Technology360

'Tagging' gives Web a human meaning

Daniel Terdiman writes:  "If you've been to a technology event recently, especially one with a high concentration of digerati, you may have seen someone stand up and tell everyone what the event's Flickr tag is.  ¶  It may sound like another language, and in a way it is: Flickr is a popular photo-sharing service that allows anyone to view most of the more than 50 million member-submitted images it hosts. Tags, meanwhile, are the searchable keywords the individuals can assign to either their own images or to those of nearly anyone else that say something about the information--the defining characteristic of Flickr and a growing number of other online services. ..."  Link:  CNET News.com.

This time, the revolution will be televised

Neil Sequeira writes:  "... Television has slowly made the move toward on-demand technology. Earlier this fall, CBS announced plans to put additional content on the Web to compete with 24-hour news channels. Starz has rolled-out an online movie download service, while Comcast has built out its own on-demand capabilities to give consumers content they want and when they want it. ...¶... Unlike traditional HFC or satellite systems, IP-based systems can scale to almost limitless size. Such scale is necessary because certain consumers will want access to very niche content. Given the vast amount of content that exists in one form or another, the shift necessarily will be to an IP environment. You're going to need nearly boundless capabilities to match content of admittedly limited interest to some consumers. The only other alternative would be to use a dedicated pipe or channel to deliver something that few people will watch--and that doesn't make any sense. ..."  Link:  CNET News.com.

The End Of TV (As You Know It)

David Kiley, Tom Lowry and Ronald Grover write:  "The string of groundbreaking deals struck on Nov. 7 has been heralded as the beginning of a media revolution. NBC Universal ... and CBS Broadcasting ... abandoned age-old policies and chose to make top shows available via video-on-demand services. Yahoo! Inc. ... announced that it will enable television fans who are away from home to program their TiVo ... digital-video recording devices remotely. 'The computer has crashed into the television set,' declares Brian L. Roberts, CEO of Comcast Corp. ..., the nation's largest cable operator, which will let customers order up CBS prime-time shows just hours after they air. ¶  But amidst all the hoopla over increasing consumer disdain for the daily TV schedule and enthusiasm for DVRs and iPods, one thing was missing: the business model. How will the producers of entertainment replace the profits they made from selling advertising aimed at a mass audience? It's going to be a painful transition ...  ¶  So why the rush by media giants into the on-demand world? They're worried that audiences are fragmenting and that marketers won't keep paying for general audiences who are tuning out their messages. The Internet and handheld devices already provide access to all kinds of entertainment for a small fee. Internet ad revenue amounts to only a fraction of the $17.8 billion that network television ads generate, but the online take is growing by 40% a year. Network dollars are up only 2.6%, and that's the result of price increases that will be difficult to sustain with shrinking audiences. ..."  Link:  BusinessWeek.

Also, listen to this NPR program, The Changing Face of Television:  "Networks are now selling their programs so consumers can watch when they want. It's uncertain if, in the long-run, viewers will foot the bill for TV programs they can get for free -- or how the networks will hang onto all-important advertising dollars. But experts agree there's no turning back. ..."  Link:  NPR Talk of the Nation.

Also see The Brave New World of TV.  Link:  Broadcasting & Cable.

Research Note – Edge Competences and Media 2.0: Newspapers Mini Case Study

Umair Haque writes:  "... Newspapers are canaries in the coal mine. The economic shift that is disrupting the structure of the media industry is deep and pervasive; within the next five years, it will touch all consumer-facing industries. What's happening to newspapers should serve as a warning signal to players across markets that the deep economics of consumer-facing businesses are undergoing radical change: change as fundamental as that which marked the shift from the industrial to the knowledge economy. To understand this change, let's define the problem the news market is facing.  ¶  The publishers, like the rest of the media industry, are facing a radical shift in industry economics; a structural disruption. Barriers to entry have been vaporized, as have switching costs. At the same time, the market power newspapers could exert over content creators and advertisers is eroding. ..."  Link:  Bubblegeneration.  Also see this related post.  About edge competences.  --Dennis

Edge Competences and the Post-Network Economy

Umair Haque writes:  "The fundamental economic shift taking place in the 21st century is the shift from cheap information to cheap coordination.  ¶  In the second half of the 20th century, thing got digitized, and then networked - the cost of information itself dropped discontinuously. This made the dominant strategy hyperspecialization - to leverage this cheap info by building core competences, which are essentially, scale economies in specialization.  ¶  Now, new technologies are making coordination discontinuously cheap - it's now increasingly possible to do things with that information, without the need to build the huge coordination mechanisms firms employ; like bosses, managers, meetings, roles, and performance assessments. ..."  Link:  Bubblegeneration.  From one of the best thinkers about the media economy.  Also see related post.  About edge competences.  --Dennis

Study shows DVRs increase TV viewership

Jeremy Reimer writes:  "A study released yesterday by the six major TV networks has analyzed the viewing habits of DVR owners. The report seeks to allay fears by advertisers that the rise in DVR use would lead to a drop in TV viewership, dooming the entire industry of advertising-sponsored broadcast television.  ¶  The report claimed that homes with a DVR watched 5.7 hours of television per day on average, compared to 5.1 hours for households without a DVR. Viewers with DVRs still watched 90 percent of their television live at the scheduled time of broadcast, with the remaining 10 percent as time-shifted programming. While 90 percent of DVR owners fast-forwarded through commercials, 58 percent of those paid attention to commercials in fast-forward mode, and 53 percent admitted to rewinding and watching a commercial that looked interesting. ..."  Link:  ars technica.

