The (industrial) (r)Evolution of Media

The Difference Between Pioneers and Settlers

Americans need their media businesses to begin to make needed adjustments to their business model in order to better serve the changed markets for content. In order to expedite these changes it helps to recognize the difference, historically, between pioneers and settlers.

I am a big fan of old westerns. One reason why is because many capture the real mood and circumstances of the time the film portrays. There were economic and social highs and lows over the many decades as we moved west as a society. One of the most captivating periods of social transformation is the transition from scattered pioneers to competitive communities (markets) of settlers.  Once a frontier has been established this often involves a complicated social adjustment. (For instance: Thinking we should rely on government to manage the process is a reflex reaction but a very bad idea. Why? People should define their specific needs for government and it should not be the other way around. History shows that may invite greed and corruption when so many unknowns still exist.)

Pioneering anything requires a unique perspective and insight.  It requires skill sets most people (or companies) do not cultivate. In reviewing recent and distant history it is easy to see how the process naturally allows for inefficiencies. The inefficiencies are easily recognized later by the settlers because competition did not exist earlier. Different challenges that no longer exist are ignored as the old ways are often criticized. Yes, pioneers in our old west often wasted resources and often made no attempt to manage or conserve them but that perspective is now passed on by those who came after the pioneers.

Adding social structure to a newly settled frontier is a messy process. The vision of the few gives way to the Choices of the many. Traditions surrounding compromise and right-of-way must be established. Social contracts not previously considered often require revision in light of the needs of the new local markets. To do this, updated social norms must be accounted for and allowed room to change more with the place and the times...and then change again if needed. This is not the job of government and oligopolies will not do this well.  Successful social structures endure because they are sensitive and flexible to changing shared values of the many...not the few visionaries.  As populations grow the values of pioneers are inevitably in conflict with the newer settlers because expectations are expanded.  (Many great movie settings were born this way.)

What changed  since the late 1990's is very obvious: Technology. This change has enabled consumers of content (all kinds) to change their expectations and to have Choice for the first time. Choice is as important to the business of media as the railroad or modern guns were to settling the west and changed our nation forever. Choice has already transformed  us as a nation and how we communicate. (witness: social media) Much more change through Choice is coming.

Pioneers are both essential and reliable elements of a successful free society as they confront new frontiers. So too are settlers.  The analogy I am painting needs to be discussed (LOUDLY) in the new media these days. Government and regulatory bodies need to be removed from the business of content for The People when it comes to developing new business models for production and delivery systems. The notion that journalism might somehow go away is preposterous. Many of the same interests that have been firing journalists are the same ones hiring lobbyist to voice fearful concerns asking for unreasonable protection. I ask you to think hard about these issues because media is primary social tool. It is built into our founding agreement as a people. Media tools are among the most important components of a free society.  Government does not belong in the middle of these big decisions regulating one of our core freedoms. New business models will not be smartly figured out by government agencies...government tends to protect yesterday's shared values because it reflects consensus associated with lagging interests. Protecting old interests would be terribly unproductive for our society right now. Mature businesses commonly lose relevance when significant new technology comes along. New business models are put to use in order to more efficiently use new technology to serve changing markets. This is natural selection at work in the economy. The businesses that were most powerful in content production and distribution in the 20th century will probably not be the companies leading us in the 21st century unless government is allowed to hold us back using fear because of powerful lobbyists. So, how do we look forward and not backward?

We need crowds of competitively-minded settlers right now; lots of them. Settlers think big and are willing to risk it all to suffer humble beginnings and are capable of moving mountains slowly. The best days of some digital pioneers are already coming to an end...a time when their specific interests are in conflict with the needs of the new settlers. Many 20th century media pioneers feel like they should somehow be grandfathered into this new era. The old business model needs to be updated. Significantly Changed. Pulled Apart. Specialized. The parts will not go away but the fact that some parts will be re-allocated does not ordain ownership of these parts to the old enterprises as if it is royal title being passed down. There are no meaningful pedigrees in business that a market does not support by way of profits.  The businesses of building cars and banking has taught us this lesson many times recently. Failure must have stigma attached or winning means nothing. We are all going to have to earn it in the years ahead. Failing companies cannot be bailed out or we risk creating disincentives through bailouts.

If Congress and federal agencies get out of the way, the free markets will combine myriad new possibilities to produce more efficient content companies. This result will make us all better off than we are today.  We will have journalism, many new jobs, and better forms of communication benefiting our free society.  Right now, it does not matter if you produce journalism or entertainment. The tools we use to get our content products to market have changed and need to be changed much more in order to serve quickly changing communities of content consumers. Most pioneers move away as settlers arrive. A few of them are able to change (evolve) their perspectives and help to build the new communities that rise up around them even though they are no longer part of a powerful regional or local oligopoly.  They adjust and change with the new shared values around them. When you think about this, one thing is very clear: It's time to change. Are you ready? 

The end of this post is where I might begin a meaningful comparison of Google and Apple as both pioneer and settler. I'll save that for another post. Which do you think is more likely to adjust to settler lifestyle? The answer might surprise you.

Wired Magazine highlights how the settler mindset acts

The Perishability of Content: Re-Evaluating the social contract, slowly

update 5 09 10:

Since publishing this post the argument has been shown to me to already have much wider social application than I anticipated and is already developed in the realm of software patents and business process patents. One of the core qualities of significant social trends are how some core value is reflected upon in a variety of manifestations across a society. In this case it is about shared attitudes toward ownership of ideas as it related to IP, patents, and copyrights. Interestingly, these seemingly separate events are all part of one evolving social trend that can be monitored as such. Established interests in the business realm use an ever more complicated legal process to obfuscate the core public need: ever increasing utilization of good ideas to produce incremental innovation. The problem is how ideas have become protected like patents on machines and drugs once were. The age of digital innovation is ground zero for all these concerns and is subject the the era of Choice. The greater social good in the era of Choice is about being more connected using high quality ideas and whether or not ideas can be owned the same way a unique manufacture process has been protected by patents. So the perishability of content is about the ownership of ideas in the same way that we eventually decided that ranch owners ultimately were forced to erect fences to protect grazing for their cattle.  This is not esoteric if you produce daily news content in any modality, if you write software, and these day if you use math to produce a business process. The following video link is 28 minutes and shines a bright light on how individual interests are using our legal system to protect ideas that cost prevent from becoming more efficient in order to capture value for a single enterprise. From a very broad social standpoint, businesses are tools created by people to deliver value to markets of people. That is their role and responsibility. Over time the social fundamentals have evolved so that our laws are working harder for business interests that for the markets they serve. That is the current state of this trending process.

