Future of Media Summit Blog

It is inevitable that news dissemination will become a largely social function. By whatever means, we will be provided with extremely low touch ways of sharing content we think would be interesting to specific people we know. This will then be filtered in various ways by the recipients, however most will value being recommended articles and sites on an individual basis.

Digg, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, and other tools allow us to recommend content to the world at large. But recommendations are far more valuable if they are specific to the person and context. The best way to disseminate these recommendations is through our social networks, if we happen to spend time there. So social networks can become a platform for the collaborative filtering of content, giving individuals the benefit of their network’s judgment and access to information.

In this context, the announcement today by New York Times and LinkedIn of a way of providing custom content and recommendations to their network is a landmark. Over the next few years this integration of social networks and content will rapidly evolve to be a very important part of the landscape.

Sorry I’ve been slow to follow up on the Future of Media Summit – it’s been a very busy time since the event, including some long flights :-)

To start off here are some of the most interesting blog posts on the Summit. There are some fantastic ideas and insights in these, so well worth a read. In no particular order :

Stephen Collins: What will the future of media look like?, including the ‘artificial split’ between journalism and new media

Chris Bishops: Monetising future content: business models as traditional content models break down.

JD Lasica: Takeaways from Future of Media Summit, including the ‘Great Decoupling’ and media as ‘Distraction Machine’

Phil Morle: A Future for TV: The Collaborative Crowd - the future is (crudely) present

Seth Yates: Comprehensive Future of Media Summary including notes on all the panels

Jay Cross: review of Future of Media Summit, including the US future of journalism panel

Stilgherrian: Note to “old media: journalists: adapt or stfu!
(Same post at Crikey with different comment stream)

Jonathan Este: Bloggers: the biggest whingers since journalists (Response to Stilgherrian, originally posted on Crikey and reposted on Stilgherrian's blog with comments)

Brad Howarth: Live from Future of Media Summit Part 1, Live from Future of Media Summit Part 2, Live from Future of Media Summit Part 3 - detailed insights and commentary

Craig Wilson: review of the Future of Media Summit, including discussion of the Twitter backchannel at the event

Gavin Heaton: review of future of Media Summit: the future of media is PARTICIPATION

Alex Gibson: compilation of ideas and annotations from the event Twitter stream

Kathy Drasky: live blogging and commentary from the Future of Media Summit in Silicon Valley

Gordon Whitehead: Future of Media: Opportunity or Train Wreck – believing in opportunities

Also be sure to see the initial review of social media commentary on the Future of Media Summit. Since then, additional posts on the Future of Media Summit blog include two additional summaries of discussions on Participant Roundtables on the Sydney side:

Media and social networks Roundtable
Shifts in the advertising industry Roundtable

Media and Social networks.

Moderated by Jim McNamara.
We were asked to think about the word “social” with regards to social networks – since the networks were used for many more things than just social interaction.
What about calling them community networks for instance? A group like Advance, meant to link the Australian diaspora around the world used it as a means of business, while Financial institutions used the networks for business interaction.

Also, since there are so many uses for social networks, should they be classified under the generic term of ‘media”?

One of the key points about the networks was that they used ‘trust’ and word of mouth, based on the user being empowered. Rather like an Irish pub, said someone, an example of a social and communications network and also a place for distribution of material.

There was discussion about misterminology about the words social networks – since after all they were mediated – so were they not just another form of media?

Or have social networks morphed into another and different form of media altogether?
Depends on your point of view, said one participant: it’s a generational thing. Older people would use them to push agendas, whereas younger people used them more for communications and social purposed.

The definition is irrelevant, said another: whatever you want to call it – you are a target audience to the advertiser. Not so, was the reply, since the advantage of Web 2.0 was the ability to talk back and interact. It gives participants a voice.

There was talk about traditional media being ‘closed media’, in the sense the audience was told what to look at, whereas social networks were ‘open media’.

Should we therefore, said the moderator, be thinking about a term such as ‘emergent’ media as it was still developing.

The conversation moved on to the issue of the audience as content generators and the day of the citizen journalist .

