Communities Dominate Brands

Reposessing folk culture for the 21st Century

I have been pondering on what the storming of the bastille is all about.

Once you storm the Bastille you don't go back to your day job - that is all about the total break down of big media trying to control our culture and cultural production.

My muse was on the 50646+ video's on youtube of all combatents telling their stories of what it is like to be in iraq or the Milbloggers in Iraq providing their version of their experiences.

The use of soundtracks that pump up the volume or bring a tear or two to your eye.

Preparing a presentation for HP's CMO summit in Rome , I reflected on the fact that folk culture is all about the telling of stories about ordinary people. These stories create context, are a record of significant events.

Think of the Marching Season in Northern Ireland , or American folk / blues culture , or British folk culture Recorded in songs, stories, clothes and visual works of art.

All of this is cultural production which records our past.

In a recent post Citizen Calling I wrote

Come on - STOP and pause for a moment - Rupublican protest songs passed down over the years, songs of struggle with the industrial revolution etc., etc., all cultures have them. Its culture for the people where folk culture was always about telling a story - and about sharing that together. If you are American - its Gravy for breakfast, Gravy for lunch and Gravy for dinner a story about the Great Depression. Do you know where I heard that in Finland - where a American lady sang that song in a restaurant and I sang The Black Leg Miner - A song about the birth of the uniions in the coal mining industry we were both richer for the experience. Next time you see me ask me to sing it. I have a lovely singing voice

We have taken our culture back to make it for ourselves. The end game of that is an expectation in fact a demand for participatory democracy

So places like Youtube or Myspace or where ever are a reinvention of folk culture for the 21st Century.

We want to have our voices heard and we now have the technology to to make that happen.

In a book I am reading at the moment, Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins, DeFlorz Professor of Humanities and the founder and director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT

Jenkins states

the emergence of modern mass media spelled the doom for the vital folk culture traditions that thrived in 19th Century America, the current moment of media change is reaffirming the right of the everyday people to actively contribute to their culture. Like the older culture of quilting, bees and barn dances, creativity, and a bartering r gift economy. This is what hapens when consumers take media into their own hands

Jenkins mentions Grant McCracken a cultural anthropologist. His belief that in the future media producers must accomodate consumers demands for participation or they run the risk of alienating their most passionate audience.

But back to folk culture. Jenkins argues American folf culture was the victim of mass media. Don't believe him read Community Media. People, Places and Communication Technologies Which tells this story in some detail. Jenkins states that intially the emerging mass media saw folk culture as a talent pool, but once establised, mass media has another agenda which was profit and the drive of mass consumption. To do this it needed not folk culture but mass media stars, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinartra which evolved into Friends, Sienfeld and Frasier.

A mass media product for a mass media.

Increasingly, the commercial culture generated the stories, and sounds that mattered most to the public... Folk practices were pushed underground

But the web, audio-visual and audio software technologies, and distribution has changed that. Something that Yochai Benkler argues is structural and will change how our economies evolve from now on.

We are migrating from Old World to a New World. Technological, economic and cultural changes are going to affect us all - whilst in the US and in Europe there is a great desire by some to lock down culture

But back to the main theme, Blogs and the vlogs and the peer to peer flows of communication which bring us closer together online and offline are very hard to lock down. Especially when being social and telling stories are central to human existence.

Now thats worth pondering on is it not?

Get today's Financial Times if you like our blog topics

Run don't walk! Today's Financial Times (20 Sept 2006) has a 12 page insert entitled "Digital Business" which focuses very strongly on the topics of our blogsite. This is the cheapest investment you can make - come on, one UK pound? - into gettign a very solid all-around view of what's going on in the digital communities (ie Communities Domnate) world.

It has all the predictable topics, from a very good overview of the digital youth of today, to learning, sharing, online communities, using multiplayer gaming and virtual worlds for personal advancement etc etc etc. A fantastic insert, go buy the FT today!

I am about ot fly to Asia so I won't be able to blog about it immediately, but I will return with selected best bits hopefully late tomorrow or Friday the latest. Alan is also abroad today so he's also unable to immediately do a review...

