The Fourth Estate

Web2.0 - The Hard Act To Follow

What's next for the Web? It was the unspoken question of many who gathered at the Web2.0 Summit in San Francisco this week. For Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired magazine, it all came down to a number - 6,527. Or, the exact number of days until now since Tim Berners Lee made the first webpage. All the innovation, the new wealth, disruptions in traditional media and the millions of Wikipedia entries - a seemingly impossible scale of human endeavor - had been created in that relatively short span. So, what are we likely to see in the next 6500 days?

Last Days of Disco

Along with Murdoch and Malone, Barry Diller was one of my longtime media mogul matinee idols. So it was with great anticipation that I sat down this week to hear him speak at the CASBAA convention in Hong Kong. It was a slow start, but things got interesting when he was asked what he thought was the future of the industry. This is what he said...

Cheap As Chips

 

Consumers have had a seemingly indefatigable fascination with gadgets as they shrink into smaller and smaller form factors. Lately though, the main thing getting tiny has been price points. From PCs to video cameras, the best selling items in the market are low cost units. Naturally, there are big trade-offs in performance. It's worth thinking about why no one seems to care.

Angelic Machines

I was walking around today through the chaotic streets of Hong Kong with Bloom, Brian Eno's generative iphone app providing a soothing soundscape. It's hard to quantify how much joy something so simple can give - not to mention something that only costs $3.99. Bloom uses algorithyms to create and evolve patterns of sounds, at once random and yet strangely structured.

Apples vs Oranges

The sales assistant in the downtown NYC TMobile store was effusive to say the least. He shrugged at my hacked Hong Kong iPhone, and pulled out the new Google phone and waved it at me. 'This changes everything', he said. 'I can check an address on my map, zoom into 3D street level and then actually see a picture of my own shop. And even better, I can scan the SKUs of my products, and see if they are cheaper down the road'. I nodded politely, thinking that if anything was going to change with the new Google phone, it may simply be the number of people spending money at his overpriced shop.

Sports Rights, Business Wrongs

Had an interesting chat about sports rights today with Jason O'Sullivan who is the VP, Digital Media at ESPN STAR Sports in Singapore. There is a growing trend for Federations and rights holders to package and sell online rights distinct from broadcast rights. One of the challenges is that many of the people bidding for the latter are network operators and ISPs, who see exclusive content as a loss leader to get people to buy their communications products. That drives up the prices of those rights. For media companies, online advertising revenues are growing, but not to the extent to monetise massive investments in new media licensing. So, what about premium content? ESPN in the US has been successful with broadband platforms like ESPN 360 but O'Sullivan sees small upside in subscription revenue in Asia for the immediate term. In his view, broadband, disposable income and credit ownership are limiting factors in emerging markets. After all, in India even Pay TV is generally "don't need to pay" TV.

Evil Genius

 

If you haven't already, watch Buffy creator Joss Whedon's new 'direct to web' supervillain musical. And the good news, for those of you who don't live in the US, is that you can get it for free at Hulu. For now, at least.

The Silver Lining

 

Apple's new MobileMe service has had a tough reception. Not entirely unsurprising. After all, when you are heralding the second coming of the 'Jesus Phone', its inevitable that expectations might be running unfairly high.

The Future of the ABC

 

Had a very interesting chat last night at the FED with Mark Scott, Managing Director of the ABC. If you didn't make the event you can listen to the podcast. The premise of what it means to be a 'public broadcaster' over the next few years is set for a collision course with dramatic changes in the media consumption behaviour of audiences as well as the new economics of funding content.

Aural Pleasures

 

I've been enjoying listening to the new city guides jointly released by Louis Vuitton and Soundwalk. Narrated by three well known local actors (Gong Li, Shu Qi, and Joan Chen) they blend personal anecdotes with ambient sounds and slick audio production.

The result is quite compelling. It's an amazing experience walking around a city, even one familiar to you, hearing someone else's perspectives on what you are seeing. And it's only going to get more sophisticated. As most of us start carrying GPS/phone/MP3 devices - geotagged audio tours are going to be the guide books of the future. Smart move by Louis Vuitton. After all, once luxury brands exhaust the possibilities of expensive objects there is only thing left to sell. Curated brand experiences.

