Faster Future: Possibilities now and beyond: 01/01/2009

Friday, January 30, 2009

How influence really works

Mark Earls is heading up a cracking free session at NESTA on Feb 9 in London.

If you want a clue about how this influence stuff really works, I'd rate this one as unmissable.
All the details.

Book your place.

Mark is The Man when it comes to communicating Herd behaviour (hence his book Herd, right, and twitter moniker @herdmeister).

You'll also find him among the consulting network at BrandoSocial, I've been building :-)

Thursday, January 29, 2009

TwitterFriends - joining the dots

TwitterFriends. If you tweet, try it.
Twitter is a fantastic enabler of adhoc real-time self-forming communities of purpose.

Which means some connections are more important/relevant to you than others on a daily/hourly/by-the-minute basis. Some have more influence.

TwitterFriends helps you visualise that. The image here is just one of the many ways in which it cuts up and displays the data about the networks you share.

It's the kind of thing that has the potential to be really valuable in enabling the measurement of influence - something which is essential in empowering conversational marketing, but which also changes by the minute and by the interaction.

As I noted previously, measuring influence is complex (not complicated) it depends on:

Me sticking to my brief – you trust me to talk social media, future of publishing, impact of the power of the network etc. If I start giving you tips about horse racing you’re going to treat them with caution – at the very least.
I remain consistent: If I give you a series of bum steers my value to you will rapidly reduce.
2 and 3 can mix. If I start giving you horse racing tips AND I am consistently right – you’ll value this new aspect (I’ll even attract new communities of purpose as a result.
The result of 2 and 3 mixing can impact on those who followed me because of 1&2.
The value of my influence can only be measured from the receivers point of view – recommendation happens in the mind of the receiver.
My influence among those who are yet to connect with me, but have the potential to through meta data is somewhere between 0 and infinity.

The toolkit to make THIS work is coming together... TwitterFriends gives us a glimpse.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Worrying

"...the majority of Twitter is PRs, journos and indos... not playing any more, sorry." - LittleBoots

It does sometimes feel like that.

Pity littleboots didn't hang around a little longer and follow a few more back - she might have found a little more value in the connections.

I can't believe the 63,000+ people following @stephenfry are all PRs and journos, for example.

Lord I hope not...

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Trust can't be broadcast

Trust in the banks is down. I believe the expression is 'no shit, sherlock?'

Much more interesting than the bleeding obvious to me is the accelerating collapse in trust in advertising and traditional mass media.

(Image courtesy.)

This from Edelman's 2009 Trust Barometer release:

Trust in nearly every type of news outlet and spokesperson is down from last year.
Trust in business magazines and stock or industry analyst reports—last year’s leaders— decreased from 57% to 44% and from 56% to 47%, respectively.
Only 13% trust corporate or product advertising—down from last year’s low of 20%.

Let's say that again. Only 13% of people trust the ads now. That's assuming they are still accepting the interruptions.

Even more staggering, the figure for the UK is down to JUST 5%!

So let's assume you overcome our studied ignorance of ads in social media. Those whose attention is snared by them (remember folks, it's a 0.01% click-thru rate), of these, only 13% (5% in the UK) trust what they see, hear and read. So they're hardly likely to act on them.

Peer-to-peer recommendation however, of the kind we see inspiring purchases of products and services every day in social networks, in conversations between friends, is not interruptive and it is trustworthy.

Britain trusts media less than any other of the 20 countries surveyed (30%)
Traditional sources of information are on the wane and at an all-time low
Newspapers down 10 points at 19%;
Radio news down 20 at 33%
There is a Trust Bust in conventional Corporate Comms
Only 5%trust corporate/ product advertising; 15% for corporate website, press releases, live speeches - Edelman Trust Barometer, UK

More reason to explore models like this.

Trust in banking and business is down because of some very unusual economic factors.

Trust in mass media is down because of something much more fundamental. We've found ways to connect one to another - there is a new model which places trust in new places - in each other, in the edge - not the centre.

Trust can't be broadcast.

P2PR Community open meet - Wednesday evening

Image via WikipediaThe P2PR community meets in person for the first time on Wednesday evening (Jan 28, 2009).
In some ways it's an example of how all this digital meta-data sharing works.

