Hollywood is worried, although they have not yet had a full-blown panic attack. Their bedrock market - the one they have always taken for granted - is eroding beneath their feet. Generation X, is growing up and their tastes have changed. The once captive audience that grew up on the "Star Wars" movies that their parents took them to is finding that their own children are not nearly as impressed as the Gen-X parents once were with special effects.
But that is not the only place we are seeing changes.
Video games are capturing a bigger piece of the pie.
"If I had some time in the afternoon, and it was a choice between watching a movie or playing a game, I'd rather play a game," said Marlon Castro, 35, of Foster City.
Already, the gate is down not only at theaters, but also at Blockbuster Video - once the powerhouse of video has taken yet another hit as reported on PBS, Marketplace. The reports says,
Blockbuster is expected to report a third quarter loss today. Efforts to adjust its brick-and-mortar business model to compete with on-line DVD distribution don't appear to be working. Jeff Tyler reports
In short, the market in going through a shakeout - one which Laura and I have watched closely.
It is no secret that I take much of what Clayton Christensen says, to heart. Christensen is a professor at the Harvard Business School. His specialty is the evolution of technology.
I have a few observations of my own which square with Christensen's observations.
New technologies are often force-fit to solve existing problems - and that makes sense. We have today's problems that need to be solved. Disruptive technologies are those that unseat the market leader, the dominant player, the king of the hill. In film, Polaroid, the instant picture people, did not survive. Wedded to emulsion technology, Polaroid did not take the grasp the realities of the emerging videotape market. Polaroid plunged millions into its Polavision. The product is now a curio.
What seems to be the case is that new technology creates new markets and disrupts old channels of distribution. Revenue and distribution models change - as do tastes and forms and even cost structures. Can emulsion film compete with digital? The business model Polaroid had was to provide cameras at cost and sell the film to make the revenue. The digital camera turned that model on its head.
Both radio and television evolved over time into what they are today, but first they experimented with older forms - such as vaudeville - before settling into their current content.
2006
The silent revolution hasn't been so silent - computer generated graphics, but the interesting thing is that film makers are not the only ones who have benefited. To be sure, the barriers to entry for a film company are substantial - high-cost equipment, pricey actors, and technical issues having to do with real-world filming.
More and more, blue screens and animation have crept into the movie process. And the directors are fascinated with their toys. As an aficionado, I enjoy listening to the director's commentary - sometimes good, sometimes really bad - and the interesting thing I am hearing is how they used some special effects gimmick to accomplish something. It wasn't a commentary about the story; the commentary was about how they managed to make some effect happen. I suppose there is nothing wrong with that, but it does suggest that the movie making mind-set is currently driven by technology.
And yet, the "Revenge of the Sith" has not ignited the popular culture the way very first "Star Wars" movie did. Re-releasing the original one, with current special effects technology inserted into it, had little tangible impact.
The trend has been for films to be turned into video games, yet there is a countertrend where video games, such as "Tomb Raider," are turned into movies.
Content
I suppose this all reminds me of the first Apple computers - when people collected fonts, just like some people collect baseball trading cards. Memos appeared with a variety of font. (Guilty, your Honor). But soon people got back to the content and were not quite as mesmerized at the fonts as they once had been.
The basic difference between video game and movies is the level of involvement in the outcome.
This is the dark horse, yet always the front runner. Technologies come and go - but involving the reader-viewer in the story and giving the person a say in the outcome, is a powerful thing which sall too often gets forgotten.
This is where interactive will change the landscape and the time is much closer than people think.
]]>The gating step is how much data can be delivered how fast over what system to the destination.
I look back ten years ago and Netscape was the rage. My customers changed markedly from 1990 to 1996. In 1990, they were mostly software oriented people who could pop the top of a computer and fix stuff as fast as Gyro Gearloose, could.
Ten years before that, most computers with any power were the size of a refrigerator and word processing was something that required a special set of hardware - and Wang was its name. Color laser printers, digital cameras, flat panel monitors, search engines, web cafes - the concepts ranged from Buck Rogers to the incomprehensible.
