Communities Dominate Brands

Digital salvation

One tribute that seemed more significant than most as the baton passed last week and the retiring CEO of the Guardian Media Group, owner of The Observer and much else, hailed his newly designated successor. 'This is a first class appointment,' said Sir Robert Phillis. 'Carolyn McCall's drive, energy and understanding will ensure continuing success for GMG in the digital age.' It's that big 'D' word again: for direction, development, decision-making and, inevitably, digital.

Ahhh the "D" word

Which way to digital salvation?

Yet pause for a moment and ask where else in Fleet Street the D word would figure when chairs change at the top.

Did the Barclays talk about digital futures when they hired Murdoch MacLennan from the Mail? Did the Mail, for that matter, mention such matters when it brought in Kevin Beatty from Northcliffe to replace him? The Ds that excite Richard Desmond are mostly divorce, dalliance and décolletage. Les Hinton at News International still comes home, metaphorically at least, with printers' ink on his hands - and, as Jeremy Warner, business editor of the Independent, frankly confessed the other day, Sir Tony O'Reilly's 'response to the internet has not, in truth, been a very ambitious one'

Its funny because some people/ CEO's of newspapers still think that customers will continue to read printed paper classifieds. No, they won't they will want their information as a rich experience with links, that are navigational, life enabling and life simplifying. There is so much more that can and eventually shall be done.

But lets get back to the Observer article, and of course how do you charge and make money? Well, the mobile internet is right round the corner, and it breathes life into, a very different business model, where advertising is content and content is advertising. BUT NOT SPAM. Kids don't read print as we experienced, but they are still interested in information. And want it fast/compacted hence the rise of compacted information flows like text messaging. They want experience

Take that Independent verdict on Sir Tony's lack of ambition. Warner, speaking at a Dow Jones business editors' conference, has his doubts. 'There's a very big and growing demand for professional products (on the web), content you can trust, which you know has been edited and obeys certain disciplines. The difficulty is how on earth you charge for it. People will not pay for it any more and it's a big, big problem.

And then

What comes first: the news on paper, or the news on the net? Where is the main cutting edge of creativity and concern? How do you best manage or edit something in such profound, unpredictable transition? Are any of Fleet Street's finest true multi-media companies yet - or strings of newspapers with strong digital appendages?

Indeed a pressing question and serious issue. And it all comes back to value. What is value, when defined as a good experience for Digital Natives? How do you monetise that? How do you transfer attention into dollars? Because we all have to pay the bills - right? It is all about understanding information flows and how people now pull on information. Immediacy and passion based values now count for a great deal. I have come to realise over my long journey that, this is a paradigm shift which is not about tweaking our thinking. It requires a new framework to enable us look at and understand the world.

Murdoch divided the world between Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. Different rules apply. I was told that I was the last of the generation that had caught the last train/ helicopter out of the old world and into the new.

And so

Questions like these matter. For the moment, though, we're only at the beginning, surveying the April ABC sales results as they bring more bad news for the red-tops, more hilarity as another helping of bulks keeps the Daily Telegraph over 900,000, more cheer as Berliner and tabloid change keep the Independent on Sunday and Observer flying high. For the moment, old Fleet Street rules, still ploughing billions into new presses and lorries pounding along motorways in the night. For the moment, some papers are far down the future track and others have barely begun to look for a signpost. Fasten your safety belts.

China beckons

Reiterating: It is utter folly, Vodafone to fixed

When this was rumoured last month, I wrote a scalding warning that Vodafone should not entertain illusions of entering the fixed telecoms game. Its a total fool's errand. Now Vodafone has released its querterly results and as part of that announcement, Vodafone officially states it will abandon its mobile-only strategy, and enter fixed telecoms competition.

I won't bother to rewrite my stern posting from April, you can link to it if you missed it (or perhaps want to read it again). I will only summarize the main reasons why this is madness by Vodafone.