It started as a term, a set of ideas and an ensuing discussion on this blog.
It became a fully-fledged social network of its own.
And now it's taking on physical form.
You'll find us upstairs at the Coach & Horses, Greek St, London, from 7pm.

The internet is here to make our reality better - not to replace it.

Monday, January 26, 2009

When Clay met Euan

Two of my favourite thinkers are in conversation tomorrow evening -

Image via Wikipedia Clay Shirky (author of Here Comes Everybody -who I had the pleasure of interviewing for a video series on this blog last summer) and Euan Semple - who I'm chuffed to say is part of the BrandoSocial Consult network I've been putting together (disclosure I work for BrandoSocial).

It's virtual so everyone can sign up to attend.

Listen in from 2pm-3pm EST (that's 7pm-8pm UK, I think). Great use of an hour of your Tuesday, in my book.

Three great things filtered, discovered and delivered to me, by you

My social Network on Flickr, Facebook, Twitter...

Image by luc legay via FlickrHuman-powered search never ceases to amaze me.

It brings things to me I never knew I needed to know, with incredible accuracy.

In the days before always-on real-time access, there was an element of patience involved.

It was hard to conceive of the global phone-a-friend as a true competitor to the I-need-an-answer-now nature of algorithmic search.

But the more connected we become, with more relevant people (ad hoc real-time self-forming communities of purpose) the more competitive we become. We regularly beat the machine.

Ask a relevant question of your community of purpose and you'll more often than not be more satisfied with the result of that vs google.

Indeed because the content people share Is great metadata about themselves, as is the people they share with, We get better and better at finding the right people, with right results for us.

It's got to the point for me now that it is no longer a search function - at least not one activated by me at a certain point in time.

It's closer to human-powered RSS. The feeds are people, and the results of their discoveries are ready filtered to be truly relevant to me.

More than that, they are delivered to me at the moment we share purpose. There's no friendspam clogging up the inbox.

It's the most relevant, fastest and most trustworthy news channel I have.

There are three examples below. Discoveries I didn't know I needed to know - and could not of consciously searched for.

If it wasn't for my communities of purpose I would not know about any of them.

Metadata shared widely to enable communities of purpose to connect is already disrupting algorithmic search - the keystone to the wealth of the world's fastest growing company in history, google.

You can be sure if it can disrupt even this, there are few corners of the economy and society which will be untouched. This is just the start.

Those examples:

Each of these were delivered to me through the community of purpose I share via Twitter:

1. Awesome presentation on the future of social networks via charlene li (delivered via a dm recommending mashable's link from Jill Simon!)
Charlene Li talks about 'air' her take on the expression of metadata beyond silos.

The Future Of Social Networks

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: future advertising)

2. The because effect in full effect, courtesy of Monty Python.Monty Python Puts Free Video Online, Sells 23000% More DVDs

3.Honda on the value of failure (which fits nicely with my take on evolutionary models in complex adaptive systems, fitness landscapes - like the economy and the internet.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Rule books being ripped up

Interesting times: Times in which Youtube overtakes yahoo as No2 search engine; and in which twitter is overtaking digg.
Even the new order is being reshuffled.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Alan Moore on engagement, his journey to the networked world and his next book

Alan Moore - one of the most influential people on my own journey to the networked world - tells us about his journey.

Blown away to be able to say Alan has joined me in a network of the very best consultants - people who all have a deep understanding of the power of the network - which I'm putting together at BrandoSocial.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Obama's speech as a tag cloud and word tree

Via Paul Valach

From ManyEyes Alpha works
Via Doc Searls

Measuring influence is complex, not complicated

An individual’s ‘grading’, ‘influence’, ‘fame’ or however else you wish to describe it is no longer about who gets the biggest number. It is all about relevance.

I outlined that in a chapter of The Power of The Network and you can also find the thinking here

I’m relevant to you if you’re reading this blog. So my influence may be reasonably high. But it only remains so if:

I stick to my brief – you trust me to talk social media, future of publishing, impact of the power of the network etc. If I start giving you tips about horse racing you’re going to treat them with caution – at the very least.
I remain consistent: If I give you a series of bum steers my value to you will rapidly reduce.
2 and 3 can mix. If I start giving you horse racing tips AND I am consistently right – you’ll value this new aspect (I’ll even attract new communities of purpose as a result.
The result of 2 and 3 mixing can impact on those who followed me because of 1&2.
The value of my influence can only be measured from the receivers point of view – recommendation happens in the mind of the receiver.
My influence among those who are yet to connect with me, but have the potential to through meta data is somewhere between 0 and infinity.