If space allowed (it does not) I could offer an esoteric discussion of how different portions of large social trends are seen to have phases that can be identified and how this phase of this particular trend is clearly nearing social exhaustion and typically this produces circumstances where the fundamental issues are out of balance with the greater public good. This is exactly why I am writing about this topic here. Viacom v. Google (You Tube) is a side show to this larger social trending process.

Even if you have no interest in the legal process surrounding tech issues, this video will offer insight to how this late stage trending is choking value off from the larger social need that the era of Choice is endeavoring to revive. Large and important social trends have at their core very simple social values that can be seen to swing from one polar extreme to the other.  This will take a while (as in several years more at least) but the value in identifying this now is precisely because social values sometimes change much more quickly than at other times. We are approaching one of those periods now. Expect change because it is needed and the social motivation to produce that change is based on need and noting less (like politics etc). This trending issue is a reflection of one important aspect of social need that surrounds the industrial revolution of media. 

video link: Patent Absurdity

Original publish date: 4 08 10

Viacom's lawsuit of Google's You Tube over copyright protection issues is a major social issue but so far most people see it only as one business fighting another business in court, so they dismiss it.

That's really too bad.

The implications of any decisive action will affect all Americans, and especially the youngest & brightest from focusing on what really matters most...incremental innovation. 

Even though the long term outlook is more predictable (generationally), the shorter iterations will change how content companies do business and how Americans, ultimately, make progress in these challenging times.  How we value things (our shared values related to information) is changing and more than ever the spotlight is being cast upon the behavior of newly competitive enterprises and the generational divide. This case matters to everyone because we are redrawing the official boundaries of acceptable behavior (as reflected by actual changing behavior). It is not everyday we re-write (or redefine) a social contract. It is worth a little reflection that goes beyond the demands of the quarterly earnings of over-leveraged companies.

If this introduction sounds like editorial, I encourage you to read through to the end.

The Great Media Pay Wall, and the incremental answer not being offered; yet

update 4 03 10 : This post is turning into a thread of links on the issue of fractionalization of demand and the market's current refusal to accommodate it. Links added at end. Dave

Paying media companies to produce high quality content is an idea that feels reasonable to everyone.  As we collectively move through this period of changing technology and shared values toward them we will also have to decide the many nuances surrounding this issue. It is not all so straight forward.  On the surface, however, a larger issue is being tested right now. Kind of.

Just about anyone weighing in on the issue of effectively monetizing content knows that the market for content has changed and that is why we find ourselves and our media companies where we are today. The psychology has changed along with the structure of the market,altering the fundamentals and the larger business trends.  Yet even though dramatic change in the market for content is acknowledged, it is not being acted upon in a manner that seems to really address the changes. Like an endless one-sided conversation in the headlines where management and unions negotiate during a strike, fairness and balanced perspectives are skipped in favor of grabbing an opportunity to make a soundbite that will be repeated endlessly.

Let's try for some balanced market perspective here:

In his own "Network"-like moment Rupert Murdoch opened up the window and yelled I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!' (Did he really do that? No.) But by adopting a total pay wall strategy that is targeted toward an audience that largely writes off the subscription expense of the WSJ, he is trying to justify paying so much for it two years ago. Because of the WSJ's unique audience, he may succeed in saving that over-leveraged investment, for now. That option will fail with most other newspapers, and has already, spectacularly in some cases (like Cablevision's Long Island Newsday).  

It was newspaper companies that first adopted the internet strategies that led us to this moment. So it might also seem reasonable that the newspaper companies now are erecting barriers that ask to be paid for the same content provided seemingly free for years. Of course, you and I still see ads when we read content on the web but because they do not get paid as much for those ads and we are led to believe that our end (as consumers) is somehow not being held up. Make no mistake; the story is being skewed in favor of why consumers should replace lost revenues of the traditional media companies as they struggle to adapt to our changing habits using technology. The companies that exist today want you to believe that we must all pay to make them profitable or we won't get high quality content. We will. Just not from them, unless they can adapt.

This is the key point in the discussion. Who must adapt and how? The media companies serving us our content needs must adapt. It is common for dying companies (that were previously successful) lash out as if their plight was the product of some nefarious forces in the market that must be defeated. (see this post on business models from The Root Trend) 

Newspapers are not the only place we are seeing this battle right now. If you live in the US you are probably aware of how cable TV bills have been going up and how TV production companies are asking for more money from cable companies and still running as many commercials. Cable companies are distributors that have little competition so prices are not yet checked like the are in almost all other realms of monetizing content. The consumer has no appreciation for why this is happening unless they really dig to understand the deflationary forces at work. I am guessing most of the execs in charge of pricing do not fully understand the deflationary forces either. Cable just happens to be the one market unchecked by competition as yet.(see link at end of post) The record label business was the first to see deflation happen. Radio and magazines too, have been hit hard by deflationary forces. Deflation in any industry that is leveraged is a nasty combination. We just saw this in the banking industry and we all paid to bail them out. I really doubt the US electorate will tolerate a bailout of the media companies that have leverage hangovers from the 1996 Telecommunications Act (consolidation era). This time, those that survive the revolution will be smarter about how to make and sell content (or which to do).