The other day a news reporter told how some students were tapping out text messages on their cellular phone - while in their pockets, no less - and sending schoolmates answers to questions during a test. This has led to some schools to contemplate a policy of banning all cellular communication - especially, phones.
The generation that has taken the place of Gen-X, young boys with money (allowances) for whom movies are targeted, have stopped going to films. Passive watching of programming is hardly in peril, but the trend is unmistakable and spiraling.
Interactivity in games might be a large market, but it is hardly the largest. The revenue models are still taking shape, but what is clear is the firms that find ways to interact electronically will have a competitive edge over those that are still door-to-door - in the way of the Fuller Brush Company.
Something I have noticed is the "standard" looking web site and design. Like a newspaper, having a standard format is not altogether bad. There is the content, and the ads, and the various sections, and even when we're in another town, we know how to look through the paper.
Today, this is where Web 2.0 seems to be. Borrowing largely from the Sears catalog and the Yellow Pages model, web pages present products on the "TV screen" or give information on how to locate the establishment. Frequently asked questions are addressed, but the infrequently asked ones take some time - and sometimes a competitor or alternative solution is found before the question gets answered.
Take an example of what might be in store. Suppose I would like to own a sports car such as a Ferrari.
Nice brochures and pictures, but let's say they really wanted to get my attention. What about sitting inside - somewhat virtually - and taking a spin? Does any dealership take its customers out for a 185 mile per hour ride? Not likely you'll be allowed to sit inside one of the ones in the showroom (they're locked) let along roar down the open road.
And if Ferrari decides they don't have the budget, maybe Corvette does.
Interactivity that is thrilling is not limited just to games.
]]>Dumbest thing said on the stage:
Bary Diller dismissed the idea that citizens with blogs and video editing software were major threats to the entertainment industry. "There is not that much talent in the world," Diller said. "There are very few people in very few closets in very few rooms that are really talented and can't get out."
When you think about it, that really is pretty dumb. This idea that the entertainment industry is actually open and accessible to new talent is a popular myth perpetuated by many who "make it" in Hollywood. But these "winners" fail to acknowledge that many talents languish their entire careers in the "paying their dues" struggle to make ends meet ... and so many more simply never even try.
This blindness to the realities of creative talent in and out of the entertainment industrial complex is not new, especially when it comes to the internet. Mr. Diller's attitude towards creatives is the very same attitude that helped to kill the broadband entertainment boom in the late '90s: the idea that talent is cheap and that it's the industry that actually creates entertainment content -- presumably using Excel spreadsheets and lunches at Nozawa. Companies like pop.com and DEN blasted through tens of millions of dollars, spending nearly all of it on management and not on writers and artists and directors and producers and actors, and ended up closing their doors with precious little to show for it. In fact, Pop.com never even got started. As Red Herring noted (.pdf), these "experts" didn't know what they were doing. And after these spectacular train wrecks and the dot bomb, the smaller players simply didn't have a chance.
But now it's six years later, and the net has changed, with faster, cheaper and better tools to create and distribute new media. And yet it seems that it's not only Mr. Diller's board members who agree with him:
Of course Diller is right about this. The ability to create doesn't mean that everyone has the talent to create something outstanding. Which explains why the vast majority of private websites have a readership that's generally composed of the friends and family of the creator. And there's nothing wrong with this either. We're not all Picassos, nor should we expect to be.
This is a fair point. Much of the net explosion is driven by individual expression for expression's sake, never mind the ballyhoos.
But the real question is not what motivates most personal bloggers to blog, but what blocks motivated creators from creating. In other words, the real groundswell today is in the avenues of distribution, marketing and promotion that are emerging outside of the mega-corporate entertainment complex -- avenues that not only can draw audiences away from the mainstream offerings, but can actually create and cultivate new markets for these new entertainment forms. The barriers to entry are so much lower than they were even 10 years ago, there are a lot more people with fires in their bellies who will be able to get past their "one of these days" speeches in the coffee shop and actually create and distribute things -- product -- that people want to experience.