Complex, isn’t it?

I've explored this in a more detail on the BrandoSocial blog, which I'd like to introduce you to, right here, if I may.

By way of disclosure; BrandoSocial is where I work four days a week.

Monday, January 19, 2009

The Crunch and your personal experiments

An unhealthy dose of risk aversion has swept through the financial world since it got taken somewhat by surprise by the crunch.

It's extending its hope-corroding fingers into the world of social media start-ups.

Less of Google's - 'you can't milk a calf' - more of - 'show me the money'!

Don't let this eat at you, too. Don't be part of a downturn in personal experimentation. (image courtesy)

For example. When you hear Google is closing services, does it make you think twice before uploading content to any new-comer? Does the risk averse monkey on your back whisper: "you'll lose it forever if they go belly-up"?

Are you sticking with the devils you know? The brands you already have a taste for?

Who you trust for cloud services is built around assumptions of long term reliability.

To win in this space cloud competitors will have to offer guarantees to customers - and evidence of a personal content migration or retrieval plan should the worst happen.

Which takes you back to needing to prove a value for these relationships to funders.

And it's all adding up to creating a credit crunch of experimentation.

Experimentation - our essential playfulness - is vital for the health of our web and for increasing innovation, innovation which brings efficiency and wealth for all. The more experiments, the more successfully we find good fits for the evolutionary fitness landscapes that can converge and amplify through the two complex adaptive systems of the web and the economy.

The less we experiment, the less chance of finding all the right fits for all possible niches and needs.

Your willingness to experiment is the equivalent of the banking system's willingness to lend.

There is no government bail-out scheme on offer for this.

Only you can keep the flame of experimentation and innovation alive.

And you must.

Lend yourself - your time, your playfulness, your innovative spirit - so that the evolution of the web may continue.

Try the new guys. Take a risk. Extend them some of your credit.

Show the bankers how it's done!

Show your intent with a comment below! Encourage your friends to do it too, blog and tweet it, email and text it.

You are the driving force of the web.

Go play!

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Google holds the key to conversational marketing

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...

Image via CrunchBaseI like where Stowe is going with this
He draws the conclusion from the Google shakedown ( Google Ends Google Video Uploads, Shutters Notebook, Catalog Search, Dodgeball & Jaiku ) that the big G is lining up a bid for Twitter.

Interesting, because if there's anyone with the volume of advertisers required to make a business model work in Twitter, it is Google.

Interesting too, to imagine how a half-way house to the fourth dimension of marketing (co-creation with real-time adhoc communities of purpose) could be delivered with something very similar to google adsense.

Think of conversational marketing, think of people being rewarded for recommending products or services where-ever they (digitally at least) talk about it.

Think how we are all advertisers and all marketers now. How the only way messages are passed on in social networks is peer to peer.

Think how trust in you as a source of recommendation could be enhanced rather than damaged by payment (a la ebay's reputation system) when your recommendations aren't broadcast, but shared in peer to peer networks of trust.

If I spam my friends, if I fool my friends, if I fail my friends - then pretty soon they aren't my friends any more.

And if the value of your recommendations are ranked by the reach of your social graph - that should keep the spam down: Lie to make a quick buck if you like. But trust is your currency in this world - and you've just blown yours.

Mechanically how might this work? Perhaps I register with Google Conversation Sense (tm!) and I pick out a series of brands and products I actually like, use and would recommend to peers.

After this if and when I do recommend these in digital p2p communication, I get a micropayment. The size of payment depends on how many people follow/read/interact with me online (which correlates with trust, of course).

There are details to be overcome, for sure. For example, should your use of a specific term become a link whenever you use it - to a particular vendor, depending on bids of the kind used in adsense/adwords.

A simpler proposition would be that you get rewarded for the mention - those receiving the recommendation will use search (likely google) to find a vendor for themselves anyway!)

And I'm thinking beyond single networks. Google could track the conversation across all open networks - and reward participants where-ever the conversation is happening.

Which explains why Facebook (with its conversations beyond the reach of google) is seen as such a rival for them.

Ultimately that may mean that Facebook is the more glittering prize for Google to go after - since they can get at the conversation in Twitter anyway.