Citizen calling

David Doherty of 3Gdoctor.com tells us that citizencalling.com

has been set up by the Home Affairs Committee to provide an opportunity for young people to tell MPs about their experiences, ideas and opinions on the criminal justice system.

It's going to explore how mobile phones might help people and Parliament communicate with one another and is going to try and find out if sending in experiences, ideas and views through mobile phone messages can make it easier to take part.

Messages will be sent via the project’s phone number (07786 201247) and hosted on citizencalling.com

To me I would say it is a good and useful experiement. There are many reasons why this is such a good idea. For me having written the book with Tomi and now taking our thinking much further - I definitely can see that how we, the civil service and, government interact, will change.

If the world is exploding with peer-to-peer communication, communities of interest, communities of commerce, and as the younger generations grow up familiar with technology that is always two way - Any business or institution that only works in broadcast mode will simply fail. If you think about Youtube its folk culture reinvented for the 21st Century.

Come on - STOP and pause for a moment - Rupublican protest songs passed down over the years, songs of struggle with the industrial revolution etc., etc., all cultures have them. Its culture for the people where folk culture was always about telling a story - and about sharing that together. If you are American - its Gravy for breakfast, Gravy for lunch and Gravy for dinner a story about the Great Depression. Do you know where I heard that in Finland - where a American lady sang that song in a restaurant and I sang The Black Leg Miner - A song about the birth of the uniions in the coal mining industry we were both richer for the experience. Next time you see me ask me to sing it. I have a lovely singing voice

We have taken our culture back to make it for ourselves. The end game of that is an expectation in fact a demand for participatory democracy

What underpins all of this is economic, social and technological.

Without dialogue there is ignorence - with ignorence there is fear and with fear there are all the myriad ways in which others can come and try to subvert the precious freedoms we have already. And those freedoms right now are under threat.

Listening really helps - it means you are valued - dialogue is an exchange upon which trust is built. That is how democracies survive. More dialogue is a good thing. And its great the people can get to have more of their say. A word of caution though, this cuts both ways - don't like what you hear - you still have to engage, as we learn't on this site a few months ago.

I picked this up at Forum Oxford a rich lively community whichs discusses and debates all things mobile. Go and join it could be useful.

Search Inside has been enabled by Amazon for our book!

Finally! There were some glitches at Amazon, but finally the "Search Inside" feature has been activated at Amazon for our book. It is at the Amazon USA site at this link [Search Inside Communities Dominate Brands].

You can enter any word and see about three lines of context of where that word or phrase is covered. I need to advise you to consider alternate spellings, as many of the items we wrote about have (or have had) multiple spellings. So for example if you search for "Ohmy News" it says no entries (even though it is a case study). But if you ask for "Oh My News" with the spaces, you get 8 separate pages with reference to the South Korean community-generated newspaper.

It is funny, because I myself actually need that function at times (I use it also with my older titles) when I know its somewhere in the book, but is not mentioned in the index.. Nice feature at Amazon.

Is our book topical or what? community sites biggest trend on the web says Nielsen

A fascinating tidbit. Nielsen Netratings, the organization that tracks web usage (and TV viewing etc), reported in 2005 that one out of the top 10 web brands was a community oriented site, ie one with consumer-created content. But for 2006 they report that 5 out of 10 fastest growing websites are community sites! Obviously sites you hear us blog about regularly, like YouTube, Flickr and MySpace. The story was reported in Friday's Financial Times (Sept 15, 2006).

So "communities dominating" is the biggest trend on the web? Cool. And yes, (shameless plug coming..) the only book that covers all of digital communities from blogging to multiplayer gaming to smart mobs to TV interactivity etc - is our book Communities Dominate Brands. Isn't it time YOU read our global bestseller? Send us an e-mail. we'll send you the pdf of the first chapter (including the foreword by Chief Marketing Officer of Coca Cola) for free.

Welcoming visitors from Arstechnica (Apple iPod/iTunes story)

We noticed that the Arstechnica discussion board became very involved in the iTunes/iPod story and has sent a couple of hundred visitors to our pages already.