Vodafone is the world's largest mobile operator by revenues, and one of the largest by subscribers. They also are one of the world's largest 3G mobile operators. This is wrong for many reasons including because:

Moves into bad competition. Cellular telecoms is limited in available radio spectrum, and typically any market has only from 3 to 6 network operators. In all markets there are more fixed landline operator competitors.

Fixed landline telecoms business is a dying industry. It is not dying this year or even this decade, but it has stopped growing and has started to die. In total users households are increasingly abandoning fixed landlines in favour of mobiles. Total voice traffic in fixed telecoms is shifting to VoIP - services like Skype with free, or near-free voice minutes. We already reported that 8% of the WORLD'S fixed telecoms customers have signed up to Skype. Come on. Its a death-spiral. Total revenues and total profits in fixed are an endangered species.

Wrong investment. All investment and innovation into fixed is effort away from the future that Vodafone has a rare licence to. Vodafone has a 3G licence in almost every one of its markets. This is the obvious future of telecoms. This year twice as many people will have mobile phones as have fixed landline phones. By the end of 2006 something like 15% of all mobile phones in the world will be 3G phones.

Is a waste of marketing effort. To do fixed-mobile convergence in any way adequately, requires a lot of effort. Not only in service creation, synchronization and harmonization, but also in the marketing activities. Not only does Vodafone have to build competence in areas it does not really need, it has to expend enormous marketing resources to now educate its markets of this crazy shift in their positioning.

Mixes priorities in-house. Up to now Vodafone's focus has been clear. Now internally there will be conflict. Do they build for the future, or try to fight to win a part of the past? Internally it will lead to chaos and conflicting goals.

Vodafone now in its announcement has said that it aims to get 10% of its total revenues from fixed (broadband internet) business. That means it goes against EVERY established broadband provider, including every fixed landline incumbent operator like BT in the UK, Deutcshe Telekom in Germany, France Telecom in France etc. Plus every new broadband provider in those markets. Plus every cable TV operator who wants to offer tripple play. Plus every newcomer WiFi and WiMax operator. Plus the OTHER mobile operators, both those who have fixed and mobile assets, plus any mobile-only operators on their 3G and HSDPA offerings.

Broadband? Broadband!! Worldwide there are about 200 million broadband users, and forecasts suggest there will be near 300 million at the end of this year. But there will be more 3G USERS at the end of this year, closer to 400 million! Vodafone should focus all of its efforts to capturing more than its fair share of those 3G subscribers, where it only has 2, 3 or 4 other competitors with 3G licences, and where Vodafone has legitimate strengths from its SCALE as a huge buyer of handsets. But to now go into broadband and get that gear and competence and all the hassles the roll-out of a new technology will cause to the Vodafone brand now? This is sheer madness!

But Vodafone says they will not build the fixed network, they will lease it. So now Vodafone says it will come and succeed in buying wholesale and selling retail - without even controlling the technology, on a strategic goal aiming to deliver 10% of total revenues. Dream on. This is a complete counterproductive misallocation of resources.

Here is what Vodafone should do rather than blunder into fixed telecoms. Its current SMS text messaging revenue is 14%. Its leading rivals like O2 have nearly 20% of total revenues out of SMS. Text messaging is the MOST PROFITABLE service ever created. If Vodafone had one ounce of intellect, it would pour all of its efforts into catching O2 and then passing it - pursuing Norwegian and Irish levels of SMS usage (and then spy on the South Koreans, Singaporeans and Philippinos to find out why these send even more messages). In SMS text messaging Vodafone has a captive audience who are addicted to the service. SMS is so severely under-utilized and mis-marketed and misunderstood, that with the simplest moves Vodafone could raise revenues, profits, AND loyalty.

Here is what Vodafone should do rather than stumble into fixed telecoms. In Japan in 18 months, the second largest mobile operator, KDDI has converted 5 million out of its 22 million subscribers, or 23% of its customers to buying music on its mobile phones. KDDI reports sales of 40 million songs over the last 12 months, or about 8 full-track MP3 songs per music customer per year.