We saw this when transistor radios exploded on the marketplace, giving Japanese companies in-roads into American markets. And we see it today with podcasting and video shorts and digital movies. The new media paradigm is disrupting the closed, top-down nature of the old media marketplace. Already large numbers of people are seeking out alternatives for news and narrative. And we're only what, 5 years into blogs? 10-15 years of popular use of the internet? 2-3 years of significant broadband penetration? Pre-wimax and internet 2? We're just getting started.
Then again, maybe it's not such a surprise to hear Mr. Diller's perspective in the context of the Web 2.0 conference. After all, when you have admission going at $2,800 and sponsorship from a veritable Who's Who of internet industry corporations, maybe the appeal of "web 2.0" is not its disruption of existing hierarchies but rather the profit-promising idea that there's a "new release" of the internet that everyone needs to buy into (again).
How successful they can be at branding the internet today as a version release, I don't know. The phrase "web 2.0" has caught on, but it's hardly descriptive of what's happening. What these large corporations need is a certain degree of predictability in the marketplace, and the ever-evolving new media marketplace is just a little too fast and wild and uncooperative to make a "web 2.0" prospectus a very safe investment.
At least that's how it seems to me now. It might all change tomorrow.
]]>The father tried various ways of explaining it and finally said. "It's a printer."
I type on these keys. The flat panel monitor takes up little space. The laser printer is light and sits nearby. At my elbow sits my scanner that can resolve to 12,000 dots per inch, dpi. Just beyond that sits the HP ink jet that runs the few color jobs I have. As an ex-HP person, I know that the cartridges cost under a dollar out the door. The mark-up is staggering, but that's how Vancouver Division justifies selling the printers for a song.
Bill Hewlett and David Packard would have gone nuts over that business model as it was against "The HP Way"; The HP Way, a blog I am working on for a future posting.
I am connected through a firewall router that goes into a cable modem - my system - modem, router and computer, all connect through a battery-back-up surge protector. Power could go down and so long as the net is up, I can finish a download.
Ah. My hard drive is chugging. Norton is sending down a live virus protection update.
I wonder, if I went back to when I was seven, what would I think of all this? I wanted to publish a magazine when I was in middle school. My printer sits right there. Not only that, I have my own record studio.
Wanna watch a full length motion picture in Dolby (what's that?) stereo? It's on this flat disk, smaller than an LP record. Where did the reels of film go?
Want to enlarge a negative or copy it down to the grain? I can do that too. Or I can send photographs and talk for free over the internet. I can access data, take college courses over the cable.
You know that most of this has happened since 1997, and actually since about 2001. Four years.
At work I hear our planners talking about terabytes, TB, storage instead of gigabytes, GB, and the tea leaves say TB's will be on every home computer hard drive sooner than later.
In the blogs below there was a discussion about disclosure and information. I suggest that the disclosure is not all that different from when I was seven and before all this technology. People used to gossip about the neighbors and what odd things were going on two doors down and across the street.
People used to write letters to the editor and some even got published. Now we skip all that and write blogs.
Amy Gahran suggested the day of the press release was over and I agree with her. So is the day of the "sound truck," remember those - there was one in "Back to the Future." in the 1955 reality. The day of leaflets is also in its twilight. Coupons? Get them online. Pay bills? Online. Balance my check book? Online. Write a check! What's that? I have a debit card.
Back to the father of the seven year old - the typewriter is printer - that was 1994. That son is 18, now. When that son is a father and has a seven year old son, some time out there in 2021, what will the world look like?
What antique stores will house today's technological treasures?
I wonder what life will be like.
]]>I have died on gone to heaven! These courses are free and they are online and they originate at MIT. They range from Aeronautics to Writing, stopping along the way at Languages, Economics, History, Women's Studies, Business, Music, Mathematics and on and on.
Some are even on video: I was already familiar with Walter Lewin's Physics Courses from the University of Washington Channel and Gilbert Strang's Linear Algebra Course available in streaming video.
