Skimming Block, originally uploaded by superlocal.

I love the Far East.  I love the way they just get on and make stuff and then make more stuff to solve the problems of the initial stuff.  There’s no prevaricating, they just keep making instead of legislating, which is what we’re so good at in Europe.  Here we have a skimming block for RFID [which is embedded in credit cards over there and probably soon to be here].   
Makes me think of Matt Webb’s recent post on the excellent Pulse Laser blog about the rise of distributed manufacture in Japan and the use of interchangeable parts to make a complete product, rather than it being manufactured by one organisation.  This skimming block works the same way but for situations or experiences of the individual person -  in that rather than solving the problem for all in the ‘host’ technology [so working with all RFID chip users] you have interchangeable solutions for the range of technologies employed by the user.
In some scenario planning work I did whilst at the BBC one of the stories had the rise of technical ‘plumbers’ to solve problems you had with interoperability, or rebellious technology.  Workarounds necessary for the myriad of different socio-technical relations that emerged in the digital age.  That service and the sorts of products as this,above, seem increasingly plausible  cf. the discourse of the future which had all our ‘technology’ as pure, whole and inter-operable. But is the UK economy set up for that or are those products and services going to be imported or offshored?

Broadcast:

Here:

• The value is intrinsic to the media itself e.g. a TV programme and there’s a simple general revenue model for it to work [subscription or ads - based on viewing figures proxied by time of day etc.]
• The rights framework is built with that in mind, the rights holders paid for their bit of the media etc. and if the distributor cannot control supply through the medium e.g. decoder then the media must be controlled e.g. DRM
• The primary constraint here is limited supply.  The legal and political framework only allow for a small number of ‘broadcasters’ and to get involved in that is expensive and risky and consequently the barriers to entry are high.
• Any ‘sociality’ around the media is defined by either ‘locally’ produced feedback loops around say the [cliched] water cooler or, more abstractly, as a feedback loop through the media, in say TV guides or reviews.

Networked:

Here the:

• Media value is increasingly defined through the ‘sociality’ of the media itself, that is the ‘links’ that serve to define it in the ecosystem, rather than in the asset itself.
• Consequently value is distributed with the media [which is the case in the broadcast model only in the broadcast model that was pretty much everyone or everyone divided by x]
• The feedback loops are key in defining the value of the media and these loops are not constrained by space or place but play out through them – so you get feedback in the form of recommendation systems that are very public.
• Nor are these feedback loops constrained by time and the physical limitations in the broadcast model.  The loops are ‘immediate’ and are on the whole very ‘transferable’, contained within URLs or even in chat histories via AIM etc.   
• Neither are the feedback loops defined by formal hierarchy – informal [digg] mixes with formal, organised feedback [metacritic] as defined by the status of the reviewer.
• Advertising is the main means through which to generate revenue but this revenue may not fall to the media creator / owner as the media is copied, distributed and published elsewhere.
• Policing this environment is virtually impossible although community driven ‘social  policing’  through  individual reporting can be highly effective.

Of course trhese are two polarised ideals and the reality [at present, before IPTV] is we live with a mix – with some media being bigger than others, or at least more social or popular.  But what I’m getting at is that value is driven by the ‘ghost-like’ relations of links, by the ‘communicative morass’ rather than the media itself.  Blogs, AIM have their own place in that mix that can be defined by speed and fixity.  Blog and link aggregators are the nodes, akin to the FTSE, there to be gamed and played once measured.   AIM, txt, the more intricate, ‘local’ and immediate narrative that is often ephermeral, disappearing as quickly as it came but no less important for that.  Services like Twitter and Dodgeball only serve to facilitate and play on this communicative need.  And as more metadata, links, and  narratives come into existence so media must adapt to play out with them in the form of feedback loops.

However, many people I speak to who are involved in media production are still fixated on the media itself, which of course has to be brilliant but  is just part of the ‘design’ for creating successful genuinely ‘new media’ that pays.  The audience are now more integral than ever to the proposition and how it plays out.  Steven B Johnson sums this up in Emergence from 1991:

"The most significant thing for the web.. is not its capacity to stream high-quality video images or booming surround sound; indeed, it’s quite possible that the actual content of the convergence will arrive via some other transmission platform.  Instead, the web will contribute the metadata that enables these clusters to self-organize. it will be the central warehouse and marketplace for all our patterns of mediated behaviour, and instead of those patterns being restricted to the invisible gaze of Madison Avenue and TRW, consumers will be able to tap into that pool themselves to create communal maps of all the entertainment and data available online." [Steven Berlin Johnson 1991 Emergence p220].

All pretty basic stuff now but quiet prescient all the same and ahead of its time.  In talking through the implications of this nascent ecosystem to indies etc. they inevitably want to know how they can evolve to remain relevant to audiences that are increasingly getting recommendations and media itself [youtube, torrent files etc] from the web.  The basic question for such companies is: "how can we retain or maintain revenue from media when it’s massively distributed?". I’m not sure that anyone who owns IP in the digital age knows the answer to this.  But I’m not sure that there is an answer.  Media that is IP protected will struggle to be social in a networked
ecosystem.  And if it ain’t social then you’re going to have problems
getting it noticed and making money from it.  No, you have to move from a model whereby the media itself is intrinsically of value to a model where you use the social to develop new business models.  Easy stuf, for example:

• Translate. Get people to pay for transferring one media into another.  Just like printing has become a winner for static media e.g. moo for flickr and blurb for blogs, so ring-tones and paid for podcasts etc. have worked for exploiting traditional media.
• Relate. Start to create metadata around the media which can be used to drive discovery [e.g. delicious] and consequently ad revenue.  Then own that data.

