesting company they are about to release a film shot on HD called Bubble, directed by David Soderbergh simultaneously in Cinemas and by video-on-demand.

This has got Hollywood in a bit of a pickle - and is nothing short of heresy according to Rolling Stone Magazine

Is Bubble the future of movie watching? Some theater owners would like to screw off Soderbergh's head for threatening their business. Others think this triple-release strategy will save millions in marketing costs, serve a wider audience and appeal to a generation that wants what it wants right now, whether it's on a DVD, a computer or an iPod

Whilst Boing boing commented

Some cinema chains in America are refusing to show Steven Soderbergh's new movie Bubble because it's being released in a new way -- in theaters, on DVD, and via pay-per-view all at once.

In fact according to CBC Theatre chains in more than 15 states have refused to show the film, saying Soderbergh's plan will take a big chunk out of their bottom line.

"It's the biggest threat to the viability of the cinema industry today," John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theater Owners, said of the so-called "day and date" release strategy.

The 2929 way

At the center of this shift is 2929 Entertainment, the media company co-founded by Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban-the high profile founders of online radio company Broadcast.com, which they sold to Yahoo! Inc. in 1999 for $5.7billion. Taking advantage of their deep pockets, Wagner and Cuban have used 2929 Entertainment to marry a vertical collection of holdings that includes their two digital cable channels-HDNet and HDNet Movies-along with Rysher Entertainment, 2929 Productions, HDNet Films, Magnolia Pictures Distribution and Landmark Theatres, allowing them to digitalize completely the production and distribution of movies. By doing this, they plan to shift the power of viewing choice from the studios to the consumer.

Despite widespread adoption of VHS, DVDs and more recently video-on-demand, Hollywood has held tight to the series of windows through which it distributes and allows consumers to access its films-a system designed to extract maximum revenues from each medium. Studios actively drum up interest
in a film in the months leading up to its release, and then limit the number of theaters it is initially sent to in an effort to enhance the buzz before it is sent on to smaller screens across the country. Roughly 60 to 90 days after a film's release, it is publicized again and then released to the home video market and video-on-demand. Once revenues from those windows have been exhausted, a film will finally be licensed to cable providers such as HBO and Cinemax, before ultimately making its way onto free TV, where it will generate advertising revenues. The studios have intentionally held to this formula in an effort to keep the rental market from cutting into a film's initial theater sales, but with DVD sales now responsible for the bulk of films' revenues, the new companies believe the model is flawed.

Many think it's time to compress the time horizon. That's exactly what 2929 Entertainment is doing. "We have the ability to make a movie, put it on TV, put it in the theaters and sell a DVD simultaneously; the consumer is now in charge and gets the choice of deciding," says Wagner, 2929 Entertainment's chief executive. "It's about leveraging technology-leveraging the fact that it's a digital world and saying, let's get these products to people and let the consumer decide,' as opposed to some arbitrary window."

The Observer commented on this on Sunday whilst looking at Disneys purchase of Pixar studios

There is an industry-wide realisation that the business model underpinning media companies could become obsolete in the face of new technology.

The release of the new Steven Soderbergh film Bubble this week, the first to be released simultaneously on DVD, in cinemas and over the internet, marks a watershed. American movie-goers have typically seen films first, with additional revenues added through DVD sales to pay-TV operators and, finally, terrestrial broadcasters. Releasing movies at different times in different countries also maximised revenues. The dissemination of information over search engines like Google, which recently launched a 'searchable' online video store, make that model impracticable

Currently, studios control the distribution of films. In the future, they may struggle to maintain that grip as content becomes available on a myriad of new platforms. Every major TV and film studio is examining ways of making their content available over the internet, on mobile phones or on other hand-held devices, including iPods.

The key to all this - does it enable viewers, consumers of content in valuable ways?

If NO - then don't bother - then you have to work out your business model.

But it is the future - so get used to it.

Soderbergh interviewed by Wired said of the benefits of embracing new technologies for film making and distribution

When the changeover from film to digital happens in theaters in five or 10 years, you're going to see name filmmakers self-distributing. Another thing that really excites me: I'd like to do multiple versions of the same film. I often do very radical cuts of my own films just to experiment, shake things up, and see if anything comes of it. I think it would be really interesting to have a movie out in release and then, just a few weeks later say, "Here's version 2.0, recut, rescored." The other version is still out there - people can see either or both. For instance, right now I know I could do two very different versions of The Good German.

Connected Marketing

Justin Kirby of DMC has recently co-authored a book on viral and buzz marketing

Entitled Connected Marketing and they have a blog and are busy podcasting I believe six are currently available.

Justin Co-wrote the book with a number of colleagues; Dr Paul Marsden from London School of Economics Enterprise who has a PhD in social contagion. He talks about the science of influencer marketing and makes practical recommendations on how to seed, what to seed and to whom in order to ignite consumer conversations. He ends by discussing the economics of buzz and how consumer advocacy has been proven to drive business growth.

Martin Oetting who researches word of mouth, viral and buzz marketing at ESCP-EAP European School of Management (Berlin) . Martin provides an overview of connected marketing tactics, techniques and issues, including consumer empowerment, ethics, definitions, measuring ROI, delivering experiences that exceed expectations, and more. He also reveals his predictions for the future of connected marketing both in Germany and globally.

Schuyler Brown, the Co-creative Director of [email protected] RSCG in New York. She reveals how consumers now focus on their 'pop life' rather than real life; how trendspotting can help brands create buzz; how brands can buy their way into the glamorous life and still look like they've been invited to the party rather than bought their way in; her opinions about the backlash against buzz marketing; how buzz marketing can play a complementary role with above-the-line advertising; and more.

