Judgment Call: Can You Be A Global Business and Idealistic?

The Problem

Once again I've been asked to contribute to The Financial Times' Judgment Call panel - alongside Harvard Business School's Sebastien S Kresge professor of marketing Rohit Deshpande and the CEO of Polar Mobile Kunal Gupta.
The issue our advice was sought on was: Can you be a global business and idealistic?
This follows from the detention of Google's most senior exec in Brazil when Google refused to take down a YouTube video which allegedly insulted a local politician.

My advice, as regulars here will guess, was that not only should a global business remain idealistic - but that it must.
Here's the full (and only lightly edited for publication) response I supplied:

Organisations have to remain true to their fundamental beliefs - their purpose.

There may be a short term cost or loss from sticking to them but businesses built to succeed in today's Open Economy must take a longer view: Without consistency trust disappears; Without consistency believers stop believing; Without consistency supporters stop supporting.

My Advice: Top

Our connected world demands more than simple customer centricity, it requires customer partnership - and that is driven by belief.

Today's winners are Open Businesses - organisations which use their resources to create networks of people who care about the same things they do and who work with them to achieve shared goals.

This clearly relies on support from outside the org. It's this support, this willingness to participate, that delivers competitive advantage. They participate because they share your beliefs.

That is the bigger picture Google sees - and which no amount of local sabre-rattling is likely to make it relinquish.

This of course speaks to Principle One of the 10 Principles of Open Business - Purpose.
The outing in the FT this morning (October 3, 2012), also marks the first publication in print of the fact of our forthcoming book The 10 Principles of Open Business (see the end of my piece in the pictures accompanying this post). Though I have to say our potential publishers are suggesting that may, in the end, become a sub-heading. Will keep you posted, of course.

Related articles

• Open Business Principle 4: Sharability
• Open Business Principle 2: Open Capital
• Open Business - Principle 3: The Networked Organisation
• 10 Principles of Open Business - 9010 group
• Police arrest Google Brazil chief over YouTube video
• Idealistic is Realistic

Facebook's journey to monopoly or bust

I have no objection to the nice chaps at Instagram getting a billion dollars for their baby. Providing someone, somewhere on the planet is putting a similar sum behind a platform to make real change that matters.

Not happening though is it?

There’s something fundamentally wrong about a world where we’ll spend $1bn on an app but not on a way of creating value we can all benefit from. The key wrong bit is in the allocation of resource.

Projects like kickstarter point the way ahead. Resource allocation is shifting to the edge. And the edge won’t choose apps – we’ll choose change.

Which means The edge is unlikely to choose Instagram’s acquirer Facebook either. Big central blocks of cash might (the institutional investors). The odd geek shareholder? Perhaps. But for the most part, the edge won’t play.

Facebook paid $1bn for Instagram, not for a company, not for a business, (there is irony in the fact that Kodak, creators of the Instamatic, are now dead and buried as a business) but for an idea that threatened its dominance of the important image-storing/sharing sector.

Our concern should be that Facebook appears to be so 'valuable' now that it can simply buy the next idea that challenges it – at almost any price. And that’s a significant step on the road to monopoly.

But Facebook only gets to do this based on a valuation of itself which is in turn based only on the idea that it is valuable.

It’s buying ideas at inflated prices based on the idea that it itself is valuable.

That worries me in a very credit-crunchy kind of way.

When our collective belief in that is diffused by the realisation that communities don’t function like audiences then that bubble will deflate.

There is a more hopeful scenario – it is that Zuckerberg has the foresight to think acquiring creative connectors of the kind who ‘love’ Instagram has a potentially higher value for co-creating outcomes (rather than 'audiences' of folk sitting around waiting to be advertised at). And he can build a new, real, co-created and sustainable valuation around that idea.

I’m not holding my breath.

I guess it’ll be Pinterest next:  $2bn to Google anyone? Seems as good a fit as any to me.

If my daughter’s use of the web is any guide then Google needs to get Pinterest-hot at visual search as soon as it can. At 7 and reading and writing fluently,  she continues to search the web through pictures – just as she has ever since she first started playing with search. A pointer for the future.

See also: Facebook Should Be Working Harder for its $100b valuation

By what and by whom do we want to be remembered?

Forbes reported this week that 'CMOs must prepare for the next technology revolution’.

The revolution in question is the shift from org-owned CRM (customer relationship management processes) to customer-owned VRM (Vendor Relationship Management - as Doc Searls has pioneered ).

This 'revolution' is, of course, far less tech/tool related than described. It is for more attitudinal and requiring of cultural shift (as often the case, observers confuse correlation with causality).

The basic notion is that the customer gets to own their data and share it with whom they choose to their own ends and benefit (as opposed to the organisation laying claim to customer data). 'Personal' is one example of the output of such a cultural shift in thinking.