Here is what Vodafone should do rather than wander into fixed telecoms. In South Korea the incumbent SK Telecom has launched CyWorld, and in two years has achieved 30% of all Koreans to upload photographs and blogs via their mobile phones.

In my over 150 conference speakershps I have shown over 800 separate service ideas for mobile telecoms. In my four books I have 400 of them. Any one that Vodafone could launch, where they would be creating a marketspace all to themselves (like we write in the book, that was the brilliance of iTunes with Apple's iPod. The brilliance of creating a new marketspace which Apple could then exploit for many years)

The strongest internet company - GOOGLE - just came out and said the next internet is on mobile. WHY WHY WHY would Vodafone, which HAS what Google could only dream for, abandon its lead and waste its efforts to go against the internet brands in fixed broadband business?

This move by Vodafone into fixed telecoms business is sheer madness, a very bad business move, shows a lack of strategic understanding of mobile, and reflects a badly mis-analyzed fixed-fixated outdated view of telecoms. It is an active attempt at rejecting an obvious leadership position into the future, by suddenly switching to fight for a doomed past. It is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

I could understand it, if this was proposed by some fixed landline, WiFi or internet player, or perhaps a media company. Or if it was proposed by a total newcomer who maybe didn't really understand the fundamentals of mobile. But that this comes as the preferred new strategy clearly driven by the CEO of the biggest mobile operator group in the world is totally unforgivable. Sorry. This is simply wrong.

I don't want to write more. You can read my original posting at this link [Catastrophic Strategic Lack of Focus: Vodafone into Fixed]. You can rest assured I will return to this theme with time and we'll track Vodafone's misfortunes on this lost cause.

Tapping into a community: Lordi gets 6.4 million votes in Eurovision Contest

As a Finn I had grown up with the total conviction our nation was eternally damned to be the perennial losers in the annual Eurovision song contest. That yearly feast of Europop that gave the world the prototypical Euroband, Abba, and out of Finland's neighbors, Sweden, Norway and Estonia had all managed to win the contest. Yet in 50 years Finland never made it better than 6th best. Many times Finland was dead-last in the voting, and even this year Finland had to go through the semi-finals just to be allowed to perform in the final.

So as the Eurovision song contest came on TV here in Britain, I only paid partial attention - Finland was doomed to fail, as it had every year in my lifetime. But this year Finland did do something bizarre. Where the format and conventional wisdom suggests that the winner has to be upbeat energetic europop, or a lyrical harmonic ballad - Finland sent in a heavy metal rock song. And not just any hard rock band, Finland's Lordi is theatrical head-banging stuff. A cross perhaps between Alice Cooper and Twisted Sister; or Kiss meets Frankenstein's Monster. Some accused the band of satan-worship and tried to get the band banned. Yes, this was rock-n-roll at its most fierce. The ultimate anti-Eurovision song.

Nonetheless, coming from Finland, I knew deep in my heart that Lordi's song, Hard Rock Hallelujah, didn't have a snowball's chance in hell, of winning the contest. Too many people would be aghast at this song, not to mention the hideous outfits of the band - the lead singer even grows huge bat-wings.

I should have known better. After all, Alan and I regularly preach of the power of digital communities. And of engagement.

This is what had happened behind the scenes. Very few Eurovision song entrants are able to activate any kind of youth-movement - simply because the songs are so horribly bland, sugar-coated and over-produced. Songs that the parents would like. Not for kids. To make sure the Eurovision song entrant has a chance of securing votes across Europe, conventional wisdom made sure no song ever had any edge. And the youth would not identify with such blatant rubbish.