I want to thank Farhan Rehman for the thinking around adsense and conversational marketing.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Feeling unlucky?

"$110,000,000 - approximately: amount of money lost by Google annually due to the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button"

More mad internet facts here.

Welcome to the human network

Nice message from Cisco - I don't often repeat ads here, but this one speaks to The Power of the Network - that the internet is about connecting people.
We start with our social graph (our friends, family, peers) and through them discover people who interest us, people we come to trust and through them we discover content they trust and people they trust. And the less silo'd the metadata (the more easily and readily we share) the easier it becomes to connect with our communities of purpose - groups of people who care about what we care about right now.
That's what I'm thinking when I'm watching this. How about you?

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

10 Things I love about the iPhone - no, really

Image representing iPhone as depicted in Crunc...

Image via CrunchBaseSince I've given apple such a hard time over my iPhone. I thought I ought to consider why I persist with it.

The contract I'm locked into has much to do with it.
And I'd be lieing if the coolness of it doesn't help (though this is seriously undermined in the style stakes by the black rubber condom I sheath my new one in after I dropped the last.
(incidentally, perhaps apple could build in this kind of protection next time around? Or at least box new iPhones with a cheap protective case.)

My daughter told the genius at the apple store that I love my phone.

And she's right.

The iPhone and I have a stormy relationship. Moments of sheer frustration spread widely apart by good experiences.

So 10 things I love about my iPhone.
There are problems with how some of these function, as I've posted and tweeted in the past, but they are powerful.

1. The community. When I have problems with my iPhone I can always find someone who has faced similar, overcome the challenge and shared the result. Apple's real ace is that their customers do their customer service ( and marketing, of course, but that's another story.)

2. No walled garden: I'm on an O2 contract but I don't experience the Internet-as-controlled-for-you-by-O2, I get the real Internet - our Internet.

3. The interface. Not so great for one-handed operation but an unmatchable experience for the eye and speed of navigation. When you aren't walking anywhere.

4. The iPod. Their best yet.

5. The integration with email and calendar services. Easier to set up than most.

6. Intuitive. My daughter could take pictures with the iPhone at the age of 3.

7. Solutions. Updates to make the phone ever better are built into your life. Adding content from iTunes? Want a better phone while you are at it. Ok then.

8. The app store. Easiest installation and best integration of any phone (or computer, for that matter) that I have ever experienced. Some social recommendation to your phone would ramp it higher still.

9. Control of the desktop. That the user can rearrange navigation to suit themselves is a given.

10. The wifi. Connects seemlessly whereever possible. And that's harder to achieve than often credited for.

What do you love about your phone?

Monday, January 12, 2009

iPhone - shattered screens and shattered illusions

I dropped my iPhone on Friday. Face down from pocket height to pavement. I don't know if the chill air made it more fragile, but the screen shattered.

It was still working. Just didn't look very nice or likely to last too long in that condition.

So I rang O2. Who didn't know who did repairs. Suggested I tried rivals Carphone Warehouse.

Actually O2 does have an exchange plan. £156 and your phone has to be sent back to apple which will, only upon receipt, supply another. But the on-the-phone 02 people didn't know that.

So I rang Apple. They told me they didn't do repairs. (image courtesy)

They could do an exchange. And they would make an appointment for me with a Genius (member of staff) at my nearest Apple Store in Cambridge.

They made it for 3:15pm that day. It takes me some time to get into traffic-choked Cambridge. Even using the park and ride.

I had hoped to be working on a consulting brief that Friday afternoon. But staying connected is key for me. Needs must.

So, making the best of it, I trundled off to Cambridge with 4-year-old daughter in tow. She likes a ride on a double-decker.

And we arrive on time. And we sit down for our appointment. And just as the centralised apple care team had told us when making the appointment, there was no replacement screen available. Only an exchange could solve this customer's problem. But.

But.

They didn't have any in stock.

Let me describe a simple logic flow here.

Has iphone got shattered screen?
Yes

Is only resolution of this a replacement phone?
Yes

Has apple store got that phone available to conduct said exchange?
No

Should you waste an afternoon of your customer's limited time sending him into town on a Friday afternoon with zero possibility of a positive outcome?
Can you guess the right answer?

Apple couldn't.