I was reviewing Professor Strang's course, when by chance, I moved to another browser page at the site and there they were-the keys to the kingdom. Free. Walk in. There is the Course outline, syllabus and calendar, lecture notes, assignments, exams, further on-line resources, in some cases video or audio recordings of the lectures, and an on-line discussion group.
This is available, online, from arguably the greatest technical school in the world, perhaps the greatest university in the world, technical or not.
Two of my alma maters are also doing something along the same line. As I mentioned above, the University of Washington is broadcasting courses - both internet and television - and with relatively uncomplicated camera work along with fairly good lighting and sound, they are simply pointing the camera at the lectern and out it goes. The UW had a fabulous graduate course in Industrial Engineering just a few years back. Harvard Business School (alas limited only to alums as far as I know) has a video library of conferences and seminars that are playable over RealPlayer. Unlike the science courses where drawings play a central role, the business courses are (at least to a larger extent) comprehensible on audio-only, without slides or chalk boards, so they can make drive time a pleasure.
But in as far as I have seen, the frontrunner is MIT.
The reader might ask why this worthy of a blog. "Knock yourself out, but MIT courses aren't most people's cup of tea."
The virtual University will not replace the traditional University or classes and I will illustrate with a story of why I think human interaction is important. Two years ago I returned to the State University and took some additional mathematics courses. I enrolled in upper division mathematics classes where the other students were young enough to be my children's age. That's where I learned of Strang's MIT Course on-video. I am mature enough and interested enough in the subject not to require the professor to bang the drum to attend and to get me to do my homework. What my professors did that meant the most was that they graded and returned my homework. I got my precious "red marks" where I had messed up. That was worth the whole tuition right there.
And yes, there is a vitality that one gets in being in a classroom.
However, having the virtual courses is wonderful. If I were in secondary school and this technology was available to me, I am positive I would be taking advantage of the opportunity.
And I suppose the main reason I find this fascinating is that in the future, this kind of interactive learning will be commonplace.
As someone who has been out of school for some time, it is refreshing to know that you "still have what it takes" and likewise to find out that it does not take all that much to stay current and to also feel the excitement of staying current - notwithstanding that the sheer volume of information is mind boggling, but that is the nature of the beast for everyone.
The site is worth a look see, even for people who are not as enthralled about MIT as I am. It is a peek into the future-even if that peek is only a look just around the corner.
]]>The Yellow Pages, a history
The first yellow pages were not yellow at all. They appeared in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1878 and contained no phone numbers. At the time the operator simply connected the caller. The first yellow pages contained fifty names and consisted of one sheet of paper.
The actual yellow pages emerged by chance one day in 1883. During a regular telephone directory print run, the printer ran out of white paper and, in a moment of invention born of necessity, he switched to some yellow paper stock he had on hand. Three years later, Reuben H. Donnelly, published a directory with names, addresses, products and services. In 1909, coupons became part of the yellow pages.
Some might say utilizing the yellow pages was an early "net browsing." In 1961 AT&T introduced the slogan, "let your fingers do the walking."
According to an article in FindArticles.com - The Reach Of The Yellow Pages - Industry Overview American Demographics, Nov 1, 2002, by Sandra Yin, as of 2002, there were over 7000 different books calling themselves Yellow Pages (YP) published by over 240 companies. Yin describes the familiar book:
They are decidedly unglamorous. The big, bulky Yellow Pages are the directories most commonly hidden in drawers, tucked away in closets and tossed under sofas. Sometimes they even double as booster seats for children too small to sit at the dining room table . . .
Although many consider YP publishing to be a mature industry with little potential for growth, this old ad medium has managed to survive in an era of new technology and is even undergoing a makeover to ensure that it becomes more relevant.
Ordering a book on-line or a pizza or even booking that trip to Hawaii - or is it Cleveland this week - or checking the bank account while we're at it, seems to be the way of the future. And in a world where people, and not their fingers, are doing the walking - replete with cellular phones - it is more likely the YP will stay under the couch or under junior.