We agreed on the core concepts of social media as being: Open/interactive/participatory

We then turned to history and reviewed the fact that there used to be the marketplace and the forum in a village society, which allowed for participatory contact and interaction. Mass media had in fact taken away from people the ability to talk to one another. “We’re back to the global town hall meeting and the world as a village”.

Final Key points to consider:

Information vs communication
Enabling
Interative
Peer to peer influences at work
Social for engagement rather than just to be cosial

And so, does this now make social media a mainstream concept?

* Donald McBain, Head of Brand Marketing, MLC
* Alena Jang, MLC
* Nicholas Wong, Manager, Corporate Strategy, SBS
* Stephen Hollings, CEO, News Digital Careers
* Chris Bishop, BizNet
* Caesar Wong, Web Managing Editor, IBM
* Craig Blair, Netus
* Roger Kermode, Prime Digital Works
* (sorry, didn't catch her name)?, Yahoo
* Michael Broadhead, Folk
* Kara Sullivan, Folk

Marketers changing focus on CPC, wanting more action.
Underlying metrics: Different publishers have different spins. Some
emphasise engagement, UB's, PI's, CPM, etc.
Yahoo! Gateway - performance display, connection between offline and
online. On back of TV commercial - "Search on Yahoo for XYZ"
Much greater fragmentation, unbundling. Takes longer to buy media.
Instead of 5 calls, now it takes dozens.
Agency commission gone in the last 10 years for most, but agencies
starting to charge "consulting fee" to claw this back.
Online consolidating to representation (e.g., "networks")
Clients saying they want to do innovation for sake of innovation ("I
want to do an online ad", vs focussing on the message and target)
Agencies often having independent "strategy units" to tie together
different media types
Media agencies currently unskilled at doing the cross-media planning.
Many set up a "new media" division. Clients don't want that, they
want a media plan.
Influx of hedge fund skills into media buying. Think of them as asset
managers vs agencies.
Demand for data and analytics increasing rapidly.
Can we design our sites for larger screen sizes? Are those people in
a more valuable demographic?
"Free will win, but it will come at a cost" - Nicholas Wong, SBS

I’ll do some more detailed reflections on the Future of Media Summit tomorrow. I’m just about to fall over after a very long day, but thought I’d post a few important social media references and commentary on the event.

First stopping point has to be the Future of Media Summit Blog, where participants have been busily posting all day, notably:

Participant roundtables in Sydney:
Mobile Media and Content
Future of Media and Television

Flow Economy/ Media Strategy Workshop in Silicon Valley:
Yahoo!
CBS

Reviews of panel discussions:
Global Media Strategies – 1
Global Media Strategies – 2
CEO Panel – 1
CEO Panel – 2
Future of TV and video – by Mark Pesce 1
Future of TV and video – by Mark Pesce 2
Future of Privacy and Targeted Advertising
Future of Journalism (Sydney)

Unconference sessions:
New Media – 1
New Media – 2

Twitter comments:
See the Summize search for Twitters with the #fom08 tag – literally hundreds of Twitters from attendees at the Future of Media Summit (which included a Twitter 101 session during the Unconference session in Sydney).

Live video:
The Ustream video from Phil Morle

All this will give you a good feel for the event from the perspective of participants. I'll provide some of my thoughts soon.

In previous years the Summit blog has continued to be active for quite a while after the event as discussions continue online - hopefully this will be the case this year too! Subscribe to the blog to keep up with the conversation.

New Media

- Is consumer a dead word? It implies that they are passive
- Does the same content player work for all audiences?
- Participants drive
o Content
o Format
o Delivery
- Segmentation – not age but levels of interaction / media usage
- Content
o What you want, when you want it
- Progression of people
o Media literacy/interfaces
o Demanding short attention spans of people
- As quality increases peoples standards go up
- Production quality not important on a 2x2 screen
o Versus relevance quality
- Advertising – selling a product through need or desire
-
- Content
o Interaction vs experience
o Peer recognition
o Sharing value with others
- Technology
o MID – Mobile Internet Device
- Cheaper – increases penetration
• Fundamental change in internet demographics
- Variable content by device
o Quality of the idea
o People are not necessarily looking for production quality (time, relevance immediacy)

- Funding notes
o Selling product vs trafficking
o Traditional model – aggregate – very little mass appeal content
- We can’t make all of the good stuff free – public sponsorship
- Wider distraction channels
o Audience distribution / greater reach
o What is the measure of sources and how can discussion be monetise / the value recognised

Notes from the group discussion...