Not this time. Not with Lordi. There is a strong heavy metal community all across Europe. Finnish bands had already had a rich history tapping into it, from The Rasmus to HIM and Nightwish (even Leningrad Cowboys ha-ha). So when various European rockers heard that the Finnish entry would be the first-ever heavy metal song in the Song of Europe contest, they orchestrated a vote-getting campaign. All throughout Europe young head-bangers were energized to come out and vote. First in the semi-finals on Saturday, to make sure all of Europe could get to see these monster-rockers in action in the main event on Sunday. And then of course on Sunday, to go on to win the contest.

So far so good. If we have a determined community and they are digitally connected, they can do this. Lordi did win the semi-finals and entered the final. But here is where then the particular logic of SMS voting comes in.

Most adults who might watch the Eurovision song contest, and be moved enough to bother to vote, would typically only vote once. And back several years ago, when only parents had phones, it would have been perhaps one or two votes per family. But today every teenager in Europe has their own mobile phone. They get to vote themselves.

And young people are NOT rational. Or more precisely, their sense of what is worthwhile is quite different from the value systems of adults. Young people not only voted for Lordi's song. They voted many times! I know several (Finnish) friends throughout Europe who admit to have voting massively in the 10 minute span that voting was allowed, to boost Lordi's chances in the countries they happen to be living in.

Not only did Lordi win, but they won with the greatest vote total ever in the 51 year history of the Eurovision song contest. Finland celebrated like there was no tomorrow (and considering Lordi hails from Rovaniemi [I have to send greetings to Ajit's son!] at the Arctic Circle - in the winter their night is so long there literally is no tomorrow). Lordi played all night. They were awarded a plot to build a house in their home town (like Finnish custom has for Olympic winners and Formula One world champions). There was a huge outdoor concert and parade in Helsinki. And perhaps the best celebration was the newspaper headline simply stating how Finland was able to win: Hell has frozen over.

In all over 38 countries that were eligible to vote, 6.4 million votes were cast, as just-released numbers from the EBU (European Broadcasting Union) reveal. That's 1.4 million more than last year. If the viewership was 100 million, you might say 6.4 million is not much, only 6.4%. But keep in mind, that they only had 10 minutes to vote (at two sessions, one 10 min session in the semifinal, another 10 minutes in the final). Averaging that works out to 320,000 simultaneous votes per minute, or 5,666 votes per second.

So what? First, my congratulations to Lordi. And no, while we both share the same first name Tomi, I have an alibi, it was not me inside that mask in Athens. Honestly! Besides even with those platform shoes I am not that tall. Secondly, if a rock band can so utterly shatter the norms as destroying the winning formula for the 50 year tradition of the Eurovision by using digital communities to create a revolution - then perhaps so can you as well, with your brand. (Time to read our book?) And finally, don't under-estimate the passion and "irrational" activism of the young empowered Generation-C of today. This is the consumer of tomorrow. They will not sit still and take whatever happened to be their parent's way of doing things. Just like forcing Lordi onto the European airwaves, these young people will force many more of their preferences upon us older geezers. We better get used to it.

Its been over a week and I still can feel the pride. Hard! Rock! Hallelujah!

Stumbling upon [email protected]

I came across this article in last weeks Observer Music monthly magazine. Pictures of Lily A story of the power of networks, the internet and a new socio-economic model hard at work

Miranada Sawyer writes,

Last month I used my column in this magazine to bemoan today's lack of proper pop stars, the ones who talk the talk as well as walk the tight-trousered walk, who know that the music's only part of the job and personality's the rest. Anyway, just days later, the editor called me up, all excited, and said, 'I think I've found you one!'.

Lily Allen was his answer to my rant, recommended to him by an OMM work-experience girl who had found her MySpace site . Lily had put up four of her chirpy pop-ska songs, and, within weeks, they'd spread like internet flu. She now has a staggering 24,932 friends on her page, Parlophone has rush-released her first single, 'LDN', and the limited edition seven-inch is reselling for £40 on eBay. Lily is a genuine, no PR, punters-love-it success, which is fantastic, but, even more promisingly, her blog is hilarious...

