You the channel

Microsoft Research was kind enough to invite Bauer Consumer Media (the company I work for) behind the doors of its Cambridge (UK) facility today.
I was joined by our Head of Technology Gus Swan and, along for the fun of it, Communities Dominate Brands' Alan Moore.
My very sincere thanks to Natasa Milic-Frayling for putting together a sparkling agenda and group of brilliant people which sparked some fascinating conversation.
Microsoft Research is the blue sky arm - where new stuff gets toyed with - often ideas that are years from being turned into a product, if they'll ever see the light of day.
And for that reason I'm not going to repeat the bulk of what we were shown.
However, one thing Natasa demo'd is in the public domain and I think it's very interesting indeed: WeConnect.co.uk.

Early in the afternoon we discussed Reed's Law (Group Forming Network Theory) and the idea that navigation and real-time discovery of people who share the same purpose is the thing that unlocks the potential of Reed's Law.

The problem that needs solving is: how do I find people who want to achieve the same as I do right now?

One limitation to overcome (and a pretty significant one at that) is the fact that the tools which enable this kind of connection, social networks, even social mediums like twitter, are still, no matter what their scale, silos.

The long term and monumental win is in a platform-agnostic solution. It is where we are the platforms. We, the nodes, connect through the internet as a whole, not a small subsection of it.

Which is why I find WeConnect.co.uk so interesting.

At this stage it's a series of platform-agnostic personal broadcast channels. I take a picture in Venice - I can share it with you on your mobile, or to my online picture gallery, or directly to your desktop; one-too-one or one-to-many. The connections are between us (via Internet Explorer in this case). The device we use simply realises that connection. There is no social network or medium involved.

Natasa and co are thinking about adding some of the kind of commenting we come to expect of social networks, but know that this will also bring complex design issues.

As it stands it's a brave first step.

Imagine an internet in which there are only blogs and those blogs exist nowhere other than at the point at which they are realised, or rendered, on a device. Imagine a place without platforms or silos, instead a place where groups attract through the implicit and explicit data each of these blogs exhibit. In real time. To and from any enabled device.

(nb, these are my imaginings, not those of microsoft, at least not on this occasion!)

A few steps to go then, but I like the direction WeConnect points.

Visiting Microsoft Research in Cambridge today

I'm getting through the doors at Microsoft Research in Cambridge this afternoon. I've no idea how much of what we get to see and talk about I'll be allowed to share, but whatever the case I daresay we'll have some interesting conversations and an exchange of ideas that can only add value all round.
I took a quick look at their site this morning.
Among the focus on 'being human' and nature's inspiration for the machine I noticed something that didn't seem particularly organic.
Under 'Careers at Microsoft Research' there are just two buttons: 'Interns' and 'Post Docs'.
In the context of 'blue sky thinking' that just struck me as a little odd...

What do you do now you don't watch TV?

Clay Shirky is slap in the middle of my radar right now, which is how I came across this work of genius.

Nutshell: TV has sucked up most of the time you'd otherwise have been using to create things you care about.

I think I spend my cognitive surplus right about here and here.
And it results in stuff like this.

Bet Clay doesn't watch much TV...

In digital space, everyone can hear you scream

When the transaction cost of group activity falls through the floor, economic behaviour must change.

That's my paraphrasing of Clay Shirky's description of the critical disruption the power of the network is causing (in his book Here Comes Everybody).

Clay has identified essentially the same learning that Dave Weinberger brings us in Everything Is Miscellaneous, or indeed that the Cluetrain Manifesto showed (in the idea that in the digital space the gap between humans is zero).

In the digital space everyone can hear you scream.

And it all comes back to Reed's Law (Group Forming Network Theory).

Value gets created by fuzzy-edged communities of purpose. The thing that allows those communities of purpose to gather, evolve, talk, cooperate and act is the medium of zeroes and ones - the digital space.

Digital IS different from the physical realm because it has the potential for us to ALL to be permanently hotdesking, globally.

Unlike the physical world it is possible for ALL the potential of Reed's Law to be fulfilled in a global digital medium.

Where that potential isn't currently fulfilled it is because we are not able to find absolutely every node on the network with whom we could, or should, connect for any given purpose.

There must be huge value in creating the optimum fitness landscape for the individuals who form groups of purpose to find one another. The more people of shared passion and purpose can find one another in real time, the more value will get created.

Until we as individuals become our own platforms, for want of a better word (ie until we as individuals are each able to connect with networks of trust without the need for mediation of any kind) there remains a place for the mediators of this process, potentially the last generation of mediator.

For media as platforms.

Blyk on target as Google adsense goes mobile

Despite consistent mutterings within the mobile industry that Blyk cannot possibly work... here it is hitting its 100K customer target in the UK six months ahead of schedule.
Congrats to all those involved including Jonathan and Alan.

Also today I see google has added Mobile Ads to its adsense suite. So now you can design a mobile-friendly ad to link to your mobile internet site. Potentially very powerful and something I'm sure admob will be watching carefully.
The google tools even include giving the advertiser the tools to create their own mobile internet page for the mobile ad to link to (the horrible flaw in the car-crash they had before was that the ad might point to a standard fixed line web site. All the clicks but none of the business).

All very long tail enabling.

However, that page (an Adwords Business Page) is only an 'information' page. In other words you can't enable easy payment or ordering of an item advertised. Which seems a bit daft. How long before they integrate google checkout?