We welcome you. We hope you will also find other intersting postings at this site, which is not an iPod/iTunes/Apple site - although we do cover the iPod as a case study in our book - as this blogsite covers the stories of digital communities (blogging, massively multiplayer gaming, mobile phone smart mobs, TV interactivity, community collaboration etc) and the related digital convergence, interactivity and engagement marketing stories.

For us the iPod/musicphones is rather strongly "old news" but for anyone visiting us and intersted in our analysis of why MP3 player phones outsell iPods currently already at a ratio of 6:1, music consumption on musicplayer phones exceeds consumption on iPods at over 2:1, and the actual digital sales of MP3 songs (full-track songs, not ringing tones) to musicphones exceeds that of iTunes at a ratio of already 1.1 to 1. We launched this analysis a year ago. There are five related postings on the story. I ask that you read the related articles. If you are in a hurry and want the quick view, then please look at the charts we prepared at this story:

Picture tells it better - iPod market share is 14%

The actual discussion of the iPod vs musicphones story is in five parts. We started a year ago discussing the emerging threat of musicphones to challenge the technology darling of the iPod. A year ago this time Apple had seen 15 quarters of continuous quarter-on-quarter growth and a prediction that Apple would lose its dominace was quite a brave one (and a lonely one). We still made that at this forward-looking blog:

2006: the year the iPod died

That blog proved to be very controversial at the time, generating a lot of ire from the Apple and iPod fans. But also, with hindsight, our foresight had a remarkable level of insight. Apple's quarterly sales continued to grow for the two last quarters of 2005 resulting in an amazing run of over 4 years fo solid growth, 17 consecutive quarters, but then in the first quarter of 2006, iPod sales crashed. We reported it in March 2006 at this follow-up blog:

Nails into the Coffin of the iPod

Like before, we again attracted some heated comments from the iPod community, but also by this time, many had joined in the view that musicphones were a viable rival to the iPod. Organizations such as Informa, IFPI and TNS all reported on the trend away from the iPod to the musicphone. We were no longer alone in our view. There were many angry Apple and iPod fans who reacted claiming that the iPod drop in sales of 40% was because of "seasonality" even though for the previous four years there never was a seasonal drop in iPod sales in the January-March quarter. No Seasonal Drop in ANY quarter in fact. Still, we allowed for this possibility, and promised to return to the story after second quarter 2006 numbers by Apple had been revealed.

That happened in July 2006, when we posted our most read posting reporting that for the second consecutive quarter, the sales of iPods were down again, a further 6%. Now seasonality was totally out of question, as musicphones were soaring, each of the global giant mobile phone manufacturers from leading Nokia and Motorola to the LGs and SonyEricssons reported unmet demand for their top-end musicphones. The market shifted totally away from Apple. By now Microsoft's Bill Gates, Nokia's Anssi Vanjoki, and the leading senior executives of each of the four record industry giants - Warner, Universal, Sony BMG and EMI all had made statements that the musicphones would dominate over iPods as a music selling and consumption platform. Even Apple's own senior management - CFO Peter Oppenheimer admitted they now track musicphones in the same market as the iPod, also pointing out that as of now, the iPod still holds a technical lead.

Demise of a Darling: iPod market share crashes to 14%

That story ignited the ire of the Apple and iPod community like nothing we've seen at this website. But by now we were no longer a lonely voice. The story was covered in July at dozens of discussion groups and attracted hundreds of comments - including over 145 comments left at our blogsite alone. We dutifully replied personally to each and every comment, and invited all to continue the dialogue. We also visited dozens of other sites where the discussion also was maintained, and offered our views. I posted a review of that discussion in the final entry to this story entitled:

Electronic Echoes: Hundreds commented on our iPod 14% story.

Now, as final comments - we don't carry advertising at this site, and we are not aiming to. So there is no reason whatsoever for us to generate sensational traffic and raise our profile.

For all who think our view is preposterous, please consider that this view has now been covered in various press such as the Financial Times, Business Week, Observer, Guardian, etc. The same principles - that musicphones are part of the same market as iPods - is no longer heresy, it is reported amongst others, by Informa/IDC - the market research organization that Apple itself quotes for its sales numbers. Most revealingly all of the four major music labels feel the musicphones are a direct rival to iPods. Our view is now the mainstream, and any Apple iPod fanatical view that we are somehow heretics, is about as pointless as claiming the Intel based windows computers are not personal computers (that somehow only Macintoshes are PCs).