Besides the phone going mobile, a generation of keyboardists has grown up knowing how to touch-type and are ready to buy based on what they see on a screen. Additionally, other on-line directories calling themselves "yellow pages" have entered the market as well. Thus, when speaking of yellow pages, it could be any of the over 7000 directories calling themselves that.
Yet the YP are resilient and Yin tells us that 119 million Americans, that's 57-percent, look in the YP once a week. That means they serve more people than are wired for the Internet.
Yet, the direction of the tide is clear, notes Yin. ". . . annual revenue growth for the industry has been slowing, dropping to a projected 1.5 percent in 2002 from 7.1 percent in 1999." She cites factors such as an aging population and an influx of those for whom the yellow pages are not part of a tradition. And she goes on to say, "In 2001, almost 1 in 3 (27 percent) said they used the Internet to look for products and services instead of consulting the YP, up from 17 percent in 1998 . . ." One wonders what that number is in 2005, but according to an older source, circa 2000, Evolving the last mile: digital-loop-carrier approach, "By 2002, it is estimated that 12.9 million DSL lines will be put into service, up from 770,000 in 1999, according to Piper Jaffray in US Bancorp's February 2000 report. It is expected that 60% of these lines will serve the residential market."
The Internet Cometh
The Order Entry Department now is the computer in every home.
In the 1980's, American Hospital Supply Corporation, AHSC, rolled forward with ASAP. In this concept, AHSC brought Just-in-Time (JIT) inventory control to hospitals. Placing computers at every purchasing agent's desk who would have one, the computer channeled orders to AHSC warehouses, and trucks with hospital supplies rolled up once or twice a day, sometimes more, with fresh inventory. The AHSC warehouse was now the hospital's warehouse. The best part was, the hospital no longer carried the inventory.
Two decades later, with computers increasingly making their way into homes, the concept that AHSC implement in the 1980's almost seems quaint.
Telephone vs. Internet
The interesting thing is that the telephone and computer operate over the same system - telephone lines.
Originally configured for voice transmission, telephone lines now carries far more data than they do voice.
In a recent television commercial for a travel service, contestants in a "Family Feud" style show had to book a hotel room in Hawaii to win the round. Straightaway, one of the families got a hold of the polite reservations operator at the hotel. The other family won by simply entering the data on-line.
Point made.
Instead of talking to an operator, agent, or order processing representative who keys in the information, the buyer simply does this directly and faster and probably more accurately. A customer is less likely to mis key their own name than is someone on the other end of the line.
Thinking back to the original one-sheet yellow pages, in 1878 the caller told the operator the name of the firm. The caller did not need the number. The call was placed and business transacted. At least two additional human-to-human interactions were made to whatever other interactions were required to fulfill the caller's request. With the advent of telephone numbers and the yellow pages, interaction with the telephone switchboard operator were reduced to a minimum. Today, the computer now makes it possible to by-pass the order processing center altogether and the customer's requisition, through a secure server, goes straight to the shipping department and to a courier and it is possible to track the parcel from the loading dock to delivery.
But not everything can be bought sight unseen or used over the net. Sandra Yin writes,
And the directories deliver: The typical YP display ad for an attorney pulls in an average of 900 calls per year and generates $17 in sales per ad dollar spent (bankruptcy lawyers generate an average of $31 in sales per dollar spent), according to CRM Associates. Restaurants take in $3.50 in sales per dollar spent, and at the higher end of the spectrum, car dealers and car services average $280 in sales per ad dollar.
Clearly, it is better to hire an attorney face-to-face. A leaky faucet is not effectively fixed via the telephone and only take-out has taken-off as a form of ordering food. Buying a car or refinancing a home over the Internet never quite ignited as a concept, although they keep plugging away.
She goes on to say,
Total circulation for the four Bell regional directory publishers, which accounted for 83 percent of YP ad sales [in 2001], was flat, at 373 million, compared with the previous year's circulation.