Graham Goodkind, founder and chairman of Frank PR . He discusses how good PR campaigns not only generate media coverage, but also stimulate word of mouth by getting people talking. He looks at the impact that user generated media will have on the way PR ignites consumer conversations; how traditional PR measurement doesn't go far enough to prove the success of campaigns; and how to conduct B2B PR. He also reveals Frank PR's Talkability process and gives us his predictions for the future of buzzworthy PR.

Emanuel Rosen, author of the bestselling book, Anatomy of Buzz . Emanuel reveals how businesses should deal with the rise of user-generated media such as blogs; why marketers should never confuse influencers with happy customers; why there is growing interest from advertisers in word of mouth marketing; and more.

Who owns the wisdom of the crowd?

I stumbled upon this post Who owns the wisdom of the crowd? by Jeff Jarvis who quotes Yochai Benkler

A whole set of other behaviors that have grown up in the household, in friendships, in communities, the motivations that they capture, the signals that get people to explain what it is that they desire, how they desire, what they want to do, what they’re trying to do, all of these things are suddenly becoming integrated into the core economic activities of the most advanced economists, and all of the players inside of these economies need to begin to think. It’s a new set of social competition. It’s a new set of opportunities. It’s a new solution space for ways to solve production problems. And we need to start learning how to live with, use, provide platforms for, use the outputs of without undermining this new set of social cultural practices.

Jeff also quotes Tom Evslin

I think lesson one is don’t try to build a business and network at the same time…. Let’s forget Reed’s Law for a moment because Metcalf’s Law is steep enough, that everyone knows that Metcalf’s Law says use networks that increase value, and everybody forgets the converse, which is small networks have no value. And so what value is there to the first few users in joining a small network. Almost none. And so you can’t extract anything in return. You can’t put friction in the way of people joining a small network. You have to make it incredibly attractive and easy. That’s the secret of Skype’s success. They only had distribution experience. Then they used that, and they didn’t introduced Skype in and Skype out because it would have been a distraction until they reached critical network mass.

Jeff states

I believe we start with the notions that: * We all want to control our contributions. * We all want the community to benefit if we in turn benefit. * We expect mutual trust in the forms of transparency and honesty * And we all — individual, collective, enabler — find uncivil behavior (spam, fraud, hate) unacceptable.

But there’s one more fundamental notion that informs this new society, a notion that big companies and institutions invariably forget because they were build in the old order:

This is no longer a centralized world, a world controlled by those institutions. This is a decentralized world, a world controlled by us.

And if you try to take control away from us, you will lose. It used to be that you could take control away from us and we had nowhere to go. But in this post-scarcity world, we can always go somewhere else for content or information or service. There’s always another news story, always another email service, always another search engine. Thus my first law, once again: Give us control and we will use it. Don’t and you will lose us.

Chinese bloggers debate Google

Google's decision to launch a censored version of its search engine in China has drawn opprobrium from many bloggers around the world.

The BBC News website spoke to bloggers in China and Hong Kong to get their perspective.

This is what one said

The problem is not that Google is censoring its search service, it is that China doesn't have free speech.

But I'm always supportive of kicking up a fuss about American companies. Yahoo, Google and Microsoft are part of the "Great Firewall". They helped build the infrastructure to block information.

If I send an email to anyone with a Yahoo.cn account which has the words "democracy" or "civil society", it will bounce back.

These companies are the keepers of information from a billion people for profit. Google is just the latest manifestation of the bigger story.

My blog has been affected by this. On my 30th birthday I wrote about my birthday wish: a democratic China. I went on holiday to China, stayed in a state-owned hotel, and checked my blog from there.

When I returned to Hong Kong, I couldn't get onto the site. Even the host had been blocked. It became a bit of a cause celebre. Bloggers around the world turned their sites black as a gesture of solidarity.

Some bloggers may say this is not an important issue but I don't think enough attention can be paid to Chinese internet censorship. If I were based a few miles across the border, I wouldn't be able to do what I am doing now.

The internet is the way forward to break the silence in China. Every media outlet is state owned. The internet is the back door. For the people who care, it is a hopeful technology.

Gutenberg liberated information from the church, the internet it seems has liberated us from church, state, and the contolled distribution of the media in all its many guises. So what next?

mediated and unmediated media. A view from Argentina

Robin Good posting on his most excellent blog says about Julian Gallo

A very talented journalism Professor from Argentina, has recently written an interesting article about how the trade should take full advantage of the direct publishing features of blogs as well as of the multimedia opportunities provided by the increased ease with which anyone can post audio and video clips to the web.

News Online: Static Text-Only Is Over - Video And Audio Are Next

Have a read - its worth the effort.

What I really appreciate is that the conversation is global from weblogistan to Argentina , to China

Of course we know the US is a hot-bed of fervant debate...

Dance dance revolution deployed in the fight against obesity

Love this a piece of engagement marketing

W. Virginia uses dance video game to fight obesity

Children in West Virginia's public schools will be required to play Konami Digital Entertainment Inc.'s popular " Dance Dance Revolution " video game under a deal to help the state battle rising childhood obesity rates, the company said on Wednesday.

In the game, arrows appear on a video screen according to the beat of a song. Players score points by stepping on matching arrows on a mat. Units with a special workout mode allows players to track the calories they burn.

As part of the partnership, which includes all 765 of the state's schools, West Virginia will develop a curriculum based around the video game and track its progress.

All of the state's schools will have "Dance Dance Revolution" equipment within two years, said Konami spokeswoman Clara Gilbert.

The total cost of the program is $500,000. Konami is giving the state $75,000 in cash for product and research related to the program, which the company said is the first of its kind.

wicked

also have a look at