So, there's a customer service issue here. And I didn't half take up some Genius time explaining that in store.

And my annoyance at my wasted time left me asking a range of other questions I really think apple should have a stab at answering:

How much does a screen really cost? Given they break at the drop of a phone (my wife dropped her Nokia yesterday- zero damage) why aren't Apple making cheap and quick repairs available?

Why do you think mobile phones are the width they are? It's because it is the ideal fit for the average human hand (Nokia's interaction designers have known this for a long time). The iphone's extra few millimetres of width make for a great screen but an inherently more droppable design.

Yes apple, I am holding you partially to blame for all those cracked screens. We haven't all just got clumsy. I've owned mobile phones since the mid 90s - dozens. And I've never broken a single one.

And what about this pricing? £200 for a replacement. Hang on a mo. That's what I paid for my brand new one on contract in the first place. I'm still on that O2 contract.

Yet the replacement phone is made of recycled parts (in a new case). And you get no periferals, no charger, no earphones.

I'm all for secondhand recycling, cutting down on waste - but why do you get to keep all the cash saved apple?

The apple store rang me on Saturday to tell me they did now have a phone for me to go back into Cambridge to pay them £200 for (and they get to keep my cracked one - to recycle and charge someone else £200 for. WTF?).

Over a barrel, I went to get it.

Apple care were meant to have rung me at just after noon to explain how they would resolve and recompense for my wasted time.

By 3pm they hadn't called. I had to call them as I dashed for the apple store to make my 4:15pm Saturday appointment.

Poor. You will hear more. Just another day in my life with an iphone.

BTW: My PC was running the wrong time when I restored the iphone from itunes. Which meant to get the right time on my phone I had to reset the computer's time, restart it, restart itunes and then restore the iphone to factory settings and then finally restore all the content and contacts etc. To adjust the time. Ouch.

Thursday, January 08, 2009

The Power in context

Dr Chris Thorpe has seen me present a couple times - once in New York and on another occasion in London.

We've got to know each other somewhat. In fact we've got to trust each other, so much so that he's agreed to join a network of consultants I'm bringing together who share a vision of the networked world.

I tell you this by way of disclosure because he's just published an exceptionally kind review of my book The Power of the Network.

"His insight into the current landscape... is fantastic and from it he provides a stunning vantage point into the networked world which is building minute by minute, connection by connection, conversation by conversation around us. For people outside of this networked world this vantage point could quite easily be daunting, even vertiginous. However through examples, quotes from other thought leaders and a very good and not overdone smattering of illustrative case studies he makes things simple. This is done without making things over simplified though, and the book can almost be seen as a way of talking someone from old marketing/advertising off the ledge they may currently be finding themselves on."

Chris has also identified some of the poetry that I've strived for in my writing from time to time.

"Themes running throughout the book often have a recurring linguistic motif... This makes the book almost like a piece of music where themes will come in and out of focus but remind you of their presence... it feels very well structured although in essence it is a collection of semi-connected essays."

It's something the thoroughly excellent Ted Shelton, also referred to when we met earlier this week.

And that's very interesting to me - and I hope to you.

But what you may find even more interesting is his discussion of the merits of reading the same words you can discover digitally, on this blog, in the context of a printed book - and how the print experience compares with the audio one (in Seth Godin's Tribe download).

Those who would replace our libraries with e-readers and kindles may do well to note.

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Twitter's missing millions: How social media will make money

I have a feeling those of us old enough to use search are getting rather tired of it. Search fatigue is setting in. I've hinted as much before and more recently at /message.

Indeed my own informal research (ask the kids you know) suggests the latest generation of digital natives aren't even bothering to try it long enough to tire of it. They are skipping straight to friend recommendation. (image courtesy)

I've been doing the January thing. Searching for a holiday. What a chore that has become. Dead end after blind alley after irrelevant results. SEO without the social can do that to an Internet.

Thought: wouldn't it be good if SEO was all about an improved experience for the customer, rather than the vendor? We might be more inclined to surf the resulting SEA (search engine accuracy) with more joy in our hearts.

I digress. Search fatigue is driving us to opt for a strategy of 'good enough for me' results, by which we mean 'if it's good enough for the friend I trust, it's good enough for me'

Recent questions I've been asking of the humans Itrust on Twitter include where should I go for a holiday with guaranteed hot weather, all inclusive, safe and fun for my 4yr old with kids clubs and baby sitters. Oh and at the right credit-crunch adjusted price.