All of which surfaces some questions about data ownership that have been gnawing at me.

What is the difference between your actions being recorded in a digital database - and being recorded by our human collective memory?

Do human memories decay faster, do digital ones do a worse job of delivering context (and therefore meaning)? These are the 'technical issues'. They are questions of effectiveness.

By what and by whom do we want to be remembered?

Let's set aside for the moment that memory and data may be different things - that memory may be the story through which we understand the data stored in our and other people's collective memory. In my view that applies equally to data stored in databases; it makes no sense without a story applied to it, derived from experience and with context.

By whom or what is it anything from 'ok' to be remembered, all the way through to 'desirable' to be remembered?
We want our friends and families to remember us. Is this different from data being stored in a database. If so, how and why?
We want our favourite restaurants and hotels to remember us.
We want society to remember us.
We want posterity to remember us.

Throughout history the remembering has been done by other humans, creating context around the data in the stories they tell, write, record and film.

So why not have Google storing your data? Why not Facebook? Why not the brands you consume? Perhaps they can record the source material more accurately than has been possible. The stories that make the data comprehensible, that gives it its context, will still require humanising.

I ask these questions because I think we need to be clear about what the risks and benefits of who owns data really are.

Related articles

• VRM, Fourth Party and the Empowered Consumer (realtea.net)
• CRM Strategist Brent Leary on Social Media and Customer Relationship Management (VIDEO) (bizblog.blackberry.com)
• Will Data Collection on User Behavior Be Forced to End Soon? (readwriteweb.com)

GPS, data caps and a crushing blow to location based services

For the first time ever I have received a warning that my smartphone data usage was coming close to my monthly limit.

It’s actually only the second month I’ve had a data limit – part of the joys of a new contract with O2 on an iPhone 4S.

I was assured when taking it out that my data usage was well within the limits they set. (A quick check of my records reveals I used no more that 175mb/month in the 3 months previous to the new contract).

I thought nothing more of it.

Until I got a text on Jan 31 telling me I’d used 80% of my 500mb limit and it wouldn’t be reset until February 7.

I hadn’t been streaming radio or video. I had maybe shared a handful of images the whole month. My iCloud settings were set to synch only when on wifi and the phone is plugged in.

In fact I did all the checks and there seemed little out of the ordinary.

In short I had used my 4S pretty much as I had the 3G it replaced and it was eating 3 times as much data.

O2 (via twitter) suggested it may be apps I’m running in the background. But of course apps don’t really run in the background, they only activate when called on (at least any built for IOS4).

I checked anyway. Cleared out loads of stuff in there.

The critical ones, it may be, are those which require GPS – ie location based stuff. The two key culprits for me; Googlemaps and Foursquare.

I’d rather like to leave them on, for the obvious reasons.

And I suspect the nascent location based services industry (which the telco's would also benefit from) would rather like us to leave them on, too. Because, unless I’m very much mistaken, the new limits on data use the telecoms industry seems so keen on look ready to strangle it at birth.

Don't know about you but I feel like I'm paying so much more for so much less. In the meantime, I guess this is what Onavo.com is for - download it free at the appstore.

And talking of App(le) Stores, O2 ended up setting up an appointment for me at my local Apple Store. They say they have had cases of iCloud using 3G for back-up even when it appears to be set to Wifi. They also, kindly, added a free data bolt-on to cover me this month while we investigate.

But if Apple can't find an issue with my phone (and I will update this when I have a result) then O2 and other providers may have to face up to the issue that their data limits are woefully inadequate to support today's smartphones and the ecosystem they promise to deliver.

UPDATE (Feb 3, 2012 2pm): The Genius bar at Cambridge (UK) could offer little advice other than try resetting the phone in the hope that perhaps one of my apps is incorrectly installed and continuingly calling on data when it shouldn't be. This (after the traditional 2 hours or so of back up and synching) I have done.

IF this does not work (ie reveal a significant fall in data use compared to previous, then Apple suggested I take it up with the operator who may be miscalcuating data (they've seen rare cases). And if that fails they'll try me with a new phone... Will keep you posted.

Google's skyscraper?

There is a fascinating theory (from Barclays Capital) that where-ever there is a boom in skyscraper building you can be sure rapid economic collapse will follow.
This measurable proposition echoes one of Parkinson's Laws (for which I am indebted to @jobucks on Twitter.) which states that when companies start building monuments to themselves, their precipitous decline is just around the corner.

How is the new Apple HQ coming along, I wonder?
Perhaps this trend has been repeated through history. Perhaps that's why the phrase 'pride comes before a fall' is so well used - and often so accurate.

And then I think about Google Plus. Is it an essential reconfiguration of google's business model? Or one helluva showboat?
Time will tell.
In any event I'm going to be watching what Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook build for themselves with renewed interest.