With the launch of the iPad days away, we see a new channel for content about to come on-line and more than ever it seems like an easy answer to old profitability problems may be in sight.  No matter how successful (or not) this launch is during the first few months, no one will deny how technology has changed how everyone gets content, uses content, and what kinds of content we increasingly spend our time with every week. In just the past few years, Americans now dedicate substantial time to user generated content that does not cost anything. You cannot dismiss this important dynamic as part of the overall answer. 

I suspect the iPad will be an important disruptor even if it is destined to be a narrow market that is defined by Apple's proprietary software that deceptively limits Choices. 

The most common discussion I have with non-media people (over the years) is the perception how the industry is like a monolithic entity that hides in the dark shadows of government protection. Nothing could be further from the truth. Sure, lots of media companies try to use Congress to do their bidding but the only reason that exists is because substantial barriers to entry in the business existed for many decades and that concentrated the power of select companies. That advantage is rapidly disappearing as content producers are no longer protected from competition and competitive advantage is based on product quality (and not infrastructure or licenses) these days.  For instance, the cool market dashboards that the WSJ web site offers can be replaced, if you go looking, on other free sites (and those sites are glad to have the targeted traffic).

I call this the era of Choice because with the advent of search and ubiquitous internet connections we consumers of content are now in control of our own destiny. Tune in Sunday at 9pm is no longer relevant if we choose not to set our schedule by a company's. This may seem simplistic but the change it represents to a large and complex industry is very dramatic and brought us to this moment. Newspapers feel as if offering a web based option is allowing Choice but here's the thing: Until a new kind of content company is built and accepted, Price will be the issue that seems most important. Remember the 4 P's of marketing? Product, Price, Place (channels), and Promotion.  The way to a more profitable media industry is to specialize in specific functions, just like factories did with labor to become more efficient. Each of these specialties will have a very different mix of the 4P's.  And since the world is consuming more content and not less, this idea is for a growth business born from a mature industry. Only right now, many highly leveraged companies cannot see past next quarter and even though the digital world is moving at warp speed. These older, leveraged, media companies are struggling for every breath. These are the symptoms of deflation, and correction in a market, and not an industry that is about to die off and send us into information blackness. Why? Again, we are consuming more and more content, not less.

I am skeptical of the iPad's potential because of how I expect media companies to limit Choice through the device. For instance:

50 cents a day for the WSJ on the iPad would be a step in the right direction though I am sure that idea will be resisted, until someone else does it, of course.That is not likely to happen if Apple is allowed to build a monopoly in the distribution market similar to cable companies with no competition.  Why? Because the market is all of us and represents our collective shared values for things and ideas.This includes content, how we get it, how much we pay, and how it is packaged.

If the iPad is really to serve Choice, it will sell content more like a news stand and not like a Publisher's Clearinghouse subscription center. By only providing those Choices of long term sign up's, broad consumer appeal will be diverted elsewhere or they may even stop using it.  So the news stand $1.25 daily copy of the WSJ should be .40, .50 or .75 cents on the iPad, right? How much is an article in Time worth; one you could scan while standing in line at the checkout? Choice requires that companies selling content make these decisions. Fractionalization of demand is an important part of packaging Choice, like it or not.

Once you dive into this mindset of change you can begin to appreciate the discussions I began previously about much needed better quality metrics for media companies. For now, serving Choice means accepting fractionalization of demand and lowering operating costs by reducing leverage. That's a tough recipe to achieve but we are going there one way or another.  

also worth reading:

iPad makes cover of Time and Newsweek  WP 4 03 10  (article includes iPad cost for various pubs)

NYT's Jacks Kindle E-edition to $19.99/mo (wishful thinking) 4 02 10

Getting Media Companies to adopt Better Metrics requires honest discussion (part 3)

Google: 1100 Cities want us to build huge fiber networks (think: badly needed competition for Cable Co's)

Google suggest micropayments for online media consumption (previois iroM post with link)

Will the iPad unintentionally pierce the Cable TV Bubble? iroM post

added 3 30 10:

Why the future of Good news is not Free  London Times (another Murdoch asset) (blurb below)

..."Ultimately we think that other newspapers will follow, and that the only free content online will be of inferior quality or supplied by the BBC. Even that organisation is finally beginning to realise it should stop trying to become a publisher online, and is cutting back on its massive internet spending.

We are in the midst of a publishing revolution, and if we get our finances right, you, our valued readers, will benefit from a new golden age in which we can devote more time and money to bringing you the very best journalism in the finest traditions of The Sunday Times."

What is rarely admitted by leveraged companies is how "getting our finances right" is being made the consumer's problem and used as an excuse to limit Choice. There are thousands of blogs and companies with web sites providing high quality, current, content for free now that somehow enhances the business' mission. Sure you have to go find it but that is exactly why Google, Yahoo, Bing and others are successful enterprises. Failure to admit this fact and attributing it to some form of malfeasance on the part of their customers is blatant, even if remaining unspoken...and terribly obvious. 

Viacom's suit of Google-You Tube is making media's long term challenges very clear

 For readers who do not realize, this is my second blog. The other other blog I write, The Root Trend is about big picture social trending issues that matter to marketers and business owners. Yes, that is a very broad subject area. It uses a specific model to see social trends that originates with the general idea called social mood. This blog  (iroM) is intended to be an extension of that view and a discussion about how three specific trending forces are impacting the business of media right now. Social mood, generational issues, and what I call the era of Choice are each worthy of separate discussion but can be viewed together to see where media is headed as a business (where we are taking our media tools).  Each of these three exerts a different pull on the business of selling content but together they offer a strong directional argument for how the business model for media enterprises must now change in order to better serve their markets. And while I have not shared that specific vision yet, I will in some format soon.  In the meantime there is plenty of connected issues to look at from this same perspective.

Oftentimes, I begin looking at current (social) trending dynamics over at the Root Trend blog and later it'll migrate here. That is how this blog came to be in the first place. This blog was first inspired by this lawsuit almost 4 years ago though it took 2 more years to develop into its own blog.  For instance, right now the latest post over at The Root Trend is about how shared values toward privacy issues change (over time) and how they are expressed as different trends depending upon from where you are viewing it. 