The Exodus Continues
The Yellow Pages are far from gone and they will continue to thrive. But the first sign of decline of the YP is that growth has flatten. The Achilles heel of the traditional YP is found its strength - its unity.
People can have the Model T in any color - so long as it's black.
Henry Ford (1863-1947)
Categories are the sections in which the yellow pages collect similar products and companies. The Yellow Pages are not a magazine where advertisers can bring their tailored message and special selling points to a specific customer group. Whereas a search on Google can narrow the choices, the YP has a different concept, and it clusters them. The Yellow Pages is a level playing field directory with specific slots and, in an era before relational data bases and search engines, this made perfect sense. While researching this article, this writer looked at the choices offered by the regional Bell YP. What is striking is how well they have organized the menu structure to shuttle the potential advertisers into a book-searchable category. And the categories are logical. Once the category is narrowed, an array of names, phone numbers, and addresses are offered. Some have small block ads - and now the real sifting begins. Who are these people? Can they meet my needs?
The web browsers break with this concept by competing outside the yellow-pages-style categories. This change in the way people make purchasing decisions is not easily matched by the way the YP have traditionally served although, ever adaptable, the major YP have gone on-line. But the model endures. The Yellow Pages are a searchable directory, not the entire Internet.
The modern search engine has accelerated this trend and changed the landscape dramatically. In just one month, March 2005, Google carried 2.3 billion searches out of the Nielsen, estimate of 4.3 billion searches, dwarfing the estimated 159 million people who look at the yellow pages at least once a month. Granted, the search engine traffic is not entirely pure commerce while it can be argued that that is true for the yellow pages. Yin says,
What makes YP users especially valuable as potential customers is their mind-set: They're ready to spend. No other ad medium can claim that 9 in 10 customers who see its ads ultimately make a purchase, according to New York City-based Simmons Market Research Bureau.
What the engines are doing, and what is shifting the way people buy, is that the eight words of the search engine query narrow down the search - beyond the YP categories.
Some marketing firms are encouraging business to push their product out through the web. The key, according to those who advocate this strategy, is to rank high in a search. Spam, pop-up ads, web page ads are part of the strategy to push the message out onto the Internet.
The alternative to the push strategy is the pull strategy. It is where the person at the other end of the Internet pulls the site because it fits a searcher's specific needs - and this is where a web site is a big asset to a small firm.
For example, enter the word "plumber" in Google and about 3.4 million hits appear. Add the word "Denver" to the search and I am down to 100,000 possibilities. Add the word "faucet" and it drops to 10,000. Add "24-hour" to the search and it is down to 282. Further refinements get me to the plumber who will come fix my faucet in the middle of the night.
Placing an advertisement in the yellow pages, due to the category structure of the pages, turns the product or service into a commodity - a no-no in the minds of many marketing professionals. Yet, there is good reason to continue to advertise in the Yellow Pages for certain customers will only come along this avenue.
On the other hand, the Internet offers several advantages. The founders of pingV recognized this trend and created the firm in order to address the new reality.
]]>
- Search engines have changed how people get information.
- Search engines have, in many cases, replaced existing channels of distribution.
- Businesses are finding they can cut cost by fulfilling orders over the computer and customers seem to welcome that way of doing things.
- The Internet offers a new way of getting a message out - and web sites can be rapidly adapted to reflect changing circumstance.
- Small business are all too often ignored by larger web service corporations whose offerings are targeted toward other large corporations.
- The largest web site growth with be among small business who can play on a new "level playing field" - the search engine.
- There is a real need for world-class work, at an affordable price, by people who cater to businesses that are not part of the Fortune 500.
So, yeah, blogs are cool. Anything that gives people a voice benefits society and makes us all better and smarter - and, as bloggers have proved, makes established information outlets more accountable. But blogs don't seem to be the second coming of the printing press. They're just another turn of the wheel in communications technology.
More likely, a few years from now, after the blog bubble has normalized, we'll look back and say that this technology made a difference and that our total fascination with it seems quaint.
He calls it the "blog bubble." This leaves me wondering: Was the craze over the telephone a "bubble"? Was the radio simply a passing fad?