Consumer
Generational difference
"Consumer" is a dead word (implies passive) > changed to participants, but not every participant is active
Does the same content player work for all audiences?
Participants drive: content, format, delivery
- Differences for different cultures
- Participants drive the creation of niches
Segmentation: Not age but levels of interaction/media usage; how much time do they have
Progression of people - how does it change the formats people are looking for
- demanding short attention spans
- media literacy/simplification of interfaces
- unleash untapped potential in audiences
- transferred knowledge
Segment by need vs product segment

Content
what you want, when you want it, how you want it, how you will make it
- production quality vs. relevance quality
As quality goes up, peoples standards go up
Production quality not important @ 2x2 screen. Therefore, free/grass roots content acceptable
Need content - what is it people really want?
- information vs. experience
- peer recognition
Variable content by device
- Quality of the idea
- People are not necessarily looking for production quality but time, relevance, immediacy (e.g. happy to view grainy footage of the Gulf War that has basically been filmed on a mobile phone)

Funding models
Selling product vs trading traffic
Traditional model - aggregate eyeballs
- BUT very little mass appeal content (hard to create content that appeals to everybody)
How do you fund content?
Community supported content models (e.g. Wikipedia) - make value judgement about what's important then voluntarily contribute to support it
Reality is we can't make all the good stuff free (Australian film industry) > public sponsorship
- Implications for creating a "user choice" model
Wider distribution channels
- audience distribution/greater reach
- leverage this idea to divide content up and sell it in different ways
What is the measure of success and how can success be monetised/the value recognised
- Multiple forms

Technology
MID - Mobile Internet Device
Cheaper - increases penetration, fundamental in changing internet demographics (i.e. currently the most people on the internet are English-speaking Westerners, but predictions are that this will change)

Top Australian media executives discuss the findings of the prediction markets, and offer their own insights into directions for the media industry.

Belinda Rowe (Zenith Optimedia)
- Optimist at heart
- Get tired of discussion around whether mainstream media will survive - most of the big media companies have moved into the digital space and are using this to enhance their customer relationships

Angelos Frangopoulos (Australian News Channel)
- Don't see any option other than to grow
- A case of embracing as many opportunities as you can
- Digital since 1996
- Fanastic future for mainstream media because we are all diversifying - those who don't embrace change will suffer

Wendy Hogan (CNET)
- CBS integration
- Contrary to last session, CNET employee a significant number of just for web journalists, who are allowed to blog if they like!
- Different payment models for how you recognise the contribution of people
- Inviting the audience to participate is a method people are using to bring their production costs down
- Give bloggers the opportunity to be seen by audiences

Mark Scott (ABC)
- Positive picture for ABC - recognise they are a good content creator
- Deliver content to audience at a time they want in a format they want
- Advantages for ABC: has a lot of content and don't need to execute that in a model that makes money
- Business model relies on getting a big cheque from the Commonwealth Government, by showing they deliver unique content to Australians

Australian media landscape is distinctive
- Urbanisation, distribution of population
What will make Australian media landscape distinctive in the future?
- Global boundaries that have already been strong are broken down - Aus consumer can engage with content from all around the world
- It will be harder for media companies than when there were far fewer content providers. Who will be able to financially deliver content created in local communities and delivered to local communities?
- Access to 24 hour content from countries all around the world - challenge for mainstream media is about being more and more relevant to local markets. What is unique about us compared with operator overseas?
- Australia has successfully exported content overseas (e.g Neighbours, Home & Away). Opportunity for Australia to produce more content to export, technology can pave the way - need investment in broadband for this to happen efficiently and easily
- CNET: add content with a local context to a site that already exists (e.g. Game Spot - need to tweek Grand Theft Auto for Australian players). Deliver contextually relevant ads too. It's all about putting decisions back in audience's hands regarding content and where they want to read/view it
- ABC: how to find a program that is intrinsically Australian? The real challenge for Aus program makers not that the global market is open to Aus content, but that the global market is available for audience here to see, but you still have to make your money back from the audience here as well - i.e. it's not about selling Australian content overseas.
- No doubt that online will be a big distribution mechanism - more and more people will watch traditional TV content online. How do you monetise it? No one wants to buy/watch pre-rolls? CNET says there's a big drop off from pre-roll to video content, especially for 30 sec pre-rolls