From the perspective of a media company, the issues surrounding intellectual property rights (IP) are being shouted about right now and for the past 3 1/2 years. IP rights are  being argued as if  they = expressions towards privacy in the world of enterprises. There's no better example of this pomp than Viacom's suit of Google/You Tube for $1 billion dollars. Viacom is not able to police their own products, does not want to pay to do it,  and in keeping with decades of media's protected market status, they are suing someone else to do it for them. Now, that last sentence contains a pretty strong opinion...no doubt. When you take the time to see where we (society) are taking media broadly and according to the large trending forces (read as "shared values), you cannot help see the falseness of Viacom's position while knowing they'll never admit that much. They can't. No matter how this turns out they'll lose money because the old media business model is falling further and further behind. Why? Because it is not serving the larger, changing social need these days....because shared values have changed (are changing) with the adoption of digital technology. The technology did not change us. We changed as we realized that more is possible from our media tools and there is no going back. The FCC and other large barriers to entry into the business of selling content that previously existed, have now disappeared. The flood of competition was inevitable. The sharing that exists as a result is part of the emerging social norm. In the years ahead many cases surrounding this core issue will be decided in courts incrementally but right now it has already changed the business of selling content. The unspoken truth is that no one realizes how to do it differently. The best businesses surf the unfolding social trend....and do not fight it.

In a article last night in the FT, Viacom and Google's lawyers exchange jabs in initial arguments, only now in a 3 1/2 year old suit. 'You Tube is an obvious attempt to circumvent copyright infringement laws and Google should be responsible as if they are a media company'. And, in order to prove the position, Viacom has been seen uploading protected materials to the You Tube site and then complaining about the material being there. First, get the free promotion, then a slap em with a suit "as if". It's the American way!

The fact that this last statement was alleged in the FT, a paper usually beyond reproach, I submit that millions of our own tax dollars are being wasted by a company gaming our own system instead of doing the work they should be doing...or paying another competent company to do it for them.

Google is a behemoth. It is a giant that is almost an oligopoly. Many believe they deserve to be watched closely. They certainly deserve considerable praise for delivering us Choice even if it is disruptive. The age of broadcast began dying with Google. I suspect it is hard not to blame them as if they are responsible but social trends this big are not caused by technology or a single business.....social momentum is required for trends to happen and history shows us clearly how technology has often existed for decades before being adopted and used. The industrial revolution in the US was just such a trend. It took the rift between large generations to expose this overdue need for change then, and now again....and these times are exactly when history shows us huge examples of social change!

The most obvious lessons of the new industrial revolution are simple and straight forward. They are also remarkably similar to what we learned last time: 

1. Recognize the fact that we have all changed for the better;it's not a fad.(How we values things changes as social mood changes and different time horizons matter a great deal when using this view)

2. Understand that generational rifts are where the largest changes happen to social contracts. The generational perspective is essential to understanding how to prioritize social developments but is always secondary to social mood.

3.  Specialize your function to gain competitive advantage. Competitive markets require more specialized focus, not broader. Vertical integration and exclusionary software strategies will be socially rejected as a business strategy unless it is demonstrated to add value not available elsewhere for market participants.

The FT article link above is worth reading.

NYT story 2 24 10 re Italy's bureaucratic courts on Google:  Larger Threat is Seen in Google Case (in Italy) NYT  (read the entire article because every time this story is told it is like hearing two different movies)

For further reading @ The Root Trend: What is social mood?

Social trends reflect the polarity of shared values

More on the link between social mood and consumer behavior: the most basic social expressions

Tablet PC's, fences, and information ownership as seen through the generational divide

The PR buzz created around today's launch of a tablet PC device is astonishing and a testament to a marketing machine that is currently setting the standard. I've read no fewer than a dozen posts on it in the past few days and avoided three times as many on reputable sites.

It makes me think back to the larger trend thread in the media universe that began (for me) with Google's You Tube v. Viacom...a billion dollar lawsuit because Viacom is not capable of protecting their own content in this new age of technology. So much has happened since this suit began 3 1/2 years ago. It seems like it will die from old age and irrelevance before any real attempt is made to acknowledge that the issue is not framed correctly.

Of the content I did read about Apple's new tablet PC is how it may save old media by creating a new channel for content. Another new channel !?  It may be wrapped up prettier and more convenient than others but it will fail later (if not sooner) if it leverages itself on the incremental revenue from this new channel for content. Why?

The Search Business Offers an Important Lesson For American Media Companies

This blog is about a very large & important trend involving a key part of the American infrastructure. As a nation we are presently doing to media what we did to establish the US as an industrial force more than a hundred years ago. Many naturally occurring circumstances surrounding the first industrial revolution helped the US to a quick competitive edge. This time, however, many of the key mitigating factors (think technology) are matched around the world so American's main advantage will be our very freedom, creative flexibility, and development speed attached to these defining alterations.

In the US during the 20th century broadcast media was a great business and the rules that confined and defined these markets allowed it to develop both deeply and broadly. Now, the digital era has changed so much in a very short time and the pace of this change is increasing.

My perspective (because of my age) is naturally divided between pre-digital media and AS (after Search arrived). To some extent, we are all products of our experiences. For instance if you learned how to use Yahoo and Google as an adult then these powerful tools are an adjunct to the universe of media in your head. If however, you are younger and have come of age in the past 13 years (when search entered the mainstream) then search is more than a thick phone book option for when you do not have a first choice; the process is more thoroughly integrated into a pattern of behavior. Different generations think about (organize) media differently and that is evident in how search is utilized. 

Yesterday's NYT offers a brief discussion of how the Search business is now splintering its efforts to distinguish real time search from query oriented search. When you think about it, this is the equivalent of a wizard bottling the magic power of TV or radio's immediacy into a universal potion for access to the collective consciousness without regard to geography. wow! If you are a user, it is a great development. If you are an established media company, your challenges just got more complex.