My colleague Katherine has spoken much about Debora Spar and her insights on "disruptive technologies." I will leave the real discussion to her -- to them -- except to make the observation that it's not all that surprising that a (minor) celebrity in what must be considered the "old media" takes issue with the credibility, longevity -- even the reality -- of a "new media" phenomenon like blogs.
But in the past, each technology has also gone through a cycle of superhype, followed by a hype-o-glycemic crash. After that, the technology reaches equilibrium and steadily evolves into a crucial piece of the global fabric.
"For the moment, blogs are on the ascent to the detriment of other media activities," says Larry Downes, professor of information economics at the University of California-Berkeley. "But newer and more interesting communications technologies will unthrone blogs soon enough."
The novelty of blogs will wear off, Downes says, just as it did with Web sites a handful of years ago. "How much time do you spend anymore just surfing the Web - you know, for fun?" he asks.
The step that Mr. Maney seems to miss -- or deliberately ignore -- is that these new technologies become part of the very fabric of our society. I'm sure in the early days of telephones, people would call each other just because they could. "Wow! Isn't this so terrific that we're talking to each other from 100 miles away?" they would say to each other, though perhaps not in so many words. Following on Professor Downes' rhetorical question: How many people simply call each other up, "you know, for fun?"
Blogs have changed the very fabric of our communications culture. The obvious impact has been in politics. The rising influence of high-profile bloggers like Markos has been the most noted. Also, the mainstream media have acknowledged -- albeit grudgingly -- that the "blogosphere" has fact-checked some important news stories, and even broken some key ones.
Heather Green, on BusinessWeek.com, observed that blogs
are simply another innovation in a long line of changes in publishing. But certain innovations, such as the Internet and, we argue, blogs, have characteristics that allow them to leap ahead of other inventions in impact. The ability to publish your thoughts easily, quickly, and link to others is part of what makes blogs stand out.
There's no missing that. The people have found their voices. So why is it that the mainstream media, for all their "objectivity" on the news, find no parallels to the Gutenberg press? Instead we get more and more treatment of "the bloggers" as either a politically cohesive insurgency, or another channel to compete with cable news.
And then there's Jon Stewart's hilarious take on it all.
What's been missed from most mainstream analyses of blogs is how the people, the individuals, the citizens, the consumers, suddenly have ways to communicate with each other. This has had profound effects upon politics -- but more subtly, yet perhaps more profoundly, the biggest impact is happening in business.
Why ask Apple for tech support when you can go to an Apple users' discussion forum and get your question answered within minutes? Why go to a travel agent when you can go online and find the best fare within minutes? Why complain to some customer service department when you can go gripe on a discussion board and be heard, really heard?
This is the heart of the Open Source revolution in computer systems and software. Why go with a product offered up by some monolithic corporate giant that really doesn't give a damn about you, when you can go with an open source alternative that is developed by individuals with whom you can talk about what your needs are?
Amy Gahran offers this insight:
This may seem obvious, but the two things which matter most in virtually any aspect of media (including the net) are content and connections. These principles, which are deeply intertwined, form the foundation of all types of value yielded by media whether for broadcast TV, a national magazine, a web site, a weblog, or a simple exchange of e-mail messages.
The opportunity that comes from interactive media like dynamic websites is that this connection can be two-way. In a previous post, Ms. Gahran makes the real insight:
At some level, all events, actions, and communications are deeply personal, because they affect who we are within ourselves and in context with others. This, I suppose, is why I care so much about communciation and interaction, how we learn about our world and the meanings we make of it.
It seems that when I take the time to focus on connections between people, meanings and patterns appear. Even flaws and stress are an important part of the picture. I appreciate this world more, and I sense my own place in it more securely.
So even though I prattle on here about technology, media, etc., please understand what compels me toward those fields: people. I like to see people connecting in a more conscious way, even though these experiences are often imperfect or uncomfortable. Every time we connect, and especially every time we empathize, if only for a moment, our world gets wider and stronger. We can accomplish more.