Related articles

• Skyscrapers have 'unhealthy' link to financial crises: bank (calgaryherald.com)
• The Shard - London (seeker401.wordpress.com)
• Skyscrapers Bad (theawl.com)
• China's skyscraper craze 'may herald economic crash' (guardian.co.uk)
• China, India skyscraper boom may herald downturn (seattlepi.com)
• Tech's Doomsday Plots: How Your Favorite Tech Giants Could Lose Their Edge (readwriteweb.com)

We don't connect to be marketed to

Facebook's announcement that it is to enable a 'subscribe' button so you can follow interesting things and people (provided they are sharing publicly) is the latest shot in the battle for hearts and minds among the big players. 'Subscribe' is essentially Twitter's follow (or Google +'s for that matter).

So it's yet another case of Facebook being late to the party. The extra it adds is enabling you to select how much of someone's stream you want to subscribe to - giving a little control to the follower (though frankly this has varying value depending on your personal experience of the volume of content - which has always been controlled by who and what you friend or follow in any event).

But it got me thinking: Subscribe takes us back to our online social roots: You just have to love blogs and blogrolls, RSS and hypertext linking. A glorious place of freely forming communities of purpose.

All the rest; Facebook, Twitter, Google +, etc etc, all the rest are at best filters of simplicity or, at their worst, silos of data. Some sit further along to the left of that scale, some to the right. But sit on it they do, in a way that blogs and rss well, don't.

The social platforms have taken down some serious technical barriers to entry - itself a silo of some significance. My wife would never have written a blog. But she's at home and connected with facebook. This is a good thing.

But ultimately we will call time on the nannying. The tech difficulties the platforms solve for us will become problems no longer. A level of what we now call technical know-how will simply become common sense. Like being able to cross a road, most folk will grow up knowing how. They'll call it common sense rather than know-how because it will, of course, be common.

At that point we no longer need the platforms. We'll need and will have the common sense to publish, to discover those who share our needs, problems or desires. And the ability to connect in self-forming groups.

And guess what Facebook et al? We won't be doing this to be marketed to.

Related articles

• Facebook Launches Twitter-Like 'Subscriptions' (techcrunch.com)
• On Google+, circles and silos and internal communications (sharemarketing.wordpress.com)
• How to use Twitter and tweet like a bird (vodafone.com.au)

What is happening to my internet?

We can Haz your Internets?So while Facebook busies itself remaking the internet in the way Governments would have liked it, Google (in Google+ ) comes up with a social answer of the kind McKinsey would have arrived at had it done the math (Nova Spivak said that first, not me - so good I had to repeat it).

To be fair, Google hasn't graced me with an invite to trial Google + yet (update: theyvdid about an hour after I published this). I do worry though about all the 'friend-management' that is being referenced in news reports about it.(I'll feed back in due course).

Which makes me ask: What is happening to my internet? To your internet? To the wonderful adhoc, fuzzy-edged, self forming internet?

Why do folk keep trying to put it in a box and make it behave like it were part of the old broadcast world, of mass, of control and ownership at the centre, of take not give.

I was only half joking when I tweeted (when stories about Facebook's IPO) broke that we should all leave for a bit of a laugh - and then see how much it got valued at.

Control and ownership from the centre.

The internet The Government would have given us had we asked.

But we didn't ask did we? We just did. One task at a time. Flocking. Failing, Flailing.

Don't tell me it's time the internet grew up. It's time we removed the silos and gave it back the freedom from which it flourished.

Social networks of the Facebook kind have delivered a wonderful thing - they gave everyone and their mother access to the group-forming value of the web. Once learned though, do we still need the stabilisers on?

Don't forget folks, blogs remain the single least silo'd bit of easy-user tech available to most of us through which to self form groups.

Maybe it's time to give yourself back the freedom to self-form beyond the safety zone set and owned by Zuckerberg and co? Mark, your work here is done - the kids have grown up. Let them go.

Related articles

• Google's Facebook Copycat, Google Plus (blogs.wsj.com)
• Google Social Network Nears Release (steverubel.me)

Clay Shirky interview - salvaged from Google Video

When Google announced it was closing down Google Video I was relatively comfortable with the idea since they said nothing would be deleted. The idea (as I recall) was that you could no longer add to it. Made sense post the YouTube purchase, of course.
I was staggered to find recently (and they haven't even emailed me with this) that they are going to shut it down as a hosting site entirely. And it's up to you, dear contributor, to download what is yours or lose it.
Some would say that's the risk of free SaaS. I disagree. There is a difference between SaaS and a platform to host content from which the platform owner then makes all the money (ie by advertising against content that users contribute).
And I think it was incumbent on Google to transfer all Google Video content to YouTube on behalf of the the content creator, with the option to merge with the owner's Youtube accounts or delete. How hard would that be.
Instead it's up to mugs like you and me to salvage the likes of this, above: A 35 minute interview with Clay Shirky I conducted in 2008. It was too long for YouTube at the time, so started life on Google Video.
In it we discuss Gin, TV and what comes next?, Why Here Comes Everybody (his book) avoids the copyright issue, is technology changing us, scoring collaboration in education, humanising brands, facebook and email and how algorithms caused the credit crunch.
Gin, TV and what comes next?, Why Here Comes Everybody avoids the copyright issue, is technology changing us, scoring collaboration in education, humanising brands, facebook and email and how algorithms caused the credit crunch.