Media channels will be increasing age fragmented
- Teenage audiences using social networking to share content experiences (e.g. MySpace page for Jamie from Summer Heights High)
- Younger audiences are more personalised and selective about what content they consume, they are more content loyal rather than channel loyal (i.e. content is channel agnostic)
- Advent of data

Clearly the iPhone is changing the way that the Australian audience thinks about consuming products via their mobile devices. Where arguably the technology has been available for some time, getting your head around the application of that technology - getting excited about it - that is a different matter.
We discussed the potential of mobile as both a medium for consuming media product and a tool for creating it. As Stephen Quinn from Deakin University suggested, the mobile sphere has an enormous potential to reach people, particularly younger people, like never before.
Viacorp's Ian Gardiner made the point that the Australian mobile carriers are desperately trying to maintain a kind of "walled garden", restricting access and hoping to protect their revenue accordingly, but perhaps "Carriers need o stop trying to be media companies, because they're bad at it," as was suggested by Christo Van Egmond from Stripe.
The carriers might be trying to shore up their revenue models, retain ultimate control over content (however questionable the quality), but is there a real, substantial market for the content they are fighting so fiercely to protect?
Generally the group believes there is - at least for certain content, and assuming Australian carriers loosen the leash in terms of download limits...
Diverging for a second, does anyone reading this know the details and dynamics of the deal that lead to Telstra acquiring rights to distribute the iPhone and why 3 was left out? Would love more info on that.
Anyway, returning to the point at hand, there is some debate over whether mobiles can compete with free content on larger screens over the internet.
First foremost there needs to be appropriate infrastructure in place to accommodate the desire to view any content, to make that experience enjoyable and convenient, but once that is established, really the group agreed that there should be no "for mobile" content. It should all just be content, and platform agnostic. Some sites/uses will lend themselves more heavily to mobile - Van Egmond suggests sport results and breaking news - but really if I want to shop online, if I want to view YouTube, if I want to watch a streamed TV show, I should be able to do it.
Mike Zimmerman from Technology Venture Partners suggests carriers might find some success and continued control if they begin to supplement subscription/pay-per-usage models with ad support, so offer a cut-rate cap plan in exchange for eyeballs during use time or SMS/MMS ads.
Ultimately, as wifi becomes increasingly prolific and accessible and various different enabling technologies undermine the telcos' ambitions, perhaps as Gardiner suggests "the carriers are doomed".

Newsrooms are laying off staff, print journalists are being asked to use video cameras, bloggers are going professional, and sub-editors are writing headlines for search engines. Who will the journalists be and how will they earn a living?

Gen Y don't want to read papers. But some say the newspaper is the best browser - selects the stories for you to read, rather than you going online and searching for only the stories of interest to you

Currently the revenue for media companies comes from newspapers and online is being funded - this balance will evenutually change

Newspapers are not as 'green' as online?

Is the future of journalism only in the hands of journalists?
- It will have to involve people who don't consider themselves journalists today
- Newspapers as a technology will have to adapt
- Most people won't read it front to back but will choose what they want to read
- Green nature of newspaper publishing - allowing people to purchase only the sections they want thereby customising newspapers for the audiences that read them

Skill and professionalism involved in journalism
- The more likely user generated content will come in the visual form (rather than video) because making text requires a lot more work - being a professional journalist requires a certain expertise, it's a craft.
- Blogger is a columnist, not a journalist. You can't be both.
- Need to clearly identify 'reporters' versus 'bloggers'
- But, a blog is just a tool, a piece of paper or web page - some bloggers use the tool to report. Right now I'm using this Future of Media blog to record what is being said during today's panels, rather than to simply express my opinions on the topics

Why don't journalists like bloggers and why don't bloggers like journalists?