And yes, we LOVE the iPod. We LOVE Apple. We LOVE iTunes. We say so in our book, and we have celebrated iPod and iTunes for five years. But now its time of ruling the roost is over. iPod has become a high-end niche product. The mass market has shifted to musicphones.

Please read the five related blogs to understand why we think so, and what proof we have. We have listed actual sales numbers from Apple, Nokia, Motorola, etc. We have listed actual global music sales figures from the IFPI. We have listed results of the only usage study which included both iPods and musicphones. All of the data now prove our point.

And as a final note - I have already promised to return to this topic again at the end of the year, when we have final Apple iPod sales numbers - many Apple/iPod fans believe the iPod will make a dramatic return to form, and if that happens of course we will happily report that.

FINAL UPDATE from January 2007 - as I promised, we have returned one last time after Apple relased Christmas quarter sales figures, and concluded this story in Requiem for a Heavyweight: The iPod Reign is now Over.

Lessons on the volatility of digital communities: MSN Video and YouTube

Since our book (Communities Dominate Brands) came out a little over a year ago as the first comprehensive study into the area of digital communities - meaning that we covered all of the space including blogging, multiplayer gaming, mobile phone smart mobs, collaboration sites, TV interactivity etc - the area of digital communities has exploded and a lot of research is going into this space. One area nobody had any insights for, as it was too new, was that of attempting to sustain a lead in a given digital community.

We have the first case with elements for a case study. Video sharing sites. The numbers paint a frightening picture for strategic marketing purposes, and for community-buiding. Digital communties may well be the most volatile of any consumer groups in history.

Let me explain. Last week (Sept 13, 2006) the Financial Times reported on the registered users at the seven most visited video sharing sites, for July 2005 and July 2006. As the FT included Apple's iTunes - and we can expect the majority of iTunes visitors are still there for music, rather than to share videos, I have removed the iTunes numbers from this analysis. The remaining six sites are all primarily video sharing sites.

In July of 2005 the largest video sharing site was MSN Video, with 17.2 million users. A distant second was NetFlix with 10.6 M users. Far below them at third, was Yahoo Video, at only half the users of NetFlix and a third of the users of MSN Video, at 5.8 M. And to round up the six largest sites, the "tiny" sites in July 2005, with only 15% the size of the market leader, with similar user numbers were Atom Films (4th, 2.7 M), YouTube (5th, 2.6 M) and Google Video (6th, 2.3M).

How incredibly a digital community can evolve in one year. Lets track these roughly in order of size. MSN Video the undisputed leader continued to grow in user numbers to July 2006, today having 23.6 million users. Thats a growth of 37% in 12 months for the market leader. You would think that is excellent performance, wouldn't you. But before we celebrate MSN, lets see how the other five did..

The second largest in 2005, NetFlix, has barely managed a negligable growth, to 11.2 million users. NetFlix has set itself up to be overtaken by some of the rivals if any of them managed some impressive growth in the same period.

The third largest in 2005 was Yahoo Video, and it has in fact more than doubled, to 12.3 million users, passing NetFlix. Impressive performance indeed, Yahoo!

The fourth biggest in 2005 was Atom Films. This is the only one out of the six that managed to abandon users. Their numbers went down, from 2.6 million to 2.3 million to July 2006. Very poor performance.

I will skip the fifth for now, and go to the sixth-place rival in 2005, Google Video. From its user base of 2.3 million, Google has managed to grow its numbers ten-fold ! By July 2006, Google Video had exploded its user numbers to 24.5 million - yes ahead even of last year's clear market laeder MSN Video. From sixth place to overtaking the leader in only a year, that is remarkable. Or it would be remarkable if not for the best in class. I haven't told you about YouTube.