Related articles

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• RIP Google Video: Download Your Videos by May 13 or They're Gone Forever (mashable.com)

Another Google social fail?

Google +1 is being touted as the next big social thing.


Trouble is it seems to me it's going to be just another aggregator of mass - just as Twitter Trends.

I'm waiting for a response to the actual niche peer-to-peer group-forming needs of a network (of the kind that would be delivered by Trends among Friends)

I've yet to trial the product myself - and welcome corrections and comments from those who have - but unless it allows me to share relevant recommendations with relevant people I can't see how it's much different from digg (bar scale).

In short, I want to see what my peers +1, not everyone. And our poorly maintained Google profiles don't seem to me sufficiently rich to make that vital connection.

The focus on publishers may be the give away: less social, more mass for the broadcast internet.

Related articles

• Google Wants You to +1, But Why Would You? (readwriteweb.com)
• With +1, Google Search Goes Truly Social - As Do Google Ads (techcrunch.com)
• Google redesigns Google Profiles, getting ready for new social layer? (socialwayne.com)

Privacy, permission and concern for the individual versus concern for the network

Data, published conversations, recordings of what we say to each other, call it what you will, ownership of what you publish online has long been fraught with complexity.

Traditional media companies kept it simple when they went online. They got you to agree that everything you publish on their site is theirs to reuse as they wish. They did it at sign up.

They've got a little greedy about this if most print news publications are anything to go by. From their repeated sourcing of quotes and stories from the likes of Twitter it appears they feel they can reuse pretty much anything you publish online.

They haven't sought your permission.

Neither do those companies who spider the web to gather and index what you say. Google, for example. And, of course the wide range of alternative search and social media monitoring tools.

Publish to the web and your default state is that your data is discoverable and can be reused for profit and gain by, well, anyone.

That's a truth. And it's one rarely considered.

Now, if you don't like that truth, you can opt out. You could set twitter to locked, Facebook to absolute private, tell google not to index your blog etc. Or just publish nothing online at all.

These are all options. And they are all actually more about permissions than privacy.

For example, let's imagine that when you sign up to use the web (at all, anywhere) you get the option to set your permissions.

Would you set yours at 'allow my data to be used by companies for gain'? That's effectively the default in the age of social media monitoring. If your data is discoverable it is discoverable by all. On or off.

If you're 'on' monitoring technologies can pick up what you say. There's nothing CIA about that. You can do exactly the same with some patience and a search engine. They can only track open conversations.

Then nice people like my company (90:10group) will slice, dice, analyse and interpret. And if the nice people we work with take the appropriate action and make change based on what they hear then you get better things, things that you cared enough about to want to publish to the web about. (This, by the way, is just part of what 90:10Group does, but it's the part that is relevant in this conversation).

Four groups just gained from your data:

The monitoring tool makers.

Companies like mine: which turn the data (your conversations) into something that can drive change - one to the benefit of both producer and customer.

The producer: Who gets to make a more efficient fit with the expressed needs of their customer.

You. You just improved something you care about.

But should we have asked your permission before we began the search?

My good friend Jonathan Macdonald believes so. And he makes his case very well himself so I will simply link to that here.

I don't object to the provision of an opt-in to this kind of data collection. Many people do make choices already to opt out via the methods I described earlier. The concern is the current internet-wide default that you are opted in.
We could tackle this through a big new 'opt out' button, or education, or by the insight industries opting themselves out.

But for myself I won't be opting out.

When I choose to express my metadata in public (ie publish online) I do so with the intention of connecting with others who care about the same thing I do.

I do so to join with others who may be trying to solve the same issue as I am right now. I do so because together we make things better.

The problem is more important than the individual.

One extra connection (node) doubles the number of connections in a network. It doubles the value of the network.

Which means when I limit the spread of my metadata I'm limiting the connections all of us can make and the value of the network to all of us.

And I'm all for the network over the node.

So maybe what all this does come down to is concern for the individual vs concern for the network.

Tough choices to make. But these are the realities of the networked world.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone so I may have to tidy it up later ;-)

Related articles

• The Web Overreacted to Facebook's Latest Privacy Issue (programmableweb.com)
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App Internet vs Commoditised Devices?

Here's a genuinely fascinating conversation between Robert Scoble (tech blogger) and the George Colony, CEO of Forrester (recorded at Davos).