So here is lily

'Rudely awoken by the radio and that trollop Edith Bowman warbling on about how she is just BESTEST friends with just about anyone, so long as they are in a band and preferably wearing skinny jeans and stripey cardigans, and how the Magic Numbers are just absolutely brilliant, AGAIN.'

I listened to her songs, and thought fabulous.

So as of today Lilys 4 songs loaded up on myspace have been played

Smile: 122,740
Little Things: 387,986
Everything just Works: 264,726
Knock 'em Out: 146,930

Now out of that lot, will develop a niche mass audience. If Lily's music touches people, then the community of fans and advocates will grow.

It sort of turns A&R on its head.

Myspace the final word

Lily Allen has already been called the poster-girl of the MySpace generation - in fact, OMM wrote about her briefly two months ago with reference to the revolutionary community networking site

She thinks that 'a lot of labels - not necessarily mine - are run by older people and they're scared of it.' In fact, Parlophone had signed Allen before she put her profile up on the site - but it was her idea to do so and 'no one could have anticipated the level of attention I'm getting now, and that's purely because of the internet.

Lily Allen music

More reading:
The holes in the digital cheese
Darwinism rudely arrives in our media ecology
The battle for my(voice)space

The bonfire of the brands

This appeared in my inbox today

On 26.08.06, I am going to gather every branded possession of mine into a warehouse, douse them with petrol and burn the lot. Jacobson chairs, Christian Dior shirts, a Louis Vuitton bag; I'm too frightened to calculate the financial cost of this action, but I know it's a lot. Far more unsettling than the money is the emotional cost I'm going to suffer. You see, It's not simply a pile of expensive clothes and accessories going on the bonfire, Neil Boorman is being destroyed too.

Until recently, I thought I knew who Neil Boorman was. I felt sure how the outside world regarded me because I had spent a fair amount of time engineering an image. I found the best way to understand and articulate 'me' was through the owning and displaying of things made by brands. They provided a source of comfort, a reassurance of my own self worth, they project my identity to others around me.

Frustratingly, this attempt at branded self-identity has been accompanied with a numbed sense of dissatisfaction. Attempting to cure myself, I have sought comfort and reassurance by buying yet more
branded goods, treating myself 'because I'm worth it'. I now understand that this behavior only made matters worse. For all the time and money I have devoted to collecting these brands, these symbols of self, I have absolutely no idea who I am. For every new material extension of my character, I become more distant from the person than I really am.

The reality however is only just becoming clear; with every new emblem of identity I add to my collection, I lose a piece of myself to the brands. They cannot reciprocate the love I give. They cannot transport me to the places I'm promised exist. I am not, nor will I ever be remotely similar to the people that appear in their ads. It is a lie, a lie I have believed in for too long.

Like wow! I asked Neil if I could blog his email. For me what struck me was the whole issue around personal identity, and how we construct meaning in our post modern world. Neil obviously sees another future as to how he will construct his new identity.

It is worth quoting Soshana Zuboff here, from her book the Support Economy because there is a direct relation between what Neil says, and Soshana's insight

These individuals are seeking new consumption choices that can redefine commerce. The new individuals want to make a difference, they want to be heard, and each wants to matter. Their new political choices begin with an apparent dilemma for leaders. The new individuals are educated (and increasingly more so) opinionated, rights claiming and keen to act. They have concepts, ideals, and information. All of these characteristics ought to make them avid participants in the political process, but despite these credentials, the political participation of the "postmaterialists" is, by conventional measures, lower than of the modern generation.

In contrast, the values surveys of Ronald Inglehart indicate that the new postmaterialists demand true voice. Theirs is a psychological reformation that suggests some interesting parallels to the religious reformation of the sixteenth century. Today’s individual rejects organisational mediation seeking instead to have a direct impact upon matters that touch his or her life.