Craze of blogging - everyone wants to have a blog
That will settle down so that only the people who really have something to say in a blog will make use of one
Need to move away from the idea of thinking that blogs are just a place for people to say 'this is what i think'

People are stretched right now in the amount of time they have and the amount of information they have to absorb (like Ronald Regan insisting that documents he had to read consisted of no more than one page)
Journalists will become more required to be sythesisers of masses of information

Fairfax Digital has employed senior, well-known journalists to write for SMH/The Age Business Day (online business site). If you have a blog that has enough credibility and funding then you could employ journalists. For now it is traditional media that are the main employers of journalists, however this will change

What is the business model for the future of journalism?
- Imcumbent of journalists to break news, but as is human nature there is also a tendency to cut corners to save time
- Surprised if we see the same continuing pressure of newspapers over the next few years and no change in the status of journalists
- Journalist at The Australian says she writes for online as well as the papers. When a story happens she has to quickly write the online story - is this the future of journalists? Reporting in a multi-media world
- As newspapers driven by revenue and costs start to shed staff (e.g. LA Times has gone down by about half in the last 5 years) the quality and quantitiy of stories go down
- Correlation b/w the number of jobs in the industry and the quality of the output

Decline in newspaper market in America
- No one has invested in them for years - no glossy liftouts like in Australia
- Pressure on revenues requires them to cut, cut, cut
- In Australia we have 3 very large print companies with huge earning bases from which to fund new ideas
- Most of the cost cutting has gone into getting rid of the salaries of people
- If we go into online, theoretically reducing paper already reduces costs
- Jobs are there for people with certain skills - movement from print to online
- Police force tends to lose people at certain ages, but then they go into similar jobs (e.g. driving instructers, security guards). This could happen for journalists too

CONTROVERSY! Bloggers don't pretend to have objectivity, journalists do
- Journalists have let us down in the last 10 years or so with the focus on Monica Lewinsky, etc
- Trying to set up a dichotomy b/w journalists and bloggers, but blogging is just a tool
- Where a journalist will go off and research people, an individual has already blogged about it
- False dichotomy to say that blogging and journlism are opposites? They are just different?

Branding - you read something in The Australian and this guarantees a certain credibility for the content. With blogging the wheat is being sorted out from the chaff gradually. Some bloggers are gaining credibility, others are good for a laugh but you wouldn't base your opinions on what they say

Would journalists be happy being paid on how many page impressions a certain article gets? i.e. paid on performance

Conversation with US panelists

Is objectivity attainable?
- Values of journalists: fairness, balance, choose stories that matter and not the stories that get the most page views (we know what stories those are already). It's okay to have some Big Macs occasionally, but if you have Big Macs too often you become one sick person
- Do we all agree about the notion of fairness?
- Importance of certain stories
- Goal for all of us is to become more educated and informed about the world around us, rather than just focusing on the stories or marketing products that we want (avoid star gazing)
- Is such thing as too much of a good thing
- Formula for reaching mass audience with the Big Macs and also providing the content that will clean their arteries of the cholestoral! Don't know how to convey the important stories with this news medium of online

Embracing change and opportunites as there is a lot of room for diversifying. Financially, it all comes from quality content. Blogs/news content - different payment models for contributors - there will be recognition for video or photo content

ABC - new ops in digital media offers more ways in more situations to communicate to Australia - advantages are from content and it isn't under a business model framed to earn money - purely quality content. Online, off-line - all consumers of ABC are access in significant numbers. No-one else is in this position to do so.

Australia is disctinctive in its media landscape - how/ what will continue this in the future?
Urbanisation
Distribution of population
Global opps

- Global boundaries have broken down around media - global newspapers etc content are now accessible. Regional and rural australia - who will be able to deliver content that is created in local communities & made for local communities?

The landscape is much different in the future.

Angelos - ANC

Access to 24 hours news content - is a threat to ANS
Being more and more relevant to each and every market - which sees them offering localised portals to various areas
As a provider of info - what is not going to be easily replicated overseas

Z.O
Australia produces high quality content and production - technology - australia has the opportunity to produce/export more.
Reliance on investment in broadband is needed for this to happen sooner and more easily

CNET - content in a local context - you need a local context for many platforms - simply to make it contextually relevant to various locations (e.g GTA - may need to be censored). Putting it into the audiences hands - show what they want and what they want to know/interact with. Sport, interest, hobbies etc.