Key takeaway: The exponential growth of processing power and storage capacity is pushing everything to the edge (in device) which is a threat to web-centric companies such as Google and Facebook. "The web is a dead technology in the long run".
There is something familiar in that concept I was considering back here.(Services And The Death of The Website).
There is an alternative view - that the rapid growth in capability in devices will result in the rapid reduction in price - taking us to a place where the device (our way of accessing all the stuff of the internet) is commoditised to the point where you can pick one up off a supermarket shelf for a few pounds. In that world the web-centric companies remain important.
Perhaps it won't be one or the other but both.
The 20-minute conversation covers the impact of management changes/risk at the top of google and apple and the burning question of when China gets to be the dominant economic power in the world.
I think the CEO may be wrong about China's requirement to go through political change to end up beating the US for GDP. And here's why:

Related articles

• The world in 2020 (broadstuff.com)
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Quora: My answer's better than your answer

I got myself involved in answering a question on Quora: What is the best social media monitoring product?

Here's the answer I gave:

No single tool does it all or suits (every and all) business need.

This becomes even clearer when you add the global, multilingual dimension.

Being technology neutral is important if you are serious about delivering the best results for clients. No vendor (tool) supplies an all-language function.

It's also key to have local language experts in place in both the gathering-the-data and in the interpretation-and-analysis phases. Social media use and dominant sites vary massively from culture to culture.

Then it's all about who gets (delivered) that analysis, in which depts, with what responsibility.

No tool can deliver on creating strategic response from data. No tool makes the data actionable.
Without these the data has little value.

I'd respectfully suggest therefore that it's not a tool you are looking for, but a consultancy.

I would say that wouldn't I? So why have I copied my answer to paste it here? (image courtesy Caro's Lines)

Because, I guess, the drive to lowest common denominator on Quora is too great and the room for niche interest too little, at present.

Those who care about the criteria I value will judge my answer good. They are also the same folk who are likely to come by this blog - brought here by the kind of terms you'll find scattered through it.

Put at its simplest and rawest - my answer's better than your answer (I'm bound to think that because that's the reason I'm offering the answer - I think it's a damn good one). And that's likely the case for all of us driven to answer anything on Quora. We answer because we feel we have the experience and knowledge to answer it better than most. Otherwise we're risking our reputational necks. Or having a laugh.

Is this a problem or a strength for Quora? Time will tell. But the idea that a vote will reveal the best answer is clearly wrong when judged against the measure of the niche needs the internet can serve. The highest ranking is simply the one that gets the single largest group of support. But that does not mean it is the right answer for you.

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• 7 Top Tips for New Quora Users (jamescrawford.org.uk)
• What Is Quora? (techie-buzz.com)
• Why is Quora exploding? (blogs.forbes.com)
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• What's with all the hype about Quora? (thesearchagents.com)

The real-time web vs the new edifices of information

I've been having a play with Quora - a kind of wikipedia meets Yahoo Answers with a real-time spin that's suddenly got very hot.

There's some good social stuff going on, lots of instant connections being made - sign up through twitter and facebook and hook up with your pals for a festival of Q&A!

You get to ask and answer questions - the crowd gets to raise the profile of some questions over others (surfacing them to other folk).
Unfortunately, like so many others it's gone down the lowest-common-denominator route with its voting mechanic. Rather than surfacing questions that are useful and interesting to me and my friends, it simply surfaces what is interesting to the greatest single number of people.

This risks creating peaks of high intensity around lowest common denominator subjects (and there's no plan for dealing with the wikipedia-style rows over right and wrong yet when these peaks emerge) while leaving barren deserts of low interest because the only mechanic for surfacing what's interesting to YOU is to select from broad interest categories OR make a specific search. - on your own.

In other words it's missing the trick of socialising the surfacing of what is interesting to you AND your peers (and let's be clear, Twitter's trends continue to make the same mistake).

Even without this Quora remains interesting. While Twitter may be very effective as a human search engine (ie a place I can ask questions of my peers) it's not good at organising the responses or making them available much beyond real time.

Quora seeks to create an aggregate of the best info and retaining it for future reference:

"One way you can think of it is as a cache for the research that people do looking things up on the web and asking other people. Eventually, when you see a link to a question page on Quora, your feeling should be: "Oh, great! That's going to have all the information I want about that." It's also a place where new stuff--that no one has written about yet--can get pulled onto the web."

The team at Quora think this is important because while the web is full of info, most of it is not in a format that makes it useful to most.

Which is why Quora makes an ideal acquisition target for Google. (You probably didn't hear that here first).

But it's also its achilles heel. The people best placed to put information in a way that is best formatted for you are people who know you - your friends, your peers. Indeed 'best formatted for you' is a fluid thing better enabled by the real time web than is potentially the case with the edifices of information Quora is creating.