They shun traditional organisations in favour of unmediated relationship to the things they care about. The new individuals thus demand a high quality of direct participation and influence. They have skills to lead, confer and discuss, and they are not content to be good foot soldiers.

Young adults place a premium on the efficacy of small groups of people working together to effect change in tangible ways. And they showed strong preference for leadership "that emphasises the collective participation of many individuals over the strong leadership of the few."

This rejection of mediated influence also helps explain the growing interest in the concept of "direct democracy" as a natural evolution of representative democracy.

The new individuals seek true voice; direct participation, unmediated influence and identity based community because they are comfortable using their own experience as a basis for making judgements.

Bonfire of the brands

Also Neil clearly feels he has been mediated out of existence - his reaction is an extreme one, but I find it curiously compelling.

One thing though Neil, spare the Jacobsen chairs!

To our readers: Celebrating a year here with you

Our book was released just over a year ago. Alan and I set up this blogsite to "put our money where our mouth is." In other words, if we were to promote the "dominance" of digital communities then we should also "engage" it, as through blogging.

We wanted this blogsite to be a place for us to follow up with topics and themes from the book, for us to muse about the changes in media, digital convergence, impact of social networking, user-generated content, sharing. To discuss search, blogging, dating, rating, TV-interactivity and smart-mobs. To cover multiplayer videogaming, virtual worlds, new market spaces. And considering our backgrounds, Alan would inevitably cover marketing, branding and advertising angles, while I would usually include discussion about fixed and mobile telecoms and the evolution on the internet.

A year ago we thought that we should try to get one or two postings per week to make sure this site remains active. We didn't know how important this site would become to us, professionally and personally, as a vehicle for expressing our passion to a changing media, technology, and to economic and social worlds. We couldn't anticipate how much would be happening, provoking us to write on an almost daily basis and generating over 400 postings in our first year. There is a vast amount of industry commentary, news announcements and analysis on this blogsite already. I would challenge you the reader to pick your current hot topic and write it into our search field here, and most likely you'll discover a blog posting or several that address that very subject.

It also could have been a monologue into a digital void. Alan and me writing essentially to each other, posting an online diary-type journal of our idle thoughts of the day. What is wonderfully inspiring to both of us, is that this site has generated a lot of visitors and traffic. By now we get over 200 individual visitors every day. There are 100 sites that connect directly to us. We have over 200 inbound links. That is very fulfilling to us. We know you are out there, reading our blog.

What is surprising is how well we are regarded in the blogosphere. Technorati currently tracks over 40 million blogsites (there were about 12 million when we started) and today our ranking was at 18,886. That is in the top percent, in fact top 1/20th of one percent of all blogsites. Truly amazing! Its not that we blog about Brittney Spears or Big Brother or the US politics etc, where heavy readership might be expected. In such a techie-nerdy area as digital convergence and marketing/branding and telecoms, we have managed to find a loyal readership. We feel a commitment to you.

Many who visit our site have also posted comments. Alan and I have made it our mission to reply to everybody who comments to us - again within our philosophy of the book, in "engaging" with our readership. Those comments have often provided us with links to fascinating websites helping us learn more, or added dimensions and insights to our postings that we had not considered, helping us understand more; or at times exposed areas where there yet is not consensus, and we have had honest debate within some of our readers, helping us see where honest industry disagreement still exists in the changing world.

And for all those who are "lurking" at our site, have a thought, and are not sure about posting - please do post a comment for us. If you have a question, perhaps we weren't quite clear, or you might have an observation, or don't agree with our point. Please do post the comment. That is what makes a blog come alive: more relevant, more engaging and interactive. We would warmly welcome any comments and we will reply to you.

Our activities here have helped spawn other areas for online digital community social networking. Alan and I helped found Forum Oxford and the Engagement Alliance. Both of our blog entries have appeared among the selected top writings in Carnival of the Mobilists, and both of us also feature on Wireless Watch.