ABC - what australian t.v product has expanded globally/domestically on it's own
Summer Heights High - BBC etc
Challenge program makers - you still have to make your money back - how do you create programming here that competes domestically with global/o.s. shows - competitively

There is a growing division in the age demographic

Advertisers opp - amount of data and knowldge that is now available

with mark pesce as facilitator. global market. very intersting group. across a range of dinterests, content and media. interactive. also gov. aggregators, aust content, media agencies, vry exciting.
are we operating in two different worlds. budgets, how to be interactive and deliver broadcast content as well. haveing shelf space for australia, is there need for regulation to hear australian voice? why settle for small space? australians create huge content on youtube. tv.com partiicpation as well. distrbution and content. old media world of film and tv. new age of partnership. both in distribution and content. innovation to come from fleet-footed. offset initiatives to incent production. early days lots of competitors.
national innovation review to come out soon - to support the fleet-footed opportunistic innovators. Cutler's review supports this. small innovators can apply to government to funding as they are the new face of innovation.
new models of internet video NOT advertising. no one right answer. is advertising meant to be annoying? or to help meet people's values?. metrics on p2p. large media coming to grips with the metrics. then re-eduate what they mean - not just per view - but level of engagement. study from trade body in uk tv and online buyers if they see both. Integrated sell to advertisers. tv, print, online. ad agencies margins are not as clear online. margins bigger in traditional - not as big online. need to try to talk same language details to compare tv and print ad to online. reach and frequency.
media buyers still split - integrate online and tv. transitional phase? online is not about cpm it is about conversation. radio is doing it commercially online. push consumers to online. that radio bloke. measurability, accountability to drive away from cpm metrics.
How to get beyond big media - media planners dont understand that the conversations online are not managed by big media. global conversations and regional marketing have a disconnect - tension between the two.
What do broadcasters do with youtube? the new tv. tv is just a monitor - where do you want to access it? fragmented distribution mechanisms is huge for heritage media. they will never really be good at it. next step is deeper interactivity - additional media in the experience.
government can influence by tax and incentives. new age of popularism. gov controls of internet, spam dont work. how to protect the kids. deeper levels of understanding and knolwedge so parents can influence, ethics.
are free to air commercial scared? or are they really ocmfortable with where they re right now.

How can content creators localise content, distribution, and audience engagement to reach multiple markets?

French perspective: alienate yourself if you don't consume media in English
- More people consuming media in English in Europe even though there are so many different languages
- When you launch something in the US it can reach a minimum of 3 million people, whereas in Europe there are 20-21 different languages which restrict the reach of a single message

Is English becoming viable as a media language?

Search: despite the efforts of Google in China, Baidu remains ahead in search

Multi media consumption: ahead of the game in Australia

People care about what is going on locally, especially in smaller places. As opposed to engaging about national/global issues, people want to complain about their neighbours

Yahoo: challenge as an organisation is to develop platforms to deliver scale, but localise formats

Compared to US, the diversity you find in Europe is amazing. South Europeans very active in blogging (ego led, especially if you use your name) and converstaion platforms - but the more you go north blogging is almost non-existent (e.g. Germany, Switzerland). Germans have a tendency not to expose their names, they walk under a cover.

Linked In - dominate US first and then localise.

In terms of where Australian businesses stand in terms of exporting content into Chinese markets, it's going to be challenging. The relative cost of media is some $10X cheaper than it is in Australia. India is a bit of a different kettle of fish. There are a number of businesses succeeding in taking content service over there.

What is the easiest place to get dollars? How do we get the advertising dollars in China?

Baidu is never going to leave China, Google is never going to get there

China is one day going to have companies that come out and compete worldwide

There has been a thread talking about how important "customer relationship management" is. I propose we look more at the new field of Service Science:

Services Sciences, Management and Engineering

Service Science, Management and Engineering

Or look up James Spohrer and Service Science...

-b

While on stage at the Future of Media 2008 Summit, I did have a bit of a brainwave, the crashing together of all my recent research on self-organizing social systems and the last five years thinking about media.