The most valuable content of all is the information you need right now delivered to you in a way you can best make use of. 

I guess we'll soon discover which is best placed to deliver that: The real-time web or the new edifices of information.

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• People, Topics, Questions - Intersection of Interest Graph and Social Graph (dorai.wordpress.com)
• Quora, an iteration on web forums (victusspiritus.com)
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Three thoughts about the iPad

Image by marcopako  via Flickr

I've seen all the excitement about the potential of the iPad as the salvation of traditional media. I see some of that. I watched someone on the train this morning consuming plain text on an e-reader. Looked kind of... grey.
I can see it converting some traditional magazine buyers and TV viewers to consuming their broadcast content a little more interactively - a little more tailored to their downtime and their personal consumption preferences.

But mostly a device connected to the internet will always better serve participatory activity. This is the place where people do stuff - rather than have it done to them. The value created by all rather than a few.

So while the gorgeousness of the turny-page thing and the click-to-play video thing will be a pleasant distraction for those used to print, it won't allow them to write the magazine.

In this respect, traditional media hanging its hopes on the iPad is a little like scribes banking on the printing press to mass produce illuminated Bibles to keep them in a job. Broadcast media is not a great fit with a peer to peer environment - just as hand-painted books don't make a great deal of sense in print. And the killer app of the iPad, like every other wifi/3G-enabled device on planet earth... remains the internet.

So that's the theory. But there are also a couple of practical points.

First: I want my music updates to synch to all my listening points at once. It's a nightmare having to update all the ipods in my house every time someone gets a bit of new content to add to them all - even via iTunes.
Clunky, restrictive, crash-tastic and not the intuitive experience for first timers the black-polo-neck brigade would have you believe.

The solution, of course is streaming and it is cloud. Apple must know that, surely?

I hear rumours of a streaming service from Apple later this year. Which should have Spotify quaking in its boots.

Which dovetails nicely with my last point. Apple has made its fortune by being very device specific and device focused. To survive in the age of the cloud it must change.

For example - I'd love to see the iPod speaker doc that an iPad will fit in. My iPhone isn't compatible with mine - so good luck!

Already the device-specific nature of Apple's offerings are so focused they are becoming incompatible with each other. Some older macbook pro's won't charge an iPad either. Screw the legacy hey?

If they are prepared to do that to some current devices- why not all? Imagine all your ipods becoming as useless as your portable CD player. It's going to happen - and soon.

Right now I am waiting before committing to another long-term phone contract - waiting on the iPhone 4G due this summer (I have an out-of-contract 3G currently).

I'm waiting because of the lock-in apple has on my contacts, my music and all those apps.

But I'm starting to wonder how wise a strategy that is.

Services are everything in the age of the cloud - services that play brilliantly out on every possible device.

Those who make the best ones will win. Interesting that it has been outsiders (such as LalA, Spotify and LastFM, who are disrupting the iTunes model and showing the way Apple must behave.

Spotify doesn't make devices. Nor does Google. And perhaps one day soon, nor will Apple.

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Twitter's Anywhere can change the game, the web and your life

Wow. Twitter made an announcement at SXSW (I'm not there, for the record) which, according to reports, got overshadowed by other events.

I don't want to go into that. I do want to make sure you don't miss the real story here. Something that is potentially beyond game-changing - it is life changing. And it is called @anywhere.

From Twitter's blog:

"When we designed Twitter, we took a different approach—we didn’t require a relationship model like that of a social network. Keeping things open meant you could browse our site to read tweets from friends, celebrities, companies, media outlets, fictional characters, and more. You could follow any account and be followed by any account. As a result, companies started interacting with customers, celebrities connected with fans, governments became more transparent, and people started discovering and sharing information in a new, participatory manner.

"We’ve developed a new set of frameworks for adding this Twitter experience anywhere on the web. Soon, sites... will be able to recreate these open, engaging interactions providing a new layer of value for visitors without sending them to Twitter.com. Our open technology platform is well known and Twitter APIs are already widely implemented but this is a different approach because we’ve created something incredibly simple. Rather than implementing APIs, site owners need only drop in a few lines of javascript. This new set of frameworks is called @anywhere."

It took hypertext to create the open, unsilo'd web of documents we see today.

We are waiting for something similar to do for the web of people what hypertext does for the web of documents. (image courtesy Erica Marshall)

And @anywhere sounds like it could be a judicious punt in the right direction.

Imagine if @anywhere could become a standard protocol for people's real-time meta data in the way hypertext has proved to be for documents?

That's potentially web changing - and therefore life changing. For all of us.

In its present iteration the @anywhere platform twitterises sites. Launch partners include eBay and The New York Times, Amazon and (watch out Google) Yahoo!