What the Viacom - Google/You Tube Suit is telling us (entering year three)

8 08 09 --  updated comment -- The subject of IP (intellectual property) is a big and challenging subject. After confronting it in this annual post series, it has become a topic in two different sections of the book chapters I am writing based on the theme of this blog. I feel the need to address it first from a social trending perspective before injecting anymore of my opinion.  I'll probably do that first over at the Root Trend blog. It is a matter for Boomers and younger generations to confront in good faith. The irony is bound to be in watching the graying Boomers fight their younger (selves) fellow citizens with the same vigor as displayed at Woodstock only to realize that time is now working against their narrow self interest. 

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The subject of this 2007 vintage lawsuit is of particular interest to me because it tells us a lot about where we are in relation to media's evolution as we traverse a period of rapid social change.  Opinions presented here are not based on existing interpretations of laws. Instead, the perspective here is about how we are collectively proceeding toward a set of more evolved media tools that people may use to be better at everything we do as individuals and when gathered into our various formal and informal groups to create. Ultimately, this suit is about social progress and how an antiquated way of seeing content (all kinds) is to be expected and, is sure to see substantial change (in time).

What the You Tube suit by Viacom is really telling us -- one year later--about where the media business is going

 

Back in June 2007 we were first made aware of the Viacom lawsuit of You Tube for not protecting Viacom's content from being posted on their free site. The bold assumption in Viacom's suit is that if they cannot protect their content products themselves, then Google-You Tube must be responsible for protecting their content.  What are the You Tube suits really telling uswas apparent a year ago and is triply so today, as the trend advances socially and also in business channels. The harshly clanging noises in the background are indicative of the developing social mood.  This social dynamic <social mood> is leading the process.
This suit and others to come are lagging indications of larger trends well under way. Understanding how technology and social mood mix is the key to seeing the bigger picture. These are dramatic days for everyone in the media universe, even if this topic is simply thought of as something 'legal' that needs to be "worked out".  In the really big picture, this issue will not be worked out for a long time and these circumstances will persist. No amount of regulation, or social finger wagging will put the Choice genie back in the bottle. In the human struggle for knowledge, business' right to turn a profit will come second to the natural human need to share knowledge. This truth puts business squarely in its place...as a purposeful tool of human endeavor and not having the quality of human life itself. <Many of us in the older  generations feel big business is somehow more important by how it is afforded such clout in the legal realm, but the reality is that businesses either serve us what we want, or they die off>

The human impulse to share information of all kinds includes sharing content as we explore the new human invention of the digital environment. People are attracted to expansive spaces and that media's front lawn is being trampled in the broad social rush is only a symptom of the importance of this trend. The only things that can fix this business development is more ground breaking technology or new approaches that create incremental value for the consumer of content (ie. new business models). Absent the development of being able to broadly protect content using technology, this issue will define the next decade (or two). In the meantime, players in business will either be very flexible in their business models or they will be naturally selected for extinction. This can be made obvious when you see the true social trending priorities in these developments. 

This post is intended as a limited update on a longer discussion about trends in media in the US. It is based on a new wrinkle published today in papers worldwide about a judge's decision to expose You Tube's customer privacy in order to demonstrate Google is somehow negligent for Viacom's own shortcoming. And while it sounds like I am taking a definitive position, it was only a few years ago this position would not have been necessary because technology to share was harder to come by.....and history shows how technology changes the world. Fighting this truth is like spitting into the wind. In the same way we might stop to consider our very freedoms on a day like today (7/4), we should consider the responsibility that comes along with that freedom. Is protecting the ideas and work of others essential to freedom? What if those ideas are now easily reproduced? Is it worth less? Is the responsibility to protect their ideas now less than before?  What's a story in the newspaper worth? What's a song worth? What's a current movie worth? Is it worth less on a cell phone screen than in a theater? How about a book?  What if it took a long time to produce? What if it took five weeks but was based on years of experience?  This sounds very difficult to do but the market will always give you an answer. The market is always responsive to such matters if we listen. It also can be shown that the market for shared human values changes with social mood. Join me for the rest of this short discussion.  It matters, no matter what kind of business you are in: Dave

The title of this post is really about how perpetual ownership and the value of Intellectual Property (IP) is being challenged in the new digital social realm by technology and generational changeover <in attitudes> and resulting in a deflationary force not yet willingly recognized by the enterprises that create content. Ideas are going to be worth less, in fact, they already are. This is not some ridiculous argument. Viacom now has a court looking at sensitive customer use data to see if Google's You Tube is primarily making money off Viacom's illegally placed content, then Google is somehow complicit and therefore, liable to protect that which the owner cannot protect for themselves.  Imagine that for a minute.  It was made for broadcast, was in fact broadcast, and now that everyone has shared the creativity it is willingly depicted as proprietary still even though it already lives in people's minds. In the digital realm they cannot protect their own work so they are suing the company most responsible for giving consumers <exactly what they want> Choice, by allowing them to easily find exactly what is already out there and what they want. The very fact that technology now allows us to share everything and sharing is a natural human impulsive behavior, then trying to make us conform to the needs of business becomes obviously ridiculous. Of course it is easy to make an argument for protecting the content to but my point is simple; This type of disagreement is exactly what we should expect a lot of as the generational guard begins to turn over......planned or unplanned revisions to the existing social contracts. Some generational turnover is more tumultuous than others. This is going to be a big one, for a lot of reasons.