I had a bit of a vision, and it looks like this. There's an event - in Australia, it's arguably a footy game - which has many thousands of people in the audience. Many of these people have high-end smart phones (Nokia N80/N95 or iPhone, etc.) which have good cameras and 3G/HSDPA radios. Add in a nice piece of software, such as Qik, and you immediately have turned every one of these folks into live broadcasters.

OK, that's nice, and it's reasonably revolutionary. But that's not where this ends. That's where this begins.

All of that massive live coverage is essentially uncoordinated, at least to begin with. But as soon as the capability exists to have this massive live coverage, tools will begin to be developed which can coordinate and crowdsource this coverage.

Consider: these mobiles all have AGPS receivers - they know where they are. They can all handle a large amount of IP traffic (both up and down). This means that it should be possible to create tools which allow the users (live broadcasters) themselves to optimize their coverage. So that everyone is getting a unique shot.

Plus, all of this will be fed into a master "console" - again, available to anyone - so that the streams can be chosen, mixed, and rebroadcast out to a broader web audience - all in real time.

This is where Qik is going. Perhaps not this year. But certainly next year. And I can see a huge market opportunity for these tools, for the audiences these tools will aggregate, and for the events thus covered.

That's just the beginning. I've just scratched the surface. But this will be huge.

Will advertisers' and publishers' desire for highly targeted advertising be thwarted by the desire for privacy?

Targeted advertising: Where are we today and where are we going?
- Changing from push to pull model of advertising
- Holy Grail of marketing - deliver the right ad to the right person at the right time
- Most of the marketers out there are subscribing to the same tennants that traditional direct marketers have been for years (using consumer data to deliver advertising)
- Ask Clients - what is the state of your database? Always problems. The issue is how much time & money do they want to spend on making their database healthy
- Lack of innovation or room for innovation at the ad delivery level because everyone is too busy trying to sort out their data. Everyone is worried about how much personal information companies like Google have, but the thing is they actually have no idea how to use that information!
- Search is your experience (you're choosing to search for something) - targeting makes sense
- Social advertising - Mistake a lot of sites are making today is trying to target too hyper-optimised. Users are creating content and participating in converations about content. There is room for non-targeted advertising where the advertisers participate in a social community and inform the social context - targeting doesn't always make sense

Who controls or owns data?

Key points to clarify when talking about data ownership and privacy
- The word privacy has a number of negative connotations, very vague. Can't implement privacy, privacy is a biproduct
- Data is personal and should be owned by the user. The problem is not one of ownership, what is missing today is control
- Dataportability project is advocating tools to control personal data

- When a person discloses data to a particular company/party they might feel comfortable doing so. Starts to become scary for an individual when data is collated through merges of companies, etc
- Usually some sort of incident leads to public outcry and the government steps into to mandate privacy laws
- Need to develop techniques and mechanism to protect ourselves before someone else tells us how to do it
- Put control in the users' hands to revoke permission to use it

Who are the players in this world of highly targeted advertising?

From a consumers' perspective, if you are using a service you have a relationship with that particular service. But at the moment it's relatively easy for a third party to get
- How to avoid getting individual data sent around?

Goods and services that provide utility in exchange for data (e.g. Users know there is a trade off between getting free Gmail and seeing ads)

Users are the main players. Personal digital assistant - program to receive any of the information you're looking for and serve as a data repository

Vendor relationship management - customer collects as much data about themselves and then provides access to vendors

Important to remember that not all advertising leads to an immediate transaction

Trust is missing - how do we gain trust?

Marketing is the process of having a dialogue with the people you're targeting. Puts Facebook and other social networking platforms ahead because they create converstaions. However, Facebook may have made the mistake of trying to monetise word-of-mouth

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=47050&id=500634407

How existing broadcast and cable TV are shifting into an open landscape including user generated video, IPTV, and video conversations?