But surely the end game isn't about serving individual sites? Just as hypertext isn't about better internal navigation within a website. No, @anywhere is all about connecting people through the real-time expression of their meta data. So @anywhere is the building blocks of the twitterisation of the web - taking the real-time adhoc fuzzy-edged community-of-purpose forming that Twitter delivers beyond the silo of Twitter itself - and across the entire internet..

Imagine if all sites used it. And it all connected us from site to site. Beyond the silos.

Forget the 140character thing, that's just clever interaction design. It's the framework and standardising of a protocol emerging here which excites me.

Facebook Connect connects. But to me the way it connects people is in a hypertext, node-to-node way. The potential for @anywhere is to connect via interaction between nodes. And that's a much richer space with far greater opportunities to connect with people who share your real-time expression of need, a much greater opportunity to find each other when you need each other.

The value is in the interactions, not in the nodes. Twitter may just have identified that - and found a way to extract it.

And the great thing about value in interactions is that it is value in which we can all share. An even better way to find those who care about the same issue we do right now, come together and act to fix it.

Efficiency beyond the dreams of the broadcast world.

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90:10 - Open For Business

Today I can finally announce I've embarked on a new journey - as Managing Director and co-founder of a new business: 90:10.

It's a journey that emphasises a meme close observers will have seen emerging in my work for quite some time (it's described in my Communities of Purpose paper written in March 08).

That is, that in order to truly benefit from the power of the network we must think less about media (social or otherwise) and more about how and why people organise to get things done.

90:10 takes that to its logical business-oriented change-empowering conclusion. 90:10 is aimed at enabling efficiency, innovation and transformation through social technologies.

Efficiency - the big why

Efficiency is important to us not just for the obvious reason (the payback to the benefitting business's bottom line) but for the same kind of reason that quality is important to outdoor clothing maker Howies.

Howies believes in quality (read Mark Earls' Herd for the full story) because it makes their stuff last longer. If it needs replacing less often less resources are required to keep Howies fans clothed. It's better for the environment, better for all.

Efficiency is important to 90:10 because when people connect to wikifix or co-create something new we do so because we want that thing to exist. We want the outcome.

This closes the gap between supply and demand. In its final iteration, as a planet, we will only create what we need - with zero waste and zero need to 'create' demand.

In a world of limited resource plundering the things we have in abundance, to make the most of the things we don't, has to be the right thing to do.

Our creativity, our desire and ability to connect, to be social beings, these we have in abundance. Tapping them is both exciting in its potential and wise as a strategy for success. It is what 90:10 does.

It ultimately means there will be more of what all of us need. All of us.

Efficiency that is better for all.
Efficiency for a bigger reason.
That's why we believe in efficiency. Driven by innovation - leading to transformation.

It's not about the tech, it's about the people

We understand the tech doesn't perform the magic. People do.

The tech is simply the tools through which the business of new business (and new organisation) is done. It is the tools the crowd, this we species of ours, the edglings, us, are using to build our self-organised tomorrow.

I don't want to build the next Twitter, Facebook or Google (though I'll happily consult on how they could and should monetise) - I'm interested in what emerges from them and what comes after them - what communities of purpose can and will do with these tools.

Connecting people who care about the same stuff gets that stuff done better. It innovates best-fit solutions and gets to those best-fit solutions faster and cheaper.

It's Wikifixing. It's global. And it's because people give a damn - if only you'll let them.

As I detailed in Social + Media = Change, I believe the real RoI of social media is unleashed by the way it enables adhoc communities of purpose to form; This is what the money has been waiting to follow.

These communities exist. They want to make stuff better. They want to join in creating the things that matter to them.

Recently, inspired by Clay Shirky, I wrote: Media that publishes without a comment box, publishes broken

That is, publishing without being open to contribution, is the wrong model for the networked world.

There is a version for business - in fact for all organisations:

'A business that operates without a comment box, operates broken'.

That is, a business that fails to open up to the riches it could share in through the feedback loops, real-time co-creation and wikifixing of the power of the network is a business that is in peril - at risk of being disrupted and defeated by those that are.

Next to those from the self-organised, open future, it is broken.

90:10 is all about fixing that - becoming truly and effectively Open For Business.

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The significance of Twitter in search

The fact that search (Google/Bing) is opening up to Twitter is very significant. Why? because group forming is all about opening up the silo.
Blogs have remained the least silo'd form of user publishing up until now. You don't have to be a member of 'blogger.com' to read this blog, find it's outpourings or (crucially) respond to it (me).

User-publishing = expression of our metadata.
Expression of our metadata = ways in which others who share the same issues/concerns/passions as us can find us. This is critical for group forming.

Remember each extra node on a network doubles its value.

So being able to find one more person expressing, through their metadata, the same stuff you are expressing means one extra node on your network - with the doubling of opportunity to solve your shared problem that (potentially) equates to.