Works within the existing framework, exploiting essentially dead media, like any artefact or product.  Packaged dead media in the form of formats like Wife Swap and Super Nanny are still the most lucrative [because they are 'transportable' and 'transferable' assets] but it is precisely their ‘dead’ nature that limits their potential in the networked digital world of the future. Going forward networked digital distribution allows is to give media life – to make it  inherently social by developing feedback loops or ‘ripples’ and therefore creating more opportunities to spin off into other [older] media [translation], or initiate subscription for extra functionality around a service and of course drive advertising into new areas.  To produce more social media, you need to get people [both end consumers and developers / producers] involved in creating or augmenting media in the first place and to play with the variety of things that influence the media such as links, metadata and narrative.

Enough waffle, I’m going to try and knock this into something meaningful soon.

What I want to know is that given that we’re able to document our
lives in ever more ways and soon to be 24/7 video, how are we to make
sense of it? How do we package it for others? How do we make it, well,
more interesting…? Please.

The XML standard is ebuild and is based upon eBIS-XML the BASDA standard, but has also been officially adopted by government departments in the form of the e-GIF schema. So it would seem that the construction industry, not particularly known for its innovation, is leading the way in terms of ecommerce. 

As anyone involved in ecommerce will know there are a host of ‘solutions’ to different document data types.  For company X and Company Y to trade electronically they need to speak the same language.  Of course most don’t.  Most use different terms to describe different things and some don’t specify certain details at all so orders and invoices can often have a great deal of mismatch due to human error [and this matters a lot for businesses when invoices aren't paid and orders turn up incorrect].  Consequently ASPs [Application Service Providers] created solutions using closed standards like EDI [Electronic Data Interchange] which has have become very powerful as a  ‘translator’ of different document types [requiring the implementation of their own EDI translation software].  This translation comes at a cost, of course, and software companies can look to make a lot of money out of such a service, often calculating the cost based on savings made like postage, print, ink etc. 

Open standards also mean that companies can keep bespoke IT solutions [different companies have different needs depending on size, complexity of supply chain etc.] yet speak the same language.  It’s a breakthrough for ecommerce.  Implementing this XML will not be easy, I’m sure, especially for smaller companies for whom IT involves disproportionate training costs etc. relative to the possible gains to be had, but nonetheless it’s a big step.

The crux of maintaining a standard is to have trust in the governing body.  A non-commercial ‘neutral’ body like BASDA manages and regulates the ‘language’ resolving any disputes and agreeing on any revisions as arbiter.

XML is no panacea as tabilizer makes clear, but is the parameters for business are quite clear then it represents, as an open standard, a lot of clear benefits to the adoption of electronic administrative solutions for B2B.

So in all the hype around innovation in software and design I wonder if we’re losing sight of some real innovation in the small print of trade journals and in the grubby back streets of what’s left of industrial Britain?

via Gary Stein

I’ve been a bit slow on the uptake about this one and hadn’t realised the potential of Google’s move into offline activity in terms of revenue generation.  As Stein says:

Satellite maps are cool and all, but this is where you should pay
attention, when thinking about Google. This is development around the
way they make all their money.

Google makes 99% of its revenue from online advertising – $3billion last year [2004].  So what’s the deal?  Even though online ad revenue is growing at a phenomenal rate it still only accounts for around 10% of all advertising.  So Google is moving into print, trying to eek some of the huge potential revenue open to it and in the process pushing out the media agencies/buyers that make a living from deciding on appropriate advertising and planning ad campaigns. 

How is it moving into print?  One experiment with PC World saw it buy a page of advertising and then cut this up and in effect sub-let it to others:

The issue has a full page of Google-facilitated ads with the URL of an online version of the page
at the top. Fine text also appears at the top saying "Ads by Google,"
and "Google advertisers offer these products and services" at the
bottom. However, there is no Google logo.

So Google  is leveraging the fact that product search online is key to advertising.  People want to check out a product, compare it and get the best price online, yet awareness is often gained offline through the myriad of niche [and mainstream] publications.  Why is this so important?  Because people using the URL in the print advert can be measured – the "offline" URLs are redirected through Google servers.  This is important.  It allows Google to take their online business model into the offline world of brand advertising a move which is upsetting traditional media buyers.

The result is that publishing partners such as PC World would only get paid according to how many people "clicked through" no matter what "brand value" the advert had in raising awareness.  It’s a model which is high in risk especially for publishing partners who would lose some of the ability to plan around revenue streams – as spots are often booked up 3-6+ months in advance.  It could also change the nature of creative work to more product focused rather than brand focused benefits and values.

It’s potentially a major shake-up for the ad industry and marketing in general.