John Malone was interviewed this week (CNBC link for interview) and pointed out bluntly that the business model will be what it is today in media until something else is found to work.  He is arguably the most connected mind in media in the US and he is right, up to a point, from this perspective. The business model can break down just as it is beginning to right now because the social contract is essentially unenforceable when you look beyond the generational divide. Social contracts to behave a certain way are rarely enforcible when tested on such a mass scale as now beginning. Sure, a few headlines are possible that serve to warn but, they really tell us increasingly is how something important is out of balance. Business is a tool that serves people no matter who's money is behind the business. When what is on offer is no longer appreciated in the way it was when the business began, it is business, and not people, that must change.  Blaming this dysfunction on kid-like and criminal behavior is short sighted and wrong from a multi-generational perspective. Malone's interview is a steady look at the circumstances.  The social contract that says content is intellectual property (IP) and that it is protected perpetually works no better when confronting the basic human impulse to share than did land rights registered in far away courts against open range cattle grazing on private property. Fences were built by the owners of the land  because it was the only way to protect what each needed for their own assets. This analogy is very purposeful in this case because of the nature of the digital environment. If you advertise the fact that your grass is getting eaten for free, more "thieves" will come for the free grass. Ownership must be enforcible outside of courts in the social realm, or it will not hold up. We are social animals by nature and we share. Period. If technology advancements allow for sharing, we will. We are.  That we were collectively denied of consumer Choice for our media consumption for the first seven or eight decades of socially using media, this current technology and the change in social mood is destroying the social contract that does not serve our true needs...and is best seen being precipitated by a secular kind of change (really long term forces)  John Malone can talk about the business of content requiring a successful business model in order for high quality content to be produced, but the recent addition of social media styled content to the total inventory of content available is placing glacial-like pressure for the pricing of all content to change. Choice, what the consumer of media wants, is paramount. Of course good content will not get produced if it is not somehow made profitable but the real question being decided is, just how much is fair? Few are willing to openly acknowledge this dynamic. It is the only one that matters since we consume more and more content these days. The key is to give it to them (content consumers) just as they want it and charge a fair price at the same time. It is possible.  It must be, because, again, we collectively consume more media now than before.  Anyone saying otherwise is simply complaining it is not easy. Perpetual ownership of already shared content is not realistic in a digital environment or the courts will be bogged down for a century. This point will be the eventual nexus of compromise that will open up a growth phase for content production and consumption.  In the meantime, there is a long social correction in the way.

To me, the only key behavioral traits left to exploit is our connections to convenience and sociability, and that is the big clue to how to do it.

Producers of content must provide convenience in terms of timing and modality in order to charge a fair rate for content, or it will be "shared" illegally. This was my argument last year seeing this through social mood and its more clear now. Media should be available by different modality and stay in that modality (channel) and be purchased that way incrementally. You want the WSJ paper in the AM?, great. That is one product. You want the web site? That is another. You want it on both your PDA and PC....those are two products, not one. Sounds difficult? This is the new infrastructure or channels of programming content and it must be developed this way in order to capture value.  Content is best viewed as functional by specific use. Making it generic harms the value proposition in an age when value is the main question.  My original argument a year ago to Sumner Redstone's initial suit was that some of his most stolen  shared content is obviously mis-priced by seeing the economics. Why it is mis-priced is more clear today than ever. The same social forces that over took the US during the industrial revolution are back and as benevolent as ever...(to the next generation).  Specialization through collaboration is necessary to get people and business better at sharing information. We've begun this detailed dance without any prodding.  Again, sharing and organizing is very natural to social animals. Next, Choice is now the important (smaller) trend spurring this leg of the Information age (begun 30 or 40 centuries ago). Social mood sees to it that each small leg of this human trending process is characterized by specific kinds of patterns. Each of these correspond to the current developing social mood.  All of this matters to enterprises that produce content  and especially marketers in that process. Yea, it is very big picture but if you do not understand the shape of the overall trend then seeing what is next is more of a guessing game.

One actionable irony is that the very technology helping consumers share content will be the means content producers use to become better marketers or content. Social media. It is not just a fad. What appears to playful activity for younger kids is really purposeful social ordering. Socially organizing the digital realm is the first step to  colonizing it and making it more useful. It may seem lawless to some content producers but it is based on highly structured social rules. (This is the part the older generation does not like to acknowledge because it is what will make the Boomers really begin to feel old (out of touch) and that is not likely to be a good thing initially.)

Part and parcel of my argument here is that in order to specialize and refine production, cost basis, and distribution skills in these new formats, the business of producing and selling content will have to split on an axis not previous considered. Content producers must become more efficient. Distributors of content must make it readily available in multi-modal forms <on demand> and with great ease. How will privacy be protected in this digital realm? Will there ever be true privacy?  Since a new era of regulation is now developing, will we resist the temptation to let big brother govern a business <internet commerce> he clearly has no clear qualifications to run? Will fear of uncertainty force us there? I hope not but it is an outcome which must be guarded against. Again, it is all about providing the consumer Choice, not just a few options. We must remember this about  the digital realm or risk greater social turmoil.  This is not so much an opinion as a distillation of facts of what large crowds of people do. The true utility of the digital environment is how different people use it. If we dictate how creativity is to be applied in the digital realm, we will stifle innovation and the incremental utility of the tool. That will be bad for everyone, not just a few big businesses. Government must be made to realize this point and focus upon defining freshness dates, and attribution requirements for content. The creator of content should be acknowledged. If it is not protect-able, it should be allowed a period of exclusivity. This requires social agreement, not decrees by old people, telling young people what to do.

If your business is anywhere in the chain of production-consumption of content, your enterprise must adapt quickly to multi-modal format utilization and a new industry hierarchy that must develop in order to better monetize content.  Many old players will not survive the necessary innovation and cost control. Innovation requires risk taking and a willingness to fail. Big organizations are not equipped to do that well. Expect small companies to first see the next generation business models based on the individual consumer and not aggregating masses for ratings points.

The irony now is that the question -how to price content?- is not going to be based on what businesses think is reasonable markup of their costs but, what the market is willing to bear. How many sponsorship mentions will viewers/listeners allow? How much will people pay for content without sponsorship that is not free? How much is each modality convenience worth? What will it take for media businesses to forget how it was done in the first  seven decades and based their new way of doing business on what the market now wants? What makes sense in this new era? What makes sense to me is Choice delivered by multiple modes of using the same content....in as many ways as the customer wants and knowing what the customer wants is a matter for marketers....in two separate businesses....one that specializes in making it good and cheaply and the other that takes it to the consumer. Next, social media is the newest use of technology to create and gauge new experience in the marketing of anything to people in the digital realm. Social media isn't marketing. Marketing may politely use social media. Notice the difference? And since the digital realm is here to stay and grow, marketers of every stripe must learn to use it productively right now in order to adjust to what the customers truly want. Experience engineering is more than nifty sounding lingo. It is essential in any market that is seeing the effects of Choice. The media universe needs to adopt social media as a marketing tool and not with expectations if it fixing the old business model...but to launch the new models.