Connections. How many connections, real human connections, do you have in your business life? Of the ones you do have, how much weight do they carry over your other relationships? Do you think that maybe if you had stronger connections with your customers -- and that they felt they had stronger connections with you -- that this could have some impact on your business?
What if you ignored those real human connections in your business dealings? What if you limited all those connections to just those with whom you actually shook hands? What about the rest of the world?
Blogs -- and I use "blogs" as shorthand for the entire online interactive phenomenon happening as you read this -- are not just a new information or entertainment medium -- they're a new way of communicating. What "blogging" is will almost certainly change over the coming years, but what's almost certain to remain is the idea that business communication, real business communication, is a two-way street. It's a way to build relationships, connections, trust. And you don't need Madison Avenue dollars to do it.
Back to Professor Spar:
We are undeniably living in a revolutionary period. We see this revolution every day and feel it crack the structures of our lives. We see it in the rush toward Silicon Valley; in the euphoria that drove Internet stocks to unbelievable heights; in the intrusion of e-mail and surfing and "dot.com" everything. At a more profound level, it is also clear that this revolution will seriously affect both business and politics. It will open vast new vistas for commerce and, in the process, will challenge relations between private firms and the governments that seek to regulate them. The information revolution is alive and well. It will change the way we work, they way we play, and the way in which we order our societies. It will change in particular how we think about governments, because cyberspace is a realm that seems inherently to ignore traditional authorities. Cyberspace, in fact, is a truly global phenomenon, something that spans borders irrepressibly and imperceptibly. Purely by accident, the Net shatters our notions of what a "state" does or what a "national economy" is. For cyberspace is bigger than any state and well beyond traditional powers of enforcement. What can the Pope do if Bishop Gaillot uses his site to condemn celibacy in the priesthood and encourage the use of condoms? Not much. How can Singapore stop its citizens from peeking at Hustler on their laptops? Or the U.S. government prevent American firms from using high-powered security software in their overseas affiliates? Again, they essentially can't. Silently, cyberspace challenges the power of government by going where it, by definition, cannot: across national borders.
When other bonds fail, what is there but the personal bond?
Amy Gahran offers this insight:
This may seem obvious, but the two things which matter most in virtually any aspect of media (including the net) are content and connections. These principles, which are deeply intertwined, form the foundation of all types of value yielded by media, whether for broadcast TV, a national magazine, a web site, a weblog, or a simple exchange of e-mail messages.
The opportunity that comes from interactive media like dynamic websites is that this connection can be two-way. In a previous post, Ms. Gahran makes the real insight:
At some level, all events, actions, and communications are deeply personal, because they affect who we are, within ourselves and in context with others. This, I suppose, is why I care so much about communciation and interaction, how we learn about our world and the meanings we make of it.
It seems that when I take the time to focus on connections between people, meanings and patterns appear. Even flaws and stress are an important part of the picture. I appreciate this world more, and I sense my own place in it more securely.
So even though I prattle on here about technology, media, etc., please understand what compels me toward those fields: people. I like to see people connecting in a more conscious way, even though these experiences are often imperfect or uncomfortable. Every time we connect, and especially every time we empathize, if only for a moment, our world gets wider and stronger. We can accomplish more.
Connections. How many connections, real human connections, do you have in your business life? Of the ones you do have, how much weight do they carry over your other relationships? Do you think that maybe if you had stronger connections with your customers -- and that they felt they had stronger connections with you -- that this could have some impact on your business?
What if you ignored those real human connections in your business dealings? What if you limited all those connections to just those with whom you actually shook hands? What about the rest of the world?
Blogs -- and I use "blogs" as shorthand for the entire online interactive phenomenon happening as you read this -- are not just a new information or entertainment medium -- they're a new way of communicating. What "blogging" is will almost certainly change over the coming years, but what's almost certain to remain is the idea that business communication, real business communication, is a two-way street. It's a way to build relationships, connections, trust. And you don't need Madison Avenue dollars to do it.
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