Music Matters

 

There is a massive gap between traditional music industry economics and the rapidly evolving behavior of Asian media consumers. I spent a few days last week at the Music Matters conference in Hong Kong listening to some of the most senior record label executives dissect the complexities of their situation. Contradictions abound. Online piracy in China is rampant, and yet China Mobile made nearly US$1.7 billion last year selling caller ring back tones. Most of Baidu's traffic comes from its illicit MP3 search service, while authorised mobile download services in Japan are growing rapidly.

Fuel, Whales & Short Sleeved Suits

 

Usually the rise and fall of commodity prices would be the last thing I'd be interested in. But the global drama unfolding over oil is riveting, particularly the broader historical context. Case in point is a piece in today's Financial Times looking at the demise of the 19th century Whaling industry, while the editorial in this week's Economist features an analysis of the 70s oil shock.

Look closely, and behind the recent rise of oil prices is a intricate opportunity/crisis ecosystem driven by the energy lust of developing Asian countries, the interplay of food prices and biofuel subsidies, the emerging bubble in Silicon Valley funded clean tech companies, and the waning geopolitical influence of the US in both China and the Middle East. Oil has become the ultimate example of a complex dynamic system. Not that it's just economics. Take shoene rukku for example - a Japanese style of short-sleeved business suit inspired by the last energy crisis. As Joi Ito pointed out in a post from 2002, back then even the Japanese prime minister enjoyed wearing them. Roll over Saville Row. It's time to turn off the AC.

Putting the Social into Conscience

 

Waking up every morning in China and watching the daily flood of images from the Sichuan earthquake has been both devastating and moving. But there has also been an interesting social media dimension to the disaster worth noting.

The same nationalist fervor that gripped Chinese bloggers during the Tibet and Torch relay protests, has been replaced by a collective sense of action in recent days - played out across SMS, QQ, Twitter and local Chinese BBS networks. Twitter apparently broke the news about the earthquake before the official earthquake tracking agency. QQ has aggregated video shot by its users from many of the affected areas, while amazing footage from mobile phones quickly found its way onto Tudou. And on the fund raising side, China Mobile has set up an effective system which lets subscribers donate by sending an SMS, which then gets charged to your phone bill. It's the future of charitable action. For more details keep an eye on Global Voices for their ongoing coverage.

The Pipe & The Straw

High definition set top boxes, mobile TV, digital radio – all contenders for the future of media, right? Well, not exactly. It can be tempting to assume if something is digital it must be good. But there is a more subtle pattern at play. If you want to understand how traditional media is being disrupted – the key is not technology but audience behaviour.

Vince Frost & Futuretainment

 

This month's edition of Wallpaper* has an article on my upcoming  book Futuretainment.

The magazine lists the book as one of the top "2008 Design Masterpieces". The article has some great quotes from my art director on the project, Vince Frost. 

From the article - Will good design ultimately concede to digital books? Art director Vince Frost thinks so: 'The book has been replaced already. A book is an old-fashioned form of communication. We are all writers and publishers. We make our own content and share it with the world with ease. It's a break-down of traditional monopolies that have controlled monopolies that have controlled our literary diet for too long.' Fitting, Frost has art directed a new book called Futuretainment, which is about the amazing things that have happened and are happening in the digital world. Published by Phaidon, you will note that it is, in fact, a book.

Googlegangers Gone Wild

 

Well, the latest web meme has arrived. Googleganging. Or in other words - the strange affinity that people feel to total strangers with whom they share the same name. The buzz started with the new book 'Finding Angela Shelton', about a writer who describes her meetings with 40 other Angela Sheltons. According to the New York Times, there is some social science behind what I suspect is really just an exercise in vanity. But I thought I'd give it a try. So anyway, I was highly amused to find of us Walsh clones had decided, like in the movie 'Highlander' that there could only be one. From his website, the other Mike Walsh explains:

"Be forewarned! There are a lot of Mike Walshes out there. There is a guy in Hong Kong (used to be in Australia) who is some kind of luminary on interactive media. There is a Mike Walsh out of Helsinki (go figure) who is big in online games. There is a Mike Walsh (now dead) who used to be president of Textron. He was an early adopter of the cellular phone and died of a brain tumor at the early age of 42. Urban legend says that the publicity surrounding his death was the origin of “can cell phones cause cancer.” There is a Mike Walsh who perpetrated an accounting fraud against Boston Company, a big subsidiary of American Express, back in the 90’s. Based on the emails I receive, there was a Mike Walsh who apparently screwed every woman in Texas during the 80’s. Alas, I’m not a luminary; not a gamer; not dead yet; never perpetrated a decent sized fraud and never knowingly screwed a woman in or from Texas ( although there was the redhead from Plano… oh forget about it). So to end the confusion once and for all, I decided to become themikewalsh. Pretty clever, huh! Now when people come up to me and say… are you the Mike Walsh who … yada, yada. I can just cut them short and tell the… “I’m themikewalsh.”

Pure genius. You win. I'm changing my name. 

Instant Gratification

 

I don't think its any accident that social services like Twitter have lately experienced a rapid increase in adoption. Along with email, Instant Messaging was right there at the very beginning of the Web. But now, IM no longer exists in a vacuum. It's integrated in wide variety of other communications ecosystems including mobile text, social networking, blogging, status updates and feed aggregators. For me, Twitter was a toy on launch. Now that I'm addicted to Friendfeed, its utility has increased ten fold.

That's something to keep in mind as China's own IM boom continues to escalate. The China Web2.0 Review blog has posted some great stats on the phenomenon. QQ accounts for about 78% market share among totally 390 million active IM accounts in China. MSN Live Messenger has about 19 million active users, accounting for 4.9% market shared, followed by Sina UC (4.1%) and Fetion (3.7%). QQ have been very agile in using their dominance to introduce a wide variety of other integrated products. But well funded competitors are now in close pursuit, including China Mobile's Fetion service which facilitates free texting between PCs and mobiles, and Baidu's Hi platform. Two weeks after launch Baidu already claims that over 1 million people have tried their new IM service.

China Music Mayhem

 

They are at it again. The Record Labels in China are filing suit against Baidu and Sohu for their involvement in aiding piracy by linking to unlicensed music files. The WSJ has a useful summary of the less than successful attempts by the labels to force compliance in the past.

In some ways the situation in China may be a lead indicator of the future of the music industry in the west. Chinese artists derive only a tiny fraction of their income from CD sales, earning their keep instead from events and endorsements. Under that model, what you might call piracy, others might see as free marketing. The Labels probably know that too. Music downloading is such an integral part of the Chinese web experience, and a large proportion of the traffic to sites like Baidu - that I suspect that these law suits have more to do with gaining leverage in negotiations than forcing a change user behavior.

Pitch Perfect

 

Major League Baseball is ramping up their efforts to broaden awareness of the game in China. The interesting thing is that they are using the Web to do it. The FT reports that they will begin streaming games and other content on a Chinese language website it is creating with BroadWebAsia.

Although still not that popular in China, MLB has actually been a powerful content driver of new platform adoption elsewhere in Asia. One of the earliest deals South Korean Mobile TV operator TU Media did was with the MLB to broadcast games of Korean major leaguer Chanho Park. Ride on the subway in Seoul, and you will observe just how popular watching baseball on mobile phones has become. But don't hold your breath on the mainland catching up anytime soon. While Japan, Korea and Taiwan already send their best players to the US, the game is as yet barely played in China.

China Rising

 

The South China Morning Post reported today that China has finally surpassed the US as the world's biggest Web market by users. Last year, China added 73 million new users, taking their total to 210 million. What is really interesting is what lies behind the numbers.

The article references data by Pearl Research that found that Baidu's lead over Google had a lot to do with its strength in entertainment and youth functions rather than simply relevant and precise search. It's a fact little appreciated outside of the East. In China, the Internet is mainly used for entertainment and on Baidu, copyright concerns aside, it is very easy to search and download MP3 tracks. A different Web indeed.