See also Networks: TiVo may not be the enemy after all.  Link:  Reuters via CNet News.com.

Media Futures: From Theory to Practice

Last summer I posted links to an excellent series of essays on "media futures" by Seth Goldstein, now a principal in a new company called ROOT Markets (press release).  Goldstein also chairs the non-profit, AttentionTrust.org.  He writes:  "... The challenge we are focused on is gauging and thereby pricing intent.  I often refer to the transformation of attention into intention simply as "lead generation;" however commercial leads are only one expression of intention, albeit the easist to monetize and therefore the one most likely to lead to new viable business systems.  The fact remains, however, that not all leads are created equal.  The 28 fields of data that Johnny entered on the mortgage form would seem to indicate the same authenticity of intent as Suzie’s.  But the fact is that he was only filling out the form because he was looking to earn a Free iPod whereas she had spent the last three weeks doing research on how to refinance her home.  On the Internet nobody knows you are a dog, nor does anybody know if you are a legitimate lead. ..."  Link:  Transparent Bundles.  This is a long and thoughtful post that is must reading for anyone wanting to understand the power of attention analysis in the media economy.

Update 11/23/2005
I like to link to thoughtful contrasting views when they can be found and here's one from Jason Calacanis, publisher of Engadget and a host of other weblogs: "Will direct sales of attention data disintermediate publishers and Google AdSense?  Looks like Seth Wants to figure that out." Link: calacanis.com.  But then also see this follow-up post by Mr. Attention:  Time is on our Side.  Link:  Steve Gillmor's Inforouter. --Dennis

Does Pre-Roll Video Change Traditional Online Media Buying?

Jaffer Ali writes: "... Let us take a stab at discussing how "traditional" online advertising has been bought. First, one used to target Web sites that fit the demographics of their target market. Once upon a time, this made sense. Many agencies still want to buy advertising based upon a Web site's "brand" or demographics. That is why a lot of media plans obsess about Web sites, with agencies often positioned as the intermediary or gatekeeper to select the "best" sites for their clients.  ¶  But Google's AdSense seemed to suggest that the CONTENT on a site was more important than any specific Web site's "brand." So AdSense would serve contextual ads that corresponded with the content of the Web page. Advertisers really did not know where their ads were appearing, only that their ads were appearing within the right context or content. This was the move beyond targeting Web sites to targeting content. ..."  Link:  Online Media Daily.  Thanks to Terry Heaton's POMO Blog for the lead.  --Dennis

Will subscription media kill broadcast?

Tom Coates writes:  "I just got chucked a link to some video by Kevin Marks - an early pioneer of the technology that would eventually become podcasting - in which he talks about his time in broadcast as a cameraman, working at Apple and how podcasting changes everything (nostreaming.mov). It's a fascinating few minutes of video with an interesting thesis - that subscribable media like podcasting removes the need for streaming almost completely.  ¶  My perspective is slightly different - both bigger and smaller. Because it's not streaming that's most affected by a combination of on demand and 'deliver it to me' subscribable podcast-like functionality. The main potential victim here is broadcast itself. Those of us who have Tivos or PVR functionality are already used to the idea that we don't have to sit in front of the television when something's being broadcast to watch our shows. ...¶... My sense of the future is that the role of broadcast in the delivery of television and audio programming is going to significantly diminish over the next twenty years, and a more browsable subscribable media derived from the (fairly obvious) lessons of podcasting will replace it (with an individual either subscribing through a net interface or through a truncated remote-control based lean-back experience. ..."  Link:  plasticbag.org.  Good piece.  Be sure to check out the thoughtful comments as well.  --Dennis

Yahoo and Tivo take a step toward Coactive TV

Richard Reisman writes:  "This Yahoo-Tivo alliance could be a watershed step toward the Media Concierge and advanced Web-plus-TV multitasking.  ¶  What was announced on 11/7 is just a baby step. Now you can schedule your Tivo while Web surfing on Yahoo with your PC. Web scheduling of Tivos is not new. Doing it from Yahoo's TV pages does not seem like much of a step further.  ¶  But this is a step toward the Media Concierge, one that both Yahoo and Tivo can easily build into a killer linkage of Web and TV services. Right now, I can't find a recommender (like Tivo's) on Yahoo TV. But AOL TV has one. Tivo may still be hesitant to take its crown jewels off its closed TV box, but that seems inevitable. Once it is there on Yahoo, I can sit down once or twice a week with my PC to review recommendations, link to reviews from Yahoo or any Web source, check RottenTomatoes or MetaCritic, check my friends opinions (maybe using structured blogging), and then just click what I want to record.  ¶  It also lays the foundations for real coactivity, where what you see on the Web is in the context of what you watch on TV, what I call CoTV. CoTV is aimed at the millions of people who frequently surf the Web on a laptop while watching TV on their TV. CoTV connects those media activities. ..."  Link:  AlwaysOn.  Also available at Reisman on User-Centered Media.  Here's the AP story on this alliance linked here a few days ago.  --Dennis