Privacy, intellectual property, responsibility to protect other people's work? These are all  related questions today.   That smaller units of association is happening now and will be a trend for along time, points to major re-thinking of how this case is proceeding.  The royalty debate in radio, pirating of movies in Asia, linking and using of other's work in the social media realm....all have been written about in the last week. Again, it is all about privacy, IP, and the social contracts surrounding a free society. This is not one issue. This is part of a tremendous series of social issues that will see the further evolution of media as a key tool of humans across the globe.   Any business now stuck thinking about how things are changing and lamenting even more changes in a digital world, are losing ground by the minute. Being a leader requires seeing and accepting social change.    Social change requires different tools. ready, set, go.

This just reported in the Washington Post:

You Tube Ordered to release user data by court

another great link in this time of change:  What is a business model?

The human impulse to share information of all kinds includes sharing content as we explore the new human invention of the digital environment. People are attracted to expansive spaces and that media's front lawn is being trampled in the broad social rush is only a symptom of the importance of this trend. The only things that can fix this business development is more ground breaking technology or new approaches that create incremental value for the consumer of content (ie. new business models). Absent the development of being able to broadly protect content using technology, this issue will define the next decade (or two). In the meantime, players in business will either be very flexible in their business models or they will be naturally selected for extinction. This can be made obvious when you see the true social trending priorities in these developments. 

This post is intended as a limited update on a longer discussion about trends in media in the US. It is based on a new wrinkle published today in papers worldwide about a judge's decision to expose You Tube's customer privacy in order to demonstrate Google is somehow negligent for Viacom's own shortcoming. And while it sounds like I am taking a definitive position, it was only a few years ago this position would not have been necessary because technology to share was harder to come by.....and history shows how technology changes the world. Fighting this truth is like spitting into the wind. In the same way we might stop to consider our very freedoms on a day like today (7/4), we should consider the responsibility that comes along with that freedom. Is protecting the ideas and work of others essential to freedom? What if those ideas are now easily reproduced? Is it worth less? Is the responsibility to protect their ideas now less than before?  What's a story in the newspaper worth? What's a song worth? What's a current movie worth? Is it worth less on a cell phone screen than in a theater? How about a book?  What if it took a long time to produce? What if it took five weeks but was based on years of experience?  This sounds very difficult to do but the market will always give you an answer. The market is always responsive to such matters if we listen. It also can be shown that the market for shared human values changes with social mood. Join me for the rest of this short discussion.  It matters, no matter what kind of business you are in: Dave

The title of this post is really about how perpetual ownership and the value of Intellectual Property (IP) is being challenged in the new digital social realm by technology and generational changeover <in attitudes> and resulting in a deflationary force not yet willingly recognized by the enterprises that create content. Ideas are going to be worth less, in fact, they already are. This is not some ridiculous argument. Viacom now has a court looking at sensitive customer use data to see if Google's You Tube is primarily making money off Viacom's illegally placed content, then Google is somehow complicit and therefore, liable to protect that which the owner cannot protect for themselves.  Imagine that for a minute.  It was made for broadcast, was in fact broadcast, and now that everyone has shared the creativity it is willingly depicted as proprietary still even though it already lives in people's minds. In the digital realm they cannot protect their own work so they are suing the company most responsible for giving consumers <exactly what they want> Choice, by allowing them to easily find exactly what is already out there and what they want. The very fact that technology now allows us to share everything and sharing is a natural human impulsive behavior, then trying to make us conform to the needs of business becomes obviously ridiculous. Of course it is easy to make an argument for protecting the content to but my point is simple; This type of disagreement is exactly what we should expect a lot of as the generational guard begins to turn over......planned or unplanned revisions to the existing social contracts. Some generational turnover is more tumultuous than others. This is going to be a big one, for a lot of reasons.

John Malone was interviewed this week (CNBC link for interview) and pointed out bluntly that the business model will be what it is today in media until something else is found to work.  He is arguably the most connected mind in media in the US and he is right, up to a point, from this perspective. The business model can break down just as it is beginning to right now because the social contract is essentially unenforceable when you look beyond the generational divide. Social contracts to behave a certain way are rarely enforcible when tested on such a mass scale as now beginning. Sure, a few headlines are possible that serve to warn but, they really tell us increasingly is how something important is out of balance. Business is a tool that serves people no matter who's money is behind the business. When what is on offer is no longer appreciated in the way it was when the business began, it is business, and not people, that must change.  Blaming this dysfunction on kid-like and criminal behavior is short sighted and wrong from a multi-generational perspective. Malone's interview is a steady look at the circumstances.  The social contract that says content is intellectual property (IP) and that it is protected perpetually works no better when confronting the basic human impulse to share than did land rights registered in far away courts against open range cattle grazing on private property. Fences were built by the owners of the land  because it was the only way to protect what each needed for their own assets. This analogy is very purposeful in this case because of the nature of the digital environment. If you advertise the fact that your grass is getting eaten for free, more "thieves" will come for the free grass. Ownership must be enforcible outside of courts in the social realm, or it will not hold up. We are social animals by nature and we share. Period. If technology advancements allow for sharing, we will. We are.  That we were collectively denied of consumer Choice for our media consumption for the first seven or eight decades of socially using media, this current technology and the change in social mood is destroying the social contract that does not serve our true needs...and is best seen being precipitated by a secular kind of change (really long term forces)  John Malone can talk about the business of content requiring a successful business model in order for high quality content to be produced, but the recent addition of social media styled content to the total inventory of content available is placing glacial-like pressure for the pricing of all content to change. Choice, what the consumer of media wants, is paramount. Of course good content will not get produced if it is not somehow made profitable but the real question being decided is, just how much is fair? Few are willing to openly acknowledge this dynamic. It is the only one that matters since we consume more and more content these days. The key is to give it to them (content consumers) just as they want it and charge a fair price at the same time. It is possible.  It must be, because, again, we collectively consume more media now than before.  Anyone saying otherwise is simply complaining it is not easy. Perpetual ownership of already shared content is not realistic in a digital environment or the courts will be bogged down for a century. This point will be the eventual nexus of compromise that will open up a growth phase for content production and consumption.  In the meantime, there is a long social correction in the way.