Through direct contacts, conference speakerships, university lectures etc we have also met with many who regularly read our blog. And just as a reminder - yes, Alan and I are available for your event should you like a speaker on any of the topics at this site.

A few words on the book. This site is to celebrate the book Communities Dominate Brands. That book went into its second printing last autumn, was certified a bestseller by its publisher, and is now being translated into several languages. If you like what we talk about here at this blogsite, please consider buying the book. It has fantastic reviews from CEO level executives from various leading companies and was selected as one of the best marketing books of 2005 by the UK Chartered Institute of Marketing. As we keep hearing from readers, the book is fresh and relevant, as if cut from today's headlines. For all who bought the book and for all who posted kind words at Amazon, the Financial Times book pages, at a blogsite or other review etc, we thank you.

Obviously we are working on a follow-up. But no definite date yet. You will be the first to know at this blogsite. Thank you for being part of our community.

I speak for both of us in that more than anything else professionally, the readers of this blogsite do mean a great deal to us. We both start our web presence every day visiting this site to see what the other had blogged, and if we have received any comments. Your readership makes our blog writing worthwhile!

Tomi Ahonen & Alan Moore

Financial Times on MySpace impact to Broadcast Media

Today's Financial Times has a long story on the impact of digital communities, social networking and in particular MySpace to broadcast TV and the advertising industry, entitled "Whose space? How advertisers are struggling to fathom webwise teens."

A great article which obviously echoes the same themes we cover here on a daily basis at our blogsite. The long article takes just about all the logical steps to arrive at the same conclusion, that the traditional broadcast and its advertising industry is changing. The FT says for example "Now, even in the last year, there has been more change in media behaviour than at any time since the invention of television."

The article points out that the youth are different, they multitask while watching TV. With PVRs, they are skipping traditional ads. And this year apparently for the first time, the big American broadcast networks - ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC - all featured big pitches about their online involvement, when recruiting the advertising spend of the big TV advertisers for the Fall schedules.

A new media needs new formats, not only in content but also in its advertising. The FT points out also that while web audiences are more fragmented, they do leave better footprints for advertisers to use in targeting. Finally the article points out that traditional interruptive, repetetive and annoying ads will not work in the new world. I like in particular the quote in the story from Ross Levinson, Head of Fox Interactive Media, saying "You have to go where the audience is."

First. great story, Financial Times. Excellent. Totally worth reading. Good, analytical and well documented story. Secondly, all of that is familiar territory to readers of our book or blog. I find it funny, that a year ago Alan wrote almost an identical piece here for us, entitled "Postmodern engagement marketing vs modern interruptive advertising."

Obviously we've written about MySpace regularly, but also the other themes in the article are regularly featured. A good indication of what that modern young connected customer is like, is at this posting about Generation-C (for Community Generation) discussing their sharing and multitasking etc: "They ARE the Borg"

And if you want an elegant modern treatise on the same subject of the FT article by Alan, he wrote a brilliant piece in March expressly on media meeting social networking, entitled "Darwinism rudely arrives in our media ecology."

Authentic vs. Fake

Cory Treffiletti discusses two initiatives that have been created by Nike around the football world cup, and the differences between the two

One is of Ronaldinho do some amazing stunts with a football, which is claimed to be real, but in fact has been doctored, the other what Nike calls the longest soccer chain

Treffiletti explains

The company invites users to upload a video of themselves kicking the soccer ball around and passing it to someone else, which is then spliced together with someone else's video. So far there are only 90 players representing 23 countries, but I'm assuming I found this in a beta period; I expect the site to grow exponentially once people check it out

Authentic vs. Fake

In one case we have an attempt to masquerade a recognized character in "authentic" content, and on the other hand we have a symbolic union of global consumers. One concept represents a situation that need not be falsified in order to provide an example of greatness--and the other concept represents an applaud able attempt to generate a feeling of cohesiveness around the largest sport in the world.