The realtime nature of twitter amplifies the potential for action -and therefore value. (connecting with those who care enough about the same thing you do right now, enough to drop everything to help you fix it, has great value).

But Twitter is/was a silo. You had to be participating to find each other. But if search can fix that - the tweets escape the silo. You can attract even more connections because your metadata escapes the silo. More nodes can be added to more networks.

Search can add a lot of value still - something Facebook should pay a little attention. Use its internal search and you get the impression of getting a scant view of silos within silos within silos. So much metadata trapped - so many connections failing to be made.

Believe in open.

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Wave : Real-time Collaboration Google-style

You've heard the buzz, you've watched it trend - and you've given up on the hour long video... well here's the 7 min version.
Google Wave really is worth at least that much of your time :-)

Why we need an Adsense that values relationships

So why don't I have Adsense on my blog? Google keeps pushing it at me. Why don't I take this free money?

The first reason is simple and mercenary. The payment I may receive via Adsense is too low to tempt me. The return on my time not sufficiently rewarding. ( I know, I've tried in the past).

That may be because there are insufficient advertisers for the Adwords related to the stuff I blog about. And that means the ads served seem rather less like the helpful content that Adsense promises and more like the spam it seeks to avoid. (image courtesy)

And I don't want to put you off, dear reader. I value our relationship more than I value a few cents from Google.

A lot more actually, which is where RoI comes in. Or perhaps we should call it RoR - return on reputation and/or relationship?

By allowing advertising which could sell you something I have not tried myself, I can't give it my endorsement.

I can't recommend it to you. In fact an ad may pop up for a product or service I will actively recommend you do not use. Each time this happens our relationship is damaged and my reputation with you is diminished.

Adsense takes no account of the value we both place on this.

I'd like to think the niche nature of this community is such that should I recommend a product, service, event etc you will give it quite serious consideration.

Our conversations can be – and regularly are – one to one. And this is the reality of the future online as more and more we become The Eighth Mass Media - the publishers, advertisers, marketers, distributors, connectors.

You'll give me the time of day because over time you have come to learn from experience that we share the same thirst for knowledge about certain things, have similar problems to solve etc. We are one of my favourite things - a community of purpose.

In short, we have a relationship in which we exchange trust to build reputation.

I described a simple model previously which could value reputation using something like Adsense. It may be worth reviewing again.

I think if a model could be devised and implemented which raised the valuation of reputation and therefore of our recommendations, one to another, it would kill the incumbents.

Who would stick with the few cents of Adsense if instead you had a way of being rewarded for the recommendations you give freely to those you know will value them?

It’s a micro-relationships model, but not a micro-payment one. Car manufacturers have been know to pay up to £300 to large media outfits for a lead which results in a test drive. We as individuals will come to expect equal returns in our niches.

That’s mostly because our recommendations come with our reputations and micro-relationships tightly bundled to them.

We don’t give our recommendations lightly. False recommendations are taken personally. We lose friends. Your recommendations would become ultimately worthless. And we understand that recommendation is in the eye of the perceiver – and we don’t want to lose face by giving friends something they perceive as ill conceived. (Yes, I do think my recommendation to you is more valuable than a recommendation from some form of mass media broadcasting at the lowest common denominator of its audience.)

We know our friends (our communities of purpose) in ways advertisers – even Google – can’t touch.

The future is not in-context, related, targeted. It is in conversational flow (with all the real-time that suggests), peer-to-peer recommendation and consistently and constantly validated reputation - otherwise known as human relationships.

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To fly you need us Supermen beneath your wings

I hear The Face is coming back. As a magazine (though most likely digital,  free or subscription only). I wish the team good luck.

I like to think of the role of print editors these days in terms of glider pilots.

The more skilled the pilot, the more thermals he may find, the higher he may, in the short term, rise.

If the conditions are right he might even perform a few impressive aerobatics.

If the weather is less than ideal he won't be taking risks.

He'll be doing everything he can to keep that bird in the sky just a little bit longer.

Every media company with print interests believes it has better gliders and pilots than the other guys.

So they can stay in the air just a little longer than the rest.
(Image courtesy)

They all started a long way up, with the advantage of being flown there by a powered plane - all the advantages mass media used to enjoy; route to market; distribution, access to exclusives; unavoidable advertising; monopoly on publication etc.

Now they have a slingshot to fire a new launch into the air. Staying up for long periods requires ever greater skill.

Meanwhile we've all learned to fly - without the need for your planes or gliders. And we take that Superman ability and carry aloft Twitter and Facebook, Youtube and  flickr, eBay and Google.
Together we can lift anything, raise it as high as we choose.

And from up here we watch the old world push gliders off cliffs.

Good luck and good fortune to all who fly them. Those who soar will do so by convincing enough of us there is a good reason to come to your glider and support it on our Superman shoulders.

To coin a sacherine phrase: We are the wind beneath your wings.