To me, the only key behavioral traits left to exploit is our connections to convenience and sociability, and that is the big clue to how to do it.

Producers of content must provide convenience in terms of timing and modality in order to charge a fair rate for content, or it will be "shared" illegally. This was my argument last year seeing this through social mood and its more clear now. Media should be available by different modality and stay in that modality (channel) and be purchased that way incrementally. You want the WSJ paper in the AM?, great. That is one product. You want the web site? That is another. You want it on both your PDA and PC....those are two products, not one. Sounds difficult? This is the new infrastructure or channels of programming content and it must be developed this way in order to capture value.  Content is best viewed as functional by specific use. Making it generic harms the value proposition in an age when value is the main question.  My original argument a year ago to Sumner Redstone's initial suit was that some of his most stolen  shared content is obviously mis-priced by seeing the economics. Why it is mis-priced is more clear today than ever. The same social forces that over took the US during the industrial revolution are back and as benevolent as ever...(to the next generation).  Specialization through collaboration is necessary to get people and business better at sharing information. We've begun this detailed dance without any prodding.  Again, sharing and organizing is very natural to social animals. Next, Choice is now the important (smaller) trend spurring this leg of the Information age (begun 30 or 40 centuries ago). Social mood sees to it that each small leg of this human trending process is characterized by specific kinds of patterns. Each of these correspond to the current developing social mood.  All of this matters to enterprises that produce content  and especially marketers in that process. Yea, it is very big picture but if you do not understand the shape of the overall trend then seeing what is next is more of a guessing game.

One actionable irony is that the very technology helping consumers share content will be the means content producers use to become better marketers or content. Social media. It is not just a fad. What appears to playful activity for younger kids is really purposeful social ordering. Socially organizing the digital realm is the first step to  colonizing it and making it more useful. It may seem lawless to some content producers but it is based on highly structured social rules. (This is the part the older generation does not like to acknowledge because it is what will make the Boomers really begin to feel old (out of touch) and that is not likely to be a good thing initially.)

Part and parcel of my argument here is that in order to specialize and refine production, cost basis, and distribution skills in these new formats, the business of producing and selling content will have to split on an axis not previous considered. Content producers must become more efficient. Distributors of content must make it readily available in multi-modal forms <on demand> and with great ease. How will privacy be protected in this digital realm? Will there ever be true privacy?  Since a new era of regulation is now developing, will we resist the temptation to let big brother govern a business <internet commerce> he clearly has no clear qualifications to run? Will fear of uncertainty force us there? I hope not but it is an outcome which must be guarded against. Again, it is all about providing the consumer Choice, not just a few options. We must remember this about  the digital realm or risk greater social turmoil.  This is not so much an opinion as a distillation of facts of what large crowds of people do. The true utility of the digital environment is how different people use it. If we dictate how creativity is to be applied in the digital realm, we will stifle innovation and the incremental utility of the tool. That will be bad for everyone, not just a few big businesses. Government must be made to realize this point and focus upon defining freshness dates, and attribution requirements for content. The creator of content should be acknowledged. If it is not protect-able, it should be allowed a period of exclusivity. This requires social agreement, not decrees by old people, telling young people what to do.

If your business is anywhere in the chain of production-consumption of content, your enterprise must adapt quickly to multi-modal format utilization and a new industry hierarchy that must develop in order to better monetize content.  Many old players will not survive the necessary innovation and cost control. Innovation requires risk taking and a willingness to fail. Big organizations are not equipped to do that well. Expect small companies to first see the next generation business models based on the individual consumer and not aggregating masses for ratings points.

The irony now is that the question -how to price content?- is not going to be based on what businesses think is reasonable markup of their costs but, what the market is willing to bear. How many sponsorship mentions will viewers/listeners allow? How much will people pay for content without sponsorship that is not free? How much is each modality convenience worth? What will it take for media businesses to forget how it was done in the first  seven decades and based their new way of doing business on what the market now wants? What makes sense in this new era? What makes sense to me is Choice delivered by multiple modes of using the same content....in as many ways as the customer wants and knowing what the customer wants is a matter for marketers....in two separate businesses....one that specializes in making it good and cheaply and the other that takes it to the consumer. Next, social media is the newest use of technology to create and gauge new experience in the marketing of anything to people in the digital realm. Social media isn't marketing. Marketing may politely use social media. Notice the difference? And since the digital realm is here to stay and grow, marketers of every stripe must learn to use it productively right now in order to adjust to what the customers truly want. Experience engineering is more than nifty sounding lingo. It is essential in any market that is seeing the effects of Choice. The media universe needs to adopt social media as a marketing tool and not with expectations if it fixing the old business model...but to launch the new models.

Privacy, intellectual property, responsibility to protect other people's work? These are all  related questions today.   That smaller units of association is happening now and will be a trend for along time, points to major re-thinking of how this case is proceeding.  The royalty debate in radio, pirating of movies in Asia, linking and using of other's work in the social media realm....all have been written about in the last week. Again, it is all about privacy, IP, and the social contracts surrounding a free society. This is not one issue. This is part of a tremendous series of social issues that will see the further evolution of media as a key tool of humans across the globe.   Any business now stuck thinking about how things are changing and lamenting even more changes in a digital world, are losing ground by the minute. Being a leader requires seeing and accepting social change.    Social change requires different tools. ready, set, go.

This just reported in the Washington Post:

You Tube Ordered to release user data by court

another great link in this time of change:  What is a business model?