Where is the TV landscape going?
- It's a landscape getting more and more challenging - securing distribution and getting access to consumers
- Key is to figure out how to package TV and present to people in a way that is compelling and doesn't lose the editorial voice, but also to figure out how to make money of this business which is always evolving
- Innovation - bring new things to this medium
- TV is a medium which hasn't changed much in the past 40-50 years
- Time to innovate, time to bring new ways of consuming and participating in television for it to prosper

Can current TV broadcast be maintained?
- People yearn for experience and current broadcasters can still provide some of these experiences
- But some broadcasters have been complacent in regard to some of the changes going on and need to consider new ways of attracting revenue

TV broadcasters as far apart from consumers now as they've ever been. Media should be singular

Two components of what broadcasters do
1. Content (primary)
2. Distribution (secondary)

One simple solution to the problems is content. None of it matters (how/where they get the content) if the content isn't compelling. You won't get any readers or viewers if you don't produce good content
- No one cares about 'quality of presentation' they care about 'quality of content'. But you also need to produce a 'volume of content'. If you can do that you can win in any media

We all create content - broadcasters & consumers

We can now as individuals go into live broadcasting - 500 people in a crowd covering events live from their phones. Can TV win this 'live broadcasting' match?

Broadcasters can pull the user generated content together?
Content creation & editing - consumers can do this too

All of us are in an information revolution where QUALITY of content is key. If you can distribute this content then you will succeed. If you're controlling a large amount of content (editorial) you have to have regular & effective quality control. If you have this you can win in a commodity market

Rise of documentary as a form is attracting significant audiences (think An Inconvenient Truth), whereas previously a niche genre. This is just one example of changing content forms. If broadcasters are smart and adapt the new forms of content then they will succeed and have a successful future

People consuming more and more short form video
- YouTube is a fascinating example of the profiliferation of different forms of content
- YouTube is an extention of people forwarding content
- YouTube can promote broadcast content

Moving towards 'salience-based aggregation' of content (away from time-based aggregation)
- Sending content you think someone will appreciate
- If I keep sending my friend crap he will no longer open my emails! This is true for broadcasters too

TiVo launching this month
- A bit of a yawn (i.e. not the revolution it would have been a few years ago)
- People have already got used to the idea of consuming content on demand

We now can be active in searching out what we want to see ourselves - at work you'll look at your favourites (content you know you like/care about). At home you turn on the news and discover content you didn't know you cared about - key is credible, usable content you care about

What does the consumer actually care about? What are they looking for?
- People want content that is more relevant for them. They don't want a top-down media experience
- Look at the success of YouTube! YouTube is still struggling to build an economic model - if Google hadn't come along they would be a very different business today - but while you need to take economic factors into account, ultimately the most important thing is what the consumer wants

Previously all you had to worry about was distribution - Large viewership, easy money. It's much more interesting now - How do I get my audience interested in this? How do I get advertisers interested in this?

Gruen Transfer - spend a lot of time talking about the low end ads (the screaming low end ads). They only need to get a few people viewing their ads to make money. With the changing nature of content (i.e. short form video) and advertising models, why don't we have millions of little ads dropped into a certain, tangled video stream rather than placed on television (when people may just turn it off)?

You've got to produce as much as you can at a low price, but you've also got to produce some Mercedes along the way. People are beginning to make choices based on content - if you have this mix of 'base level content' and 'quality content' it's a good model for world domination!

Three ways we consume information
1. Read
2. Listen
3. Watch
These are the three ways news/content providers need to dominate. Media organisations must be able to do all three to succeed

My table of five here at the Future of Media Summit at the Computer History Museum analyzed Yahoo! to try out Future Exploration Network's Strategy Tools. We looked at Yahoo! past, present, and future along the dimensions of connecivity, interfaces, relationships, services, content, and standards.

Yahoo! began as a recommender of links and became a portal which seemed to offer anything that moves. They are in relationships, services, and content. Their services might be repositioned as time-savers, offering focus in the face of google's breadth. Their content is good when specific, e.g. PR Newswire, so again a focus on specialty areas might differentiate them. Yahoo! would like to be sticky, but it feels like a bunch of separate sights rather than an integrated portal. We couldn't find any viable means of repositioning Yahoo1 for the flow economy.

Our advice: take Microsoft's money. It's $10 billion over the current market cap and we're skeptical Yahoo! stock is going to rise.

Cross-posted to FOM08/blog.