In July of 2005, YouTube was a distant 5th out of six, and with 2.6 million users, the size of one sixth that of the market leader MSN Video. In only one year, YouTube did grow. It grew most impressively, By July 2006 YouTube had shot past MSN Video and Google Video. And by no small margin, by growing to be 24 times larger in only a year, today YouTube is as big as MSN Video and Google Video and Yahoo Video - combined. YouTube has in fact 63.4 million users.

So what do we learn from this? The two largest players 12 months ago, MSN Video and NetFlix who were both more than twice as large as their nearest rivals, dropped from positions of 1st and 2nd to 3rd and fifth. Meanwhile, YouTube and Google Video, both only one sixth the size of the market leader, in only one year moved to numbers 1 and 2.

Digital communities? More volatile than any other market places we've ever seen. Expect these kinds of changes in other digital communities as well. And yes, if you are managing a digital commnunity, you cannot stop building it when you become biggest. It is much too easy for one of your rivals to catch up with you. YouTube was one sixth the size of market leader MSN Video and in 12 months grew to be over twice its size - all this while MSN Video itself grew very impressively, by almost 40%.

Fed up with junkmail?

Typically around 1 to 4% of people will respond to a direct mail campaign. Therefore 96% or more of all the mail sent will be wasted. Companies are very commercial and while they can and do make a profit on these relatively low returns, they are always looking for ways to increase the response rate to any campaign. Knowing therefore that you are not for example going to support a charity mailing for an animal hospital, because you prefer to give to children’s charities will help them achieve their goals as they will no longer write to you. This helps them to make a larger return on their investment and enables them to send out less mail therefore using up less of our planets resources.

Register at Myletterbox

I wonder if these mail companies pay an earth tax or are carbon emission conscious?

Emerce day - Rocks in Rotterdam

I have spent the last few days in Holland in the wonderful city of Rotterdam

I was giving a keynote at Emerce day

It was a lot of fun and was sold out. I also met some great people:

Albert Boswijk of the European Centre for the Experience Economy

Thank you Albert for your time and generosity. A great experience :-)

Mark Hansen from LEGO A valuable and animated conversation about co-creation, authenticity and communities.

Hubert Deitmars of van den ende & deitmars Thank you Hubert for engaging conversation over dinner.

Robert Nesselaar of the Rotterdam Chief Marketing Office Who discussed with me the challenges of marketing a city in a way that created real value

Lloyd Chris Blake of Global Village with whom we discussed the language of modern marketing, and many things else besides. Lloyd challenged one of the speakers from the floor "Should we all drop the word consumer - because it ties us to the past?" A very valid point Lloyd.

Igor Milder of Lost Boys We chatted about our book and the organisational and budgtry challenges facing companies as they attempt to embrace the New World. Something I also mentioned in the speech.

I had a few beers with Werner Vogels CTO at Amazon. Who enlightened me and several others over a few beers about many issues relating to online retail. A pleasure to meet you Werner.

I hooked up with Joseph Jaffe of getthejuice Nice to meet you at last Joseph.

Finally thank you to everyone at Emerce and to Anton van Elburg for inviting me.

MySpace set to sell music online

Website MySpace is to allow unsigned bands featured on the social networking site to sell their music as downloads.

The site - which has 106 million users - is currently testing the idea, and hopes to rival market leader iTunes. Nearly three million bands feature on the site, with individual bands set to decide on the price of their tracks.

"The goal is to be one of the biggest digital music stores out there," MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe told news agency Reuters.

"Everyone we've spoken to definitely wants an alternative to iTunes and the iPod. MySpace could be that alternative."

And

Music downloads have soared in popularity in recent years, with Europeans alone expected to spend 280m euros (£189m) buying music online this year.

The announcement from MySpace is the latest development in the fast-changing area of music and social networking sites.

In July, Sony BMG struck a partnership with British site Faceparty to have its artists promoted exclusively to the site's six million members. Last week Vivendi Universal, the world's biggest music group, signed a deal to make its music catalogue available on a free legal downloads service through entertainment site Spiralfrog.

Under the agreement, Spiralfrog will offer Universal's songs online in the US and Canada. Meanwhile, YouTube has declared its ambition to place every pop video ever made on its site.

As we say Its a new socio-economic model. Even Duran Duran are getting in on the act :-)

Via the BBC