And I agree, when we (customers) trust brands less, even small attempts at bending/blurring/spinning the truth, seem to me ill judged, and ill advised.

Better Than We Know Ourselves

Music – economics – socioeconomics – search – contextual search – narrative threads in a borderless world – google for the ears – collaborative filtering – tags – social information filtering – navigating superabundance in a superdistributed world – databases – blogs – algorithms for automating 'word of mouth – conversations – communities – living in an ipod shuffle world – curated consumption – clusters – constellations – the nirvana of the celestial jukebox... ahhhh

Better Than We Know Ourselves discusses in great detail how we use, find and buy music in a digital world, though it goes much deeper than that. Pitchfork media have produced a fine, well articulated and written article, making a very complicated subject easy to understand. Fabulous!

At the same time, the information these tools provide is enthralling-- whether we're comparing ourselves to other people on Last.fm , haggling over why we like or dislike what we're hearing on Pandora , or watching MusicIP draw unexpected connections across our music collections. Music discovery tools are just smart enough to teach and challenge us without doing all the thinking. They can surprise us and break us out of our habits-- for example, to make sense of our guilty pleasures, or destroy our assumptions about genre and style. Imagine if we could even just shake ourselves loose of old-fashioned concepts about rock, or jazz, or "world music," and realize that we like a song because we're drawn to certain vocal timbres, and certain tempos, and the sweat on a certain kind of guitar solo, and the whistling sound a cello makes with the right amount of reverb. How do we learn to love music? Do we pursue it intellectually, or emotionally, or do we just respond to sounds as primally as a lizard responds to a heat rock? Are our preferences set by nature or nurture, by what we heard in high school or borrowed from our siblings, or can we keep learning, and changing?

Additional reading
Search Inside The Music
Exploring new ways to search and organize large collections of music

Paul Lamere (sunmicrosystems) blog

The International Conferences on Music Information Retrieval and Related Activities

Tristan Jehan

brian.whitman at variogr.am

Musicstrands

Audiobaba

The echo nest

There are more than two sides to the story

A relevant article in understanding the changing nature of business and customer relationships by by Michael J. Reuschel, President Unisys Global Communications and Media Industries

The crux of the argument lies here

So what’s the relevance to the communications industry? As communications service providers, and even traditional systems integrators such as Unisys and IBM, look to facilitate the efficient integration of content, customer and channel, coordinating the activities of these distinct customer groups is complicated – to say the least. If the role of the platform is to get and keep everyone on board, the more traditional rules of pricing, the choice of business partners and even the business model used to guide the business itself becomes obsolete. The ability of the platform to motivate distinct groups of customers simultaneously, becomes critical to the success of all involved – and to the market overall. There is clearly more science than art to being successful when there are more than two sides to the transaction. Recent observations about the success and failure of business over the last 3-5 years – coincident to the emergence of the so called “new economy businesses” and the communications attempt at convergence – underscore this point.

Also of importance is who pays?

Inherently tricky in all of this is an understanding of the dynamics of the “multi-sides” such that the interdependencies between the demand and marginal costs can be captured and modeled. The traditional business school concept of price points therefore becomes less relevant. It is the pricing structure that drives the ultimate pricing scheme. Moving a price from $100 to $99 to stimulate demand is less important than establishing who pays, why and how much.

And I like these guiding principles

Creating Success With A Multi-Sided Market Framework
* 1. Identify platform communities –understand the parties to the transaction, their incentives and related dependencies
* 2. Establish pricing structures - understanding demand substitutes, incentives and demand responsiveness;
* 3. Create a profitability roadmap –model demand responsiveness, create the ROI baseline, understand payback periods and assess risk.
* 4. Implement an incentive structure – craft the business case and go to market model, develop market positioning and value propositions for each group of customers
* 5. Experiment and evolve –craft and implement a trial, prototype and/or launch strategy that includes clear success measures.