People understand what I mean by all that. And if they don't, they ask questions. People who come to know me also know what makes me happy.

We're not being lazy. We just trust our friends (our adhoc communities of purpose) more than we do search returns.

Algorithms eat your heart out.

And so to Twitter's missing millions. Everyone is asking how this phenomenon can turn all this two-way flow of conversation into cash.

And most struggle to see an answer. And I think that's because it's like looking into the fourth dimension from a world of just three.

We want to apply business models we know - ad models, banners, affiliates etc. to a networked world we are glimpsing in the corner of our eyes - a blur of a ghost we think we may have seen.

But before google gave us adsense few would have predicted such a brilliant fit with the third dimension of the digitally disaggregated world. It gave us ads that served as content by virtue of their potential to be so relevant to the content they were served against.

That was something that couldn't be done in the two dimensions of print - and couldn't be conceived of from those thinking in those two dimensions.

Twitter - and the other peer-to-peer networks which make up social media are different from the broadcast style websites which went before them. It requires a different model again to monetise.

There IS money being made in Twitter, via conversational p2p marketing. We're all buying stuff on the recommendation of those who make up our social graphs - of our ad hoc communities of purpose.

The vast majority is done with zero involvement by the brands getting the benefit. And zero involvement by Twitter.

So how will Twitter stake a claim on those missing millions?

What I do know is there IS a key to unlocking this - trouble is, not only do we not know where we left it, we don't even know what it looks like.

The adsense moment for social media will come. My guess is it'll involve a combination of conversational marketing, co-creation webs and ways of enabling production by communities of purpose.

Social media's monetisation will be less from the traditional broadcast model (cash spent to persuade us to buy the mass produced) and more from the networked world it inhabits - a model enabling a crowd-sourcing response to deliver against global, real-time niche needs.

The fourth dimension in this case is not just time, it is right now, real-time - and the adhoc communities of purpose who act in it.

And that, my friends, is not a banner ad.

It's not an ad model at all. It's ultimately a new means of production.

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

List of lists

Ok, well there's just two.

I know some people hate this kind of self congratulatory stuff. But for those who like a little context with their blog...

FasterFuture is nestling in the top 30 Marketing blogs in the UK (number 23 at present).

And it's been named in the top 20 PR blogs on the planet. Which is nice. We're at number 17.

Someone has to come up with a list of blogs which deal with convergence of marketing/advertising/pr/editorial/production.... er the power of the network and it's impact. Ok, that may be something of a niche...

Monday, January 05, 2009

Who's afraid of 2009?

There's a lot of doom and gloom among the financial soothsayers. Purpose-less business are being put to the sword.
My (Huntingdon, Cambs) High St Woolworths went last week. Which as far as I can think means the only place left where you could buy a cd on Huntingdon High St is WHSmiths.

And you have to fear for the likes of Smiths in the current climate. Like woolies, it lacks a purpose. For me its become a Christmas shop. I visit it once a year.
If smiths stopped selling CDs there would be no where left on the High St to sell them.

And this illustrates the reality and illusion of fear of 2009: Music is being enjoyed as much, if not more than ever. It isn't music that's at risk in a recession, it is a business model - one which packages up, stacks on racks and locks out co-creation.

The illusion is that all is at risk. The reality is that business models which don't fit the networked world are at risk. (image courtesy)

I spent New Years Eve playing Guitar Hero with friends - a glimpse of how new value gets created in a supply web (the artists get paid for their music, and the coders and game designers and interaction designers etc get paid for their contributions.

£300 of console. £175 of game and equipment. Wild guess: more than you've spent on CDs or downloads in the last year?

And way more fun.

People playing together co-creating an outcome they want. It's what multi-player gaming has always been about.

It's what the business models that need have no fear of 2009 must also be about.

Those that have purpose, those that engage with the power of the network; 2009 - and the future - welcomes them.

Those that persist with the broadcast mindset, with command and control, with centre over edge, those do face a tough 2009 - and no future.

As Christmas 2008 fades into memory, like Scrooge, while there's life, there's still time to change. May the ghosts of Woolworths and Zavvi do the trick.

Best not wait for the ghost of Christmas-Yet-To-Come to show your business to its grave.